Today I Learned

[BillTre]

TIL that there are ways to download topo data from particular websites, transform it into .stl files and then used it to mill cool topomaps (which I don't have the equipment to do). Similar files could be used in for 3-D printers (which I do have access to.
Nice video:

 

[BillTre]

Here is another nice Feynman video.

This one is about 15 minutes long and has the approach that Feynman was more of an ordinary guy than a super high IQ person.
Thus great achievements like his can be realistically considered to be not beyond the grasp of greater numbers of people.

 

[DaveC426913]

So they used a dysphemism for King George instead?

TIL a "dysphemism" is a thing.

 

[strangerep]

[...] Feynman was more of an ordinary guy than a super high IQ person. [...]

Near 7:43 in the video: "...he [Feynman] reportedly liked to date undergrads, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of his friends"...

IOW, he could give Einstein some competition in the "icky" department...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Near 7:43 in the video: "...he [Feynman] reportedly liked to date undergrads, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of his friends"...

IOW, he could give Einstein some competition in the "icky" department...

Schrodinger was also famous for his rendezvous in the Swiss Alps with very young ladies, and I believe the wife of a grad student on one occasion. Reportedly, it was known to his closest friends that he came back from these trips inspired. So maybe Quantum Mechanics came about due to the inspiration of a beautiful woman.

 

[Hornbein]

Near 7:43 in the video: "...he [Feynman] reportedly liked to date undergrads, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of his friends"...

IOW, he could give Einstein some competition in the "icky" department...

He describes patronizing prostitutes in his autobiography.

 

[pinball1970]

Near 7:43 in the video: "...he [Feynman] reportedly liked to date undergrads, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of his friends"...

IOW, he could give Einstein some competition in the "icky" department...

Einstein came up with some rules for his marriage. I remember laughing in disbelief reading them, even 100 years ago this must have been pretty outrageous.

"A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or travelling with you.

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.
D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior."

 

[Hornbein]

Schrodinger was also famous for his rendezvous in the Swiss Alps with very young ladies, and I believe the wife of a grad student on one occasion. Reportedly, it was known to his closest friends that he came back from these trips inspired. So maybe Quantum Mechanics came about due to the inspiration of a beautiful woman.

He also had two wives, insofar as that was possible then and there.

 

[Hornbein]

Einstein came up with some rules for his marriage. I remember laughing in disbelief reading them, even 100 years ago this must have been pretty outrageous.

"A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or travelling with you.

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

His first or second marriage? I suppose it was his second. By that time he had escaped into a world of mathematical physics. His second wife just a servant with job security.

In his youth he was more normal. He was an excellent violinist, good enough to turn pro, in a day when that was an important social skill. He enjoyed good relations with his first wife after the divorce.

 

[Hornbein]

There was a free love movement in the late 19th century, the leading exponent of which was Victoria Woodhull. She was a "household word," someone everyone knew of. Victoria has been, ah, de-emphasized in history.

 

[pinball1970]

Schrodinger was also famous for his rendezvous in the Swiss Alps with very young ladies, and I believe the wife of a grad student on one occasion. Reportedly, it was known to his closest friends that he came back from these trips inspired. So maybe Quantum Mechanics came about due to the inspiration of a beautiful woman.

Weird what inspires people, Heisenberg went off for a walk with bad hay fever and came back with the uncertainty principle and Feynman looked at some plates to get fired up to solve QED!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Weird what inspires people, Heisenberg went off for a walk with bad hay fever and came back with the uncertainty principle and Feynman looked at some plates to get fired up to solve QED!

Kary Mullis took LSD, came up with the polymerase chain reaction [inspired by a road sign], and received a Nobel Prize. But later he thought a glowing green raccoon would talk to him and was channeling an alien, so maybe not such a good idea.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Another related quote apparently:

“I encountered a glowing green raccoon riding a neon orange motorcycle at my cabin in the woods of northern California around midnight one night in 1985. The raccoon proceeded to metamorphose into a singing dolphin at the stroke of midnight.” - Kary Mullis​

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10649147-i-encountered-a-glowing-green-raccoon-riding-a-neon-orange

 

[Hornbein]

I was a graduate student in the same department with Ralph Abraham. He gave a presentation in which he said psychedelics helped him discover chaos theory.

Dave Davies, guitarist of The Kinks, believed he was in psychic communication with extraterrestrials and that this improved his guitar playing.

 

[BillTre]

Another related quote apparently:

“I encountered a glowing green raccoon riding a neon orange motorcycle at my cabin in the woods of northern California around midnight one night in 1985. The raccoon proceeded to metamorphose into a singing dolphin at the stroke of midnight.” - Kary Mullis​

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10649147-i-encountered-a-glowing-green-raccoon-riding-a-neon-orange

Too much surfing?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Dave Davies, guitarist of The Kinks, believed he was in psychic communication with extraterrestrials and that this improved his guitar playing.

No way! Never once have I seen an alien give a good guitar performance.

Must be the Akashic field.

 

[diogenesNY]

Sun Ra stated quite specifically that he was from Saturn. I have no intention of contradicting him.

 

[Hornbein]

Sun Ra stated quite specifically that he was from Saturn. I have no intention of contradicting him.

Laurdine "Pat" Patrick played with Sun Ra for forty years. His son Deval was elected governor of Massachusetts and is a big shot at Bain Capital.

 

[Hornbein]

From Wikipedia

A Golden Arm is a craps player who rolls the dice for longer than one hour without losing. The first Golden Arm was Oahu native Stanley Fujitake, who rolled 118 times without sevening out in 3 hours and 6 minutes at the California Hotel and Casino on May 28, 1989.[28]

The current record for length of a "hand" (successive rounds won by the same shooter) is 154 rolls including 25 passes by Patricia DeMauro of New Jersey, lasting 4 hours and 18 minutes,[29] at the Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on May 23–24, 2009. She bested by over an hour the record held for almost 20 years – that of Fujitake.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

TIL where I parked my Tesla Roadster

https://where-is-tesla-roadster.space/live

 

[KingGambit]

Today I learned, that the definition of the speed of light is 299,792,458 meter per second.
Not that speed of light that I learned.
But that the definitions was settled in 1983. What the hell??
Why didn't they set the speed of light is 300,000,000.000000 meter per second exactly, and let the circumference of the earth (I mean the lateral line) to be 40 thousands km plus some meters.
Anyway the lateral line can change in some region right.

 

[KingGambit]

I see only one apostrophe, and my French is almost as bad as my Klingon, but I would guess that it was not his fault. Wiki seems to have fixed the error:

"Il ne leur a fallu qu’un moment pour faire tomber cette tête, et cent années peut-être ne suffiront pas pour en reproduire une semblable."
("It took them only an instant to cut off this head, and one hundred years might not suffice to reproduce its like.")

ps. Lavoisier named Oxygen.

pps. The wiki entry on his last days: Final days and execution
sounds very much like, um, right now.

ppps. Was that here, FB, or in a dream, where I theorized that the French were nice to us back then, because they knew we'd be here one day?

Never mind. It was on my sister's FB page, regarding her disgust of the images that U.S. kids were tweeting of their icky looking lunches. And then she commented on how healthy French children ate. And then, it happened...OmCheeto: I hope that you are aware, that France has the highest tax burden in the world. hmmm... I wonder if this is why the French, from our very beginning, as a country, sided with us. They went through what we are going through now, 200 years ago. Don't we have a castle in the north of France?

Yes, Lavoisier, sadly.
La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes.

 

[pinball1970]

Yes, Lavoisier, sadly.
La République n'a pas besoin de savants ni de chimistes.

@PeterDonis answered this in another thread from memory.

 

[Ibix]

Why didn't they set the speed of light is 300,000,000.000000 meter per second exactly, and let the circumference of the earth (I mean the lateral line) to be 40 thousands km plus some meters.

Because that would have changed the definition of the meter by about 0.3mm, enough to matter. Inch/metric conversions are already a minefield - imagine if there were two meters that you had to convert between the two...

 

[KingGambit]

Here is another nice Feynman video.

This one is about 15 minutes long and has the approach that Feynman was more of an ordinary guy than a super high IQ person.
Thus great achievements like his can be realistically considered to be not beyond the grasp of greater numbers of people.

Yeah, everytime I see Richard Feynman, I can't shake off @PeterDonis signature.
Nature can't be fooled.
Challenger investigation?

 

[KingGambit]

Because that would have changed the definition of the meter by about 0.3mm, enough to matter. Inch/metric conversions are already a minefield - imagine if there were two meters that you had to convert between the two...

Ahh, the imperial system. Haven't thought of that.
Well, metric was introduced right after Lavoisier lost his head I think.

 

[PeterDonis]

Nature can't be fooled.
Challenger investigation?

Yes, that's what the Feynman quote in my signature is from: the closing sentence of "Appendix F" that Feynman wrote as a supplement to the investigation report. The full sentence is: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

 

[gmax137]

Because that would have changed the definition of the meter by about 0.3mm, enough to matter. Inch/metric conversions are already a minefield - imagine if there were two meters that you had to convert between the two...

The OP should note, also changing every measured value of anything that includes LENGTH in its units. Not a good idea.

The whole point of SI is to avoid "old meters" and "new meters."

 

[KingGambit]

Yes, that's what the Feynman quote in my signature is from: the closing sentence of "Appendix F" that Feynman wrote as a supplement to the investigation report. The full sentence is: "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."

Yes, Challenger disaster was very sadly and also traumatic.
It's been watch by relatives, all the Christa's students and exploded.
Not like Columbia. Which Leroy (the Flight Director) realized something was wrong between 15 minutes of comm black out.
And everytime I watch Youtube footage about space shuttle launch and hear "Endeavour (or Atlantis, Discovery) go for throttle up". It sometimes send chill at my spine.

I'm not superstitious, but every shuttle begins with C, Challenger and Columbia, experienced catasthrope.

 

[KingGambit]

Yes, Challenger disaster was very sadly and also traumatic.
It's been watch by relatives, all the Christa's students and exploded.
Not like Columbia. Which Leroy (the Flight Director) realized something was wrong between 15 minutes of comm black out.
And everytime I watch Youtube footage about space shuttle launch and hear "Endeavour (or Atlantis, Discovery) go for throttle up". It sometimes send chill at my spine.

I'm not superstitious, but every shuttle begins with C, Challenger and Columbia, experienced catasthrope.

Add: And the first to carry a civilian.