|
Stu Savory's Blog
http://www.savory.de/blog.htm
| |
|
Friday, September 30, 2005
Friday Dog-Blogging
Getting to know you : Our bulldog pup Frieda with her little friend Jil. Thursday, September 29, 2005
In Memoriam : Tessa Steer
It is with sadness today that I relay the news of the premature death of
UK bloggeress Tessa Steer (63).
Tessa and I never met, but, through our blogs and some emails we felt we had
known one another to some small degree.
These electronic friendships are different somehow, but despite this, Tessa will be sadly
missed by her blog-readers across the globe.
Tessa and I were in the same age group (I'm 61) and had recently shared illness stories on which we had corresponded (we oldies do go on about our illnesses). I always liked reading Tessa's warm and sympathetic blog. It covered a wide spectrum, from the simple delights of making marmalade for her husband , via the intimate fears of her cancer and of the necessary operations, via relayed WW2 Battle of Britain stories, to hilarious anecdotes such as the recent Plumber's tale.
You will be missed in the blogosphere;
Rest In Peace, Tessa.
Because I don't know how long Tessa's blog will remain online, I would like you all to remember her as a woman who, despite personal illness and setbacks, could still tell hilarious anecdotes. So - naturally without her permission, but in all due respect - I reproduce here one of Tessa's terribly funny recent tales :- A lady, who lived in a block of flats, was having trouble in her kitchen, her sink appeared to be blocked. So her reluctant husband was asked to have a look at the problem. Changing into his 'work' clothes, he stuck his head into the cupboard under the sink and proceeded to try to undo the locknut and the coupling so that he could remove the trap. In the meantime, his wife decides she will pop out to the corner shop and leaves him lying half in and half out of the cupboard and swearing gently under his breath. After she had gone and after struggling unsuccessfully to get at the sink trap, the husband gives up in frustration. He telephones the plumber who, by a stroke of luck, was working nearby and arrived within a few minutes. After being out for about an hour, the wife arrives home with her shopping. She is amazed to see that her husband is in the exact same position he was when she left with his legs sticking out of the cupboard. On an impulse, she bent down and "vested a familiarity upon his person" [use your imagination!]. Well, the shock was so great that the poor plumber sat up with an exclamation - and banged his head very hard on the end of the pipe. Our dear lady then perceived the error of her ways and screamed for her husband. Anxious about the cut on the head of the dazed plumber, they decide to call for an ambulance. The ambulance duly arrived and two paramedics tended to the injury. As the plumber had blacked out briefly, they decided to take him to hospital to be checked over. They carefully put him on a stretcher and proceeded to carry him out of the flat and down the stairs. "How on earth did you manage to sit up so hard and knock yourself out?", asked one paramedic. So, the plumber then explained what had happened and the shock he had had when he had suddenly, and most unexpectedly, been subjected to the 'ministrations' of the lady of the house. This tale of woe so amused the paramedics that they promptly convulsed in laughter and inadvertently tipped the poor plumber off the stretcher and down the stairs. Sadly, when the poor man finally arrived at the hospital it was found that he had sustained a broken leg in addition to his original head injury. Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Haggiswurst's 23/5 memeHaggiswurst, a scottish Desk Monkey famed for his accounts of his boss doing a wee jobbie* in Mingelton Town Hall's provost's office, asks me to join his 23/5 meme. It goes thus:-
"Very funny but with some compassionate parts." Yup, that sums up my life; albeit I need to increase the humour content of this blog :-( I now tag any and all of the 900+ who read this, to carry on the 23/5 meme for Haggiswurst. *In English "a wee jobbie" means "a minor task". Ah'll nae tell ye whit it is in thae Scots leid :-) Monday, September 26, 2005
I should cocoa!*Do people (friends, parents, teachers, dieticians, trainers etc) nag at you for eating chocolate? Well I've got news for them . Chocolate is good for you!
In praise of chocolate.
