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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
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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. ![Merit Badge in Quill Award
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| This one's been kicking around for nearly five years, so you've probably seen some version of it by now. Still, as is often the case, I have something to say. How non-English speakers are taught this crazy English grammar rule you know but have never heard of  Don't be too put off by the clickbaity headline. English grammar, beloved by sticklers, is also feared by non-native speakers. Even sticklers get it wrong sometimes. Waltz's First Law of the Internet is that any post criticizing someone's spelling, grammar, or punctuation will itself contain at least one spelling, grammar, or punctuation error. As with many Laws, it is possible to find exceptions. But it happens often enough to make me chuckle every time I see it. "You missed a comma there. Your an idiot." That sort of thing. Many of its idiosyncrasies can turn into traps even for the most confident users. I have heard that English is one of the hardest languages to master. I'm not sure any of us ever really do so. This week, for example, the BBC’s Matthew Anderson pointed out a ”rule” about the order in which adjectives have to be put in front of a noun. "This week," of course, was five years ago now. Adjectives, writes the author, professional stickler Mark Forsyth, “absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But if you mess with that order in the slightest you’ll sound like a maniac.” And that is where I'm going to quibble. First of all, let's get "knife" out of that example phrase, because it's too easy to "sound like a maniac" when describing a knife. Let's stick with utensils, though, and change it to "spoon." Since there's no such thing as a whittling spoon (except insofar as language allows me to put those two words together), let's further change the "purpose" slot to "soup." The only other questionable adjective, then, is "rectangular," because I've never heard of a rectangular spoon, but for the sake of keeping the phrase as close as possible to the original, imagine a rectangular spoon. Maybe it has rounded corners, and "rectangular" is less than precise. Doesn't matter. The point is, it's harder to sound like a crazy person when describing a spoon than it is when describing a knife. So we have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver soup spoon. The quote above asserts that if you mess with the order, it sounds wrong. And yes, if you mix it all up at random, it probably will. But consider: You can easily have a little old rectangular green silver French soup spoon. There, I swapped "French" with "silver." Instead of sounding like you need to be put away, you've emphasized that the spoon is made of green silver (not that I've ever seen green silver, either, but it's easy enough to imagine it). If you're having trouble with "green silver," though, pretend it's made of wood instead. "green wood French soup spoon" might actually be a better description than "green French wood soup spoon," depending on what you want to emphasize. The former emphasizes "green wood," while the latter implies that it's green and made of French wood. My point being that, like all rules, there are exceptions. It makes me wonder how English became so ubiquitous in the world. Still, at least in English, we know that, in very nearly every case, adjectives precede nouns. The only exceptions I can think of are done for effect, such as "arts dramatic" instead of the more natural "dramatic arts." Point is, off the top of my head, I can't think of any situation where you'd be wrong to put every single damn stupid adjective before the noun it modifies. From what little I've learned about French, some adjectives come before the noun, and some after. More, there are some that precede certain nouns and follow other nouns. Like, "last month" would be "le mois dernier" (literally "the month last"), while "the last book" would be "le dernier livre." (that one's easy; it's the same word order as English). To me, French adjective positioning is harder to remember, but then, I've been speaking and reading English for most of my life, so I suppose a Francophone person would find the English adjective thing weird. Speaking of weird: Learning rules doesn’t always work, however. Forsyth also takes issue with the rules we think we know, but which don’t actually hold true. In a lecture about grammar, he dismantles the commonly held English spelling mantra ”I before E except after C.” It’s used to help people remember how to spell words like “piece,” but, Forsyth says, there are only 44 words that follow the rule, and 923 that don’t. His prime examples? “Their,” “being,” and “eight.” Whereas my favorite example of that rule being broken is "weird." I suppose when it comes to spelling, the best thing to do is to memorize each word individually. I've always been fairly good at spelling, though there are words that trip me up all the time, like "commitment" and "embarrassing." Either way ("either" being another one, and I dare you to pronounce it correctly), that's why I almost never correct someone's grammar in an Internet post. I don't want to fall victim to my own First Law. |
