Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Mind Numbingly Dull Minutiae

After a couple of frustrating hours that could have been saved by going immediately to the textbook from 1961, when people actually knew stuff, I have discovered that the things that every modern physical chemistry textbook calls 'the associated Laguerre polynomials' are not what mathematicians call 'the associated Laguerre polynomials', but their derivatives. Apparently then multiplied by two, for no reason that I can figure out...

Some time earlier, in 1862, a man was hanged in New Orleans, by order of General Butler, for desecrating the Union flag. He was picked up in the street wearing a fragment of it in his buttonhole, after a small mob took down the flag the occupying forces had put up over the Mint.

No comments: