What did you learn today TIL

[Hades]

TIL that Ben & Jerry's makes ice cream... for dogs!

[Hilda]

Recent posts in the "Leave your hat on" topic sent me to re-visit Jeff Beck's "Hi Ho Silver Lining" with its mention of a lady going down a bumpy hillside in a hippie hat (what else?)

And mention of surfers in another topic sent me to a 4-CD compilation I have of vintage surf music (Cowabunga! The Surf Box)

So there I was, listening to a succession of old favorites, when the Bel-Airs' "Mr. Moto" began playing. Not for the first time, I wondered who Mr. Moto might have been, and whether it had anything to do with Japan. So I decided to do a little research and discovered that there are novels and movies about a secret agent of that name:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Moto

Yet another gap in my knowledge. A used copy of The Cradle of Erotica showed up in my mail box yesterday, but I think I'll read some of Marquand's Mr. Moto novels first. I found six of them in my ebook archive, downloaded from Usenet at least twenty years ago. Being a hoarder does have its advantages. 

[Pornhubby]

L

A used copy of The Cradle of Erotica showed up in my mail box yesterday, but I think I'll read some of Marquand's Mr. Moto novels first.

[Hades]

Fuck this shit.  I just ordered a copy as well.  Used, in vey good condition.  It will take a couple of weeks to arrive.

[Hilda]

If Moses was the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, then he was the daughter of Pharaoh’s son.

Has anyone come across this word puzzle, or a variation? I' found it today, in Flora Annie Steel's autobiography. Around 1880 she's visiting Rome. She mentions some annoying fellow-tourists, and adds:

But above all irritations was that caused by an American lady who failed to grip the common quip, “If Moses was the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, then he was the daughter of Pharaoh’s son”. We tried commas, semi-colons, colons, full stops in the attempt to make her see. Finally, with distinct scorn, she said, “Of course I have seen that from the beginning, but I don’t think that view is borne out by Scripture; besides, it spoils the whole beauty of the story.”

It took me several minutes to "grip the common quip", so I sympathize with the American lady.

[Pornhubby]

TIL NASA only uses Pi with 15 decimal places. Not because it is entirely accurate, but their computers can’t handle more without a serious upgrade. Something about IEEE754 64-bit floating point.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/

[Hilda]

Today I learnt the origin of the word "dope".

In a book written in 1929, the author is describing a trek she made with her husband through the lower Himalayas. She goes out of her way to visit a famous cave, and is disappointed by what she finds. She muses about the religious fervor of the pilgrims who go there in their thousands, many of them dying along the way.

Yet [the cave's] very triviality impressed one. Thousands, nay, millions of humanity, beset by the desire for redemption which is so curious a passion in the race, have braved death through ice, snow, avalanches, to reach it. Hundreds of them lose their lives on the road every year, for each pilgrim discards every stitch of clothing at Shisha Nag and continues the journey, naked, drugged by opium or Indian hemp. I have been told that scarcely one reached the cave without some form of dope.

Partridge's Dictionary of Historical Slang informs me that "dope", used in the meaning of "drug", is US slang, dating back to the 1890s. It first had the meaning of "any thick lubricant or absorbent", and the word comes from the Dutch "doopen", to dip.

Partridge doesn't explain how "dope" came to mean "fool" but I'm guessing the idea was "someone who acts as if drugged".

[ObiDongKenobi]

TIL NASA only uses Pi with 15 decimal places. Not because it is entirely accurate, but their computers can’t handle more without a serious upgrade. Something about IEEE754 64-bit floating point.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/news/2016/3/16/how-many-decimals-of-pi-do-we-really-need/

https://www.techspot.com/news/94892-google-calculates-pi-100-trillion-digits-reclaims-world.html

[Hilda]

I remember reading that a mathematical savant (Daniel Tammet?) could see pi as a beautiful landscape unfolding before his mind's eye. That would suggest that there's some kind of pattern in the endless string of digits.

