The Humble Hour
I started wondering a few days ago why our time--in Western culture, at least--is organized around the hour.
When I was in junior high and high school, all of classes were based on an hour--55 minute classes, 5 minutes to get to the next class. Television is based on the hour, too.
Other things. Openings and closing of businesses. The vast majority of them open and close on the hour.
Child sport practices, too. Almost every introductory level to a sport has hour-long sessions.
I could keep going, but you see what I mean. And why is an hour sixty minutes long?
I started poking around and found this: The ancient, brilliant reason we divide days into 60-minute hours and 60-second minutes. It's fascinating, and here are a few short hits:
--originally, a day was divided into 24 segments by the ancient "Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks). However, these segments were NOT of uniform length.
--Greek astronomers in the Hellinistic period first proposed fixed length hours to assist in their calculations.
--hours of fixed length only started commonly appearing in the 14th century "after mechanical clocks first appeared in Europe."
I did not find a clear answer as to why so much of what we do is organized by the hour. Still hunting around for a good explanation.
The Sprinter
Eli 25.2 ran with the track team last week for the first time.
He said he was in the puppy group, not the dogs. But he wasn't the slowest.
He talked to the sprint coach afterwards and she said if he trained with her for a year he'd be running in the 49s. "At least," she said.
It's five weeks after he ran the 53.5. He said if he ran a timed 400 now it would be below 52. And his form is still terrible. It's all horsepower.
I refuse to be surprised anymore.
I keep telling him his ideal distance is going to be the mile (if he runs in the 49s for the 400 he could theoretically--with the proper training--break four minutes in the mile, and he could do it on the same track where Roger Bannister did it for the first time). He laughs and says not to threaten him (because the mile requires much more training and suffering).
We'll see.
Friday Links Draft Kings link fixed
Sorry. It should work now.
Friday Links!
Leading off this week, a story of absolute predation: https://www.propublica.org/article/draftkings-sports-gambling-problem-vip-fanduel.
This is terrific: What butterfly wings have in common with barbershop poles.
This is a fascinating read: Fixer, financier, spymaster: how the UAE’s Sheikh Tahnoon is setting his sights on AI dominance.
A strange and tragic story: What Killed the Bear Lady? For 28 years, Kay Grayson lived side-by-side with wild black bears in North Carolina's swampy coastal forests, hand-feeding them, defending them against poachers, and letting them in her home. When she went missing last year, the only thing the investigators could find were her clean-picked bones. And that's just the start of the mystery.
A fantastic read: The Bizarre, Murky History of Soviet-Born Tetris.
From 2019, but riveting: A Paranoid Tech Bro, a Homemade Nuclear Bunker, and a Shocking Death: In the tunnels beneath a placid suburban home, an angel investor turned into an angel of doom.
From Wally, and this is an interesting turn: Choose Your Own Adventure Publisher Launches Adult Imprint. I've noticed these: Uncanny and unappetizing: appetites spoil as AI images take over food menus. Not my favorite genre: 10 Greatest Historical Fiction Books of All Time. An absolutely excellent read: Misunderstanding the Genius of Jules Verne — And Why It Matters to Science Fiction: Our cultural obsession with Verne's predictive abilities ignores the real critical nuance and power of his writing, to everyone's detriment.
Surmise
DQ Reader Zack has created a word game, and it's quite good. Most new word games are knockoffs on existing ones, but this is unique and makes you think.
It's called Surmise, and the objective is to uncover the rule guiding the puzzle. Some words are "in," others are "out," and it's up to you to discover why. Actually, I don't even need to explain it because he made an excellent, short trailer: Surmise video.
You just go to a website for the daily puzzle. No app and nothing to install. It has plenty of features already, including practice puzzles, the ability to share puzzles with friends, and stat tracking.
If you decide to play, you can enter the code SURMISEBETA to gain full supporter access through the middle of October.
The Wayback Machine
I've written before about being willing to boycott some companies (rot in hell, Hobby Lobby), but not Chic-Fil-A.
I did, for about ten years. Then Eli 10.0 had friends take him for lunch and he loved it because who wouldn't? So I started taking him and the boycott was over and hasn't yet returned.
I had a few spare minutes waiting for the subway today and went into the wayback machine.
The magical mall we went to in Corpus Christi was called Padre-Staples Mall. It opened on July 29, 1969, so I would have been a few months past eight then. The mall was a magical place for a kid who came from a town of 7,302 people. I don't remember the first time we went, but it was always a highlight of my weekend when we did. And it was half an hour away, so it felt like a journey.
