Category: fun things

Yesterday was Waffle Day, and I did in fact make waffles for the family. Mmmmmm. So what delicious, sweet, crispy treat awaits us today? (Checks notes.) Oh. Well, spinach may not be terribly exciting, but…wow, so much nutrition!

Spinach is one of those foods that, as a kid, I was so thoroughly convinced I’d hate (based on its appearance and smell) that I would not, under any circumstances, allow it near my mouth. And let’s face it, cooked spinach is kinda gross looking. But fresh baby spinach is great in a salad, and cooked spinach has really grown on me too, as long as it’s not mushy. (So, sorry, but no canned or frozen spinach for me. I have to draw the line somewhere.)

It so happens we have no spinach in the house right now, but we do have leftover waffles, so I may just have to pretend.

Image credit: Tiia Monto [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Time for a pie chart

Author Douglas Adams famously made fun of earthlings for being “so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” Shortly before he died, Adams gave a talk at the University of California, Santa Barbara (not far from his home), at the end of which there was a brief question-and-answer session. A woman stood up and asked Adams the question that had been bothering her for decades: what did he have against digital watches? The crowd probably expected him to toss off a witty one-liner in response. Instead, he gave a very thoughtful answer that, in true Douglas Adams fashion, made ordinary human behavior seem self-evidently absurd.

After admitting that his comment had originally been written in the days when digital watches were themselves fairly primitive (and, ironically, required two hands to operate), Adams couched his complaint—appropriately—using an analogy. In the early days of personal computers, he said, people got very excited that their spreadsheet programs could finally create pie charts. This was considered a revolutionary advance, because as everyone knows, a pie chart visually represents a part-whole relationship in a way that is immediately obvious—a way that, to be more specific, mere columns of numbers did not. Well, the hands of an analog timepiece form wedges that look very much like a pie chart, and like a pie chart, they represent a sort of part-whole relationship in a way that requires a bare minimum of mental effort to comprehend. Not so digital timepieces, which for all their precision say nothing about the relationship of one time of day to another.

Ticked Off

Although digital watches have their place and are in no danger of becoming extinct, analog models (and, more recently, analog faces on smartwatches) have enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years, and I think that’s just marvelous. Now, I’ve always liked digital watches, for both aesthetic and practical reasons. But when I stopped to think about it, I realized that it is far less useful to know that it’s 10:13 than that it’s quarter past ten, and that when I read the time in a digital format, I nearly always have to perform an additional mental calculation to figure out what time it “really” is—that is, what that string of numbers actually means in terms of how much of the day has gone by or how much longer I can sleep before getting up to go to work.

Studies have shown alarmingly that many children today—and even a fair number of adults—cannot tell time using an analog clock or watch because they have only ever been exposed to digital timepieces. Presumably, someone whose only experience of timekeeping has been digital would not expend any extra mental effort figuring out how much of an hour had elapsed at 7:52—but then, such a person may have to think harder on other occasions, being unable to visually judge the “distance” between two times. Be that as it may, one clearly must be able at least to identify numbers and count in order to tell time with a digital watch, whereas even without knowing any numbers, someone can tell roughly what time of day it is using an analog watch.

Second Opinion

Analog watch or clock faces—even the ones whose hands decisively click into well-defined positions rather than moving smoothly in a circle—convey a fuzzy or approximate sense of time at a casual glance. This is a good thing, not only for the sake of children’s education but because time itself is continuous, not an infinite series of discrete steps (unless you believe in quantized time, but even if you do, you must admit that human perception of time is continuous). Units like seconds, minutes, and hours are just a convenient, arbitrary fiction, after all—they don’t represent anything objectively real in the world. As linguist George Lakoff pointed out in his book Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things, we like to talk about time as though it were money—a thing that can be spent, saved, earned, or wasted—but this is all merely a conceit of language. Thus, to the extent that analog timepieces distance us less from reality than digital ones do, I’ve got to believe they help to keep us ever-so-slightly more human.