| This one's been languishing in my queue for quite a while now. Let me just start by saying this: If you're "tired" of the song, if you're sick of hearing about it, if you're weary of its many versions... I don't want to hear it. There are few perfect songs out there, and this is one of them. I will never get tired of hearing it, and I will never get tired of hearing about it. You can just stop reading here if that's the case; chances are tomorrow I'll have something else to talk about (though I should note that I have at least one other Cohen article in the waiting room). That said, Bono's version of it straight-up sucks. Anyway, if you're still with me: In the late 1970s, Leonard Cohen sat down to write a song about god, sex, love, and other mysteries of human existence that bring us to our knees for one reason or another. The legendary singer-songwriter, who was in his early forties at the time, knew how to write a hit: He had penned "Suzanne," "Bird on the Wire," "Lover, Lover, Lover," and dozens of other songs for both himself and other popular artists of the time. I was first introduced, in my teens, to Leonard Cohen as a poet. It was only much later I discovered he did songs, too. The lyrics reflect the poetry. Hell, at least one of them started out as a poem. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have seen him in concert twice before he died, once in New York City and once in Las Vegas. And he was one of the many musical casualties of 2016, overshadowed in that (as usual) by more well-known artists such as David Bowie and Prince. I say all this because I want to emphasize that it was not "Hallelujah" that brought me to his music, but rather vice-versa. In the 35 years since it was originally released, "Hallelujah" has been covered by more than 300 other artists in virtually every genre. Willie Nelson, k.d. lang, Justin Timberlake, Bono, Brandi Carlile, Bon Jovi, Susan Boyle, Pentatonix, and Alexandra Burke... Brandi  Carlile does a completely amazing version of it. It's on her live album if you're interested. But none of them that I've ever heard actually suck -- except Bono's.With its synth-heavy ’80s production, Cohen’s version of “Hallelujah” doesn’t announce itself as the chill-inducing secular hymn it’s now understood to be. And I will admit that other artists did a much better rendition than the original. Such is the case with many of his songs. His voice is... an acquired taste, like Tom Waits', or gin. “I wanted to push the Hallelujah deep into the secular world, into the ordinary world,” Cohen once said. “The Hallelujah, the David’s Hallelujah, was still a religious song. So I wanted to indicate that Hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion.” Which is probably one of the reasons the song has always appealed to me. Cale’s pared down piano-and-vocals arrangement inspired Jeff Buckley to record what is arguably the definitive “Hallelujah,” a haunting, seductive performance found on the late singer-songwriter’s one and only studio album, 1994’s Grace. Buckley’s death in 1997 only heightened the power of his recording, and within a few years, “Hallelujah” was everywhere. It's really the Cale / Buckley version that has spawned most other covers, including Brandi Carlile's. I'm pretty sure a lot of people still aren't aware that Cohen was the songwriter.And yet, I've never fully been able to put my finger on exactly what the lyrics mean, metaphorically. I mean, obviously they have meaning; they're evocative, and they come from a truly amazing poet. This article ended up helping me with that, which is one reason I'm linking it here: Putting aside all the biblical allusions and poetic language, “Hallelujah” is a pretty simple song about loving life despite—or because of—its harshness and disappointments. And I don't think I can sum it all up better than the article does, in Cohen's own words. |
| As yesterday was National Beer Day, I can't even right now. But I'm going to try anyway. I've encountered this writer before, with very mixed results. Over the past three years, I’ve read more than 200 non-fiction books. Must be nice to have that kind of time. I'm retired and I don't have that kind of time. I’ve dived into Philosophy, Marketing, Productivity, Evolution, History, Biographies, and many other books you read to learn something. No wonder I've encountered him before; a lot of those are my thing too. One thing I’ve noticed is that non-fiction books of the past ten years are not boring to read. Gotta agree with that point. People shy away from non-fiction on principle, I think, the way I avoid jazz and opera. Then he segués into the actual topic of the post, non-non-fiction, aka fiction. I’ve made a list of 7 fiction books that have inspired me. You won’t find the cliché books on this list. We all know The Catcher In The Rye, Lord Of The Flies (I really hate that book, it’s so obvious), To Kill A Mocking Bird, and so forth. Also gotta agree on Lord of the Flies. Thinly-veiled anti-humanist propaganda. Okay, not even veiled. 1. Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple This book was recommended to me by a reader. It’s not something I would stumble upon myself. Too good for it? Where’d You Go, Bernadette is an entertaining and creative novel about weirdoes in Seattle. Nope. Next? 2. Naïve. Super by Erlend Loe Another funny and entertaining book. Loe is from Norway, and I like his minimal style. It’s a story about a young kid who’s searching for meaning in life. While minimalist styles appeal to me, I'm still thinking "Oh, another kid searching for the meaning of life, probably born from the author's inner child navel-gazing." Next? 3. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Let’s get a little serious. This book is an examination of human suffering. If this book doesn’t change the way you think about people, nothing will. I've actually never tackled this one, but always thought I should -- until I read this article. I'm starting to think that maybe this author is more of a negative example. As in, if he likes it, I won't. 4. Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk The only very familiar book on this list. I’ve referred to this book more often and I still enjoy it after all these years. Okay, look, that book was made into one of my all-time favorite movies. Not because of the surface elements that people tend to focus on, but more about the subtext. I never read the book. But I made the mistake, once, of trying to read a different book by Palahniuk, and... I'll just stick to the movie, thanks. 5. Ask The Dust by John Fante My favorite writer, Charles Bukowski, was influenced by Fante. In Ask The Dust, you read the story of Arturo Bandini, a struggling writer in 1930s Los Angeles. "Write what you know" is questionable advice in the first place (I prefer "know what you write"), and writers writing about writing writers is the worst kind of cliché. I'm going to go out on a limb here and predict that the story involves a torrid affair, probably with a much younger woman. I could be wrong, but I'm just not feeling it. (I'll read the hell out of Bukowski, though.) 6. Death With Interruptions by Jose Saramago We all die, right? But what if that wasn’t the case? A lot of people are afraid of death, but in this novel, people don’t have to be afraid anymore. Because on the first day of the new year, no one dies. Yawn. 7. Cathedral by Raymond Carver Because Raymond Carver wrote short stories, he’s never included in any ‘top novels’ lists. And that’s a shame. No opinion, but given the rest of this list, pass. Again, I could be way off about these things. Maybe they're worth reading. Maybe not. This article doesn't sell me on the former, though. If I were to tackle any of them, though, it'd be Dostoyevsky, because Russians have a wonderful optimistic attitude toward life and love happy endings. That's sarcasm. Except for the part about wanting to read it. Anyone here ever read any of these? I think I'll need a second opinion. Otherwise I'm inclined to read literally any other book than the ones listed here. |
| And now to crush all your dreams... Why interstellar travel is so damn hard Basic physics goes a long way towards explaining why a pair of theoretical rocket engines may never come to fruition. Rocket science is easy. Newton figured that shit out. Action. Reaction. F=ma. There, done; what made "rocket science" a synonym for supergenius? Well, it turns out there's a lot of details to work out. Who knew? Ever since we imagined the technological sophistication to send ourselves hurtling at escape velocity away from the Earth and toward some unknown pinprick of light in the unending vacuum of open space, obsessive individuals and paranoid governments have spent billions of dollars trying to figure out how to get as far away from our home planet as possible. That's a cynical way to look at it. The idealist version is we're curious and want to explore. Need to explore, actually. As for the next big thing, the general idea that the American government has run with for the past 70 years—from Project Orion to Project Longshot to Project Prometheus—has involved strapping small nuclear bombs to the backs of rockets and hoping for the best. It occurs to me that some people might not have heard of these things. I forget that not everyone reads science fiction. Yes, there have been serious proposals to use nuclear bombs for rocket thrust. Look it up if you don't believe me. Needless to say, none of these have ever been built or are likely ever to be built; they were dreamed up with a future civilization in mind, one that had conquered the problems of nuclear fusion and international cooperation but still had no control over the Earth’s inevitable solar doom That's rich. My turn to be cynical: Should we survive all the looming catastrophes such that we have to start worrying about the Sun heating up and destroying Earth (not something to worry about for, oh, half a billion years at least, so don't start sweating yet), we will figure out a way to engineer the Sun before we figure out international cooperation. As long as there are some people who think pineapple is just fine on pizza and others who think it's an abomination, there will always be war and conflict. If you’re wondering why taking a trip to another star is incredibly