Phatic Haptic Part 2

This is the second - completely unconnected - part of a riff on a 6-letter anagram combo. Part 1 on Haptic Gloves and AI interfaces.  I am a bit of a fanboy for Tom Scott who has a much bigger following (on youtube) than The Blob. I've cited his work before, not least because he usually manages to get his point across in less than five minutes. At the beginning of August, Scott published a piece-to-camera about phatic expressions. These are the verbal equivalent of two primates riffling through each other's fur looking for lice and skin flakes as appetizers for a more substantial dinner. For the primates, reducing the load of ectoparasites is a positive evolutionary benefit but the primary purpose of the activity is demonstrable active care-and-attention between two relatives / allies.

I've been interested in phatic expressions for a while; especially since I noticed how much of human conversation consists solely or mainly of such content-free babble. Tom Scott cites the common greetings: How are you? ➙ How're you? ➙ How r ya? ➙ Howya ➙ Hiya. When I started work at The Institute Hiya was my standard corridor greeting for acquaintances. But it elicited "Fine thanks, and you?" too often for comfort [as if I really cared tuppence if they'd had a domestic argument over breakfast]. So I switched to G'day even if I wasn't fitted out like Crocodile Dundee.

But what really disturbed me was listening to people talking in class, in the canteen, on the wireless. An awful lot of the word-count was repeating the end of the one person's sentence and maybe adding a bit to the end as the other'scontribution. All it means is that I am listening, I heard what you had to say, you are sagacious, generous and my friend . . . I do not intend in the near future to assault you with this plate of salad . . . nor will I seek small invertebrates about your person. The trouble is that, once heard, you cannot avoid hearing this vapid prattle all the time. It's not all bad though, it shows that you can get to a +50% fluency in any foreign language; enough to win friends and influence people with maybe 200 words of formulaic clichés. In these WEA islands, you're off to a great start if you know a few weather-related phrases: Brutal . . . lashing . . . brrrr chilly . . . phew wot a scorcher . . . worst/best/wettest Summer since records began.

Piper greets the year

Rich and famous

• Peregrin Paddi, Grace and James - new album A Curious Dance [cover R]
  
• Uilleann pipe arcana 
• A Basque set James Patrick Gavin 
• The Piper at the Gates of Dawn full text
  
• 403 / 100K Brits want to go full Imperial 
• 303 of them are surnamed Colonel, Blimp or Rees-Mogg
• Setting out the Imperial stall in 2022: Imph, human height, neonate weight
  
• Informative essay about Shipping Forecast areas. The Wireless BBC Shipping forecast is 100 years old in 2024.
• Emily Graslie left the Field Museum two years ago.
• Then came back a month ago, as a self-employed person.
• Fanboy Blob from 10 years !! ago
• After 10 years every Monday, Tom Scott is turning down the thermostat
• Which Tom Scott, though?
  
• Documentary about British Trad parades / festivals (sunrise solstice stonehenge 2019 below). via MeFi
  
• How it's done in Saõ Miguel, Açores

 

Tween Hallowe'en & Guy Fawkes

Two nights 31/10 and 05/11 when fireworks go off. Now for the calm between the pyrotechs.

• Tom Scott - science communicator deconstructs science communication at the RI
• Don't forget the Q&A
• Tom Scott on ASCII EBCDIC & UTF-8
• Massimo Vitali's gaff (home, not gaffe=error)
• Haleigh cooks to make Smørrebrød
• Rogan reacts to Kilian "King of the Mountains" Jornet
• Did you see the Gloucester cheese rolling where people hurl themself off a steep slope after a rolling cheese?
• These lads hurl themselves down a white water gorge in a kayak.
• Griff Rhys-Jones looks at Welsh vernacular architecture and surrounding fields
• The last of the master artisanal blacksmiths in Japan.
• Bread - its etymology and associations [brew, boil, bubble, ferment, loaf, lord, lady, dairy, dough, companion . . . I could go on and Mark Sundaram does just that]
• We've had a look at BLEVEs [boiling liquid expanding vapor explosion] before. With the heart-felt advice: do NOT try to put out a chip-pan fire with a cup of water.
• You can make an even more dramatic show if you keep the water separated from the burning oil in a tin can . . . until internal pressure builds up to bursting point. Whooomph! indeed.
• Fairly useful video-essay on political polls [UK general election 12'12'19] and their limitations.
• John "OrdAH" Bercow retired as Speaker of the House of Commons last week. One Trib.
• I shall have more to say about Brineuria the drug which Rees-Mogg bullied through parliament for one of his constituents.

September Browns

 Start here

• Iron & Wine Time after Time
• Megan Davis, Jaclyn & Boyce Avenue version
• Gabriela y Rodrigo jam a concert [23mins]
• Youtube comment "Are all those extra guitars on hand in case the ones they’re playing catch fire?"
• Subteen drummers jammin'
• Smells like teen spirit - Yoyoka
• Dave Grohl and Nandi Bushell
• Things wet
• Wade in the water with Eva Cassidy
• Dunkirk Little Ships
• Storm surge à la Ten Charlton Commandments
• Why it's called a flash flood - all over in 15 mins
• Shaping the Tally Ho keel - with the adze.
• Dunmore East lifeboat going out in all weathers - normal heroes all.
• A 260 video, 5 year journey starts at Uma Don't buy a couch. Buy a boat!
• Diving Trá an Dóilín, Carraroe, Co Galway.
• Meme City
• Spoofing Tom Scott - bloboprev: real Tom Scott
• Uncle Roger disses Jamie Oliver doing egg fried rice - you need wok hay
• Jan Misali ConLangCritic [Prev: having a go at Esperanto; generally favourable about Toki Pona] having a punt at #MegaFavNumber [last week] with 720,720.
• Recycled cotton saves water.

Afsluitdijk in spades

hier gaan over het tij 

de maan de wind en wij

Hoe goed is jouw Nederlands?  It's like Engels but not exactly the same: here over the tide go the moon the wind and we. That's the dedication on the Oosterscheldekering [East Scheldt Barrier] an amazing civil engineering project protecting Zeeland  from inundation from the sea. The terrifying destruction of the 31st Jan 1953 dyke swamping floods made the Dutch government sit up and start taxing the people to build a set of storm barriers to keep land and sea separate. The Delta Works were impelmented over a 25 year time-frame at a cost of about €1 billion. The original plan was to simplify the Scheldt Delta with the creation of an impenetrable Oosterscheldedam but oyster farmers and ecologists decried the loss of a unique shallow-sea environment and a vastly more complex Kering was constructed instead. And expensive!: the build-cost of the Oosterscheldekering alone ballooned to €2.5 billion and maintenance and operation costs are about €17miliion each year. But it works! The gates clank shut when the meteorologists announce that a storm surge of at least 3m is expected; most recently on 10 Feb 2020!

Now they have a massive storm-surge barrier in a place where the wind can gust as high as anywhere in the country. Seems a shame not to find alternative use for it. When the canals of Friesland are so iced that no traffic can pass, the locals put on their skates and do the Elfstedentocht a 200km circular race passing 11 towns in the province. The last time a sustained cold snap lasted long enough to have the race was 1997. In Winter 2012, excitement was cranked up again but the event never happened because the ice really wasn't thick enough. Climate change makes it really unlikely that anyone alive today will see the Elfstedentocht happen.

But there are other weather extremes to embrace! When a truly tree-flattening gale in the right direction is forecast for Zeeland, they organise a Tegenwindfietsen [Against Wind Biking] event. Tom Scott, who made a guest appearance on Sunday on Hannah Fry's RI Christmas Lectures, was on the Oosterscheldekering last week watching succession of Nederlanders force their traditional gearless sit-up-and-beg bicycle into the teeth of a 120 km/h gale. We! Kriehen! Sturm! - we get a storm - goes the cry and folk with calves like knotted cords flock to register for the event. Tom explains that the Drag goes up with the sqeare of the wind-speed, so it really requires heart to complete the course.

