American geographic ignorance :-(

I really do despair at times about some Americans' ignorance (e.g. of the geography of the world).

This particular picture, found on a US blog, is making a valid point about rich families/corporations minimising their tax bills by declaring their losses in the USA and their profits in some low-tax haven instead of paying US taxes.

So far, so good. Except that the picture shown to emphasize the point is a photo of the Matterhorn mountain, which is in Switzerland, NOT Luxembourg, which doesn't have any mountains :-(

If the author thereof openly displays his/her ignorance (of geography) we may assume he/she is equally ignorant of the political issue at hand. He/she thus (sadly) diminishes the validity of a perfectly good argument :-(

Ambrose Bierce once wrote "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." So I explain the ignorance shown above by the fact that the USA has neither been to war with Switzerland nor with Luxembourg (yet). Probably because they are far too big for a successful US invasion. Switzerland has an area of almost 16,000 sq. miles; Luxembourg has 998 square miles; the last country the USA (almost 4 million sq.mi) invaded successfully was Grenada (134 sq. miles). Annuit coeptis indeed ;-)

Comments (4)
Hattie (Hawaii) wrote " Stu: Yes, it's true. We Americans are very ignorant on the subject of geography. I think the main reason is that it's not taught in the schools. My favorite anecdote is from teaching days when a student asked me if the Mainland United States was as big as Hawaii. I was able to answer that one, at any rate." Wow! Not taught?!?!
Ed (USA) asked "Whats with : Annuit coeptis?" Just me being sarcastic. Annuit coeptis is a Latin line on the top of the reverse of the Great Seal of the USA, over the eye on the pyramid. I had expected an American to know that. Maybe not? It means "He favours our undertakings", whence the sarcasm ;-)
Dave (USA) wrote "There's a Luxemburg in Iowa too." Indeed, and in Wisconsin, and in Minnesota. But none of these 3 contain the letter "O", the spelling is different.
Renke notes "Small correction: Luxembourg has mountains - the Kneiff is the highest point in Luxembourg :) More photogenic is the Schloss Berg (Mountain Castle), though." The Kneiff is 560 metres (1837 feet) amsl, so by the Welsh definition it IS a mountain, even if rather flat (see linked photo folks) ;-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 29, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Massenhausen's Toy Museum :-)

Sundays we often go for motorcycle rides, weather permitting. And sometimes we discover the neatest destinations :-) On the 14th we rode over to see the Toy Museum in Massenhausen, only open from 2 to 4 pm sundays and wednesdays because it's all volunteer run.

One of the first exhibits was this Punch and Judy puppet show shown above.

This teddy-bear classroom was used to get the kids used to the idea of the village school (more about this at the end). Whilst the teacher is an old-style 19th century teddy, some of the pupils are 20th century (post WW2 even).

Beyond an age of about 8 there was gender separation between the types of toys. The boys could play with this model of a local farmer's castle, equipping it with (self?-)cast metal soldiers, cows etc etc.

The boys also got real working models of steam engines in which to burn their little fingers and scald themselves. No nanny-government health-and-safety interference back then, you learned by making mistakes. Ouch ;-)

The girls were introduced to a life of domestic drudgery. These are all various model kitchen ranges with fires to be made and kept burning, hot surfaces, kettles, pots and ashes dropping out of the bottom. So the girls got their fair share of burns and scaldings too :-(

In the girls' section was this model of a 1950's village shop; although I remember playing with one like this as a boy too. Weighing out loose goods in a miniature scale, adding up prices in a cash register, adding interest on IOU bills, making change, all of this honed our primary school maths skills.

One room held an accurate replica of one half of the village school's single classroom (see the teddy-class photo above). Three benches, each for 2 kids, so classes were only for 12 kids in that village. The teacher's pult even contained a contemporary confiscated catapult, made from a Y-shaped wooden branch and some of somebody's mother's knicker elastic ;-)

This display brought back happy memories, a maths-toolkit from primary school days :-) Chalk and a slate. We had pens, not pencils, but no erasers.

A really neat feature was at the exit to the museum which led us into a tiny coffee shop run by the volunteer old ladies who also provided home-baked cakes! Scrumptious! We had two slices each :-)

Comments (1)
Jenny (Ibiza) asks "But would any of today's children identify? They all have smart phones!" I doubt it; much of it's more for us old fogies. Would the kids even recognise a rotary dial phone? Kids should take granny along ;-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 26, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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He He He, Efimov was right :-)

Back in 1970, Russian theoretical physicist Vitaly Efimov predicted a rare quantum-mechanical solution of the three-body problem, wherein 3 particles could share a weak connection although two could not.

