News you are not meant to understand

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Graeme
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by Graeme »

Well, if mount Everest is about a trillion tonnes, then 30 trillion tonnes is about the mass of the Himalayas?
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HansV
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

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Problem is, I can imagine neither the mass of Mount Everest, nor that of the Himalayas...
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Leif
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by Leif »

Well, can you imagine the mass of the Vatican?
Leif

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HansV
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by HansV »

:igiveup:
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ChrisGreaves
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

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I still find this wonderfully strange. Strange, and full of wonder. A day or two has passed since I posted this latest news factoid, and chances are strong that not one of us have remembered the original figures from just a day or two ago.
And yet, and yet, some of us will be able to recall, right now, while reading this paragraph, the leading non-zero digits in the two printed number strings. And if you have resisted the urge to open the spoiler below, sit for five seconds and see if you can remember those two single-digit values. And then, again, before you open up the spoiler, can you recall how many zeroes appeared to the right of those significant digits?

Side question: Do you agree that the two values expressed are accurate? That is, are xxx tons roughly equivalent to yyy pounds? And if you don't know, how many imperial pounds are represented by an imperial ton, how are you supposed to agree with the figures?
Spoiler
"6" and "3"
We humans appear to be capable of remembering a value that can be accommodated by the fingers/digits of both hands, but are on shaky ground after that. That boils down to an argument that, in Senior Kindergarten class when we chant out numbers above ten, we are being trained in an unnatural act!

Most mornings I take a perverse delight in reading my electricity meter. This ritual involves slipping on a pair of outside slippers, spectacles, and walking twenty paces to read the meter. I then come inside and enter data into a spreadsheet. I need remember only the two least-significant digits, because the spreadsheet works out the significant digits. This morning the reading was mumble-mumble-mumble-eighty-two, but the value 82 will NOT stay in my memory in the time it takes to walk indoors, exchange slippers, pull the coffee from the microwave and get back to the laptop.
I can remember that 1982 was the year I spent in Singapore, and later today I will be able to recall that today's meter reading was Singapore. But I must use that mnemonic to arrive at mumble-mumble-mumble-eighty-two.

A career in computers was interesting, but a career in The Brain would have been a better choice!

Cheers, Chris
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by GeoffW »

If we're talking reading the electricity metre, this is how I read it. Lying in bed, keeping warm. Though it is two days old.
Screenshot_2023-05-25-00-34-07-18_ac0e79cd2db601d3e444b989b523664e.jpg
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kdock
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by kdock »

ChrisGreaves wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 19:29
PS tonight's drift-off-to-sleep theme is to work inframassive into a usable sentence. C
How about "The amount of money [governmental entity of your choice] spent on [insert enormous public works project of your choice] was inframassive!"

Boom! :bananas:
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stuck
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

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kdock wrote:
24 May 2023, 19:47
ChrisGreaves wrote:
29 Mar 2023, 19:29
PS tonight's drift-off-to-sleep theme is to work inframassive into a usable sentence. C
How about "The amount of money [governmental entity of your choice] spent on [insert enormous public works project of your choice] was inframassive!"

Boom! :bananas:
Kim
:bullseye:

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ChrisGreaves
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by ChrisGreaves »

GeoffW wrote:
24 May 2023, 14:36
If we're talking reading the electricity metre, this is how I read it. Lying in bed, keeping warm. Though it is two days old.
Screenshot_2023-05-25-00-34-07-18_ac0e79cd2db601d3e444b989b523664e.jpg
Untitled.png
Well, Geoff, I too am in bed as I type this, a situation which undoubtedly contributes to back pain, but my daily reading indicates much better consumption figures. Apparently I spent $2.47 yesterday on Total Energy Imports to the household. Perhaps getting out of bed :grin: :grin: would reduce your energy dependency? :laugh: :laugh:
Cheers, Chris
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ChrisGreaves
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by ChrisGreaves »

kdock wrote:
24 May 2023, 19:47
How about "The amount of money [governmental entity of your choice] spent on [insert enormous public works project of your choice] was inframassive!"
Good one, Kim!
But where is Graeme when we need him?
The vast majority of white dwarfs evolve from normal main-sequence stars following normal evolutionary processes. However, ultramassive (11.1 M,) and inframassive (!0.40 M,) white dwarfs require special evolutionary paths.

Next week's competition will be to find how many words we can find whose trailing part is "massive:.

Cheers, Chris
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GeoffW
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by GeoffW »

ChrisGreaves wrote:
25 May 2023, 08:42
Well, Geoff, I too am in bed as I type this, a situation which undoubtedly contributes to back pain, but my daily reading indicates much better consumption figures. Apparently I spent $2.47 yesterday on Total Energy Imports to the household. Perhaps getting out of bed :grin: :grin: would reduce your energy dependency? :laugh: :laugh:
Cheers, Chris
The purpose was not to compare consumption, but just to show that I don't have to brave the elements to read the meter (and I apologise for the typo of that word earlier). A comparison of consumption of a largish house in Australia with 3 people with your residence in Canada would be meaningless.

