Today I Learned

[efros]

Oct 2, 2024 22:59:47 GMT efros said:

That CNN has launched a paywall on its online platform,



I forecast it will go down in flames.

Apparently if you logout of the site, disable the sites ability to store cookies, and erase that site's existing cookies then the paywall disappears. Or just view the site in an incognito window.

[amanda]

Via a show on the ABC here called 'Take 5' where famous people/musicians are interviewed, I've learnt that Bill Bailey has perfect pitch, as do I. (discovered by my piano teacher at the age of 5 - a standard test she did for all new students)

[jenny]

My late mother-in-law also had perfect pitch. I remember us being in the room together when my (late) husband was playing the piano and she was not watching him, and she casually said "you played an E there and it should have been an E flat".

[crissdee]

I don't think she had perfect pitch, but my mum certainly had a far better ear for music than either of her sons. There was one particular piece (I forget which) that she always enjoyed, because an aunt of hers had pointed out the change in key part way through. Several times she would try to point it out to me, and I always had to gently reminder that all I hear is some notes, and then some more notes. Any difference between the two sets of notes was completely indistinguishable to me. She could play a piano/keyboard "by ear", well enough that it sounded like a tune to me, but that is still quite a low bar....

[eeyoresmum]

That progress is effing scary.


x.com/CensoredMen/status/1843652807699964295

[amanda]

Oct 8, 2024 15:59:15 GMT jenny said:

My late mother-in-law also had perfect pitch. I remember us being in the room together when my (late) husband was playing the piano and she was not watching him, and she casually said "you played an E there and it should have been an E flat".

Mine is such that I can also pitch other sounds, like elevator calls etc. (and then name the musical interval - major third etc)
And my new washing machine plays a four note, descending F major arpeggio upon completion of a wash. 

[celebaelin]

Today I finally learned of this album; people have been quoting bits of this to me for four decades and only limited portions have, until now, been familiar to me - on balance you'd think you'd get a fair exchange... but apparently not.

[efros]

Did you know it was a three sided album?

[celebaelin]

Not till you told me!

[celebaelin]

Richard Burton was nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars SEVEN times.

25th Academy Awards: Best Supporting Actor, nomination, My Cousin Rachel (1952)
26th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, The Robe (1953)
37th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, Becket (1964)
38th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965)
39th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
42nd Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, Anne of the Thousand Days (1969)
50th Academy Awards: Best Actor, nomination, Equus (1977)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Burton

I was aware that he never won but SEVEN?

[eeyoresmum]

Just now I learned that Scotland has Hunger Walls.
It's just sickening.



x.com/cridhe_/status/1847717914352504932

[efros]

Similar in concept to the parish works of the great depression, equally appalling.

[Leith]

Oct 20, 2024 15:38:51 GMT eeyoresmum said:

Just now I learned that Scotland has Hunger Walls.
It's just sickening.



x.com/cridhe_/status/1847717914352504932

That's my family's part of the world. I'm pretty sure the view of the mountain-top wall above the valley looking down the loch (at midpoint of video and repeated towards the end) is the wall on Beinn Dearg, above Inverlael, looking down Loch Broom.

My 5 x great grandfather's farm is just out of shot, up the valley from Inverlael. His once prosperous family lost their land during the clearances, and faced destitution. I have letters sent between them bemoaning the rapacious traffickers who divested them of their last assets in return for (unsafe) passage to Nova Scotia.

My 3 x great grandfather William was among those who stayed behind. He scraped a living as a cooper and fish curer on the islands you can see at the end of loch, around the time the Beinn Dearg wall was built. I suspect the birth of my great-great grandmother Bella (a third child and perhaps one more than the family could feed) prompted William's ill-fated venture to the US from which he never returned (or so family lore has it).

I think the history of that time and place is a big part of why Nova Scotia remains one of the last strongholds of Scots Gaelic.

Despite the dire circumstances of their flight, William and Bella's cousins thrived in Nova Scotia (somewhat at the expense of its previous Mi'kmaw and French inhabitants), and include Nova Scotia's first woman to earn a medical degree. Bella was brought up by foster parents in the US, but returned to the UK to marry.