difficult, blame physics. Conservation of momentum (or Newton’s third law, depending on how you want to look at it) requires a rocket to poop out some amount of mass at some speed (AKA explosive fuel) for the rocket to move. The sticking point is that the fuel still has to push the remaining fuel still unpooped and connected to the payload. Gotta love those technical terms. This predicament can be turned into a formula that relates the change in speed to the amount of mass pooped out. It’s called the Tsiolkovsky rocket equation, named after the father of modern rocket science. This is the same Tsiolkovsky who, after looking at all the math needed to lob rockets into space (he lived about 100 years ago), said "fuck it, what if we built a really tall tower?" Only he said it in Russian so no one listened. It can tell you that if you have a chemical propellant and you’re going to eject your fuel at, say, the maximum velocity of a nuclear fireball — around 100 km/s — and you want to travel 4.25 light-years over to Proxima Centauri, you’re going to need to have ten thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion times more fuel than payload if you want to get there in around one hundred years. Not to mention that we’d need double the fuel and time to slow down enough to take data from or drop passengers near the star. For a 1 kg payload, the fuel would roughly account for the entire mass of the universe. This is the kind of shit that space-based science fiction loves to hand-wave around, to the point where people are all like, "Why don't we just invent warp drive?" Like that's easy. I mean, sure, maybe? We're actually pretty clever when we try to be. But we barely have the vaguest glimmerings of a theory of how such a thing would be possible. Meanwhile, it's a plot device, nothing more. The sheer weight of the scientific difficulties facing interstellar travel is humbling, if not existentially depressing. Many space nerds have put their hopes in harnessing exotic engines that utilize badly understood (or entirely misunderstood) physics that might obviate the fuel problem. Two of them, the EmDrive and the Mach Effect Thruster, have been hyped by everyone from NASA to National Geographic as the solutions to our interstellar detention. It’s too early to say if either of them is a pipe dream, but their tantalizing likelihoods fade every day. The article goes on to describe these technologies, mostly in plain language (what do you expect from an article that calls rocket exhaust "poop?") so it's worth reading; I won't copy much more of it here. For his part, Shawyer seems to be doing great: after receiving a patent for the EmDrive in late 2016, he formed a joint venture with some guys who have been trying to make flying cars happen for more than a decade. AKA "doing holy work." Before you comment with links, yes, I know there are flying car prototypes out there. I don't care. I want my consumer-model flying car. It's 2021 and I still don't have a flying car. I was promised one long before now. For the foreseeable future, we will have to settle for a less glamorous, less hopeful kind of interstellar travel. Still, there's always the possibility of new breakthroughs in physics. Like I said, we can be clever. History is littered with ideas that just waited for technology to catch up, and others that seemed impossible until someone made them possible. Unfortunately, it's also littered with bullshit, but we tend to forget things like "riding a dew-powered ship to the Moon" (which was actually the basis for one of the earliest "trip to the moon" stories) in a kind of collective confirmation bias. So I'm not saying warp drive can never happen. And we certainly shouldn't stop imagining what we'll find when we finally have a way to head out there.  Mini-Contest Result! Lots of great comments from yesterday! Some of them I might actually try. And I appreciated all the comments; some of y'all are overachievers. I said I'd pick one winner, though, and that's going to be... Sharmelle's Expressions  for her Bacon, Sausage, Runny Yolk, Hashbrown SandwichWhile I'm not actually a fan of runny yolks, it's trivial to simply cook the egg more thoroughly. And I do love me some breakfast. So a MB will be sent your way soon! But like I said, that wasn't the only one I liked, so thanks again for the ideas! I'll do this again sometime soon, so there'll be more chances. |
| I certainly don't want to turn this into a food blog, but, well, everyone eats occasionally, so sometimes food articles are relevant. So is "easy," because this is me we're talking about here. Low effort, huge reward: readers recommend 10 very easy, supremely tasty recipes A delicious, hearty meal needn’t take much time to make. Here are some startlingly quick options for big taste sensations – from midnight spaghetti to fried green plantain Well, that sounds good; I'm all about easy food, and... Put enough spaghetti for two in a pot of heavily salted water and bring to the boil. Finely slice four garlic cloves, a red chilli and the stems of four leaves of rainbow chard (saving the leaves for later) and add to a frying pan with a generous glug of olive oil, then heat gently until golden. Add a couple of teaspoons of capers