{"id":664301,"date":"2010-02-14T18:42:27","date_gmt":"2010-02-14T23:42:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/?p=4081"},"modified":"2010-02-14T18:42:27","modified_gmt":"2010-02-14T23:42:27","slug":"nothing-says-%e2%80%9ci-love-you%e2%80%9d-like-a-non-orientable-surface-cosmic-variance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/664301","title":{"rendered":"Nothing Says \u201cI Love You\u201d Like a Non-Orientable Surface | Cosmic Variance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Feeling like Valentine&#8217;s Day is a little too cutesy for an intellectual heavyweight such as yourself? Nonsense; the heart may have its reasons, but reason can certainly figure them out, given sufficient grant funding and some diligent graduate students. <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/twistedphysics.typepad.com\/cocktail_party_physics\/2010\/02\/all-you-need-is.html\">Jennifer Ouellette<\/a> points to a talk by Mary Roach that is safe for TED but arguably not safe for work, and shares some brain scans to prove that love is really blind.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2010\/02\/6a00d8341c9c1053ef0120a89d40b8970b-500wi.gif?resize=426%2C237\" alt=\"6a00d8341c9c1053ef0120a89d40b8970b-500wi\" title=\"6a00d8341c9c1053ef0120a89d40b8970b-500wi\" width=\"426\" height=\"237\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-4083\"\/><\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/2010\/02\/fourthheartcurve.gif?resize=172%2C182\" alt=\"fourthheartcurve\" title=\"fourthheartcurve\" width=\"172\" height=\"182\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-4086\"\/>If all that biology is a bit too squishy, <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/individual.utoronto.ca\/sck\/vday.html\">Sarah Kavassalis does the math<\/a>. Here you will find the right functions to use to draw hearts &#8212; my favorite is the fourth heart curve from <a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/blog.wolframalpha.com\/2010\/02\/12\/computing-valentines-day-with-wolframalpha\/\">Wolfram|Alpha<\/a>, shown at right &#8212; and how to construct topologically nontrivial versions out of construction paper and scissors. Who says mathematicians aren&#8217;t practical? Nor are they above venturing into the realm of the literary.<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Roses are red.<br \/> Violets are approximately blue.<br \/> A paracompact manifold with a Lorentzian metric,<br \/> can be a spacetime, if it has dimension greater than or equal to two.\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Shakespeare, maybe not. But the course of true science never did run smooth.<\/p>\n<p><a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/4TMiFSv8ziZyNz6P6Mj604klLEA\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/4TMiFSv8ziZyNz6P6Mj604klLEA\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><br \/>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\"  href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/4TMiFSv8ziZyNz6P6Mj604klLEA\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/4TMiFSv8ziZyNz6P6Mj604klLEA\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/CosmicVarianceBlog\/~4\/_yLh1rblpf4\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/DiscoverMag\/~4\/YZgVK9FjCPE\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Feeling like Valentine&#8217;s Day is a little too cutesy for an intellectual heavyweight such as yourself? Nonsense; the heart may have its reasons, but reason can certainly figure them out, given sufficient grant funding and some diligent graduate students. Jennifer Ouellette points to a talk by Mary Roach that is safe for TED but arguably [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":657,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4821],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9NivD-2MOx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/657"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}