Today I Learned

[JorisL]

Yesterday I learned I was probably coming down with flu, despite my flu shot.

Today I learned I'm probably not coming down with the flu.

Had a similar experience minus the flu shot, a semi-good night of sleep sure helps.

 

[OmCheeto]

Just found out that photons have a "shape".

This really throws a monkey wrench into my bestest, and unfortunately, the last of my crackpot theories.

I guess, it's time, to wash the dishes.

 

[TheDemx27]

Today I learned that euler's identity is abbreviated cis(x). Now I can make some offensive math joke with ties to trans/cis people.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Today I learned the first microwave oven was made in 1947.

 

[metapuff]

Today I learned that the quotient group Z / (i - 2) is isomorphic to Z / 5Z. Pretty neat, eh?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

This is the molecule for propane. I got it wrong at trivia tonight :(

 

[dlgoff]

I learned some frogs like tropical islands

 

[Vagn]

I learned that iron atoms flouresce under illumination with copper K-$\alpha$ radiation.

 

[Borek]

This is the molecule for propane. I got it wrong at trivia tonight :(

I hope you don't expect me to like that post.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I hope you don't expect me to like that post.

I was wishing I could "phone a friend" :D

 

[iDimension]

Today I learned that I really should start listening to my parents as they genuinely do know best.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Today I learned there's a Ford F series truck sold every 43 seconds.

 

[nuuskur]

Today I learned that I really should start listening to my parents as they genuinely do know best.

once you realize this, you no longer need to heed their advice. It's weird, I know.

 

[Borek]

Today I learned that I really should start listening to my parents as they genuinely do know best.

This lesson is a classical part of a process called "maturing".

 

[Pythagorean]

This lesson is a classical part of a process called "maturing".

Another version of maturing is that you realize your parents are uneducated bigots and that you don't need their blessing.

 

[TheDemx27]

Another version of maturing is that you realize your parents are uneducated bigots and that you don't need their blessing.

Today I learned that I really should start listening to my parents as they genuinely do know best.

It's most likely going to be somewhere in between the two extremes: blinding accepting everything they say, and completely rejecting everything that comes out of their mouths. I bet where you fall on the spectrum between these two situations depend on: How smart your parents are and how you were raised when you were young.

 

[Borek]

How smart your parents are

and how smart you are.

 

[TheDemx27]

and how smart you are

The way I see it, the two possible things you can base your intelligence on is heredity and the environment you were raised in at an early age; both are provided by your parents. Of course after you come of some age you start acting for yourself, but the largest influence by far comes from the very early years.

 

[Pythagorean]

The way I see it, the two possible things you can base your intelligence on is heredity and the environment you were raised in at an early age; both are provided by your parents. Of course after you come of some age you start acting for yourself, but the largest influence by far comes from the very early years.

There's actually something called a 50-0-50 rule in psychology that pertains to personality and intelligence. It states that intelligence and personality are 50% genetics, 0% correlated with raising, and 50% with peers. They found this by comparing monozygotic twins raised by their biological parents to twins raised by adopted parents. And, obviously, its's a rough approximation. I believe some studies find a higher balance towards genetics with intelligence (like 64-0-35 or something).

 

[zoobyshoe]

Today I learned there is something called a 50-0-50 rule in psychology that pertains to personality and intelligence.

 

[TheDemx27]

There's actually something called a 50-0-50 rule in psychology that pertains to personality and intelligence. It states that intelligence and personality are 50% genetics, 0% correlated with raising, and 50% with peers. They found this by comparing monozygotic twins raised by their biological parents to twins raised by adopted parents. And, obviously, its's a rough approximation. I believe some studies find a higher balance towards genetics with intelligence (like 64-0-35 or something).

I'm having trouble taking that seriously, but if it's in Psychology Today there must be some validity to it. My sister is a social worker, and I remember her quoting from textbook something like 80% of your intelligence can be attributed to parental bonding in the first few years. Obviously there is some discrepancy in the method of measuring intelligence, the definition of "parenting" in this context, or something else. I'll have to remember this as a talking point for next time I meet with her.

 

[Pythagorean]

I'm having trouble taking that seriously, but if it's in Psychology Today there must be some validity to it. My sister is a social worker, and I remember her quoting from textbook something like 80% of your intelligence can be attributed to parental bonding in the first few years. Obviously there is some discrepancy in the method of measuring intelligence, the definition of "parenting" in this context, or something else. I'll have to remember this as a talking point for next time I meet with her.

I'd be interested to see the research where that 80% comes from. I don't think the 50-0-50 rule is supposed to be hard and fast, but a generalization of how much impact each of the categories has. Here's the review article that it came from (published in Psychological Review):

http://faculty.weber.edu/eamsel/Classes/Child 3000/Lectures/3 Childhood/SE development/JudithHarris.html

The above covers a few experiments and their results.

