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Stu Savory's Blog
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Thursday, April 27, 2006
20 years after Chernobyl
BTW, over a period of 20 years, Chernobyl has killed probably only ¼ to ½ of the number of people killed by the Americans in Irak so far. The US has the real Dubya-Em-Dees :-( Wednesday, April 26, 2006
We went for a drink . . .. . . in the smallest pub in the world :-)Well, the illustrious Guiness Book of World records says it is. And the "Alte Saustall" - which is German for "Old Pig-sty" - turns out to be in Blomberg, a mere 40 miles from where were live. So we got in our trusty VW New Beetle and trundled off... Other pubs laying claims to this title are :-
There is also the legally required window. It is behind the bar and enables the barman to turn around and serve any guests sitting in the huge beergarden. You can see the walled beergarden in the exterior-view photo on the left. It is all of 4.5 square metres and could seat about 10 to 12 if they were really intimate friends ;-) 
The building actually is a converted old pig-sty, retaining its original size and the original adjacent pig-pen has become the beergarden. The pub has a tiny beer-cellar, just big enough for one 50 liter keg of ale. No heating, and ventilation is by leaving the door open:( So far so good, but then things turned sour :-( We hadn't called ahead to make a reservation, it being in the middle of the week. The landlord's website claims it's open 10 am to 10pm, except mondays. But when we got there, it was shut :-( :-( :-( So we walked the 100 meters to the landlord's main pub, Der Scharfrichter. That's German and means The Executioner. The extrovert landlord Reinhold Mennecke was not available for comment :-( No food was available either. So we just had a beer while the lone barmaid explained that the Saustall was only open for groups who booked ahead, otherwise it was not an economic proposition to staff it. I think that Herr Mennecke should be honest and say this on his website, so that people don't make frustratingly superfluous trips there. Judging by the photos outside, the landlord likes to be photographed with 'outstanding' guests, such as Lollo Ferrari(nsfw!), now just as dead as his pubs. IMHO, a loser :-( Monday, April 24, 2006
How to piss off your maths teacher :-)N othing pisses off a teacher more than sloppy work ? Oh but there is one thing : apparently sloppy work which nevertheless gets the right answer ;-) Next time you're in a geometry class doing Pythagoras' theorem (proof here), draw this construct instead. With luck, your maths teacher won't realise you're teasing him.
Now draw arbitrary parallograms of any size on each of the upper two sides of the triangle (i.e. on AB and on AC). Extend the upper sides of these two arbitrary parallelograms so that they meet at a point which you label point P. Draw the straight line PARQ. The line crosses the hypotenuse BC at R and the length of the segment RQ is made the same length as PA. From the line BC drop a parallelogram with 2 sides parallel to and the same length as RQ. Now proclaim loudly in class that this is a proof of Pythagoras theorem (AB2 + AC2 = BC2), i.e. the area of the parallelogram on the hypotenuse BC equals the sum of the areas of the other two parallelograms, AB and AC ;-) Your maths teacher may bug out is he/she doesn't remember that Pappus of Alexandria proved this about 300 B.C. Then you can gently explain you were pulling his/her leg and collect top marks whilst teasing the teacher. You'll be class hero/heroine for a week ;-) Schoolboys Ranjit(India) and David(Scotland), this one's for you ;-) Saturday, April 22, 2006
Sanborn blew it!Should you ever have cause to make a visit to the CIA site at Langley you will notice a rather mysterious sculpture by one Jim Sanborn there, as shown in the photo on the left. The sculpture is called Kryptos and contains four text messages inscribed in code. Difficult code, really, really hard.And it's even harder than we thought because Sanborn blew it, big time. In order to decode the four texts, each needs the results of decoding the previous texts. So if you get just one decode wrong, the whole result comes out wrong. The first 3 texts have been decoded (by Stein then by Gillogly) but the fourth resists all attempts so far. Now it turns out that Sanborn left off a letter X from the ciphertext of message number three, "just to make the sculpture look neater" (sic!). Of course this means the decodes so far were wrong, message three should finish off saying "Layer two" instead of "ID by rows". If you want to give it a try, here are the ciphertexts. So Sanborn has been leading all us crippies up the garden path for years. But now he's admitted his mistake we can make renewed attempts to crack message number four :-) Calling now Dirk in Holland, David and Dave at the NSA, Frode at CERN, Tom and Jerry (sic!), Nanette, Bruce, Norbert (HNF), David(Hamer) and any other cryptographers reading this : get to work on it again lads (and lady), 'cos the news is now breaking at Wired too. Monday, April 17, 2006
Dem Bones, Dem Bones, Dem DRY Bones.An Easter trip report : Do you remember enjoying the gospel song "Dem Bones" ?The song served as an anatomy lesson too, viz... Your toe bone connected to your foot bone, Your foot bone connected to your ankle bone, . . Your neck bone connected to your head bone, I hear the word of the Lord! Well if you did, you'd enjoy visiting the ossuary in the abbey at Sedlec(Kutna Hora), about 40 miles east of Prague in the Czeck Republic. It's just a day's motorcycle ride SE of here. In 1278 the Cistercian abbot Henry made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and brought back to Sedlec an urn full of earth from Golgotha which he spread in the cemetary there. So people liked to be buried there 'in holy soil'. By the time of the plague (1318?) there were 30,000 skeletons there. The chapel was built around 1400, but not until 1511 did a half-blind monk collect up all the bones into the crypt to make way for new burials. Much later (1870) Franz Rindt was tasked by the Duke of Schwarzenberg to integrate all these bones into the chapel as decoratively as possible. I have collected six photos from around the web to give you a visual impression. The photo lower left shows the Duke's coat of arms. The place is not at all macabre. It is a functioning church, with an air of peace and the reverence of death of about it. If you only ever visit one ossuary, this is the place to go. FYI : 'Golgotha' (where Jesus was crucified) means 'the place of skulls', which makes this a very appropriate road trip to make over Easter :-)
Sunday, April 16, 2006
Commemorating Culloden, 260 years on.
