Short Takes

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/circa?q=Circa

originally “a shivering,” a word of uncertain origin. Some guesses … or that the Italian word is connected with capo “head” + riccio “curl, frizzled,” literally “hedgehog” (from Latin ericius). The notion in this case would be of the hair standing on end, hence a person shivering in fear.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/capricious

In biology, a refugium (plural: refugia) is a location that supports an isolated or relict [see next entry] population of a once more widespread species.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugium_(population_biology)

“a widow,” mid-15c., relicte, etymologically “one who is left, one who remains,” … also as an adjective in Middle English and early modern English, originally “left undisturbed or untouched, allowed to remain” (mid-15c.) but used in various senses.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/relict

Alba is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland. Historically, the term refers to Britain as a whole and is ultimately based on the Indo-European root for “white”.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alba

The town was incorporated as the railroads arrived in 1873. A railroad official, Ira H. Evans, combined the names of his daughter, Ola, and her friend, Minnie Patten, to create the city name Mineola.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mineola,_Texas

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrolysis

In 1896, Ernest Hanbury Hankin reported that something in the waters of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers in India had a marked antibacterial action against cholera and it could pass through a very fine porcelain filter.

Félix dHérelle announced on 3 September 1917, that he had discovered “an invisible, antagonistic microbe of the dysentery bacillus”. DHérelle called the virus a bacteriophage, a bacteria-eater (from the Greek phagein meaning “to devour”). DHerelle researched bacteriophages and introduced the concept of phage therapy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serve-and-volley

• chimneying: the process of pinching yourself between the two walls. Chimneying is achieved by placing your back against one wall and your feet against the other wall. Your body will be facing sideways or up. Your hands are used for balance and for helping you move.
• stemming: a technique used to travel up or down a slot canyon. You place your left foot and left hand on one wall of the canyon and your right foot and right hand on the other wall. Your body faces forward.
• bridging: a technique used to travel up or down a slot canyon. You place your hands on one wall of the canyon and your feet on the other wall. Your stomach points down to the ground.

https://dyeclan.com/outdoors101/canyoneering101/?page=canyon-movement

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-origin-of-the-pilcrow-aka-the-strange-paragraph-symbol-8610683/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blitz_(gridiron_football)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y._A._Tittle

https://www.dummies.com/article/body-mind-spirit/medical/terminology/medical-terminology-gastrointestinal-root-words-145522/

This inertia, or centrifugal force, causes the oceans to bulge on the opposite side facing the moon. While the moons gravitational pull is strong enough to attract oceans into a bulge on the side of the earth facing the moon, it is not strong enough to overcome the inertia on the opposite side of the earth. As a result, the worlds oceans bulge twice once when they are on the side of Earth closest to the moon, and once when they are on the side farthest from the moon, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA.

Geography complicates the tides, but many places on Earth experience just two high and two low tides every 24 hours and 50 minutes. (The extra 50 minutes is caused by the distance the moon moves each day as it orbits Earth).”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barycenter Fascinating !

I asked, “Is plaque mineral or organic ?”

She gave a thorough answer — mentioned that the first layer on the teeth is called biofilm and that this changes to tartar over time.

I was intrigued by the word biofilm and I went down the rabbit hole.

Excerpt from wiki

Dental plaque is a biofilm of microorganisms (mostly bacteria, but also fungi) that grows on surfaces within the mouth. It is a sticky colorless deposit at first, but when it forms tartar, it is often brown or pale yellow. It is commonly found between the teeth, on the front of teeth, behind teeth, on chewing surfaces, along the gumline (supragingival), or below the gumline cervical margins (subgingival). Dental plaque is also known as microbial plaque, oral biofilm, dental biofilm, dental plaque biofilm, or bacterial plaque biofilm. Bacterial plaque is one of the major causes of dental decay and gum disease.

It may be a pet name, a “name used to show affection for a person or object. It may be a diminutive form of a person’s name, such as Izzy for Isabel or Bob for Robert, or it may be unrelated.”

“It evolved from the Greek verb hypokorizesthai (“to call by pet names”), which itself comes from korizesthai (“to caress”).”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypocorism/

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hypocorism

Most of the UK has a combined sewage system, so wastewater from toilets is carried to sewage treatment works through the same pipes as rainwater.