and a lot of ground black pepper. Roughly chop the chard leaves and a couple of handfuls of parsley. Add the chard leaves to the frying pan along with the almost-cooked spaghetti and 4 tbsp of pasta water. Turn off the heat after a minute or two, add the parsley and stir through, then serve with grated parmesan. Are you fucking kidding me? Maybe the Brits just have a different definition of "very easy..." Put small pieces of vegetables (such as broccoli, pea pods, thinly sliced carrots and thin strips of cabbage), tofu cubes and/or prawns, and wakame seaweed (optional) in boiling water then simmer for 3-4 minutes until slightly tender. Turn the heat off and stir in miso paste to taste (do not boil the miso), then top with scallions [spring onions] and furikake. You can serve with rice on the side or add quick-cooking noodles with the veggies if you want. Nope. That's a faux-miso soup recipe from someone in Minnesota (I can only assume the Guardian editors translated "shrimp" into "prawns.") Now, look, most of these dishes look delicious; I'm not arguing that at all. But I'm not inspired to read on, because they've already complicated the first two dishes. I mean... here's a true quick and easy recipe: Put ham and cheese between two slices of bread along with your choice of condiments. Here's another one: Dump Chef Boy-Ar-Dee into a pot; heat until hot. And a third: Boil spaghetti; drain. Mix with tomato sauce. And my actual definition of easy: Remove pretzel from package. But no, this article goes on to describe things that are the polar opposite of easy. Top a ready-rolled sheet of puff pastry with cream cheese or soft goat’s cheese loosened with a dollop of creme fraiche (mix in some garlic, black pepper and fresh herbs if you have them), then top with tomatoes or other vegetables – roasted peppers, courgettes, aubergines, whatever you’ve got. Bake for around 30-35 minutes at 180 degrees and voilà! Aubergines aren't food, but at least they're optional here. And here's one from Ecuador: Peel the plantain and chop into slices the width of your index finger; you should get between 10 and 15 slices per plantain. Fry them in hot oil, turning once or twice. Remove from the oil and leave to stand on a plate for a minute or two. Now squash them with a cup or glass so they spread into something twice their initial diameter. Return to the hot oil for another minute or so. Drain on kitchen roll, sprinkle with salt and eat. Great served with queso fresco, chilli sauce or avocado. Sure, I have plantains sitting around. Like I said, most of these look delicious. But by the time I've turned on ovens, operated the pressure cooker, chopped and cleaned and whatever, hell, I could have walked to Taco Bell and back. Not to mention the planning it takes to acquire the specialty ingredients. I should turn this into a Merit Badge Mini-Contest, but I can't be arsed to do the formatting tonight. So if you've made it this far: Give me an actual "quick and easy" recipe that doesn't involve fancy, privileged ingredients or too much prep/cleaning. Let's see if we can beat the Guardian here. My favorite will get a food/cooking merit badge. As always, you have until midnight, end of the day Tuesday WDC time. |
| Here's another one for all my fellow procrastinators out there. I keep meaning to get a procrastinators' convention together, but can't ever seem to get around to it. 'Why Do I Spend Weeks Avoiding Tasks That Will Take Me 10 Minutes to Do?' Procrastinating has less to do with time management and more to do with mood management. The article is dated from mid-January and I'm just now posting it. Sometimes we just can’t make ourselves do stuff! Last month, when I asked people to talk about times they’d opted to not do something that they could also simply… do… my mentions were flooded. Example: taxes. Here in the US, the Federal income tax deadline is usually April 15, though it's been extended this year due to... you know. Individual states, the ones that have state taxes, have different deadlines. Either way, it needs to be done soon. My accountant has been bugging me, and I've collected most of what I need. The rest? Well. I'll get to it eventually. I can't tell you how many times I've mentally prodded myself to Just Do The Thing and yet fail to do that very thing. Until it's the last minute. Or after. Blogging every day has helped a little bit with that, but the underlying problem (me) remains. Whether it’s watching your plants wither for weeks before repotting them (total time to complete: six minutes) or waiting until you get pulled over to replace the registration sticker that’s been expired for a year (that was me, I did this), a lot of folks are procrastinating on alllll kinds of little things. How about procrastinating on getting someone to edit your article? Why, exactly? When it’s relatively simple to Do The Thing, and when the consequences of Not Doing The Thing can be serious or fairly unpleasant, why do so many of us look the other way? Of course the article goes on to answer that question. It's a Vice article, not clickbait. Oh, wait... “We get punished for being late in our culture,” Ferrari said. “We don’t get rewarded for being early.” And when you internalize the message that