jack

For the propagation of news, apparently Arthur C. Clarke has died.

Of the vast number of "Gary Gygax has died. I will now demonstrate my witicitude by humorously conflating Gygax's existence with that of his creations" comments on the internet, my favourite few were:

xkcd Death: "You know how when someone dies, they challenge me to a game for their soul? I'm afraid I might be a while on this guy." (Which I think is a great comic, but not quite up to xkcd's usual staggeringly good presentation, I infer it was a little hurried and hence had more verbiage, which just goes to show how good it normally is.)
Penny Arcade A tribute banner "Gary Gygax. Rolling in his grave."
Futurama Gary: "It's a. *rolls dice* Pleasure to meet you! "

(OK, that last wasn't a tribute, it was just good. And a honourable mention to Order of the Stick, because although it's not as funny as the others it (a) fits seamlessly into the ongoing storyline of the comic and (b) says who Gygax was and what he did. I know the name, but no more about the history, but definitely do appreciate the existence of roleplaying games.)

As several people have reminded people already, if you like seeing celestial mechanics in action, you won't be able to see the moon for several hours about around 03:00 GMT tonight. It may be wise to look now for comparison: if the moon is obscured from the sun by the earth, that's a lunar eclipse, if the earth is obscured from the sun by the moon, that's a solar eclipse, but if the sun is obscured by the earth from you, that's night, that's no less special, but happens every day night, and the moon being obscured from you by the moon is also normal, and happens every month[1], and the moon being obscured from the earth by the earth is also normal, and also happens every day, but doesn't have such a good name, except "after moonset".

[1] Pedant note, yes it DOES happen every month. Sometimes twice :)

The other thing was the old chestnut about how many US states there are. The question is confused because several of them are commonwealths. I ignored this trivia question for ages, not knowing anything about it, but when it came up there, I finally felt impelled to look up a definitive answer.

Before that, I couldn't even have told you the traditional number with confidence. For the record, there are:

* 50 entities commonly referred to as states, including Alaska and Hawaii not contiguous with the rest
* DC
* Puerto Rico
* Some incorporated territories (mainly inhabited atols)
* Some unincorportated territories (mainly uninhabited atols)
* Some regions that may overlap with an above case (water, indian reservations, etc)

People often seem to think there are 52 states. Perhaps because 50 sounds too round a number. There are a couple of suggestions for why this is. (1) People remembered Alaska and Hawaii, but thought they were as well (2) That's how many cards there are in a deck.

I certainly suffered from the second factual false friend :)

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread212402/pg1 has a humorous description of the situation, and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_divisions_of_the_United_States a more sober one.

However, the "trick" question is about the states.

How many US states are there in the USA?

This typically crops up in trivia questions and the like. It generally goes something like,

Person A: How many US states are there in the USA?
Person B: 50
Person A: Ha ha! You're wrong! [1, 2, 3, or 4] of them are Commonwealths!

And sometimes you get:

Person C: Ha ha! No, you're wrong!

QI stopped at line three. (Did I remember that correctly?) But I think I disagree, I think its best to say there are 50. Although, of course, if anyone ever asks the question, the Commonwealth of Virginia had better be the first thing out of your mouth if you guess that's what they meant, or they'll ignore your citations and consider you an idiot for the next week.

As I understand it, "state" was originally referring to a political entity the way "country" does. The articles of independence talk about severing ties from the state of Britain.

I use Virginia as an example. There seem to be two possibilities.

(1) Virginia is a commonwealth, not a state, although shares all properties with a US State.
(2) People are fooled into believing in false dichotomy that it must be a commonwealth OR a state, the Commonwealth of Virginia is a state the way the Kingdom of Great Britain is a country.

Or possibly somewhere in between. However, the second case looks most convincing to me.

Evidence

As far as I can see, the evidence that Commonwealth of Virginia can be described as a US State is:

* It was a state in the sense the framers of the constitution were thinking of, a political entity
* It signed the Articles of Confederation that referred to the thirteen uniting units as states
* The constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia refers to itself as a state in at least one section
* It is one of the entities having all the rights and responsibilities of a state as described in the US constitution
* It is commonly referred to as a State, official documents mentioning US States don't have to add "and commonwealths"

And the evidence that it isn't a state:

* It doesn't use "State" in its official title, whereas other states do.

It comes down to the meaning of the words. I think the meaning I'm thinking of for "state" is the only reasonable one in the context, and normally intended. I think "commonwealth" is more fuzzy, to some extent it describes entities having some philosophy, but a lot it just refers to several sets of entities that have come to be identified in that way. Like, if you ask "How many kingdoms are there," you might have to ask "Do you meant, how many countries technically ruled by a monarch? Or how many countries called 'kingdom'?"

