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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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| At first, I thought this was going to be another "you're doing it wrong" article, but no. Well, a qualified no. From Fast Company: The Duolingo effect: How keeping the ‘streak’ is changing people’s behavior  Maintaining a streak is a major motivator, and apps have caught on. "Duolingo" in the headline of course caught my eye, but that's not the only streak I have going. An activity streak has the power to compel behavior, and marketers have taken note. Marketing researchers Jackie Silverman and Alixandra Barasch recently documented 101 unique instances, including Snapchat, Candy Crush Saga, Wordle, and the Duolingo language learning platform, of apps that have incorporated streaks into their architecture by tracking the number of consecutive days users complete a task. Thing is, though, when I started with Duolingo, I was well aware that it was gamified. That is, it's deliberately structured to reward obsessive behavior, like how a fantasy role-playing game might dangle the promise of the next reward, or play triumphant music when you succeed at a quest, or whatever myriad little tricks game designers use to keep people playing. That was, for a gamer like me, the whole point. Self-motivation almost never works for me; I get frustrated and go play video games. But even that doesn't always work for me. The linked article displays someone's Wordle streak chart. Remember Wordle? I think it's still around. I got up to 101 consecutive days' wins, then failed one day. Rather than slog through trying to get another streak going, I just quit playing altogether. Still, there's a difference (something the article does note later). Wordle doesn't have an overall goal, apart from the streak (I remember one day, my habitual first word, which was STEIN, was the actual answer, so there wasn't any motivation left to go for even that, anymore). Not so with Duolingo. My streak there is just the motivation; the goal is to become more facile at languages. Still French. At one point, I'd finished all their French lessons, but then they went and added more. A lot more. So I'm still slogging through French. As an aside, some of the more recently added sections discuss cooking terms. You'd think that would be pretty damn basic in French, but no, many of those lessons were added fairly recently. Based on input from people maintaining streaks and how streaks are described in the popular media, I suggest they have four underlying characteristics. Keep in mind these are one person's definitions, not a generally-accepted scientific result. First, streaks require unchanging performance and temporal parameters. I'm skeptical about the "unchanging performance" thing; when I'm traveling, I have less time to maintain my streaks, so I let myself do the bare minimum; however, when I'm home, I do more. Second, the streak-holder largely attributes completing the activity to his or her resolve. I question this, as well. As I implied above, I consider my Duolingo streak to be mostly the result of the program's game-like design. This blog, in its fifth year of daily entries? Maybe that's my own stubbornness. Third, a streak is a series of the same completed activity that the person maintaining the streak considers to be uninterrupted. By Duolingo's own parameters, a participant can miss a day, occasionally, and have their streak automatically "frozen." This maintains the streak in their records through a day of inactivity. I would still consider it a streak if that happened, but in my 1622-day streak, that hasn't happened yet. The downside is that I find myself reluctant to go anywhere that doesn't have reliable internet access, but let's be real, here; that would be a consideration anyway, as my longest streak of all (besides being alive) involves being on the internet in some manner every day for 20 years. Fourth, the streaker quantifies the series’ duration. Which I just did for Duo. But I had to look it up. It's not like I spent all morning going "This is my 1622nd day for Duolingo." No, I just thought to myself, "Blog, then Duolingo lessons, and then I can get back to playing Starfield." I have at least one other streak going, which is WDC newsletter editorship. I'd have to look up the numbers there, too, but I haven't missed an assigned issue of the Fantasy or Comedy newsletters since I started being a regular editor there. Both began in the late noughties. Those are monthly, though, not daily. This definition distinguishes an activity streak from winning streaks and lucky streaks. Wordle, as above, isn't necessarily an activity streak; unless you're really good, or you cheat, you're not going to hit every one. (If you really are that good, great! If you cheat, whatever; that's on you.) There's a lot more to the article, but this is already getting long. Just a one more highlight: Streaks can serve to gamify the underlying activity by creating rules and quantifying the outcome, and many people enjoy the challenge of a game. And some don't, and that's okay, too. Everyone finds their own motivation. Or doesn't. The author ends by suggesting starting a streak rather than making a New Year's resolution, though the date on it was January 3, by which point most people have already failed at least one resolution. By today, it's probably safe to go back to the gym. Which was a streak I had going for a few years, myself, until... you know what... made it hazardous to be around sweating, heavily breathing people. That's a streak I might try to restart, but never in January. |
| As has become my usual habit on a Sunday, I picked an old blog entry at random to see what's changed. And boy, did I hit an old one—only the fourth entry, in fact, from early January, 2007: "Poker" This was back when I thought the blog would be about personal updates, as if my life were interesting enough to provide daily updates. Actually, it was "back when" a lot of things. Point by point:  Poker Night - dustbin of history obligations in December - not any more wife - no longer my former groomsmen - see below employee - I'm retired and he's long gone wife's friend's husband - dumped his wife, ran off with a younger belly dancer Quintessential gin - no longer available in Vir-gin-iaFinal verdict: 0/7 With qualifications. The qualifications are thus:  I'm still in contact with one of the groomsmen, though not both. Actually talked to him last night as we were gaming. While Quintessential is unavailable to me (it really is my favorite gin, though others come close), one thing that has not changed in 17 years is drinking itself. Well, maybe not quite as often. But it's nice to have some consistency in my life. |
| For "Journalistic Intentions" [18+]... Burgundy Not all red is burgundy, and not all burgundy is red. Burgundy (the region in France) apparently has a long history of influence in Europe. I've heard that, for a while, it was Burgundy (Bourgogne in French) that was the cultural center, not Paris. All things rise and fall, though, and now the region is mostly just famous for wine. And mustard. Yes, mustard; the capital of the region was once also the capital of mustard-making. The capital's name is Dijon. But while mustard's a fine condiment, I'd rather talk about wine. As with most wine-producing regions, they grow a wide variety of grapes there. Many of them produce red wine. Many others produce whites. Last November, I did an entry about one of my favorite French wines: "Beaujolais Nouveau Day" . Now, the Beaujolais region is just south of, and adjacent to, Burgundy. Incidentally, these blog entries are inadvertently helping me plan a trip to France. Anyway, point is, Beaujolais grapes grow in Burgundy, too.But Burgundy is responsible for what I consider to be the light beer of the wine world: Chardonnay. Unlike light beer, though, Chardonnay doesn't suck. It's just... everywhere. It's often the entry port into the land of Oenophilia. Those grapes can apparently grow just about anywhere, which means most of the wineries I've visited have some variation of Chardonnay. Now, I'm not ragging on peoples' tastes; if you like it, you like it, and that's fine. But there are so many other whites, including many from Burgundy, just waiting to be tasted. Like Pinot Blanc, also Burgundian, though better examples can be found elsewhere. And yet, the region is most known for its red wine, to the point where an official name for a certain shade of red, possibly reminiscent of the ruby color of a red wine, is called burgundy. Burgundy (the color) is quite similar to bordeaux (the color), though Bordeaux is an entirely separate wine-growing region, located on the Atlantic (west) coast of France. Unlike Burgundy, Bordeaux is better known as a wine region than as a color, to the point where I've taken to calling all boxed wine "cardbordeaux." I'll have to remember not to use that word when I'm in France. I've heard the people there can be... a bit touchy about certain things. So, to reiterate: not all red is burgundy, and not all burgundy is red. |