I remember eating Chic-Fil-A for the first time and being stunned that anything could taste so perfect. What I didn't know was that when the Chic-Fil-A opened in Corpus Christi--the day the mall opened--it was only the eighth Chic-Fil-A location in the entire country, and the first in Texas.
How Corpus Christi was chosen is entirely baffling, as there were at least four other, far better cities (Austin, San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas). Corpus Christi only had about 200,000 people, which made it huge to me but quite small compared to the big four.
I remember the quality being a bit uneven (unlike today). Most of the time, though, it was spectacular, and I've never forgotten those memories. They still hit whenever I walk into one today.
ASU Update
There's an update: Arizona State men's hockey players ask school to place coach Greg Powers on leave.
Most of what the coaches and university claimed in their "investigative" report is disputed by the players, which makes sense, because much of what was claimed by the university was total gibberish.
This will inevitably drag on. No actual charges will be filed, even though someone died through utter negligence. The coach will be dismissed but admit no wrongdoing. The Navy Seal will move on to put someone else's life in jeopardy. The parents will file a lawsuit and receive a large settlement that will never make up for any of what happened.
This old-school coach mentality bullshit where sports are equated with war has to stop. It gets people killed.
Rain Rain Rain
It's rained all day for the last three days. All day.
It's clearly gotten to me because last night I dreamed I woke up and it was sunny outside.
I did wake up. It was not.
It's still raining.
I Respect the Thorough Nature of Your Inquiry, Sir
Here's what I received a while back:
Hi Bill,
In About What You'd Expect (October 2016) you ran two online reaction tests and noted that one was "probably more accurate" - .21-.23 on one, .25-.27 on the other. That gap is mostly the input path, and almost every one of these tests hides it behind a single number.
I built a new benchmark tool around that problem. Results are ranked separately by device class - mouse, trackpad, touchscreen - and the per-device offsets are labelled as extrapolation rather than measurement, because they are. The baseline itself is fitted from Human Benchmark's published statistics (n=81,000,000), which pools every input device into one figure; splitting it is my extrapolation, and the page says so. There is also an audio mode, with the caveat that Bluetooth output adds its own delay.
Not asking you to edit a ten-year-old post. But if you ever revisit reaction time, or test Eli again, this is a fairer instrument than the ones that print one number and stop.
No account, no ads, nothing to buy.
https://benchself.com/
Both the test and the website around it are excellent. The email was also a masterclass in explaining why this tool is different and providing comprehensive information.
If you were ever interested originally, it's a good time to revisit. My best 5-test run (average) was 184ms. Reaction time is still strong, even with my "advanced" age. It makes me wonder what it was like when I was young.
Damn It
Due to ineptitude and indifference, an Arizona St. hockey player, Matthew Mayich, is in a coma and will not recover: Arizona State hockey workout review assigns no blame. Lawyer calls it 'mind-blogging'.
That "review" was performed by Arizona St. itself.
Here are a few excerpts from the story:
Carey said exertional heat stroke caused a lack of oxygen to his brain and there is no chance for a full recovery [by Mayich].
The workout was horrific in both its intensity and scope (the details are in the article). It was run by an ex-Navy Seal and was 100% in the "alpha male bullshit this will prove how tough you are" category. Safeguards were in place, they were totally ignored, and tragedy was the result.
The Seal has already lawyered up, of course. This is from a another article (Rake is the Seal's attorney):
The workout that Tim did was discussed with the coaches beforehand and with the training staff, and it was a mid-level, or what I would call a low-level, high school football workout
Yes. That is why you bring in an ex-Navy Seal to conduct a workout. So he can lead a low-level high school workout. That totally makes sense.
I remember when Eli 25.1 was playing AAA in 16U, which is the premiere junior age group. His time was in the top 15 nationally--and didn't have a trainer. The degree of disposability in athletes is astonishing. They're just pulp for the machine that pays coaches, and while there are exceptions, I would argue that in both football and hockey they're the rare exceptions.
To be clear, these kinds of bullshit workouts don't help you get in better shape. Any time you overload beyond capacity to that degree, absolutely nothing is achieved. Conditioning-wise, it's a waste of time. It's just peacocking for macho male moron culture, which continues to curse this country at every conceivable level.
I'm angry, in case you can't tell.
Yuck, For a While
I've been grinding along the last few days because I've been sick.
This time, though, I've been lucky. Only three days for a respiratory virus, and I was even able to walk several miles today. Not quite back to normal, but not feeling terrible, either.
There are common sense precautions to take when you live here and that I stopped during the summer, like wearing a mask when you're on mass transit. This has been a good reminder to start doing it again. I'm not crazy about wearing a mask because it can affect the fit of my glasses, but it's far better than being sick.