Listen to the Battlefield Band singing 'My bonny yew tree' (697 kB mp3).
Friday, April 14, 2006
XPICTOC"Papa, what's this word 'Xpictoc' in this easter story? Do you know what it means?""No, look it up in the dictionary as I taught you to do, Xpictoc is not in my vocabulary." "Papa, it's not in the dictionary, they've never heard of 'Xpictoc' either." "Well maybe it's an abbreviation, like TOC is an abbreviation for 'Table-of-Contents' ." "Papa, that leaves XPIC. What's an XPIC? Is that an abbreviation too?" "Look, Papa doesn't know that either. But films (movies) are X-rated if they are for adults only, so maybe XPICs are X-rated films?" "Like your dirty picture DVDs, Papa?" "Harrummmph. No. X-pics are usually excessively violent. They might make you suffer". "Like what film, Papa?" "Like Mel Gibson's film 'The Passion of the Christ'. It was such a violent film that in France a priest died of a heart attack while watching it in a cinema!" "So XPICTOC is a table of contents, a list, of pics that make you ill and to make little children suffer?" (sotto voce) "Sufferin' little children who come unto me!". "Maybe it's a foreign word?" "The Greeks had a word for it, I'm sure ;-)" "So it's an old word then, Papa, really really old, like the oldest word there is?" "Yes, my son, 'In the beginning was the word, and the word was XPICTOC!' " Papa, what does 'Habeamus Papam' mean?" "Oh for Christ's sake, just shut up!" Wednesday, April 12, 2006
My Swan Upping . . .
... at which I got shat upon :-(
Many moons ago I attended a swan upping. This is a traditional (12th century) ritual in which the English monarch claims that all the swans in the realm are his/hers. Which is why we commoners don't get to eat swans in the UK (I've eaten swan once at a medieval-style feast here in Germany. It's a fat and greasy bird, sort of a feathered Yo Momma). Under a Royal Charter of the 15th century, the Vintners' Company and the Dyers' Company, two Livery Companies of the City of London, are entitled to share in the Queens' ownership. They do the royal swan census by ringing the swans annually and annularly(sic!) during the third week of July. Question : if special small rings were made for the young swans, would these be called cygnet-rings? Anyway.... During the ceremony, the Queen's, the Vintners', and the Dyers' Swan Uppers row up the Thames in skiffs, trying to catch the swans. Mostly, the swans disapprove of this, get angry and aggressive or try to escape. That year we were standing amongst hundreds of other spectators watching from the Thames' banks. One of the swans took an instant hissing dislike to me, and spread its wings and started to run at me across the water, I thought to attack me. Unable to flee because of the crowd, I whipped up my hands to at least protect my face from that sharp beak. The swan, which must have seen this as an act of aggression, 'chickened' out and converted his attack-run into a take-off. It had to redouble its efforts in order to (just) clear my head and beshat me as it just cleared me by 2 inches. I don't know who was more scared! It must have been me, because my hair turned white that day ;-) Now in these days of avian flu, I'm wondering what the Swan Uppers will do this year to avoid infection with H5N1. Even cancel the traditional event, maybe? BTW: Never been to see Swan Lake since, but I DO miss listening to Flanders and Swann ;) Monday, April 10, 2006
Geometry : a forgotten artS everal of you commented on last thursday's blog "Can today's teenagers still do Geometry ?". The general consensus is that adults soon forgot the geometry they learned in school. But I also got a nice anecdote from Anne (UK) and a challenge from Ranjit (India). Let's kick off with two reminiscing friends :Mandarin Meg wrote that there are more important things in life : "How much did we forget? All. Isn't there a song? don't know much about geometry don't know much trigonometry but i do know that i love you and i know that if you love me too what a wonderful world this would be... Guess the dude had a crush on a gal in the math class ;-)" Winston Rand tried to remember what he had learned and reminisced : "I stared at the questions you posed for several minutes, thinking ... I've been here before. Kind of a deja vu. In school, math was always my favorite subject, and geometry my pearl. I ate it up, made straight A's, and never really had to study much - it just came naturally. That was then... Not once in the intervening years have I had a need for geometry or trig beyond some simple calculation using Pythagorus' delusion. It has been too long. Those brain cells have died off and been replaced by others that don't know a