hollygrahm

trillianekua and T are two of the best people ever.

Thank you, guys!

I'm sitting in my new room and enjoying the hell out of the strong breeze coming in through my new window.  I like the sound it makes.  I love the sound it doesn't make.  It doesn't make the squeak-squeak noise that wind made at the condo.  The new tenant at the condo is probably wondering about that noise as I type this, cursing whatever it is on the roof that keeps getting jarred.

Or perhaps she's standing at the stairs, trying to figure out the Myst-like configuration that makes the hall lights come on.  We've got an easier time of it here; it's just a matter of learning which switches are connected to something and which ones aren't.  We can ignore the ones that don't do anything, and the others operate on a simple principle:  flip it either direction and the light will turn on if it's off or off it's on.  No longer do we have to worry about flipping Switch A up if Switch B is down and it's a Tuesday, or down if B is down but C is up and it's raining and you're wearing red.

It's not that I'm overjoyed to have escaped the pit of inadequacy that was our condo.  The condo was great and I liked it very much.  It had its share of quirks and annoyances, but every place does.  In time I'll be complaining about the oddities of this new house.  But for now I want to glory in my 2,200 square feet and five bedrooms.

So permit me to gloat just a little when I imagine the new condo tenant relaxing in the living room and admiring the lovely garden droewyn planted.  Because although she has a very pretty and color-coordinated bunch of flora in her backyard, I have lightning bugs and bats and baby ducks.  Last night I got a frog to sit on my hand, and this morning I sat in the dining room and watched a heron catch a fish.

I win.

I think I've located that sciatic nerve I've heard people talk about.

I was looking through my high school yearbooks just now, trying to find a picture of a haircut I once had.  Apparently I appear on p. 167 in three out of four volumes.  Did the yearbook staffs do this on purpose?  If so, well... why?

You know those suggestions offered by online shops when you make a purchase?  The people who bought the item you just bought also liked such-and-such suggestions?  It occurred to me last night that while those little ads are a good way to find more of what you like, they don't help at all when you want to find new interests.

I propose a try-something-different approach to accompany the current system.

Right now amazon is looking at my buying history and recommending Doctor Who, Star Trek TOS, Star Trek TNG, Star Trek DS9, Star Trek Voyager, Stargate, some dinosaur documentaries (greyweirdo 's fault), and He-Man (droewyn 's fault).  Yes, these items are all within my sphere of things I'm likely to buy.  But what about the things I'd never think of?

for it is amusing.

An engineer's guide to cats

I get to the episode which features this line:

"It's a sequence of happy primes.  379.  Any number that reduces to one when you take the sum of the square of its digits and continue iterating until it yields one is a happy number.  Any number that doesn't, isn't.  A happy prime is a number that is both happy and prime.  Now type it in!  I don't know, talk about dumbing down.  Don't they teach recreational mathematics any more?"

I resent that I must turn off the DVD and go to bed so I don't fall asleep at work tomorrow.  I resent that I have to go to work tomorrow.  There are so many hours between now and getting home tomorrow afternoon!  So many hours spent not watching Doctor Who!  Dammit.

Doctor Who, where have you been all my life?

I cringe to think of all the wasted hours I spent not watching you!

( It's just that once I think of a theme, I can't stop listing things that fit. )

Oh, Hillary.  What else have you misspoken about?

Part of my job involves rummaging around outdoors and in factories.  It's a nice break from the daily cubicle routine, but it does increase my risk of encountering spiders.

These are no ordinary spiders, either.  They're smart and they're mean.  They build invisible webs between the columns where they know I'll be walking.  Also, like any proper arch-nemesis, they do their homework.  For instance, they've found out my height and are thus able to position their webs strategically at face-level.

My chief weapon against them is traditionally a long stick, which I wave before me in an up-and-down arc whenever I have to traverse a narrow space.  Good sticks are not always easily obtained, though.  I have to settle for whatever happens to be on the ground nearby, and it's usually something dirty and rusty and gross.

No longer!

I am now the proud owner of some high-tech anti-arachnid technology.  Oh sure, they're calling it a pointer/ search light.  But we all know better.

Because it has a light, I can tell my male colleagues that it's for lighting up those dark areas we can't quite reach in order to properly read part labels.  Only two of my co-workers will recognize the device's true purpose, and one of them is likely to respond, "Hey, neat!  Where can I get a spider stick... I mean, uh, a pointer with a light for illuminating those dark areas we can't quite reach in order to properly read part labels?"