As for getting out of bed. It was 1:30am our time when I posted. I suspect that it was appropriate to stay in bed at that time. I was only awake due to old man bladder.

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HansV
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by HansV »

Old man blather? :innocent:
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Hans

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John Gray
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by John Gray »

HansV wrote:
25 May 2023, 10:21
Old man blather? :innocent:
Spot on, Hans!
I think Chris is probably thinking of the song by Renaissance, sung by the wonderful Annie Haslam, called "[Thinking about] things I don't understand".
Chris can even listen to a reaction to it by a classical composer.
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GeoffW
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by GeoffW »

HansV wrote:
25 May 2023, 10:21
Old man blather? :innocent:
Ouch.

Back to electricity cost. This sub thread prompted me to look up prices. The unit electricity price in Australia is more than double that of Canada. But the prices in countries like Netherlands and Germany is double that of Australia.
https://www.globalpetrolprices.com/electricity_prices/

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ChrisGreaves
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by ChrisGreaves »

GeoffW wrote:
25 May 2023, 10:02
The purpose was not to compare consumption, but just to show that I don't have to brave the elements to read the meter (and I apologise for the typo of that word earlier). A comparison of consumption of a largish house in Australia with 3 people with your residence in Canada would be meaningless.
THAT I understood. I confess that some mornings I rather wish that Newfoundland Power let us read the meter online - even through a web page - especially as the meter is set high enough that I must (a) remember my spectacles and (b) crane my neck. Indeed, the only time of year when it is easy for me (5'6") to read the meter is during blizzard season when a five-foot drift elevates me to the point where I need spectacles to read the meter which is then around knee-level. If the snow has formed a crust.

Too, I agree that comparison with a large house[hold] is meaningful. It's just that May is the month when my running average for the past month plummets from over 100 units to around 20 units. My record LOW consumption was 3 units. I wanted to celebrate in a quiet fashion ...
Cheers, Chris
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ChrisGreaves
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by ChrisGreaves »

John Gray wrote:
25 May 2023, 11:40
I think Chris is probably thinking of the song by Renaissance, sung by the wonderful Annie Haslam, called "[Thinking about] things I don't understand".
Dear John.
Please be assured that Chris was certainly NOT thinking of the song by Renaissance, sung, as you claim, by the wonderful Annie Haslam. Chris did wander over and check out the first thirty seconds of the two video links, and he has assured me that would rather barrow an extra two loads of compost than spend time downloading punk-trash (I think that that is the genre) onto one of his smart phones.

No. Chris's choice of the phrase "not meant to understand" was a testimonial to Mr Brian Feld, our wonderful teacher of Maths A and Maths B in high school. "Wonderful" because he poured wonder by the bucketful into this head in my teenage years. It was he who urged us to quanify, to estimate and calculate answers in our heads, and from this I leaned how to understand the world - and how not to try to understand things that were poorly expressed.

But enough. Back to decomposting those bins ...
Cheers, Chris
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ChrisGreaves
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Re: News you are not meant to understand

Post by ChrisGreaves »

GeoffW wrote:
25 May 2023, 11:43
This sub thread prompted me to look up prices. The unit electricity price in Australia is more than double that of Canada. But the prices in countries like Netherlands and Germany is double that of Australia.
There again, A comparison of consumption of a nation as large as Canada with an idiotic provincial government in Newfoundland would be meaningless.
I say that because Newfoundland has mismanaged both its major Hydro-electric projects on two occasions (Churchill Falls, Muskrat Falls).

That said I do note that the price for Canada (how calculated?) of 0.118 $US/KWh is close to the local price here on The Rock (0.12346 $Cdn/KWh), so I suspect that some parts of Canada are paying way more than we are. Except the dastardly Quebecois who ripped us of so many years ago. (There is a story that Quebec re-sells "our" electricity to the US states at prices lower than retail prices in Canada)

Too, and straying back on-topic, I have been following Solar power as a source of electricity in the Australian news, and many folks here don't realize that WA is not tied into a national power grid. It is 1,600 Km by road from Norseman to Port Augusta with nary a power line in sight (except every 100 miles at roadhouses across the Nullabor Plain), so in one sense, when WA produces 110% of their electricity needs, it becomes a problem to be solved!

Once again, to read in the news that WA produces 110% of its power needs sounds like a Good thing, but without knowing the context, the news is poorly understood.

Awaiting correction, :grin:
I remain,
Yours sincerely
Chris
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