What is the newest installment of 'Random Thoughts' on Physics Forums?

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The discussion revolves around frustrations with current documentary programming, particularly criticizing the History Channel's focus on sensational topics like time travel conspiracies instead of real historical content. Participants express disappointment over National Geographic's sale to Fox, fearing a decline in quality programming. The conversation shifts to lighter topics, including humorous anecdotes about everyday life, such as a malfunctioning kitchen fan discovered to be blocked by installation instructions. There are also discussions about the challenges of understanding various dialects in Belgium, the complexities of language, and personal experiences with weather and housing in California. Members share their thoughts on food, including a peculiar dish of zucchini pancakes served with strawberry yogurt, and delve into mathematical concepts related to sandwich cutting and the properties of numbers. The thread captures a blend of serious commentary and lighthearted banter, reflecting a diverse range of interests and perspectives among participants.
  • #4,081
OCR said:
Her name is Karolina Protsenko...
Thanks. I've been trying to figure her name to see if she has other music vids.
OCR said:
I'm pretty sure this is the one you posted...
Yes it is. Looks like it's been edited to zoom in more, but the same performance.
OCR said:
This is the one Karolina posted three days ago...
Same tune, different performance. I've only listened/viewed this one where she makes here violin "talk": .
That takes some real talent. Makes me think, "The world has hope", ... but I am old. Thanks for sharing.
 
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  • #4,082
It's hot here in London. Not that hot, but 31c. I like to put a thick wedge of watermelon in the freezer for an hour. It gives it a nice sorbet consistency with a thin, icy shell. So refreshing.

It's the giant Moroccan watermelon that gets imported at this time of year. Super sweet. I have no idea how all the local shops can sell it for only 79p a kilo and make a profit.
 
  • #4,083
skyshrimp said:
It's hot here in London. Not that hot, but 31c. I like to put a thick wedge of watermelon in the freezer for an hour. It gives it a nice sorbet consistency with a thin, icy shell. So refreshing.
Good idea.
It's the giant Moroccan watermelon that gets imported at this time of year. Super sweet. I have no idea how all the local shops can sell it for only 79p a kilo and make a profit.
Because the real price for water in Morocco is calculated as zero.
 
  • #4,084
skyshrimp said:
It's the giant Moroccan watermelon that gets imported at this time of year. Super sweet.
Quick story. My grandfather hauled ice to customers iceboxes from the age of 14 till he hung up his ice hooks at age 65. This was in Arkansas USA where it's hot and humid in the summers. The ice plant he worked for sold ice cold watermelon and he would always have one on ice in his outside cooler. The variety he brought home was the Black Diamond. Very sweet.
There are two types; red and yellow meat.
nonhybrid-blackdiamondwatermelon.jpg
 

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  • #4,085
dlgoff said:
My grandfather hauled ice to customers iceboxes from the age of 14 till he hung up his ice hooks at age 65
How quickly things change fascinates me. I think of electric fridges as things that all homes have, but your grandfather delivered ice. I think of indoor plumbing as standard, but there are rows and rows of houses near me that have indoor toilets only as a refit.

I was watching a video on YouTube with my son, and he asked me if I watched videos on YouTube with my daddy when I was little. I don't think he could quite grasp the notion that computers couldn't do that back in the day...
 
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  • #4,086
Ibix said:
How quickly things change fascinates me. I think of electric fridges as things that all homes have, but your grandfather delivered ice. I think of indoor plumbing as standard, but there are rows and rows of houses near me that have indoor toilets only as a refit.

I was watching a video on YouTube with my son, and he asked me if I watched videos on YouTube with my daddy when I was little. I don't think he could quite grasp the notion that computers couldn't do that back in the day...
And there is the flip side of older "Where can I buy an internet, one of the latest model? " (An exaggeration, but not by much) . Or the one catching a taxi :"Take me to the Internet, quick".
 
  • #4,087
WWGD said:
And there is the flip side of older "Where can I buy an internet, one of the latest model? " (An exaggeration, but not by much) . Or the one catching a taxi :"Take me to the Internet, quick".
I remember a headline from the 90's: "Housewife in Massachusetts Downloaded the Internet!"

Ibix said:
I don't think he could quite grasp the notion that computers couldn't do that back in the day...
I sometimes have to think: "What would have Grandma said, if I had told her what I'm doing here", especially whom I talk to as if it was my neighbor.
 
  • #4,088
fresh_42 said:
I sometimes have to think: "What would have Grandma said, if I had told her what I'm doing here", especially whom I talk to as if it was my neighbor.
Oddly, I think "chatting about maths/physics/whatever" is perfectly understandable. It's the "here" that's problematic, because we aren't anywhere in particular.

On the other hand, if you don't get into the technical details, the only thing we're doing that's different from debating in the letters page of some journal is the speed with which we can do it.
 
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  • #4,089
Ibix said:
It's the "here" that's problematic, because we aren't anywhere in particular.
Yes, that's what she probably couldn't have believed.
"Oh Grandma, it was late last night."
"Why? What were you doing?"
"Oh, I talked about math with someone from Down Under to whom it was at day. And before we were finished, this guy from Portland joined the debate."
"?"

I even note it with my parents. Mom: "The internet doesn't work!" Me: "Telephone line, Router, WLAN, PC, Windows, Browser or Site Content?" - "?"
 
  • #4,090
fresh_42 said:
I even note it with my parents.
Fortunately I was able to introduced my dad to my first PC; with the 80286 processor. He was amazed as much as me. If he were alive today, I don't think he could handle technology. And he even worked for DuPont.
 
