Starcraft is now an official course at Berkeley

Starcraft, the computer game that has destroyed the grades of many promising students in the past decade, may now help the same students achieve better grades… at least if you live in Berkeley. The university is now offering a fully accredited course on playing Starcraft.

Nope, we’re not talking about programming games, or game design, but actually playing the game. Well, just that would be too easy, the course also involves theoretical components, such as this most academic question:

A Terran Siege Tank in Siege Mode attacks for 70 damage, has 150 hp, and 1 armor. This means that after two upgrades, a Siege Tank can kill another Siege Tank in two hits instead of three. What are other significant damage combos? Be sure to investigate not just upgrades and numbers of hits, but also unit group combinations. Which numbers are worth noting?

Now, I bet you haven’t seen a question with such depth, and I am sure Prof. Vidal would agree. I mean, just check out the full course description:

This course will go in-depth in the theory of how war is conducted within the confines of the game StarCraft. There will be lecture on various aspects of the game, from the viewpoint of pure theory to the more computational aspects of how exactly battles are conducted. Calculus and Differential Equations are highly recommended for full understanding of the course. Furthermore, the class will take the theoretical into the practical world by analyzing games and replays to reinforce decision-making skills and advanced StarCraft theory.

If you’re interested, you can enrol in a degree at Berkeley now. 

Source: 1up

The first to get back up, of course, is an explanatory article in regards to the paper `More Really is Different’, that I coauthered. Given that the paper dealt with the idea that not all macroscopic laws can be derived from fundamental physics, you can imagine all the sort of misinterpretations that it may case. 

• More Really is Different explained.

I’ve also attached the powerpoint presentation that I gave at the first quantum biology workshop at Santosa in January, which presents the topic from the altermative perspective of what it can say about deriving biological laws.

And you thought Lego was just for kids… The good folks at Arhus University has decided to reveal the true importance of this innocent looking toy by constructing a fully functional Turing machine using nothing but Lego pieces. The remarkable piece of engineering has firmly established that we can now stay the entire universe using Lego pieces alone. 

The silly scientists from the 1950s are certain to turn in their graves. Why didn’t they use lego blocks instead of vacuum tubes?

So, I’ve always wondered how people typed equations on their sites. Finally, I’ve found a nice program that does. Fingers crossed that the equation below is going to go through:

What about my favorite equation?

As my old lecturer Dr. Bold put it:

When I was a young lad, with a lot more hair on my head, I looked at the equation and ripped a lot of it out. Here you’ve got , a rediculous number that’s 2.71 whatever… then you’ve got , 3.1415… another number that keeps going forever. And finall, you got , which isn’t even a real number for gods sake! And somehow you and to the combination and you get nothing???

He’s lecturers almost made electric circuits interesting!

With the PhD finally behind me, there is an actually sense that I have time to do other things! Mind you, its not as if I never did other stuff in the last few month, but simply the constantly feeling that I shouldn’t be doing anything else!

Thus, Qceptor over at quantum.infoceptor.net went into disrepair. For some reason, my lovely hosts decided to load up a back-up of the server from several months back, and then take an extended holiday to Congo (or wherever else Internet acess is unlikely). Thus, the site seems to have got wiped.

Yeesh. I’ve move my personal site to a new server, with a new domain. So, lets see how this goes! If you see this site, its still in its highly experimental stages!