I just invented the three minute rule for dropped peanut butter sandwiches

 There are no seconds when you grew up poor.

120ThingsIn20Years thinks it's pretty clever today.

Thinking - Robotic pleasantries

I  normally say please when I speak to google and ask it something.

I suspect this might be a good habit to get into because...

1. One day robots might get offended if you dont thank them, and punch you in the face.
2. If we get out of the habit of thanking stuff for doing stuff for us, we will start offending people making us coffee, because we will forget they are human.
3. If our kids get out of the habit of watching us thank stuff, the world will probably end in an enormous fireball, killing us all. 

Thank the floor for not letting you fall. Do it now. It deserves some credit. It's a thankless task, but a very important one.

120ThingsIn20Years Thinks it's probably worth thanking everything. 

Thinking - Pedestrian traffic self control

So... you know that thing where you are walking between someone close to some shelves or something and your turn your body sideways... to kind of... crab shuffle... past them?

I just discovered that I'm officially thicker than I am wide, so I should just barge past them front on from now on.

It's more polite, more efficient, and less disruptive.

You also have the added advantage of not needing to decide to go front facing, or butt facing when you brush past them.

120ThingsIn20Years asks...Thicker than you are wide?...

Just barge on through facing front!

Thinking - Multi-individual organisms (ants and so forth)

A while ago I wrote about the time I saw a cockroach die of old age. At the time it put me off killing things for a while because I was just about to kill it when it did the getting all dead thing. But...

Not long after that, I was sitting on the street in front of my workplace enjoying the smells of the traffic, and eating my lunch.

We didnt have a tree, and there was no other shade.

As the inevitable crumbs dropped to the ground, the ants started to wander around picking them up and taking them home presumably to feed their kids. I watched with exactly the amount of interest such things demand until I suddenly became slightly more excited.

!

An ant had decided to bite me.

And whats more, it too was taking it's newly acquired bit of food back home to feed the kids.

The ant was eating me.

It was holding a huge lump of my leg with it's face.

It didnt care at all that it was taking a few cells at a time with, I'm guessing, an ultimate goal of taking all my cells. At least all the squishy ones.

I murdered it of course.

But then I remembered I didnt like killing things because of the cockroach event.

But then I remembered that an ant cant really live on it's own. It's just a few cells out of a much bigger creature that is the entire nest. Some critters that live like this cant even feed themselves without other critters from the hive helping. Bees and ants (except for solitary varieties) are just tiny bits of a bigger organism.

So if one bites you and takes some of you home...

Murder it.

Somebody else will take care of their kids.

The hive won't even care.




120 Things in 20 Years wants to acknowledge things are killed on my behalf all the time, that I kill things to eat all the time, and the bees and ants we might normally meet dont actually have kids. Also we all eat thousands of cheese mites (found on cheese, flour, plant leaves etc. I just thought you should know.

Thinking - Preserves

We bought a induction hotplate a while back, and sometimes fry stuff on it in a place where we also keep jars of things like apricot jam.

It turns out if you lightly spatter your jars with cooking oil, then subject them to the normal vibrations of a house with people moving around and traffic etc, the jar lids work their way loose in time to the point where they are effectively off when you pick up a jar, no matter how tightly you put the lids on.

I love the universe.

It just keeps revealing new bit's I didnt even know it owned.

120ThingsIn20Years thinks stuff is awesome.

Thinking - Slightly interesting TV helicopter factoid

When I watch helicopters shooting at people on TV, it doesn't look very real. Why dont they just hover and shoot?

Why do they keep flying past really fast and taking a few shots, then letting the escaping car escape?

It turns out there's a good reason!

Well at least I think there is, and let's face it, that's good enough for me.

There's this thing called autorotation, and it's a very fine thing indeed. It seems that when your helicopter's motor dies on you in flight, it's not just a case of "plummet to the ground and hope you land in a used marshmallow dump" or something.

It turns out there's actually something you can do.

Which is odd, and a little surprising. And also kind of pleasant if you are in a helicopter with no motor.

Helicopter blades can change the angle they sit at when they are doing their rotating thing. They can make it so they create more or less lift as required, and they can also tilt forward or backward to create thrust so you can actually go somewhere, and not just hover impressively.