* BTW, "I should cocoa" is a 1930's UK idiom, rhyming slang for 'I should say so!'. Friday, September 23, 2005
Ancient wordplays : Peter rocks, etc ;-)Mankind just loves jokes and wordplays. In the UK (at least on their TV shows), old jokes are popular and are known as 'hoary old chesnuts'. Unless they are old dirty jokes, in which case they are known as 'whorey chest & nuts' ;-) Be that as it may, I've been reading some ancient humour; so here are some of the punny things (Norse parliaments?) I found :Some ancient (BC) Greek fountains are inscribed "Wash the sin as well as the face". Transliterated from the Greek that's "Nispon anomimata mi monan opsin", which is a palindrome (i.e. reads the same back-to-front). "Quid est veritas?" (What is truth?) asked their contemporary Romans, and answered "Est vir qui adest!" (It is this man here!). Note that question and answer are anagrams (use the same letters in a different order). Some time later, a scribe even wrote a pun into the bible, where JC alledgedly said : "Thou art Peter; upon this rock I shall build my church." Of course JC would have spoken Aramaic, where the line isn't funny. The scribe however was writing in Greek, where "Rock" and "Peter" are the same word, hence punny. Of course the scribe might just as well have written "Thou art Rocky, with thy erect peter, **** my church!", which might explain the number of paedophiles in the priesthood ;-) William Shakespeare (I am a weakish speller) - we all make his praise - has some 3000 (sic) puns and wordplays in his works, even commenting the death of Hotspur as a change to Coldspur (groan!). Half the fun of reading Shakespeare at school was spotting the puns. BTW: have you noticed that when the nobles speak in many of his plays, their lines are rhyming couplets, but the common folk just uses plain prose? The shortest wordplay I know of is in French "Ga". It means 'I am very hungry'. Huh? Sure! Read it as G grand, A petit = "J'ai grand appetit" (Groan!). You often see Garfield using it in his cartoons. The longest wordplay I know of is a novel by Georges Perec (also a Frenchman) , 50,000 words long, without using the letter E a single time! You should try it too, it is difficult to do and still not bark silly words for hours, milady! And the most up-to-date pun today? Texas strippers are being ordered to cover up their breasts before evacuating south Texas in the path of Hurrican Rita. This is why it's called the "Gal, vest on!" evacuation ;-) Wednesday, September 21, 2005
More Maths MailsWhenever I blog some Maths, as I did last week on tuesday and on thursday, it provides polarised responses. After tuesday's piece where I showed you how to make cut-out models of the 5 regular polyhedra the number of daily site-readers shot up by ~ 50% to 940+. But thursday's proof that there are only 5 such regular polyhedra was too heavy for many. Inter alia there was a delightfully clever insulting note from James (UK) which was so good, I'm quoting it:
... you toss off mathematical proofs like other folks toss
out empty beer cans...you're a real tosser!
"Hey Stu, you just toss off mathematical proofs like other folks toss
out empty beer cans, you must be a talented tosser! And since nothing about thursday's proof was IMAGINARY
and the proof certainly was not COMPLEX, we must conclude that you are a REAL tosser ;-)"
Which brings us around to the subject of imaginary numbers. Tyree, alias 'Music man', is the 15-year old son of Diane Fray (Arcadian Expressions). He's just puzzling out complex numbers and asked : "So the other day, im in class. Talking about how -X*-X=X^2. I get thinking about how math is completely balanced. Whatever happens to one side happens to the other. So why does X*X=X^2 and not X*X=-X^2? Like, a simple explanation behind this "theory" would be the equation AX=B. To solve that you do A/A to cancel A out. Then whatever you do to one side you have to do to the other. That's just how math works. So, you do B/A. Now if math is all balanced, why doesn't X*X work like this? Im really stumped on this. But if X*X=-X^2. The possibilitys are nuts! . . ." Ok, Tyree, here's my shot at an explanation for you :- Imagine (or - better - draw) a clock face with one clock-hand. Draw a horizontal line through the middle, from 9 to 3 o'clock. At the 3 o'clock position, write +1. At the 9 o'clock position, write -1. zero in the middle. Place the hand at the 3 o'clock position = +1. Now comes the big question : "What do you have to do identically twice (i*i) to get the hand to point to 9 o'clock (i*i=-1)?" Answer, turn the hand anticlockwise through a right angle. Twice 90 degrees = 180 degrees. The first time you do that the hand points to 12 o'clock. That is i= sqrt(-1). Do it again and the hand moves from 12 to 9 o'clock. You did it twice, so i*i=-1 :-) Which is what you wanted to achieve. So the square root of -1 is just a vector of length 1 (the hand) turned through 90 degrees, to point straight up. Note that the 6 o'clock position would be just as good because -i*-i=-1 too, you just turned the hand twice clockwise instead. Also note that 'i' projects onto the zero position on the line through the middle. This line denotes the socalled REAL numbers which you are used to.
