Mar 30

 

 

 

Mar 30, 2021   Week: 14    Day: 89                        

Visibility: 10 miles	Ave. Sky Cover: 5%
Local: H 64°\ L 33°	Nearest Lightning: 2311mi.
Wind:  9mph/ Gusts:  12mph	High Risk of Fire:  Active fire:  365mi
Record: 70°[1971]  Record: 1°[1998]	Mar. Averages: 53°/23° (6 days with moisture)

 

Today’s Quote

Where there is great love, there are always wishes.

~Willa Cather

Random Tidbits

Hops, the bittering agent in beer, belong to the family Cannabaceae, making them marijuana's close cousins and lending a little perspective to the term "hopped up."

A Little Something to Think About

If people ring a bell today and rang a bell yesterday, why don’t we say theat they flange a ball? If they wrote a letter, perhaps they also bot their tongue. If a teacher taught, why isn’t it also true that the preacher paught?

True Things

Man bitten by deadly pet snake

Doctors in North Carolina said they used four vials of antivenin to treat a man who was bitten by his unusual pet: a deadly green mamba snake. The University of North Carolina Rex Healthcare in Raleigh contacted the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, S.C., after a man came in reporting that he was bitten by his pet green mamba, a venomous species native to Africa. "[If] you get bitten by a green mamba without antivenin, your chances of survival are very low," Sean Foley, curator of herpetology said. "It's a neurotoxic venom, so it's going to affect your breathing." A cooler packed with 10 vials of antivenin was flown via helicopter to UNC Rex, where doctors used four vials to treat the man. Foley said the incident highlights the dangers of keeping venomous pets. "They are out there as pets. I don't know how common it is. It's not something I would ever want to have as a pet," he said. "They are not particularly aggressive, but they are really fast, and they can be difficult for an untrained person to work with. It's not something I would personally want to have at home, that's for sure."

Weekly Observations

Lent [Christian] Passover [Jewish]	Thru 4/3 Thru 4/4
Passiontide	21-4/3
National Cherry Blossom Festival Link	20-4/10
National Physicians Week  Link	25-31
Holy Week International Phace Syndrome Awareness Week National Cleaning Week	24-4/3

 

Today’s Observations

Doctors Day  Link
Grass Is Always Browner On The Other Side Of The Fence Day
I am in Control Day  Link
International Laundry Folding Day
National Doctor's Day

National Hot Chicken Day
National Turkey Neck Soup Day

Pencil Day
Smoke and Mirrors Day
Take a Walk in the Park Day

Torrents Day Link
Turkey Neck Soup Day

Virtual Vacation Day Link
World Bi-polar Day Link

 

My Sometimes-Long-Winded Thoughts

Another nice spring day…ain’t complaining…even a little bit.

60 Minutes had a good piece on the Wuhan Virus [Covid]. I now have more questions than I had before. I have been to a few ‘live markets’ in the Asia area. Since I have read that a virus in an animal can be transmitted to humans, I figured that is what happened. The WHO met with Chinese officials to determine the length and depth of the WHO investigation. They found that the vast majority of live animals in the Wuhan market came from southern China. They visited that area and found no outbreak of Covid. They went to the Virology lab in Wuhan and found no Covid. But the team investigating had minders with them during the visit. It sure looks like China is hiding some important information. WHO has requested another investigation.

When I turned on my computer, I learned that the Evergreen is no longer stuck in the Suez Canal. It took 6 days to get it moved. It still isn’t over, as they have to be sure it is still sea worthy. Egypt says they still need a few more days to ensure the safety of the canal. What a huge mess.

AI HS classmate posted a story about a ‘buddy bench’. It is a brightly painted bench on a playground. If a child feels alone and wants to play with someone, they sit on the ‘buddy bench’ and wait for someone to invite them to play. According to the story, all the children know about the bench and a child never has to sit there long before being invited to play. Sounds like a good idea.