square-root from a dodecahedron (which BTW I made a model of once - fun project - and it all actually fit together!) I s'pose the old adage is true, you use it or lose it. Today's teenagers might have a better shot at the questions you pose than adults. At least the teens who have had geometry in school. Adults (save math teachers) don't use it and have lost it. So as I stare at your problems, I see a mysterious message in Sanskrit, one that I do not understand. But thanks for the chance to reminisce." Ha, Winston et al., the message was "Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin" ;-) Jack (UK) tells me that maths education in the UK is dropping off. Anne, who is a maths teacher in England, tells a nice children's anecdote: "I didn't know about solving quadratic equations geometrically, so thanks for blowing my mind again. I just love that "Aha!" effect when I see how things hang together, like algebra and geometry in your example :-) I love it when children make their own "Aha!" discoveries too. Let me tell you a story about that. I'd got hold of several sets of used bingo-balls from the local bingo hall, so that the schoolchildren could play pattern-games with them. I had them set out a multiplication table and note that the squares x2 run down the diagonal top left to bottom right (see left pic). What a lovely story, Anne. And it's not just coincidence. Here's the algebra to prove it :-) The odd numbers are the series 2x+1, so the squares of the odd numbers are (2x+1)*(2x+1). This multiplies out to 4x2 + 4x +1. As your very bright little girl pupil said, 1 is the remainder, because 4x2 + 4x = 4*(x+1)*x and either x or x+1 is divisible by 2, and thus 4x2 + 4x is divisible by 8. QED :-) Ranjit sent a sarcastic comment from India, saying "OK, mister geometry cleverdick, lets see you trisect an angle with a ruler and compasses only!" Afraid that's not possible, Ranjit, because Euclid's rules don't let you make any marks on the straightedge :-( However, I'm going use a ruler (which YOU specified!), which DOES have marks. 
How to trisect an angle : Draw a unit circle with a measured radius (say 10cm).
Open an arbitrary angle AOB which is to be trisected and label point B.
Mark off the unit radius on your ruler (with marks X and Y).
Holding the ruler on point B, and the mark X on the extended radius AO,
slide the ruler along AOX until the mark Y intersects the circle.
The angle XOY will now be 1/3 of the angle AOB.
So there you are, Ranjit, I just trisected an arbitrary angle using a
compass and ruler only, just as you specified :-) Sunday, April 9, 2006
For whom the bell tolls It's a dying industry.
No, not funeral parlours, where there's a roaring trade at least thanks to this funeral home :-( I'm talking about the casting of bells, e.g. for churches. Today we're planning a motorcycle trip with the gang and are going to visit one of Germany's last bell-casting businesses in june. During WW2 many bells were melted down because the bronze was needed for war purposes. And of course many churches with their belltowers were destroyed then too. So after WW2 there was a high demand for new bells and bell-casting was a good business to be in during the 50s and 60s. In 1950 alone over 1680 tons of bronze were cast into bells, and there were 26 bell-casting companies here in Germany. For comparison, a mere 158 tons of bronze were cast last year. And now there just 6 bell-casting works left in Germany :-( An average bell nowadays weighs 300 kilograms and costs 3600 Euros, but the price of bronze has risen 30% from €4,60 to €6 per Kg. Nevertheless, 70% of the factories' costs are personell wages. So when the friary at Maria Laach started making bells too, the price competition between bellmakers became ruinous, because of the friary's savings on wages. Traditional bellmakers like Rincker, established 1590, now make only 50 church bells a year (in the 1960s it was 500 annually). But they are feeling the pinch and so have now branched out into supplying bell-cradles, bell carriers, providing annual checks of belltower statics etc. Nowadays they cast statues, sculptures and other objet's d'art like replicas of Karl Friedrich Schinkel bronze furniture. We'll probably buy another G-handbell in june :-) BTW: I've noticed that church music scores are all in the key of C. I wonder why? So, before this casting tradition disappears completely, we are going to visit a bell-making works in june, doubtless I will do a photo-report then on our trip. In the meantime, I have the CD-grinder turned up to 11 (Hallo Nigel!) and am listening to AC/DC's "Hell's Bells" ;-) Thursday, April 6, 2006
Can today's teenagers still do Geometry ?
