I’ve always loved those puzzles, too. I guess they’re logic puzzles rather than math ones, but I can see how they would be useful in developing an analytical mindset needed for success in math.
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If you’ve seen Parenthood, about 4 seasons in it seemed like they started doing some more nuanced things with the two aspbergers characters. It wasn’t particularly deep but I thought over the course of the show they went from some pretty broad attempts at writing and playing autism to creating real characters. I particularly liked the story line of the adult not realizing he had it and then piecing it together. I imagine that is happening to a lot of people right now.
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I’m with you. I’m definitely a music and math geek, and one stop away from being an art and science geek. Looking at people’s MFA projects, there are loads of interdisciplinary geeks out there fusing art and science in really clever ways.
I have a theory about comics and gaming geeks, as opposed to arts and science geeks. If art geeks and science geeks have their one discipline that they’re pouring themselves into, the comics and gaming geeks are looking for escape. Not saying there’s anything wrong with that, or even that someone can’t have both motivations at the same time, but I do think the motivations are more different between science and comics geekery than they are between science and theater geekery.
In engineering school, I met so many of these people. They not only thought any major other than engineering was a toilet paper degree dooming the graduate to a life of poverty, but thought having any interests in the arts or music were a waste of time. My guess is they were pushed into engineering by their parents, or were after a paycheck in Big Ag, Big Pharma, or Defense. Whatever it is, they had issues.
I believe we call these people “neckbeards” today.
I’m not sure what we call artists and musicians who don’t like technology. I’m sure there are some, but they’re about as rare as computer illiterate math professors, who most assuredly exist.
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Keeping a population of 60-70 million perhaps.
Sakhalin is roughly the Eastern equivalent of the UK. It’s habitable - for about half a million people who probably wish they lived elsewhere. Even Siberia can be nice in summer.
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They were invented, AFAIK, by Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll, and he used to send them to the many girls and young women with whom he corresponded. Remember that at the time the universities were barred to women.
I tend to distinguish arithmetic from mathematics. These puzzles are mathematical, full stop. They involve set theory and Boolean logic and you can’t get much more mathematical than that. Unless I have a specific problem to solve, I hate arithmetic, calculus and trigonometry send me to sleep and algebra I find boring. Symbolic logic is a little better - sufficiently non-boring that I could end up earning a living at it.
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Could be. I really haven’t seen the show.
I can’t relate to that at all. My experiences have been almost the polar opposite of that. I thought there was something horribly wrong with me until fairly recently, and now I realize I’m more normal than I thought. Not only are there more people getting diagnosed, but it’s more acceptable to be outside the mainstream now than it was when (and where) I grew up.
Also, it’s hard to believe anyone who has Asperger’s would think they’re normal their entire life. Even if they don’t have a name for their condition, it must be different enough from the norm where they know something is up. If they really do think they’re normal, then they are either from a more permissive culture than I am, or autism and Asperger’s are more different than I thought.
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Hipsters!
Sorry, couldn’t resist, I’ll see myself out…
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sigh
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i love that problem. i ran across it in college in a book of lateral thinking exercises. i used the principles of conditional probability to compare figure out that switching is the optimal choice.
the second-guessing of vos savant is, of course, no surprise at all. i’ve been witness to that kind of shit for longer than the term “mansplaining” has existed. if i get a chance later today i’ll have to try to find a video clip i saw a few years ago in which a panel discussion on feminism-related issues is going on. at some point in the proceedings one of the female participants (i can’t recall if she was a sociologist or an anthropologist) started discussing the problem of mansplaining and more generally the second-guessing of women’s expertise in fields of their expertise. in the middle of her exposition one of the male participants interrupted her and began challenging her definition of “mansplaining” as well as her characterization of the extent to which the phenomenon prevails at all levels of discourse. after a minute or so of semi-shocked silence the audience began laughing and got louder and louder as he continued. he evinced a combination of irritation and confusion and finally paused at which point one of the audience members got to one of the audience microphones and asked him if he were giving the crowd a practical illustration of what the woman had been talking about. his face was a study in confusion and he asked what that was supposed to mean at which point the woman whose speaking time he had been stepping on said something like “dr. ???, i think they’re laughing because you’ve interrupted me to spend the last 3 or 4 minutes mansplaining mansplaining. it’s pretty piquant if you think about it.” at that point it did finally sink in. he turned deep red and sat down.
edited for spelling.