there’s no point in being early, you can apply that to any task that needs doing. Well, that's just a matter of point of view, isn't it? If you're a procrastinator, things are often late and you suffer negative consequences. These consequences comprise your default. So anything better than the default is a reward, such as not suffering negative consequences. That's the same thing as a reward in my book. “Procrastination is an avoidant way of coping,” Sirois said. “How do I manage uncomfortable feelings around that paperwork I have to do? I know, I’ll put the task aside and feel better about it. Ah, I feel better already. You just managed your mood by procrastinating.” This makes sense. To go back to the taxes thing, I always end up owing money. I do not want to pay money. So I put it off. Which sometimes means I owe more money. That fear of fucking up can keep you from starting in the first place—even if it’s a little thing like taking five seconds to write a text or answer an email. And on the other hand, if you do a good job... well, what if you can’t maintain it? What if you can’t do it as well the next time? Which may explain at least one reason I haven't really pursued story publication. Procrastination tends to be a solitary struggle, but literally everyone does it! I know people who don't. Stop misusing "literally." And if this behavior has become a regular occurrence—the kind of thing that’s paralyzing you in your personal and professional life or preventing you from reaching your goals—it might be time to talk to a professional. Chronic procrastination can be a symptom of anxiety disorders, depression, and ADHD; a mental health expert will be able to tell you more. I've had a shrink's number pasted on my board since December. Have I called them yet? What do you think? |
| It always bugged me when people would romanticize the past. I mean, okay, technically, there was a period called the "romantic" period, and look, let's face it, "romantic" has WAY too many definitions, mostly incompatible with each other. What I mean is the people who look at the past all starry-eyed and breathless and go, "I wanna live THEN." And look, I've had friends in the SCA, I read and write fantasy, and I play fantasy role-playing games. Know what all of those things have in common? "Fantasy." I can still take advantage of modern sanitation, electricity, and medical facilities. Leave it to Cracked to make a numbered list of exactly why the past completely sucked syphilitic ass. Aren't you happy to live in the modern, hygienic world that exists today? A world where you can easily wash your hands anytime you like, and must disinfect yourself with sanitizer every time you enter a building, and wear a mask to limit germ transmission, and submit to continual temperature checks in order to walk around publicly ... uh, all right, some of this might feel a tad excessive. But wow, is it infinitely better than the alternative you'd have to deal with if you lived centuries ago. Okay, so maybe the present isn't exactly what you'd call "perfect." I won't be copying all 55 of these. Of course. Go check out the link to find examples even more egregious than the ones I'm highlighting here. Especially the first one, which I'm going to skip right over. 2. Cat Piano Johann Christian Reil arranged cats so hammers hit their tails, and they would cry out. Somehow, this was supposed to jump-start patients back into sanity. I don't believe in an afterlife. But if I'm wrong, I want it to be run by cats, with this guy hit eternally by hammers. On his "tail." 11. Splinter Butt Before we settled on toilet paper (or the convenient anal hose), people as recently as the 1930s were wiping themselves with rough stuff that gave them splinters. About a year ago, this was looking like it was going to make a resurgence. 17. Fire Toilets Roman toilets would occasionally erupt in open flames. Huh. I didn't know they had Chipotle back then. 21. Castration Cults Rome had a cult based on the Greek goddess Cybele, and adherents modeled them after her consort, a eunuch. Yeah, that's a truckload of nope right there. 30. Gong-Farming Someone had to clean out medieval cesspits. That job fell to the gong farmer, who would have to jump into the pit to shovel the stuff into a bucket. And I thought my job, which sometimes involved investigating sanitary sewer pipes, could suck. 33. Werewolf Trials Along with the very reasonable fear of witches, Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries suspected people might be werewolves. Thousands were executed for this offense. Circumstantial evidence included proximity to tomatoes. Hey, I was just trying to enjoy my Big Mac in peace. 42. The Big Stink In 1858, the Thames got clogged with sewage, a heatwave set in, and the smell was so bad, Parliament had to relocate to a rural area upstream. Odd how one never sees that year on Doctor Who. Now, I'll admit that there are some things from the past that we might do well do emulate. After re-reading that list, however, I'm hard-pressed to think of a single one. So as much as this past year has been no fun for just about everyone, at least we're not taking shits in exploding Roman latrines and wiping our char-broiled butts with splintery wood. Yet. |
