Today I Learned

[Keith_McClary]

So drinking a Butt-load of wine probably isn't a great idea.

Not at one sitting, anyway.
A butt is half a tun.

 

[strangerep]

A butt is half a tun.

Must... resist... temptation to post pictures of certain celebrities as confirmatory evidence of this...

 

[Janus]

TIL: A Butt is (ok, was) a real unit of measure. 1 Butt ≈ 500 litres of wine. So drinking a Butt-load of wine probably isn't a great idea.

a Butt-load of Beer would be worse, as there are two hogsheads to a Butt and a hogshead of beer is 64 gallons, vs. 63 gallons for wine. ( imagine the trips to the restroom!)

 

[strangerep]

TIL... "de Broglie" is pronounced "de Broy" (rhymes with destroy). [Thanks to Sabine Hossenfelder's latest video.]

But,... WTF?? How do you get "oy" out of "oglie".

Oh well, English can be incomprehensibly weird too, at times.

 

[DaveE]

TIL... "de Broglie" is pronounced "de Broy" (rhymes with destroy). [Thanks to Sabine Hossenfelder's latest video.]

But,... WTF?? How do you get "oy" out of "oglie".

Oh well, English can be incomprehensibly weird too, at times.

Because it's not English. He was French.

 

[mfb]

But,... WTF?? How do you get "oy" out of "oglie".

I'll tell you after you tell me how you get 10 different sounds out of "ough".
rough, through, thorough, borough, cough, bough, thought, hiccough, ...

The French love to write a few more letters than they pronounce at the end of words.

 

[mfb]

TIL about thr Conway base 13 function.

The intermediate value theorem says that a continuous function will reach every intermediate value between f(a) and f(b) somewhere between a and b. But is the converse also true? Is a function that reaches every intermediate value (for any a,b) continuous? No, and the above function is a counterexample.

 

[Tom.G]

With just a quick read of the Wikipedia article, it looks like that assertion is a fallacy.

They are redefining some characters that are numeric in base 13 (specifically "+", "-", ".") as operators or delimiters in base 10.

As an example the American word 'Corn.'

(following extracted from:
https://forum.thefreedictionary.com/postst137875_Maize-Vs-Corn.aspx)

Maize is big green leafy plants with yellow cobs.
In America this is called corn.
.
.
In the UK, that is called maize, but the vegetable on the stalk is called corn on the cob,
.
.
In the UK, corn is a grain.
It commonly means wheat, but it can apply to any grain.Or... maybe I missed something?

 

[mfb]

They are redefining some characters that are numeric in base 13 (specifically "+", "-", ".") as operators or delimiters in base 10.

It's just a way to describe how the function assigns values to numbers. To find f(a), write a in base 13, replace A B C with symbols, then assign f(a) based on the described algorithm. Where is the problem?

I don't see how this would have anything to do with the way corn is described in English.

 

[Tom.G]

Yup,

I missed something?

I read only thru the "Sketch of definition" section. Reading the rest of the article, you are probably correct. I'll go to bed now.

Goodnight.

 

[fresh_42]

TIL that cheetahs were originally american cats who emigrated to Africa.

 

[BillTre]

TIL that Tom Lehrer (yes, he's still alive) has released all his compositions from copyright.

 

[Keith_McClary]

TIL the Large Hadron Collider has a beam lifetime (time interval after which the intensity of the beam has reached 1/e of its initial value )of

Spoiler

ten hours.

Source.

 

[DaveE]

TIL the Large Hadron Collider has a beam lifetime (time interval after which the intensity of the beam has reached 1/e of its initial value )of

Spoiler

ten hours.

LOL. I was thinking femtoseconds! Clearly I have NO IDEA AT ALL how this machine works.

 

[jbriggs444]

LOL. I was thinking femtoseconds! Clearly I have NO IDEA AT ALL how this machine works.

The main loop is 26 kilometers. At 300,000 km per second, that's about 10 laps per millisecond. You need your beam line particles (a substantial fraction anyway) to survive for at least a couple of laps, otherwise you might as well build a linear accelerator instead.

Surviving for 10 hours -- 360 million laps if I haven't slipped a digit -- is impressive. [Of course I doubt you would keep the same particles in the beam that long. The quoted figure is likely just extrapolation from the loss rate you get for the short intervals you actually use]

Caveat: I'm not an expert, just applying high school physics knowledge to the situation.

 

[mfb]

Collisions with the opposing beam are indeed an important loss mechanism, and of course it's one you do not want to reduce.

Refilling the LHC takes at least two hours but three hours is more typical (and four to five can happen, too), so this long lifetime is important. The optimal time to dump the beam and refill comes after about 15 hours.