It has taken experimental physicists over thirty years to demonstrate a stable state, but now Efimov (University of Washington, Seattle) has been vindicated, using bosons near absolute zero. Initial successes by Grimm et al at Innsbrück used Caesium atoms with only sub-millisecond stability. But now Dörner and Kinutski at Frankfurt's Goethe university have constructed stable Efimov molecules from 3 atoms of Helium-4.

One of the harder problems was to build a mass spectrometer for use as a separator because Helium atoms have neither a charge nor a magnetic moment. The binding distances turned out to be huge (ten nanometers) ; for comparison water has 0.2 nM binding distance. The trimeres are highly asymmetrical too, two of the atoms are quite close, but the third is quite some distance away. Think of a couple dancing but always keeping eye-contact with a 3rd person (chaperone?) on the other side of the room. The third atom in the Efimov molecule is so far away that normal interaction forces are too weak at that distance to keep the atoms together.

How satisying must it be to Efimov to have been proved right after 35 years?

Comments (2)
John (UK) teases "Go on, admit it! You only wrote this quasi-unintelligible article so that you could put that godawful lightweight pun in the title! :-(" True, I admit it, Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa ;-)
Cop Car (USA) wrote " Unlike John, I know that your title is more sexist than funny! *smirking* Beyond humor, the three-body problem is - enough to drive anyone off the deep end - at least, those of us who lack super-power brains. I gave the book to a friend, hoping that she understood it better than did I. (She did!)" Sexist? No, I just don't like the smell of brimstone.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 24, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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The Rudi Blues :-)

One of our 20-odd motorcyclist group is called Rudiger (well, three of them are actually). He has a second hobby, playing the saxophone in a band called Blaues Wunder. He claims this is because both hobbies let him wear a black suit, albeit of a different cut ;-) On the previous weekend Blaues Wunder gave an open-air revival concert at Haxterpark for several hundred fans, from 8pm til after midnight. So we went along to hear them and my ears sang for two days afterwards :-( Much fun was had by all.

So here's a photo of the brasses in the band, featuring Rudi (3rd from left) playing one of his saxophones (a Tenor and afaik an Alto):-

And here's a link to the Blaues Wunder homepage for more photos, video and audio snippets, etc.etc.

Comments (2)
John (UK) warns "Your ears sang? Not good. The BBC has a warning article about hearing damage." WHAT?
Doug (Canada) wrote "Too bad they don't post on Youtube - they'd probably get a nice following - I watched their Higher and Higher video and their sound is quite good." We liked them too :-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 22, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Hitstorm? No, SiteMeter's bust :-(

Wow! What happened yesterday?

This blog usually trundles along at around 400 to 450 readers each day and about 540 pages viewed (1.3 pages per reader). Yesterday that tripled to 1,376 visitors reading 21,410 pages (that's 15.5 pages per reader). And today by 7 a.m. as I write this, there are already 440 readers today reading 5,290 pages (12 pages per reader).

I'm not naive enough to think it's due to my writing, more likely someone influential linked to my blog the day before. Turns out that Mostly Cajun (USA) linked here on the 18th and then maybe those new readers stayed around to explore the site a little. So thanks where they are due, we'll see if any of the new readers stay on as regulars :-)

Either that or SiteMeter changed their hit-counting algorithm ;-)

Update 16:24 : Seems SiteMeter is sometimes stuttering, so the hitstorm is not real :-( Anybody else having trouble with them?
Update 25/6/2015 : Now Sitemeter is not counting at all :-( Maybe they are trying to fix their problem finally ?

Comments (2)
John (UK) notes "It may be your maths pages, especially your rules for divisibility. Example : If I Google "Divisible by 13", your page is the worldwide number one :-)" "Divisibility Rules' is certainly the most popular page I ever wrote, but that wouldn't account for the sudden increase ? Noon today (saturday) shows 3,800 readers already!
Petra (A) said "I'm sure it's deserved!" I doubt it, but thankyou :-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 20, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Napoleon's Waterloo Hat

Boney, who was short and fat, had over 100 of these bicorn hats, which he wore sideways so that people would notice him. 19 survive, but which was the one he wore at Waterloo? Thomas Schuler, historian, has researched this; I merely summarize :-

Prior to Waterloo, Napoleon had driven a wedge between Wellington (GB) and Bluechner's (Prussia) armies on 16/6/1815 to prevent them joining forces against him. On the night before Waterloo (17-18/6/1815) a torrential thunderstorm turned the battle field into a muddy morass and soaked everyone to the skin. Boney's hat was so soaked that he sent it back to Paris for repair, then donned a new and dry one. This is the one of interest.

