(no subject)
Mar. 19th, 2008 12:13 pmSorry for asking controversial things last thing at night when I'm half-asleep. I don't have time to go on now (and temporarily froze one thread, I'm afraid), but several people helped out a lot, thank you.
Follow-up: Ice-cubes and marbles
Feb. 15th, 2008 01:15 am* The marble saga ended as Ian handed me marbles in the carlton
* Most people had no idea of the connection between the marbles-in-ice-cubes idea and the marbles wandering round looking for me. So it must have seemed a whole order of magnitude weirder to them than to me :)
* There seemed to be a final cosmic twist, I got home, and the marbles were gone! If they'd fallen out of my jacker pocket, I thought that was my cue to call a tragic ending and wrap up the saga. However, no, I'd just moved them to the table when I got home, (in case I forgot they were there, cycled off tomorrow, and they fell out of my jacket pocket).
* I thought of a use for marble-weighted ice-cubes while filling a jug generously with vanilla ice-cubes. In a jug (typo: guy) there's often a bell-shape which lets you pour while keeping anything heavy in the bottom, and you want many ice-cubes to keep that mass of water cold, and they really do have a tendency to escape into a glass if they float.
* When filling the ice-cube tray with marbles (half-metalic, half-coloured-glass) each notch is almost exactly the width and twice the length of a marble, giving them a pleasing binary switch "roll to either end" configuration.
* Getting ice cubes out of a tray, I was used to twisting, and it only now occured to me to apply sheer. Parallelagramising the tray (and hence holes) a bit has to make the ice pop out, whereas twisting just loosens it against the sides.
* Most people had no idea of the connection between the marbles-in-ice-cubes idea and the marbles wandering round looking for me. So it must have seemed a whole order of magnitude weirder to them than to me :)
* There seemed to be a final cosmic twist, I got home, and the marbles were gone! If they'd fallen out of my jacker pocket, I thought that was my cue to call a tragic ending and wrap up the saga. However, no, I'd just moved them to the table when I got home, (in case I forgot they were there, cycled off tomorrow, and they fell out of my jacket pocket).
* I thought of a use for marble-weighted ice-cubes while filling a jug generously with vanilla ice-cubes. In a jug (typo: guy) there's often a bell-shape which lets you pour while keeping anything heavy in the bottom, and you want many ice-cubes to keep that mass of water cold, and they really do have a tendency to escape into a glass if they float.
* When filling the ice-cube tray with marbles (half-metalic, half-coloured-glass) each notch is almost exactly the width and twice the length of a marble, giving them a pleasing binary switch "roll to either end" configuration.
* Getting ice cubes out of a tray, I was used to twisting, and it only now occured to me to apply sheer. Parallelagramising the tray (and hence holes) a bit has to make the ice pop out, whereas twisting just loosens it against the sides.
Followup #1: 50 States
Feb. 1st, 2008 02:34 pmAha! I hoped I'd find someone talking about that QI episode and here it is.
http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=10008&start=12&sid=8da3f18e501905ad74133159e6526839
(Worryingly, MY post is now practically the top hit for the subject.)
Thoughts:
* I don't blame QI. Although its a shame I think they were misleading, the look on Alan Davies face when he gets a "do you know the obvious" question wrong to flashing and buzzing is worth it
* And he lost about 30 points guessing wrongly (the highest score was about 2, the lowest, about -30) so it didn't make any difference.
* And he was successfully funny, which is the real point.
* There's a few more nuggests. The CIA thinks there are fifty states, and you would think they have grim-faced men in charge of collecting this sort of intelligence.
* The Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has this to say: "Massachusetts, like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, is called a 'Commonwealth'. Commonwealths are states." He seems like the kind of person that ought to know.
* If the question could be phrased in such a way as to ask whether they are *called* states (a bit like asking how many countries are kingdoms, perhaps) then 46 could be the best answer.
* However, I don't think 46 is the pedantic answer. It's the answer at a very very specific level of pedantry. Sufficiently pedantic to be aware that four of the states are not entitled states, and consider that more important than what the most obvious and useful answer is. But insufficiently pedantic to consider that they are, in fact, states, and thus the literally correct answer, whether they're also commonwealths or not, is 50.
* I have a love/hate relationship with that level of pedantry. I lived in it for a while (some would say between the ages of 4 and 21). I have a lot of sympathy -- it's a genuine effort to spread correctness and knowledge of obscure topics. However, I also feel obliged to help combat it, and expand people's perceptions into more pedantic and more helpful responses.
* And, while googling, I show its not universal, but intelligent, knowledgeable people do give the 46 answer.
http://www.qi.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=10008&start=12&sid=8da3f18e501905ad74133159e6526839
(Worryingly, MY post is now practically the top hit for the subject.)
Thoughts:
* I don't blame QI. Although its a shame I think they were misleading, the look on Alan Davies face when he gets a "do you know the obvious" question wrong to flashing and buzzing is worth it
* And he lost about 30 points guessing wrongly (the highest score was about 2, the lowest, about -30) so it didn't make any difference.
* And he was successfully funny, which is the real point.
* There's a few more nuggests. The CIA thinks there are fifty states, and you would think they have grim-faced men in charge of collecting this sort of intelligence.
* The Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has this to say: "Massachusetts, like Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Kentucky, is called a 'Commonwealth'. Commonwealths are states." He seems like the kind of person that ought to know.
* If the question could be phrased in such a way as to ask whether they are *called* states (a bit like asking how many countries are kingdoms, perhaps) then 46 could be the best answer.
* However, I don't think 46 is the pedantic answer. It's the answer at a very very specific level of pedantry. Sufficiently pedantic to be aware that four of the states are not entitled states, and consider that more important than what the most obvious and useful answer is. But insufficiently pedantic to consider that they are, in fact, states, and thus the literally correct answer, whether they're also commonwealths or not, is 50.
* I have a love/hate relationship with that level of pedantry. I lived in it for a while (some would say between the ages of 4 and 21). I have a lot of sympathy -- it's a genuine effort to spread correctness and knowledge of obscure topics. However, I also feel obliged to help combat it, and expand people's perceptions into more pedantic and more helpful responses.
* And, while googling, I show its not universal, but intelligent, knowledgeable people do give the 46 answer.