Go Nederland!

But that's not all. When the 1953 floods occurred, the Afsluitdijk across the mouthbetween Noord Holland and Friesland had just calmed the Zuiderzee into the Ijsselmeer. That barrier was said to have recouped its costs on that single night. If we can do these piffling billion €€ flood abatement projects, the Dutch engineers ask, why not scale it up and separate the North Sea from the Atlantic?
Our grandchildren may NEED this Northern European Enclosure Dam. Not even the Dutch are suggesting a Kering that is basically open but ready to close when the mega-tide comes in. Apparently a dam of these dimensions is feasible from an engineer's perspective. The footprint is only 500km long, the maximum depth is only 350m. What could possibly go wrong? Kiting this idea shows that at least someone is thinking about the consequences of sea-level rise . . . and proposing to fight rather than get under the duvets and wait. But really the proposal is to stir up some mojo to do something else about anthropogenic climate change - like give up the old car, the toaster, the air-con and the effin' methaneburgers.

via MeFi where there is 

much interesting commentary.

Mappy links

I recently asserted that I love maps, 'tis true and here are the links to prove it.
Scandinanvian triple-point land-deal;
Indiana standard time in flux
Hilarious twinning of Ukrainian Oblasts with Irish Counties
Ditto Belarus and Ulster
PrairyErth
Oola Oval
Baarle
I thought it would be time to cull some more from the interweb:

• One of many investigations of topological distortion on the London Underground map.
• Senator Al Franken (Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party DFL) does his draw-the-United-States from memory party trick.
• Explanation of  numerous anomalies along the borders between those states. A bit galloppy but well informed. Several of these The Blob, being boring and derviative, has also blobovered:
• Point Roberts
• Ellis Island
• The Prime Meridian: fascinating [as Tom Scott often is] journey from Greenwich and George Airy in 1830 to SatNav, GPs and Johns Hopkins in 1973 to plate tectonics in 3 minutes flat spheroid.

And now for something completely diff: documentaries about Art

• It's Edward Hopper's birthday 22 July 1882.  Wim Wenders and Brian O’Doherty talk about his life and works.
• While we're about 20thC US art, let's check out Michael Palin’s Wyeth’s World:

B Day

 D-Day 6th June 1944 is long long ago. I've had two Sundays off, but I really need to clear the backlog of this is could interesting links

• Chop-chop
• Farming snails for food [as R]
• Dip-netting salmon for food
• Tapping trees for food
• Food irrelevant to judge's judgement
• Soul food makes everyone happy
• Farms with trees are better
• Trees? Bonny Portmore ♬ ♫ ♩ ♪
• Trees? Shinrin'yuko 森林浴 = Forest bathing
• Japan? 4th Grade
• Flotsam = Lego
• Tom Scott? James Lovelock, hamsters and microwaves.
• Never Seen: minority interest collection of the UK Science Museum
• Oroville 2017 [prevs] Grady the Engineer's retrospective
• Erosion? Rock trundling it's a thang
• Rocks? Split them with plug'n'feathers
• Engineers? building tooth-pick structures for earthquake zones
• Fakkin' frakking: a river on fire
• The End . . . of A River Runs Thru It. I am haunted by waters.

Pointing the finger

And remember how much a hand can express,
How a single slight movement of it can say more
Than millions of words – dropped hand, clenched fist,
Snapping fingers, thump up, thumb down,
Raised in blessing, clutched in passion, begging,
Welcome, dismissal, prayer, applause,
And a million other signs, too slight, too subtle,
Too packed with meaning for words to describe,
A universal language understood by all.

That would be [prev in context] Hugh "Marxist" MacDiarmid suggesting that all human endeavour amounts to a bit of dust flicked heedlessly off God's cuff. I guess we're not usually conscious of gestures - either made by us or seen in others. But that's not to say either a) that we are heedless or b) that gestures don't matter. 