Some people have argued that analog watches, for all their merits, are still too complicated because they artificially divide the day into two arbitrary cycles; there are, unsurprisingly, 24-hour clocks and watches of various designs intended to address this limitation. When an hour hand goes around a dial just once per day, it’s easier to picture what it’s an analog of: namely, the rotation of the Earth (more or less). A sundial, needless to say, gives a representation of time that’s even closer cognitively to its source, but much less accurate (and inconveniently nonfunctional at night).

Nowadays, it’s possible to make analog timepieces every bit as accurate as digital models, and for those who dislike a ticking sound or prefer the no-moving-parts aesthetic, the aforementioned “analog” smartwatch faces (and similar designs on larger timepieces) should do the trick. In short, the analog clock is having its revenge by providing all the benefits of digital timepieces in a human-brain-friendly package. None of this is news; I could have written essentially the same thing decaedes ago. But it is exciting that we earthlings are somehow able to come to our senses and overcome these collective blips of faulty judgment. Let’s all keep up the good work.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on September 4, 2004.

Image credit: Pixabay

I know people have very strong opinions on the question of pancakes vs. waffles. My opinion is that they are both delicious, and while waffles have a superior texture, pancakes are less fussy to make (and to butter), so I eat pancakes far more frequently. However, today I believe I’ll drag out the ol’ waffle iron and waffle up some batter for the family, because it’s the right thing to do today.

Image credit: Pplc [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

New Wales in Patagonia

Argentina has no shortage of bookstores. In some of the busier shopping districts of Buenos Aires, it’s not unusual to see half a dozen of them in a single block—all apparently doing brisk business. We visited many of these when we traveled there, and showed uncharacteristic restraint, leaving with just a few books altogether. Of course, the selection of English-language books was typically limited, though you could find Spanish translations of nearly any major English book you could name. For example, I picked up a Spanish copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. On the copyright page, it said that this book was also available in Latin and Welsh translations. The Latin bit surprised me: I can’t think of anywhere other than Vatican City where Latin is still used conversationally, and I don’t expect many folks there are keen on reading stories about wizards and witches. Welsh, on the other hand—that can certainly constitute a reasonable market, especially in Patagonia.

Looking for New Wales

In the mid-1800s, many residents of Wales felt their territory, culture, and language were being overrun by the English. Realizing they were hopelessly outnumbered, a group of them decided to look for a place far away where they could transplant a piece of Wales and control their own destiny. Patagonia offered a familiar climate and an appropriately remote location, far from English influence. So in 1865, 159 settlers, led by Rev. Michael D. Jones, sailed aboard a ship called Mimosa and landed in a sheltered bay on the coast of Argentina known as Golfo Nuevo. They initially set up residence in a port town that came to be called Puerto Madryn, but soon thereafter most of the colonists moved about 100km (60 miles) to the south, building several small towns along the Rio Chubut—one of the few fertile regions in this part of Patagonia. Among these towns are Rawson, the provincial capital near the coast; Trelew, a hub of commerce and transportation about 20km (12 miles) to the west; and a further 16km (10 miles) inland along the river, Gaiman.

Although Gaiman was originally founded by a Pennsylvanian named David Roberts, it eventually achieved notoriety as the largest Welsh settlement outside Wales. Today, the town’s population numbers less than 5,000, but a large percentage of these people are direct descendants of the original colonists. Public signs are in Spanish and Welsh, and the Welsh language is still taught in the public schools. Here in the heart of Argentina, it’s not at all unusual to encounter people with names like Williams, Davies, or Jones—perhaps even with red hair—who speak Spanish with a Welsh accent and not a bit of English. Locals still proudly recall a visit by Diana, princess of Wales, in 1995.

Tea, Anyone?

Gaiman’s biggest tourist attraction, by far, is its tea houses. Here you can have a traditional afternoon tea with a large selection of pastries. An English couple in our group couldn’t wait to tell their families about the experience, as it was something they’d never actually do at home. Other major attractions in the town include the Primera Casa, a stone house built by Roberts in 1874 (still intact but with a new, corrugated metal roof), and a brick chapel built in 1880. The town also hosts an annual festival of choral music and poetry called Eisteddfod, where you can hear both Welsh and Argentinean folk music.

