Science!

It's science fair time! This is our second year of science projects. So far we are in the camp of letting the kid put something together and not worrying overmuch about it, although I can imagine if the kid was genuinely excited to learn about something, it would be fun to explore it together.

I just figured there'd be some funny stories in this group. Also I bet some of you won the national science fair. I went looking for documented proof of a family member who won, and came up empty looking here, so I'm not sure if there's more than one organization that holds science fairs or if family lore is faulty. I did however see my undergraduate Abstract Algebra professor. I wish it said what their project was on.

The Impossible Possible

I work at a place where we keep track of our billable hours, which is new to me, and I was telling my manager (who is a cool dude and about fifteen years younger than I am) that I find it challenging, and he said "Do you use your calendar?" Well, yes, but...say more.... He showed me his calendar, and no foolin', he sits down each Sunday night and breaks the entire upcoming week into one or two hour chunks: meetings, working on x, thinking about y, napping, working out, social engagements. For one blazing minute, that screen share was a portal into an entirely different world, where people aren't constantly procrastinating and reading about the lifecycle of naked mole rats. I'm still trembling.

It's easy to say "well, he obviously doesn't have kids" or whatever, but it's not like I was that organized when I didn't have kids. What I find kind of perplexing is that I know, to a certainty, that I could never do what he does, but I also can't really explain why. Is it the same as not being able to do arithmetic in my head like Ramanujan, or a sign that I need therapy?

The News

Impeachment.fyi is good.

London meet-up thread!

DQ writes: Dairy Queen & better half will be there November 11-18, with exception of a dash to Amsterdam for a concert on the 13th. We're staying in Spitalfields, but without work-commute constraints so can be reasonably flexible.

Ajay has a preference for a not-work-night, so perhaps Friday 15th or Saturday 16th?

Heebie's take: plan away!

Bumped! DQ says: How's about Saturday 16 November, 1130 at St. John Bread & Wine. I believe Ume, NW are confirmed - let me know if this is wrong, not sure about Ginger Yelliw, ajay, Alex? - also, please confirm here so i can make a reservation thanks! But if don't have opportunity to confirm just show up & we'll squoze.

Guest Post - Increments

Mossy writes: In Western Australia, of all places.

Green Corridor is an initiative in emissions mitigation made compelling by the International Maritime Organisation's decision in 2016 to set a January 2020 date for a requirement that global shipping either move to lower-sulphur fuels or invest a bigger fortune in scrubbing technologies to contain exhaust fumes.
[...]
"If shipping were a country it would be the sixth largest emitter of CO2 in the world, with more emissions than Germany or Canada," he said, reiterating BHP's commitment to find LNG-powered ships enough to carry 27mt per annum of iron ore northwards.
[...]
"BHP is one of the largest dry bulk charterers in the world. The Commercial Maritime team procure freight for a quarter of a billion tonnes of iron ore, coal and copper and over 1500 voyages each year."

(Sulfur emissions, of course, seed clouds which reflect sunlight. But the LNG thing will make life less profitable for refiners, so.)

Heebie's take: That last link is fascinating. It's like chemtrails are real, aside from being mindcontrol devices.

Biannual Complainey Time

Measuring if--and how much--DST sucks for you. This is a really fun little site.

Background here:

Usually the whining is short-term shock at the sudden change in the timing of day and night, not a reasoned assessment of what it means for the timing of daylight over the whole year. People often don't even know what they're complaining about: they'll rail against "daylight saving time" even if it's the early sunsets of standard time that they hate. For the record I'm no DST hater, because my morning commute is about 5 seconds (no pants required) so I never need to wake up before the sun, and I live in a place where the sun sets at 4:11 in the damn afternoon in winter so I'd love to push that back an hour.

...

Latitude thus affects how early or late the sun rises and sets, but what the clock says depends on a location's longitude within its time zone. The farther east it is, the earlier the sun will rise and set. Considering all this, I want to map sunrise and sunset times in the United States and see how they are affected by daylight saving time. I've done so by using a little bit of GIS and the super handy SunCalc JavaScript library by Vladimir Agafonkin.

I personally don't have strong opinions about DST, but I do wish I had 25 hour days. As in, I wish one rotation of the earth took 25 hours, but I held my energy level and circadian rhythms constant. Not that I wish that every 25 days, the demarcation of what we declare to be a "day" cycled around the 24 hour day/night pattern. (I'd be willing to try that for a month, though, for fun.)

Unsurprisingly, I found the winter darkness more difficult and oppressive when I lived in Michigan for college. I don't know if it's fair to take the opinions of people in the Southern half to be equally important as the opinions of people in the Northern half on this topic, just because the variation in day length is so reduced.

Heebieville, summer solstice: 6:32 am - 8:36 pm
Winter solstice daylight: 7:33 am - 5:37 pm

Ann Arbor, summer solstice: 5:59 am - 9:15 pm
Winter solstice daylight: 8:00 am - 5:06 pm

My memory is that it felt much sadder and darker than that indicates - my memory is that it felt like sunset from about 4 pm on. Whereas here, my impression is that sunset is still pretty short in the winter time - it's light, and then it's dark.

Guest Post - here's something cool...

LW writes: Handedness population genetics study drops!!!

What a phenotype. 12% narrow sense heritability in this paper. Marmosets and a few other primates have individual handedness preference which persist over a lifetime.

There's a whole journal devoted to laterality, who knew?

Heebie's take: the front page of the first link mildly amused me, as if they named and listed out all 49 variants into one very long title.