Personally I think hovering is impressive enough, but it turns out other people like to derive useful function from their helicopters.

So using some sticks and pedals and things inside the helicopter, your pilot (hopefully) can make your helicopter go where they (or you if you own enough money) want it to.

But when it's falling out of the sky, it turns out they can set the blades in such a way as to make them spin a lot using the substantial breeze that they find blowing through their blades when they plummet to the ground.

As I understand it, it's a bit like strapping a ceiling fan to the front your bike and riding around the block.

The fan, despite being disconnected from any power supply, starts spinning a lot.

Now, it turns out "spinning a lot" is just the kind of thing that you want from a helicopter's blades when you dont have a motor any more.

So if your motor dies on you, as long as you have enough forward momentum, OR altitude, you dont just fall from the sky. Your skilled pilot can do the ceiling fan on a bike thing for a bit, get the blades up to pace, then just at the last minute, turn all that handy rotating blade motion into lift and actually land without everyone's blood falling out.

Way cool.

I mention that the requirement is either forward momentum, or altitude, because that's true.

I like to say true stuff where I can.

If you dont have enough forward momentum to keep the blades spinning, you can trade some altitude by falling out of the sky for a bit and pulling up. This translates into forward momentum. So you need some altitude to do a bit of a dive to get some forward momentum, or just have some forward momentum to start with.

So...

I'm guessing the reason the TV helicopters dont just hover fifty feet off the ground and shoot at Jimmy Bond a lot is because it's a really stupid thing to do.

Who knew?

120ThingsIn20Years thinks TV might have actually got it right.

Thinking - R2D2

That little R2D2 robot nugget doesn't really have a lot going for it other than charm and cracking skills. Some would say that's enough, but I want more from my personal robot assistant.

It talks in ascii via a screen when it communicates with humans, and chirps to everything else regardless of what language they speak. Even my iPhone speaks more languages than R2D2.

Now dont get me wrong, I've always enjoyed it's company, and it seems like a decent kind of ... device, but it hasn't seen a lot of upgrades in the time we've known it.

I think it's been a hundred years or so. The kid did a few adjustments, but I dont think there was any kind of major operating system upgrade from the manufacturer or anything, and it seems to have pretty much the same skill set on the ice planet as he did all those years earlier.

That makes him a toaster as compared to my aging phone.

Not happy!


120 Things in 20 years wants more from my robots NOW!


OK this time I really haven't added a photo (or a post really)

Thinking - Pest control

Once when I was eighteen years old or so, I owned a ghetto-blaster style sound system.

Which is interesting enough as it stands.

But to add interest to the narrative, I once saw a remarkable thing occur upon it's top surface.

A cockroach walked across it.

I realize at this point that this is still not the gripping tale promised by it's title, but there's more...

I rolled up some junk mail* vouchers for fast food and furniture, and just as I was about to kill it, it died.

It just died right there in front of me while I watched. I presume it died of old age. I have a slight allergy to bug spray type product (I get hay fever from them) so it wasn't because of a surface spray or anything.

I'm guessing it didnt die of a heart attack or anything, because I've notice in squashed cockroaches there's no sign of a heart of anything else meaningful.

Just mush.

I always assumed they dont have organs, just soup, and something that makes their legs twitch to give their famous ability to scurry.

Here's my impression of an actual X-ray of the mush inside a healthy, living cockroach.

Pretty convincing stuff.







Anyway...

The thing just up and died right in front of me just seconds before I was going to kill it.

I was going to rob it of those last few seconds of life.

It changed the way I saw killing things for a while.

Until the ant incident a few months later, but thats a story for another day.

That's it really.

I just thought you should know.


120 Things in 20 years thinks it may be the only person on earth to have seen an insect die of old age.

*In order to take a relevant photo of something rolled up, I just went out to get the daily batch of junk mail that we have hand delivered to our door every day. Today for the first time in our history here, there has been no delivery. When we lived in the country we didnt get junk mail, so we still find it culturally interesting and worth a read. Before we lived in the country, I lived in the city, so received junk mail, and something called the Messenger Post, which is a free newspaper (looking thing) that someone sees fit to throw at every house in South Australia, and is typically used to help fill recycling bins, and wrapping fish heads. In fact it was most likely a copy of the Messenger Post news paper that I would have rolled up on the day.