Despite the significance of the Great Groundhog today, we're going to talk about another rodent. The Platonic ideal of rodent, the Ruler of Rodentia: In Defense of the Rat They’re less of a pest than you think—actually, they have quite a few benefits. Now, if someone had said that, say, mosquitos were "less of a pest than you think," I'd know they were bullshitting. But rats are cute, and don't we give cute critters the benefit of the doubt? There was a time when we human beings used to put animals on trial for their alleged crimes against us. Gosh, I wonder what would happen if they put us on trial for our alleged crimes against them? The earliest of these prosecutions in the Western tradition of law appears to be a case against moles in the Valle d’Aosta, Italy, in 824 AD... Another clear example of anti-rodent prejudice. In the centuries between, a killer pig was dressed in human clothing and hanged in Falaise, France... Okay, I can kind of see the pig wearing human clothing (just imagine Alex Jones), but how the hell do you hang a hog? They ain't got no neck. ...Marseille put dolphins on trial for crimes unknown... That one's easy. The prince heir apparent of France was known as le dauphin. Someone mispronounced the definite article, and they thought they were trying les dauphins. ...and a rooster—in what must have been a case of mistaken identity—was burned at the stake in Basel, Switzerland, for the witchery of laying an egg while male. Maybe he was just living his true life. In 1522, “some rats of the diocese” of Autun, France, were charged with criminally eating and destroying barley crops. A skilled legal tactician, one Barthélemy de Chasseneuz, was assigned to defend the rats. How come most of these are French? Well. The article is fairly long, but I found it enlightening. Especially the part about how humans were a more proximate cause of The Plague than rats were: "In the case of the notorious plague in Europe, the event that forever marked rats as public enemy number one, the animals may be almost entirely innocent." But there's also a long discussion about rats' intelligence and demonstrated capacity for empathy—not only with other rats, but with humans. I'm not saying you should venture into the NYC subway tunnels and pick up a rat. There really are hazards with wild rats—just like there are with raccoons, and everyone thinks trash pandas are just the cutest things (mainly because they are). But I've known several rats in my life, albeit briefly (rodents don't tend to live very long lives), and, yeah... they're not all vermin. Now, if I could only convince my cats to stop leaving them for me as gifts, that'd be great. |
| Well, here we are: the worst month of the year. At least it's shorter than other months. Wait, this is a leap year? Rats. No sense dwelling on it. I'll just pick another site from my queue to blog about, and move on. One perfectly legitimate reason to avoid having kids, besides the obvious ones, is that, at some stages, they ask awkward questions that may be hard to answer in an age-appropriate manner. Like this one. Why is Gold yellow? Spoiler alert: Einstein again It turns out you don't have to look further than gold jewelry to experience Einstein's relativity. I don't think I ever asked my dad that particular question, but I did ask the classic "why is the sky blue" one, and his lengthy scientific explanation went right over Kid Me's little head. I think I might even have fallen asleep. Eventually, I understood the reason for the effect, at least to some degree. And I've often wondered why gold appears, well, gold-colored, when most other metals (with some obvious exceptions, like copper) are various shades of gray. Just haven't wondered enough to be arsed to look it up. Then this article somehow got my attention. You’ve probably not given it much thought, but the reason why gold is yellow (or rather, golden) is deeply ingrained in its atomic structure — and it’s because of something called relativistic quantum chemistry. Now, here's the thing: Generally (pun intended), relativity deals with large-scale things, while quantum mechanics deals mostly with the smallest. I'm told the two theories are both well-supported; that is, predictions they make turn out to match observed evidence. And yet, they're incompatible with each other (again, just going by what I've heard, here). So for me, the phrase "relativistic quantum chemistry" is itself a shiny gold thing that I just have to pick up. Simply put, because it’s a very large atom, gold’s electrons move so fast that they exhibit relativistic contraction, shifting the wavelength of light absorbed to blue and reflecting the opposite color: golden yellow. And there you have it: the answer. Refreshing to see that at the beginning of an article. Of course, it goes on to explain that shit further, which is also good. Incidentally, this is an entirely different phenomenon from why the sky is blue, but I can't help but notice the parallels: blue light from the sun gets preferentially scattered by air molecules, turning the sky blue and making the sun appear yellower. Read on for a more in-depth look into the fascinating chemistry that gives this symbol of wealth and luxury its prized color. At this point, it's less a symbol of wealth and luxury than one of overindulgence and greed. Still pretty, but come the apocalypse, all that gold you've been hoarding will be mostly useless. It's not like any survivors will need it for its amazing electrical conductivity. Anyway. I won't bore you with too much from the rest of the article. I do think it's very accessible—probably too much for a toddler, but not for a teen or a grown-ass adult—so give it a look if, like me, you want to finally get that stubborn curiosity looked at. |
| Before I get into today's article, a quick notice: I'll be participating in "Journalistic Intentions" [18+] next month, meaning eight of my entries will be themed for that contest. If you have a blog or feel like starting one, it's a good way to spark ideas. (The preceding has been an unpaid public service announcement.) Once again from Cracked, a beneficial article: There are, arguably, too many things in the world. Even if you make it your life’s work to know what everything is, it’s an impossible goal. Hell, even just trying to get to know every beer is an impossible goal. That doesn't stop me from trying. Sometimes you might be seeing something that you’re 100 percent sure you’ve identified, and turned out to be plumb wrong. That's because you used common sense, which is usually misguided. 5. Eastern Coral Snake/Scarlet Kingsnake If something in nature is frequently enough confused, and with sour enough results, that it earns its own trademark mnemonic device? That’s a pretty good sign that intuition isn’t going to cut it. I learned this one at a young age, even though neither of these snakes lives in Virginia (yet). That rhyme, of course, being the famous “Red touches yellow, kill a fellow; red touches black, friend to Jack.” It’s brief, fun and just creative enough to make it kind of hard to remember in an actual emergency. The snake in question is the highly venomous eastern coral snake, and their very similar looking counterpart, the scarlet Kingsnake. I'm also always confusing the "liquor before beer, never fear; beer before liquor, never sicker" one. Mostly because my primary superpower, besides punning, is that I'm free to ignore such aphorisms. As for snakes, look, they can be beautiful creatures, but I prefer to admire them from a distance. 4. False Morels I've covered fungus in here before: "Everyone Calls Me Mushroom Because I'm Such A Fun Guy" . All I have to say about this now is that it's a real morel hazard. Yes, I made that pun in the linked entry, too; shut up.3. Baking Powder/Baking Soda Coincidentally, I've covered this one too. Sort of: "Sodium Cool" 2. Fabuloso/Tasty Drinks Pretty sure this is in the same category as Tide Pods. You might scoff and say you’d have to be an idiot to ever accidentally drink something that belongs under the sink, but I can tell you from personal experience, even knowing it’s poison, it still looks delicious on a hot day. In big grocery stores, you’d probably get the hint noticing it stocked next to the Windex, but in smaller stores where it might not be that far from the Gatorade? Enough people have made the mistake that warnings have had to be issued, and eventually, the entire labeling was changed to make it more obviously for cleaning and not quaffing. I consider this to be a self-correcting problem. 