[eeyoresmum]

Oct 8, 2024 15:59:15 GMT jenny said:

My late mother-in-law also had perfect pitch. I remember us being in the room together when my (late) husband was playing the piano and she was not watching him, and she casually said "you played an E there and it should have been an E flat".

My late ex mother-in-law was a very talented amateur soprano; sang in choirs.
She had perfect pitch.
And she was also very good at singing just slightly out of key every now and then when cooking or doing the dishes, which was very unsettling - it was so subtle that you first doubted yourself, and it was only when her husband could no longer contain his laughter when watching the 'audience' wince that we twigged she did it deliberately. 

[crissdee]

She could have kept that up for hours in front of me, because I wouldn't have known anything was wrong....

[amanda]

.....the word interalia as used in this context by the teacher at my school of South African heritage. 

Dad mentioned interalia moving house.....

A quick Google told me the meaning. 

[celebaelin]

On Mars gravitational acceleration is 3.73 m/s²; on Titan, the biggest of the moons of Saturn, gravitational acceleration is 1.352 m/s².

This is confusing me as Brian Cox is currently telling me that Titan has methane storms - how does it keep an atmosphere when Mars cannot?  Titan's atmosphere is nitrogen (94.2%), methane (5.65%), and hydrogen (0.099%) and argon (0.0043%) according to Wiki at 1.47 kPa (about 1.5 times the pressure of earth's atmosphere) because of the cold (-182.55 °C) increasing the density of the gasses.

Apparently it benefits from Saturn's magnetic field which acts as a protection from solar winds.

You are right that it's surprising that Titan, being just a moon, has a thick atmosphere. Usually, the answer includes magnetism: Earth has an atmosphere because the liquid magma inside the planet produces a magnetic field. This magnetic field changes the paths of the particles in the solar wind, thus preserving the volatile gases intact. Mars did once have an atmosphere, just like Earth, but it being farther away from the Sun, the magma froze and lost its magnetic properties.

Titan itself doesn't have a magnetic field, but Saturn does. Saturn's magnetosphere is produced by the motion of the super-compressed hydrogen gas inside the planet (metallic fluid). The field is so strong it encompasses the satellites, including Titan.

Saturn doesn't have the same magma as Earth. Earth is a rocky planet. This means that it was formed so close to the sun that light gases (such as hydrogen) could not coalesce due to the high temperature and the solar wind. Therefore, the inner planets (Mercury to Mars) are composed mostly of rock and metal. It's the liquid iron in the outer core that makes Earth magnetic.

Gaseous planets instead have a small solid metal/rocky core (therefore, no magnetic field from there), and a huge layer of light gases (hydrogen and helium). The gases are not usually magnetic, but under such an enormous pressure they take a 'metallic' structure, which means they can conduct electricity like a metal. This same property allows them to generate a magnetic field.

www.quora.com/How-is-Titan-able-to-hold-an-atmosphere-with-14-of-earth%E2%80%99s-gravity-while-the-moon-cant-with-16

Beware - some of the other answers there are incorrect eg Mars is 4.77 times the mass of Titan.

Low atmospheric temperature also means that the gas molecules have lower energies and do not reach escape velocity despite the lower mass of the body they're trying to escape.

High in Titan’s atmosphere, methane and nitrogen molecules are split apart by the Sun's ultraviolet light and by high-energy particles accelerated in Saturn's magnetic field. The pieces of these molecules recombine to form a variety of organic chemicals (substances that contain carbon and hydrogen), and often include nitrogen, oxygen and other elements important to life on Earth.

Some of the compounds produced by that splitting and recycling of methane and nitrogen create a kind of smog—a thick, orange-colored haze that makes the moon's surface difficult to view from space. (Spacecraft and telescopes can, however, see through the haze at certain wavelengths of light outside of those visible to human eyes.) Some of the heavy, carbon-rich compounds settle to the moon’s surface—these hydrocarbons play the role of “sand” in Titan’s vast dune fields. And methane condenses into clouds that occasionally drench the surface in methane storms.