| Look, I know today's site is kinda... cheesy (or should I say cheezy?) But the topic is both funny and relevant to writing, so here it is. The English language has some confusing peculiarities to it that result in English struggles, but heck, most languages have some phonetic and semantic weirdness winding through them. And English isn't the only strange language. And yes, many of the posts are about languages other than English. I'm especially amused by the ones about French. The rest of the article is mostly just meme images, which means I get to phone this one in. Just trust me; it's worth it. But it helps to have an ad-blocker going as well as a script blocker. It's not that cheezburger.com is dangerous; it's just packed solid with extraneous crap. As a final disclaimer, some of the posts aren't really factual. But you know what I say: Never let the facts get in the way of a good joke. Or a bad one. Especially a bad one. One comment stands out for me, though, buried in image #6: "Are you telling me that we are such sarcastic shits it literally changed our language" Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I'm telling you. Anyway, these all made me laugh, which is usually a good thing. So I had to share for your amusement. |
| I know I've talked about this before, but here's Cracked's take on it. A couple years ago, a big hunk of something flew into our solar system. It took a bit longer for the world to really stand up and pay attention to it, and we're still keeping an eye on it, even though it's now billions of miles away now. You said "now" twice. So it's twice as now? Hey, look, I'm not claiming I never make mistakes. I also don't have an editor. 5. First, The Most Important Part: What's With That Name? Just kidding, the name isn't the most important part, but let us set this thing up for you. In October 2017, astronomers were looking up at the sky, which is their favorite thing to do. They thought they spotted a comet, so they named it, using the standard comet designation protocol. Then they looked closer, saw no hint of a tail, and figured it had to be an asteroid, which meant they instead needed the asteroid designation protocol. But as they got out their notepads and tried to trace its path, they realized it had to have come from outside the solar system. It was the first ever identified interstellar object, which was very exciting, because it meant they had to create a NEW designation protocol. You know, the way this is generally reported, it makes it sound like nothing ever passes through this solar system from outside it, that this is a once-in-a-billion year happening, that it's unique and precious. Of course, we don't know how often it happens because we've only recently had the tools to detect that it's a) an object that b) comes from outside the solar system. This was the first detected, not the first ever. Probably. Or the last. Probably. Cracked, unlike any other article I've seen on the subject, goes into detail about the origin, prononciation, and meaning of its name: 'Oumuamua. So, way to go, dick joke site? 4. We Don't Actually Know What This Thing Looks Like At the top of the page, and copied again right below these words for your convenience, is an artist's impression of 'Oumuamua: For which I'm afraid you're just going to have to click on the link. We only get a limited number of image files here, and I'd rather not use up all of mine on rocks. Scientists, and the media, unanimously refer to this as "cigar-shaped," which is the term they use when they want you to think about dongs but are too afraid to just come out and say "dong." Way to go, dick joke site. All this is to say -- and this will become important in a minute -- there's a whole lot of very basic info about 'Oumuamua we don't know. But we have been able to monitor its movement, and that's what's stumped so many scientists. Surprised they didn't joke about it moving in and out and in and out and in and out... 3. 'Oumuamua Is Moving Very Weirdly As those astronomers were tracking 'Oumuamua (during the few breaks allowed to them by their droves of oversexed groupies), they realized their interstellar visitor could not have come from the fairly close star system Vega just 600,000 years away, nor could it have come from any of the first several other close alternatives they checked out. The paths just didn't line up. Instead, 'Oumuamua might have spent billions upon billions of years traversing the cosmos before it landed in our solar system. Which is really kinda cool. By the way, they're not saying Vega is 600,000 light years away; I believe they're implying that at the speed this thing was traveling, it would have taken it that long to get here from the vicinity of Vega. If you want to know for sure, ask a Vegan. (You have NO IDEA how long I've been wanting to make that joke. NO IDEA.) But that's not the weird part about its motion. The weird part: 'Oumuamua was accelerating. Not just accelerating due to the Sun's gravity, as expected, but also accelerating due to ... something else. And this, as I mentioned before, inspired a lot of people, including a supposedly respectable dude from Harvard, to start shrieking "ALIENS! ALIENS! AAAAALLLLIIIIIEEENNNNS!" But, as