To prevent homes and public spaces from being flooded after heavy rains, the system is designed occasionally to overflow and discharge untreated sewage into rivers and the sea.

Sewage in sea: French appeal to EU over UK discharges of waste

Enjambment is a literary device in which a line of poetry carries its idea or thought over to the next line without a grammatical pause.

https://literarydevices.net/enjambment/

Dubraes keep laces tight and centered.

Click for the history of the dubrae

Dumping anything out of an aquarium — fish, animals, and plants — can have devastating consequences for Texas natural waterbodies. This is true for both freshwater and saltwater aquariums. Never dump them into a natural body of water or flush them down the toilet.

Click for the next invasive species could come from your aquarium

After a successful Phase 1 in 1961 off Guadalupe Island in the Pacific Ocean, the Mohole project devolved due to mismanagement, cost overruns, and scientific disagreement and was defunded in 1966. The deepest hole drilled was only down to 601 feet (183 m) below the sea floor in 11,700 feet (3,600 m) of water.

The deepest hole ever drilled was the Kola Superdeep Borehole in Russia (near the Artic Ocean and near Finland), a depth of 12,262 meters (7.6 miles *) was reached in 1989.

Mystery Doug Overview

Project Mohole

Kola Superdeep Borehole

Mohorovičić discontinuity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willard_Bascom

late 17th century: from French péricarpe, from Greek perikarpion ‘pod, shell’, from peri- ‘around’ + karpos ‘fruit’.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drupe

http://etymologies.net/pericarp

Click to see poster with marvelously zoomable closeups

https://www.webmd.com/a-to-z-guides/what-is-a-nosocomial-infection

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hospital-acquired_infection

The rattlesnake scored the highest measured acceleration, at 279 meters per second squared. But to their surprise, the nonvenomous rat snake came in a close second at 274 meters per second squared (275 meters per second squared = 28 Gs !).

Snakes probably evolved such quick strikes to compete with the reaction times of prey, Penning adds. Depending on the species and the situation, mammals can react and make an observable motion anywhere between 60 and 395 milliseconds. An average human eye blink, for instance, spans a leisurely 200 milliseconds.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-surprise-even-nonvenomous-snakes-can-strike-ridiculous-speeds-180958452/

The Richness of Time

• About a third of the world’s languages do not rely on words for right and left
• In the Yagua language of Peru, there are five distinct grammatical forms of the past tense
• “In English,” she says, moving her hand toward the cup, “if I knock this cup off the table, even accidentally, you would likely say, She broke the cup.” However, in Japanese or Spanish, she explains, intent matters.

Here’s a link to a lighthearted and insightful conversation between Shankar Vedantam and cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky

Lost In Translation: The Power Of Language To Shape How We View The World

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-the-langlands-program-20220601/

Rare after 17c.; in deliberately archaic or mock-heroic use since c. 1800. If it had survived in living language, its modern form would be dighty.

https://www.etymonline.com/word/doughty#etymonline_v_13979

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_wool

EXCERPT

Daniel P. Thompson in his “History of the Town of Montpelier … laments the way settlers renamed rivers and mountains instead of adopting aboriginal names. In 1860 he wrote, “I cannot forbear, in passing, to express a regret that the practical tastes and common-place notions of our first settlers should have so far governed them, in respect to this name, as to have led them generally to adopt the homely translation instead of the poetic original. The Indian names are not like most of ours, arbitrary and inexpressive, but ever have their significations. This of itself is a beauty. It ensures, also, the applicability of the name to the thing.” For this reason, Thompson joined a group fighting to keep the name of Montpelier’s dominant river “Winooski” — Abenaki for “land of the wild onion.”

https://montpelierbridge.org/2021/10/history-corner-how-montpelier-got-its-name/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Writing_about_music_is_like_dancing_about_architecture

Mathematics-Ferguson Springs Cemetery
Forest Service Rd 100-G, Benton, KY 42025

https://goo.gl/maps/y4QBjVQVKUifMZFU6

EXCERPT

What most people perhaps don’t realize is that eggs are single cells. Even a chicken egg is one cell — a really, really large cell. It’s incredibly hard to make a cell that size — and not something that can be done alone. To become that large, the egg grows while remaining physically connected to other cells, which are called sister cells or nurse cells.