Of the roughly 500,000 people in the world who speak Welsh, roughly 1%, or 5,000, live in Patagonia. Of these, the vast majority are bilingual, and in fact few speak Welsh as a first language. But today, as in the earliest days of the Welsh settlements in Patagonia, a group of dedicated citizens is working hard to maintain and revitalize the Welsh language and culture in this remote area. And if that requires help from a couple of Harry Potter novels, well, it’s all in the service of a good cause.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on January 27, 2005.

We have covered numerous national whatever days here where the whatever was a specific type of cocktail, such as a martini or a margarita. Today, it’s bartender’s choice. Mix potable liquids in whatever manner strikes your fancy, optionally garnish with a complementary fruit or vegetable, and consume in moderation. Me, I’m sort of feeling like a gin & tonic, although I definitely do not look like a gin & tonic. Perhaps if I stuck a wedge of lime behind my ear…

Image credit: Pixabay

Legend, science, and common sense

Chemistry was one of my favorite classes in high school. I remember on one occasion, our teacher gave us all a very strange and difficult assignment. It was a list of “real-world” questions to which chemistry could presumably provide the answers, and we were given several days to figure them out, with complete freedom to consult libraries or any other available sources to get the information. One of these questions had to do with the freezing point of water. I no longer remember the exact wording, but the gist of it was that if you had two wooden buckets of a given size, one containing hot water and the other containing cold water (with precise temperatures specified in each case), and if you exposed said buckets to an air temperature of such-and-such, which one would freeze first? The obvious answer, of course, would have been the one with colder water, which led us to believe that this must be the wrong answer. However, it was not sufficient to provide the correct response; we had to justify the answer based on our knowledge of chemistry. Well, despite a great deal of research—and bear in mind, this was back when research meant looking at books rather than searching the web—I came up empty-handed. I left that one blank, and to make matters worse, I happened to miss class on the day the assignment was discussed, so I never found out the solution to this mystery.

Years later, I was to discover that there are a number of urban myths about the boiling point and freezing point of water, with “hot water freezes faster” being just one of them. I scoured a bunch of websites, and came up with contradictory information. But this is not, after all, rocket science—there’s no reason I should have to live with uncertainty about something so easily demonstrated. So I decided to conduct my own experiments and find out for myself. Although I didn’t have a wooden bucket handy, I did have a freezer, a stove, some water, and a digital thermometer. I’ll tell you the results of my experiments in just a moment. But first, here are some of the interesting claims about water I found.

• “Hot water freezes faster than cold water.” Most experts say that, all things being equal, cold water freezes faster. However, things are not always equal. A curious phenomenon known as the Mpemba effect can, under some very specific (and poorly understood) circumstances, result in hotter water freezing faster than colder water. One of the numerous possible explanations for this effect involves evaporation: if you start with extremely hot water, a good bit of it will evaporate, and a smaller quantity of water will freeze faster than a larger quantity. (Evaporation is also endothermic, reducing the water’s temperature further and faster.) And so, according to chemists, this one is not a myth, but it works only if you get the initial conditions exactly correct. This is presumably what my high school chemistry assignment was getting at.
• “Previously boiled water freezes faster than regular water.” Notwithstanding the previous explanation, water at room temperature that was once boiled, according to some experts, should freeze faster because the dissolved oxygen has been removed.
• “Previously boiled water boils faster than regular water.” Likewise, previously boiled water at room temperature should boil faster than water that has never been boiled, for the same reason it freezes faster (less dissolved oxygen).
• “Cold water boils faster than hot water.” If hot water freezes faster, maybe cold water boils faster! Again, this defies common sense—and again, say scientists, it’s simply wrong. Hot water from the tap should in fact boil much faster than cold water. However, using hot water for boiling does not actually save any energy. You may use less gas (or electricity) on the stovetop, but your water heater will have used the same amount of energy to heat the water in the first place. (If you use solar energy to heat your water, of course, that’s a different story.) Some water heaters may introduce additional sediment into the water, giving you another reason to consider starting with cold—at least, if time is not of the essence.
• “Adding salt to water raises its boiling point.” Chemically speaking, this is a verifiable fact. Salt does raise water’s boiling point (and lower its freezing point—which is why home ice cream makers use rock salt). But the real question is whether this makes it take longer to get to the boiling point (and, for that matter, how far above 212°F/100°C it will get). Despite what you read in cookbooks, scientists claim that the amount of salt you’d typically add to a pot of boiling water is too small to make any meaningful difference in the boiling time or boiling point.