Arizona just made Aug. 14 a state holiday to honor the Navajo Code Talkers. Nice!

 

Daily Puzzle

Answer: bottom of the page

This conundrum, a variation on a lying/truth problem, has famously been called the hardest logic puzzle ever. You meet three gods on a mountain top. One always tells the truth, one always lies, and one tells the truth or lies randomly. We can call them Truth, False and Random. They understand English but answer in their own language, with ja or da for yes and no—but you don’t know which is which. You can ask three questions to any of the gods (and you can ask the same god more than one question), and they will answer with ja or da. What three question do you ask to figure out who’s who?

Historical Events

1842 – Ether anesthesia was used for the first time, in an operation by the American surgeon, Dr. Crawford Long.

1867 – Alaska is purchased from Russia for $7.2 million (‘Seward’s Folly’), by United States Secretary of State William H. Seward.

1910 – The Mississippi Legislature founded the University of Southern Mississippi.

1939 – Detective Comics #27 was released, introducing Batman.

1963 -- The Chiffons – He’s So Fine

1964 – Jeopardy!, hosted by Art Fleming, debuted.

1990 – In Belgium, several UFOs were seen on radar and were chased by two Belgian Air Force F-16’s.

2000 Richard Branson is knighted by Charles, Prince of Wales for "services to entrepreneurship" at Buckingham Palace, London

2012 Mastercard and Visa announce a massive breach in security with over ten million compromised credit card numbers.

2013 North Korea declares it is at a state of war with South Korea.

2019 Pope Francis arrives in Rabat, Morocco, on his first-ever visit to the Magreb region of Northern Africa.

2020 Three out of four Americans now ordered to stay home due to COVID-19 as states of Virginia, Maryland, Arizona and Florida issue lockdowns.

Birthdays Today

84 – Henry Warren Beatty, American actor, director, producer, screenwriter

76 – Eric Clapton, English guitarist and singer-songwriter

65 – Paul Reiser, American actor

59 – MC Hammer [Stanley Kirk Burrell], American rapper

53 – Celine Dion, Canadian singer-songwriter

41 – Norah Jones [Geethali Norah Jones Shankar], Jazz singer

@37 – Vincent van Gogh, Dutch-French painter, illustrator (died in 1890)

 

Puzzle Answer

Before getting to the answer, let’s think of a hypothetical question you know the answer to, such as “Does two plus two equal four?” Then, phrase it so you’re asking it as an embedded question: “If I asked you if two plus two equals four, would you answer ja?” If ja means yes, Truth would answer ja, but so would False (he always lies, so he’d say ja even though he really would answer da). If ja means no, they both would still answer ja—in this case, False would answer the embedded question with ja, but saying da to the overall question would be telling the truth, so he says ja. (Random’s answer would be meaningless because we don’t know whether he lies or tells the truth.)

But what if you said, “If I asked you if two plus two equals five, would you answer ja?” If ja means yes, Truth would answer da, as would False; if ja means no, they’d also both answer da. So, you know that if the embedded question is correct, Truth and False always answer with the same word you use; if the embedded question is incorrect, they always answer with the opposite word. You also know they always answer with the same word as each other.

With this reasoning, ask the god in the middle your first question: “If I asked you whether the god on my left is Random, would you answer ja?” If the god answers ja and you’re talking to either Truth or False, following the above logic you know the embedded question is correct, and the god to the left is Random. It’s also possible that you’re speaking to Random; but you know no matter who you’re talking to, the god on the right is not Random. If the answer is da, the opposite is the case, and you know the god on the left isn’t Random. Next, you can ask the god you definitely know isn’t Random a question using the same structure: “If I were to ask you if you are Truth, would you say ja?” If they answer ja, you know you’re talking to Truth; if they answer da you know you’re talking with False. Then once you’ve identified that god as True or False, you can ask the same god a final question to identify Random: “If I asked you if the god in the middle is Random, would you say ja?” By process of elimination, you can then identify the last god.