 

[nitsuj]

I'd be interested to see the research where that 80% comes from. I don't think the 50-0-50 rule is supposed to be hard and fast, but a generalization of how much impact each of the categories has. Here's the review article that it came from (published in Psychological Review):

http://faculty.weber.edu/eamsel/Classes/Child 3000/Lectures/3 Childhood/SE development/JudithHarris.html

The above covers a few experiments and their results.

Parental bonding maybe referring to physical contact. I've always thought of it as "common knowledge". Lack of physical contact leads to increased levels of stress, and vice versa. I can't find it but have seen something about monkeys having dramatic personality(social) disorders from lack of mothering, surely the brain develops poorly under those conditions.

below is a silly short excerpt from a S.A. Q&A.
We have known for a long time that skin-to-skin contact with babies is important for their development. In what ways does it help them?
Particularly in the newborn period, it helps calm babies: they cry less and it helps them sleep better. There are some studies that show their brain development is facilitated—probably because they are calmer and sleep better.

 

[Enigman]

Kallman and Grillo present a method for ethical decision making and part of their method involves the use of five tests: the mom test, would you tell your mother what you did; the TV test, would you tell a national TV audience what you did; the smell test, does what you did have a bad smell to it; the other person's shoes test, would you like what you did to be done to you, and the market test, would your action be a good sales pitch?
https://ethics.csc.ncsu.edu/risks/safety/killer_robot/killer_news9.html

Today I learned that taking a dump might be ethically suspect.

 

[Pythagorean]

Parental bonding maybe referring to physical contact. I've always thought of it as "common knowledge". Lack of physical contact leads to increased levels of stress, and vice versa. I can't find it but have seen something about monkeys having dramatic personality(social) disorders from lack of mothering, surely the brain develops poorly under those conditions.

below is a silly short excerpt from a S.A. Q&A.
We have known for a long time that skin-to-skin contact with babies is important for their development. In what ways does it help them?
Particularly in the newborn period, it helps calm babies: they cry less and it helps them sleep better. There are some studies that show their brain development is facilitated—probably because they are calmer and sleep better.

I agree with this. In fact, my wife and I went the attachment parenting route with our children (skint to skin, long-term breastfeeding, co-sleeping). Though, I think this has more to do with emotional intelligence and mental health. What the 50-0-50 rule applies to is generalized intelligence. More specifically, though, I think what the study really says is that the intelligence (and personality) of the parent doesn't "rub off" on children, but peer intelligence (and personalities) do (or, maybe there is no actual causation in peers, only correlation: children seek out peers of equal intelligence). Anecdotally, I've seen causation with my own daughter. It takes about 10x more effort for me to teach her something then for her friend that's a grade above her too because when I do it "it's boooorring". But then, when she's challenged by her friend and loses, she will come to me for help. And if I wasn't capable, she would go to her school teachers for help. It's her resourcefulness and her motivation (driven by her peers and her perception of herself compared to them) that drive her acquisition of knowledge, not my intelligence (of course, I can't argue that I didn't contribute genetically :P)

When it comes to pathological objections though, of course abuse and lack of care is going to cause pathological problems, but this is not normal physiology. I didn't think the 50-0-50 rule was commenting on the complexity of pathological conditions or undermining the importance of a parent in the child's health and happiness (which is generally more important than their intelligence or personality anyway).

 

[iDimension]

Today I learned that to join my local gym will cost me £550 a year!

 

[Vahsek]

a lot about myself and that some people, who I thought were stupid, are actually much smarter than me! :)

 

[Lisa!]

Today I learned that when you are a responsible and good employee, your boss gives you more responsibilities and tasks to do and you are less likely to get a promotion because your boss doesn't want to lose you!

 

[nuuskur]

Today I learned that when you are a responsible and good employee, your boss gives you more responsibilities and tasks to do and you are less likely to get a promotion because your boss doesn't want to lose you!

You will learn soon that when you extend a finger, your arm will be bitten off :D

 

[Borek]

Today I learned that when you are a responsible and good employee, your boss gives you more responsibilities and tasks to do and you are less likely to get a promotion because your boss doesn't want to lose you!

Today I learned Lisa! is still a teenager, learning the most obvious things about adults the hard way ;)

 

[zoobyshoe]

Today I learned that when you are a responsible and good employee, your boss gives you more responsibilities and tasks to do and you are less likely to get a promotion because your boss doesn't want to lose you!

"Make yourself useful and you will be used."

 

[Ibix]

Today I learned that there are people who can read 80-page policy documents in one 40-minute sitting and come away with both a coherent picture of what was being said, and three pages of questions and requests for clarification. I was fighting sleep by page 4...

 

[Lisa!]

Today I learned Lisa! is still a teenager, learning the most obvious things about adults the hard way ;)

I'm not a teenager! I just didn't have a job like this before.

"Make yourself useful and you will be used."

 

[JorisL]

I learned it's better for me to go for a run on the road. Not on a soft course.
It made a difference of 20-30 minutes regarding endurance

 

[Bandersnatch]

Today I learned about the etymology of the word 'leech'. It used to mean 'doctor' ('medicine man', more precisely 'conjurer' - similar to 'witch doctor') before that word superseded it, and is still present in the form of its linguistic equivalent in my mother tongue (Polish) as 'lekarz'.
I always find it spellbinding when I stumble upon an inconspicuous word whose roots run so deep, connecting as distinctive languages as these two.

