Today I Learned

[Borg]

While the system may be unpredictable, this has been going on for billions of years so it seems stable enough.

Is it truly known that they've been in that orbit for billions of years as opposed to having decayed recently into its current configuration?

 

[Swamp Thing]

TIL that an old plasma display can be used as a sketch pad that you can draw on with a laser pointer.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

TIL that monoclonal antibodies are used to selectively deliver cancer-killing drugs to tumor cells

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that Uranus was originally Georgian, after King George III. Nations unfriendly to the British Empire would not accept this.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

TIL that Uranus was originally Georgian, after King George III. Nations unfriendly to the British Empire would not accept this.

So they used a dysphemism for King George instead?

 

[jack action]

TIL that the WD-40 name represents 39 failed attempts at making the product:

It took them 40 attempts to get their water displacing formula to work, but on the 40th attempt, they got it right in a big way. WD-40 Multi Use Product was born. WD-40 stands for Water Displacement, 40th formula. That’s the name straight out of the lab book used by the chemist who developed the product.

 

[gmax137]

I heard a similar story about 7-Up.

 

[kyphysics]

. . .how to beat inflation

 

[Ivan Seeking]

TIL about the latest in cyber security. Eeeeeesh!

I predict that in ten years, cyber security hardware/software will be the number one cause of failures in automation.

 

[Rive]

I predict that in ten years, cyber security hardware/software will be the number one cause of failures in automation.

I'm kind of surprised. I thought it already got the lead by now.

 

[Swamp Thing]

TIL about the remarkable engineering subtleties within the deceptively simple PVC ball valve.

 

[BillTre]

Ball valves are cool. i have used thousands of them.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

I'm kind of surprised. I thought it already got the lead by now.

So far it has caused us to jump through more hoops, but I haven't seen huge problems. But the degree of protection is going to increase dramatically for the typical factory.

It certainly gets harder and harder to do our jobs. For example, it has been impossible email a program to many companies for years how. We used to be able to change the extension from an EXE to something like XLXS. But they finally got smart about that. Some companies have even started banning all external storage devices. So how are we supposed to hand off a program?

Ever since Stuxnet we have been walking on thin ice.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

TIL that cocaine can make rats love jazz.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21688895/

I knew it all along!

 

[Hornbein]

TIL that cocaine can make rats love jazz.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21688895/

I knew it all along!

"Of the 20 rats examined, eighteen of them showed a preference for Beethoven, and only two showed a preference for Miles Davis. "

The rats preferred silence to Beethoven's Fur Elise. The scientists considered making music that the rats liked but have yet to explore this avenue. They noted that music has an effect on the human brain similar to popular forms of drug abuse. They were able to get the rats to prefer Beethoven over silence by injecting them with a cocaine solution in association with Beethoven's Fur Elise.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3144275/

Hipster rats : Outnumbered!

 

[BillTre]

TIL that there are ways to download topo data from particular websites, transform it into .stl files and then used it to mill cool topomaps (which I don't have the equipment to do). Similar files could be used in for 3-D printers (which I do have access to.
Nice video:

 

[BillTre]

Here is another nice Feynman video.

This one is about 15 minutes long and has the approach that Feynman was more of an ordinary guy than a super high IQ person.
Thus great achievements like his can be realistically considered to be not beyond the grasp of greater numbers of people.

 

[DaveC426913]

So they used a dysphemism for King George instead?

TIL a "dysphemism" is a thing.

 

[strangerep]

[...] Feynman was more of an ordinary guy than a super high IQ person. [...]

Near 7:43 in the video: "...he [Feynman] reportedly liked to date undergrads, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of his friends"...

IOW, he could give Einstein some competition in the "icky" department...

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Near 7:43 in the video: "...he [Feynman] reportedly liked to date undergrads, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of his friends"...

IOW, he could give Einstein some competition in the "icky" department...

Schrodinger was also famous for his rendezvous in the Swiss Alps with very young ladies, and I believe the wife of a grad student on one occasion. Reportedly, it was known to his closest friends that he came back from these trips inspired. So maybe Quantum Mechanics came about due to the inspiration of a beautiful woman.

 

[Hornbein]

Near 7:43 in the video: "...he [Feynman] reportedly liked to date undergrads, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of his friends"...

IOW, he could give Einstein some competition in the "icky" department...

He describes patronizing prostitutes in his autobiography.

 

[pinball1970]

Near 7:43 in the video: "...he [Feynman] reportedly liked to date undergrads, hire prostitutes, and sleep with the wives of his friends"...

IOW, he could give Einstein some competition in the "icky" department...

Einstein came up with some rules for his marriage. I remember laughing in disbelief reading them, even 100 years ago this must have been pretty outrageous.

"A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or travelling with you.

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.
D. You will undertake not to belittle me in front of our children, either through words or behavior."

 

[Hornbein]

Schrodinger was also famous for his rendezvous in the Swiss Alps with very young ladies, and I believe the wife of a grad student on one occasion. Reportedly, it was known to his closest friends that he came back from these trips inspired. So maybe Quantum Mechanics came about due to the inspiration of a beautiful woman.

He also had two wives, insofar as that was possible then and there.

 

[Hornbein]

Einstein came up with some rules for his marriage. I remember laughing in disbelief reading them, even 100 years ago this must have been pretty outrageous.

"A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laundry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals regularly in my room;
3. that my bedroom and study are kept neat, and especially that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all personal relations with me insofar as they are not completely necessary for social reasons. Specifically, You will forego:

1. my sitting at home with you;
2. my going out or travelling with you.

C. You will obey the following points in your relations with me:

1. you will not expect any intimacy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talking to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bedroom or study immediately without protest if I request it.

His first or second marriage? I suppose it was his second. By that time he had escaped into a world of mathematical physics. His second wife just a servant with job security.

In his youth he was more normal. He was an excellent violinist, good enough to turn pro, in a day when that was an important social skill. He enjoyed good relations with his first wife after the divorce.

 

[Hornbein]

There was a free love movement in the late 19th century, the leading exponent of which was Victoria Woodhull. She was a "household word," someone everyone knew of. Victoria has been, ah, de-emphasized in history.

 

[pinball1970]

Schrodinger was also famous for his rendezvous in the Swiss Alps with very young ladies, and I believe the wife of a grad student on one occasion. Reportedly, it was known to his closest friends that he came back from these trips inspired. So maybe Quantum Mechanics came about due to the inspiration of a beautiful woman.

Weird what inspires people, Heisenberg went off for a walk with bad hay fever and came back with the uncertainty principle and Feynman looked at some plates to get fired up to solve QED!

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Weird what inspires people, Heisenberg went off for a walk with bad hay fever and came back with the uncertainty principle and Feynman looked at some plates to get fired up to solve QED!

Kary Mullis took LSD, came up with the polymerase chain reaction [inspired by a road sign], and received a Nobel Prize. But later he thought a glowing green raccoon would talk to him and was channeling an alien, so maybe not such a good idea.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Another related quote apparently:

“I encountered a glowing green raccoon riding a neon orange motorcycle at my cabin in the woods of northern California around midnight one night in 1985. The raccoon proceeded to metamorphose into a singing dolphin at the stroke of midnight.” - Kary Mullis​

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10649147-i-encountered-a-glowing-green-raccoon-riding-a-neon-orange

 

[Hornbein]

I was a graduate student in the same department with Ralph Abraham. He gave a presentation in which he said psychedelics helped him discover chaos theory.

Dave Davies, guitarist of The Kinks, believed he was in psychic communication with extraterrestrials and that this improved his guitar playing.

 

[BillTre]

Another related quote apparently:

“I encountered a glowing green raccoon riding a neon orange motorcycle at my cabin in the woods of northern California around midnight one night in 1985. The raccoon proceeded to metamorphose into a singing dolphin at the stroke of midnight.” - Kary Mullis​

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10649147-i-encountered-a-glowing-green-raccoon-riding-a-neon-orange

Too much surfing?

 

[Ivan Seeking]

Dave Davies, guitarist of The Kinks, believed he was in psychic communication with extraterrestrials and that this improved his guitar playing.

No way! Never once have I seen an alien give a good guitar performance.

Must be the Akashic field.

 

[diogenesNY]

Sun Ra stated quite specifically that he was from Saturn. I have no intention of contradicting him.

 

[Hornbein]

Sun Ra stated quite specifically that he was from Saturn. I have no intention of contradicting him.

Laurdine "Pat" Patrick played with Sun Ra for forty years. His son Deval was elected governor of Massachusetts and is a big shot at Bain Capital.

 

[Hornbein]

From Wikipedia

A Golden Arm is a craps player who rolls the dice for longer than one hour without losing. The first Golden Arm was Oahu native Stanley Fujitake, who rolled 118 times without sevening out in 3 hours and 6 minutes at the California Hotel and Casino on May 28, 1989.[28]

The current record for length of a "hand" (successive rounds won by the same shooter) is 154 rolls including 25 passes by Patricia DeMauro of New Jersey, lasting 4 hours and 18 minutes,[29] at the Borgata in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on May 23–24, 2009. She bested by over an hour the record held for almost 20 years – that of Fujitake.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

TIL where I parked my Tesla Roadster

https://where-is-tesla-roadster.space/live