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Rated: 18+ · Book · Personal · #1196512
Not for the faint of art.
Complex Numbers

A complex number is expressed in the standard form a + bi, where a and b are real numbers and i is defined by i^2 = -1 (that is, i is the square root of -1). For example, 3 + 2i is a complex number.

The bi term is often referred to as an imaginary number (though this may be misleading, as it is no more "imaginary" than the symbolic abstractions we know as the "real" numbers). Thus, every complex number has a real part, a, and an imaginary part, bi.

Complex numbers are often represented on a graph known as the "complex plane," where the horizontal axis represents the infinity of real numbers, and the vertical axis represents the infinity of imaginary numbers. Thus, each complex number has a unique representation on the complex plane: some closer to real; others, more imaginary. If a = b, the number is equal parts real and imaginary.

Very simple transformations applied to numbers in the complex plane can lead to fractal structures of enormous intricacy and astonishing beauty.




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March 4, 2024 at 9:03am
March 4, 2024 at 9:03am
#1065530
Here's a scientist's take on battling nuttery. From Ars Technica:

    The key to fighting pseudoscience isn’t mockery—it’s empathy  
Evidence shows that shoving data in peoples’ faces doesn’t work to change minds.


Empathy? Well, then, my efforts are doomed to failure.

As a scientist heavily engaged in science communication, I’ve seen it all.

Somehow, I doubt that is true. This article is less than two months old, and I'll bet that this author saw even more in the scant 7 weeks since it was published. But okay. I'm being pedantic. Believe it or not, scientists have a poetic license, too.

People have come to my public talks to argue with me that the Big Bang never happened.

There have indeed been whisperings in the physics world about alternative origins, mainly based on data collected from the JWST. But it's one thing for trained scientists to use available data to come up with new hypotheses, and quite another for non-scientists to assert something without real evidence. Yes, that group includes me.

People have sent me handwritten letters explaining how dark matter means that ghosts are real.

I had a long discussion with myself in here, quite recently, about the spectrum between "real" and "not real." Ghosts lie somewhere on that spectrum. I have no doubt that people have experienced... whatever... and called that whatever "ghosts." (I also have no doubt that there are hoaxers out there, as documented in Scooby-Doo.) The leap there is from "experiencing something I can't explain" to "it must be the disembodied spirit of a dead person." Analogous to "lights in the sky = space aliens."

In any event, there is not one single shred of evidence that I'm aware of to link dark matter with unexplained haunt-like phenomena. Hell, the whole point of dark matter, as far as I understand the science, is that it only interacts gravitationally with ordinary matter.

People have asked me for my scientific opinion about homeopathy—and scoffed when they didn’t like my answer.

As Tim Minchin explained, funny how water "somehow forgets all the poo it's had in it."  

People have told me, to my face, that what they just learned on a TV show proves that aliens built the pyramids and that I didn’t understand the science.

Sure; they were spaceship landing sites, as seen in the well-known documentary Stargate: SG-1.

Notably left out of this introduction is any discussion on flat-earthers, UFOs, astrology, psychic powers, cryptozoology, vaccine refusal, climate change "skepticism," or moon-landing hoaxers. Among myriad others. Fortunately, the author nods to these later.

But in all my years of working with the public, I’ve found a potential strategy. And that strategy doesn’t involve confronting pseudoscience head-on but rather empathizing with why people have pseudoscientific beliefs and finding ways to get them to understand and appreciate the scientific method.

I figured the answer to "why" is that people want certainty, which things like religion and pseudoscience can give them the illusion of. Science is the best tool we have of approaching the truth, but it's imperfect and it knows that.

But I'm not a very empathetic person. I try to be, but there are some things I just have to accept without understanding.

To get things started, let's figure out what we mean by “pseudoscience.” Unfortunately, there’s no universally agreed-upon definition for us to turn to, and the lines between science and pseudoscience can get a little blurry. For example, some people accuse super-theoretical investigations like string theory of veering into pseudoscience (I disagree, but that’s another story).

String Theory: The Universe is a big ball of string, and God is a cat.

Look. I'm allowed jokes, and that's one I'm inordinately proud of. The image of a cosmic feline batting around a stupendously huge ball of string is inherently amusing to me, and, let's face it, would explain a lot of the chaos in the universe.

Here in reality, though, string theory might well be a dead end. And that's okay. That doesn't make it pseudoscience, any more than the luminiferous ether was pseudoscience; it was just the best we could come up with when we had a more limited understanding of light.

And then there’s science that doesn’t live up to expectations. There are some bad scientists who create junk, lazy scientists who don’t do their homework, fraudulent scientists who tune their findings for a buck, and all manner of not-quite-good-enough scientific output. All of these blur the lines, too, even within disciplines that generally sit on firm foundations.

That's because scientists are, generally at least, human, and humans are subject to all kinds of fallacies, biases, desires, distractions, and yes, a certain level of darkness.

Perhaps the most obvious example of junk science was Andrew Wakefield's assertion that vaccines caused autism. While later debunked (and Wakefield defrocked), the damage had already been done. Not to mention what the whole kerfluffle said about the general public's attitude about those on the spectrum, which I imagine can be quite hurtful to those on the spectrum. (Okay, maybe I can exhibit empathy from time to time.)

An important part of the scientific method is to identify these mistakes and correct them. Unfortunately, it doesn't always happen quickly enough. And then you get branches that even I am wary of, such as nutrition science, which is notorious for going back and forth on things. (I think that's a case of things being so incredibly complicated that it's really difficult, if not philosophically impossible, to control for all possible variables.)

The word pseudoscience means “false science,” and that’s where my definition starts. Pseudoscience is a practice, a mode of investigation, that looks like science but misses the point. Or, as I like to phrase it, pseudoscience has the skin of science but misses its soul.

"Soul" is very close to the last word I'd expect a scientist to use to describe anything, but again... poetic license.

I won't continue to quote too much, but the next section makes clear that by "soul," the author is referring to the scientific method itself.

Many people around the world seek the advice of astrologers, whose practice was once considered a scientific discipline. And while astrology uses jargon and complicated mathematics, practitioners keep their methods secret and arcane; there is no community-wide accepted set of practices open to criticism and refinement.

The evolution of astrology into astronomy is a fascinating one, and I can't think of any discipline that better illustrates the history of science. I've noted before that Newton had what today would be called fringe beliefs, such as alchemy and astrology. His genius wasn't limited to being inspired by falling fruit, but that he showed the rest of the world a way to separate testable science from folklore and wishful thinking.

Just yesterday, I happened upon an article, which I shall not share, written by an astrologer. The argument in the article boiled down to lamenting that astronomers don't consult astrologers before making changes to how they classify things. It was a much-needed laugh, let me tell you.

So, after a while, the author finally gets to the question of why people believe pseudoscience. And, at least in part, it closely matches my guess, above:

Pseudoscience is seductive; it’s a counterbalance to the often cold, remote authority offered by scientists. It provides a “real” truth about the world that people may accept when scientific statements run counter to their personal or ideological beliefs.

In the spirit of the article, though, I'm not trying to interpret the wording here as confirmation of my pre-existing belief. And the article lists several other explanations, as well.

The soul of science is there to eliminate human bias as much as possible, to allow for nonintuitive answers to emerge that run counter to our expectations.

Which is precisely why I scoff at "common sense."

Humans tend to trust the word of their friends and family over distant scientists because that’s the way we’re wired. Humans tend to be swayed by a good story over a good data set.

In case you were wondering, that's where writing comes in.

As for suggestions on how to battle pseudoscience, that section's in there, as well.

Evidence has repeatedly shown that simply shoving data in peoples’ faces doesn’t work to change their minds. Neither does simply telling somebody they’re wrong and leaving it at that (to be honest, that strategy rarely works on me, either).

Nor me. As much as I try to keep an open mind about things, I can be just as stubborn as anyone when it comes to data that conflicts with my pre-existing beliefs. Like, recently, some article came out that asserted that alcohol is bad for you at any dosage. My first instinct was denial. And then, realizing my own hypocrisy (we all have hypocrisies), I concluded that, even if the science is sound (which is always in question), physical health isn't the last word on anything; you have to take into account quality of life, not just quantity. What use would it be to live to 100 if you have to give up everything that truly makes life worth living?

I don't doubt the facts, at least not any more than I doubt a lot of facts. Just the underlying assumptions.

I have a personal rule: Unless someone asks me directly for my opinion, I don’t offer it.

Shit, if I had that rule, this blog would be a tumbleweed wasteland.

Instead, I try to practice what’s known as radical empathy. This is empathy given to another person without any expectation of receiving it back in return. I try to see the world through someone else’s eyes and use that to find common ground.

Now that is, in my humble opinion, a thing worth striving for. If I could just remember to apply it in the moment.