At the Flatiron Institute, developmental biologist Jasmin Imran Alsous and her collaborators are working together to uncover the mysteries of how gametes move and develop.

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2022/10/03/the-fruit-fly-photographer/

EXCERPT

The saros is a period of exactly 223 synodic months, approximately 6585.3211 days, or 18.029 years, that can be used to predict eclipses of the Sun and Moon. One saros period after an eclipse, the Sun, Earth, and Moon return to approximately the same relative geometry, a near straight line, and a nearly identical eclipse will occur, in what is referred to as an eclipse cycle. A sar is one-half of a saros.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saros_(astronomy)

EXCERPT

What most people perhaps don’t realize is that eggs are single cells. Even a chicken egg is one cell — a really, really large cell. It’s incredibly hard to make a cell that size — and not something that can be done alone. To become that large, the egg grows while remaining physically connected to other cells, which are called sister cells or nurse cells.

At the Flatiron Institute, developmental biologist Jasmin Imran Alsous and her collaborators are working together to uncover the mysteries of how gametes move and develop.

https://www.simonsfoundation.org/2022/10/03/the-fruit-fly-photographer/

Löwenmensch, meaning “lion-person” or “lion-human”, is used most frequently because it was discovered and is exhibited in Germany.

Determined by carbon dating of the layer in which it was found to be between 35,000 and 40,000 years old, it is one of the oldest-known examples of an artistic representation and the oldest confirmed statue ever discovered.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-man

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_art

The first rule of autopen is “don’t talk about autopen.”

https://northernvirginiamag.com/culture/culture-features/2013/07/29/sincerely-yours-this-machine-does-not-exist/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/09/a-history-of-arm-part-1-building-the-first-chip/

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/a-history-of-arm-part-2-everything-starts-

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Wilson

The exact cause of nickel allergy is unknown. As with other allergies, nickel allergy develops when your immune system views nickel as a harmful, rather than a harmless substance. Normally, your immune system only reacts to protect your body against bacteria, viruses, or toxic substances.

Once your body has developed a reaction to a particular agent (allergen) — in this case, nickel — your immune system will always be sensitive to it.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/nickel-allergy/symptoms-causes/syc-20351529

https://twitter.com/SmithCountyNews/status/1625963718512152576?s=20&t=SsyEvZg1lIDIMSO0AiW3Fg

We Do Repairs

MSM never intended to be in competition with the retail computer industry, so we do not advertise a repair service… but we do repairs!

We understand that many families struggle to make ends meet. Families also know that having technology for their children is essential for academic success. With this in mind, MSM repairs units for needy families. If an MSM computer needs repair, it is of course – free. If we repair a computer that has been purchased elsewhere, we charge only the cost of the parts or licenses needed to repair the unit. No labor time is charged.

MSM takes pride in our business ethic. We never fix a computer that isn’t worth repairing – and we never deem a computer to be salvaged when it can be repaired and continue to service a family successfully.

If you have a computer issue – come see us! We’ll check it out for free!

https://www.mustardseedcomputers.com/we-do-repairs/

FREE … For Sale … Lifetime Warranty!
First, all students from 5th grade through college are eligible for a free computer from MSM! Here’s How…

5th -8th graders … write a short essay stating why they think a computer will help them with their school work. Plus, they complete 10 hours of community service. The 10 hours can be completed ANYWHERE. We hope that our students will find new and inventive ways to complete their service: maybe help an elderly neighbor, volunteer at a shelter, organize a service project with their friends at church, etc.

After these two steps are completed, the student brings to MSM the paperwork and they leave with their new computer! It’s FREE!

Second, MSM does some fundraising by selling high-end computers and laptops. We sell every name brand and can build a unit to your specs. Many of our units have Intel i7 processors with plenty of RAM. And every unit comes with Windows 10 Pro, Office Pro, and lots of other goodies. Computers start at $100! Our most expensive unit is $200! The awesome thing about our refurbished computers is that they have a lifetime warranty! Hardware and software are repaired or reloaded for free if they fail in any way. (Abuse or natural disasters are not covered.)