  • #4,091
Just in case anybody asks himself whether the red sofa still travels: Just heard on the radio that it has be seen on a highway here.
 
  • #4,092
fresh_42 said:
Just in case anybody asks himself whether the red sofa still travels: Just heard on the radio that it has be seen on a highway here.
...what?
 
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  • #4,093
fresh_42 said:
Just in case anybody asks himself whether the red sofa still travels: Just heard on the radio that it has be seen on a highway here.
Lay off the exotic mushrooms, Fresh. :).
 
  • #4,094
Ibix said:
...what?
"There!" said Ford, shooting out his arm; "there, behind that sofa!"
Arthur looked. Much to his surprise, there was a velvet paisley-covered Chesterfield sofa in the field in front of them. He boggled intelligently at it. Shrewd questions sprang into his mind.
"Why," he said, "is there a sofa in that field?"
"I told you!" shouted Ford, leaping to his feet. "Eddies in the space-time continuum!"
"And this is his sofa, is it?"
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/950420-i-have-detected-he-said-disturbances-in-the-wash

After 4 years of being stranded on prehistoric Earth , Arthur Dent is met by his old friend Ford Prefect, who drags him into a space-time eddy, represented by an anachronistic chesterfield sofa. The two end up at Lord's Cricket Ground two days before the Earth's destruction by the Vogons. Shortly after they arrive, a squad of robots land in a spaceship in the middle of the field and attack the assembled crowd, stealing The Ashes before departing. Another spaceship, the Starship Bistromath, arrives, with Slartibartfast at the helm, who discovers he is too late and requests Arthur and Ford's help.
http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Life,_the_Universe_and_Everything

“Arthur felt happy. He was terribly pleased that the day was for once working out so much according to plan. Only twenty minutes ago he had decided he would go mad, and now here he was already chasing a Chesterfield sofa across the fields of prehistoric Earth.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/385444-arthur-felt-happy-he-was-terribly-pleased-that-the-day
 
  • #4,095
Had you said "Chesterfield", I'd have got it. And Paisley is a pattern, not a uniform red. But HHGttG is an excellent reference.
 
  • #4,096
Ibix said:
And Paisley is a pattern, not a uniform red.
Well, I've read the German translations, though.
 
  • #4,097
They lost some kitsch in the translation, then.
 
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  • #4,098
I was called "Arthur Dent" this morning, on Twitter.
hmmmmm...
 
  • #4,099
OmCheeto said:
I was called "Arthur Dent" this morning, on Twitter.
hmmmmm...
My towel is at hand ...
 
  • #4,100
fresh_42 said:
My towel is at hand ...
This guy's towel is in the glove box.

2018.08.04.nasa.eyes.dont.panic.png

[ref: NASA's Eyes]

Hey! And it's red.
hmmmm...
 

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  • #4,101
My favorite G.B.Shaw quotation: "You should have read what I already dismissed out of politeness!" as his answer to someone who demanded him to be more polite.
 
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  • #4,102
Ibix said:
How quickly things change fascinates me. ...
I recently went through part of the school archives with some high school students. I had to explain to them what the photographic negatives were.
 
  • #4,103
Fewmet said:
I recently went through part of the school archives with some high school students. I had to explain to them what the photographic negatives were.
Wait until you find a slide rule!
 
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  • #4,104
Found one of my old tests, the assignment said "study the function so-and-so".
I wrote "I studied it" as an answer. Got full credit :oldlaugh:
 
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  • #4,105
Ah - bad questions...

A chemistry teacher visiting my school commented on a GCSE (school exams taken at 16 in the UK) multiple choice question that asked "what colour is sulphur". The options were yellow, brown, blue, and green. The official correct answer was yellow. He got into trouble for also accepting brown and blue, because liquid sulphur cooled rapidly turns into a rubbery brown substance and colloidal sulphur is blue. It's a specific form of sulphur, flowers of sulphur, that's yellow, and the question did not specify that.
 
  • #4,106
We had qualifying exams, needed to be able to go on in the program : "What can you say about..."? Seriously? A live-or-die exam and they ask such vague question?
 
  • #4,107
dlgoff said:
Thanks for sharing.
You're welcome...
Mark44 said:
Great tune!
It is a good a good tune...

Here's another cover version of "Despacito" I really like... . :thumbup:

.
 
  • #4,108
Psinter said:
Um... Is calling a random person you just met: "baby", normal for English speakers?

It's been happening too frequently. It hasn't bothered me at all. But, how odd. I am beginning to think it is actually pretty normal. Like saying 'bro'.

I would say that is a city/working class thing.Bar ladies in particular or women who serve food tend to call children and men, “love” “pet” depending on which part of the country you are fromMen in the same job do the same with children and women, “cock” is another one.So this is informal settings cafes, bars rather than restaurants.Sir, Madam and Miss are used more in formal settings, Hospital government departments and more formal eateries.
 
  • #4,109
It is not allowed to send sausages (wrong word, but you don't have a better one) to the US. But here's my question: Would a dog searching for drugs bark at such a package by: "Forget the damn cocaine, open that package, I want the sausage!"
 
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  • #4,110
fresh_42 said:
It is not allowed to send sausages (wrong word, but you don't have a better one) to the US. But here's my question: Would a dog searching for drugs bark at such a package by: "Forget the damn cocaine, open that package, I want the sausage!"
Only if it's a wiener dog.

Edit: using one of those as a drug dog would be the wurst idea...
 
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