I've railed on related topics in here, repeatedly. Most notably, in my "space aliens" rants. It's important, I think, to remember that people believe stuff because it brings them some benefit: comfort, peace, whatever. Something to help them sleep at night. And I think most, if not all, of us want the same benefits, ultimately; we just take different routes to the napping couch.
March 3, 2024 at 9:37am
March 3, 2024 at 9:37am
#1065466
Almost two years ago, in May of 2022, I wrote some commentary on an Atlas Obscura article about the Great Lakes: "Sea What I Did There

Being relatively recent, the article I referenced is still there.   Among other things, it's a good read for learning more about the Great Lakes. So, today, I'll just critique my own entry.

And now, today's burning (or really, drowning) question

I thought that intro was clever at the time. In retrospect, it was just silly. Partly because parts of the Great Lakes indeed have a history of burning, due to the chemicals that apes like to dump into them (I kind of chuckle every time they're described as "fresh water," though I know that's meant to describe lack of sea salt). And also partly because it was a bit insensitive.

(Responding to "Are the Great Lakes Really Inland Seas" headline): That's right up there with "Is a hot dog a sandwich?" in terms of categorization questions. (It's not, by the way. It's a taco.)

I stand by my categorization of hot dog as not-a-sandwich, but since then, I've been wondering about where gyros fit in. They're kind of like tacos, too. A taco is clearly not a gyro, nor is a hot dog (even if the hot dog has been spinning around on one of those convenience store heat roller machines). But is it fair to lump several different cultures' foods into a category based on that of only one of the cultures? Hot dogs are basically derived from Germany. Gyros are, famously, Greek, though I'd extend that to nearby Mediterranean regions. And tacos are, of course, Mexican. Other cultures have the similar idea of folding some sort of carbs around a filling, but not fully (that would be a "wrap" or a burrito. or perhaps one of those meat pies you can get from street vendors in England, though those are probably closer to calzones). So what we need is an overarching category for foods that are not technically sandwiches, because they're not fillings between two hunks of bread, but also not technically wraps or calzones, but something in between the two. A sandwich sandwich, if you like.

It is entirely possible that I spend too much time considering these important philosophical questions.

I think we're all aware of how angry the Lakes can become.

Frankly (see what I did there?), I have no memory of why I made such an idiotic blanket statement. Maybe I assumed everyone's heard Gordon Lightfoot's most famous song, the one about a ship sinking in the Great Lakes. Another fun categorization question: Ship or boat? The Edmund Fitzgerald was a freighter, which is most definitely a ship, because, well, it shipped stuff between ports, or, in its case, between a port and the bottom of Lake Superior.

In any case, I should always know better than stating "we're all aware" of anything. There are always people who don't know, be it from age or geographical distance or lack of exposure to cultural references.

Is Pluto a planet? Depends on definition of "planet." Under current internationally accepted definition, no.

As of this writing, I'm still obsessed with playing Starfield, a video game that features lots of star systems with planets and moons to explore. One of the star systems is our own solar system. Amusingly, they list Pluto as a planet and Charon as its moon, though here in reality, Charon and Pluto orbit a center of mass which doesn't lie within either body, which should make it a binary system. Further, in reality, this double-not-a-planet has other, smaller satellites.

This is, of course, not the only, or even the worst, technical issue in Starfield. But it's a game, so I just take it for what it is.

Virginia and three other US states are technically Commonwealths. We still refer to them as states.

That was not as apt an analogy as I apparently thought it was at the time. There's a difference between the arbitrary boundaries and technical name of a state or country, and the border between bodies of water and land. Except, of course, when there is no difference; Hawai'i, e.g.

The Dead Sea is famously salty as hell, sure, but so is the Great Salt Lake, which is about 7 times bigger than the Dead Sea.

Since then, I've learned that the GSL is shrinking pretty fast, so now, two years later, I'm not sure about that size comparison. The Dead Sea is also shrinking, of course. In any case, my real point was that they're both endorrheic bodies of water, and we call the bigger one a lake and the smaller one a sea.

In the spirit of what I said above about assuming awareness, "endorrheic" describes a watershed that's self-contained and doesn't allow for runoff into an ocean. They're really common in the American West. Hell, the vast majority of Nevada is endorrheic. Why they're usually found in areas we call deserts, I really do think should be obvious.

At one time, though, around the time the dinosaurs bit it, the Rockies were at the bottom of an inland sea, and the Appalachians were much, much higher (and originally extended into Scotland).

You know, when I make a claim like the bit about Scotland, I really should include a reference. At this time, however, I can't find where I learned that little tidbit, though I do remember that it involved the really stupendous age of the mountain range, combined with continental drift. Since I can't locate a reference, even on Wikipedia, you can probably safely ignore that bit of trivia, because it might well be the result of a misunderstanding on my part.

The relative youth of the Rockies and former height of the Appalachians, though, those are well-documented parts of geological history. here,   for one.

All continents can be considered big islands, and there is really only one world-spanning ocean surrounding all of them.

I object to my use of the word "really" in that sentence. Sure, it's another way to look at things, but there are real differences   between the areas we label as "oceans," even if the boundaries between those bodies are fuzzy.

I'll just end with this little tidbit, relevant to this entire discussion, which takes the categorization problem to its logical extreme: The Earth sandwich.  
March 2, 2024 at 6:33am
March 2, 2024 at 6:33am
#1065370
Hope you're not prone to paranoia.

     Who Controls Your Thoughts?  
Our minds are being coerced in covert ways.


After yesterday's article, clearly, the answer to the headline question is "space aliens."

In 2017, Simon McCarthy-Jones wrote an article about schizophrenia for The Conversation. The piece, he jokes, got read by more than two people, which, as an academic—he’s an associate professor of clinical psychology at Trinity College Dublin—was a thrill.

Except that, when I read this lede, I thought he was making a schizophrenia joke, like the old "I'm schizophrenic and so am I" one, which perpetuates the conflation of schizophrenia with MPD. Which I might be able to get away with, but not a psych professor. Anyway, no, that wasn't the intent. As far as I can tell.

Shortly thereafter, however, he found himself “just gripped by the iron claws of Facebook,” looking over and over again to see who had liked his article, who had commented on it.

Isn't there a psych disorder where you attribute your actions to some outside force, instead of taking responsibility for them? I don't mean that in a "we have no free will" way, but in a "the Devil made me do it" way.

Was his thinking being covertly, coercively controlled by external forces (in this case, a big tech company)? The experience got him wondering just what “free thought” actually was. And so he started wading into the murky waters of the psychological, philosophical, cultural, and legal assumptions about what constitutes thought—and how it could remain truly free.

His intellectual quest has exited his head, as much thought eventually does, and now exists in the form of a new book: Freethinking: Protecting Freedom of Thought Amidst the New Battle for the Mind.


Of course it's a book ad. Everything on the internet is an ad, or it's behind a paywall. Well, except for this blog, of course.

In any case, the rest of the ad is an interview.

We might want to say: No, we’re independent, autonomous thinkers. But I think we have to recognize that in front of a persuasive AI, we are in deep trouble.

In my experience, the people who shout "I think for myself!" the loudest are the most likely to follow the herd.

The first was that the right to free thought is an absolute right, based on the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In the United States, it’s as close to an absolute right as there is in the Constitution. And that’s quite exciting because it means that nobody can interfere with your freedom of thought. There are instances where you can limit someone’s speech if it’s defamatory or false advertising or fighting words. But thought is unimpeachable, you can create absolute protection for people’s minds.

Well, okay, except that it's (at least so far) easy to say "you have an absolute right to free thought" when there is no possible way to read minds. Introduce a mind-reading device, though, and watch how quickly that right disappears. Sure, we can sometimes take an educated guess as to what's in someone's mind. Like if you're a shoe clerk, and some guy is in there looking at the Nike selection, you'd probably be right in assuming the guy's thinking "I might be interested in buying athletic shoes." But only "probably." After all, he might be idly gazing at footwear while wondering how he's going to trick some lady into bed that night.

There’s a quote by Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel laureate, who said: “Human beings are to independent thinking as cats are to swimming. They can do it, but they prefer not to.”

Honestly, I mostly saved this article so I could share that quote.

Astute readers may note that a lot of this is in opposition to my assertion that we don't really have free will. And it is. But lack of free will doesn't necessarily imply that it's other people pulling on our strings. Sometimes it's just the universe conspiring to keep us complacent.
March 1, 2024 at 8:39am
March 1, 2024 at 8:39am
#1065309
The truth is out there... but you don't believe it. From New York, not to be confused with The New Yorker:

    No, Aliens Haven’t Visited the Earth  
Why are so many smart people insisting otherwise?


