| An email reply |
[Jan. 5th, 2008|07:22 pm] |
One of my grandparents who tends to forward crap emails sent me a missive containing this piece of bigotry:
http://community.myfoxwghp.com/blogs/cook2712/2008/01/03/Thank_goodness_POT_isnt
My reply:
Wow!!! Whoever wrote this is right, we should definitely let Mexicans in this country. They must be loaded!!! Think what a bunch of people throwing around that kind of cash would do for the economy!!
Boy, I can't wait till they meet my new girlfriend. Hope it works out.
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| Thought of the day |
[Dec. 11th, 2007|04:56 am] |
A lot of theoretical physics today deals with trying to explain the seemingly arbitrary values of the various physical constants. For instance, to calculate the gravitational force between two bodies, you multiply together their masses, divide by the square of the distance between them, multiply by a random magic number and you have the force of attraction between them.
Where did this number come from?
Why does the gravitational constant G = 6.67x10^-11 m^3/kg s^2 and not some other value?
If, instead of using kilograms, we used a unit of mass (let's call it the flam) where one flam = 1/G kilograms, then the gravitational constant would be 1, wouldn't it? Also, when we work through the units, we see that a flam can be defined as:
1 flam = 1 m^3/s^2
Thus mass can be defined in terms of distance and time and their relationship through the gravity formula, rather than being an independent unit.
The unit of energy, the Joule, is already defined in terms of mass, time, and distance.
1 Joule = 1 kg*m^2/s^2
This is why formulae dealing with energy in terms of mass, distance, and time do not involve physical constants. Nobody seems to question why accelerating a particular amount of mass to a certain velocity requires a specific quantity of energy. It seems to happen by definition.
A kilogram is defined as the mass of .001 cubic meters of water.
A meter was originally defined as 1/10000000 the distance from the north pole to the equator.
A second is 1/86400 of the time it takes the earth to make a complete rotation relative to the sun.
So it would seem that the seemingly arbitrary value of the gravititational constant (and probably other constants too) probably has more to do with the density of water, and the size and rotational period of the earth, than it does with any fundamental pecularities of the universe.
Incidentally, I weigh approximately 6.60x10^-9 m^3/s^2. |
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[Nov. 6th, 2007|02:46 pm] |
From http://www.city-data.com/housing/houses-Dayton-Ohio.html
Means of transportation to work
* Drove a car alone: 49,549 (74%)
* Carpooled: 7,828 (12%)
* Bus or trolley bus: 4,636 (7%)
* Streetcar or trolley car: 12 (0%)
* Subway or elevated: 19 (0%)
* Taxi: 41 (0%)
* Motorcycle: 16 (0%)
* Bicycle: 211 (0%)
* Walked: 3,558 (5%)
* Other means: 404 (1%)
* Worked at home: 1,065 (2%)
How is this possible? Shouldn't those be zero? I think a few people misunderstood the question. |
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| Super Lotto |
[Oct. 23rd, 2007|02:16 am] |
According to my calculations, if you buy two lotto tickets, the odds of hitting the Ohio lottery jackpot are approximately 1 in 10!
Can anyone out there explain why this is? |
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| Names |
[Oct. 6th, 2007|03:50 am] |
Recently I met a neurobiologist named Brittany.
That's sort of like meeting a tow-truck driver named Antoine.
Or a cowboy named Akira.
Or a hairdresser named Earl.
Strange days. |
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[Sep. 28th, 2007|03:40 am] |
I'm riding in the car with someone and I see a guy holding a sign by the side of the road.
"Cool!! A protestor," I say then yell at him, "Yeah!!! Fight the power!!!"
My traveling companion points out the sign says "Free Oil Change."
I yell, "Free Oil Change!! End the injustice!!" |
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[Sep. 20th, 2007|11:59 am] |
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I think I just accidentally earned about $13.00. |
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| These cryptic letters, they mean something |
[Sep. 20th, 2007|05:07 am] |
I noticed something interesting the other day.
It appears that the call letters for many of the local TV and radio stations have geographic or other significance.
WDTN 2 - DayToN
WHIO 7 - oHIO
WPTD 16 - Public Television Dayton
WPTO 14 - Public Television Oxford
WPFB 105.9 - Wright Patterson air Force Base
WDPR 88.1 - Dayton Public Radio
WCSU 88.9 - Central State University
WDKF 94.5 - Dayton Kettering Fairborn
WKEF 22 - Kettering Eaton Fairborn?
WYSO 91.3 - Yellow Springs Ohio
WCET 48 - Cincinnati Educational Television
WIII 64 - cIncInnatI (now WSTR)
WRGT 45 - WRiGhT Brothers (were from Dayton)
WXIX 19 - Roman numerals.
WLW 700 - World's Largest Wireless?
WLWT 5 - WLW Television
WKOI 43 - Kentucky Ohio Indiana
Weird.
