Category Archives: sciences

the Big Whack

Giant impact hypothesis It has been said (though not in that article) that the Pacific Ocean is the scar of the whack. So if the whack hadn’t happened, would Earth’s crust be all continental? In that case the plates would … Continue reading

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the greatest thing ever!

Forgive my waxing hyperbolic . . . This is a tiling of the hyperbolic plane by triangles whose angles are π/2, π/3, π/7 – the smallest possible tile. I present it in a conformal mapping analogous to the Mercator projection, which I’ve … Continue reading

Posted in eye-candy, mathematics | 1 Comment

looking for sanity checks in an insane world

Some years ago, using basic theorems of hyperbolic trigonometry, I worked out a conformal representation of the hyperbolic plane which preserves one line – analogous to the Mercator projection of the sphere, a conformal map which preserves one great circle. … Continue reading

Posted in mathematics | 1 Comment

what the cat did in the night-time

Whenever I get settled in my big chair, Pillow (the junior cat) is all over me; but when I’m in bed he almost never comes within reach. So I was surprised when, on waking in the night, I found him … Continue reading

Posted in medicine, pets | 3 Comments

to balance a calendar

A Martian year is 668.6 Martian days; that’s 3.4 less than 24×28. I asked myself, how should the short months be arranged for best ‘balance’? I ran all combinations and this is it: The three big dots represent the missing … Continue reading

Posted in calendars | Tagged | 3 Comments

symmetries made simple

This may be of interest to only a few: Simplest Canonical Polyhedra of Each Symmetry Type (rotable in Java); in other words, canonical forms of the simplest topologies that allow the specified symmetries and none higher. Any convex polyhedron can … Continue reading

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how much is in there?

I reloaded MacOS, restored my home directory from backup, and was surprised to learn that I have 3e5 files. Most of the bulk is music, but that’s only 7e3 files. Is there a tool analogous to du that gives the … Continue reading

Posted in medicine, neep-neep | 1 Comment