knock on wood
The Shinkansen is 60 years old today:
A picture speaks a thousand words… or one interesting fact:
The caption provides helpful info about this image:
I updated to an image that didn’t take people to Reddit. But I find it remarkable the river has moved that much since the border has been drawn.
Easy to find in Google Maps:
Meandering rivers move a lot by definition. Must be a hell of a border to patrol and control.
That’s how horseshoe or oxbow lakes are formed:
Every year:
- The month of May starts on a different day of the week than any other month.
- The month of June also starts on a different day of the week.
- The months September and December always start on the same day of the week, which is shared by no other month.
- The pairs of months March-November and April-July have their own start days of the week, but sometimes share with other months.
Christmas and New Year’s Day is always on the same day of the week.
In non-leap years, January, February and March combine for 90 days.
When I was a kid, I got this little notebook or calendar. What was notable about it was that it had a method of determining the day of week for any day per the Gregorian calendar.
The method had several steps, and one step used a lookup table based on the month. From the lookup table I realized that certain months would always start on the same day of the week. (Also that it was common for months to have 5 of, say, Sundays or Fridays. This should be obvious to anyone who can reason)
I wish I could get my hands on that again.
California produces over 85 percent of all carrots grown in the United States.
At least for now, until the Ice Age-legacy aquifers are empty.
TIL that:
- linseeds, source of linseed oil, are the seeds of the flax plant Linum usitatissimum
- so I guess Linum → Linen
- France produces 75% of the world’s supply of flax
Yes, it’s the Doomsday Rule
It takes advantage of each year having a certain day of the week upon which certain easy-to-remember dates, called the doomsdays , fall; for example, the last day of February, April 4 (4/4), June 6 (6/6), August 8 (8/8), October 10 (10/10), and December 12 (12/12) all occur on the same day of the week in any year
There’s more to it, including the odd-numbered months, and the other years in the century and previous centuries.
My birthday is a doomsday: awesome. (Therefore, so is Halloween.)
Today I learned a couple things about quartz:
- Ultra pure quartz is a really important material for the semiconductor industry. (I’m not exactly sure why, though I didn’t do a deep dive on it. But it has something to do with crucibles.)
- There are very few suppliers of ultra pure quartz. One of them is in North Carolina, and there is a major concern local flooding will impact their ability to supply quartz, resulting in ripple effects that will be felt by semiconductor foundries across the globe.
Easter always falls on a Sunday.
There’s a little idiosyncrasy in the Gregorian calendar due to it’s cyclic nature not being perfect. Not all dates appear equally likely on all days of the week. In particular the 13 of the months appears slightly more often on a Friday than any of the other days of the week.
I sometimes picture a little imp sitting on Pope Gregory XIII’s shoulder urging him to okay that calendar system.
“Go ahead! It’s Okay! And they’ll name it after you!”
OK, this is creepy. Friday the 13th not only always occurs on a Friday - it is also ALWAYS on the 13th day of the month. What are the odds?!