Cracked loquaciously puts it: 2. So, Is This An Alien Spaceship? No. 2. C'mon. Couldn't It Be Aliens? Okay, we can't rule out that aliens made it. But if you've heard the theory that 'Oumuamua is an alien spaceship -- and if you heard of 'Oumuamua before today, you probably heard this theory -- you should know that despite all the coverage it got, this idea comes from just one dude. Well, two dudes, counting his paper's co-author, who doesn't seem to chase the spotlight as much. Well, three dudes, if you count the ancient aliens guy who has endorsed the theory. And since I harped on this before, I'm just leaving this bit here. 1. Let's Go And Find Out For Sure There's a reason we're still talking about 'Oumuamua today, and that reason is Project Lyra. This group of scientists is considering sending an interstellar ship to catch up with 'Oumuamua, even though it's already billions of miles away and going 500 million miles farther every year. Are they nuts? No, no they are not. We absolutely do want to catch up with interstellar objects eventually, and 'Oumuamua's a good candidate because at least we know where to find it. The other plan for reaching an object like that has been approved by the European Space Agency and involves sending a vessel into space by the end of the decade and then just chilling for a while till we figure out where to direct it. Compared to that, Project Lyra seems downright reasonable. The idea that we can chase this sucker with a probe is *almost* as farfetched as the "alien ship" hypothesis. Before they launch, Project Lyra also needs funds, and personnel, and manufacturing facilities, and lots more. The group behind it (the "Initiative for Interstellar Studies"), they're just some scientists writing a proposal, not a space agency. But we're absolutely rooting for them to come up with a plan that makes sense and to put it in the hands of those who can make it happen. And if they do discover that 'Oumuamua is a functioning spacecraft, we will admit we were wrong, and then we'll commandeer the vessel and fly it back to where it came from. But we're clever (except for the guys shrieking about aliens); we can find a way. Because that's what we do. When we're not making dick jokes, anyway. |
| As it is April Fools' Day, how about an article that actually fits with the plain (as opposed to metaphorical) theme of the blog? Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality A new thought experiment indicates that quantum mechanics doesn’t work without strange numbers that turn negative when squared. Sure, you can skip this if you want; it won't break my heart. But for anyone who's ever laughed at the idea of "imaginary numbers," this one's for you. After all... all numbers are imaginary, in a sense; there's just a subset with the official name of "imaginary." Mathematicians were disturbed, centuries ago, to find that calculating the properties of certain curves demanded the seemingly impossible: numbers that, when multiplied by themselves, turn negative. They weren't as disturbed as non-mathematicians, I'm pretty sure of that. Want to disturb a mathematician? Ask one how to divide by zero. All the numbers on the number line, when squared, yield a positive number; 22 = 4, and (-2)2 = 4. Mathematicians started calling those familiar numbers “real” and the apparently impossible breed of numbers “imaginary.” As I've noted, all numbers are already abstractions. These are just... I guess... more abstract? Yet physicists may have just shown for the first time that imaginary numbers are, in a sense, real. Okay, fine; I still say the opposite is true. “These complex numbers, usually they’re just a convenient tool, but here it turns out that they really have some physical meaning,” said Tamás Vértesi, a physicist at the Institute for Nuclear Research at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences who, years ago, argued the opposite. “The world is such that it really requires these complex” numbers, he said. Even my own surface exploration of math and physics has led me to the conclusion that if the math exists, eventually some physicist will find an application for it. I may be wrong, but it's happened too many times to count (see what I did there?) The earlier research led people to conclude that “in quantum theory complex numbers are only convenient, but not necessary,” wrote the authors, who include Marc-Olivier Renou of the Institute of Photonic Sciences in Spain and Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva. “Here we prove this conclusion wrong.” Now, I've always heard that complex numbers also show up in, say, electrical engineering. I wouldn't know. Electricity might as well be magic, as far as I'm concerned. I got somewhat familiar with the math involved because the Mandelbrot set is just plain fascinating.Anyway, the article goes on to describe the experiment in question, whereupon it quickly loses me. What does this all mean? Well, nothing much to everyday life. Maybe it adds another layer of flavor to this blog's title knowing that what is imaginary possesses a kind of reality. Like I said, I just find it interesting, so y'all get to read about it here. |
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