Incidentally, the funniest bathroom graffiti I ever saw was a crude drawing of a five foot high upward pointing penis with the words THE BIG ONE - WLW written underneath on the inside of a stall door. |
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| Freeze the balls off... |
[Sep. 17th, 2007|01:40 am] |
A brass monkey is a metal frame used for stacking cannonballs.
When it is cold, the brass contracts more than the iron of the cannonballs.
Hence the popular expression.
It's not dirty, so say it freely in mixed company. |
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| Finding a Job |
[Aug. 18th, 2007|12:34 am] |
I want to write about something today that I'm sure is important to many of you. That is, how to get a good job at a good company without networking. You could spam resumes all over town, but that takes a lot of time and effort, and, unless you are the best ever at what you do, yours won't stand out. The best way to get a good job is to know the right people. However, if you are fresh out of school, or are trying to break out of the service sector, you probably don't know the right people yet.
So what do you do?
( Read more... ) |
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| More fun questions... |
[Aug. 16th, 2007|06:51 pm] |
In my last post, I explained how I torture telemarketers with esoteric questions. Here's some more good questions.
( Read more... ) |
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| Doing the Dishes |
[Aug. 16th, 2007|05:56 pm] |
Got a telemarketing call from Dish Network.
Dish has outsourced their sales to India, which is always fun, because they don't have any firsthand knowledge of how TV works in the US. Most of what they know is info given to them by their corporate masters, and in this case, their customers. Given that I worked with Cable TV equipment for a while, I could throw all kinds of esoteric bullshit at them. In fact, I do this for internet providers that call too.
Does it support Linux? Solaris? CP/M 80?
Does it support Token Ring? StarLan? AppleTalk?
This could be fun.
The first leg of the call was with a girl. She started pitching the service and the FREE DVR and all that. I started in with some light technical questions.
Can I record Top Gear?
I can? It's only on in the UK.
Oh, I see.
So it's like Bittorrent, but it only works for shows that you broadcast?
Will it work with my black and white Zenith console TV?
You say it's digital. Are you sure it will work?
Do the outputs support S-Video, composite video, RG-59, or twinlead?
You see, because three of my TVs only support 300 ohm twinlead.
At this point, she transfered my call to her manager, who was somewhat more technically astute. It at least he wanted to be. He seemed generally interested in some of the more esoteric technical nuances of television in America, since I was raising what seemed like legitimate concerns, which I happily embellished as I went along.
Firstly, I discussed at length the lack of support for twinlead anttena wiring in modern consumer electronics. He pointed out that his installers have adapters to handle this, which is probably true.
Next I asked him if the satellite receiver box was compatible with NTSC, PAL, and SECAM television sets. This threw him for a bit of a curve as he had never heard this question before. I explained that this should be a serious concern for him as TVs in North America and Japan use NTSC for the color encoding, most televisions in Europe use PAL, and SECAM was developed in France and is used primarily there and in parts of Africa. I explained how they used different frame rates and color encoding techniques, like RGB vs. Hue, Saturation, Brightness (I didn't really know the exact details, just made shit up) and emphasized that they are absolutely and completely not compatible with one another (this part is true). I also convinced him that a sizable minority of the TVs sold in the Americas, particularly in Quebec, Haiti, and parts of rural Louisiana use SECAM (because only SECAM dupports French), and that his company's equipment probably wouldn't work with them. He seemed to be taking this seriously, thanked me for the technical enlightenment, and assured me that he would try to determine if his customers' TVs were PAL, SECAM or NTSC in the future, since his equipment likely only supported NTSC. He then lamented the fact that he had a hard enough time explaining the difference between regular TV and hi-def TV to people.
This lead into a technical dsicussion about hi-def TV, and how it supported letterbox and other weird aspect ratios. I pointed out that my black and white Zenith has letterbox, but only because the circuit that drives the vertical sync is going bad. We discussed resolution and debated whether or not the signal to the TV from the receiver was analog or digital. It has to be analog, if it will work with any TV, but he insisted it was digital. We also debated the relative merits of the two systems, as I prefer analog because it degrades more gracefully with a weak signal (snowy picture and white noise versus weird geometic shapes and no sound).
I also learned that he used to steal cable from his neighbor in India when I asked him if the box used Macrovision to prevent recording with a VCR. I don't think he quite grasped what I meant by unauthorized copying.
Anyways, the call was abruptly ended, as UPS came to the door with a package that I needed to sign for. But it was still fun. And if you get a telemarketing call from a guy in India, and he starts babbling about NTSC vs SECAM vs PAL and differing frame rates and such, you can thank me for it. |
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| What goes around... |
[Aug. 6th, 2007|10:18 pm] |
I think I just bought something on eBay that I sold years ago at a flea market.
Weird.
I wonder where it's been...
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| Meeting People |
[Aug. 1st, 2007|10:38 am] |
I think it's time to dust off my people skills.