The methane in Titan’s atmosphere is what makes its complex atmospheric chemistry possible, but where all that methane comes from is a mystery. Because sunlight continuously breaks down methane in Titan’s atmosphere, some source must be replenishing it or it would be depleted over time. Researchers suspect methane could be belched into Titan's atmosphere by cryovolcanism—volcanoes releasing chilled water instead of molten rock lava—but they’re not certain if this or some other process is responsible.

science.nasa.gov/saturn/moons/titan/facts/

Coincidentally NASA believe there might be life on Titan.

The Cassini spacecraft’s numerous gravity measurements of Titan revealed that the moon is hiding an underground ocean of liquid water (likely mixed with salts and ammonia). The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe also measured radio signals during its descent to the surface, in 2005, that strongly suggested the presence of an ocean 35 to 50 miles (55 to 80 kilometers) below the icy ground. The discovery of a global ocean of liquid water adds Titan to the handful of worlds in our solar system that could potentially contain habitable environments. Additionally, Titan’s rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane might serve as a habitable environment on the moon’s surface, though any life there would likely be very different from Earth’s life. Thus, Titan could potentially harbor environments with conditions suitable for life—meaning both life as we know it (in the subsurface ocean) and life as we don’t know it (in the hydrocarbon liquid on the surface). Although there is so far no evidence of life on Titan, its complex chemistry and unique environments are certain to make it a destination for continued exploration.

[efros]

That penguins are not only impossible for Benadryl Cucumberpatch to pronounce but also aren't actually penguins.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin#Pinguinus

[tetsabb]

Oct 30, 2024 14:21:18 GMT efros said:

That penguins are not only impossible for Benadryl Cucumberpatch to pronounce but also aren't actually penguins.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin#Pinguinus

Next, they'll be telling us that Pluto is not a planet, and that Earth has more than one moon

Oh, hold on....

[alexanderhoward]

The natural history museum in Rouen has a display about the great auk and a long piece on the board beside it berating anyone qui appelle un manchot un 'pingouin'.

[efros]

That the Cauld Lad is supposedly the ghost of a murdered stable boy who haunts Hylton Castle in SUnderland.


en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauld_Lad_of_Hylton

[crissdee]

One for our Antipodean correspondent. Is this even slightly true? (seen on YT shorts)

"Did you know? You can LEGALLY cut an Australian $10 bill in half and use each half as $5! It's true! In Australia, any banknote that's more than half intact can be used for its proportional value. If less than 20% is missing, you get FULL FACE VALUE! "

[amanda]

It's illegal to deface any of our bank notes, let alone cut them in half. The 'new' plastic ones often tear if kept in wallets etc folded for awhile and some stores won't accept them. But with banks also closing down, they don't do what they did in my grandfather's day and remove such notes from circulation.

[bigmartin]

I had a fiver neatly cut in two by the cash machine. The bank changed it, though I didn't tell them it wasn't their machine it came out of!

[crissdee]

Three things I have learned today, two things of little significance, and one thing that has given me much perturbation...

1) Walking past our local swimming pool, I saw they had removed a gate which blocked access to the main windows/doors, allowing me to see the thing properly for the first time. I discovered that it has no deep end, just two shallow ends and a "deep" middle. I put "deep" in quotation marks as it plunges only to a depth of 1.42m. Even for someone of my own concise dimensions, that is barely chin height. For someone of Cel's more considerable mien, it would be chest height at best.
2) The building it is housed in, despite being fully refurbished during my residency here, has the three sets of double glass doors through which I was looking, sealed up with gaffer tape, which speaks volumes about the quality of said refurbishment...
3) Idly reminiscing about my archery career, I realised I had utterly forgotten the name of the club that was blessed by SWSOIWLTB's membership. A swift search online found me on their website, where I found myself looking at her telephone number and email address. I know what I want to do with this information, but the gap between what I want to do, and what is appropriate/sensible to do is a large one, as is the gap between what I want to do and what I have the courage to do....

[suze]

Nov 4, 2024 17:10:12 GMT crissdee said:

 I discovered that it has no deep end, just two shallow ends and a "deep" middle. I put "deep" in quotation marks as it plunges only to a depth of 1.42m. Even for someone of my own concise dimensions, that is barely chin height. For someone of Cel's more considerable mien, it would be chest height at best.

