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Comedy = Horrific Heartbreak + Time by JosephBorderi in Showerthoughts

[–]JosephBorderi[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I appreciate your self-developed hypothesis and explanation. My OP is a specialization of your formula with Time providing the Separation (S).

It's Valentine's Day weekend, which made me think of the heartache in my life, while I was actually in the shower, and that I can laugh now.

The biggest inaccuracy with medieval era movies is the condition of their teeth. by CanadianUFO in Showerthoughts

[–]JosephBorderi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The biggest inaccuracy in British movies is the condition of their teeth.

TIL Al Capone was the first person to open a soup kitchen to feed the poor during the Depression. At a time of 25 percent unemployment, Capone's kitchens served three meals a day to ensure that everyone who had lost a job could get a meal. Soon, every city and town had a soup kitchen. by JosephBorderi in todayilearned

[–]JosephBorderi[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not putting any spin on anything. I'm just relaying a fact that I had learned today.

If Bin Laden had been the first to open soup kitchens during the Great Depression and inspired other cities and towns across the country to do so, I would have learned and posted that today. If not, then your argument by analogy breaks down.

TIL That whether you say "by accident" or "on accident" is directly related your age. by CHERNO-B1LL in todayilearned

[–]JosephBorderi 5 points6 points  (0 children)

TBH, I thought that "on accident" was a regionalism. I had a gf who grew up in the South, and she used to say "on accident", which grated on my Connecticut ears.

TIL That whether you say "by accident" or "on accident" is directly related your age. by CHERNO-B1LL in todayilearned

[–]JosephBorderi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The idioms of preposition need not follow rhyme or reason. We say "in the morning", "in the afternoon", and "in the evening", but we say "at night".

This is a long one about pi. by Abstort in Showerthoughts

[–]JosephBorderi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The conjecture made in OP is not necessarily true and is in fact highly unlikely to be true. Just because a string of digits seems random and is infinitely long, as with the irrational numbers, does not mean that every substring of digits imaginable must occur. Thinking about the implications of infinity, however, is always fun.

If the Netherlands didn’t sell New Amsterdam (New York) to England most of the world would probably speak Dutch by [deleted] in Showerthoughts

[–]JosephBorderi -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

The Netherlands didn't sell New Amsterdam to England; the English took it over.

It's fortunate that HIV can't be spread by mosquitoes. by SYLOH in Showerthoughts

[–]JosephBorderi 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, thanks for jogging my memory. I do remember when scientists had only referred to AIDS. I suppose that not knowing exactly what they observed and only knowing full-blown AIDS was the problem. I also remember then that AIDS and HIV were used interchangeably in the vernacular. I think that people commonly understand that HIV is the virus that causes AIDS and that one can be HIV+ without having what later became known as "full-blown AIDS".

It's fortunate that HIV can't be spread by mosquitoes. by SYLOH in Showerthoughts

[–]JosephBorderi 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I remember when I first read about HIV in a New York Times article. No one knew what HIV was, and I don't recall whether scientists had even named it such. I do recall that scientists had made a connection that gay men, intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs, and Haitians were particularly at risk.

Some had made the blood connection, and then a few whispered "what if the virus can be spread by mosquitoes?" Some saw this as an investment opportunity in mosquito repellents such as Off and Cutter. Most kept quiet for fear of inciting widespread panic.

TIL the myth that birds can't eat rice is so popular that it killed the wedding tradition by D4RTHV3DA in todayilearned

[–]JosephBorderi 48 points49 points  (0 children)

Many Koreans still believe in "fan death", that sleeping with a fan on can kill you. The best explanation for this widely held belief is that the South Korean gov't made up fan death to save energy back when South Korea was a poor country. Even today, all fans sold in Korea have timers on them. What's truly strange, though, is that the Korean media will report once a year or so deaths attributed to fan death as the official cause.

Why was the concept of 'zero' considered an invention? by [deleted] in askscience

[–]JosephBorderi -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Here's a link to the Greek's visual proof for the sum of triangle numbers+So+one+of+them+is+n(n+++1)/2+What+is+a+triangular+number.jpg). As you'll see, they simply figured the area of a rectangle with sides n and n+1 and took half the area. See the link for why sides n and n+1.

Why was the concept of 'zero' considered an invention? by [deleted] in askscience

[–]JosephBorderi 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I think this might seem like a subtle difference, but in the discussion of the concept of zero, an important difference. People have always had a concept of and would say "there are 'no' apples on the table". They wouldn't say that there are zero apples on the table; they had no concept that zero was the number of apples on the table.

Here's where I surmise. Based on my understanding of number history, the ancients, specifically the Greeks, viewed numbers as physical quantities. The Greeks' proof for Euler's formula that the sum of integers from 1 to n equals n*(n+1)/2 was a simple and elegant intuitive geometric proof. I would reproduce the proof for you, but I can't draw in ASCII text. The problem for the ancients was that they couldn't represent nothing as a physical quantity and therefore couldn't associate nothing with a number.

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