Eunoia
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--> Most recent Blog Comments Policy Impressum Maths trivia Search this site RSS Feed Eunoia, who is a grumpy, overeducated, facetious, multilingual ex-pat Scot, blatantly opinionated, old (1944-vintage), amateur cryptologist, computer consultant, atheist, flying instructor, bulldog-lover, Beetle-driver, textbook-writer, long-distance biker, geocacher and blogger living in the foothills south of the northern German plains. Not too shy to reveal his true name or even whereabouts, he blogs his opinions, and humour and rants irregularly. Stubbornly he clings to his beliefs, e.g. that Faith does not give answers, it only prevents you doing any goddamn questioning. You are as atheist as he is. When you understand why you don't believe in all the other gods, you will know why he does not believe in yours :-) Oh, and he also has a neat English Bulldog bitch 'Frieda'. And her big son 'Kosmo'.
Some of my bikes
My Crypto Pages
My Maths Pages
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Thursday, January 29, 2015
A Thousand Years ago...Blessed Meinwerk (c. 975 - 5 June 1036) was the Bishop of Paderborn (our local cathedral city) from 1009 until his death in 1036. He built the Bartholomy chapel which still exists and many churches in villages in the surrounding countryside. One of them was our village, which thus first appeared in written history (church diary) 1000 years ago this year. The tiny village core is thus actually older. Doubtless there will be a big millenium parade in summer.The village sign has been dismantled and replaced by a "new" one. Unfortunately, during the daytime, this just looks like an old sheet of rusty iron with some vague carvings on it, which has led to protests. But if you look at it at night, when it is lit up internally, you can see it in its full glory :-) The laser cut-outs show L2R the "new" village church (19th century); the stone bridge over the river (which was taken out by the spring floods in 1965, which drowned several people), now rebuilt; and the tower of the old medieval church - which now serves as a war memorial. We have lived here since 1988 and I have seen the bridge submerged during the snow-melts some years; this is also why the graveyard has been moved up onto the northern hillside of the valley. But the "new" sewage works was built one summer down on the floodplain downstream of our village. This merely meant that - come the next spring floods - the next village down stream got the benefits of the town planner's foresight :-( When the millenium parades and celebrations take place I shall be taking lots of photos, some of which I shall show you in this blog (unless I'm away on a motorcycle tour at the time e.g. to the Ukraine border). The neighbouring village up on the hill to the south also celebrates its millenium of written history this year. Their symbol is their large oak tree which is on the register of protected ancient landmarks. Old, old, old!
Meanwhile it turns out that the tottering cherry tree in our garden, which I had to chop down last year for safety's sake, was only 44 years old. Comments (5) : Monday, January 26, 2015
Budding ScientistsLet my tell you about some of the competitions for budding talented scientists we have in this country. I'll use local boy Leon Lettermann as an example. Leon will be taking his university entrance exams this summer, but meanwhile he has qualified for the International Physics Olympics (IPhO) this year, which means he is one of the top 50 aspirants in the country.The third round is taking place right now (January 21st through 27th) at DESY in Hamburg. The finals will be in Mumbai in July. This week participants get a guided tour of DESY (an electron-synchrotron), a visit to a power-generating electricity works, and fireside discussion with professional astro-particle-physicists. But of course they get workshops and tests of their experiment-design skills too. How would you design these 3 experiments?