1. Your Kid at Chuck E. Cheese I have never been to a Chuck E. Cheese. I'm pretty sure they were around when I was a kid, but my parents had enough sense not to take me to one. And, of course, being fortunate enough not to have kids myself, I never had a reason to go as an adult. (I have, however, been to Disney World.) How was I supposed to notice that this one had a different Spider-Man T-shirt on? I haven’t slept more than two hours in five years. This is why you dress up your kids in a way that makes them unmistakable. You won't ever lose them, and they will never, ever forget it. I have to admit I'm surprised that the article doesn't include the most important extremely similar thing that you better not mix up: your girlfriend and her twin sister. That shit only turns out well in letters to Penthouse. Just trust me on this. |
| Everything makes more sense once you realize this guy's in charge now: There are many ancient Greek gods in mythology, representing all aspects of human life and various concepts. There is Aphrodite, the goddess of beauty, Apollo, the god of of music and dance, Ares, the god of war, and Poseidon, the god of the sea among many others. "But do you recall... the most famous deity of all?" Several of the gods possessed human qualities, traits, and frailties. It as if ancient Greeks created gods as images of themselves, with their good qualities and flaws, virtues, and whims. An alternative way to look at it is that we possess godlike qualities. Then there is Koalemos, (Κοάλεμος in Greek, Coalemus in Latin) the god of stupidity and foolishness. Zeus leaves him in charge when he's busy, and Zeus is always busy. There is very little information about the story of Koalemos. It is assumed he was the son of the goddess Nyx, the personification of the night, according to ancient Greeks. Nyx denies any such allegations. In terms of Koalemos, much like his siblings, he had the power to personify or possess human beings and turn them into idiots or fools, for instance. Something he clearly does quite a lot. Anyway, just a little fun with theology today. We humans are perfectly good at being idiots and fools all by ourselves, no divine intervention needed. Of course, we can also be quite good at being clever or kind, so I figure it all balances out in the end. |
| Mostly just because I find this stuff fascinating, an article from Quanta: These Moons Are Dark and Frozen. So How Can They Have Oceans? The moons orbiting Jupiter and Saturn appear to have subsurface oceans — tantalizing targets in the search for life beyond Earth. But it’s not clear why these seas exist at all. Usual disclaimer here: by "life" they mean probably simple life; complex life is unlikely, and sentient aliens are pretty much off the table. So let's not go imagining little green women. For most of humankind’s existence, Earth was the only known ocean-draped world, seemingly unlike any other cosmic isle. Counterpoint: we barely knew other worlds existed, what the stars and planets really were, and certainly not that they had satellites. Now Earth’s oceans are no longer unique. They’re just strange. They exist on our planet’s sunlit surface, while the seas of the outer solar system are tucked beneath ice and bathed in darkness. And these subterranean liquid oceans seem to be the rule for our solar system, not the exception. In addition to Europa and Enceladus, other moons with ice-covered oceans almost certainly exist as well. Really, it shouldn't be so strange that there's a lot of water out there. Even before they made these discoveries about outer solar system worlds, we knew that comets were largely water (in the form of ice). These moons have existed in the frosty reaches of our solar system for billions of years — long enough for residual heat from their creation to have escaped into space eons ago. Any subsurface seas should be solid ice by now. This sort of thing is, of course, what science is for. These oceanic moons also offer a grander possibility. Temperate, potentially livable oceans could be an inevitable consequence of planet formation. It may not matter how far a planet and its moons are from their star’s nuclear bonfire. And if that’s true, then the number of landscapes we might explore in our search for life beyond Earth is nearly limitless. I should note that I saved this article to my queue before I started playing Starfield. “Oceans under icy moons seem weird and improbable,” said Steven Vance, an astrobiologist and geophysicist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. And yet, defiantly, these alien seas remain liquid. Side note: Every time these days that I see "defiantly," my assumption is that someone doesn't know how to spell "definitely." This is not the case here. Now, it might seem, on the surface (pun intended), not so odd that an ice-covered moon would have liquid water underneath. After all, Earth is rocky (though much of those rocks are underwater), and yet has a molten core. Water is molten ice. But it's not that simple; we're talking about globes much smaller than Earth, worlds whose inner heat has had more of a chance to dissipate. The article goes on to explain some theories that fit the evidence, but I won't go into more detail here. In summary, other factors produce heat, such as tidal friction. As one of the prime candidates for under-ice life in the solar system is Europa (moon of Jupiter), the only thing I have left to note is that it's a good thing Arthur C. Clarke was writing fiction when he penned: "All these worlds are yours - except Europa. Attempt no landing there." Because telling humans they can't do something is a sure way to get them to do it. |
| Today is my regular trip to the past, and I landed by chance on an entry that's definitely worth another look. It's a good time for this to have come up in my random pickings: "Who" It's from October of 2018, and it's about the show Doctor Who; a rare, for me, opinion on pop culture. I've learned not to give out too many of those, because I almost always get burned. Praise an actor? Turns out they're a pedo. Say something good about a show? It goes downhill. That sort of thing. Anyway, let's see what I said then and how things are going now. So... I've seen every episode of Doctor Who. Still true. Well, I haven't gotten around to watching the recreated 4th Doctor episode Shada yet, but as it never aired when it was made, it doesn't really count. Bit over five years later and... nope, still haven't seen that. There's been a lot of hype about the most recent incarnation, which premiered Sunday. There is, of course, always hype. The difference then was that the actor was a chick, which angered the usual assholes, which pleased me. The reason this older entry is appropriate now is that they just introduced a new Doctor again. Well, there were shenanigans when 13 regenerated into 14, who was actually 10 (David Tennant) for a couple of specials, but now they're on 15, who's a black dude, which angers the usual assholes, which pleases me. Anyway. New Doctor, new companions, new composer, new showrunner... Yeah, now, the composer and showrunner have reverted to the folks behind the 2005 series revival, and this is a good thing. Well, I'm here to tell you that the 13th Doctor *is* The Doctor. Thoroughly, completely, without a doubt. She nailed it. The other actors nailed it. The writers nailed it. I stand by my opinion on Jodie Whittaker's first episode. The rest of her stint as the Doctor, though... well, it had its ups and downs, but I wasn't all that impressed by the writing or directing (though the acting continued to be solid, an actor can only do so much with a mediocre script). It wasn't bad; it just didn't really hook me. Of course, now that I've posted this, the rest of the season might very well suck. Many people seem to have only two opinions about anything: "That's awesome" or "That sucks." Long ago, Netflix had a star-rating system like we do here on WDC. I liked that, because you could express opinions in the middle. Have some nuance. Unfortunately, we now live in a world where many people seem to think that anything less than five stars means something sucks, and Netflix changed their rating to "awesome" or "sucks" (with the usual thumb icons). There's nothing wrong with three stars. And that's what I'd give the 13th Doctor's run if I were asked (or, because it's my blog, I don't have to be asked). It didn't suck. It wasn't awesome. Those aren't the only choices. I'll keep watching. |