Just to get this out of the way: Smart people can still draw bogus conclusions. They can be fooled. They can be exceptionally good at fooling. I wouldn't give a smart person's opinion more weight, unless it's in a field they're credentialed in, any more than I'd trust a rich person's opinion over that of a poor person.

Last month, Sean Kirkpatrick, the head of the Pentagon office responsible for investigating unexplained aerial events, stepped down.

The article's from the end of January, so I guess that happened in December?

He said he was tired of being harassed and accused of hiding evidence, and he lamented an erosion in “our capacity for rational, evidence-based critical thinking.”

I feel that.

He may have been pushed over the edge by a pair of events from the past summer. In June of last year, Avi Loeb, an astronomer at Harvard, announced that he had found some tiny blobs of metal by dragging a magnetic sled over the bottom of the Pacific near Papua New Guinea. He claimed that these blobs were metallic droplets that had melted off an interstellar object that might have been “a technological gadget with artificial intelligence” — the product of beings from another star system.

That's the same numbskull who claimed that the interstellar wanderer called 'Oumuamua   was a product of technology.

Look, most of the time, I see Avi Loeb's name, Harvard gets mentioned. I think that's an attempt to give him some credentials. But it has the opposite effect on me: instead of being more inclined to believe Loeb's crackpot "it-must-be-smart-aliens" conclusions, I become more inclined to dismiss anything that comes out of Harvard.

In other words, that guy's such a disgrace to that prestigious university that his association with it (along with a few other Harvard-associated people recently) decreases its prestige.

Oh, and sure, random blobs of metal could have come from an interstellar visitor. I don't consider the odds of that to be very high. Claim like that, though, you're going to have to rule out terrestrial origins, first.

Thoughtful, sensible-seeming, non-crankish people at Harvard, at The New Yorker, at the New York Times, and at the Pentagon seemed to be drifting ever closer to the conclusion that alien spaceships had visited Earth.

One of those things is not like the others...

To be clear, we should investigate these claims, within reasonable budgetary limits. Though any debunking that gets done sure won't convince the UFO nuts. On the other hand, show me definitive evidence, and I'll be convinced.

Yet even after more than 70 years of claimed sightings, there was simply no good evidence. In an age of ubiquitous cameras and fancy scopes, there was no footage that wasn’t blurry and jumpy and taken from far away. There was just this guy Grusch telling the world that the government had a “crash-retrieval and reverse-engineering program” for flying saucers that was totally supersecret and that only people in the program knew about the program. Grusch said he had learned about it while serving on a UAP task force at the Pentagon. He interviewed more than 40 people, and they told him wild things. He said he couldn’t reveal the names of the people he interviewed. He shared no firsthand information and showed no photos.

And that, folks, isn't evidence. It's crackpottery, albeit perpetrated by someone who would be in a position to know. It makes me wonder what he was paid to distract us from. Yes, I have my own conspiracy leanings, but they involve human activity, not purported alien.

Now, the article goes on for a while, and it's absolutely worth a look, at least a skim. I won't comment on it further, though, except to say that our collective fascination with the subject says nothing about aliens and everything about humans.
February 29, 2024 at 7:37am
February 29, 2024 at 7:37am
#1065222
The one thing that can make February even worse than it's already is? Well, it's now. Today. Leap days make the worst month of the year even longer, almost as long as other months like April or September, but without their benefits.

Since my current daily blogging streak now encompasses two Leap Days, I thought I'd take a look to remind myself what I might have been talking about on February 29, 2020, just a few weeks before we took a leap right into a societal meltdown. But I didn't really acknowledge it then. Hell, I probably wouldn't acknowledge it now, if it weren't for "Invalid Item .

It's just another day, after all; though, if you're a salaried employee, you're working for free   today. Hope you took the day off and told the boss to take a flying leap.

I'm going to leap to the conclusion that you already know why there's a leap day.   Maybe you even know why it occurs in February within our largely arbitrary Gregorian calendar system. But what I didn't know, so I'm assuming no one else does either, is that the word "leap" in English is etymologically related to "lope," one of the many near-synonyms for "run."

Which leads me to ponder: the past tense of leap is either "leaped" or "leapt." I suspect "leapt" is more British than "leaped," but either is correct. This is similar to words like "dream," but, oddly, "sleep" only leaps into the past tense as "slept;" it's never "sleeped," even though it rhymes with "leaped."

English is weird. Obviously, the past tense of "leap" should be "lope." "We lope to the wrong conclusion yesterday," for example.

Ah well. Further such musings will have to wait another four years.
February 28, 2024 at 8:49am
February 28, 2024 at 8:49am
#1065075
Not every invention is great, but the article I'm linking today, from Cracked, is about great inventions that were unappreciated at the time. The article's a bit on the lengthy side, so I'm not going to mention all of them. Just a few things I want to comment on.



5. Push Buttons

At the end of the 19th century, a few different electric devices like the lightbulb were set to change the world.


Meanwhile, I'm sure candlemakers and whale oil suppliers were freaking out about their impending loss of revenue.

Still, people resisted electricity entering their homes.

I truly hope that was an intended pun.

Then came a new ancillary invention that made electricity a lot less scary: the push button.

The actual definition of "easy," at least according to one well-known marketing campaign.

But the push button received unexpected pushback from the scientific community itself. While marketers realized the button would convert people to the church of electric power, educators already had their own plan for managing this: education. They wanted to bring people closer to the inner workings of electricity, not farther. In schools, they were teaching boys and girls about how to put together motors and batteries, not as part of vocational training but just standard learning. Understanding electricity demystified the process.

I kind of get it. I liked the internet a lot better when you had to have some level of technical proficiency and the desire to use it. And also when it was less commercialized. Okay, mostly the latter. Still, I kind of get it. Teach people, instead of dumbing things down for them.

Problem is, some people refuse to be taught, and some simply cannot be taught. They already know everything they need to. Just ask them, and they'll tell you.

4. ZIP Codes

Everyone was being assigned new numbers? That was pointless — and dehumanizing. It was (theorized some people) surely a communist plot, with an uncertain goal. Some random comments from disgruntled customers were preserved so we can marvel at them, generations later. “Dear Sir, Zip Code is a complete boo-boo and you just don’t want to admit it,” wrote one woman. “It has set our mail delivery back 100 years.” Another message claimed, “The Pony Express would be more efficient.”

Sound familiar? It should. 60 years later, we're still getting comments from the same kinds of novelty-resistant people, only now with a lot more abbreviations, LOLs, OMGs, emoji, and maybe a few cutting gifs. Which, I suppose, satisfies the definition of "irony."

Today, you use them without complaint, but how often do you use the full ZIP code, with the initial five digits as well as the four digits that come after them? Do you even know your own full ZIP code?

No, but I can look it up. And therein lies the problem: Anyone can type in an address, anywhere in the US (which is the only place ZIP codes apply; places like Canada and the UK use similar but different systems), and find their ZIP code, complete with the rarely-used +4 suffix.

Which means that now, ZIP codes are kinda anachronistic in general. Hardly matters, though, at least for me: I can't remember the last time I had to address an envelope. It's been a long, long time.

2. The Cheese Slicer

If you try cutting a block of cheese into slices, you need a steady hand, lots of concentration and also a high tolerance for failure because the result will come out terrible no matter what. You’ll wind up with a bunch of awkward wedges instead of slices. Then, in 1925, a hero named Thor Bjørklund forged a new tool, which would be called the ostehøvel.

I suspect it would be very, very difficult to find a more Norwegian name than Thor Bjørklund.

Everyone who cut food at home loved the ostehøvel. Professional cheese men did not. If cheese cutting was going to be so easy going forward, why had they wasted all those years getting a degree from Colby College (and then a master’s, from Stilton)?

And that should sound familiar, too. Many new inventions threaten to displace old industries. It's only when the industry is powerful enough to have a lobbying group that laws get passed against the new invention. At least, that's how it works in the US. Not sure about Norway.

1. Toilet Paper

Look, if you value your mental health, never, ever look up "what did people wipe their asses with before toilet paper?" This article doesn't even go into the real details. For which you should be ever grateful.
February 27, 2024 at 11:32am
February 27, 2024 at 11:32am
#1064998
To wrap up February's "Journalistic Intentions [18+]...

Olive


There's a grocery store on Broadway, on the Upper East Side (corner of 80th Street if you're ever in the area) called Zabar's.

I get the impression that it's moderately well-known across the land. Maybe it's been in a movie or show or two; I don't know. Maybe its vibe, which more modern and chain-affiliated places can't replicate with their corporate policies, focus on metrics, and eventual enshittification, is just something people respond better to.

Since I haven't been there in a while, I can't comment on their prices, but I remember them being about what you'd expect in Manhattan: slightly elevated, though not sky-high like in Hawai'i. But their location means they serve a moderately well-to-do clientele, which means offering some premium selections. The first time I went in there, I nearly dehydrated salivating over the seemingly endless, though really not because we're still talking about a Manhattan grocery store with limited space, selection of cheeses.