My nephew Darius - now a postdoc in Aachen - entered the Maths Olympics in his final year at school. I remember the tests as being quite hard, at the time. Life was simpler when I was a kid, OTOH there were no such opportunities. But there may be less such opportunities in the future here too :-( Before CC asks : yes there are many women studying to become teachers too, but mostly in non-MINT subjects. Chicken & egg problem? Comments (2) : Saturday, January 24, 2015
Winston Churchill50 years ago today, the great British politician and warlord, the bulldog-like Winston Churchill, died aged 90. Doubtless there will be many tributes, to his speeches etc, and obituaries in the Brit press, so I've just got a pictorial summary of his career for you ;-)
Comments (1) : Friday, January 23, 2015
Reacting to CharlieAfter the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, different European countries have reacted in different ways :-Britain : PM Cameron wants to extend GCHQ's powers to spy on people (thus making the net even less safe), via e.g. WhatsApp and require teachers and lecturers to sneak on any apparently radicalised muslim pupils/students. The UK Community Secretary has written to 1000 imams demanding they integrate better, which has caused a minor uproar. Spain : After the 2004 Madrid terrorism, the government introduced a secret plan in 2010 for enhanced border controls and to inhibit recruitment of terrorists. A new plan is expected soon. Belgium : Use the military internally to protect special buildings etc. Monitor suspects' telephones. First thoughts about dealing with endangerers returning from war-training in Irak/Syria. I expect further measures after last week's terrorist shootings. Norway : Police protection of radio and TV stations such as NDK. Issue of automatic weapons instead of pistols. Withdraw suspects' passports. Italy : Set up an anti-terror unit. Withdraw suspects' passports. Block terror-propaganda websites. More armed patrols at tourist sites (Colosseum, Peters Place). Austria : A security-offensive is being planned. Hundreds of millions for better equipped police and special units. Withdraw suspects' passports. Romania : Introduce a modified law about monitoring mobile-phone and internet access after the 2012 one was deemed unconstitutional by the courts. European Union : Interchange of air-passenger data. Germany : The German government is trying to address the French terror attacks with a sense of calm, with no plans for new terror laws. However, fears are growing that the massacre will boost a disturbing anti-Muslim current (Pegida) in the country, as predicted in this blog a few weeks back. Even the attempt to travel to a terrorist training camp will soon be a punishable offence, as will the funding of terrorist groups. A bill will be submitted to the cabinet in January that would enable law enforcement to revoke the identification cards of suspects, to inhibit their travels. Meanwhile we have over 1900 salafists in the state of NRW alone... General remarks : First suggestions of reintroducing border controls for the Schengen countries have appeared. Nobody has openly suggested preventative imprisonment of suspects, aka concentration camps like Guantanamo Bay YET, but that'll be in the pipeline somewhere I expect. So far, only the UK has forcibly ejected hate-preachers (radical Imams) afaik. Years ago, the UK used to send their undesirables to Australia, but nowadays they don't want them either ;-) I wonder what else the governments will come up with? One-way tickets to XYZ-istan maybe??? Interesting times :-( Thursday, January 22, 2015
American SniperNo, I haven't seen the movie. But with Clint Eastwood as director, I expect it will be technically well executed (pun intended). I have however seen the murderous trailers. I find the release date unfortunate, just as we are suffering from the Charlie Hebdo assassinations, this film show what radicalises IS to rebel against western killers. A lack of political sensitivity in this hero worship movie, methinks :-( The unrelated picture above - found on Cheezeburger - characterises the cliche´s we have here of gun-nut Americans : shooting from the far right, at anything on the left, a big a bore as possible, but a short-barrelled bible-belter too. If the guy had a longer barrel (yes, Dorothy, that IS a metaphor) he might have inscribed it "Revelations 3:16" instead of "John", which would sum up my opinion of him better ;-) So, no to that one. Instead I shall be going to see "The Imitation Game" which is on German release today. The life and times of Alan Turing at Bletchley Park. I think that will be a much better movie, even if not true to the real facts. Mathematics is hard to display in a movie as so many have such a small understanding thereof. I see it is a multiple Oscar-candidate :-) Wednesday, January 21, 2015
German Aircraft Registrations, 2nd letterCorrespondence with fellow pilot Cop Car (USA) showed me that here in Germany we do aircraft registrations differently, inasmuch as the second letter acts as a classifier. Stateside, after the initial country letter (N) there seems only to be a serial number, with some neat out-of-sequence registrations. For example, Spaceship One has the special registration N-328KF. which can be read as 328 KiloFeet = 100 kms = the altitude where space officially begins :-) Our first letter D means Deutschland, i.e. Germany. The meanings of the second letter classifiers for civil aircraft are :-
