Quick hits

Two quick things noticed on Cynical-C. First, very much up the old Cosmic Variance alley, a list of the Ten Most Beautiful Physics Experiments ever. I have a funny feeling we've linked to it before, but it's worth a visit. I would have voted for Archimedes taking a bath over Galileo dropping balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which after all probably never happened. (He did, however, amuse himself during sermons at the next-door cathedral by using his pulse to time the chandelier swinging overhead, thereby discovering that the period of a pendulum is independent of its amplitude.) Our fan base will verify that we here at CV are utterly beholden to the dictates of political correctness, so this other link is somewhat outside our normal fare: but it is perhaps the best blonde joke ever.