I think that gesture may be treated separately from Sign Language on which I've had a good bit to say: BSL .ne. ISL - Makaton - Koko - Haptic - Washoe - SingAndSign. Tom Scott agrees that they are different; that gesture is co-speech or paralinguistic communication. Maybe like the adverbs of the basic comms.

Lauren Gawne [the Southern half of Lingthusiasm] has f i n a l l y brought her book to publication: Gesture: a slim guide [that's an autopuff alert from Gawne which abstracts 5 cool facts about gesture]. The Blob has been quite the fanboi for Lingthusiasm, the podcast. They took their podcast to YT for episode 30 about Gesture. Obvs you're going to lose a lot in such a dialog if all the info is coming only through your headphones. That's a still clip [R] of Gawne gesturing a tomato rolling down hill. Turkish tomatoes roll exactly the same as English ones; but the accompanying gestures track the constraints of each language. Turkish (and french) emphasizes the down, while English privileges the roll.

If you are a normally unobservant person, you won't thank me for making you aware of co-speech. You'll never be comfortable watching your boss's left hand chopping the air to show herself she's in charge.

Miss Ellen Annie May

It's exactly 50 years since leftie 1930s poet Cecil Day Lewis passed on.  He was born in Ballintubber, Queen's County, not a million miles from my people. But he's buried in Stinsford, Dorset not 10 million microns from Thomas Hardy. His son is still running. Daughter still cookin'.

• Come live with me.  
  
• Where the war poets? 
  
• A hard frost
  

Poetry? ‘Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.’ Robert Frost.

What else?

• Yay, mechanical advantage - block-and-tackle launch edition.
• Doom grinding RTE documentary about Lithium [prev] mining in Wicklow and NW Argentina
• Gatekeeping PRIDE - no!
• Flood prone Welsh village told to up sticks  
• Tom Scott flies like a goose Anser albifrons
• Gangnam Newton. via MeFi
• Pints at 2/- in North Kerry . . . 1967
  

sun 27t mar 022

Last of March

• Only joshing to sell tools 
• Mugs? Tom Scott makes a few [R handle]
  
• Running the Thames for Windrush
• Windrows? Slow scything
• Insufficient 🌈respeck on Startrek
• Diary doings below stairs before the war 
• Repairing Judi Dench
• Vredefort, ZA and an ancient impact
• Cai Thomas laudate dominus 
  

Thirteen October

Few musical links from the last week.

• Satie, Eric. I find his stuff super-restfulzzzzzzzzz
• Gnossiennes 1,2,3
• Trois gymnopedies
• Sara Bareilles et al: Once upon another time.
• Brave
• First Aid Kit - un hommage to Emmylou Harris
• FAK - The Lion's Roar
• Katie Melua - Fields Of Gold
• I will be there
• If you were a sailboat
• Horse-racing wrongs bloboprev now MeFi commentary
• Lateral. A quiz for Internet "celeb" nerds led by Tom Scott.
• Primes, spirals, Dirichlet (1837). Beautiful explanation of the distribution of primes by 3blue1brown . . . just zzzzz off when it gets too much - I did.
• More narrow-gauge trains than you can shake a stick at.

Sunday Slump 081115

• Remember my explanation of Georg Cantor and his several infinities? If you think I didn't put it/him into historical or mathematical context, you might try the 1st of a BBC two-parter on maths and madmen.
• Home work: Fell Running in sunny [!] Yorkshire.
• The Bob Graham 42 peaks in 24 hours by an analytical modernist. 
• Bob Graham by a slightly hysterical German.
• Tom Scott, wide-ranging vlogger, on Google translate woes and keeping time.

Feast of St Barbara

Yes, it's true, 4th Dec is St. Barbara's Day; despite my suggestion that Barbara should really be venerated on 11th July. But the following links have nothing to do with artillery.

