Archive for category pop
Too many tourists trying to occupy limited spaces
I spent the weekend in Prague attempting to relax after a stimulating two days attending the 2015 Camo User Meeting. It really was great except for the main sights of the city being so crowded with tourists like me.
The traffic patterns vary greatly by the intermittent busloads of tour groups—big bunches of Japanese or Americans and other places worldwide that come to this wonderfully historic city.
It turns out that there’s a universal power law governing pedestrian interactions according to studies led by the Director of the University of Minnesota’s Applied Motion Lab Stephen Guy. He and his collaborators have developed a novel statistical-mechanical approach to directly measure the interaction energy between pedestrians. Using this simple interaction law they can simulate crowd phenomena such as two tour groups crossing a city square or trying to push into a just-opened attraction. See these situations and others illustrated in CGI movies here.
All I can think of when viewing these simulations is how horrible it is to get caught up in a crowd. The saving grace is you needn’t think much when this happens—just let your natural collision-avoidance system take over and go on auto-pilot.
Cheers for Czech beers
This is the view of the Charles Bridge in Prague from the usual vantage point of a fellow like me who likes his beer. As reported here by Radio Prague, the Czech Republic leads the world by drinking 160 liters per person per year. With half liter cans of Urquel going for less than 35 Crowns–only about $1.50 in US dollars, I can see why this alcoholic brew has achieved such popularity in this country. Bottoms up!
A fine beer may be judged with only one sip, but it’s better to be thoroughly sure.
-Czech Proverb
Are dogs right-pawed or left?
Last week I judged a number of entrants in a 7th grade science fair. The one I liked the best investigated a number of dogs to see which paw they favored. This depended on which hand the student held out. When he held out his left hand, all dogs offered up their right paw. But when he held out his right hand, half of the canines shook it with their left paw. I conclude from this that far more dogs are lefties than humans, who favor their right hand by a ratio of 9-to-1. Based on what I read here in the Washington Post and see published on the internet, my guess is that dogs are split 50/50 left versus right. The same may be true for cats, although they might be slightly more likely to right-pawed according a study noted in the Post article.
Just for fun, test your pet by putting a snack just barely within their reach. Which paw do they put out? Make a note. Do it again a number of times. If you see what seems to be a significant bias to left or right, let me know.
Lightening up the load on birds and bees
My former neighbor Phil–a bee-keeper–told me he loaded up too many hives in his truck on a run to California and it went over-weight for the regulations on the road home. However, Phil beat the highway inspectors by banging on the side with a hammer as he drove onto the scale. The bees flew up in the air and took down the measurement just enough for a pass–avoiding a hefty fine.
I always wondered if Phil was ‘bee-essing’ me, but a recent study by a Stanford scientist, reported here by NewScientist, indicates that this trick might be bang on. The only catches are that the flyers (in this case Pacific parrotlets, must flap in synch and the weight must be taken on the upstroke. This whole idea would backfire badly on the downstroke when the weight of the flyers comes back double.
Bee-leave it or not.
Statistic of the year: Americans busy buttering up
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on December 31, 2014
According to today’s Wall Street Journal, USA citizens on average consumed 24 sticks of butter in 2014. Wisconsinites would be careful to differentiate whether this was really “butter” or actually “oleo”—aka margarine. By State law* restaurants will only serve the non-dairy “yellow stick from Satan himself” (as a Governor deemed it) if a customer specifically orders it. Until 1967 margarine was not allowed to be sold at all in Wisconsin—it had to be smuggled in from Illinois. Meanwhile in Minnesota only sickly white oleo could be purchased. To make it look buttery consumers had to knead in a capsule of yellow food color. I remember those days and my wife Karen recalls going on smuggling runs for pre-yellowed margarine from Iowa. Those were some messed up times!
Butter, preferably from grass-fed cows (margarine being ‘udderly’ eschewed), is now the rage as a health food thanks to The Cult of the Bulletproof Coffee Diet. At up to 2 tablespoons of this bovine grease per cup I presume 2015 will see an increase in per capita consumption. Yuk! These are some messed up times!
*See this detailed along with other strange Wisconsin State laws here.
The best accidental inventions of all time
I learned from my latest issue of Chemical and Engineering News that Stanley Stookey of Corning Glass Works died last month at age 99. In 1952 he mistakenly heated an alumino-silicate glass to 900 degrees C meaning only to top out at 600. After much cursing, according to the CEN story, Stookey found that instead of the molten mess expected, the material crystallized into a new type of material called a glass ceramic that proved to be “harder than carbon steel yet lighter than aluminum—shatterproof.”
Being in the business of planned experimentation it always amazes me to come across stories like this of serendipitous science. Obviously chance favors the prepared mind because most of the momentous discoveries are made by world-class chemists such as Stookey and others of his kind in the fields of physics and so forth.
