history
The esteemed Tim Urban, over at Wait but Why?, is a self-proclaimed procrastinator. He even did a TED Talk on the subject. I understand his predicament. That may be why my man, Dan, has started to refer to this as ‘trivia nonesday’. Before I get into my main point here,
anatomy
I was recently reading a Popular Mechanics article on a variety of ‘it is known’ ways to die. /content/images/wordpress/2017/07/w2d_itisknown.mp4 Turns out many of them are simply not the case. So, I’ve ranked them by what I deem to be their level of
anatomy
Colour Models Having recently created a neat little game, I’ve been doing some thinking about colours and the different colour models we use. You may recall that, when we learned to paint in school, we were introduced to the colour wheel with its primary, secondary, and tertiary colours. If
biology
Around 1750, the 1st Duke of Northumberland hired the well-known and talented gardener Capability Brown to design and maintain the gardens around his home, Alnwick (ANN-ick) Castle. The 3rd Duke of Northumberland was a plant collector and expanded the gardens, filling them with all manner of lovely things. The Anlwick
etymology
It will come as a surprise to exactly no one who reads this that I am a huge fan of names. From my own Son of the Right Hand and God is God to my delightful Warrior Princess, Beautiful Gracious Friend, and Heavenly Light, I derive much pleasure from the
fauna
I’ve been tossing around the idea of this post for a while and couldn’t decide whether I should do a series of posts on big creatures or one large post to cover them all. It then occurred to me that a large post would be apropos… so here
etymology
though through tough thorough thought it can be thoroughly thought through, english is a difficult and oft-times unhelpful language. consider this unwritten rule: “…adjectives in English absolutely have to be in this order: opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose Noun. So you can have a lovely little old rectangular green French silver whittling knife. But
history
During the American Civil War, a Union soldier had pushed into enemy lines and discovered the wounded body of his very own son, decked in Confederate Greys. The soldier hastily carried his son back into a Union camp, in an effort to save the boy. Alas, his efforts were in
history
any british longbowman will tell you that there is a major issue they must contend with each time they fire an arrow with their fancy, straight longbows: how do you get your arrow around the bow so that it flies straight? if you can picture it, you hold up your
etymology
Some of you may recall this scene from Leslie Nielsen’s ‘Airplane’ in which three airline pilots dance around the words/names clearance+clarence, vector+victor, and roger+roger. it’s Leslie Nielsen… its funny… Ever thought about that one word pair there that is, in fact, the same word?
etymology
Philosopher Jeremy Bentham, father of modern Utilitarianism and sage to John Stuart Mill, devised an algorithm called the Felicific Calculus. Himself being an ethical hedonist, it is perhaps likely that his starting point and end goal differ from mine. I’ll admit, however, that my chief interest in this entire
fauna
recently, scienceticians have been trying to figure out a good system and/or algorithm with which to program small drones in order to help them avoid crashing when flying toward or beside each other in groups. the military has been working on this conundrum for a long while but different