| Another one from Cracked. This one's about a whole lot of nothing: Except that as regular readers know, I kind of have an interest in space. "Space" in this context means "anything that's not the Earth," not just the nearly-nothing that the stars and planets whirl through. This doesn't mean I knew all these things. It's rather a broad topic. Unless you have a way cooler job than we do, there are precious few opportunities in adult life to talk about outer space. Well, it's not a job, but there's this blog. That’s why little kids rule. They just learned that space is a thing, they think it’s amazing and they have no qualms about saying so. They're also obsessed with dinosaurs. When I learned that the dinosaurs were probably killed (mostly, except for the ones that evolved into chickens) by something from space, man, was I conflicted. Now... there are 10 of these at the link (counting down as per their usual mode, like the old space rocket countdowns). I'm not going to cover all 10. Just the ones I have something to say about. Also, I didn't fact-check these, ironically because I want to keep this short so I can go back to playing Starfield, a video game set in... wait for it... space. Those disclaimers out of the way... 10. The Sunset on Mars Is Blue Just like the daytime sky on Mars is the color of our sunsets, its sunsets are the color of our sky, i.e. bluer than a George Carlin set. I have a memory from the 70s, when I was one of those space- (and dinosaur-) obsessed kids, of the first probes to return images from Mars. The Viking ones from the US. One early image rendered the Martian daytime sky as blue, and I think people commented on how similar that was to Earth despite, you know, it having about 1/500th of the atmosphere. Then NASA discovered that the color correction was off, and the sky was actually pink. Well, I say "actually," but... okay, no, I'm not going to get into how color isn't always what it seems, not today. 9. There Are Planets Made of Diamonds Yes, I saw the Doctor Who episode called "Midnight," so this must be true. Diamonds are valuable on Earth because they’re relatively rare, but there are planets that are absolutely lousy with the things. No, diamonds are valuable on Earth because a certain company from South Africa artificially keeps prices high. Diamonds are carbon, and carbon isn't exactly uncommon, so space diamonds aren't that farfetched an idea. 6. Comets Are Leftovers They’re sometimes called “dirty snowballs,” inspiring jokes that would be inappropriate for our proverbial second grader (but he might also think of anyway). Wait'll that second grader finds out the name of the seventh planet. 4. The Largest Known Body of Water Is a Space Cloud The Pacific might seem impressive from the boardwalk, but it’s puny compared to the oceans floating out there in space. Sure, if you want to stretch the definitions of those words to the breaking point. As with carbon, though, it shouldn't be surprising that there's water out there. All of Earth's water came from "space." (Along with everything else on, in, and around the planet.) 1. There’s No Wind on the Moon I mean, technically, yes, because wind as we know it requires air. Even the extraordinarily rarefied atmosphere of Mars is enough to make wind. But there's a stream of particles from the Sun called the "solar wind," which is even more rarefied, but substantial enough so that people have proposed space probes with giant sails to use the solar wind for propulsion. That means that, unless someone else comes along and rudely brushes them away, all those footprints from the moon landings are probably gonna be there until the moon dissolves. Them and the poop. Yeah, no. Erosion is much slower on the Moon, what with the no wind or rain thing, but over deep time, erosion does happen (from solar wind and tiny space rocks and such). That's how it got regolith (Moon dust) in the first place. So even if we never touch the orb again, they'll probably wear away in the five billion years it probably has before getting swallowed by the expanding Sun. Also, that first footprint? The "one small step" one? That's probably long gone. Think about it: it was right at the bottom of the only ladder that Armstrong and Aldrin used to enter and exit the lander. Not to mention the rocket exhaust from when they took off. Still, I retain enough sense of wonder to still be impressed that there are footprints on the Moon at all. |
| Humor is humor... until someone takes it seriously. Crack reporting from Cracked today: Setting aside my quibble with the "everyone" in the headline... The world could have been saved a lot of trouble if, centuries earlier, people decided to end every sarcastic suggestion by writing out /s. Someone should retroactively print that at the end of every copy of A Modest Proposal. Also, why hasn't my idea of making Comic Sans the Official Sarcasm Font caught on yet? Sometimes, you see, people aren’t being serious. Sometimes I am. Sometimes I'm not. Sometimes, both at the same time (see #3 below). 5. Meritocracy This is one of the few portmanteaux (that I didn't come up with myself) that I can abide. Partly this is because the word is older than I am, and thus, by definition, a real word. And partly because both parts of it come from the same language roots (Latin). When you toss out that word “meritocracy,” however, you may want to keep in mind where it came from. It entered our lexicon thanks to a 1958 book called The Rise of the Meritocracy. Author Michael Dunlop was a sociologist, but the book was no straightforward sociological text. You might instead call it dystopian sci-fi, or an alt-history novel. It takes place in the year 2034 and looks back at two centuries of increasingly fictional history leading to an imminent revolution. In summnary, it was meant as a warning, not a reflection of reality or a roadmap for the future. I haven't read the book, but it wouldn't be the first time, or the last, that a book set in the future, intended as a warning, became something people started striving for. I mean, look at half of SF. 4. Daylight Saving Time This article was from last October, when DST was still active most places. It won't resume here until March 10. So, right now, it's either a bit early or a bit late to start with the endless complaints about time changes, but I work with what the random number gods give me. Some people, however, credit the invention to Benjamin Franklin, who first proposed the idea all the way back in 1784. Franklin, writing as he did before Comic Sans was a thing, often proposed things satirically that ended up being taken seriously. Franklin wrote to The Journal of Paris about how a noise recently awoke him at six in the morning. This was an unusual experience for him, because he normally awoke at noon, having arrived home drunk at around four. Shockingly, the sun was rising when he woke this time, illuminating his room and eliminating all need for candles. When he shared this discovery with several scientist friends, none believed him because they, too, always woke at noon. Perhaps, suggested one, he was confused because he’d mistakenly opened his window and let the darkness out. See? This, from the man who's also credited with the "early to bed, early to rise" proverb? Guy was an epic troll. You know how you sometimes get questions like "which historical figure would you most like to meet?" in, like, job interviews or dating apps? My answer would be Ben. 3. Schrödinger’s Cat If this hadn't been on the list, I'd have mentioned it anyway. Here in the quipping biz, we have a few stock references we drop into commentary to convince readers we’re smart. Some are literary (“The Cask of Amontillado,” The Picture of Dorian Gray), while some are scientific, the chief among these being Schrödinger's cat. I've known people who thought Erwin had used an actual cat. I'm not judging them, because many a cat has died/not died in the name of scientific advancement, but maybe the rest of us need to be more clear that it was a thought experiment Of course, a cat cannot actually be both dead and alive simultaneously, but that’s the point of the thought experiment. Schrödinger proposed this to be ridiculous. While I'm not a quantum mechanic myself, I like to watch them work on my quantum cars. One interpretation of quantum physics is that the state of any particle is unknown until it's observed. Philosophically, this has never sat right with me, because it seems to give primacy back to human consciousness alone, but like I said, not an expert. Problem is, the cat would know it's alive (presumably if it's dead, it wouldn't be in a position, super or otherwise, to know anything). 2. Hiter’s Nobel Peace Prize The Nobel Peace Prize is a sham, according to cynics who’ve never done anything. The Nobel Peace Prize is a sham. To summarize this section, he never actually got the prize, and he was nominated as a joke. Kind of like those epic comedians who write in Mickey Mouse on the voting ballot. 1. The Trolley Problem There's too much here to pick at any one thing, so you might want to read it at the link, which also contains other links to supporting documentation. Or you might not. Or you could be in both states at the same time. Suffice it to say that, proposed satirically or not, the thought experiment, with variations, can be useful. Like inspiring this short story I wrote in 2021: "The Trolley Problem" [18+] |