Thinking - Sandwiches

Dont underestimate the sandwich. It's like Sushi, but with bread! The world needs the sandwich to have a bit of a run. If even a tiny percentage of the western world cared as much about what we put into a sandwich as the average japanese worker cares about their bento box of yummy goodness bought from a train station on the way to work contains, the sandwich would take the world by storm.

It's like sushi, but with Bread!

When I was a kid, 45 years ago, a school lunch might be a sandwich that consisted of ham between some buttered bread. This would be lovingly stored in a school bag at, on some days, say.... 48 degrees c .... that's 118.4 F... from the time your mum made it, until you ate it four hours later.

Can you say "Rancid?"

Four hours at that temperature is pretty much getting into the zone of eating a dead thing you found on the side of a road after you woke up from a heat induced stupor of a length you could not define.

But anyway.... the fresh, hand crafted with love, quality sandwich is by any measure a most pleasant thing to eat, and should never be dismissed. I look forward to the day we see "Sandwich Train" restaurants offering us ever more interesting temptations from the sandwich family.

I dont ever recall being offered a salmon and caviar sandwich in my entire life of eating.

That's a lot of years.

That's not a good effort from the sandwich making community.

Sandwich Train!



120ThingsIn20Years predicts... Sandwich Train restaurants!

Thinking - Lies and fun

For around 25 years I lied to Mrs Bullwinkle that I had been on a flight with Leo Sayer on the one and only time I traveled first class on a plane to Papua New Guinea when I was seventeen years old.

I cant remember what the original gag was supposed to be that I never managed to punchline, but for some reason, I just kept it up for years and years.

Then one day when she was really, really sad for very good reasons, I told her the awesome truth.

She stopped being sad for a few minutes.

Sometimes it’s worth lying to your partner for twenty five years just for a few minutes of giggles.

It still cracks her up whenever she remembers it.

"Of all the people to lie about being on a plane with!"

It turns out twenty five years is a long time to set up a punchline.

On a different and oppositely styled gag, I realised I always wore white business shirts, and a blue thing over the top of it.

The shirts changed, but the blue... thing was always the same.

But one day I decided to cut the cuffs and the collar off a shirt, and wear them under the same blue thing I always wore.

So, no shirt, just the blue top, and cuffs and a collar from a white business shirt poking out where they normally should.

This was when I was around sixteen years old or so, and I was friends with a guy whose parents owned a motel in Kentown in Adelaide. It was pretty cool because we got to eat food from the restaurant at will, use the pool and sauna, and have unlimited access to video games and vending machines.

So one day I rock up un-announced after school, and find my friend and his girlfriend sitting on the stairs in the middle of a depressing argument that looked like it might spell the end of their relationship.

Now, keep in mind, this is the first time I had ever worn my cut down stunt shirt, but it was perhaps the 500th time my friend had seen me in a white shirt, and my blue thing.

I realised I needed to get back on the bus to go home and leave them to it, but for a few seconds before I went, I asked my friend to give me 10:1 odds on a $1 bet that I could take off my shirt in less than 5 seconds without removing my blue thing.

Three buttons, and it was done.

To this day, I doubt he could be convinced that I wore normal shirts for all the years he knew me.

I never did collect my $10, but I also don't think I saved the relationship with my cupid stunt.


120ThingsIn20Years thinks lies are always funny and stupid,but are sometimes worth giving a go if you're willing to put in the years to develop them to their full potential, or at least pretend that you have being doing so. You don't need to lie to seem like you are, but when you do, it's worth doing for the right reason.

Thinking - Post war blues and forgiveness as a profitable virtue

Forgive and forget, or perish.

That's it really.

Everything else I write will be just rehashing that first line.

And maybe a bit about Trump.

In spite of being a white, middle class, 50 year old man... which is pretty much the ideal as far as the way the world is set up to favour, I'm not a huge fan of the way the western world behaves for much of the time.

But...

The one thing we do really, really, really well as a culture is just move on.

See World War Two for an example for most of us.

