A reader might find much in this column to heartily disagree with. If they were to openly express their opinion in a letter to the editor, others might be impacted. My dad — an ardent believer in the “King’s English” on which his education was based — would have had a fit reading the previous […]
Life + Outdoors
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Much Ado about Zero
No simpler concept exists in arithmetic than the “number line,” which stretches from minus infinity through (-3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3) to infinity, and contains every “regular” number. Even or odd, positive or negative, prime (divisible only by itself and one) or composite, rational (2/3) or irrational (?, ?2) — the diagram says […]
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Feb. 15-31, 2011
Feb. 15. In either the Heavy Industrial or Agriculture-Exclusive zones of the city of Ferndale, it is permitted to operate a hog farm, turkey farm, fur farm or frog farm. No definition of “frog farm” is given. The children of that city are advised to consider seriously the career of frog farmer and to undertake […]
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Singing the Blues
Most people opt for blue when asked what their favorite color is (mine is black). Here are some thoughts about the color: Why is the sky blue? Above the atmosphere, unfiltered white sunlight is actually a blend of colors from red to violet (ROYGBIV, if you remember your high school mnemonic). Our blue sky comes […]
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Feb. 1-14, 2011
Feb. 1. The municipal code of the city of Trinidad numbers 565 pages in length, or roughly 1.8 pages per citizen. Much of it is delightful and gratifying reading, particularly the section entitled Expectoration, which states that no person shall expectorate upon any sidewalk, street or floor in public buildings or upon any other public […]
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Anagrams
To be, or not to be — that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune … In one of the Bard’s best thought-of tragedies, our insistent hero, Hamlet, queries on two fronts about how life turns rotten … Anything strike you as odd about […]
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Bizarre Basque Humboldt Connection
OK, I admit that this is a pretty lame attempt to follow His August News Kontroller’s prime directive: “Keep it local!” The Humboldt connection with the Basque language is that the older brother of the guy for whom our county is named established that Basque is the only non Indo-European language in Western Europe. While […]
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Archimedes Tomb
And so I took a good look round all the numerous tombs that stand beside the Agrigentine Gate. Finally I noted a little column just visible above the scrub: It was surmounted by a sphere and a cylinder. The sphere and the cylinder were the tip-off for Roman writer Cicero, quoted above, as he was […]
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Jan. 16-31, 2011
Jan. 16. January Men, you have made it halfway through the month. Do not, under any circumstances, start imagining your first bitterly, shockingly, bracingly cold drink quite yet. Jan. 17. On Nov. 2, 1983, a Republican president named Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill making today a federal holiday in honor of Martin Luther […]
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Dear Field Notes Guy …
Is it true that women talk more than men? According to the cover of the first printing (2006) of the book The Female Brain, by neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, “A woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man uses about 7,000.” The publisher removed the claim from later editions, but not before it was […]
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Jan. 1-15, 2011
Jan. 1. Southerners know that it is vitally important to eat black-eyed peas on New Year’s Day or risk a year of bad luck. We know of one man, married to a southern woman, who detests the peas and swallows one each year, like a pill, to appease his wife. Black-eyed pea fritters, made in […]
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Mars, One-Way
After decades of popular-press articles, a serious proposal to start the colonization of Mars with one-way missions has been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. In a recent issue of the Journal of Cosmology (journalofcosmology.com/Mars108.html), physicist Paul Davies (Arizona State) and geologist Dirk Schulze-Makuch (Washington State) make a strong case for sending two two-person teams […]