Landing fees and runway loadings are rated on this scheme too. The call signs thus tell radio partners such as controllers what sort of performance to expect, some of the big airliners/freighters will append their callsign with "Heavy", implying less manoeverable. Comments (1) : Monday, January 19, 2015
Pegs in holesYesterday while I was riding along, I tried to remember the english idiom for someone unsuited to the job he/she was doing (mismatched interfaces). I couldn't remember whether it was "Square peg in a round hole" or "Round peg in a square hole" . Since I was riding a motorcycle (weather was wet but +3°C here, no ice or snow), I didn't have access to Google to look it up, so I tried mentally deriving from first principles.The (red) pegs occupy π/4 and 2/π of the unit areas respectively, so a round peg fits better into a square hole than a square peg fits into a round hole. Therefore " square peg in a round hole" characterises the mismatch better. The idiom is attributed to Sydney Smith, a witty UK writer and priest, ca. 1840. When I got home, I googled both expressions. Turns out "square peg in a round hole" got 244,000 results but "round peg in a square hole" got only 48,700 results, which confirmed my mental arithmetic :-) However, my wandering mind went on to look at the 3 dimensional case too. And yes, a sphere fits in a cube better than a cube in a sphere. But the ratio between the two is smaller. And so I went on to calculate the fits of 4-dimensional hyperspheres in 4-dimensional hypercubes and vice versa. The ratio decreased again. To cut a long story short, for spaces of 9 dimensions and more, the unit hypercube fits more closely into the unit hypersphere than vice versa! So if our universe has 11 or 23 dimensions, depending on which flavour of String Theory you favour, we may yet have to rewrite this idiom ;-) PS : Comments about my excessive nerdiness will be duly ignored ;-) Comments (3) : Friday, January 16, 2015
The Ultimate Cafe´Racer :-)Drool! Droolier!! Drooliest!!! If I should ever win the lottery...Steve Tonkin knows how to get us old bikers, hook line and sinker! This is a roadgoing Manx Norton, legal in the UK, for gawd's sake! Back in the early sixties in Europe, the Manx Norton was THE race bike, winning most short-circuit races and doing well in the TT against the italian fours too. 500cc, DOHC, single cylinder, open megaphone, double-leading shoes drum brake, 5-speed Quaife box, 1½" Amal GP carb, Featherbed frame. Bet it pulls like a steam train! And now, Steve Tonkin, who specialised in resurrecting classic singles, builds these artisanal bikes in road trim. Gold Star 'silencer' from a DBD34 BSA, engine set up for more torque with less peak power (50 bhp), all just right for those Lancashire lanes of his region. But 48,000+ Euros??? Sadly unaffordable. It'll stay a dream for me :-( And come 1/1/2016, when the European Union tightens its rules about how loud engines may be (unbelievably, the current Ducati Panigale is street legal with 104 dB!!!), Steve will have a problem with that Goldie can, and methinks nobody is going to buy a Manx with a huge muffler, emitting a mere whisper. This is what an open 1962 Manx Norton sounds like, coming out of Governor's Bridge. Steve Tonkin, who won the Junior TT back in 1981, has in previous years built the Tonkin Tempest which is powered by a DBD34 OHV Gold Star single and the Tonkin Typhoon, powered by a SOHC Matchless G50 engine in a Seeley-style frame, both eminently desirable. For 2015 he is planning on building a few NorVins (Vincent 1000cc V-twin in a Norton Featherbed frame). Already he has me hooked; what a shame I'm not able to afford any of them! Here's a link to Steve Tonkin's website, where fellow bikers can drool too :-)
Comments (3) : FJS (D) wrote "Uuiiii - now THAT is a pretty motorcycle :-)" Indeed it is :-) Dale (UK) asks "What changes would you need to make it street-legal in Germany?" Just from the photo : it needs a mirror (or 2), blinkers, right-dipping headlamp, maybe a quieter exhaust can(?), speedo in km/h, a horn. Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Pirating cartoonsAfter the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I thought I might post a political cartoon of my own. However it turns out I have no drawing skills; the only style I might emulate is that of XKCD's stick figures, but XKCD does it much better anyway AND has a plethora of funny science stories associated with his cartoons :-)So I tug my cap to XKCD and shall stick to texts and photos. You have to admire cartoonists - especially political ones for their ability to come up with jokes about current affairs, day in, day out. Respect! I couldn't do that on a daily basis. XKCD is usually my favourite (because of the science ones), closely followed by Dilbert and Andy Capp. Which are your favourite cartoons? Comments (4) : Monday, January 12, 2015
Lilienthal Archives Online :-)Last week Cop Car implied that she'd like me to do more aviation posts. So here is one, for her and other pilots & historians :-)Back in the early nineties, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, I flew my trusty Piper PA28 to the small town of Anklam (which is the birthplace of Otto Lilienthal) as they had just opened the Otto Lilienthal museum there. Well worth seeing. Now the museum has entered the global information age and has put all of the Lilienthal Archives online. Rare photos, his patents, correspondence, design notes and papers, everything is there, and for free! A large subset of their website is available in English too, but to read Lilienthal's originals you will need to be able to read German of course. Here is the link :- Otto Lilienthal Museum in Anklam. Click on their logo there for a choice of languages; NB: unusually, their internal links are in bold grey text. TLDR for non-pilots : Lilienthal pionieered glider flight and the scientific investigation thereof well before the Wright brothers built theirs. Comments (2) : Saturday, January 10, 2015