The lifetime warranty is also a feature of our student units. Kids can be hard on computers – we know that they are just learning and may do some unexpected things to their computers. Since we want our kids to ALWAYS have a usable computer for school work – we warrant them for life. We also have free upgrades! When middle schoolers move up to high school – they trade in their unit for a new and faster unit … when they go to college – they get another upgrade and also have the option for a laptop. It’s all FREE!

https://www.mustardseedcomputers.com/lifetime-warrantee/

https://www.10best.com/..

The ‘pandemic’ destroying the world’s favorite fruit

https://www.bbc.com/..

A Quest for the Gros Michel, the Great Banana of Yesteryear

https://www.atlasobscura.com/..

Almost everyone today has flown in an airplane. Many ask the simple question “what makes an airplane fly”? The answer one frequently gets is misleading and often just plain wrong. We hope that the answers provided here will clarify many misconceptions about lift and that you will adopt our explanation when explaining lift to others. We are going to show you that lift is easier to understand if one starts with Newton rather than Bernoulli. We will also show you that the popular explanation that most of us were taught is misleading at best and that lift is due to the wing diverting air down.

https://fermatslibrary.com/s/how-airplanes-fly-a-physical-description-of-lift

James started taking trumpet lessons from his father at age eight, and by age twelve he was leading the second band in the Christy Brothers Circus, for which his family was then working. James’s father placed him on a strict daily practice schedule. At each session he was given several pages to learn from the Arbans book and was not allowed to pursue any other pastime until he had learned them. While still a student at Dick Dowling Junior High School, he participated as a regular member of Beaumont High Schools Royal Purple Band, and in May 1931 he took first place as trumpet soloist at the Texas Band Teachers Associations Annual Eastern Division contest held in Temple, Texas.

In 1924, his family settled in Beaumont, Texas. It was here in the early 1930s that James began playing in local dance bands when he was 15 years of age. James played regularly with Herman Waldman’s band, and at one performance was noticed by nationally popular Ben Pollack. In 1935 he joined Pollack’s band, but left at the start of 1937 to join Benny Goodman’s orchestra, where he stayed through 1938. He was nicknamed “The Hawk” early in his career for his ability to sight-read. A common joke was that if a fly landed on his written music, Harry James would play it. His low range had a warmth associated with the cornet and even the flugelhorn, but this sound was underrecorded in favor of James’ brilliant high register.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arban_method

Linda Ronstadt was born in 1946 in Tucson, Arizona, to Gilbert Ronstadt, a prosperous machinery merchant who ran the F. Ronstadt Co. hardware store. Her mother, Ruth Mary Copeman, from the Flint, Michigan area, was the daughter of Lloyd Groff Copeman, a prolific inventor and holder of nearly 700 patents, among them, an early form of the microwave oven and a flexible ice cube tray, the latter earning millions in royalties. Linda’s father came from a pioneering Arizona ranching family and was of German, English, and Mexican descent, and also a guitarist who sang Mexican songs to his children. Linda was raised on the family’s ten-acre ranch in Tucson along with three siblings. She had a pony and later a horse. As a teen, she formed a folk trio with brother Peter and sister Suzy; calling themselves the New Union Ramblers.

https://pophistorydig.com/topics/linda-ronstadt-jerry-brown/

Thank you! Well written and insightful.

Even after years of math and a career in engineering, it’s good to have some new scaffolding for problem-solving.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-symmetry-that-makes-solving-math-equations-easy-20230324/

And here’s a few more articles by Patrick Honner

https://www.quantamagazine.org/authors/patrick-honner/

I highly recommend Quanta magazine

https://www.quantamagazine.org/

I am Stephen Curry [not the basketball player], a Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College London. Few people know what ‘structural biology’ is but in my case it means I figure out the three-dimensional structures from biological molecules in atomic detail, using X-rays and crystals. My main interests are in the proteins used by RNA viruses such as foot-and-mouth disease virus; this work helps to reveal how these tiny pathogens tick.

Th[e] blog aims to tell the story of what it’s like to work in science in the UK in the 21st Century, to explore the larger social and political responsibilities of being a scientist and to allow me to expound, more or less randomly, on matters that may be only loosely related to science.