And then I saw the olive section and almost fainted from delight.

I like olives, you see. Not just black, green, and kalamata, but all olives.

Want to hear my most idiosyncratic quality? I don't think I've ever admitted to it in here before. Or anywhere online, really. I usually keep it to myself, because the one time I told someone in person, the look I got was so filled with horror and disgust, you'd think I made a habit of munching on baby sandwiches.

I get green olives on my pizza.

That's right. Pizza. New York slice, of course, with, at minimum, pepperoni and onions... and green olives.

I can't be alone in that, even if no one else will ever fess up. If I were, the local pizza shop wouldn't offer it as a topping, would they? And not just the local pizza shop, but the old one, the one that had been around since before I even got to town in 1983, the one that even more closely approximated NY pizza but sadly went out of business because of, well, you know—they offered green olives on their pies, too. Not just because of me, either; it was on the menu when I first visited each of them. Every once in a while, someone will misread the order slip and give me green peppers, which are an abomination, instead of green olives. But usually, they get it right, and they've never been out of stock (to be fair, the whole reason for green olives is preservation, so the little eyeballs might have been sitting around for years, for all I know).

Last time I went to pick up my extra cheese-pepperoni-onion-beef-jalapeno-green olive pizza at the place that managed to stay open, I recognized the owner as the one who provided the pie to me. "Ah, good! Green olives!" he enthused in his boisterous, Brooklyn-Italian accent. "You have wonderful taste!"

Finally, vindication.
February 26, 2024 at 10:11am
February 26, 2024 at 10:11am
#1064910
A rare case of me sharing something relevant to my actual education and career. From The Conversation:



Not that I can claim to be an expert at this. Mostly, I designed small subdivisions and commercial site plans, along with their unseen infrastructure. But not being an expert has never stopped me before in here; why start now? I know I've talked about them before, but this is, as far as I can tell, a fresh take.

If you live on the East Coast, you may have driven through roundabouts in your neighborhood countless times. Or maybe, if you’re in some parts farther west, you’ve never encountered one of these intersections. But roundabouts, while a relatively new traffic control measure, are catching on across the United States.

I've seen a few in what you lot call flyover states, too.

Roundabouts, also known as traffic circles or rotaries, are circular intersections designed to improve traffic flow and safety. They offer several advantages over conventional intersections controlled by traffic signals or stop signs, but by far the most important one is safety.

While it's possible to go overboard with safety (that is, you reach a point of diminishing returns; for example, why buses don't have seat belts), I don't think that's the case here.

As early as the 1700s, some city planners proposed and even constructed circular places, sites where roads converged, like the Circus in Bath, England, and the Place Charles de Gaulle in France. In the U.S., architect Pierre L'Enfant built several into his design for Washington, D.C.. These circles were the predecessors to roundabouts.

I think the DC traffic circles are one of the reasons some people freak out about roundabouts. They are, in a word, messy. It's important to remember that they were originally designed for horses, not vehicular traffic.

Anyway, the article delves more into the history, and discusses a lot of their benefits, concluding with:

The Federal Highway Administration estimates that when a roundabout replaces a stop sign-controlled intersection, it reduces serious and fatal injury crashes by 90%, and when it replaces an intersection with a traffic light, it reduces serious and fatal injury crashes by nearly 80%.

I didn't follow the links to those numbers, but it tracks with what I'd already heard.

One advantage that I think should be noted, but I didn't see in the article: Traffic light installation is expensive, and it incurs ongoing maintenance and operating costs. While a roundabout often takes up more space, usually requiring the purchase of additional right-of-way, I tend to think the life cycle costs are lower, considering that you're going to be doing things like mowing and repaving anyway. This may vary depending on location; rural right-of-way is generally cheaper and easier to obtain than urban.

Another thing kind of glossed over is the psychological aspect. People who are used to stoplights don't necessarily want to, or know how to, deal with this weird new thing. Well, part of that can only be overcome through time and familiarity. I'm sure it took a while to get used to traffic lights and highway cloverleafs, too.

An objection that I've heard is something along the lines of "I used to just go through that intersection, but now I have to slow down." I think some of that is selective memory. You might remember when you approached on a green light, breezing right across the intersection, but not so much the multiple times you've been stuck at a red light, fuming, willing the light to turn green through the power of mind alone.

Slowing down every time is still, in my view, superior to sometimes having to stop and wait.

As with all new things, there's a period of adjustment. If we still have cars in 50 years, I'm sure the future people will view stoplights as an unnecessary and hazardous anachronism.
February 25, 2024 at 9:53am
February 25, 2024 at 9:53am
#1064849
In September of 2020, WDC celebrated 20 years of online activity, and my account reached its 16th anniversary. Today's throwback reminded me of this, because it was from the beginning of that month: "Cheese? What Kind of Cheese? I Want Brie

Hm. Another WDC birthday week. That means I'll be 16 soon.

Obviously, that means that, in about six months, I'll be turning 20. Damn, I can't wait until my account can legally drink. No, I mean I literally can't wait; I do it anyway.

The linked entry was a response to a prompt from "30-Day Blogging Challenge ON HIATUS [13+], which I miss, but I have some idea of the amount of work involved, which makes me shudder to think about. The prompt was, in part: "I know this is cheesy, but I have to do it... In your entry today, write about what you love about Writing.Com."

Hence the "cheese" reference in the title.

You know, my hesitation on prompts like this is not that it's cheesy. I can do cheesy. It's that I've been here for just short of 16 years, and no matter how much I try, there is no way I wouldn't forget someone significant if I tried to list all of the people who are important to me here.

Obviously, it's 3.5 years later now. But my attitude on that subject hasn't changed: better to snub everyone equally than to risk snubbing one individual when creating a list of usernames.

I've been on the other side of this, of course. Someone I consider a friend will list the people that mean the most to them on WDC, and I'm not on it. Rationally, I know I'm not everyone's favorite (nor do I seek to be). Monkey brain, though, feels slighted at being left out. I don't want anyone else feeling that way, so, like I said back then:

Everyone that I've interacted with over the years -- occasionally unpleasantly, usually quite the opposite -- has helped to make me what I am today. That includes you, since you're reading this.

One of the major reasons I do these Revisited entries is to see what's changed since the original entry. In this case, it's not much.

Just time.

Fortunately, some cheeses age better than others.
February 24, 2024 at 10:04am
February 24, 2024 at 10:04am
#1064779
Everyone knows that we nerds are generally immune to problems affecting normal people, such as STDs, sunburn, and athletic injuries. To make up for it, we have today's article, from Cracked:



You may, however, come down with a whole series of other specialized conditions that will savage your body or will break your mind.

And no, one of them isn't "brain overheats from exertion."

Disclaimer: everyone is a nerd about something. This article is about the classic nerds who follow intellectual pursuits far more than is socially acceptable. Like me, for instance.

5. Nobel Disease

This isn't the same thing as noble rot.

When you get a Nobel Prize, the world is telling you you’re one of its smartest people. You may be set for life. So, there’s always the possibility of the recognition going a little to your head. Winners might go on to pursue ideas unconnected with their specialty, sometimes devolving into total nonsense.

First of all, this doesn't apply to the Peace Prize, which hasn't been relevant for decades. Second, I don't think anyone I know is in danger of contracting this dread malady. And finally, this just goes to show that even geniuses aren't immune from the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Which may not actually be a thing, but I say it is because I know better than They do.

4. Laptop Thigh

If your skin spends lots of time next to a heat source, you may come down with a condition called Erythema ab igne. That’s Latin for “redness from fire.”


One way English is superior to Latin is that we use single-syllable nouns for the most common things, such as cat, heat, and red. And nerd.

Many gentleman nerds already now the dangers of keeping laptops on their actual laps (it fries the testicles), but laptop thigh can affect anyone.

There aren't too many advantages to being a short guy. You're locked out of the dating pool—wait, no, that's an advantage. Another advantage is you don't have a lap, so "laptop" isn't the right descriptive. It does merge two simple one-syllable words, but, for instance, mine is always on a desk or table when I use it. Still, better than the French version: ordinateur portable.

3. Formaldehyde Hunger

People tend to become hungry in the close vicinity of corpses. This is dubbed “formaldehyde hunger,” on the assumption that the preserving chemical formaldehyde gets into people’s systems and stimulates their appetites.

I thought they mostly quit using formaldehyde, switching to a less carcinogenic preservative. But what do I know?

2. Brain Fag Syndrome

No, this isn't about a common slur for nerds, gays, and gay nerds.