It looks like I'm unattached again, Amanda hasn't really acknowledged my existence in a long while, so it appears to be over. Our relationship has been winding down for a while now and it seems to have ended. I guess then I should get out there and meet people. I could try internet dating maybe? That's nice because I tend to be extremely inhibited around strangers. But I've had mixed results with that in the past. Too much emailing, hoping, and eventual disappointment. Other relationships I've been in started when I was introduced to someone through various acquaintences or shared situations and we hit it off. That sort of opportunity doesn't seem to come up very often, so I suppose I need to be more proactive about it.
Out there, you know, outside, there's like people and stuff. Women even. I should try to talk to some of them.
So I'm at the Goodwill store the other day and there's this girl there about my age shopping. She was tall, moderately attractive, and rather intently digging through the bins of stuff. She also wasn't wearing a ring. It then dawns on me that there is absolutely no penalty from my perspective if I totally weird her out. I don't know her. I don't know anyone she knows. I'll probably never see her again. So to hell with inhibition, I'll say hi. So I position my cart at the end of the row and kind of "shop" my way towards her. I meet her about midway down where she is digging out some wire racks of some sort. Her cart is mostly full of office supplies. As I get close to her I notice two more of these metal racks like the ones she's already looking over. She hasn't spotted them yet. I grab them.
"Here's a couple more," I say.
"Yeah, those'll work. A couple of these are missing their rubber feet."
Holy Shit, I think it's working!
"You could wrap tape around them or something. What are these exactly?"
"I think they're paper organizers. I work for a non-profit and we can't afford office supplies, so I come here."
There was some additional small talk about the organizers, but that was basically it. At this point I should have probably asked her more about where she worked, but I sort of clammed up and she wandered off. But what if I continued talking to her?
I now know that she works for a non-profit organization. The fact that she's shopping for office supplies on her own time suggests she probably believes in its cause and isn't just showing up to get paid. Asking about her employer, in this case, would have provided a lot of insight into what makes her tick, which could lead to a goldmine of conversational jumping-off points. It's just like solving a puzzle. You find a clue and it leads to another clue and you just keep building on it until she's not a stranger anymore. For instance, it could have continued like what I've outlined below. Note that, anything in brackets is to be replaced with appropriate content as we learn more about her.
Me: "Cool, so which non-profit do you work for?"
Her: "Oh, I work for the [non-profit agency]"
Me: "Really, I read somewhere that [semi-relevant factoid I saw on Digg]. It seems like [non-committal generality phrased as an opinion]." -- OR -- "You mean like in [reference to some movie that hopefully she's seen]?"
Her: "Yeah, well I mostly [boring administrative task that has nothing to do with the agency's core mission]"
Me: "Well somebody's gotta do it."
Her: "So what do you do?"
And at this point, we've piqued her curiosity. And hopefully she becomes as interested in knowing who I am as I am in her.
Me: "I run a couple of newspapers."
And we fall in love. And then I build her an opera house, even though she can't sing. And I build her a mansion that she hates. Then she leaves me. And I trash our huge bedroom and become a recluse. Finally, on my deathbed, I lie in repose and contemplate a snow globe. I mumble the word "Rosebud", drop the globe, and quietly die, touching off a frenzy of media speculation about who or what "Rosebud" is.
Or alternately, she could have blown me off and kept searching for used binders. No loss really if she did. Either way, it sorta worked. And I just gotta keep trying until I get better at it. |
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| Immigration |
[Jul. 16th, 2007|07:11 pm] |
I was shopping at the local thrift store today when I found something interesting. Given the ongoing debate about non-English speaking students entering our schools, I thought this was worth sharing. It is a public school textbook published in Cincinnati in 1854. Here is the title page.
The text translates as:
The American Reader Third Book. Prepared for the public education of Germans in Cincinnati.
Cincinnati: Berlag of John Eggers
317 Main Street
Yes, that is a bald eagle. Aside from the copyright notice (also shown), the entire book contains no English text whatsoever. Not only is it entirely in German, the entire thing is printed in the traditional, unreadable Germanic font. So, it appears that the United States has been educating non-English speaking people in their native languages for some time now. |
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| Own a piece of hell!! |
[Jul. 2nd, 2007|01:03 am] |
A lawyer who occasionally deals with real estate told me that when you buy a piece of land, you own it all the way down to the center of the Earth unless you sell extraction rights to a mining or oil company.
With this in mind, I calculated that I am the proud owner of some 200 million cubic feet of what is apparently an alloy of iron-nickel. That's my portion of the Earth's inner core. It is in the shape of a rectangular pyramid 6 feet wide by 26 feet long at the base and 750 miles to the apex.
Anyone want to buy it? I figure its worth about 15 cents a pound if you can figure out a way to extract it.
I am also entertaining offers for the portions of the Earth's outer core and mantle that sit above this. |
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