| Cultural appropriation! How Kosher Wine Became a Hit in the Caribbean and Beyond Manischewitz has a historic consumer base not only in the Caribbean, but also in African-American and East Asian communities. ...no, not really cultural appropriation. Mani was the first wine I ever had, which should surprise no one. I can't remember the first beer I ever had. The first beer I ever finished was a Red, White, and Blue, and that didn't end well at all. Growing up on the Dutch Caribbean island of Curaçao, 34-year-old Diahann Alexandra Maria Atacho’s parents would regularly turn to an unexpected beverage when they wanted something “special to drink.” They’d pull a bottle of Manischewitz—a brand of incredibly sweet wine well-known to American Jews—and serve it in a crystal wine glass, filled to the brim. On Pesach, you drink four glasses of wine with the seder meal. Traditionally, these glasses were filled to the brim. My parents never let me do that, though, despite the very clear commandment of You-Know-Who. Manischewitz has a consumer base not only in the Caribbean, but also in African-American and East Asian communities. Of the over 900,000 cases produced in 2015, some 200,000 were exported, largely to the Caribbean, Latin America, and South Korea. What is most surprising is this is not a new trend. I'm not sure about "surprising." Lots of things transcend their original culture. I drink Scotch, and I'm not Scottish. I eat sushi, and I'm not Japanese. Last week, I did those things at the same time. Sure, Manischewitz may not be, objectively, a great wine, but it's accessible to people without the taste for more French-style wines. The reason for the beverage’s sweet—some might say sickly—taste is due to the grapes used to make it. By the 20th century, immigrant Jews were producing kosher wine from cheap, hardy, and sour Concord grapes from the American Northeast. Adding significant amounts of sugar made it drinkable. It's also far from the only fortified wine in existence. The article delves a bit into the history, then: Horowitz argues that the Great Migration to northern cities may have exposed African Americans to Manischewitz, which became known as “Mani.” Which is at least a more respectful name than what happened to that other Jewish winemaker, Mogen David, who put out MD 20/20 and had it promptly called Mad Dog. Lots more history at the link. I'll just wrap up by saying that cultural exchange is a good thing, especially when it comes to delicious fermented and/or distilled beverages. But also food. Pretty much everyone eats, and we're sharing a planet here, so why not share the food (and wine)? |
| As I'm someone who gets information more from reading than from listening, sometimes I'm prone to pronunciation errors. I'm okay with this; I consider them more literate than spelling errors. So, from Lifehacker, some actual decent information: My worst was "quinoa." How the ever-living fuck was I supposed to know it didn't rhyme with Genoa? So much for "never eat anything with ingredients you can't pronounce." (Which is a dumb rule anyway that only encourages ignorance.) I’m no prescriptivist—words are yours to do with as you will, so pronounce ‘em however you like. The obvious problem with this philosophy, when taken to its logical endpoint, is everything ends up being pronounced "Bob." Bob, bob bob bob Bob bob bob; bob bob bob bob. Gyro I saved this article because of this word alone. “Gyro” is either a shortened form of “gyroscope” or the name of a Greek lamb sandwich. It's not a sandwich. It's a taco. In the unlikely event that you’re talking about gyroscopes enough to need to shorten the word, it’s pronounced “jeye-roh.” The greek sandwich, according to Websters, is called a “yee-roh” or a “zhir-roh.” It’s rhymes with “hero.” I'm going to mock that site for misusing "It's" in a completely new improper way. Which, by Waltz's Second Law of the Internet, means I've probably got an error in my own writing here somewhere. As an aside, those things that are maybe-sandwiches that most of the US calls a "sub" or maybe a "grinder?" In New York, the traditional name for them was "hero." For years, I assumed (shut up) that this was an Anglicization of "gyro" (the food that is not actually a sandwich). Because, you know, both involve filling bread with stuff. That turns out to probably not be the case. The etymology of "hero" for the food isn't really clear, though.Interestingly, the Greek word for “to turn” is the root of the word for both the sandwich and the machine, but the terms came into the language at different times, so we don’t say them the say way. I can't confirm or deny that, but I was able to determine that it doesn't have to be made with lamb meat. Açaí The berries from the Açaí palm tree that grows in South America have become popular enough that you may be called upon to say their name at brunch. If so, it’s pronounced aa-saa-ee. Fair enough. Another one I'd only seen printed, never pronounced. Nguyen “Nguyen” is a common last name in Vietnam, and Vietnamese is a little tricky for English speakers. To call it a common last name in Vietnam is to master the art of the understatement. About a third of the population has that name.I met a blackjack dealer in Vegas once whose name was Tu Nguyen. I was just drunk enough to assert that, well, that's what I'm here for: to win. She was too sober to appreciate it. No, actually, probably every drunk cracker who's ever visited Vegas made the same "joke." Sorry, Tu. I promise I'm never a mean drunk, but I am a stupid one sometimes. Oh, and it's important to remember that "Nguyen" is a transliteration from a pictographic language. Why they couldn't create a more approachable spelling is beyond me. Gif I don't care what the article or the format's inventor says. It's a hard g. I have spoken. Hell, I wouldn't change my mind if the clouds parted and Jod themself pronounced [pun intended] that it was "jif." (It's graphic interchange format, not giraffe interchange format.) Worcestershire Worcestershire is a county in England where they invented a delicious condiment in the 1830s. And that word was Kid Me's introduction to how England can't pronounce English. Phở This Vietnamese noodle soup is pronounced “fuuh,” according to Websters, but “foe” seems to be catching on fast, at least if you’re an English speaker. Thus leading to my second favorite restaurant name of all time: Phở King. It's phở king glorious. If you get sick there, well, phở cough. Want it to go? Phở cup. My favorite restaurant name of all time? Same cuisine: Viet Noms. There are probably dozens of them by now, but the first one I saw was in central California. (Great food, incidentally.) There are more in the article, all English... but many derived from French, so it's no wonder we phở kit up. |