The British diagnosed this syndrome in their subjects in Africa, who continued to use the term into the 20th century. Over in America, though, people doing lots of brain work were also experiencing mental fatigue. Some doctors dubbed this an exceptionally American problem, naming it “Americanitis.”

Nowadays, I'm pretty sure "Americanitis" is used for an inordinate love of firearms, eagles, and eagles bearing firearms.

The best treatment, they note, is rest. Yes, you feel better when you take a rest from work. These past 150 years of medical research have produced some marvelous breakthroughs.

This is as close as the list gets to "brain overheats from exertion."

1. Dysrationalia

English words for uncommon things are allowed to be multisyllabic, and derived from Latin and/or Greek.

When we’re measuring brain power, you’ve got your computational power, but then you’ve also got your ability to be rational, and this consists of a bunch of different types of intelligence. There’s reflective cognition. There’s epistemic rationality, your ability to make correct decisions free of various fallacies. There’s syllogistic reasoning, which requires discarding biases. Put it all together, and we find that some people with high I.Q.s score worryingly low in rationality. We describe such people as suffering from dysrationalia.

In other words, you can be really smart and still be really stupid. As anyone who's read my blog can attest.
February 23, 2024 at 10:28am
February 23, 2024 at 10:28am
#1064737
My penultimate effort for February's "Journalistic Intentions [18+]...

Pike


In the original Star Trek series, James Kirk was the captain of the Enterprise. Everyone knows that. If the Sentinelese ever decide to stop killing everyone who sets foot on their island, and decide to join the rest of the world in peaceful harmony, we'd be all like, "Cool. Cool. One question: who's the captain of the original Enterprise?" And they'd be like, "Jim Kirk."

But that's not how it was supposed to go. The original pilot episode featured a Spock who wasn't emotionless, a Majel Barrett character who was, and a captain named Pike. (Roddenberry probably thought one-syllable names containing hard consonants were more "manly," which is amusing coming from a guy named Roddenberry.)

Most people with even a casual interest in Trek know this, too, because they reused the pilot for scenes in a two-part episode, thus cementing it as canon in the future history they created. It's even canon, in a different way, in the alternate universe that was J.J. Abrams' fault.

The first guy who portrayed Christopher Pike was Jeffrey Hunter, which, to be fair, would also make a great name for a square-jawed starship captain. Later, a prequel series would feature a captain named Jonathan Archer, which is close enough.

Sad story about Hunter, though. He turned down further work in Trek, wanting to concentrate on his film work or whatever. Reasonable decision for an actor, I suppose. But in 1968, while working on a movie, Hunter got injured in an on-set explosion. A few months later, before the original series aired its last episode, he died of a maybe-related cause.

If he'd stayed with Trek, that probably wouldn't have happened. But then, we wouldn't have William Shatner to make fun of, or the Spock who has become a cultural icon, or, and I cannot emphasize this enough, the utter awesomeness that is the Trek series Strange New Worlds, a prequel to the original series with Anson Mount as Captain Pike.

It's because of Anson Mount that when some nerd asks me "Kirk or Picard," I can no longer answer "Trick question. It's Sisko." Nope. Chris Pike all the way.
February 22, 2024 at 8:54am
February 22, 2024 at 8:54am
#1064670
Speaking of extraterrestrials...



In case you were wondering what it would take for me to go through the process of incorporating an image into a blog entry (might have to scroll down), well, wonder no more. It helps when it's in the public domain. Less work. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Like the infamous Face on Mars,   it's entirely possible that this particular example of pareidolia would go away, or at least diminish, under different lighting conditions or at a different angle or whatever.

Until then, let us Star Trek fans have our hour of glory.

From the linked "article:"

Amateur astronomer Scott Atkinson found the stone sculpture of the Starfleet insignia among a pile of rocks on the Red Planet's Mount Sharp (Aeolis Mons).

Just to be clear, Atkinson didn't travel to Mars or use a giant telescope; he apparently combed through the publicly available images from NASA's Curiosity robot. Well, they call it a rover, but come on; Mars is the only planet known to be inhabited solely by robots (to the best of our knowledge).

Curiosity itself (the robot) is a remarkable achievement. You can see more about it, and its images, here.  

As of this entry, according to that site, the gadget has produced 1,165,040 images over 4105 sols, an average (because I can use a calculator) of over 280 photos/sol. Which would be a remarkable output even for a social media influenza.

Oh yeah, if you don't know, a sol is what they call a solar day on Mars. It's not too different from our own solar day: roughly 24 hours and 40 minutes.

More, all of those photos are transmitted, pixel by pixel, back to Earth. Truly a monumental achievement that this has been going on for, if I've done the math right, about 11 and a half Earth years, or roughly 6 Martian years.

Which is itself about four times as long as the original Star Trek series aired.

I wrote yesterday about the possibility of encountering alien life. But if we ever encounter technologically capable aliens, given our own history of exploring with robot probes before sending humans out there, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if our first contact was with one of their machines.

Those machines might send back videos of Star Trek, and since a sense of humor appears to be a requirement for technologically advanced life, they'll probably freak us out by showing up dressed as Ferengi.

And here I was planning on talking about how the image clearly shows indications of erosion, which is cool enough by itself without invoking science fiction. Oh, well. Sometimes I go in unexpected directions, which proves I'm not an alien robot.

Or does it?

 
 ~
February 21, 2024 at 9:33am
February 21, 2024 at 9:33am
#1064595
Periodically, astronomers announce the discovery of an exoplanet in its star's "habitable zone," and, inevitably, like the old game of Telephone, this gets filtered down to us garbled as something like "Scientists Discover Evidence of Alien Life."

     Is K2-18b an inhabited ocean world? Don’t bet on it  
Some fascinating observations of K2-18b have come along with horrendous, speculative communications. There's no evidence for oceans or life.


Worse, this gets understood as "sentient alien life," because we've all grown up with Star Trek and Doctor Who, both of which put sentience on top of an evolutionary pyramid, like it's inevitable once you posit life. Much as I love those franchises, I understand that they're not documentaries.

I’m sorry, everyone, but we need to talk about Hycean worlds and dimethyl sulfide.

Okay, I have some idea of what dimethyl sulfide is (in that it's gotta involve two CH3 groups and sulfur), but I had to follow their link to "Hycean worlds." The link goes to an earlier Big Think article (same source, different author). Basically, they've got a lot of hydrogen. "Hycean" is a portmanteau of hydrogen and ocean (where "ocean" is understood to be a water ocean, and 2/3 of the atoms in water are, of course, hydrogen. But there may also be methane oceans, and 4/5 of the atoms in a methane molecule are hydrogen, but... whatever, I digress.)

I also checked up on dimethyl sulfide and, yep, a sulfur atom connected to two methyl groups. It's a bit like water, structurally, with sulfur instead of oxygen and methyl ions taking the place of hydrogen. Except that it's not like water at all. Among other differences, water doesn't usually burn, unless you live in Cleveland.

This planet, K2-18b, was indeed observed by the JWST, and did have a fantastic spectrum taken of its atmosphere, revealing many fascinating details about it.

The fact that we can do this for a planet 120 light-years away is wondrous enough in itself.

However, there is no evidence that K2-18b is a Hycean world at all; no water was detected. There’s only dubious evidence for dimethyl sulfide, and even if it does exist in the atmosphere, assigning a biological cause to it is an incredibly dubious proposition.

You said "dubious" twice. Now I'm dubious.

Yes, that word can describe both unreliable observations, and our reaction to them. Love English.

Yet if you’ve read headlines from around the internet, it isn’t just the usual suspects like the New York Post or the Daily Mail with outrageous, alien life-driven headlines, but normally reliable places like National Geographic, the BBC, and right here on Big Think.

NatGeo hasn't been reliable since Fox bought them (though Disney later acquired that property along with lots of other Foxy things, though not the "news" arm); I've been starting to wonder about the BBC; and while I like Big Think as a source, it's still subject to many of the problems all internet-only sources have.

Let’s take a look at what’s really going on with exoplanet K2-18b.

The article proceeds to do just that, but I won't reproduce it all here. But, in summary:

None of these possibilities describe K2-18b, because it’s massive, puffy, and more Neptune-like than Earth-like.

Does this mean it definitively doesn't harbor life? Of course not. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

K2-18b is about 2.6 times the radius of Earth and 8.6 times the mass of Earth. This means its density is less than half of Earth’s density, implying that it has a large envelope of volatile gases surrounding it.

Let's not be in too big a hurry to compare it to Neptune, either. Neptune is classified as an ice giant, because it's cold. K2-18b probably isn't. But I'll run with the Neptune analogy, because a) the article does, and b) I won't mention the name of the other ice giant in our solar system.

There's a bunch of technical details that follow, which I certainly won't reproduce here, but the article is an easy read and the link is right there.