... COMPLEX numbers have both a REAL and an IMAGINARY part (these are just names,
they don't mean that such numbers do or do not exist).
The socalled COMPLEX numbers have both a REAL and an IMAGINARY part (these are just names,
they don't mean that such numbers do or do not exist). Example : The complex number Z which I will define as the cube root of -1.
So you need to position the hand on the clockface so that whatever you do THREE times gets you to -1.
Well isn't that obvious now? The turn from +1 to -1 is 180 degrees, so 1/3 of that is 60 degrees.
Turn the hand to the 1 o'clock position (thats 60 degrees). Thats once, implying Z = cube root of -1.
Now turn it through 60 degrees again. Now the hand points at 11 o'clock, totalling 120 degrees. That's Z-squared.
Now turn it through 60 degrees again. Now the hand points at 9 o'clock, totalling 180 degrees. That's Z-cubed or -1 :-)
Note that the COMPLEX number Z has a REAL component (its projection onto the horizontal line) and an
IMAGINARY component (its projection onto the vertical line running from 6 to 12 o'clock) .
The square root of -1, which we called i (in some countries it is called j) is COMPLEX too, just that the REAL component is zero and the IMAGINARY component is 1 (on the vertical axis).
Could you follow my explanation, Tyree? Did that answer your question? In a mail from NZ, Paul couldn't find my proof that there is no largest prime number, and so asked me to bring my maths index page up to date (done :-). He also wants me to write a short biography of each of the (100!!) people in my list of famous mathematicians. Well I'm too lazy to do that Paul, but what I will do is to replace each name with a Wiki link every time someone asks about that specific mathematician. Some I did already. OK? And a girl who I presume is a fifth daughter, since she is called Quinta, just going up to university, asks the disturbingly difficult question "What maths should I know?" ... if a carpenter ever needs to multiply,
he can always build a table of logs ;-)
Srinivasa Ramanujan would have answered with a smile and said "All of it!". But a practical answer depends on what work you
propose to do in your life. For a carpenter, it suffices to be able to add up on ten, er
nine, no eight, hell no, seven fingers ;-) And if a carpenter ever needs to multiply,
he can always build a table of logs ;-)
Arithmetic of Integers, Rational numbers (fractions): ¼, ½, ¾, 355/113 , ...
Real and irrational numbers: Sqrt(2) = 1.4142... , pi = 3.14159...
Complex numbers: 3+4i. Polar coordinates. The complex plane. Cauchy theorems and contour integration.
Algebraic equations. Approximation techniques. Series expansions: the Taylor series. Solving equations with complex numbers. Trigonometry: sin(2x)=2sin x cos x, etc.
Will that list suffice? I think so. If someone thinks I've left out something absolutely necessary, please let me know. Tyree, that's what you'll need if you want to study physics too. Monday, September 19, 2005
Stalemate?
Stalemate so far. Preliminary results shown : Red = Schröders Socialists, Grey (in every sense of the word) = Merkel's combined Christian right (CDU/CSU). That's the coalition shown 3rd from the left in the top row in my posting yesterday, slightly more right than left ;-) So we've gone through all this hassle and still don't know who'll be running the place! Sure, a big coalition, but run by Schröder or by Merkel? What an indecisive lot we are :-( JR, thanks for your note, we need to explain this coalition idea to you Americans, but basically it means that because we have several parties, that several need to combine to get a government with >51% of the seats. So you end up with their least common denominator as gov't policy :-( NB: the 'Republicans' here are a minority fascist party. No difference there, then ;-) Sunday, September 18, 2005
Election day in Germany today
Today we have a general election in Germany. I suspect that no party will get an outright majority, so that perforce we will have a coalition, with all the weak compromises which that implies. And we don't even get the final results until October 2nd, because the fascist candidate for Dresden (voting region 160) died, so they need to reprint all the region 160 voting slips and have a delayed election day there on 2nd October :-( The array of flags shows you all of the feasible coalitions, left to right, top to bottom, in what I believe is their order of likelihood. Black = CDU/CSU (Merkel's right wing Xians), Red = SPD (Schroeder's socialists), Green = Fischer's environmental party, Purple = Communists (Gysi/Lafontaine), Yellow = FDP (Westerwelle). Don't hold your breath! Friday, September 16, 2005
Languages of the British IslesA good blogfriend from the UK - Tessa Steer - has been talking recently about the problems of adult illiteracy. She got several good comments from people who only learnt to read and write as adults. The postings are well worth reading; I for one, can barely imagine what it is like to learn your first language as an adult. I do know however that I still struggle when learning a new one. Currently I'm failing to learn Esperanto; no conversation partners.On a day to day basis, seeing as how I live in Germany, I speak (High) German. We have various regional accents,
Bavarian, Saxon, Badisch, Friesian, Platt to name but a few. I can understand most of
the accents well, even if I do find Saxon and Schwiezerdeutsch (as misspoken in
Switzerland) rather difficult.