Boney, tired, didn't start the battle until around noon, a tactical error which cost his defeat because it allowed Bluechner's troops to reach the battlefield around 15:30, distracting Boney from attacking Wellington, whom he would have otherwise thrashed. Around 20:00 Boney realised he was losing to the combined forces of Wellington and Bluechner and fled the field in a carriage. He was hotly pursued by Bluechner's troops who wanted to hang him.

Boney realised they were catching up and leapt out of his carriage to escape on horseback. In doing so, his hat fell off. The troops gathered it as a trophy and presented it to Bluechner. He in turn sent it to the prussian king (Friedrich-Wilhelm III) in Berlin.

There it was stored 130 years until russian plunderers grabbed it in 1945 and sent it to Moscow. In 1958 Moscow presented it to the East German (DDR) government as "cultural goods". After German reunification it was put on display in the German Historical Museum in Berlin, where you can see it now.

What is it worth? Another of the 19 hats went for 1.9 million Euros in 2013 when Monaco partly dissolved its trophy collection, but this is the definitive Waterloo bicorn hat, so should be worth even more :-)

Comments (2)
Doug (Canada) quips "You could call that a hat trick :)" I think Schuler did a good job tracking the hat through 200 years!
Karel (CZ) wrote "You know a lot of stuff!" I'm merely widely read :-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 19, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Waterloo

The French are good losers! said nobody, ever ;-)

And so tomorrow, when the UK celebrates the bicentenary of Wellington winning the Battle of Waterloo, the French will be boycotting the celebrations.

Back in March, Belgium tried to issue 180,000 2€ coins commemorating Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo. France - ever the poor loser - vetoed the idea. So Belgium neatly side-stepped this veto and is issuing the Waterloo coin with a nominal value of 2.50€ which the French cannot veto :-)

The Times newspaper asked tongue-in-cheek, "How do you cope with a defeat so infamous that even a then-unknown Swedish pop group (ABBA) could make a wordwide hit out of it?"

France turns a blind eye to "the glorious defeat", not only by ignoring the ceremonies, but in everyday life too. Nowhere in Paris will you find a "Waterloo Square" or a "Waterloo Avenue", not even a so-named dead-end (humour is not their strong point). They want a brand new Napoleon to lead La Grand Nation or maybe even Europe; Sarkozy wants to be that figure, but almost certainly is too tall ;-)

Well done Wellington, I shall don my boots Thursday in your memory ;-)

Comments (1)
Doug (Canada) quips "Waterloo - ah I see indoor plumbing ;)" Not at all - a very muddy bog, hence the boots.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 17, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Magna Carta

This year is a year of anniverseries in the UK. Waterloo (18/6/1815), Agincourt (25/10/1415) and today the Magna Carta(15/6/1215) being celebrated on the original signing site at Runnymede.

The political myth of Magna Carta and its protection of ancient personal liberties has persisted (see today's celebrations in the UK). However, if you can read the latin in which it is written, you will see that it only asserted protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment and access to swift justice; not (yet) for the common man.

And here we are 800 years later and the USA still imprisons people without trial and has been denying them justice since 2002. I refer of course to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Shame on you USA. If you want to celebrate Magna Carta too, then close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and either free the prisoners or grant them a fair trial! Obama promised this, but has failed to deliver... again :-(

Comments (3)
Petra (A) notes "The CIA also tortured the people in Gitmo. Shades of Dr. Mengele :-(" Yup, imho Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney & co are war criminals who should be put on trial themselves. But they're too chicken to leave the country :-(
John (UK) opines "Imho they're celebrating the wrong version of the Magna Carta." Yes, the 1216 version was ⅓ shorter and was stripped of the more radical ideas. Actually it was first named the Magna Carta in 1217 and only became part of English statute law in 1297.
Renke (D) wrote " It's kind of fitting that the European Convention on Human Rights came under fire in the UK... A perfect way to celebrate Magna Carta's jubilee :)" Afraid I didn't listen to PM Cameron's speech, just watched the plaque-unveiling on TV.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 15, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Bowled over :-(

So there I was on saturday, a pedestrian, standing in a pedestrian zone at 9:30 a.m, facing SW, me looking through the camera viewfinder in order to get a good photo of the castle up on the hill.

Without warning, a delivery lorry backed up silently about 3 yards (at walking pace) from the north and knocked me off my feet.

Crash, bang, wallop! Down I went, managing as much of a breakfall as I could. Had the wind thoroughly knocked out of me, so I lay there (face up) until I got my breath back. Carefully checked I could move my fingers and toes, then felt my skull to make sure no blood or bumps there. With the help of several witnesses, clambered unsteadily to my feet, but had to sit down again, back aching from the impact.