While a water-covered Earth-sized world would be an incredibly interesting place to look for life, and in particular to look for the biosignatures associated with the processes that occur in ocean waters, it’s an enormous stretch to apply those same criteria to a gas giant world like K2-18b.

Why?

Because there was no water detected on K2-18b.


Again, this doesn't mean "no life." But it's not a good candidate for water-based life as we understand it. And we absolutely cannot make the jump from "possible simple life" to "Klingons."

In other words, it’s not entirely implausible that maybe, just maybe, this is a mini-Neptune version of a water-rich Hycean world, and maybe there really is some sort of extremely exotic form of life that exists on a world like this. After all, the JWST spectrum shows a (weak) indication of dimethyl sulfide, which we know here on Earth is produced biologically. Could that truly be what’s happening here?

Short answer: no. Longer answer: probably not.

Look, finding extraterrestrial life, even if it's just an archaeum or its equivalent, would be a Big Fucking Deal. I genuinely hope it happens in my lifetime (so hurry it up, already). But jumping to conclusions helps no one, and is especially difficult on a high-gravity planet.

Let's also not forget that "habitable zone" isn't the last word on where life might exist. Venus and Mars are (barely) within what's considered the Sun's habitable zone, and despite some flurries a few years back, neither has shown any definitive signs of harboring life. On the other hand, we're looking at moons of Jupiter and Saturn as possible places for life to have gotten a foothold, and those moons are absolutely outside the habitable zone.

Meanwhile, though, K2-18b would make a good name for a Star Wars droid.
February 20, 2024 at 10:48am
February 20, 2024 at 10:48am
#1064499
And now here's another one for "Journalistic Intentions [18+]...



A good number of my "why the hell is it called that?" questions popped up before there was an internet. As a kid on a farm, I got to know lots of different cultivated plants—whether fruit, vegetable, or flower—whilst perusing a seed catalog. A paper one. That came through the postal mail.

This led to a lot of "why the hell is it called that?" moments that my parents, who were what passed for Wikipedia for me in those days (they'd eventually buy me an actual encyclopedia volume set, which I actually read and then promptly forgot most of), had no answers for. "Go look it up." Where? We live on a farm.

But I do remember that one of these moments was for the flower known as a dahlia. It seemed an even odder moniker than most plants' names, but the seed catalog didn't have much to say about it. It probably listed the botanical binomial, but I don't remember that. It's dahlia pinnata, according to Wikipedia, and while it's native to Mexico and Central America, it's not to be confused with a piñata. But as with many other cultivated plants, there are several subspecies. It gets confusing and beyond the point of this entry.

Nor is Wikipedia  much help with the etymology of the name. It seems it might have been named after a botanist named Anders Dahl. Which seems bogus to me, a typical European appropriation of an American species. The least they could have done is mangle one of the native names for the thing, like they did with, say, the raccoon. Except for the French, who call them washing rats, which is unfair to rats, who are often quite fastidious.

Also, I can't be arsed to find out if Anders Dahl was ancestral to the far more famous Roald Dahl.

None of which was what I set out to write about; I just did my usual assuming that if I don't know something, then no one else does, either. I have my parents to blame for that, too.

No, what I wanted to note, apart from the excellent use of depth-of-field in the photograph the title links to, is the petal pattern.

Those aren't true petals, incidentally. Each one of those petal-like pieces is a flower unto itself. But that's a bit like arguing whether a tomato is a fruit or a vegetable. No, what struck me is that the arrangement of the florets is similar to other petal and/or leaf arrangements found in nature, such as in sunflowers or artichokes: an instantiation of the Fibonacci sequence and the Golden Ratio.

Once you notice that particular spiral arrangement, you can't ever miss it. You can even find it all over the Mandelbrot set (which involves complex numbers), if you know what you're looking for. There are solid reasons for plants taking that general form (some animals, such as mollusks, do it, too), and none of them is that plants can do math. No, it's a bit complicated, but, basically, it's because it's easy and efficient.

I can appreciate that.
February 19, 2024 at 9:15am
February 19, 2024 at 9:15am
#1064442
Here's one that's a couple years old, but it's not like everyone's suddenly switched to electric cars now.

    Forget miles per gallon—here’s the best metric for measuring a car’s efficiency  
It's been right there on the vehicle's sticker all along.


In an attempt to thwart clickbait headlines, I'll give you the article's answer right up front: it's the "gallons per 100 miles" rating.

The rest of this is me laughing at the idea.

“Your mileage may vary.” That’s the disclaimer carmakers apply to the Environmental Protection Agency fuel economy ratings that are listed for their cars.

And that's entered the lexicon in other contexts, ones having nothing to do with refined petrochemicals, archaic measurement systems that the US is just too stubborn to change, or driving. Which is fine. You say that, and everyone knows what you're talking about—even me, who avoids commercials like the plague they are.

But what seems even more variable is the value of the miles-per-gallon rating itself, which is why in 2012 the EPA started providing fuel economy ratings in another measurement too.

But... but why?

This is the gallons-per-100-miles rating. Although it is in smaller type than the miles-per-gallon number, it should figure larger in your calculations when comparing cars. That’s because the gallons/100 miles rating makes it easier to compare the efficiency of different cars and estimate their likely annual fuel cost.

What? No.

European countries measure fuel economy by the benchmark of “liters per 100 kilometers.” A lower number is better, and the moon-shot goal there is the “three-liter” car that scores 3.0 liters/100 km. That’s one that burns no more than 3 liters (about 3 quarts) of fuel to drive 100 km (62 miles).

The only thing I can say there is that at least they're using international standard measurements. I have no idea how they rate the expected efficiency of vehicles in the UK, but their petrol is priced in pounds per liter, and road distances are still quoted in miles. That shit confuses me way more than if they'd just stick with one system of measurement.

The advantage of measuring fuel consumption this way is that it makes comparisons easier as fuel efficiency improves for a specific vehicle. That’s because the differences are linear. With miles per gallon, efficiency is graded on a curve. For example, for a 15-mpg car, a 5-mpg improvement is a 33-percent gain. But that same 5-mpg upgrade for a 30-mpg car is only a 17.5-percent improvement to a vehicle that is already using half as much gas.

Okay, look, this gets to the heart of my objection. I don't like that Americans are, by and large, terrible at math, but the fact is that Americans are terrible at math. Most people just can't seem to grasp simple ideas like incremental tax brackets, and think that entering a higher tax bracket means they'll be paying more tax on all their income. Percentages are almost impossible for many people, and too easily gamed by the unscrupulous (for instance, an increase of 10% could mean that something has increased by a factor of 1.1, or it could mean that instead of 35%, something is now 45%—even I get confused by this sometimes, which I think is the goal). And let's not forget we're talking about a populace that simply can't wrap their little heads around fractions, as seen here: "Math Hole

Mainly, though, what bugs me is this: Miles per gallon, and gallons per 100 miles? You're not reporting anything new. Invert MPG by making it the denominator, then multiply by 100. In other words, it's 100 divided by the MPG.

Worse, your experience may still vary. But we can't use "mileage" in that context.

What we should be focusing on is why people freeze up when asked to do such basic arithmetic. But you don't even have to do it in your head. There's a calculator in your pocket. 100 divided by the MPG. I'm going to call "gallons per 100 miles" "gpcm" because I'm lazy. Look at the example sticker in the article. Big number: 26 mpg. Smaller numbers: 22 city, 32 highway. Below that, the promised gallons/100 miles number, 3.8 gpcm, which, if you'll check, is equal to 100/26. But what's that in terms of city vs. highway estimates? Well, it's 100/22=4.5 gpcm and 100/32=3.1 gpcm. Those aren't on the label.

Part of the problem here, as exemplified in the 1/3 pound burger example from the entry I just linked, is that, psychologically, larger numbers are "better." We all know that a 50mpg car (gpcm 2) has better fuel economy than a 25mpg car (gpcm 4). But if you instead compare 2 and 4, brains go "4 better than 2."

Those examples are easy. Another easy one would be 33mpg, which inverts to 3 (or close enough). Or 20 mpg, which would yield 5.

The alternative rating is easier to understand and has been on the window label of new cars for ten years, but it nevertheless remains almost entirely unknown to American drivers.

I dispute the first assertion; as for the second, of course it's relatively unknown. To the extent that anyone looks at those stickers while being pressured by a salesweasel, we see the big numerals and ignore everything else.

That popular European “3.0 liter” target equates to 1.27 gallons per 100 miles in the US, which isn’t a very memorable number. A good goal may then be 1 gallon per 100 miles—the ultimate accomplishment for combustion vehicles before they drive into the sunset as EVs gain popularity. That score also works out to 100 mpg, which might make it easier for people to understand this more useful benchmark.