~ Numerically Challenged Hilda ~

[ObiDongKenobi]

I remember reading that a mathematical savant (Daniel Tammet?) could see pi as a beautiful landscape unfolding before his mind's eye. That would suggest that there's some kind of pattern in the endless string of digits.

~ Numerically Challenged Hilda ~

Pi is completely irrational, it never ends and It does have patterns but none that repeat. https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2016/03/pimightlookrandombutitsfullhiddenpatterns/

[Hilda]

I remember reading that a mathematical savant (Daniel Tammet?) could see pi as a beautiful landscape unfolding before his mind's eye. That would suggest that there's some kind of pattern in the endless string of digits.

Pi is completely irrational, it never ends and It does have patterns but none that repeat. https://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/articles/archive/2016/03/pimightlookrandombutitsfullhiddenpatterns/

Thanks for that link. I wish I could remember where I read about the savant who saw numbers as colors and shapes. There was a twist to the experiment in which he was asked to describe what he saw as he watched the digits of pi drift across a screen. The research team slipped an incorrect number into the string, to see how he would react.

He reacted with consternation. "Something's wrong. The scene isn't right."

[ObiDongKenobi]

Daniel Tammet

10 stunning images show the beauty hidden in pi

[MintJulie]

Daniel Tammet

10 stunning images show the beauty hidden in pi

I love Nadieh Bremer's graphing of pi to one million. 

Thank you all for all the pi info recently. Love reading it all.

[Pornhubby]

I love pie too. Hair pie.

[Clitical Thinking]

3.6969696969, to lickfinity and beyond 

[Hilda]

Daniel Tammet

10 stunning images show the beauty hidden in pi

Thanks for the links.

There's a rogue gene floating around my side of the family. I see number form and one of my daughters has synesthesia.

Mention a number and she can tell you what color it is. I can tell you where it's located in an inner three-dimensional space.

[Pornhubby]

There's a rogue gene floating around my side of the family. I see number form and one of my daughters has synesthesia.

Mention a number and she can tell you what color it is. I can tell you where it's located in an inner three-dimensional space.

That’s pretty awesome. But it just goes to show you how much we don’t understand yet. And how much more there is to discover. We can call these individuals savants, but the truth of the matter is they have abilities that are accessible to all of us, if we could only learn how to cultivate them. And I think that will open up the fourth dimension.

[MintJulie]

A snippet from the article in one of the links listed...

"If pi were truly random, that would mean that the number sequence in pi would never repeat itself, and -- because pi is infinite -- it would contain all patterns in existence. Any word that you can think of, when encoded in numbers, would show up in pi, says Kryzwinski. So would the entire works of Shakespeare, all possible misprints and permutations of Shakespeare, and even, if you were patient enough, pi itself. "

[Pornhubby]

At 7:15 AM today, EDT (US), 99% of the world’s population was either in sunlight or twilight or dawn. Sorry Australia.

The catch with the claim of near-universal simultaneous daylight for all humans is that millions of people will be under astronomical twilight, so named because the remaining sunlight is so faint that really only astronomers are likely to notice. Unless you're in a location with virtually no light pollution, you're likely to think it's already as dark as it's going to get.

But still pretty cool.

[ObiDongKenobi]

If Moses was the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, then he was the daughter of Pharaoh’s son.

Has anyone come across this word puzzle, or a variation? I' found it today, in Flora Annie Steel's autobiography. Around 1880 she's visiting Rome. She mentions some annoying fellow-tourists, and adds:

But above all irritations was that caused by an American lady who failed to grip the common quip, “If Moses was the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, then he was the daughter of Pharaoh’s son”. We tried commas, semi-colons, colons, full stops in the attempt to make her see. Finally, with distinct scorn, she said, “Of course I have seen that from the beginning, but I don’t think that view is borne out by Scripture; besides, it spoils the whole beauty of the story.”

It took me several minutes to "grip the common quip", so I sympathize with the American lady.

It took me days