Meanwhile, witnesses had called an ambulance and the police. Ambulance there within 5 minutes, police ten. Ambulance staff checked my skull and moved all my limbs, nothing broken, just some bleeding where my elbow had hit the cobblestones, so I rejected the invitation for a ride to hospital, seems I'd gotten off lightly :-) They just bandaged my left arm and elbow.

Interesting how the cops interrogated me and the driver. Cop put his arm around my shoulders and asked how I felt (that way he could unobtrusively check my breath for alcohol), only to discover I'd been eating garlic the previous evening ;-) Then he interrogated the lorry driver, establishing that he didn't have a functioning reversing warning beeper in his lorry nor did he have a co-driver to stand behind and direct him when backing up. So essentially he'd driven the 3 yards backwards slowly but still blind :-(

The only real damage was to my camera, which had gone flying and landed hard on the cobblestones, getting busted. I was sore, but basically OK, so told the cop I would NOT be pressing charges as the driver was ashen and shaking from shock more than I was :-(

Monday, I went to a masseur to lessen my back pain; it may take a couple more sessions. And the lorry owner's company called and said they'd buy me a new camera, pay for the ambulance and the masseur; they also thanked me for not pressing charges. So we all got off lightly; I'm not vindictive :-)

Thanks here to all the witnesses for their help :-)

Next day I was fit enough to ride my motorcycle the 200+ miles home, so no permanent damage :-)

Comments (4)
Cop Car (USA) wrote " Glad that the damage to you was no worse and I hope that your new camera is a successful replacement. (You'll ache for a while, though.) Thankfully, there are still some (hopefully, a vast majority) non-vindictive people left in the world. It is so much simpler and humane to handle things among ourselves instead of clogging up the (expensive!) judicial system. Kudos! Let's hope that lorry gets a repair to its backup beeper system." The camera will be a 1:1 replacement so that I'll already know how to use all the features. Update: The replacement camera arrived on June 13th already.
Ed (USA) asks "So did the cop give him a ticket?" Not immediately, since I didn't press charges. The cop writes a report for the local public prosecutor, who decides if he wants to charge the driver for a (criminal) offence. Usual would be 4 points on your licence (which gets pulled at 8 points) and a fine of several hundred Euros.
Hattie (Hawaii) wrote " I was so sorry to hear about your accident! I believe all vehicles should be fitted with backup cameras. Terry installed one in our Toyota, and I feel so much more confident about my driving now. They are cheap to buy and make a huge difference. I think they should be mandatory in all new vehicles." Cars are mostly transparent via an internal mirror, lorries not, so I agree for lorries. And : Thanks for your commiseration :-)
Update 13/6 : The driver's company is now putting reversing cameras on all its delivery vehicles :-)
Doug (Canada), a fellow biker, wrote "Sorry to hear about your accident but glad to see you survived more or less intact. Take care and as always keep it shiny side up (wax that pate) and rubber side down.". Wilco :-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 12, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Medium Wave(s) goodbye :-(

Here in Germany Medium wave AM (Amplitude Modulated) radio is being phased out after going strong for 95 years.

Medium wave (MW) is the radio band used mainly for AM broadcasting. In Europe the MW band ranges from 526.5 kHz to 1606.5 kHz, using channels spaced every 9 kHz, and in North America an extended MW broadcast band goes from 535 kHz to 1705 kHz, using 10 kHz spaced channels. Ranges of over several thousand kilometers were achievable.

Our old MW AM-radio has a scale bearing the names of the transmitting stations' cities as you can see in the photo. The orange bars indicate the 9kHz breadth of the channels, which, as you can see, overlapped to some extent, making tuning the receiver an exercise in optimisation ;-)

WDR (West German Radio) expects to save 170,000 € each year on electricity alone, and a lot more by reducing personell, totalling 26 Mio Euros per year. They say the number of listeners was minimal and falling each year. My old car has an AM/FM radio, but the new one just has FM/CD-player/USB-stick player, so they may be right.

WDR (Cologne) shuts down its AM transmissions in July, BR (Bavaria) and DR (German Radio) at the end of the year.