In the British Isles, however, there are not merely accents of English (e.g. Lancs, Geordie, Brum, Zumerzed), there are also several languages, of which I can only cope with English and Scots. Some claim that Scots is merely a dialect of English, I would claim it's a language of it's own. Here's a sample I blogged on Burns Night 2004 (January 25th), now judge for yourselves :- "The ither year, Burns nicht : me a ree ray in ma waddinbraws. Twa faikin fums (agnats) shue laik scowpers. I lerb twa jutes, muckle manky jutes, an gledge a redhieded peronall. Ah skleush ower tae her, fer tae splunt thae loorach. Wi thae fower bask jutes, ah thrammle like a kenspeckle kensy, an partle tae rush instead o ma whaisk frae sculduddery. Ah yove : nae mair upfesh!" Other languages from the British Isles include :-
On the BBC website this week you can check your knowledge of English. I'm ashamed - but sufficiently honest - to say that I only got 19 out of 20 right, despite it being a mother tongue. Shame on me :-( The BBC proclaim : "Hardly a week goes by without headlines about declining academic standards. Well, here's a chance to test yourself on English, and there's a maths test coming next week. Plus - we'll tell you the average results of everyone taking part." I think this could be a useful self-check for all of US, hence the link :-) Thursday, September 15, 2005
Proof that there are only 5 Platonic SolidsGot a reply from Ranjit, replying to tuesday's blog-entry, asking "How do you know there are only five regular polyhedra (= Platonic Solids)? Can you prove it? There might be another really big regular polyhedron with lots of corners, edges and faces that nobody has discovered yet!"Well, sorry to disppoint you, Ranjit, but there are only five; I've appended a simple proof below. Non-mathematically minded blogreaders may stop reading here ;-)
For some X, each face of a regular polyhedron is a regular Y-agon. Each face F has Y edges therefore F = 2*E/Y (the factor 2 taking into account that each edge is where 2 faces meet). Now we can use Euler's formula we already saw in tuesday's blog-entry : C - E + F = 2 , and substitute 2*E/Y for F and write C*X/2 for E. Simplifying and rearranging, we get :- 2 = (C/2Y)*(2Y-X(Y-2)) = (C/2Y)*{4-(Y-2)(X-2)} Now it is obvious that both 2 and C/2Y are positive, thus 4-(Y-2)(X-2) must be positive too. But this implies that 4 > (Y-2)*(X-2), and since X and Y are positive integers with X>=3 and Y>=3, only the following combinations for X and Y are possible :- (Y,X)=(3,3),(3,4),(3,5),(4,3) and (5,3). Five solutions = 5 regular polyhedra, Q.E.D! Now we can plug these 5 pairs back into the substitutions to get C,F,E values:-
(3,3) 4,4,6 Tetrahedron All clear now, Ranjit? You see there are only five, none as yet undiscovered :-) Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Construction Kits for the Platonic SolidsWell, I guess the school summer hols must be over, because I've been getting more maths questions again. Schoolboy Ranjit, writing from India, tells me they've got a project to make the platonic solids by cutting them each in one contiguous figure from a single sheet of paper, and he needs help.Well, Ranjit, there are just 5 regular convex polyhedra ( = the Platonic solids) and here are the construction kits to cut them each in one piece from a single piece of paper. BTW, "regular" means that all the corners have the same number of edges meeting there, all the faces are the same, all the angles at the corners are the same, and all the edges are the same length. And "convex" means that all the corners point outwards. I've shown the polyhedral edges in the construction kits, but edges are hard to stick together. So I suggest you leave room for a little tab on each of the outside edges of the construction kits, folding along the polyhedral edges, and glueing the tabs :-) 
BTW, there is a useful formula interrelating the number of corners (C), edges (E), and faces (F) of any convex polxhedron, not just the regular five. It was discovered by Euler and is :-
C - E + F = 2
Friday, September 9, 2005
Esquivalience
Sky News headline - "BUSH : ONE OF THE WORST DISASTERS TO HIT THE U.S." Thanks to Mike Golby for the heads-up on this one :-) Tuesday, September 6, 2005
Dubya, have you N.O. shame ?The Hurricane Katrina aftermath: words fail me, but others have said it better anyway :-
Sunday, September 4, 2005
Did you search my site in August in vain ?
