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March 28, 2024

Remember When?

Remember when politics was just frustrating but not completely insane? Remember when it was possible to have hope and belief? Remember when there was still an iota of intelligence in politics? No? I don’t blame you, but maybe this video will remind you:

It came across my YouTube feed and brought tears to my eyes. A highly intelligent, well educated, youthful, self-deprecating, sometimes humorous, balanced leader of and for the free world. A leader for everyone.

This year it’s critical to go vote. Vote for sanity and intelligence. Vote for decency and honesty. Vote against bigotry, hate, exclusion, and fear.

Stay sane, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

∇

1 Comment | tags: honesty, President Obama, sanity | posted in Politics

March 22, 2024

Friday Notes (Mar 22, 2024)

By Wyrd Smythe

The last two weeks have been (by my ~~lazy~~ ~~easy-going~~ retirement standards) unusually productive. Two big and long-standing items off my TODO list — a huge relief. As a good friend said, getting stuff done feels so good you have to wonder why we let things go so long.

For me, a lot of it is sheer laziness. Often, something needs to break through to Urgent Level before I’ll get around to dealing with it. (I’d rather read and doing stuff cuts into my reading time.) There is also the subliminal fear things won’t go well, or will be a pain or, as has often been the case, a disappointment.

But regardless, time for another edition of Friday Notes.

7 Comments | tags: awe, Enterprise Car Rental, Ford Fusion, plumbing, science and spirituality, trees | posted in Friday Notes

March 20, 2024

Equal Knocks

By Wyrd Smythe

Today is the Vernal Equinox, the official starter gun for spring! Now we get six months of more sunlight than not. And the length of the day is changing (towards the long summer days) at its fastest rate during the year (except for the Autumnal Equinox, the other fastest).

Ironically, the last few days have been chillier than what has passed for normal this winter. The high three days ago (on 3/17) was only 30 degrees (Fahrenheit, of course).

The weather has been so strange (thanks to global warming) that I just had to make a bunch of charts to share here.

16 Comments | posted in Life, Wednesday Wow

March 14, 2024

BB #92: Actually Using Trig

By Wyrd Smythe

Today (3/14) is Pi Day. People everywhere (or at least math geeks everywhere) are baking decorated pies (or cakes or cookies) to celebrate. And while this is yet another math-y post, it’s not about pi. I’m more of a tau guy, anyway, so I celebrate Tau Day (6/28), because I get twice the (pizza) pie.

Today is also Albert Einstein’s birthday, which I’ve always thought was a cool coincidence. He’s 145 now (and still being widely misquoted).

But this post isn’t about him either.

10 Comments | tags: Albert Einstein, pi day, tau day, trigonometry, two slit experiment | posted in Brain Bubble, Math

March 12, 2024

TV Tuesday 3/12/24

By Wyrd Smythe

I thought it had been a long time (just over six months) since I published a Mystery Monday post, but it has been even longer — close to a year — since my last TV Tuesday post. Again, it wasn’t that I wasn’t watching TV (or reading mysteries), but that I haven’t been moved to write a post about it.

The most notable thing in my TV world is that Netflix finally added the tenth and final season of the NBC show The Blacklist. The show ended last year, and I’ve been waiting to see the final season.

And because I watched it on TV (Netflix, in fact), I’ll tell you about an excruciatingly bad movie I watched. It was directed by Renny Harlin and stars Pierce Brosnan, so I had high hopes, but it was a real stinker.

3 Comments | tags: Cheers, James Spader, MASH, Northern Exposure, The Blacklist | posted in TV Tuesday

March 11, 2024

Catherine Aird

By Wyrd Smythe

It has been just over six months since my last Mystery Monday post. It’s not that I haven’t been reading mystery novels (my second-favorite genre) but that I just haven’t been moved to write a post (a bit of a general problem the last year or so).

But I haven’t been idle, quite to the contrary. I’ve now gone through the other three (of the five) character series by Lawrence Block (Keller the Killer, Chip Harrison, and Evan Tanner). Prolific writer, Block.

And I’ve read nearly all of the Sloan and Crosby murder mysteries (also known as the Chronicles of Calleshire) by yet another British writer, Catherine Aird.

7 Comments | tags: Catherine Aird, Lawrence Block | posted in Books, Mystery Monday

March 4, 2024

BB #91: Modern Childrearing

By Wyrd Smythe

The old saying “Spare the rod, spoil the child” has fallen into, shall we say, severe disfavor these days, even as just a metaphor for strict childrearing. And forget about actually spanking your kid — that’s child abuse by modern standards.

At the same time, we seem to be in the midst of a serious and growing mental health crisis among teens, especially in the USA (but also the UK and Australia).

A new book by Abigail Shrier suggests these may be connected.

24 Comments | tags: children, kids | posted in Brain Bubble, Society

March 1, 2024

Friday Notes (Feb 30, 2024)

By Wyrd Smythe

The weather has been so weirdly warm this month that I never got around to a Friday Notes for February, so I’m extending the month. Call it a leap year “plus one”. Truth is, I’m at long last finally starting to reach the bottom of my pile. A lot of what’s left is trivial, silly, or outdated, and I may end up doing a thorough spring cleaning on them.

The ultimate goal is for the Notes to be about contemporaneous things rather than from old notes that have been fermenting in the pile.

But for a bit longer, it’ll be a combination of both, so off we go.

13 Comments | tags: global warming, language, Lee Smolin, linguistics, Schadenfreude, square, temperature, Weltschmerz | posted in Friday Notes

February 29, 2024

BB #90: The Growth Paradigm

By Wyrd Smythe

My final post in 2023 was about growth curves. It focused on the difference between geometric growth versus exponential growth — which turns out to be not much — and compared them to polynomial growth (see that post for the math-y details; this post isn’t a math post, so relax and read on).

A key characteristic of all these growth curves is that they grow without limit. If we treat the horizontal axis as time, then the longer the growth continues along the curve, the greater whatever growing grows.

The problem is that nothing in the real world can grow infinitely without limit. At some point, something has to give.

9 Comments | tags: Earth population, global warming | posted in Brain Bubble, Society

February 26, 2024

BB #89: The Irrational Square

By Wyrd Smythe

Consider the lowly square, a four-sided shape with sides of equal length meeting at right angles. The embodiment of what we’re referring to when we refer to square miles, square kilometers, square inches, or square whatevers. The two-dimensional version of any one-dimensional length.

A trivially easy shape to draw, all you need is a straight edge and a compass — the latter for ensuring your corners are right angles (see Plato’s Divided Line for more on using a straight edge and compass). The only simpler shape is the circle.

Yet the simple square threw early mathematicians into a serious tizzy!

12 Comments | tags: irrational numbers, Pythagoras, square | posted in Brain Bubble, Math