Unfortunately, there does seem to be a perception in this country that swimming is mainly for children, and the layout of that pool suggests that this perception is alive and well in Builth Wells.  1.42 meters is 4' 10", which is scarcely deep enough for "serious" swimming up and down in lanes, the sort of swimming that Jenny and I do.  Breaststroke needs the deepest water, and if you attempt breaststroke in much less than 5' of water you might find yourself kicking the floor.

Two shallow ends with the deepest water in the middle is an unusual arrangement, and probably prevents the pool being used for racing.  For a racing dive - the way that swimmists enter the pool in races, diving horizontally rather than vertically - the water needs to be at least 1.35 meters (4' 5") deep, or there is a risk of swimmists hitting their heads on the floor.  That's why swimming pools are usually arranged with the racing start at the deep end.  (Backstroke races start in the water, so those can still be held.)

I don't suppose Builth Wells is planning to host the World Swimming Championships or the Olympics any time soon anyway, but for those events the pool has no shallow end.  It must have a minimum depth of 2.5 meters (8' 2") throughout.  For competitive diving - the sort where the divists clamber up to a high board and then do fancy somersaults before they enter the water - you need at least 15', and most swimming pools have signs telling you not even to think about it.  The place where I normally go swimming does, and the deep end there is marked as 3.8 meters (12' 6").

Nov 4, 2024 17:10:12 GMT crissdee said:

 Idly reminiscing about my archery career, I realised I had utterly forgotten the name of the club that was blessed by SWSOIWLTB's membership. A swift search online found me on their website, where I found myself looking at her telephone number and email address. I know what I want to do with this information, but the gap between what I want to do, and what is appropriate/sensible to do is a large one.

There may also be a fairly large gap between the amount of information that website shows to the public, and the amount it ought to.

Even giving the names of members of your club on a public website may need their permission. If would-be members are invited to contact the Secretary then it is entirely reasonable to give contact details for that person - although it definitely needs her permission - but there seems no good reason to display that information re others.

[amanda]

Re the membership, it shouldn't be readily viewed on a website unless this woman is on a board etc where those persons' details tend to be. My music library guild has a members section, gained by secure password access and available to members only. 
As what I encounter on other sites, I am unable to enter these areas unless I am a paid up member and possess such credentials. 

[crissdee]

Nov 4, 2024 18:19:01 GMT suze said:

Nov 4, 2024 17:10:12 GMT crissdee said:

 Idly reminiscing about my archery career, I realised I had utterly forgotten the name of the club that was blessed by SWSOIWLTB's membership. A swift search online found me on their website, where I found myself looking at her telephone number and email address. I know what I want to do with this information, but the gap between what I want to do, and what is appropriate/sensible to do is a large one.

There may also be a fairly large gap between the amount of information that website shows to the public, and the amount it ought to.

Even giving the names of members of your club on a public website may need their permission. If would-be members are invited to contact the Secretary then it is entirely reasonable to give contact details for that person - although it definitely needs her permission - but there seems no good reason to display that information re others.

In the context of the display, it appears she must be the secretary of the club, as hers are the only details given, presumably with her permission.  I think I will probably end up sending her an email.  What that email will contain, and how it might best be written is yet to be decided...

[Bondee]

Nov 4, 2024 17:10:12 GMT crissdee said:

Idly reminiscing about my archery career, I realised I had utterly forgotten the name of the club that was blessed by SWSOIWLTB's membership. A swift search online found me on their website, where I found myself looking at her telephone number and email address. I know what I want to do with this information, but the gap between what I want to do, and what is appropriate/sensible to do is a large one. as is the gap between what I want to do and what I have the courage to do....

Send her an e-mail telling her what you just told us. You'd forgotten the name of the club, after a search you found their website, noticed her e-mail address and wondered how she was doing so you thought you'd drop her a line to find out.

edit: Your ninja post pretty much says you're thinking of doing that anyway.

[crissdee]

That was certainly the sort of thing I had in mind, but if I was any good at this stuff*, she would be known to you lot as "Mrs crissdee", or at least "one of my ex's", rather than SWSOIWLTB.

I am fairly determined not to let this get away from me this time, but there is a lot of stuff in my head that I have to get sorted out first...




*or had any confidence in myself regarding this stuff