…

My writing has appeared in The Guardian, Times Higher Education, The Biochemist, Research Fortnight, New Scientist, at Lablit and in the Open Laboratory anthologies of the best science blogging in 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2012 (2011 was skipped because of a change of publisher — go figure).

https://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/about/

I also enjoy producing still and moving pictures. I am excessively proud of my “I’m a scientist” film. I also enjoy history and the arts, but know very little about either.

https://youtu.be/050unxghyGo

~~~

A candid and touching poem.

https://occamstypewriter.org/scurry/2023/04/15/the-separation-of-life-and-death/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ria

K-B Mirrors Harness X-rays for Science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Baez

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_C._Gratz

https://docs.juliahub.com/GraphMakie/lBoLj/0.4.0/generated/truss/

Wow !

Using the Julia language …

• 8 lines of code — enable libraries

  using NetworkDynamics
  using OrdinaryDiffEq
  using Graphs
  using GraphMakie
  using LinearAlgebra: norm, ⋅
  using Printf
  using CairoMakie
  CairoMakie.activate!()
  

• 77 lines of code — build model
• 20 lines of code — set state and solve model
• 39 lines of code — plot results as an MP4 video

144 lines of code total! (including comments and line spacing)

Thanks, Dan

https://bladereviews.com/knife-dictionary/

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The Maginot Line was impervious to most forms of attack.

Consequently, the Germans invaded through the Low Countries in 1940, passing it to the north.

The line, which was supposed to be fully extended further towards the west to avoid such an occurrence, was finally scaled back in response to demands from Belgium. Indeed, Belgium feared it would be sacrificed in the event of another German invasion.

The line has since become a metaphor for expensive efforts that offer a false sense of security.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maginot_Line

Related

The Spirit of Locarno

The Treaty of Versailles

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Im barely a podcast guy — and I’m definitely not a movie guy — and yet this is one of the best productions I’ve listened to lately.

A very recent presentation of Tom Hanks in conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs

Tuesday, May 16, 2023

KQED Broadcast: July 2, 2023

Venue: Sydney Goldstein Theater

As they say radio well worth listening to

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/city-arts-lectures/id1436346407?i=1000619060939

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Car Bloat Is Making US Streets Dangerous

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Recently we conducted a survey among our visitors. The only question we asked was “Do you know the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet?”

The result was that up to 60% of visitors don’t know IPA symbols — including me.

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I have questioned this all my life; for some reason, I never looked up the etymology till now.

Click for Anshu’s answerEtymology of quadratic by etymonline

Striking upturn in 1950.
Surprising usage trend, I think.

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Click to see the LIVE curves

Curves

Defining formulas

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Click to activate my latest LIVE Desmos graph (standard)
Click to activate my latest LIVE Desmos graph (mobile)

Verification that the area of a triangle is width times height over two.This is subtly different wording than what is traditionally taught.

Width times height over two is more general than

Base times height over two.

It works even when the base is tilted.

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Weather Sep 2022

La Semaine du Golfe
La Semaine du Golfe is a weeklong festival in Brittanny, France

Fascinating video! Maybe a little dangerous

Google map of the Gulf of Morbihan (France)

Cape Verde & Trans Atlantic passage
Who knew?

Twitter
@LettersOfNote

Newsletter
“Letters of Note author Shaun Usher publishes funny, touching, eye-opening, and abundantly shareable letters from across the world. We highly recommend checking it out.”
— History Buzz editorial team, History Buzz

https://www.hpmuseum.org/garage/garage.htm

The notion that phonesthemes exist is in itself controversial.

The existence of the phonestheme also contradicts the orthodox position expounded by Nida (1949) and Hockett and Hockett (1960:90) that the morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of language.

One example of this is the evolution of the ME verb fnesen (‘sneeze’), via neeze to sneeze in the 15^th century. It is likely that the phonetic appropriateness of the sn‑cluster and its associations with the nose led to sneeze being widely adopted and superseding the older forms.

End of Excerpts

Two presentations (with deep insight into the basis for the heat index). When calculating wind chill, note that the windspeed must be 3 miles per hour or greater.

“just deserts” vs. “just desserts”