Sayeth Ted...
"This situation gets really dangerous when you start to involve people from San Francisco."
Gravitational Wobble
The moon, of course, is not a fixed distance for the earth. This is most readily apparent in autumn (northern hemisphere); closest approach is typically 75 to 90 minutes before moonrise, so you won't normally be able to see it, but you will be able to see the moon get smaller as it comes up over the horizon and rises into the sky.
But if you could see closest approach, under the right conditions, the effect can be quite spectacular. This image, taken with a special camera that shows light not normally visible to the human eye, shows the impact of the moon against the ozone layer.
If you look carefully, you'll see bands of shading showing the waves radiating outward from the impact - much like you would see dropping a stone into a puddle. The effect isn't quite the same (the moon doesn't actually drop through, puddles aren't round, and ozone (O3) being inherently symmetric, has a characteristic flow that differs from the lopsided H2O molecule.
If you have a head for the math, Phil Plait describes this in even more detail over at Bad Astronomy.
Son of Salt Lick
With the end of the minor league baseball season, comes the opening of The Salt Lick in Round Rock - on the Dell Diamond campus.
Some notes from lunch on Saturday...
Wow - this is a whole lot closer to me than Driftwood. The restaurant is on the south west corner of the campus, so turn left at Harrell Parkway.
The good: Air conditioning. Credit cards now accepted. A bar, for those who care for such things - the wall opposite the bar is dedicated to Nolan Ryan (appropriate, as he is principal owner of the Express). Yes, they have the Robin Ventura picture. Did I mention the air conditioning?
The bad: they are still doing family style dinners, of course, but they won't send you home with the leftovers. Apparently, that change will take effect at both locations.
Ribbon Problem
Sean sent me the following math trick...
"3529411764705882 can be multiplied by 1.5 merely by moving the digit 3
from the front of the number to the end"
Not recognizing the number I was looking at (hint: 6 / 17 ), I started experimenting... what's the smallest number for which this works ( 1176470588235294 ), etc.
A google check later brought me to the Ribbon Puzzle.
Dudeney's Canterbury Puzzles was a regular highlight of my childhood summers - there was a copy of it in my family's Canadian Cabin, and I would regularly pick it up and work at some of the problems.
Which in turn got me to thinking about Cyclic Numbers, and trying to work out from first principles how to determine if a repeating fraction is going to have the nice properties that you want? The denominator needs to be prime; 1/7 and 1/17 work, but 1/13 does not. So what's the rule?
Turns out that the key is that the denominator be a Full Reptend Prime.
No general method is known for finding full reptend primes.
Translation: I can stop there, then.
Oh so awesome
Indiana Jones travels to a remote village in Central America to track down Patriots 19-0 memorabilia
Awww, show a little backbone, wouldja?
Your onion moment
Mary Kate Olsen claims executive privilege in face of subpoena.
Flat Earthing
"You can't travel at the speed of light in the dark!"
Pitch Counts
Joe Sheehan may have a valid thesis in his recent discussion of pitch counts, but his introductory example, maybe it needs some work.
1) Three run lead with one inning to play.
2) Pitcher due to bat with only one out, right in front of the top of the batting order
3) Which of course means that even if you pitch hitter flubs it, you are probably looking at the strongest part of your lineup appearing in the last of the ninth.
4) The spots due to bat in the top of the 9th are the 6-7-8 hitters.
5) And it's a Tuesday game; the team had Monday off, and the bullpen threw but three innings on Sunday, two innings on Saturday.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the case against pulling the starter is a bit too subtle to be accepted without the prosecution at least bringing out a few exhibits.
The Dark Knight
Eckhart, think of the future!
I come away from The Dark Knight, with mixed feelings.
Bottom line - I'm OK with being part of the opening weekend box, and I'll get myself a copy on DVD not long after it comes out. In other words, I feel good about investing in the franchise. But I still came away with expectations unmet.
The pacing of the movie isn't quite steady; too many places where it felt about ready to wrap up, and then had to rebuild toward the next piece. Maybe the problem was the narrative, or my assumption of the narrative, The flow ends up breaking the immersion.
The cast is a mix of actors and characters - in particular, I think I'm tired of the pap chemistry thing. That would be you, Mr. Freeman; and to a lesser extent Mr. Caine. I actually want to forgive Caine a little bit - he's doing well on choices I didn't like; in fact, I came away thinking of Sir Alec, a little bit, in that he kept things small. It's still too damn transparent - it should be easier to distinguish Alfred from Cutter.
I think the cowl slipped on Bale this time around - his Bruce lost a little bit of that public facade that keeps him out of suspicion.
There is one actor I want to single out, and I didn't succeed in figuring out who it was that was playing the role; but there's a big actor playing one of the convicts that was brilliant - abso-fuck--in-glute-ly brilliant - in the two minute scene he was featured in.
And then Ledger. I'm having a real hard time with that one, so lets break it down into parts.
1) Was I watching a character, or an actor? Character - absolutely. That was somebody else on screen.
2) Was the character real, in manner and motivation? Another checkmark. Nearly total immersion - ruined a touch by the fact that I was watching this performance.
3) Was the performance consistent? Yes.
4) Was it The Joker? No, I don't accept that he was. His motivations weren't nearly disturbing enough (should I be disturbed that I didn't find that character disturbing?).
OK, Spoilers Ho!
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