By the time the 60s rolled on we were trading with the Germans and Japanese as if nothing had happened.

but...

I know people who's grandmothers are still holding a grudge because someone from the country next door back in Europe gave their grandmother's grandmother a hard time, and tried to kill them a lot.

Well... killing people is a shit (sorry to the school I know that reads this blog, but sometimes teachers need to explain words) of a thing to do.

"Dont kill people!" is one of my favorite rules to live by.

But really???

That was 130 years ago*.

Stop it!

I don't care who you are, if you remember something that didn't happen to you, you will suffer from it until the day you die.

Read that last line again, it's really important.

Unless you are really old, and have a direct connection with whatever bad thing happened, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Move on.

If it wasnt you beaten within inches of your life and abandoned in the jungle, then it also wasn't the twenty two year old waitress in your local restaurant that didn't do it to you.

The problem with the world is people holding grudges.

Never hold a grudge for longer than you live.

That's my advice to live by...

Never hold a grudge for longer than you live.

A week or two is probably ok, but if you cant do that, at the very least don't take on dead people's grudges.

The problem with the world is people holding grudges.

And maybe Trump.

Grudges, and Donald.

North America, if you trust Trump to hold the launch codes to a shipload of nukes, then so be it, I'm all for democracy, but please, please, please don't let it happen because you didn't show up on the day to vote.

Please vote.

Please vote.

Vote for Trump or not, but please ....

apathy and grudges will mess up a world as fast as...

well...

pretty fast




 120ThingsIn20Years thinks that *Numbers may not reflect reality

Thinking - Science

If we look for new ways to win at say...chess, and start by making moves that leave the board, I can predict the outcome with a high degree of certainty.

I don't think that's thinking outside the box, I think that's trying to solve problems that aren't there.

Sometimes I have the feeling a lot of pre-agendered organizations are doing the same.

Solving problems that aren't there.

Sometimes, if you have no way of answering a question, there's no need to add another turtle under the last, because the question didn't need to be asked in the first place.


Thinking outside the box doesn't bring about good science. You need to solve outside the box.


Thinking outside the box is easy.


120ThingsIn20Years cant remember if it's offending anyone with the turtle reference, but it doesn't think so, and it if it did, it was entirely unintentional.

Thinking - Bricks

Why didn't they make bricks a bit bigger to save a little time in construction?

Just a bit.

Say 20%.

I think that might have saved perhaps 5% in building time and cost.

I'm probably wrong because bricklayers and stonemasons know their stuff...but my question still stands...

Why didn't they make bricks a bit bigger to save a little time in construction?



120 Things in 20 years is waking up slowly, but slowly.

Thinking - Not time like the percent

I wonder if our current wacky time system has any psychological side effects. If humans think $4.99 is still in the $4 range, then perhaps we think something odd about time.

Perhaps a stopwatch showing 1:50:00 is a bit close to one and a half hours or something. Perhaps that's why I leave it until the last minute to get into the shower before going to a restaurant. Perhaps I still think I have half an hour up my sleeve when really I have only ten minutes.

It's stresses like these that make people drink 1.02110316 × 10^-54 cubic Parsecs of Tequila with a slice of lime and a pinch of salt, over and over until comfortably numb.

Personally, I think we should go with the Parsec for everything. Or...

We could make everything very very simple.

Some time ago, I remember asking mum why we (Australians) were so historically insane as to have once had one Australian Pound be made up of twenty shillings, which were each subdivided into twelve pence.

She thought I was over-reacting.

People often do.

Until you ask them to do some calculations.

Perhaps a currency like that made it a simple task to buy things with the weights they were using at the time... lets see... there were sixteen ounces to the pound, fourteen pounds to the stone, and eight stone to the Hundredweight.

Easy!

If it cost one Pound, eighteen Shillings, and eleven Pence to buy one Hundredweight of paraffin, how much would it cost to buy four Pounds (no, the other Pound) and thirteen ounces. Obviously that would depend on which kind of paraffin. There's a 2/11th discount on the impure stuff, but not on the pure stuff. So lets make it simple and work it out for the pure stuff.

Mum?

Mum?