So, given what I knew should happen, here’s what actually occurred in my experiments.

Freezing Water: I started with three identical glass containers, each holding 100ml (about 3.5 fl. oz.) of filtered water: one at room temperature (72°F/22°C), one at the same temperature as my hot water tap (115°F/46°C), and one boiling (212°F/100°C). I put all these into my freezer, which had an air temperature of 0°F (–18°C). I knew that the water would not turn from liquid to ice all at once, and I puzzled over when to consider the water “frozen”—when the first ice crystals appeared, when the water was completely solid, or what? I eventually decided on an arbitrary standard for frozenness: the time at which a wooden chopstick dropped into the center of the container would no longer touch the bottom, meaning the water was mostly but not entirely frozen. I checked each of the containers every five minutes. The results? The room-temperature water froze in 50 minutes. The hot water froze in 80 minutes. And the boiling water froze in 95 minutes. My verdict: no contest—not even remotely close. Given the conditions in my freezer and the water I used, I was unable to reproduce the Mpemba effect.

I also tried a container of previously boiled water, now at room temperature. It froze in 60 minutes—more time (not less) than the unboiled water had taken, but not by much.

Boiling Water (Hot vs. Cold): I put a liter (about 34 fl. oz.) of water at room temperature in a pan at room temperature and set it on a high flame. It boiled in 6 minutes. I then cooled the pan back to room temperature and put in a liter of hot (115°F/46°C) tap water. With the flame unchanged, the hot water boiled in 4 minutes, 30 seconds. My verdict: hot water does boil significantly faster, just as you’d expect.

Boiling Previously Boiled Water: I put a liter of water that had previously been boiled, now cooled to room temperature, into a pan at room temperature. With the flame unchanged from the last experiment, this water boiled in 6 minutes, 11 seconds. My verdict: essentially the same as water that hadn’t been boiled.

Boiling Water (with salt): I added a generous 2 tablespoons of table salt—much more than most people would ever use for boiling pasta or vegetables—to a mere 1 liter of water. It boiled in 6 minutes, 33 seconds (versus 6 minutes for unsalted, room-temperature water) and reached a temperature, according to my thermometer, of 216°F (102°C). So clearly the salt had an effect, but not much of one—and this was with an uncommonly high concentration. My verdict: Add salt to water if you want to season it, but don’t expect it to make any significant change in the water’s boiling time or temperature.

Now, I freely admit that my kitchen is no laboratory, and that any number of variables could have influenced the outcome. My measurements may have been imprecise. My freezer may have had uneven zones of warmer or colder air. My glassware may have been contaminated. And so on. But whatever may occur under ideal conditions in a laboratory, when it comes to freezing or boiling water in an ordinary kitchen, common sense prevails.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 16, 2005.

Image credit: Scott Akerman [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr

I’ve always been a huge fan of the word OK, and I was fascinated to read its history in Allan Metcalf’s book OK: The Improbable Story Of America’s Greatest Word. It first appeared in print on this date in 1839 (with the spelling “o.k.” and an explanatory note indicating that it was short for “all correct,” which is to say the slang spelling “oll korrect”), so OK is 180 years old today!

Yes, a lot of people have taken to spelling it “okay,” which is a pity because it breaks the word’s etymology, apart from being a waste of two letters that could undoubtedly be put to good use somewhere else. Today, in honor of this noble word’s heritage, just cut it out…OK?