Yeah, right. We'll go full EV before they manage to give us a 100mpg car. I mean, we were heading in that direction for a while there, but people decided safety was more important than mileage (I don't necessarily disagree), and safety features tend to add weight, reducing efficiency.

No, what we need isn't basic math spoon-fed to us. What we need right now is a way to compare the economy of an EV to that of an ICE or hybrid. The difficulty there is that gas prices seem to fluctuate with the wind, while electricity prices tend to be more stable. And, from what I've heard, some EV manufacturers subsidize power costs to drivers (for now; that's not going to last).

And also to get people to stop being afraid of basic math.
February 18, 2024 at 9:36am
February 18, 2024 at 9:36am
#1064378
It's Sunday, so it's time once again to look back into the dim recesses of the past. This time, I've uncovered a short but fun link from November of 2009: "Cat stuff

I do these retrospectives in part to see what's changed. One major thing that's changed is that I no longer have the cats I had in 2009. That was nearly fifteen years ago (and you thought you'd never have a use for math), and my cats then were already old.

One thing that hasn't changed is that I still live with cats. Just different ones.

The link in the entry was to The Oatmeal, a fairly well-known webcomic that has not, as far as I know, updated much, if at all, lately. The author had other things to do that presumably were more lucrative, which is fine. But one of those things was a game called Exploding Kittens. I'm not easily offended, and that doesn't offend me, but I still don't want anything to do with it.

And I'm still not sure if the bit about Nikola Tesla is true, but I've incorporated it into a novel (unfinished) anyway.
February 17, 2024 at 9:04am
February 17, 2024 at 9:04am
#1064327
Bit out of the ordinary for me today—a link sent by a friend:



As I, too, shun the not-so-great outdoors, I found great wisdom in these words.

The outdoor industry has spent hundreds of millions in marketing dollars to convince you that everyone belongs outside.

To be fair, lots of industries spend lots of money trying to convince us that everyone needs their products.

That simply isn’t true. Some People of Color aren’t outside for very valid reasons.

As far as I'm concerned, every reason is a valid reason, but I can only imagine how much worse it must be when you have to be concerned that racist rednecks love to be outdoors. With guns.

Some don’t like the outdoors and that’s okay.

"I don't like it" is a valid reason. So is "I don't want to."

They don’t need you to convert them. Unless, maybe, you’ve found the perfect beginner-friendly hike that ends in a waterfall and free universal healthcare.

Okay, that bit made me laugh.

But failing that, here are eight reasons why you should leave your friends and family alone.

Oddly, like Cracked (which this isn't from), it's a countdown list. I won't be covering everything.

Some of us occupy entirely different realities from our parents. For us, sleeping on the ground is an adventure. For them, sleeping on the ground is elective poverty and strange (or a bad memory). Why would they pay to do that?

I've gone on about this sort of thing before. You live in a nice house, and you want to experience two weeks of homelessness? With bears and snakes? Okay, you do you, but count me out.

Some of your friends aren’t interested in hiking or climbing because they can’t afford to get hurt and miss work. They also can’t afford medical care.

Laaaaand... of the... freeeeeee!

And yes, you can get hurt at home, too. But I'm pretty sure the chances of that go up in areas of uncertain footing, wild animals, and stinging insects.

4. They don’t want to get their hair wet

This section turned out to be important for me to read, because I was mostly unaware of this aspect of culture.

3. They don’t have the money

We like to pretend that being outside doesn’t cost a thing. And it’s weird. Stop that.


While poverty looks different for different people, this point is something to remember when considering a trip to the not-inside. Proper gear (which I'm sure would help reduce the chance of injury, as above) can get expensive. Even those not experiencing poverty might have better (to them) things to spend money on.

Why do we pretend that the outdoors costs nothing—that you are required to bring nothing but yourself? Then in the next breath we shame hikers who don’t bring reusable water bottles, moisture wicking technical clothing, wool base layers, wind and water resistant shells, puffers, GPS, a trail map subscription with downloaded maps, a paper map and compass, etc.

I read an article about someone who died on Mount Washington in New Hampshire last month. The article described him as an "experienced hiker." Now, I certainly don't claim to be an expert on mountaineering, though, yes, I've hiked mountains, and experienced firsthand how quickly the weather can turn on you there. And I've read that Mount Washington is the worst of the bunch, being well-known for having logged the highest recorded non-cyclonic wind speed of any point on Earth. So my first thought was "Funny; I thought 'experienced hikers' don't mess with Mount Washington in fucking January."

It’s winter now and social media is full of photos and videos of happy people skiing, snowshoeing, tubing and snowboarding.

One of those things is not like the others...

Anyway, while a lot of the cultural reasoning doesn't apply to me, and to be fair, I was privileged enough to spend a lot of time outdoors as a child and young adult before deciding I just didn't like it, I appreciate the article's perspective. And to be clear, it's not "being outside" that I dislike; it's being farther than a short walk from civilization.

Now watch, some marketing guru is going to try to take all the stuff in that article into account the next time they need to market a line of rugged-yet-fashionable outdoor wear that'll be lucky to last for a year.
February 16, 2024 at 9:54am
February 16, 2024 at 9:54am
#1064272
Here's a colorful entry for "Journalistic Intentions [18+]:

Violet


Try to imagine a color that doesn't exist. Go on; give it a good shot.

If you're imagining "violet" because that's what I put in the title, well, no. Insofar as color exists at all, violet is on the spectrum at around 400 nanometers.  

People hardly ever describe something as "violet," though, unless they're talking about the flower, in which case, according to the ancient rhyme, violets aren't violet, but blue. Actually, I'd wager that there's far more mention of violet's neighbor, ultraviolet. Nope, that's not a color that doesn't exist; we just can't see wavelengths that short. It exists, but not to our eyes.

Ultraviolet is such a common word that we don't often stop to think about how cool a word it actually is. Ultra. Violet. Should be a superhero name. "Scatter! Ultraviolet's here!" She'd be way cooler than her archnemesis, Infrared. (That's a deliberate pun on a couple of different levels and I'm quite proud of myself for it.)

Getting back to the blueness of violets (the flower), though, I'm sure you learned the mnemonic for the official colors of the spectrum: ROYGBIV. Often—including on Pride flags and iconic album covers—poor indigo gets left out, leaving just six colors. Which is too bad, because indigo is probably just as cool a word as violet. Much cooler than red. Or yellow.

There exist, of course, not just seven colors in the spectrum, but a whole... well... spectrum of them. Red only gradually fades into orange, which only gradually fades into yellow, and so on all the way to the invisible end of violet.

Why do we say there's seven, then? Well, I'm pretty sure we can blame Isaac Newton for that.

In addition to pretty much inventing calculus, science, gravity, and motion (or at least the way we think about these things), Newton did a lot of study on the properties of light, a topic that later generations of physicists would be absolutely obsessed over. But Newton was, like everyone, a product of his time, and he was also greatly intrigued by mysticism.

So, I can only assume, when he shone sunlight through a prism to create an artificial rainbow (as reproduced in a certain classic album cover), he decided that there had to be seven colors. Because there were seven planets, see? And each one ruled a different day of the seven-day week. In mysticism, the sun and moon counted as planets, because they didn't know any better. If you're wondering, it went Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn. Some of those are obvious in English; others are obvious if you know some French: mardi for Mars, mercredi for Mercury, jeudi for Jupiter (Jove), and vendredi for Venus. English adopted the Germanic interpretation for some of the weekday names, which is why we get Norse god names instead of Roman ones.

Back to Newton, though. Researching this entry led me to this site,   which is enlightening (pun absolutely intended). Where was I? Oh yeah, seven colors. One major point of what Newton did was his invention of the color wheel, where the seven principal colors he identified wrapped around into a circle, with red touching violet. Okay, that last phrase sounded way less naughty in my head. Anyway, Newton didn't have all the information we do about light's wavelengths, or even its dual wave/particle nature (though he laid the groundwork for that discovery, centuries later). Now, we know that prisms (and rainbows) work because the bending of light in refraction, through glass or through suspended water droplets, depends on the wavelength of the light. But my point is, red and violet are, despite their proximity on color wheels, at opposite ends of the visible spectrum. And there's a lot more invisible spectrum than visible: gamma rays, microwaves, radio, etc.

All those invisible (to us) wavelengths are real.

But you know what's not real, that doesn't exist anywhere on the spectrum?

That mixture of red and blue pigments that we call purple.

And that's the answer to the riddle I started with: Purple is a color that doesn't exist.

Well. A philosophical argument can be made that no color actually exists. This is related to the holes thing I did a few days ago. But on the spectrum between "definitely exists" and "definitely does not exist," purple is closer to the latter than violet is.