• Analysis of a Landslide Dam : if you know the process, you can better predict / ameliorate.
• Sieves? Can crush and sieve oyster shell for more utility
• Catastrophic run-off? Fermentation can convert tofu waste-water into useful methane
• Regular water runs for energy; Tom Scott at the Petitcodiac Bore [bloboprev] 
• Queen Emma pontoon Swingbridge Curaçao chugs out of the way
• John Locker goes fishing off Cornwall
  
• Striding [over the] Edge to Hellvellyn
• Same route another take
  
• Makin' an axe by hand
• Makin' an archive from an 'eap - Dublin Port edition
• Makin' a jigsaw puzzle robot - surprisingly hard
  
• Makin' calligraphic ink from oak, gean and fermented FeS₂ via Mefi
• Rewriting Kelly's Book with that ink
  
• A modern [1991] Kelly's Book Leabhar Mór na hÉireann
• ♬ ♫ ♩ ♪
• Sorley Maclean An Roghainn/The Choice (Julie Fowlis)
  

Shorts Sunday 081017

I really must get up to the Faroe / Faeroe archipelago, The Blob has only looked at the islands from afar. Despite the isolation and windy weather, some 65,000 people are hanging in there with their own distinct language and culture. They are making an effort to bring a cascade of $$$s and €€€s into the island by giving the region a higher profile. If you want a sentence translated into Faroese you type it in here, wait a few seconds and you call will be routed to a real islander who will say it back  in her/his native language. How cool is that? Don't, like me, try "Let us kill more whales" though, they are fed up with that old cliché and a nice lady will refer you to whaling.fo where you will be lectured about regulation and sustainability. via MeFi where some interesting commentary about bandwidth and infrastructural support in Faroes vs Shetland and other remote parts of the UK

• Tom Scott on reaction ferries which cross rivers without power.
• Half as Interesting does the UPU which reckons the cost of postal delivery worldwide.
• Eccentric weights and measures section
• The Smoot
• Eccentric old buffers section
• Irving Finkel on the Lewis Chess-pieces.
• On cuneiform
• Michael Poliakoff on Periodic Elements
• I have written about the virtues of communal music
• drums [prev]
• singing [prev] Turns out that, in the UK, more people sing in choirs than do amateur soccer: infographic on the rise and rise of singing together
• I wrote about Educating Yorkshire this time last year. Here is the formerly stammering Musharaf all grown up and dating. And the daft bugger is now vlogging.
• Sporty people cheating
• in camera
• On the Appalachian Trail [prevlier]
• on the Pacific Crest Trail
• In case you haven't read enough about the virtues of the Finnish school system. Here is a piece on the issue from Smithsonian.
• How to live to be 100+. Advice from those who made that far.  The best advice I have heard came from a centenarian who was asked 
• "To what do you attribute your longevity?"
• "I never drank, smoked, or went with a woman; until I was eight"

Not New Yrs Day '23

Golly me, it's twenty three! Every so often, Christmas and New Year's Day fall on a Sunday; and I still find it a bit unsettling. It seems that such times need the day to be something more than a reg'lar Sunday. But here we go with a reg'lar Sunday Miscellany.

• The lost art of stabbing the other knecht [cw: hacks, blood]
• Life advice for today: Always go to the funeral. 
• obvs, nobody in Ireland needs to be told this
• Decommissioning Sellafield/ Windascle - the price
  
• On the Canadian Borrrder with Tom Scott
• Farmers are well 'ard right?
  
• CA Canada? Gander answers the call
  
• UK University Challenge: Paxo savages The Youth
  
• NO Watch the ticker: The Norwegian Sovereign Wealth fund value 
• PT The Carnation Revolution 1974
• NO FI RU triple point "Treriksrøysa" on the edge of the Øvre Pasvik National Park
  
• ♬ ♫ ♩ ♪ in F#
  
• Fanfare for The Common Man
• Fauré's Requiem
• Fandango Boccherini 
• Fado  Canção do Mar
  
• Fat Boy Slim Weapon of Choice
• Fagunero Mohonay
• Four Strong Winds Ian Tyson died a couple of days ago.
  