I am a huge fan of 3M Post-It® Notes, not only due to their incredible usefulness, but also because it delights me to think of my fellow Minnesotan Art Fry coming up these by accident. For a list including him and a dozen other experts in their field who made the most of mishaps into inventions see 13 Accidental Inventions That Changed The World by Drake Baer of Business Insider. The one I like best is George Crum (great surname for a chef!) who reacted to customer complaining about his French fries by slicing them into ridiculously thin and hard-backed pieces. Never mind that it probably was his sister Katie who made the accidental discovery according to this Snopes investigation. Either way this works out to be a delicious story.
My advice to our clients is to keep a close watch for any strange results that crop up as statistically deviant in the course of a designed experiment. They may turn out to be really Crummy!
Pianogram of Piano Man
With its bizarre German-captioned photo of a full shopping cart cut in half, this literally off-the-wall Flowing Data blog on physical infographics got me going on displaying data using apropos figures or objects.
Just to show that it’s not just das deutchlanders who apply figures in clever ways see the clever “colour” matching guide inside this suckUKtm (!) tea mug.
Further internet-searching on “infographics” brought me to these intriguing ‘pianograms’ including one, appropriately enough, of Piano Man by Billy Joel.
P.S. Coincidentally Billy Joel (not my cup of tea) just announced yesterday his return to Minneapolis for a concert, despite swearing off any further touring. Check out a wicked Starcastic graph of his many marriages and their progression toward younger and younger women. Then, to be fair, see this story about how Billy Joel’s three wives stole his heart and his money.
Extreme brews and better ones that stay within more-reasonable limits
Posted by mark in pop, Uncategorized on October 26, 2014
While in Antwerp last week I sampled many good beers but none as good as the Trappist-brewed Orval pictured.
The locals love it so much that demand far exceeds supply from the ever-shrinking ranks of monks who brew it at the monks at the centuries-old Abbey of Notre Dame d’Orval. It is lip-smacking good, or as the Belgians in this Dutch-speaking region say—smakelijke.
On the flight home I watched several episodes of Brew Dogs, which features a pair of zany Scots who go for extreme craft beers. For example they took a blond Belgian ale and freeze distilled it many times to a level of 55 percent alcohol by volume (ABV)—a new record for beer. However even with it being infused with nettles from the Scottish Highlands and fresh juniper berries, this over-the-top brew must go well beyond the bounds of good taste.and … then put in a bottle created by a taxidermist.
A few years ago I headed over the border to Hudson, Wisconsin* to pick up a bottle of the then record-holder for ABV at a now-paltry 22 percent**—Dogfish Head’s World Wide Stout. With some coaching from my number one son, I poured it into a brandy-glass and sedately sipped it. I rate it zeer smakelijke. However, I am happy to go for far more reasonably high ABVs of 8 percent or so that come with tripel Belgian abbey ales. A few mugs of that provide a very good buzz. Proost!
*Many great beers do not achieve distribution in Minnesota due to liquor not being allowed for sale on Sundays and especially not growlers of craft-brews—all this being defeated again in May by State Senate. It seems that hell will freeze over and the Vikings will win the Superbowl before we can drink on Sundays. Until then it’s on Wisconsin.
**See this beer well down the BeerTutor.com list of strongest beers in the world.
Japanese tribologists confirm that banana peels are slippery
We all know that banana peels are slippery, but who suspected this would be worthy of study. I suppose that given there’s a field of study (tribology) that focuses exclusively on the rubbing of surfaces, it stands to reason that the friction of fruits would come under scrutiny. The Japanese researchers who studied banana peels were singled out for an IgNobel prize for an achievement that made people “LAUGH, and then THINK.” It turns out that learning what makes these fruit coverings (aka “epicarps”) so slippery might lead to better lubrication of artificial joints.
It really is amazing how much a banana peel does to reduce friction. Check out the data shown in this report by Business Insider. As noted here in a Science News blog a floor littered with peels is not good for monkeying around, being nearly as slippery as ice, which us Minnesotans can readily appreciate. It would be funny, though, to see someone try this. Ha ha—someone already did as you can see in this Mythbuster’s clip of slips.
Online courses attracting cheaters?
According to the authors of the recently published statistical study “No More Excuses-Personality Traits and Academic Dishonesty in Online Courses” (Journal of Statistical Science and Application, V2 (2014) 111-118) cheaters now run rampant across most college campuses. With the number of undergrads taking classes online—4.3 million and growing fast, opportunities for academic dishonesty are expanding. Surprisingly, this experiment showed less cheating in the virtual than in the traditional classroom settings; indicative, perhaps, of those going online being more motivated to learn, rather than just achieving credits. This is good to see. Also, I was happy to learn that this and other similar studies found Americans being less accepting of cheaters and applying higher standards for honesty than most other nationalities. Along those lines, US News and World Reports in this June posting advises students to “Think Twice Before Cheating in Online Courses,” particularly when being proctored by webcam. The lady pictured with a cheat-sheet written on her arm might never get the chance to roll up a sleeve. That’s just too bad.