Violet is as close as we can get to purple and still be able to identify it in the sun's radiance.
February 15, 2024 at 10:28am
February 15, 2024 at 10:28am
#1064218
Landed on another article about language. But this one's about the common root of many languages:

     A new look at our linguistic roots  
Linguists and archaeologists have argued for decades about where, and when, the first Indo-European languages were spoken, and what kind of lives those first speakers led. A controversial new analytic technique offers a fresh answer.


The source, Knowable, is not one I've linked before, and I don't know much about it because I'm way too lazy to find out. As for timing, it's a recent article.

Almost half of all people in the world today speak an Indo-European language, one whose origins go back thousands of years to a single mother tongue.

Another way to put that is that less than half of the world speaks an Indo-European language. Depends on one's perspective. As I speak one, yes, its shared origin with other languages is interesting to me.

Over the last couple of hundred years, linguists have figured out a lot about that first Indo-European language, including many of the words it used and some of the grammatical rules that governed it.

I've mentioned this language group in here before. Repeatedly.

This is the heart of the discussion:

Most linguists think that those speakers were nomadic herders who lived on the steppes of Ukraine and western Russia about 6,000 years ago. Yet a minority put the origin 2,000 to 3,000 years before that, with a community of farmers in Anatolia, in the area of modern-day Turkey. Now a new analysis, using techniques borrowed from evolutionary biology, has come down in favor of the latter, albeit with an important later role for the steppes.

Now, look, I don't claim to be an expert in either linguistics or evolutionary biology. But I've seen the parallels between language evolution and biological evolution. There's at least one big, huge, major difference, though: in the latter, at least for eukaryotes, you don't get a lot of significant horizontal gene transfer. That is to say, organisms' DNA depend primarily on their ancestors' DNA. I understand there are exceptions. But with language, there's little barrier to horizontal meme transfer; that is, languages can liberally borrow from other languages. English is perhaps the most obvious of these; it's stolen pretty heavily from non-Indo-European languages.

I'm not saying they're wrong. They know more about this shit than I do. (There is some discussion of that sort of thing near the end of the really quite long article.)

I'd also like to point out that it's not like IE sprang into existence from nothing. It developed from an earlier language. I understand linguists call the earlier language Proto-Indo-European, or PIE, which cracks me up.

Anyway, the article goes on to describe the process by which they figured out that IE existed, and that's pretty fascinating by itself, but too much to quote here.

But then they mention the thing I find most intriguing:

For example, the Proto-Indo-European language had a word for axle, two words for wheel, a word for harness-pole and a verb that meant “to transport by vehicle.” Archaeologists know that wheel and axle technology was invented about 6,000 years ago, which suggests that Proto-Indo-European can’t be any older than that.

I knew I'd mentioned "the wheel" before, so I went and looked. It was way back in 2020: "As the Turn Worlds (or whatever)

The article speculates about the kind of people who would have used axles and wheels in prehistoric Eurasia: pastoralists or agriculturalists. Personally, I find it glaringly obvious that one speculation is missing. Once you have horses and carts, you can more effectively wage war, which is an even older human occupation than herding or farming. And tends to spread faster and further.

This, to me, is a more likely origin for the proliferation of Indo-European languages: a conquering people, not only taking over vast tracts of land, but imposing their language on the cultures they encounter. It happened with the Greeks and Romans, in historic times. Not so much with the Mongols, but not for lack of trying. And let's not forget how English got so widespread.

But, again, I'm far from an expert on these things. It just seems obvious that it's at least a hypothesis they can test. Maybe it's wrong. But given what I know of human nature, it could well be right.
February 14, 2024 at 10:18am
February 14, 2024 at 10:18am
#1064168
On this, the darkest and gloomiest day of the darkest and gloomiest month (yes, I know that, technically, in this hemisphere, December is darker and gloomier, and the solstice is the darkest and gloomiest, but metaphorically, it's today), I have an article from Cracked that's about words, a light to pierce the dark gloom.



There exist, of course, far more than five. But at least these are five I hadn't heard of before.

Imagine if words didn’t mean what you think they do. You read a news report about some victim being murdered by a succubus, but what if a succubus isn’t really a demon? What if it’s some special type of Golden Retriever? With some old words, especially those that have been clumsily translated, we’re just taking shots in the dark.

Words often don't mean what people think they mean. You hear or read a word and, usually, you're too lazy to look it up in a dictionary (even now, when a dictionary involves simply typing or pasting the unknown word into a search engine). So you go from context. And sometimes, you get it wrong, and get laughed at. Other times, you use a word the correct way, and you get laughed at because everyone else thinks it means something different. "Decimate," e.g.

Anyway, the list:

5. What Does ‘Our Daily Bread’ Mean Anyway?

We used to have a bakery here called Le Pain Quotidien. Apparently, it was part of a chain (which I didn't know), and the chain was Belgian, not French. Whatever, even before I started learning French, I wondered if they were going for the Biblical reference, why not "Notre Pain Quotidien" instead? Maybe because it would confuse English speakers. That's never stopped the French, but it might give Belgians pause.

I don't miss it; there's a much better bakery in town, and one of my great thrills in life is to go in there and pronounce their offerings "pain de campagne" and "croissant" in the French way. (I'm easily amused.)

One story from the Bible tells of the time Jesus taught his followers how to pray. When you pray, said Jesus, you shouldn’t just go on repeating some set words...

His followers wrote down the words he said and repeated them verbatim for the next 2,000 years. They taught the prayer to their children, who would learn to recite it long before they had any idea what such phrases like “thy will be done” means. This is the opposite of what Jesus told them to do, but that’s organized religion for you.


And don't get me started on indoctrinating schoolchildren with the Pledge of Allegiance, starting when they're too young to know what "pledge" or "allegiance" (not to mention "republic" and "indivisible") mean.

That prayer is called the “Our Father” or “The Lord’s Prayer.” Though, people today don’t use the exact words that were said millennia ago, because not too many people speak Aramaic anymore.

Fun fact: some Jewish prayers are in Aramaic.

Other fun fact: Catholics, at least, were okay with using Latin for that prayer right up until the 20th century, and I'm pretty sure there are some orders who ignore Vatican II.

But I digress. This section points out that the word which is commonly translated as "our daily bread" might mean something else entirely.

Or maybe it said, “Give us this day our garlic bread.” That’s a prayer to unite people of all faiths.

4. One Mystery Verse of Dante’s ‘Inferno’

Education means different things in different eras. Today, to be a properly educated scholar of culture, you need to be able to explain where every Disney remake went wrong, even though you have never watched any of them and rightly never intend to. In the past, in certain circles, an educated person was someone who’d studied Greek and Latin.

Also, you need to know the convoluted overarching plot of all the Star Wars properties, as well as the various timelines of Star Trek. Not to mention Monty Python movies, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and several others.

Perhaps you would have to translate the ancient works of Virgil, which sounds hard.

It is hard. Third and fourth year Latin in high school, as far as I can recall, was all about studying Virgil's Aenid.

Much easier, surely, would be translating a poem written 1,300 years after Virgil, featuring Virgil as a character.

Confession time: I've never read the Divine Comedy. Not even a translation.

But then you’d come upon a verse that goes like this: Raphèl mai amècche zabì almi. What does that mean?

We don’t know. It’s not Italian. Nor is it any other language we know of. The character who says it is Nimrod, a hunter from the Bible guarding the ninth circle of hell, and it seems like this line of his may be gibberish.

Even the name of Nimrod has changed meaning, thanks to Bugs Bunny. Pretty sure I've touched on that subject in here before.

In any case, the article speculates, but their guess is as good as yours.

3. The Vowel Vow of the Royal Habsburgs

The Hapsburgs, starting with King Frederick III in the 15th century, used the following motto: “A.E.I.O.U.”

This is what passed, in the 15th century, for wordplay.

Could mean a lot of things, but as the section notes:

Let’s be sure to keep an eye on any man born in Austria. Some of them seem to harbor sinister ambitions.

2. Who the Devil Is Betsy?

“Heavens to Betsy!” says the old exclamation. It’s a way of expressing shock. Descriptions of this idiom liken it to “for heaven’s sake,” a phrase that began as a euphemism...

I don't think this requires that much analysis. Betsy is, or was, a common nickname for Elizabeth, one of the most common girly names, along with about a thousand other nicknames like "Beth" or "Liz" or "Betty," not to mention variants in myriad other languages. The name Elizabeth is now synonymous with royalty, but like many other names of European origin, it derives from Hebrew via the Bible. And in Hebrew, the name (which was Aaron's wife's and John the Baptist's mama's name, though those were probably two different women given the centuries separating them) means something like "God is my oath." Combine that with the way "Heavens to Betsy" just rolls off the tongue, and you have a near-perfect minced oath.

Other speculations abound at the link.

1. Is Copacetic a Word at All?

Of course it's a word. Sure, someone made it up. This is the case with all words. Some were simply made up longer ago than others.

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