| This article, from The Guardian, is a couple of years old, though I doubt that matters. It's a New Year's article, so if you've failed at your resolutions (statistically, you have by now), maybe this can replace them. Be bad, better – from anger to laziness, how to put your worst habits to good use Forget new year resolutions and stop striving to be someone you’re not. It’s time to embrace your messy, imperfect, soft-bellied self While much of it aligns with my personal philosophy, I have some objection to the wording in the headline—the point shouldn't be that you're being "bad" or "good," just you. I think. We have the Babylonians to blame for making the new year a festival of self-flagellation – although their resolutions were more about appeasing gods than weight loss or cutting back on booze. I'm finding it difficult to tell the difference there. Either way, it's a sacrificial rite. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, rekindled the idea in 1740, with an annual new year’s service of resolution – his included a promise never to laugh, which might explain why we also choose punishment over joy. And yet people look at me funny when I say something bad about Protestant "morals." What if, instead of being motivated by guilt and shame, we leverage our worst habits to serve us better? By being intelligently, purposely lazier; less mindful, disorganised, slower (and with a bit of self-compassion), we might actually be more successful, productive and happier – but on our own terms. Yeah, that might or might not fly in England, but almost certainly won't in the US. We're all about guilt and shame here. You are bad and you need to do penance. I'll be skipping a lot of this, because it's long and I'm lazy, but a couple of highlights for me: Be brilliantly lazy Kendra Adachi, podcast host and author of The Lazy Genius Way, is a productivity expert who isn’t necessarily into making people more productive. And that's a lazy way to promote your books. Learn to love negative emotions When your cat dies and someone breezily says, “Never mind, you can get a new cat,” that’s toxic positivity. “Two things go wrong with toxic positivity,” says Robert Biswas-Diener, positive psychologist and author of The Upside of Your Dark Side. “One is relational – when your friend comes to you wanting support, what they want and what you offer has to match, but often it doesn’t.” When we try to cheer someone up who actually just wants to be heard, “toxic positivity feels invalidating”. We’ve all felt this – when a parent or partner wants to solve our problem instead of letting us talk about it. Someone says "Never mind, you can get a new cat," or something similar, to me, then after they complain about where my fist went, I can say, "Never mind, you can get dentures." And oh, look, more book promotions. Here's the thing: I admit I'm one of those whose first response is to try to solve the problem. It's either why, or because, I'm an engineer. Maybe both. I try to resist this, but in the moment, I don't always. Someone comes to me with a problem, my brain just goes "must... solve... problem." But one thing I don't do, because I'm terrible at it, is cheer someone up. I do try to make them laugh, though. Which isn't the same thing. Be moderately disorganised According to the book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder, “neatness and organisation can exact a high price”. ALL the book promotions! Problem here is finding a balance. I'm too much on the "disorganized" (I'm spelling it American) end of the scale, but I'm entirely too lazy to do anything about it. Freedman and Abrahamson point out that Albert Einstein’s desk – among many others – was always in “stupendous disarray”, so next time someone officious tells you to tidy up your desk (or your sock drawer), remind them that if one of the greatest thinkers of all time thrived in a semi-shambles, then so can you. Um, yeah, no, Einstein trap there. What worked for him won't work for us regular schlubs. Be less mindful “Traditionally, meditation was never thought of as something to create a moment of calm in the middle of crisis,” says Dr Julieta Galante, a neuroscience researcher at Cambridge University, who studies the upsides and downsides of mindfulness and meditation. “That is a western repurposing of it.” To be blunt, it's nearly pure copium. Work less “We now have a century of research that shows overwork is counterproductive,” says Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, a four-day week campaigner and author of Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. Surprise! Another book. Anyway, that's easy to say, and will often fall on angry ears, for good reason. This isn't on us. It's the system that needs to change, the one that requires people to work a lot just to maintain food and shelter. The next one I'll highlight (still more book promotions) is the one I liked best, though: Abandon meaningfulness “The pursuit of meaning is not fundamentally a bad thing,” says Wendy Syfret, author of The Sunny Nihilist: How a Meaningless Life Can Make You Truly Happy. “If you want to spend your whole life in a monastery, or pursuing enlightenment, good for you. But meaning has become so intensely commodified that now everything around us has to have meaning: your job has to be meaningful, your relationship has to be groundbreaking and every single consumer product is presented as life-changing – I saw a pack of tampons the other day that said, ‘This box is a revolution.’” When looked at this way, it’s obvious that meaning is a construct – and if absolutely everything is meaningful, then, arguably, nothing is. There's a kind of poetry in finding meaninglessness in meaning, and meaning in meaninglessness. I'm impressed. As usual, many more suggestions appear at the link, each with its own lovely book someone's trying to sell. I've said it a hundred times, but for any newcomers or forgetful folk: I'm not going to shun an article just because it promotes books, not here on a site promoting reading and writing. The article, as I said, came out as a New Year's thing, but to me it works better as a "You failed your resolutions; now what?" kind of thing. Which just so happened to come up for me at random in January. |
| A little perspective, from Cracked... I'll just jump into the list, which, naturally, counts down. 5. Catching A Foul Ball Sure, it’s no home run ball, but catching a foul ball while watching a live baseball game is still a nice consolation prize. Judging from some of the videos I've seen, there's more competition, with fewer rules, between the spectators near the end of the ball's trajectory than there is on the field. The fact is, though, that if you’re a frequent attendee, especially if you’re picking seats based on likely trajectories, the odds really aren’t that astronomical. They basically sit right around 1 in 580. Hell of an "if" there. I haven't been to a baseball game as a spectator since Nixon was president. Hell, I've played it more than I've watched it. I guarantee you me catching a foul ball would not only be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but a probability-breaking macroquantum event. 4. Total Solar Eclipse Would it surprise you I knew about this one? No? Okay. It’s true. The belief that it’s so incredibly rare is probably based on the fact that it takes 375 years to happen again in the same location. If you’ve got a deep love for orbs and an even deeper bank account, though, you could see dozens in your lifetime with the right travel plans. Yeah, but let's not confuse "happens somewhere on Earth" with "happens where you live." Tell you what, though, if you live around Paducah, Kentucky, you experienced totality in 2017, and will do so again this April. So you're, you know. Doomed. 3. Animals Going Extinct The fact is, animals are going extinct constantly, in huge numbers. The reason we don’t see more coverage of each particular critter configuration we’re losing isn’t because it’s not happening, it’s because there are literally too many to report on without their own 24-hour news cycle. 2. Blue Moons I'll give them points for not explicitly stating the false definition here. But they did include a link to a site that still promulgates that mistake, so negative points for that. By the false definition, a few years ago, we had one in January and one in March. That can never happen with the true definition. The actual last Blue Moon was on August 22, 2021. The next one is this year, on August 19. After that, May 20, 2027. One can only occur in August, November, February, or May. But yeah, they happen every 2-3 years. Which is rare enough to warrant the "once in a blue moon" expression, but the false Blue Moon can never, ever coincide with the true Blue Moon. To mash up two entries into one fun fact to throw into bar conversation, “once every total solar eclipse” would actually be more frequent than “once in a blue moon.” Again, sure, if you're privileged enough to be able to travel to the eclipse. 1. Investment Opportunities And this one should go without saying. If someone wants you to buy what they're selling, it's because they think your money is worth more than what they're selling. You should probably think so, too. Which should be obvious, but greed can blind you. |