 

[Astronuc]

Some railroad trivia

1961: Missouri Pacific acquires the rail industry’s first solid-state computer, an IBM 7070. Railroads will become one of the earliest major users of computer technology.

1968: Southern Pacific acquires the rail industry’s first locomotive engineer training simulator.

1970: In June, the giant Penn Central declares bankruptcy. At the time, it was the biggest corporate bankruptcy in U.S. history. I remember that day. It precipitated the bankruptcy of many other railroads in the NE US, including the Lehigh Valley, Erie Lackawanna, Reading, Central of New Jersey, Lehigh and Hudson River and the Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_Central_Transportation_Company#Bankruptcy

The Penn Central Transportation Company was created in 1968 via a merger between the Pennsylvania and New York Central railroads. The Pennsylvania Railroad dated back to 1846, and the New York Central railroad dated back to 1853.​

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/day-market-history-penn-central-180215022.html​

1976: The Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act creates the Consolidated Rail Corp. (Conrail) from six bankrupt Northeast railroads. The legislation also includes regulatory reforms that are supposed to make the rail regulatory system more responsive to changed circumstances.

1977: The Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad (CMStP&P), aka the "Milwaukee Road" (reporting mark MILW) filed for its third bankruptcy in 42 years on December 19. It suffered from poor management for about 7+ decades. Operations ended west of Miles City, Montana on February 29, 1980. Ultimately, lines were abandoned and the surviving railroad broken up and sold to Soo Line (a subsidiary of CP), BN (now BNSF), and other smaller railroads.​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago,_Milwaukee,_St._Paul_and_Pacific_Railroad#Early_1970s​

The BN was formed in 1970 from the merger of Great Northern; Norther Pacific; Chicago, Burlington & Quincy (CBQ) and Seattle, Portland & Spokane (SPS)​

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burlington_Northern_Railroad#History​

The Milwaukee Road secured concessions from the BN merger, which were intended to preserve competition in the Norther States and Pacific Northwest. However, MILW failed to ensure the concessions were met, and the ICC failed to enforce, in addition to having a rundown physical plant.​

1980: Congress passes the Staggers Rail Act, reducing the Interstate Commerce Commission’s regulatory authority over railroads and sparking competition that stimulates advances in technology and a restructuring of the industry, including creation of hundreds of new shortline and regional railroads using rail lines spun off from larger railroads.

During the 1980s, the railroad industry began a merger trend that now sees essentially 7 class I freight railroads: BNSF and UP in the west, CP, CN and KCS in the middle and north, and CSX and NS in the east.​

1996: After 108 years, the Interstate Commerce Commission goes out of existence and is replaced by the Surface Transportation Board, which assumes responsibility for remaining regulation of rail rates and services.

2008: Coal again becomes the top source of U.S. rail industry revenue, overtaking intermodal (which had taken over the top spot in 2003). Class I railroads originate a record 879 million tons of coal.

https://www.aar.org/chronology-of-americas-freight-railroads/

In 2020, coal shipments have dropped about 17% from 2019 levels and about 30% from 2018 levels.​

 

[Borg]

TIL about Chaos Engineering and the Simian Army.

 

[DaveE]

TIL how to write unmaintainable code. Y'all have probably seen this, but it's new to me and HILARIOUS.

A couple of randomly chosen excerpts:

Åccented Letters
Use accented characters on variable names, e. g.
typedef struct { int i; } ínt;
where the second ínt’s í is actually i-acute. With only a simple text editor, it’s nearly impossible to distinguish the slant of the accent mark.

Reuse of Global Names as Private
Declare a global array in module A and a private one of the same name in the header file for module B, so that it appears that it’s the global array you are using in module B, but it isn’t. Make no reference in the comments to this duplication.

 

[Borg]

The Bedazzling Names part of the Naming section has always been my favorite.

Choose variable names with irrelevant emotional connotation, e. g.:

marypoppins = ( superman + starship ) / god;

This confuses the reader because they have difficulty disassociating the emotional connotations of the words from the logic they’re trying to think about.

 

[Swamp Thing]

This confuses the reader... because of emotional connotations

This reminds me of an online test I once saw where you have to click on the screen in response to a color. But often, e.g. the word "green" will appear in red, just to make it really hard.

That suggests the idea of writing a manual where danger warnings and minor footnotes are color coded green and red, and are called blue items and black items respectively.

 

[fresh_42]

This reminds me of an online test I once saw where you have to click on the screen in response to a color. But often, e.g. the word "green" will appear in red, just to make it really hard.

That suggests the idea of writing a manual where warnings and notifications are color coded green and red, and are called blue items and black items respectively.