If so, it sounds to me like the Commonwealths mentioned are definitely *also* states. So mentioning this distinction is sensible, but "50" is the only correct answer.

However, I've probably missed *something*, possibly something important. Can anyone add anything? Does the constitution treat them in any way differently (I thought I remembered that it did, but couldn't find anything.)

ETA: Followup post here

Google sync will probably take care of me. But in case you're curious, here's what I would do if I could, it sounds simple enough. Does anyone write Firefox extensions, please implement it! I might get round to it, but not soon.

* Remember the time of the last sync and if since then:
** If the local is unchanged and the remote has changed, copy the remote to the local.
** If the remote is unchanged and the local has changed, copy the local to the remote.
** If both have changed, "merge" the files.

* Merge means, examine both markup-language trees and put in the output everything in either input

* The above sync operation should be run:
** Automatically before adding a bookmark
** Automatically after adding a bookmark
** Automatically on opening the browser
** Automatically, [once] a day
** Manually with a button that shows the current state and says "upload" "download" or "merge"

I think this has all the properties I want. So long as both computers are online while I'm using them, bookmarks will propagate not slower than 24 hours, and never become conflicted.

The worst that can happen is that one computer be offline when I use it and that I then delete or move a bookmark in one browser and do anything to a bookmark in the other (which is unlikley, if it's offline, I'm probably not firefoxing, am I?). In that case, the bookmark will have to be redeleted. You could fix this by adding mark-up elements to indicate which computer did what, but it's probably not worth it.

Note, this works because I don't use add bookmarks all the time. Opening an scp connection every two minutes could be wasteful, but one a day is fine :)

Also, you could do something similar external to Firefox, but you'd have to watch the bookmark file and see when it changes, and have a cache from before it changed. And it works fairly easily because of the tree-nature: you *can* sync text files, but merging is confusing.

What are presents? Shall we say, giving someone something they wouldn't have had otherwise. However, the reasons why they don't have that differ. For a child, it's probably "your parents haven't bought it yet." For many people, it's "I can't afford to buy that." However, a pleasant middle-class household *could* afford any thing they wanted, all the way up to £200,000 if they chose; but they can't afford *all* things, so you chose which to spend surplus income on. Then the limiting factor is almost "thoyling." A present to myself is something I can afford, that's fun, but that I'm being profligate for :) If you're actually pretty rich, then you have the "already got everything problem."

The *other* limiting factor is knowing you wanted something, or that something existed. That's why buying presents can be so difficult, you're looking for something you know someone would like, that they wouldn't. Meeting both factors is more "wow-ful" though meeting either is fine. For someone very rich, this is about the only way. For someone very poor, it's obviously better, but there would be many things you both know you want, that would be very acceptable. If you can't meet either, that's when you exchange book tokens, which is perfectly fine, but isn't special.

Of course, there are other things as well. You might give someone something they couldn't have for any combination of reasons including the above and: you were married to them didn't previously want them to; they would be embarrassed to buy it; they would have had to get it shipped from another country; etc.

This is why I like books. If you *really* want a book, you can buy it, but there are too many good books, so having that specific one is a little extra unjustified luxury. And there will *always* be books you might like but haven't read. It's difficult to know what, but at least you stand a *fair* chance of picking right :)

For myself, I always like:

* Things I didn't know I wanted, geek toys, etc.
* Music. I listen to almost no music, so if you want to impress your tastes upon me, try, please! :)
* Books. Pick something you like and think I might like, and it'll always be gratefully received.
* Chocolate. I don't *especially* like chocolate, but it's always very nice and I never buy it :)

By the way, this came up on monday, and it is as I thought, and in case it wasn't clear at the time: the film for which what Soylent Green is is a spoiler is "Soylent Green".

PS. And please don't say what it is in a comment to be funny. I know the meme is more popular than the movie now, and everyone knows what happens (the last person who didn't was told on monday today) but just humour me, the irony would be too painful otherwise.

Edit: PPS. Other spoilers are as ok as normal though. Elim Garak, I am your father!

PPPS. I think this being the first time I've made explicit a comment policy. I know some people explain, but I've always left it implicit, assuming that the default amongst people I know is clear, even if it annoys some people, being approximately the rules of the living room:

* I reserve the right to enforce my will on my place, but in actual fact everything will be controlled by social etiquette.
* Except people I don't know trying to sell stuff to people indiscriminantly. They will be ejected.
* People breaking the law in a major way, ditto.
* Be polite, no gratuitous hate, no gratuitously work unsafe stuff, be careful with legally dodgy stuff. Or I'll ask you nicely not to :)
* Never edit something without making it clear, if it changes the meaning.
* Everything I write copyright me. Everything you write, I'm not sure.
* If I ask you to abide by an etiquette, please do.