| As has been my custom on Sundays, I randomly picked an older blog entry to take another look at. This time, we're going back all the way to May of 2008, with a really very short one: "O Bai teh Wai..." You may have noticed a lot of the early ones were short. I'm pretty sure that's partly because this was before Newsfeed was introduced here. In a way, it's good, because there's a record of what I was thinking in 2008. But it's also bad, because there's a record of what I was thinking in 2008. The entry contains a naked link (x-link hadn't been invented yet, either). I suggest you don't click on it. It's nothing like whatever I'd found 16 years ago. I have a vague memory of "lolcatbible" being a translation of, you know, that book into lolcat pidgin. But I could be wrong, confusing it with the Pirate Bible and the Brick Testament. Doesn't matter. It's not there anymore. As I noted in that long-ago entry: I mean, really. Lolcats should have been done by now. Srsly. Lolcats certainly aren't done, though they've evolved (that evolution sometimes even involves better spelling and grammar). That site, though... that's done. But, as with my embarrassing blog entries from the noughties, most things on the internet never truly die. With a cat's curiosity, I searched for "lolcat bible," and found this WIkipedia entry. Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.... |
| I have been seeing pieces about a "new continent" that scientists have "found." As the landmass is almost entirely under ocean, and shows no sign of rising out of the ocean anytime soon, in order to do this, they had to redefine what "continent" means. It's basically New Zealand, dwarfed by a hell of a lot of what they're defining as continental shelf. One wonders at their motivation for this. Oh well, call it a classification problem, like calling the Blue Ridge "mountains" and Pluto a "dwarf planet." In any case, that's only the latest in imaginary places in the ocean. Most famous is probably Atlantis, but I do hope you've heard of Lemuria, as well. The Frenzy About the Weirdest Continent That Never Existed Forget Atlantis, the lost land of lemurs had people in a tizzy. The article, appropriately from Atlas Obscura, is fairly long, but it has maps, so you'll want to look at those. It begins with an early attempt to reconcile finding similar fossils in Madagascar and India... a discovery perfectly well explained by continental drift, but that wasn't a thing back then. The fossils were of lemurs; hence, Lemuria. So he did what other scientists of the day did when faced with similar disconnects: He proposed a vast land bridge that had once linked Madagascar to India. Lots of former "land bridges" are well-attested: Bering, e.g., and Doggerland. Incidentally, if we're going to start defining continents by their tectonic plates, then North America would get a big chunk of eastern Siberia. Bet that would go over well.That was in 1864, and ever since, Sclater’s serious scientific work has been overshadowed by his creation—because Lemuria turned out to be one of the weirdest continents that never existed. Hey, science has to start somewhere. The problem comes in when a hypothesis is disproven and yet still remains in public imagination. In 1870, German biologist Ernst Haeckel suggested that Lemuria could be the ancestral home of humanity, as a way of explaining “missing links” in the fossil record of early humans. (Rejecting Darwin’s hypothesis of humanity’s African origin, Haeckel had initially favored India as the birthplace of humankind.) Gosh. I wonder what might motivate a German in 1870 to disbelieve that humanity emerged in Africa. Hmm. Can't quite put my finger on it. In the 1880s, Lemuria graduated from scientific hypothesis to pseudoscientific fact when Helena Blavatsky, the founder of theosophy, integrated it into her esoteric, proto-New Age belief system. You mean "pseudoscientific fiction." But whatever. There is, as I noted, a lot more there at the link above. But here's the part I found most fascinating (though I'd heard some of it before): In the American imagination, Lemuria became most closely associated with Mount Shasta in northern California, which according to Frederick Spence Oliver (in his 1894 book A Dweller on Two Planets) and other occultist writers was the last refuge of the survivors of sunken Lemuria, who lived there in a jewel-encrusted underground city called Telos. The Mount Shasta connection might seem tenuous at first glance, but I'm assured that his book did all the proper fantasy world-buildingresearch. Hell, there are people even today who swear weird stuff happens in and around Mount Shasta. Lemuria also lives on in Ramona, a small town in Southern California and headquarters of the Lemurian Fellowship. I bet they got to move it move it. ...look, I tried. I tried really, really hard to get through this entry without making a King Julien reference. I could not. Just like how it's impossible to say "mah na mah na" without someone singing "do doo do doodoo," or playing Don't Fear the Reaper without someone calling out desperately for more cowbell, I can't get through a lemur-related article without a Madagascar movie reference joke. The Lemurian Philosophy says that if we live by universal laws (including the belief in reincarnation, karma, and the teachings of Christ), we will achieve an advanced stage of civilization. Pretty sure reincarnation/karma is diametrically opposed to the words attributed to Jesus, but the wonderful thing about religion is that people can say it means whatever they really want it to mean. The article ends with some fun facts about lemurs, the primates who inspired all this: Lemurs were named in the 1850s by Carl Linnaeus himself, the founder of the current system of biological nomenclature. Linnaeus got the name from ancient Rome, where the lemures were the restless spirits of the unburied dead. On May 9, 11, and 13, during the festival of Lemuria, the father of the household would rise at midnight to placate the lemures by casting black beans behind him. So, would that be the midnights that start May 9, 11, and 13, or the midnights that end May 9, 11, and 13? It's important to get it right so the ghosts don't eat you. And what if you miss actual midnight when casting the black beans? That would be bad, right? And this was before clocks. Hell, even with clocks, 0:00 or 12:00 am isn't actual local midnight, except very rarely and only by coincidence. I guess we'd have to ask the Lemurians. Anyone up for a trip to Mount Shasta? |
| It's snowing again here. Not too heavily, and it's not really sticking on the roads, but every time people in Virginia see so much as one flake of snow, it's like some alien invasion, as if they've never seen it before. And it snows here. Every. Winter. Well, not so much last winter, but every other winter. And I had to leave the house, so I got to experience the chaos firsthand. Anyway, no need to leave the house again until tomorrow evening, so I get to share with you this article from Eater about... When Cheese Can Tell the Future The Kitchen Witch brings the ancient art of tyromancy — divination through cheese — to the modern day Headline notwithstanding, no, cheese cannot tell the future. Unless it's moldy when it's not supposed to be, in which case it predicts its own journey to the trash can or compost pile. Still, people think it can, and that's fascinating to me. Throughout history, people have sought answers about the unknown. Yes. That's why there is science. Do you know how milk becomes cheese? Well, neither do I, beyond the absolute basics, but science does. But predicting fates and futures hasn’t always been synonymous with tarot cards and oracles; sometimes, it comes down to what you eat or drink. With me, it's like, "I see a night on the toilet in your future." Though each society has its own versions of food divination, shape interpretation is the common ingredient in countless fortunes told. In the 1700s, “pulling the kale” was a popular way to predict the qualities of one’s future mate based upon the traits of the pulled-up plant. And people think kale sprung suddenly onto the scene in the noughties. And then there’s tyromancy, or cheese divination. Oddly enough, the word "tyro" means novice or amateur, but that's from a different root word. And now, Jennifer Billock, the Chicago-based creator of the Kitchen Witch newsletter, is taking this ancient yet new-to-most form of fortune telling into the 21st century with group readings. “It seemed like a fun way to tell fortunes that also ended up being delicious,” she says. As long as I get to eat the cheese afterward, I'll pretend to believe in divination. After the introduction is an interview between the publication and Billock. I'm not going to quote from that, but it goes into the mechanics of how it's done (short version: she reads the "variations," like mold stripes or ridges at the break of a hard cheese). As with astrology, I'm amazed at the amount of work and thought people put into things like this. Sure, I don't accept that dairy products (or stars) can actually tell one's future, but I've come to the understanding that life is a little more fun with these absurdities than it would be without them. Still, the only future I can predict when I have a hunk of cheese is that it will soon be in my belly. |