It reminds me on a discussion about the meaning of indices. I strongly defend that a matrix should be noted $(a_{ij})$ and not $(a_{ji})$, although this is technically equivalent. But $(a_{ji})$ is the transpose and any other use is only mean.

 

[fresh_42]

3D printed at Leiden. Cool!
(https://www.pcgamer.com/micro-3d-printed-starship-voyager/)

 

[epenguin]

Because it's not English. He was French.

But I think the origin of the name is not French, or not French French really, it's Savoyard or Piedmontese or something like that.

 

[fresh_42]

But I think the origin of the name is not French, or not French French really, it's Savoyard or Piedmontese or something like that.

Broglie [ˈbrɔj] is the name of a family from Piedmont (NW Italy), naturalized in France since 1656 (originally Broglio or Broglia), ...

 

[Swamp Thing]

originally Broglio or Broglia...

Nice to know he was one of The Family.

 

[Demystifier]

Today I learned that I am not allowed to share this video on facebook because other people on Facebook have reported it as abusive!

 

[strangerep]

Today I learned that I am not allowed to share this video on facebook because other people on Facebook have reported it as abusive!

"Abusive"? Or just (allegedly) violating copyright?

I doubt either of us could "de-mystify" that.

There's been some weird stuff happening on Facebook regarding automatic censoring of content. On a chess channel I watch, the presenter had one discussion censored because (in discussion about a particular game) he said something like "...here, white is better than black...". The Facebook algorithms had no clue that he was talking about chess, not race politics (sigh).

I wonder how long it will take for automated political correctness to ban chess completely.

(Aside: I also wonder whether one could bring Facebook down by designing a distributed bot that would select random posts and report them as offensive, i.e., generate complaints seeming to come from all over the world.)

 

[Keith_McClary]

(Aside: I wonder if one could bring Facebook down by designing a distributed bot that would select random posts and report them as offensive, i.e., generate complaints seeming to come from all over the world.)

I've heard that on youtube anyone can claim to be a copyright holder (with no repercussion if they lie) and take down someone elses video.

 

[mfb]

I wonder how long it will take for automated political correctness to ban chess completely.

Black makes the first move half of the time?
We'll also need Asian figures?

 

[strangerep]

Black makes the first move half of the time?
We'll also need Asian figures?

Heck, on many chess sets white is not actually white, but rather cream or beige. And black is not black but dark brown, or even dark red.

Just shoot me now.

 

[fresh_42]

I wonder how long it will take for automated political correctness to ban chess completely.

... or people start to select matches they want to commentate whether the last line reads 0-1.

 

[epenguin]

We'll also need Asian figures?

They have been around a long time. Very long and quite common in fact. As you would expect considering where the game came from. My very first game was with an ivory set clearly Chinese which I still have, bought by my father in Aden sometime about 1934.

There used to to be several patterns, one was called the 'French', another 'English'. However there were all sorts of other fantasies. I found them fascinating and I used aged 16 or so to wish I could afford to buy examples. It passed but I did later buy a 'Waterloo' lead soldiers set, with Napoleon and Wellington as Kings, etc., but it was stolen.

When in the nineteenth century chess became formalised with players with world reputations who met each other in matches with a following (before the nineteenth century I think there were chess books, e.g. by one Philidor* but few recorded games) then there was a need for standardisation, of the rules and the peices, and the standard 'Staunton' pattern was settled on and later specified by the official international rulebook. Staunton was the leading player of the 1840's, and a prime mover in starting institutionalised championships. Today I learned he was not the designer of the standard familiar pieces named after him. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staunton_chess_set
Despite a fascination of other patterns I think at the end of the day the Staunton has a kind of perfection. Somehow, especially with nice polished wood, harmonious, balanced, relaxing, not distracting from the actual game, which is in the head. I think if you want an illustration of what the word 'hieractic' means, they are it.

* He is remembered for a particular checkmate called 'Philidor's legacy' which I have occasionally been able to bring off by a knight against a smothered King, usually involving a Queen sacrifice.

 

[fresh_42]

We'll also need Asian figures?

I remember, once in Florence, I saw an awesome wooden chess board. The figures were about 8-10 cm high, presumably hand made and not for sale. One set of figures were Indians with tipis as pawns and the other were the US cavalry, with forts as rooks and so on. It was absolutely beautiful. I guess that would have been highly non pc in the states.

 

[Tom.G]

Today I learned that I am not allowed to share this video on facebook because other people on Facebook have reported it as abusive!

Interesting. Clicking on it, I get a " ! Video unavailable" messsage. If I copy and past the URL it plays fine on youtube, BUT the "Autoplay" button is missing!

Too bad the echo was turned up so high that I couldn't understand much of the lyrics.