2000 blogposts :-)13years ago, I started on this blogging thingy, settling down to about 3 posts per week on a variety of subjects. Now I seemed to have reached a grand(?) total of 2000 posts. I'm surprised I've had the stamina. Thank y'all for staying with me. Yay, us! Vor 13 Jahren, begann ich mit diesem Blogging-Ding, im Schnitt etwa 3 Beiträge pro Woche und eine Vielfalt von Themen. Jetzt habe ich insgesamt 2000 Beiträge erreicht. Ich bin überrascht, dass ich die Ausdauer hatte. Danke, dass ihr alle bei mir ward. Mir san toll! Il ya 13 ans, j'ai commencé cette chose blogging, en moyenne, environ 3 messages par semaine et une variété de sujets. Maintenant, j'ai atteint un total de 2000 postes. Je suis surpris que j'ai eu l'endurance. Merci à tous était avec moi. Hurra nous! XIII annos coepi scribere haec res, stipes subsidere ad III de septimana in pluribus rebus. Visum est quo pervenisse iam a magnum(?) summam MM articulis. Miror Ive fuit roboris. Gratias vobis inmunibus quia mecum est. Bene, nobis! :-) 2000 already? I think my hovercraft is full of eels now ;-) Comments (5) : Thursday, January 8, 2015
Sympathy for the DevilHere in Germany - especially in the eastern city of Dresden - an anti-Islamic movement called Pegida has recently started. Pegida stands for "Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident". They call for fewer immigrants and refugees, in particular Moslems, whom they perceive as sponging off the state's security benefits and/or stealing their jobs (which is it?). They also want to ban the burka and achieve more equality for women, they claim. They have many right-wing sympathisers who distort a genuine cry for help as they join in Pegida's 18,000 man strong demonstrations.Do-gooders and the Catholic church have organised counter-demonstrations (anti-Pegida) in an attempt to shout Pegida down instead of discussing/solving their perceived problems, casting Pegida as the Devil etc. "Der Spiegel" has a more detailed article here. However, some 34 percent of citizens agreed with the Pegida protestors that Germany is becoming increasingly Islamicized. German security agencies and politicians are alarmed. But the states' interior ministers have failed to develop a convincing plan to combat the problem. "We cannot label 10,000 people as right-wing extremists. That creates more problems than it solves" said one. Concrete plans to limit immigration and refugees have not been forthcoming. Many refugees are indeed ill-educated, can't speak the language here, so can't get a job and so indeed do live off the state's security benefits, a minister has said. Language courses make little difference, it seems. Local authorities are hard put to find accomodation for the many refugees; nobody really wants them in their neighbourhood. That'll lead to ghettos, I expect :-( Against this background, wednesday's attack by Islamic Fundamentalists in Paris on the editorial office of "Charlie Hebdo", a French satirical magazine which has criticised Islam in the past by running cartoons etc., which left 12 journalists dead and 8 more injured, has demonstrated Pegida's point and fed fuel to their flames :-( Expect more Pegida sympathizers now! The analogy for our stateside friends is the GOP's perception of an invasion of Latino immigrants via Mexico, although I do not have a numerical comparison. I fully expect that the "Charlie Hebdo" killings will cause a wave of anti-Islamic feelings, demos, protests etc, perhaps even counter-attacks on mosques in France and perhaps the rest of Europe. Perhaps finally peaceful Moslems who live here will start condemning the radical Islamists and turn them over to the states' security forces? Fat chance. But our politicians will have to scramble to respond adequately to Pegida's issues lest there be riots across the continent! Fat chance of that happening too, they are out of their depth :-( We certainly do live in interesting times, thanks to the terrorist Islamic fundamentalists :-( Je suis Charlie Hebdo ! Comments (2) : Wednesday, January 7, 2015
The Maze Maker etc.Jenny asked me what I'd been reading over Xmas. Let's kick off the New Year with a book I just read for the first time over the Xmas holidays.Michael Ayrton (1921-1975) was a multi-talented British artist and writer who seemed obsessed with the myths of the Minotaur and Daedalus, the legendary inventor and maze builder. He published this novel in 1967, the ISBN number is 0-907387-05-5; mine is an Amazon used but good copy. Even his writing style seems pre-classical Mediterranean - and so is an acquired taste. But it communicates the credibility of Daedelus as a human being, one who sadly lost his only son (Icarus); his wife Naucrate, who was only 15 when she bore Icarus, barely gets a mention though. Asterion (the Minotaur) gets plenty though. Ayrton wrote a number of other works on these myths, The Testament of Daedelus, Rudiments of Paradise, The