| I've done entries about older slang in here before. Here are some examples from nearly a century ago. It's important to remember that, a century from now, if anyone's still around, they'll be doing websites or braincasts or clay tablets or interactive holograms or whatever is the tech at the time to resurrect and/or ridicule the fashion and slang of the 2020s. Yes, even "rizz." Especially "rizz." I won't be highlighting all of them here. You can go to that link from Mental Floss. But of course, I have something to say about a few of them, starting at the very beginning. 1. Nogoodnik Given that the suffix -nik denotes a person associated with something, nogoodnik is, expectedly, a word for someone who’s nothing but trouble. The links provided on the page are to the OED, which is fine, but I don't think they go far enough for this complex word. See, it's essentially Yiddish. "But it's clearly from 'no good,' which is English." Sure. But Yiddish, like English, likes to borrow words from neighbors and never pay them back. Or, in this case, suffixes. "-nik" is a Slavic/Russian suffix. "Beatnik" is another English use of it, from a few decades later. One particularly Yiddish example is "nudnik," which is loosely "annoying person." And apparently, there's a Russian word, romanized as "negodnik," which means reprobate... or no-good person. So "nogoodnik" is English-Yiddish-Russian, and we should really be using it more, but there are too many syllables in the word for it to ever make a resurgence in today's short-attention-span slang. 3. Blow One’s Wig There's a repeated theme in jazz lyrics about "blowing one's top." Anywhere but jazz, that meant being angry, like in the cartoons when someone's face turns red and steam comes out their ears. In jazz, it seems to be about being completely surprised, but in a pleasant way. Personally, I'm pretty sure it's a euphemism for orgasm. 6. Dog’s Soup Asking a server to bring you some dog’s soup while you browse the menu might result in a worried glance today, but back in the ’30s, a thirsty patron ordering some dog’s soup would be granted a fresh glass of water. This one would never fly today. The sibilants would merge, leading to inevitable misunderstandings. You can order a hot dog, but not dog soup. Well, not in the US, anyway. 7. Boondoggle The next time you’re tasked with tedious or impractical busywork, it may break a bit of tension to call it a “boondoggle.” This word is still around, of course, but I've only ever heard it used to describe government spending of limited public value. 11. Gobsmacked I still see this occasionally, but I think it's still mostly British. 13. Nitwittery Nitwittery is a particularly posh-sounding word for stupidity. I do like that word. Might have to work on bringing it back. Made me wonder about "nitwit," though, so I checked. Is it a modification of something like "nought-wit?" As in "witless?" Well, maybe something like that. Another source thinks "nit" comes from the word for louse eggs. Which could also work, in the sense of "lousy."19. On Sus Another slang term 1930s people have in common with Gen-Z, sus, according to the OED, is an abbreviation of suspicion or suspect, and indicates a feeling that questionable activities are afoot. Obviously, this one reappeared in a different form. As "sus" is only one syllable, it fits in well with emojiworld. 20. Floss In 1938, floss or flossing was synonymous with flirting or showing off, especially about one’s possessions. Possibly a variant of "flaunt?" Or maybe an association with more expensive stuff, as "floss" in the other sense comes from something meaning silk, which was at historically pretty high-end stuff. Hence the British use of "candy floss" for what we call "cotton candy." Doubt this one will come back, because the meaning would be too ambiguous. "She's over there flossing." Yeah, wrong head-picture. Several more at the link. I tend to doubt some of the etymologies, but many of the words are fun. |
| Here's a pretty recent one from Cracked. Mostly just because I felt like sharing it. The title is maybe a bit misleading, but close enough. Making decisions has to be one of my absolute least favorite things to do. That’s why I try to avoid it at all costs. Would it help to know that your decision is already made, but you just haven't caught up to that moment in time yet? And the more decisions matter, the more they suck. Picking a cereal to start your day with is a decision, but given the general futility of life, who really cares? Realizing halfway through a bowl of Cap’n Crunch that you really would have preferred Froot Loops is just another thin cut delivered by the blade of life. I avoid this by not having cereal in the house. It’s when you’re faced with decisions that really influence the future of your life or business that you get to experience the full cocktail of stress and anxiety. Hence the relevance to the article's content. Though sometimes the wrong decision turns out to be not deciding at all. 4. Sony Backing Betamax Given that plenty of people under 30 probably don’t even remember VHS tapes, I’m going to wager that Betamax rings even less bells. It’s an old, cursed technology, that barely made the cut for my 33-year-old brain, much less Zoomers’. We really need to teach history better. Anyway, yeah, so Sony backed the losing technology. They're still around, though, unlike the next fool: 3. Borders Gives Amazon Its Business The biggest mistakes they made? First was not investing in or offering e-books, and the second was outsourcing all their online book sales to a little company called Amazon. Yeah, I'm gonna call that one of the worst mistakes of all time. 2. Kodak Doesn’t Go Digital This one's pretty well-known. In 1975, a Kodak engineer named Steve Sasson invented an early digital camera that could record images electronically onto tape and display them on a TV screen. He showed it to executives, who gave it a resounding thumbs down, because it would ruin their ability to sell film, a big part of their business. So someone else went to market with it, and the tech steadily improved, ruining their ability to sell film. If only they could have seen the writing on the wall. (Okay, that might be an obscure reference.) 1. JCPenney Respects Its Customers’ Intelligence I'd have titled this "JCPenney Overestimates Its Customers' Intelligence." I mentioned the 1/3-pound burger fiasco a few days ago in here, and that people were so abysmally ignorant that they thought it was a worse deal than a quarter-pounder because, clearly, 3 is less than 4. Well, this is similar. It turns out that they do not want a $40 waffle maker, they want a $40 waffle maker they can tell people was worth $80, and if they don’t get it, they will figuratively burn your store to the ground. Sales dropped 20 percent, and one ex-customer with a real peach of a brain explained, “If I don’t get a special discount, it’s not worth the trip.” No, I'm not calling YOU stupid. Anyone who reads this blog is automatically smart, attractive, and talented, if only by association. But goddamn, the vast amorphous bulk of consumers are idiots to the core. Anyway, I'd add one more to this list: Sears. They built a sales empire on mail-order, sending catalogs to the farthest reaches of the US and Canada, and probably beyond, I don't know. At one point, they were mail-ordering houses. I'm not kidding. They got so huge that they built and occupied what was then the tallest building in the world. And then the internet came along, and they didn't keep up. There are probably lots more, of course. Most decisions are going to turn out to be bad ones, or at least neutral, which is why people like me and this article's author avoid making them whenever possible. Which is also going to be a bad decision, but whatever, at least then it's not my fault. |
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