End of an era :-(

Comments (3)
Renke (D) wrote " AM is still strong :) If you still own a AM-capable radio you can still listen to number stations - many of them are amplitude modulated. Okay, probably not the most interesting radio format :) (and shortwave instead of MW) http://www.apul64.dsl.pipex.com/enigma2000/docs/ECL.pdf is (afaik) the most complete list for number stations and other obscure/clandestine/encrypted broadcasters." It's just the public MW stations that are shutting down here. Commercial radio here is all FM/UKW (ultra short wave) afaik.
Jenny (Ibiza) asks "What are the decreasing numbers along the top?" Wavelengths. 300 meters = 1 MHz (about). Wavelength times frequency = speed of light (c).
Cop Car (USA) wrote " It seems sad, but the spectrum is required for newer applications. I'm sure that most of the radio receivers in our house (I'm counting 9 general purpose receivers) receive AM, but I haven't listened to AM since the 1960s. Our cars may receive AM since many weather/road advisories are given on 540 (?) kilocycles. Then we have 5 emergency (mostly weather) and 3 shortwave (amateur radio) sets - that I can think of. In a pinch, I would go to the Internet for radio streaming. Obviously, we don't lack for radio communications." We have 5 radios, 1 in each of 3 cars, 1 in the hifi rack and one ancient AM radio (see photo above). I'm no longer a ham, so no amateur radio set.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 10, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Bazinga!

71 today! Bazinga!

My very good friends Martina and her husband Andre´ are both fans of TBBT (The Big Bang Theory), a hilarious TV-series about science nerds.

And so am I.

So Martina and Andre´ bought me this much-appreciated Bazinga! T-shirt for my 71st birthday today, for which many thanks :-)

It seems that Sheldon Cooper's catchphrase "Bazinga!" is now an officially registered trademark of Warner Bros., but I'm assuming I'm still allowed to put up this selfie in my own private blog today without them getting their knickers in a twist, unlike some unmentionable others...

Info for other TBBT fans : the term "bazinga" is used for a seven-string harp, such as might be played by Amy Farrah-Fowler, Sheldon's girlfriend. It is also a genus of rhizostome jellyfish with only one known species, Bazinga rieki, found off the central eastern coast of Australia, and so named by another TBBT fan. Euglossa bazinga is also a euglossine bee species found in Brazil, also named by a TBBT fan :-)

Nothing to do with being a "Bar singer", another of Sheldon's many accomplishments, although he would prefer to play bongos like his hero, one Richard Feynman who was a self-confessed safe-cracker, part-time professional bongo player and incidentally the 1965 Nobel prizewinner for physics ;-)

Comments (4)
Judith (IL) wrote "Hippy Pappy Brithday!" Pooh! No brithday for me, I'm not jewish, so not cut out for it ;-)
Doug (Canada) wrote "Try as hard as I can I can't catch up to you. You;re still 5 years older than me :) Hope you had a good one - it looks like you did." Indeed! Just got back from a 4-day ride to the wine festival in Cochem :-)
John (UK) informs us "The new TBBT buzzword will be Mewow! " Okay :-)
Cop Car (USA) wrote " Belated good wishes, Stu. Great tee shirt! (And you're still six years younger than am I! "Yes, that's how it's said!")" Go, us old fogies, go! ;-)

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 8, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Helping the Ukraine

The Ukranian economy is struggling, due to the undeclared war with Russia over the Crimean and Eastern Ukraine.

The industrial part of the Ukraine is over on the eastern side (steelworks etc) and the western side is mostly agricultural, I read somewhere.

So if we are to help them pull themselves up by their bootstraps, it will not be done by short-term financial aid, but by buying their products, mostly their agricultural products.

And so I was pleased to see that our local supermarket has a "Cyrillic Corner" which also stocks Ukrainian products. Here are some Ukrainian "Happy Calf"-brand cream-flavoured cookies which I shall be trying out as soon as I've finished the ones I got from Belarus.

Help the Ukraine by buying its produce!

I would rather voluntarily help the Ukraine than be forced by the EU to support the current Greek government. YMMV. Know that nowadays YMMV may stand for Yurpeen Merkel mag Versager = Euro-Merkel likes losers :-(

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 4, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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Frieda turns ten :-)

On saturday our senior bulldog, bitch Frieda, turned ten :-) That's 70 in human years. So now SWMBO, myself and Frieda are all 70 :-)

I bought a pound of ground beef and SWMBO baked a "cake" using a couple of eggs and some oatmal. The white decoration on the top is curds and the ten "candles" are chewy dog-sticks. Both dogs sat drooling in front of the oven whose contents smelled delicious, even to us humans :-)

Her son Kosmo, recently eight, had to content himself with licking out the bowl in which her "cake" was baked. But she generously left him about 100 grammes and four of the "candles", which avoided any violent disputes ;-)

Comments (1)
Jenny (Ibiza) joked "Wish I got beefcake for my birthday ;-)" Heh heh.

Copyright ^© Ole Phat Stu on June 1, 2015 permalink Comments Email

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