I tried to explain why I thought it was insane, by attempting to teach her to count in a way that started in base 12, then rapidly insaned into base 20 for the next digit (or digit like thing), before settling out into base 10 the subsequent digits (I presume).

I got very confused.

Imperial units are funny.

People must have just tried to avoid calculations that involved all the "layers" (ie pounds, shillings, and pence) It seems odd, but I guess people chunked their prices into easy to calculate amounts.

Quarters, halves - that sort of thing.

I'm guessing shopkeepers just made up prices as they went along as well. Who's going to check?

For a modern day example for people living in a metric world, without thinking too much, on paper, in your head or with a calculator, try adding ...

11:44:29 hours, minutes and seconds to
03:19:51 PM

Not so difficult, but it hardly trips off the tongue.

It makes me think that perhaps we avoid doing it. Perhaps it's just too hard, so we only use the easy chunks of time. Quarters, halves - that sort of thing.

We need a new metric clock.

Our current clock is loopy.

Anything where your first digit is in base ten, then your next isn't, should be shot in the foot.

How do you even write a time calculation?

I think a semicolon would be more appropriate.


    1/2 ; 3/12 ; 19/60 ; 51/60 ; 00/100
+        11/12 ; 44/60 ; 29/60 ; 81/100
-------------------------------------------
=                                    ##:##:##.## am/pm


Perhaps percentage of a day might be better.

So 6pm would be 75.00 o'clock

It would be easy to learn, would allow easy calculations, unlimited resolution if it mattered, and the Swiss would love the economic stimulus.

It would save the world a few lines of code when designing stopwatches as well.



120 Things in 20 years thinks no sleep yet and 6am means it's time to buy a new internal clock.

Thinking - Flat Earth gravity

I had someone cancel an appointment today so found myself browsing youtube with no particular direction and found something interesting.

A while ago I talked about what I thought gravity might be like with a flat thing on a spherical Earth, but today I discovered on Vsauce what it might be like to live on a flat earth.

As long as it was thick enough to have some gravity, as you approach the edge, the amount of Earth behind you would add a stack of gravity. The closer you get to the edge, the more it would be pulling you back to the centre. So a bit like the billiard table I described, a ball dropped anywhere on the surface would roll back into the centre. The closer you get to the edge, the more gravity you would feel, and the more it would be attracting you toward the centre of the disk. So it would feel like you were walking uphill, AND there would be more gravity.

But my new favourite bit is what would happen when you actually managed to climb up to the edge of this flat Earth.

Nothing special.

You could just keep walking to the other side. You would step over the rim and just keep strolling along the thickness of it. The gravity would be strong, but at least you wouldn't be walking uphill any more. Once you got to the edge of the other side, you could step over it onto a downwards slope and walk to the centre.

In fact other than the centres of each side, the thickness bit (the bit that looks like the surface of a tire that touches the road) would be the best place to live and ride bikes because it would be so nice and flat.

I feel slightly safer.


120 Things in 20 years would dig a hole through at the centre so everyone could enjoy zero gravity.

Epic Adventurer - Thinking - something actually happened

Something actually happened!

I did something.

I secretly fed a duck and a turtle in a park near a hospital (Where there are "please don't feed the wildlife" signs, but I picked at the bark and leaf litter on the ground, and fed other bits of the wildlife to the other wildlife, so I figure...

Where's the crime?

anyway... they looked hungry and made pleading sounds, so I fed them some other things

but I guess I DID feed them things that (if I could read exoskeleton facial expressions) looked very frightened, and screamed in utter misery the entire time...

But anyway...

after that, and more importantly, I have more stuff in my brain that I did the other day.

and that feels a little odd

It's been a while.

I've had a tummy ache.

They thought C17H19NO3 might help so gave me lots of it for ages.

Lately it feels like there's been a eighteen month slow leak of stuff from my brain rather than the thing I was going to say but forgot a bit...

So I've got that going for me.

But today I continued on from the other day, and actually finished some work on my solar boat that may have actually got me a little closer to something.

Which is nice.

It doesn't sound like a lot. To anyone who hasn't tried to make a trailer's wiring communicate with a car's wiring it wont sound like a lot, but if you have, and you know either something, or nothing about electronics, you'll know that having your brake lights strobe when you turn left is actually a reasonabe outcome. At the very least, the person behind you knows that something is about to happen, and they should probably change lanes and get as far away as they can.