Image credit: Pixabay

Fragile spectacles

Last summer my family and I took a vacation that included a visit to Yellowstone National Park, famous for its wildlife and extensive hydrothermal features. We ogled the stunningly beautiful Grand Prismatic Spring, walked past smelly mud pots, and delighted in the gorgeous formations of the Mammoth Hot Springs. But the highlight of the visit was the chance to get close to some of the incredible geysers that Yellowstone is known for, including Steamboat Geyser (the world’s tallest active geyser) and the relatively punctual Old Faithful.

Plumbing the Depths

Geysers are quite unique among geological formations, the product of extremely rare circumstances. For a geyser to become active and stable, four conditions must be met. The first thing required is a geothermal heat source, most often provided by underground volcanic activity. Second, there must be a reservoir of water available. Third, a geyser requires a certain kind of rock, most often silica-rich rocks such as rhyolite or ignimbrite. This type of rock, when exposed to water, can develop the pressure- and water-tight seal that is necessary for the proper functioning of a geyser. The fourth requirement is a constriction in the geyser formation near the surface, which allows pressure to build up below it until the geyser erupts.

When only some of these conditions are met, other phenomena occur, such as hot springs (heat, water, and rock, but no constriction), fumaroles (steam vents that do not have enough water to erupt), and mud pots (fumaroles that emerge into a wet environment, creating mud at the surface). However, if all the necessary conditions occur simultaneously, a geyser may form and remain active over long periods of time.

The life cycle of a geyser begins when water seeps into the ground from the surface (because of rain) or from underground reservoirs, eventually sinking deep enough to reach a layer of hot rock. This water is slowly heated and gathers at the bottom of the geyser channel, while colder water enters the channel from above, and sits on top of the warmer water. The pressure of the cold water prevents the warm water from boiling, although it continues to become super-heated. When the pressure becomes too great, the hot water turns to steam and pushes the colder water out of the channel. This reduces the pressure further, producing even more steam. This whole cycle can take 500 years, which means the water rushing from a geyser today may have fallen as rain during the 16th century.

Geyser Downfalls

Old Faithful is one of the most famous geysers in the world, getting its name from its consistent schedule; it erupts on average every 91 minutes. Every geyser has its own schedule, based on its unique conditions, but this schedule is not set in stone (as it were) because geysers, including Old Faithful, are vulnerable to changes in the environment that may affect their activity. Even slight changes to the water supply or the rock formation can adversely affect the fragile balance of a geyser. Some are caused by natural processes, such as volcanic activity, but increasingly, geysers are threatened by human interference.

It is estimated that there are only 1,000 geysers in the world, half of which exist in the geyser-perfect environment of Yellowstone. Other countries with large numbers of geysers concentrated in a single area are Iceland, Russia, Chile, and New Zealand, and individual geysers exist in Peru, Bolivia, Mexico, Dominica, the Azores, Kenya, and Japan. One of the greatest threats to geysers is the diversion of their underground water sources, most often in connection with the creation of geothermal power plants. Such is the case in New Zealand, where the Wairakei geyser field on its North Island was devastated by the creation of a nearby power plant in 1958.

Of course, geysers can become dormant for many reasons, and their fragility is part of their rarity; it takes a lot to create a geyser, and just as much to keep it going. They are truly scientific marvels, and worthy of being protected as much as possible, not only for their entertainment value, but for what they tell us about long-term geological processes. Although it’s thrilling to stand next to Old Faithful while it erupts, it’s even more thrilling to imagine that this spectacle has been 500 years in the making.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on November 29, 2006.

It’s 2019, and almost a quarter of the human beings on Earth do not have safe, clean drinking water. It’s true in much of Africa and Asia, and it’s also true in Flint, Michigan. You know, solar power and Wi-Fi and educational opportunities and a thousand other things are super important too, but they all pale in comparison to the basic human need for water. And so the United Nations has declared March 22 World Water Day, a day to learn about the deficiencies in the worldwide water supply and what actions we can take to help address them.

