Britt's Blog

This is an amazing photograph, considering that it is a single exposure, not one of these ginned-up HDR gimicks that the all kids are making these days.

I really admire a good photo, even when it’s just a lucky snap, but this picture is the product of systematic hard work. The photographer is to be congratulated.

In case you were wondering, “Is it in fact true that xkcd is made of awesome and plated in gold?” I offer this stunning evidence in the affirmative: The Universe on a Logarithmic Scale.

This is not a totally new idea. The original logarithmic map of the Universe was published by Gott, Juric and others in the Astrophysical Journal¹ and the images are available online. (Beloiters may recognize this as the map, as I had it posted next to my office in Chamberlin.)

But note how much more intuitive and understandable xkcd has made the logarithmic scale by including human- and earth-scale objects, such as airliners, mountains, building, people, and, yes, grass.

The xkcd map is also nerdified by the inclusion of science fiction references, which cannot be considered a bad thing. I heartily approve of any merging of science fiction and real science!

I think analyzing this map will be an excellent end-of-the-semester activity for my astronomy class!

¹ Gott et al., 2005, ApJ, 624, 463

Just a quick heads-up! If you use iTunes to manage your podcasts, be alert! I just discovered that my podcast settings had all been changed to the “Default” settings, which were to “Keep the Last 3 Episodes” instead of “Keep All Unplayed Episodes.”

This presumably happened when I updated to iTunes 8, though I suppose it could have been malicious elves messing with my software settings.

It’s easy enough to change the default. Just go to the Podcasts screen and click the “Settings…” button, then in the “Settings For:” menu select “Podcast Defaults.” If what happened to you happened to me, all your podcasts are have been set to the “Default” settings, so you can change them all in one fell swoop.

In the grand scheme of things, losing a few podcasts isn’t the end of the world, and I was getting kind of behind on podcasts anyway, so it probably didn’t hurt for me to have involuntarily deleted a bunch, so I am only mildly irritated—certainly not irritated enough to track down the lost episodes.

And I’m hoping that maybe now it will actually delete played podcasts the way one would believe it would, based on the fact that it was set to “Keep all unplayed episodes,” something that worked only erratically for me in iTunes 7. (UPDATE: it seems to work much better, though the NPR Shuffle podcast simply refuses to comply.)

So a few days ago, I made waffles. We were out of buttermilk, which meant I couldn’t use my usual recipe, so I pulled out the Joy of Cooking.

The amount of butter in the Joy waffle recipe is subject to the cook’s discretion. You can use 4 Tbsp for the low fat version, a whole honkin’ stick for the regular version (that’s 8 Tbsp), and more (eep!) for a super-crispy version. I judiciously decided to go with 6 Tbsp, and so I hacked 2 Tbsp off the stick and put the rest in a small bowl and nuked it to melt it.

Fast forward to yesterday. Jason asked me, “Why is there a bowl of melted and resolidified butter in the microwave?”

Hmmmm.

So, apparently 0 Tbsp of butter is also an option.

I can’t figure out why exactly the waffles weren’t permanently welded to the irons, ’cause that’s what usually happens with lowfat waffles. But they cooked up fine and were durned tasty, if I say so myself.

p.s. Apropos of nothing, a bird drawn in a tophat with no other identifiable characteristics is clearly a penguin, e.g. the Broaster Chicken logo. Jason thinks this is funny, but I think it’s just obvious.

Jason and I were talking about the problem with the word unique. The problem is that despite the fact that unique means “being the only one of its kind,” people use it in a weaker sense to mean unusual, but (this is key) with a positive connotation.

The problem is that there is no other word that means that, so you can’t tell people, “No, that hat isn’t unique, as you can plainly see that there are six others in the store display that are exactly like it. What you mean to say is that hat is…”

What? Unusual? Unusual can have anything from a negative to a neutral connotation, but it rarely has a positive connotation.

If you were from Minnesota, you’d say different. As in, “That’s different.” Again, a neutral to negative connotation.

To solve this quandary, Jason has decided to use his prerogative as a speaker of the English language to make up a new word. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

What a funusual birthday party!

Gee, Fran, your new hairdo sure is funusual!

That professor takes a funusual approach to 13th century Islamic art.

As blog readers, your job is now to spread the use of funusual throughout the land. Use it liberally in conversation and writing. If someone misuses unique in your presence, suggest to them, “I don’t think you mean unique; that means one-of-a-kind. I think the world you’re looking for is funusual.”

Say it firmly and with authority. If challenged, explain that funusual is a new word that fills an important gap in the English vocabulary. Hint that it’s all the rage amongst the cognoscenti. (Be sure that you know how to pronounce cognoscenti first.)

Together, we can reclaim the original, stronger meaning of unique and provide a new word to the English language! It’s a funusual project, but a worthy one!