New Sun Day Aug

Random is as random does

• RTE report: The Law of the Wind: got an acre? get yourself a wind-turbine: €20K/year for 30 years
• Got a fire? Get a disc harrow
  
• Got 300 acres of acidic heavy-metal lake? Get yourself a marksman to frighten migrating birds [pow! R]
  
• ♬usical interlude
  
• I've just discovered Cate le Bon: Carmarthen's best si♬gster.
• Old lad♩es look back to the 1890s
  
• Viking woo with He♩lung
• Tu bella ca' lu tieni lu pettu tundu Tarantella
  
• Wet t-shirts in Bollywood  - Ishq Kameena
  
• Micromouse competition - no, I'm also baffled
• Prof T;m W;lson; political commentator; has become a semi-colon;
• Tom Scott reads scraggy hand-writing
• St Galgano's sword in the stone 
  
• Bakfietsen - appropriate technology for flat cities
• DIY wine-rack for beeeeees
• Bernie Sanders is moving to Trondheim.
  

They were expendable

NASA ran out of astronauts as the programme got more ambitious, [and cut a few corners].
[M7] First were the original Mercury Seven appointed during the Eisenhower administration in April 1959. They look suitably Star Trekky in their helmets and lace-up boots:
Back: Alan B. Shepard, Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, and L. Gordon Cooper.
Front: Walter H. Schirra, Donald K. "Deke" Slayton, John H. Glenn, and Scott Carpenter;
Only 6/7 = 86% actually made to Space; Deke Slayton's heart problems had him nixxed as a health risk Up There; but he became a NASA magnate on Earth.
They're all dead now, the last to go being John Glenn, a 1984 US presidential hopeful. And don't forget Ham, the first primate in space, who went up before Alan Shepard, came down 15 minutes later and lived another 24 years in US zoos. And also remember Enos, the second chimpanzee and first malfunction casualty in the NASA hall of shame cock-ups: Enos didn't die from multiple electric shocks, he died a year after that ordeal from the bloody flux which proved to be untreatable with then current antibiotics.

[NN] The Next Nine group of recruits were [alphabetical]: Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Pete Conrad, Jim Lovell, James McDivitt, Elliot See, Tom Stafford, Ed White and John Young - were appointed in September 1962. Only 7/9 = 78% of them left the Earth.

[TF] The following year 1963 there was another recruitment drive, and 13 white, male Right Stuff pilots made the selection cut. Because 13 was an unlucky number (Go Science!), they added Walter Cunningham to the list to form group 3 The Fourteen: Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, William Anders, Charles Bassett, Alan Bean, Gene Cernan, Michael Collins, Roger Chaffee, Walter Cunningham, Donn Eisele, Theodore Freeman, Richard Gordon, Russell (Rusty) Schweickart, David Scott, Clifton (C.C.) Williams. There were another 4 pre-flight fatalities = 71% in this group. Do you see a pattern here? the number of astronauts who actually went astro fell 86%, 78%, 71% with each intake!

Ted Freeman [TF] hit a flying goose coming into land a plane at Houston. Elliot See [NN] crashed his plane trying to land in poor weather at St Louis, taking co-pilot Charles Bassett [TF] into the ground with him.  CC Williams [TF] was also killed in a plane accident - aileron failure. Although all four planes were Supersonic T-38 jets, there is no suggestion that T-38s were inherently unsafe. Gus Grissom [MS], Ed White [NN] and Roger Chaffee [TF] went up in flames (loadsa velcro on the cabin walls, nylon space suits, design failures) on the launchpad in a practice from Apollo 1.

They Were Expendable was a book and a John Ford film about PT boats in WWII Philippines. It's a Boy Film. Nit a million miles from what my father was doing in the English Channel at about the same time.