Image credit: Public domain, via Pixnio

Canine company by the hour

On my last trip to Costa Rica, I was walking along the beach in a small town on the Atlantic coast that’s best known as a hot spot for surfing. There were a number of dogs playing on the beach—catching sticks and Frisbees, sniffing the tourists, and generally having a good time. The dogs may have been strays, or they may have belonged to local residents—the people playing with them did not appear to be their owners. But in any case, the dogs were apparently healthy, friendly, and well cared-for. I’ve always liked dogs, though for a variety of reasons I can’t see myself owning one. Still, that afternoon on the beach, I was thinking that it would be great to have a dog to play with for just a few hours, and that some enterprising person ought to set up a little dog-rental business there to cater to people such as myself who could not bring their own dogs to this remote location.

I filed this idea away in the back of my head along with all the other goofy and implausible notions I’ve come up with over the years. And then one day, I read an article in a local newspaper about a growing trend at luxury hotels and resorts around the world: free (or inexpensive) loaner dogs for the guests. Maybe my idea wasn’t so goofy after all. A few web searches turned up a number of businesses that loan or rent dogs for short periods of time—often, though not always, as a way for tourists to have canine companionship away from home. This idea seemed to have legs, so I thought it merited a bit more research.

BYOD

Although it seems a bit crude to compare rental dogs with rental cars, the concepts are similar at least in the sense that someone else is responsible for major care and maintenance. I’d never expect to rent a car for a weekend and then be asked to take it in for an oil change or a tune-up; and when borrowing or renting a dog, you don’t worry about grooming, bathing, or veterinary care. But these factors are rarely the major attraction to potential renters. Some people like having a dog with them as a way of breaking the ice when meeting other humans (a role dogs perform nearly as well as babies). In other cases, it’s simply a matter of wanting company, a hiking companion, or a playmate. Either way, the availability of loaner dogs is increasingly becoming a competitive advantage for hotels in areas where guests like to spend a lot of time outdoors.

Dog lovers on vacation may be the most visible niche market for rent-a-dog services, but there are numerous other examples. Specially trained guard dogs and hunting dogs are available in some areas for people who are unable to care for such animals year-round but need their special services on occasion. And in some Asian cities, such as Tokyo and Hong Kong, where it’s extremely difficult to find dog-friendly housing, rental services enable people to spend quality time with dogs.

Increasingly, animal shelters and pet stores are using dog rental (or loans) as a way of encouraging adoptions: people borrow pets for a few days, become attached to them, and decide to keep them. Conversely, many people who rent dogs do so in order to make sure the animals will fit into their households and lifestyles before making a permanent commitment. If you’ve lived with a dog for a week and find that it doesn’t get along with your other pets, bothers the neighbors with its barking, or causes a severe allergic reaction, it’s nice to know that you can return the dog with no leash attached, so to speak.

Barking Mad

Many people, not surprisingly, think rent-a-dog programs are an atrociously bad idea. I’ve frequently read complaints to the effect that a dog is a living being, not an inanimate object like a car or a library book that can be passed from owner to owner without any ethical difficulty. Critics of dog-rental services worry that renters may not be trustworthy, that being handled by many different people can create stress and confusion for the dogs, and that dogs who are frequently rented out may have difficulty bonding with their owners. Some people go so far as to say that if you’re not willing to undertake the responsibility of full-time dog ownership, you have no business becoming a short-term steward either.

I certainly agree that dogs should not be loaned or rented out haphazardly; owners have an obligation to ensure that potential borrowers or renters can safely and responsibly care for the dog. But many owners hire dog walkers or dog sitters, or place their dogs in kennels when they’re out of town, so I think there’s a reasonable precedent for giving someone else temporary care of a dog—though, of course, some dogs are more amenable to this sort of lifestyle than others. Arguably, dogs may benefit from increased exercise and socialization with humans, as long as the rental periods are not too long or too frequent.

I have not yet found any programs that rent pets other than dogs. As a cat owner, I think cats would tend to be temperamentally ill-suited to such drastic changes. On the other hand, I certainly enjoy visiting bookstores where cats are available to sit on the laps of browsers. So here’s my idea: an internet café where you can rent a computer with a mouse for $10 an hour, or a computer with a cat for $15. Bring your own lap.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on November 23, 2004.

Image credit: Bruce Emmerling [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons