Bear Math

This article at Quanta highlights a possible way that math can save a person in danger of being attacked by a bear.

I found it intriguing but I don't ever intend to give it a try.

Um, Really?

Despite its penchant for privacy invasion and time-wasting, I have found Facebook to be a valuable tool since the pandemic began, allowing a streaming platform for our church's services and a means of keeping in touch with our people. As well as being a kind of substitute newsletter for folks to see what's going on.

However, every now and again Facebook feels a need to remind us that it is stupid. Recently small ads have begun appearing on the right-hand side of the page when one checks one's newsfeed. These ads are, like most of the ads the platform runs, dumb. A rough estimate suggests more than four-fifths of them are bogus, designed to lure a reader primarily through thumbnail photos of attractive and mostly undressed women who have nothing to do with what is supposedly being advertised.

As it does with the ads that clutter its feed, Facebook offers us the chance to hide these ads too. And as it does with the other ads, you are given a list of choices about why you want to hide the ad in question. I always choose "Irrelevant" as my response, since "fake cash grab and pack of lies" is not one of the options. For some reason, the order of the responses changes around, so that rather than be in the same place according to alphabetical or some other order my preferred choice migrates. Perhaps FB designers think that I will not see it and I will choose one of the other answers, which will probably give the algorithm data to use in pushing an entirely different sets of ads on me. This is stupid.

After I have clicked on "irrelevant," a second dialog box opens up that asks me if I would like to learn more about this advertiser. Yes, I certainly would like to see other advertising from a source that I have labeled irrelevant. Whoops! No, I wouldn't. And the question is stupid.

If Mrs. Gump was right, stupid is as stupid does. Which is why Facebook is, despite its utility in certain areas, stupid.

What Didn't Happen?

At the informative site Back ReAction, physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains why quantum mechanics is weird. Anyone who's read a little bit about it knows there's plenty of weirdness to go around, but Dr. Hossenfelder is addressing a particular feature of the theory by use of an experiment called "the bomb experiment."

You can read the post or watch her YouTube video for a full explanation of the experiment, but the upshot of it is that, because of quantum mechanics and its quirky nature, the bomb experiment can explain not only the events that did take place, but also the ones that didn't. And that's not the way experiments usually run.

Terminal Velocity

This animation shows how long a ball would take to drop a kilometer on different bodies in the Solar System. As one might expect, the ball falls fastest in the sun's gravity. But that would hardly be your only problem if you're falling towards the sun.

Collection

 -- A story at the University of Georgia's website offers advice on how college freshmen may avoid the dread "freshman 15" or other number signifying the weight gain that often happens in the first few months away from home. Unsurprisingly, the story suggests that decreased activity and increased food intake contributes to the gain, which is usually more in the neighborhood of eight pounds rather than 15. So in other words, if I had stopped eating pepperoni pizza turnovers from the food truck at 11:30 PM, reduced the portion of my calorie count provided by grains -- specifically barley, hops and various combinations thereof -- and done more than sit on my tuckus I would not have gained weight. I hope that a degree was not required to puzzle out this information.

-- When music videos began to be played more and more regularly, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts and bassist Bill Wyman quickly established their on-camera personae as the serious guys hard at work while Mick Jagger and guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood pranced and lurched through their rock-star pose repertoire. Watts' professionalism probably contributed to the band not imploding during one of the dozen or so feuds Jagger and Richards conducted during its 58-year history. He was the first Stone to reach 80 (Wyman is 84 but retired in 1993). Even more admirably, Watts remained married to his wife Shirley from October 1964 until his death this week at 80.

-- Jupiter's moon Ganymede is apparently a weird place, boasting a size greater than the planet Mercury and features common to even much larger worlds than that. Here's hoping Elon Musk gets curious about it.

Time Travelers

In another edition of one of my favorite types of photography postings Neatorama shows the work of Magdalena Vissagio and her transformation of sculpture, paintings and old photographs to modern images. It's pretty interesting to see what Abe Lincoln looks like with a smile on his face. And Frederick Douglass shows even more don't-mess-with-me dignity than in his usual black-and-white image. Although Nero looks like a party animal instead of the psychotic murderous dictator that he was.

Aflight

The discovery of PlutoTV has allowed me to consume media other than current podcasts and such, which are filled with stuff that is nothing I want to watch right now.

Among the offerings are reruns of the 1990s NBC sitcom Wings, set in a regional airport in Nantucket. I'd enjoyed this show when it aired, but my career diversion to seminary took me away from television for a big chunk of its run. David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee created it and set it in the same world as their other output Cheers and later, Frasier. It never flew quite as high (heh) but lasted seven respectable seasons and brings the laughs pretty well. It was one of the first vehicles for Tony Shaloub, later known as Adrian Monk in the series of that name.

It's very much a product of its era with the setup/punchline format and issues resolved inside one episode. But it does make moves towards the kinds of longer arcs that more modern shows have and character development over time. It's also a showcase for 90s fashions of blocky blazers for women and unstructured shirts and floppy ties for men, especially on co-lead Steven Weber. I'd forgotten that it was an enjoyable little niche show, even if it never broke out like the trio's other work.

And Crystal Bernard was just about as cute as could be, but I am sure that had nothing to do with the show's appeal.