Surprisingly, I do actually listen to what my readers say. I also evaluate the log-files of
the on-site search facility on a monthly basis, with a view to improving the
answers automatically provided. Sharing 'em today :-)
On-site search facility? Sure : it's over there on the right sidebar, a couple of lines above my photo. Just click the word 'Search' there and enter the term(s) you are looking for. But try to spell those terms correctly please. Even if I do keep a list of misspelled words as synonyms, it turns out that in August I still failed on your misspelled searches for :
Someone else looked for "steven spender+my parents". Now admittedly, I do know your IP address. But the search engine does not know who 'you' are, and so cannot dereference the word "my" in "my parents". You need to put in their full names for the search engine to have a chance. But I don't know any "steven spender", so I have no answer. Try googling for him and your parents names e.g. "steven spender + dad's firstname dad's lastname". Perhaps you just wanted to google for track 3 of disc 2: Rough (My Parents Kept Me...) by Stephen Spender.
My search engine only returns the pages containing the text terms, so photos or pictures
are not returned unless I happened to have your text in the picture's title.
The search engine does not know what's in the photos,
unless I used the search term in a descriptive text.
So whoever came looking for "woods are lovely dark and deep" either wanted the famous
Frost poem (go Google for it) or perhaps this photo.
Less subtly, whoever wanted "lotsa girl's asses" presumably might like
this recent photo, or else needs to learn that the
apostrophe goes after the S in the plural case :-) But my site-search would not
have returned anything anyway. Having written that, I'm probably going to get lots of porn spam from the porn spambots, so let's give them a real Email address to send their Viagra-ads to : president@whitehouse.gov Friday, September 2, 2005
The Eight-fold Way
1 * 8 + 1 = 9 Thanks to Dirk for the heads-up on that one :-) Anna Pashen, writing from Down-Under where the Devil* is worth 50% more than He** is here, is into the Numbers game too. She writes :- "There's a show on T.V. (stands for Thought Void so I am told) here at the moment that I would love to witness you watching. It's called Numbers (a.k.a Numb3rs). It's kind of like C.S.I. and all those other investigative shows but all the solutions - to murders, the spread of virulent virus' - are solved by a mathematician and complex equations. The reason I would love to witness you watching them is to see you poke holes in their story lines. (I used to watch E.R. and other medical shows with my parents and listen to them point out flaws as well as watching cop shows with my cousins who are Ds. I love a Devil's** advocate.)" Writing from Poland, Viktor says he liked the Mingleton Provosts' portraits I blogged about last sunday, and tells me (and Haggiswurst) that the provost's secretary has recently achieved an 100% increase in productivity ;-) But he wants me to explain the joke about the 'single-handed staff polisher' which he claims he didn't understand. As you know, all poles are 5 ½ feet high, but 'staffs' are usually a lot shorter, Viktor. BTW, all single-handed staff polishers are called Victor, except in France, where Victor gets translated as Vanqeur ;-) Peter Harris (UK) sent a link to a thread of Bulldog photos in Flickr. Thanks for sharing! And the Chimp? Not only does Dubya not have a plan for getting out of Irak, he
didn't even have a plan for evacuating New Orleans, just for him strutting uselessly on TV
(as usual) :-( * : Explanatory note : Try writing the Number of the Beast*** upside-down ;-) ** : Explanatory note : I hedge my deathday bets by capitalising both names, OK? *** : Explanatory note, quoting
Uncle Al Schwartz :
|
Blogs that I read Apathetic Nation Betsy Devine Blogging in Paris Bulldog Blog Dirk Rijmenants Doug Alder Easy Bake Coven Elaine Kalilily Frank Paynter Haggiswurst Jeneane Sessum Jonny B's secret diary Just My Opinion Knowprose Make: Blog Making Light Mandarin Design Mercurial Mike Golby Noded Old fash. patriot Shelley Powers Special Constable Tessa Steer TFS Reluctant The (UK) Policeman Now Reading
Dubya's NeighShun 
|
RSS Feed
| Index/Home | Impressum | Sitemap | Search site/www |  |