Stuff to know

The Beauty of “Cellar Door” and Awkwardness of “Gang”

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Isn’t “cellar door” the most beautiful combination of words that have ever existed in the English language? Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about this before!

The cult classic film Donnie Darko introduced this concept to many of us; that the phrase “cellar door” is thought to be the one of, if not the, most beautiful sounding phrases in English (independent of the meaning). But of course this idea predates the 2001 movie. So where did this idea come from and who thinks about this stuff?

No one knows who first discovered the beauty in “cellar door.” Over the last hundred years it has popped up all over the place – it’s difficult to tell if each author thought of the idea themselves, or if the phrase was already commonly known. We do know that the first written use came in a 1903 novel with a character who “grew to like sounds unassociated with their meaning.” But the idea is believed to significantly predate this forgotten novel.

It has been said that “cellar door” was Edgar Allan Poe’s favorite phrase, and the word “Nevermore” in The Raven was used because of its similar sound. Was he possibly the originator? Doubtful. It looks the origin is going to have to stay a mystery…

The reason “cellar door” is used as an example of the most beautiful words in English isn’t because it objectively sounds better than any other words. It’s because its beautiful sound is in such stark contrast to its actual meaning. A cellar door is an ugly object and a perfect word.

What are some other examples of dissimilarity between meaning and sound? One that I can remember discussing on the school bus as a youngster is “gang”. Gangs are incredibly intimidating and are made up of scary men. Say the word gang five times. G-aaaaaaa-ng. Not so scary now, are they?

Who out there is now going to name their daughter Selladore? (Actually used as a non-fiction character name.)
 
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Catch-22: Hobson’s Choice, Buridan’s Ass, or Morton’s Fork?

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You caught me, that is not exactly a catch-22. The definition of each:

Hobson’s Choice: a situation where you have a free choice, but only one option is offered. You can either take it or leave it. This is named after a stable owner in the 1500’s by the name of Thomas Hobson wanted to make sure that all 40 of his horses were being worked equally. Instead of letting his customers pick their horse to ride, he offered them the horse in the stall nearest the door or no horse at all.

Buridan’s Ass: Buridan’s ass is when you find yourself in a difficult decision between two equally appealing options – the decision making process is so slow you would be better off just picking one. Let’s assume an ass will always go eat the hay closest to him. In our fictional scenario an ass walks into a barn and finds himself equidistant between two identical bales of hay. Unable to make a decision which hay to eat, the ass remains in the same spot and starves to death. This one is named after 14th century philosopher Jean Buridan (although Aristotle wrote about it first) and is often quoted to exhibit the folly of politicians.

Morton’s Fork: the opposite of Buridan’s ass is Morton’s fork (obviously right? no duh). This is when you are forced to decide between two equally unpleasant options. Between a rock and a hard place. Wikipedia’s history lesson: the expression originates from a policy of tax collection devised by John Morton, Lord Chancellor of England in 1487, under the rule of Henry VII. His approach was that if the subject lived in luxury and had clearly spent a lot of money on himself, he obviously had sufficient income to spare for the king. Alternatively, if the subject lived frugally, and showed no sign of being wealthy, he must have substantial savings and could therefore afford to give it to the king. These arguments were the two prongs of the fork and regardless of whether the subject was rich or poor, he did not have a favorable choice.

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Would You Rather Have a Bottle of Water or a Jacuzzi of Tap Water

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One dollar for a bottle of water out of a vending machine doesn’t sound like such a bad deal – it’s only a dollar! But what about compared to the price of tap water? Can you really justify the price differential?

Here is an excerpt of an article by GE Miller at 20SomethingFinance.com comparing tap water and bottled water:

“I recently got curious as to how much tap water I was actually consuming, which led me to doing this cost comparison. I discovered that my city provides an online water usage rundown. My city water bills measure water usage in CCF’s. What is CCF? It’s a unit measurement of water that is equivalent to 100 cubic feet of water. Distilling that down to units we can all relate to:

* 1 CCF = 748 gallons of water
* 748 gallons of water = 95,744 ounces of water
* 95,744 ounces = 4,787 bottles of water
* Basically, 1 CCF = 4,787 bottles of water
* What does 1 CCF cost? $2.10!

That’s right – 4,787 bottled waters could be filled with tap water for $2.10! So every time you buy a bottle of water for $1, you are paying 2,279 times what you would if you filled that same bottle with tap water.

If most of what you drink is bottled water, assuming you drink 64 oz. of water per day, you’d consume a little under 3 – 20 oz. bottles of water per day. Those 3 bottles per day would cost you $3/day or $1,095 per year. That same 1,095 bottles filled with tap water would cost you $0.48 PER YEAR. Another way to look at it is that as soon as you buy your first bottle of water, you’ve already spent double what you would for an ENTIRE YEAR of tap water. Wow.”

A four or five person jacuzzi of tap water is roughly the equivalent price as the vending machine water. Let’s be practical here, which would you rather have?

Photo: Peter Baker

If All of Your Friends Thought Global Warming Was a Hoax, Would You?

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Photo: NASA Goddard Photo and Video

The Republican party here in the United States has an all but official stance that global warming is a hoax. They aren’t simply opposed to cap-and-trade or a carbon tax – they took it one step further and have dismissed the scientific research as hogwash. I incorrectly assumed that this was an extremely conservative viewpoint that I simply couldn’t relate to. But that is wrong – it turns out conservatives in democracies the world over do not take the same stance as Republicans!

The GOP is stampeding toward an absolutist rejection of climate science that appears unmatched among major political parties around the globe, even conservative ones.

It is difficult to identify another major political party in any democracy as thoroughly dismissive of climate science as is the GOP here.

It is difficult to get anything done when half the country doesn’t think there is a problem. And it’s difficult for the world to make progress combating global warming without the United States being intimately involved.

We have seen that a candidate’s chances are slim when they disagree with their political party on key issues. I don’t believe all republican politicians personally believe global warming isn’t at least partially influenced by human behavior, but given our broken two-party political system, if you are conservative you deny global warming. Even harder, you have to pretend Sarah Palin is smart.

Doesn’t it seem like the conservative approach would be to do everything in our power to stop our carbon emissions with so many unknowns? We don’t know how fast our habits are changing the temperature, we don’t know how the frequency of hurricanes and other natural disasters will be affected, we don’t know if the ocean’s carbon dioxide will be released as these global changes take place making things even worse, and we don’t know if the trend can be reversed.

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Is it Time to Rethink the War on Drugs?

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Photo: Giuseppe Bognanni

Sometimes the United States finds itself in wars that it cannot win. And the worst part about it, we don’t lose either. What can possibly be worse than losing a war? If they go on indefinitely. Well here is one war that has been going on for 40 years with no end in sight: the war on drugs.

Ineffective
School initiatives began 40 years ago to educate children about the dangers of drugs and to “just say no”. I don’t think anyone can argue against trying to keep drugs away from children. But that doesn’t mean it is effective – since 1970 there has been a 0% change in high school drug use.

Any new ideas or are we just going to keep plugging away and hope it eventually works? I can’t help but think of Albert Einstein’s quote, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” I hate to break it to you, but 40 years = over and over.

Russ Jones is a retired narc who has spent over 30 years on the front line of the war – he should know better than almost anyone how we are doing. And he believes it is time to call it off!

“The U.S. over the last four decades has spent $1 trillion of our tax dollars, made 38 million nonviolent drug arrests and quadrupled our prison population,” Jones said. “And the rate of addiction today, 1.3 percent, is the same as it was in 1970, when we started.”

Isn’t it a good thing that there have been 38 million arrests? Isn’t that progress? Well, not really! Do you think all the addicts that bought from that dealer are just going to stop using and start going to church on Sundays? Nope. The next drug dealer slides right in and business keeps humming.

“When I arrested a rapist or a robber, the community was safer,” Jones said. “When I arrested a drug dealer, all I did was create a job opening.”

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What Are the Odds Two People in the Room Have the Same Birthday?

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Photo: surlygirl

Situations arise from time to time where you are in a room with a whole bunch of strangers. They key to making friends and the opposite sex swoon? Probability.

What are the odds that two people in the room have the same birthday? Memorize some of these numbers so that you can spout them off, I guarantee you will be the coolest guy in the room – 9 people = 10%, 13 = 20%, 15 = 25%, 18 = 35%, 23 = 51%, 57 = 99%, 366 = 100%.

It’s important that you mention the assumptions before your new worshipers start poking holes in you numbers – random distribution of birthdays, no leap years, no twins, etc. Then you can go into what is interesting – with only 23 people in the room, odds are two people share a birthday. It only takes 57 people to jump to 99% probability, but to get to 100% you need to have 366 people.

Now to really make their mouths drop. How many people would it take for the odds to be in your favor for someone having the same birthday as you? 253. They may question you because this is much higher than 365/2, but stick to your guns and point out that two of the other people could have the same birthday. How many people would it take for two to likely have a birthday within a week of each other? Only 7. Ya, but a random distribution is a hell of an assumption. Oh really? Actually the odds are slightly more in your favor because birthdays tend to clump – summer babies, C-sections aren’t on weekends, and so on.

Here’s one to set up on a tee for them: what are the odds that two people have the same half birthday? If they can figure this out, you may just have found your soulmate.

The Concept of Infectious Disease Eradication

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Photo: Sari Dennise

There is a big difference between eradication and elimination when it comes to diseases. Disease eradication is when the global number of cases reaches zero. Even if there is a vaccine available for a specific disease, eradication means no one will ever be in need of using that vaccine again. Elimination is not as stringently defined – it can refer getting rid of the disease in specific regions or diminishing the cases to a negligible number of unlucky and impoverished people.

There have been a total of seven global attempts to eradicate human diseases. 4 failed (hookworm, malaria, yaws, and yellow fever), 2 are ongoing (polio and guinea worm), and only 1 was successful (smallpox).

Smallpox
In the early 1950s roughly 50 million people a year contracted smallpox with a mortality rate north of 10%. Shockingly, only 30 years later the disease was declared completely eradicated.

The first vaccine for smallpox was discovered in 1796. By giving someone the similar cowpox virus, they were then immune from contracting smallpox (fun fact: the word vaccine has the Latin root vaccinus meaning of or from cows). Unfortunately this was before the advent of FedEx so a timely delivery of the vaccine all over the world was not possible. Thus, the disease persisted for another 170 years.

In the 1950s and 60s a global initiative to eradicate smallpox began. Any outbreaks were immediately quarantined and everyone who lived close by received a vaccination (I imagine it was just like the movie “Outbreak”). Why did it take over 170 years from known vaccination to complete eradication? It was as much a communication and education initiative as a medical one. Any outbreaks of smallpox had to be immediately identified and a quick response was necessary to keep it from spreading. This was simply not possible in the 1800s.

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You Can Write Laws for the United States of America – How to Propose Bills in Congress

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Photo: Hobvias Sudoneighm

Out of all the repetitive junk we were taught in school as kids, it is pretty interesting what actually stuck in my brain. One of the things I remember learning back in the day is that anyone can write a bill for Congress. This means you, despite never running for a political office in your life, have the opportunity to write laws for the United States of America.

Writing the Bill
Once you know the law you want to impose upon your fellow Americans, you have to put it down in writing. This is the easiest part of the process, and it isn’t exactly straightforward. Bills can contain hundreds of pages of lawyer language, making them very hard to understand for those who are not well versed in it. I don’t blame the members of Congress for not reading every single bill that comes to vote.

So the first step is familiarizing yourself with how similar bills are formatted and the language they use. Take a look at OpenCongress.org and imitate what you see – don’t worry, it’s not plagiarism. It is probably a good idea to have a lawyer take a look to change wording as necessary.

Introduction to Congress
This is where it starts to get difficult. Even though you wrote the bill, it must be formally introduced by a member of Congress. So the first step after writing the bill is to convince a Congressman to propose it.

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A Few Facts About the Netherlands to Share at Your Next Cocktail Party

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The Netherlands is always listed as one of the happiest, most democratic, most liberal, and tourist friendly nations. Boring! Here are a couple interesting facts you probably don’t know:

  • Orange is not their official color even though that is all they wear at the World Cup and Olympics. The official colors? Red, white, and blue! So why do they wear orange? To honor the royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau.
  • Marajuana is actually illegal in Amsterdam (and all of the Netherlands), but the law is deliberately not enforced. – by leaving the law on the books they are in compliance with international drug agreements. What is the “unofficial” policy of their judicial system? A person can possess up to 5 grams and a “coffee shop” can have up to 500 grams as long as it doesn’t distribute more than 5 grams per person daily. Because it is technically illegal the government only receives income tax on the proceeds, rather than jacking up the tax rate like we do for cigarettes.
  • The Netherlands is possibly the country with the most to lose from global warming – a whopping 50% of its land is less than 1 meter above sea level. In only 200 years the portion of the Netherlands below sea level is expected to go from a fifth to a well over half. Maybe that is why the are kicking the worlds butt at making use of renewable energy?

Why Merle Haggard Out Travels Lady Gaga – What You Should Know About Radio Waves

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Photo: Peter Megyeri

The radio is a perfect example of an old technology that we completely take for granted – do you know how it works or are you just cluelessly upset when all you hear is static? These older technologies are much easier to wrap my head around – if a some guy in the 19th century could figure it out, I should be able to understand the basic idea. I’m not going to focus on how a radio transmitter physically creates the signal or receiver is able to turn it into sound, but rather the basic theory and some interesting things to know.

What is the major difference between AM and FM?
AM stands for amplitude modulation. This means the sound determines the amplitude of the radio wave. FM stands for frequency modulation – the sound alters the frequency of the radio wave. The transmitter is able to turn the sound being created into the appropriate wave. Here is an example of a sound and how it would look as an AM and FM wave:

Source: Berserkerus

Another major difference is that AM radio waves are a much lower frequency than FM. Think of AM having the wavelength of a football field and FM the ball. In reality you can broadcast amplitude modulation or frequency modulation at any frequency, but high quality FM audio must be a high frequency to allow for the differences (or modulation) in frequency.

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