 

[Yanick]

This was yesterday, but it will have to do. Yesterday I learned that Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy was born from the Michelson interferometer used in the famous Michelson-Morley experiment.

 

[jim hardy]

Took the plunge into embedded microcomputers
bought Arduino Esplora's for myself and two grandsons... (on sale for $15 at MCM)
Learned once again just how nit-picky computers are
but if one is excruciatingly attentive to details that seem intentionally obscured, the software(56 meg of it!) will load into the PC and go.

Learned this morning how to copy & paste a program then install it on the Arduino, feels like i oughta get wings for that.
Now there's all that syntax and structure to slog through.
Goal is a Roman Numeral digital clock.

wish me luck ?

 

[Borg]

wish me luck ?

Good luck Jim. Let us know how it goes. I have links to some good tutorials if you're interested.

 

[dlgoff]

Learned this morning how to copy & paste a program then install it on the Arduino, feels like i oughta get wings for that.
Now there's all that syntax and structure to slog through.
Goal is a Roman Numeral digital clock.

 

[Cake]

There's a chrome/firefox extension that replaces the word "females" with a bolded word with Ferengi heads around it: http://www.beesgo.biz/chrome.html

 

[MathAmateur]

Today I learned if you pass on 1/2 yard to go, you lose the football game.

 

[nuuskur]

Today, I learned that I am even more stupid than I thought.
When you write a letter (Yes, a letter, on paper and everything, I know it's so 20th century , right? ugh)
DO NOT mark the recipient as yourself...

 

[jtbell]

Today I learned that the next item in the sequence "par, birdie, eagle..." is "albatross", e.g. a hole-in-one on a par 4 golf hole:

 

[Nathanael]

Today I learned there was a man named Dase who could multiply two hundred digit numbers in his head (and it took over 8 hours)!
A quote from wikipedia, "he multiplied 79532853 × 93758479 in 54 seconds."
He is said to have been able to work on a calculation until night, stop and go to sleep, and then resume right where he left off in the morning.
Perhaps even more remarkable, "he could distinguish some thirty objects of a similar nature in a single moment as easily as other people can recognise three or four."
Interestingly enough, he was incapable of doing mathematics (other than calculating) and is said to have failed to understand Euclid's elements.

I also learned that the author of my textbook gets distracted when talking about pi, (Dase first calculated 200 digits of pi) and I learned that I am easily distracted.

 

[iDimension]

Today I learned there was a man named Dase who could multiply two hundred digit numbers in his head (and it took over 8 hours)!
A quote from wikipedia, "he multiplied 79532853 × 93758479 in 54 seconds."
He is said to have been able to work on a calculation until night, stop and go to sleep, and then resume right where he left off in the morning.
Perhaps even more remarkable, "he could distinguish some thirty objects of a similar nature in a single moment as easily as other people can recognise three or four."
Interestingly enough, he was incapable of doing mathematics (other than calculating) and is said to have failed to understand Euclid's elements.

I also learned that the author of my textbook gets distracted when talking about pi, (Dase first calculated 200 digits of pi) and I learned that I am easily distracted.

This seems like pure brute force as opposed to something which requires an analytical approach like geometry or calculus. And of course an incredible memory.

 

[Nathanael]

This seems like pure brute force as opposed to something which requires an analytical approach like geometry or calculus. And of course an incredible memory.

Yeah, it would take lots of practice. I think it said somewhere that he studied methods of calculating (which seems odd, because it's an entirely useless skill in our day, but back then I'm sure it was somewhat useful).

But I feel like very few people could do this even if they dedicated a lifetime... I mean, 79532853 × 93758479 in 54 seconds? That takes some finesse! (If it's true.)

It's amazing how skilled we (people) can become at something (anything) if we devote all of our life to it.

 

[Borek]

I knew a guy who could multiply 675629*298417 in memory, and he got 201619712939 each time.

 

[Bystander]

Today I learned that the expression "population density" has more than one meaning --- as in, "There is a really dense population along 'The Front Range.'"

 

[Enigman]

TIL - Kurt Vonnegut graphed the world’s most popular stories

 

[NascentOxygen]

Today I learned about truly unbreakable glass, and how it was invented nearly 2000 years ago. It's inventor took a sample of his craft to show the emperor, hoping to impress the Ruler with such a useful material in an era when clay pots were the norm. The smith hurled his glass vessel onto the cobble stones whereupon it sustained a fearful dent. He then took a tiny hammer from his pocket, and hammered the glass back into its original shape. The emperor was impressed, mightily impressed. He leaned forward and earnestly inquired had the glasssmith shared his secret with anyone? With not a soul, came the answer. The emperor turned to a nearby centurion and ordered, "Off with his head!", fearing that the royal collection of fragile glassware would become of no significance if unbreakable glass were put into production.

(told by a university lecturer, so it must be true)