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got tired of that song real fast.
try brain bleach…followed by fire
I heard that if it had hit the iceberg head on, the ship wouldn’t have sunk. It would have been damaged sure, but it would have stayed afloat.
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Yeah, because the compartmentalised structure below decks was built for leaks/punctures. They could seal off one or even a few sections and keep the rest waterproof. But the iceberg ripped open nearly half the compartments, causing a catastrophic failure.
The Titanic is a great example of something that was well-engineered in many respects but failed anyhow.
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Surely, the Eastern equivalent of Rockall or the Shetneys?
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Take a look at its latitudes. The northernmost point is slightly south of Newcastle.Rockall is 2 degrees further north. -19 in January, summers wet, cloudy and cool. If the thermohaline circulation stops, that’s what the UK and Ireland have to look forward to.
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I have read this too. The double bottom was just that - it didn’t even reach the bilges. The result was that the ship was as easily damaged by a glancing collision as a ship without a double bottom. But a head on collision would in theory have left it intact aft of the collision bulkhead.
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That’s true (I was thinking geopolitically rather than meteorologically) but relative latitudes aren’t a particularly good indicator of climate as far as I can tell, at least in terms of ocean currents.
I live on the equator in South East Asia but my experience of “tropical” is probably very different to those in Africa or the Americas. Most of Japan is on the same latitude as the south of France iirc, but I can’t imagine it snowing in Biarritz.
I’m (once again) willing to admit my ignorance on this one but my impression is that relative climate is a lot more complex than just being a case of latitude or ocean currents.
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Absolutely. I’ve been far farther north on Europe than I have in Canada. You can see it on a Reykjavik -Toronto flight: Iceland will be lovely and green, whereas northern Quebec even quite a bit south is nothing but grey glacier-scratched rock covered with drifts of snow. Last time I flew that way I kept the map up on the back-of-seat screen and watched for the tree line. Took a while to show up.
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It was well engineered by the standards of the time and I think, except in blindingly obvious cases, it’s wrong to apply hindsight. What failed was the system, from sticking to BoT lifeboat limits set on the assumption that ships wouldn’t go much over 10kt in order to save money (despite there being the capacity for sufficient lifeboats) through various operational details. Ships are still built with inadequate side protection (Costa Concordia). You wouldn’t get me on a modern cruise liner. (The boat I am currently constructing is a coracle for the grandchildren, with loads of hidden flotation and grab handles. The scaling laws mean that tiny boats are very slow but, for their size, much stronger than a cruise ship. You can balance a coracle or a small kayak on one hand. If you tried the scale equivalent with a big ship, it would collapse around you.)
What is noticeable is the ratio of male/female survival rates. This was one of the few cases where being female improved your chances of survival. The highest death rate was for 2nd class men, which itself may say something about Edwardian society though I’m not too sure what.
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The Titanic was one of the last times “women and children first” actually meant something – at least in first and second class. More first-class men survived than third-class children. I’m not surprised the second-class men got the worst of it – rich enough to be expected to act like a gentleman, but too poor to claim they were important.
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But should it do now? To be very blunt, governments are no longer worried about how many adults they will have in the military age range in the 10-20 year timescale. Overpopulation is the issue. Are children worth more than adults with expensive educations and years of experience? In an emergency like that, wouldn’t the rational approach now be “doctors, nurses, small boat experts, survivalists and damage control personnel first?”
I’d be willing to consider any priority chain that puts politicians and CEOs at the bottom of the list.
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I’d say no. During the evacuation of that flight that crash-landed on the Hudson River, some women tried to invoke “women and children first”, only to be reminded that a) they were on a crowded airplane and filtering out people to disembark by gender and age wasn’t an efficient or practical proposition and b) it was the goddamn 21st century.
Women and children first made sense when women wore heavy skirts and needed help stepping into carriages, never mind lifeboats. Nowadays, not so much – although it’s a great argument for always wearing sensible, comfortable clothing on planes. Or anywhere.
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