Midas Consequence, etc., none of which I have read, so his Cretan style was new to me & tough going at first. If you are interested in Greek/Minoan mythology, this is the book to read, I was told, but I found I had to chew a lot :-( I had more fun re-reading some older books in my library: Nothing by Chance by Richard Bach (ISBN 0 586 05313 1), an autobiographical book/diary about barnstorming the mid-west in a 1920s biplane during the sixties. Fellow pilots would enjoy this. Good Omens by Gaiman and Pratchett, loosely based on the Book of Revelations, about the reincarnation of the Antichrist. Hilarious! Watching the English by Kate Fox, a 2004 paperback about the hidden rules of english behaviour, also pretty hilarious. Bill Bryson's Neither here nor there. Bryson is always good, I now have ALL of his books (amusing travelogues). Finally, Curious and Interesting Numbers by David Wells which is just a dictionary of numbers, in ascending order, and what makes them particularly interesting. A book for geeks avoiding any algebra. Example : 85 is the sum of 2 squares in 2 different ways, 9 and 2, and 6 and 7. Useless knowledge, suitable for cocktail parties and not much else. I remembered some of them for the aforesaid purpose ;-) Before you ask, all 6 books were read from paper. A study by Anne-Marie Chang et al from the Harvard Medical School has shown that the higher proportion of blue light emitted by eBooks robs you of on average 1.5 hours sleep after reading in bed. The resulting low melatonin levels can cause breast, colonic and prostate cancers, they report :-( And these 6 books are all I read over Xmas. How about you folks? Comments (3) : Guido (D) asks "What is (in English) the difference between maze and labyrinth?" Wikipedia says :- The Cretan labyrinth is the oldest known maze. Technically the maze is distinguished from the labyrinth, which has a single through-route with twists and turns but without branches, and is not designed to be as difficult to navigate. In everyday speech, both maze and labyrinth denote a complex and confusing series of pathways. Monday, January 5, 2015
Stupid is as stupid does :-(
This biker, having previously run a red light, and who videoed himself doing it, subsequently fell off at speed, was caught by the cops and lost his licence. The cops later published his video as a deterrent. To avoid a Darwin Award, may he long continue to "enjoy" his pedestrian existence! There’s old bikers and there’s bold bikers, but there ain’t no old bold bikers. Ride safely in 2015 everyone, and keep your eyes peeled for all the other stupidity on the roads ;-) Comments (3) : Friday, January 2, 2015
Never annoy the wife!Last wednesday being New Year's Eve, we were invited to a midnight dinner party. The wife asked me for a €50 note, so she could go that morning to the beauty parlour, and so (for the party) look beautiful.I gave her a €200 note ;-) After the party, me being the sober designated driver, I was
driving us home in the early hours of New Year's day, when I got pulled over for speeding. Comments (1) : |
Recent Writings
A Thousand Years ago... Budding Scientists Winston Churchill Reacting to Charlie American Sniper German Aircraft Regs. Pegs in holes The Ultimate Cafe´Racer Pirating cartoons Lilienthal Archives Online 2000 blogposts :-) Sympathy for the Devil The Maze Maker etc. Stupid is as stupid does Never annoy the wife! Best of 2014 For Eleanor Rigby ;-) Three Wise Men ;-) Quantum Santa ;-) Giger's Gravestone Lego Interferometer Impractical custom bikes The Name Game ;-) Try the torturers! Science Night @ HNF Blogroll Ain Bulldog Blog Badtux... Balloon Juice Cop Car Curmudgeonly... Earth-Bound Misfit Echidne of the snakes Fail Blog Finding life hard? Hattie (Hawaii) Making Light Mockpaperscissors Mostly Cajun Murr Brewster Not Always Right Observing Hermann Pergelator Rants from t'Rookery Scary Duck Spork in the drawer Squatlo Rant The Magistrate's Blog XE Express Yellowdog Grannie Archive 2014: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2013: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2012: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2011: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2010: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Archive 2009: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Link Disclaimer ENGLISH : I am not responsible for the contents or form of any external page to which this website links. I specifically do not adopt their content, nor do I make it mine. DEUTSCH : Für alle Seiten, die auf dieser Website verlinkt sind, möchte ich betonen, dass ich keinerlei Einfluss auf deren Gestaltung und Inhalte habe. Deshalb distanziere ich mich ausdrücklich von allen Inhalten aller gelinkten Seiten und mache mir ihren Inhalt nicht zu eigen. This Blog's Status is Blog Dewey Decimal Classification : 153 FWIW, 153 is a triangular number, meaning that you can arrange 153 items into an equilateral triangle (with 17 items on a side). It is also one of the six known truncated triangular numbers, because 1 and 15 are triangular numbers as well. It is a hexagonal number, meaning that you can distribute 153 points evenly at the corners and along the sides of a hexagon. It is the smallest 3-narcissistic number. This means it’s the sum of the cubes of its digits. It is the sum of the first five positive factorials. Yup, this is a 153-type blog. QED ;-) Books I have written
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