We're thinking of moving house.  Many of the places we've looked at feature hardwood floors, for which we'll need rugs.  Lots of rugs.  I wonder, does anyone make an actual Sierpinski carpet?  'Cause that'd be awesome.

There's a great line in The Mathematical Universe.  To put it in context, the paragraph presents a brief introduction to number theory and attempts to explain why it's considered higher math.

"Number theory is so difficult, albeit so fascinating, because mathematicians try to examine additive creations under a multiplicative light.  In this sense, the natural numbers resemble fish out of water.  Spawned by the process of addition, they find themselves in an unfamiliar, multiplicative environment.  Of course, before we dismiss the whole enterprise as hopeless, we should recall that 350 million years ago fish really did come out of water; took a few inefficient breaths in a world for which they were imperfectly designed; and went on to evolve into amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and mathematicians."

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Dunham, William, The Mathematical Universe.  New York:  John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1994.  ISBN 0471176613.

Our office has recently acquired a genuine Frenchman(TM), which means that I now have a coworker who sometimes understands my humor.  On Friday I was telling him about another coworker, whose last name is Gagnier.  He said her name sounded French.  I agreed that it did, and commented that she's a winner.*  And he laughed!



* If you don't speak French, take my word for it:  it's funny.

I saw a human-interest headline just now:  Stranger gives girl kidney.

The first thought to pop into my head was:  Didn't your momma tell you never to take kidneys from strangers?

This story was in today's BBC News:  Detroit's woes augur ill for US.

1.  I love how the British press can use phrases like "augur ill" in headlines.  American newspapers would never get away with that.

2.  I read a reaction to that story in the BBC News Magazine Monitor:

I started off when reading this article feeling sorry for the down-on-their-luck middle classes of Detroit. However, my sympathy was tempered by their expectations for outrageous portion sizes: how sorry can we really feel for someone who says "To find myself in a position where I couldn't afford a gallon of milk ... it was very humbling."
Adam, London, UK

While I understand and appreciate the European habit of buying small quantities of things in little packages because they have limited storage space in their cramped apartments, I hardly think a gallon of milk qualifies as outrageous.

Furthermore, I challenge Adam to come here and do some grocery shopping.  Unlike Londoners, Michiganders cannot nip down to the corner shop twice a week to buy only enough food for the next couple of days.  Geography and the auto industry forbid it.  The grocery store, the dry cleaner, the post office, the cinema, the office, the restaurants, the park, and the local gun shop are all beyond the reach of pedestrians.  When absolutely everything you do involves driving somewhere, you learn to minimize such excursions by making the most out of every trip.  People in London buy small because they have limited space in their tiny kitchens.  People in Michigan buy large because going two miles out of your way to hit Kroger on your way home through rush hour traffic had better damn well be worth it.

darkpattern put out a call yesterday for as-yet-unformed words needed in English.  (At least, I assume he meant English.)  This has reminded me of a neat book.

I have a habit of saying "I'm sorry" whenever someone is hurt.  Frequently I'm told, "it's okay, it's not your fault."  My response to this is usually, "that was a sorry of sympathy, not a sorry of guilt."  This scenario happens often.

One day several years ago I told Da Papa about this problem, lamenting that there didn't seem to be a word to express the exact shade of feeling I intended.  Da Papa got up from his chair, disappeared into his study, and came out a few minutes later with They Have a Word for It.  He flipped it open and read me the word uffda, which is Swedish and roughly translates to I'm sorry that you're in pain, although I personally am not responsible for it.

P.S. This is one reason I love Da Papa.  He usually has good answers at the ready.
P.P.S.  Another word I'd like to see invented or discovered is one that would mean as-yet-unformed words.

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Rheingold, Howard, They Have a Word for It:  A Lighthearted Lexicon of Untranslatable Words & Phrases.  KY:  Sarabande Books, 1988.  ISBN 0874774640.

An observation on mathematicians:

"We know that our doctor has a medical degree, and our lawyer has a law degree, because those are specific, well-defined professions that require equally specific training.  But you don't find brass plaques on buildings advertising a licensed mathematician within, who, for a large fee, will solve any math problems that you need help with."

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Stewart, Ian, Letters to a Young Mathematician.  New York:  Basic Books, 2006.  ISBN 0465082319.

Eastern hog-nosed snake:  If its menacing display fails to scare off an intruder, a hog-nosed snake will writhe in agony, roll onto its back, extend its limp tongue, and feign death.  Yet, if righted, it will quickly roll over again, reasoning that a snake, to look thoroughly dead, should be lying on its back."

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Badger, David, Snakes.  Minnesota:  Voyageur Press, Inc., 1999.  ISBN 0896584089.