L
ast month I was asked "What level of maths do you expect from a teenager?
Use Geometry as the example field of study."
I asked several maths teachers in different countries for their curricula : Anne in the UK,
Road Apples in the US,
Schorsch here in Germany. The curricula varied 'somewhat'. For some large value of 'somewhat' ;-)
The term 'Teenager' of course covers the range 13 to 19. So what do I expect of a 13 year old schoolchild?
Stop reading now and try to prove this yourself. If you are still stuck after 2 minutes, then you may click on this link for a proof (there are several). Now what do I (an old square) expect of a 19-year old (speaking geometrically of course)?
Question(19) : Stop reading now and try to solve this yourself. If you are still stuck after 20 minutes, then you may click on this link for a geometrical method of solving quadratic equations. Most adults will have forgotten whatever geometry they learned in secondary school. But I'd like to hear from you about how you did on these two questions. Comments are welcome (via Email). Any blogged feedback will be anonymised if you so request ;-) PS : This is the mean blog-posting about mathematics which I promised the average blogreader from Heartland-COG/North Central Ohio Computer Coop on wednesday :-) Wednesday, April 5, 2006
Who is your average blogreader?Who is your average blogreader? Helga (name substituted by me) has asked.Well I don't know, so today I'm going to try to find out :-) A friend of mine is thinking about starting her own blog, and has been pestering me for tips. Her first question is 'Open or Anonymous' ? I said it depends on what you are going to write. If you call it 'Helga's Hogwash' you could go 'open', but be careful to write nothing too intimate or too work-related. Examples vary from FP's Listics or Jeneane Sessum's Allied blog to the intense anti-war blogging of Mike Golby. If you are writing an 'Unexpected Orgasm' blog, you might want to stay anonymous ;-) Ditto for work related stuff. Examples are Haggiswurst (a council worker) or Coppersblog. S he hasn't decided whether to stay with one theme or jump around a lot as I do. She asked 'What does the average blogreader like? Indeed who IS your average blogreader?'. I admitted I dunno, so I've just looked at my stats to find out ;-) There are three kinds of average. Mean (which everyone knows about), mode (most frequent) and median (50% before, 50% after). I used the mode to decide which day of the week the average (mode) blogreader came. This got around the problem that people define the start of the week differently. Looking at the graphic on the left we see that my modal blogreader comes here on a wednesday. I used the median to see the time (CEST) of day the average (median) blogreader came here. It was between 2 and 3 pm CEST, see right graphic, around 14:50 CEST apparently. 
Exact results vary from day to day, so this is just a chance result today. The next step is to watch between 2 and 3 p.m to see who popped in today at 14:50. I used a sitemeter atlas like this old snapshot (100 users = ~ 2 ½ hour duration). 
So folks, it turns out that my average blogreader today came from the IP 66.144.34.0 (Heartland-COG/North Central Ohio Computer Coop.) and went on to read my long list of 100 pre-Einstein famous mathematicians. Congratulations, sir or madam, now we know at least where you are. And what you like to read about :-) Your prize will be a rather mean blog-posting about mathematics in the coming daze (sic!) ;-) BTW: modal readers coming in via search engines look for poetry, not maths. YMMV. Meg probably finds this post opaque, it's not, because Opera doesn't do opacity well :-( Saturday, April 1, 2006
Beating (about) the BushI n a communique´ issued from the US White House today, the achievements - past , present, and future - of the Preznit have been documented for immediate media release. Here is an excerpt, click on the links to see the official press photos :-
N.B : For those who are sceptical in view of today's date, the Truth Content® of this communique´ is identical to that of all other missives from The White House. P.S: Since this blog uses the larger, zoppo vocabulary of the Queen's English, I have placed a link to a dictionary at the top of the right sidebar for use by my Merkin friends ;-) P.P.S : The word Merkin means a pubic hair wig, usually for women, i.e. a false Bush;-) |
Blogs that I read Bulldog Blog D-Flat Chime Bar Doug Alder Easy Bake Coven Frank Paynter Gary Turner Haggiswurst Jeneane Sessum Jonny B's secret diary Making Light Mandarin Design Mike Golby Nobody Asked Reflective Teacher Say What? (Kira) Silent Lucidity Special Constable The (UK) Policeman Toxic Soup Universal Soldier Wasted Days & Nites Google Page Rank 
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 Sound-bytes ;-)Dubya on 2004/08/05 Berlin Wall Dementi Scotland the Brave Hailwood's Honda Bagpipe (Ceolas) Oboe and organ Auld Lang Syne Song for Dubya SED party song Rule Britannia Spitfire flyby John Lennon Manx Norton Dog barking DDR anthem Joe Satriani Steve Vai Tschuß! 
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