Not such a bad outcome as far as safety is concerned.

But what works even better is a system that uses the correct lights where they are appropriate!

Who knew!

But the best part, is that I wired it up, hot glued it in place, plugged it in...

And it actually worked.


Today at least, physics does my bidding.


120ThingsIn20Years - Bam!

Thinking - Moons

According to my blog's stats for today, I've had a few hits from the moon, and also from Jupiter's moon Europa.

Which is nice.

They even clicked on a few adds and earned me a few Earth cents.

Which is also nice.

Thanks for the support moon people.




120 Things in 20 years thinks it might be April 1st.

Thinking - Beam me up Scotty

Dear The-President,

I'm reasonably sure that the pressure difference between the Enterprise and (statistically speaking), pretty much every planet's surface, would result in a lot of sinus pain and some scenes involving explosive snot.

I feel these scenes were conspicuously absent in the filming of the Star Trek franchise during beaming exercises.

I further feel that in the interest of reality, this should be easily rectified.

The absence of snot is the absence of reality...

Boomshanka.




120 Things in 20 years - It's possible that I have a cold.

Thinking - Theoretical economic Anthropology and the Gold (star) Standard

One of the problems I see in the western world is it's dependence on reward.

The internet seems a little better than the real world in this respect, but I suspect it's because we don't see the takers doing the taking. We just see the givers being generous. The nature of the stuff up for grabs means that if you take more than you give, there's still exactly the same amount left for everyone else. Open source software is a good example. 

I've taken much, much, more from the net than I can ever give, but all the stuff I've taken is still there. 

Which is nice.

But in the real world you take some stuff, and there's not as much left for the next in line. And sometimes there isn't even a line*.  I've been lucky enough to have spent my formative years living in Papua New Guinea. To say anything about Papua New Guinea is to be wrong about most of it, but I'll say some stuff about it anyway. 

When I was in Papua New Guinea, I was there at a time when the locals were making the transition from the cultures and lifestyles they had been enjoying for the last few dozen centuries, to one that looks and tastes a little more like you might expect in a western city. One of the problems with shifts like this is the clash between the old economic system and the new. From this point is should be noted that when I talk about some attribute of Papua New Guinea's culture, I refer to only the bit's I know. There are something like a third of the worlds languages (or something) don't quote me)). and many more cultural ... things... paradigms? Anyway. every few hundred people are different. They talk different, they look different, they believe different, and they think different. Not just different as compared to me, but different from all the other different groups. I knew a fishing net merchant who could easily pick a persons birthplace to within a hundred kilometres or so, just by meeting them over the counter. Often with much greater accuracy to the point where they could name the village. Anyway...   One of the most interesting things about the culture clash was the gradual decline in the worth of generosity. Or at least my perception of that decline. There seemed to be some kind of social credit that a person could gain by simply giving stuff away. You might get something back from acts of generosity, but it might not come from the person you gave things to. You still see this in the west in small groups, but once you get to a certain population level, one where everybody can no longer know everyone else, the system breaks down. There comes a point where giving stuff away is no longer useful. 

And here I come to my point...

When you're little, you gain respect and trust within your family and friends, you are rewarded with new responsibilities, freedoms, and smiles. 

You don't need gold stars gummed to your work. 

I think gold stars (or points for Hufflepuff) might be encouraging our kids to seek only monetary reward, or perhaps an Oscar. 

I think we should stop it. 

120 things in 20 years thinks the best part about not being an academic, is that I have no need to quote sources, and I get to say whatever I want. 

*A line has just one characteristic. It's endedness. Two** ends, but just one characteristic. A list of people who can make the most noise from lowest volume to highest could be seen as another line, and often making the most noise gets you first grab at whatever's going. (see baby birds in nests, and political lobbyist)

** a circle is a line with no end. I guess that means I mean a "queue".  

Thinking - Lathes

A device like a lathe seems like a pretty indispensable thing to own if you want to make a lathe.

All those perfect shafts and bearings.

That bothers me a bit.

In a nice way.

How?