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This summer I've been slowly unpacking some of my oldest boxes, ones that have gone with me through several moves, and contain stuff from the 90s. Early 90s, in a few cases, as chanaleh has already heard :) Today, inside one of them, I found a small long narrow cardboard box, and inside it, a wooden judge-style gavel. On the decorative metal circling the center of the head is written "In Personal Appreciation of Your Support", followed by an etching of the handwritten signature of Newt Gingrich.

What is this doing in a box full of stuff that is recognizably mine?

P.S. Also in this box: Finnish currency. Which means I packed it no earlier than 2002. Probably when I moved from Somerville to the Hawkes' house in 2003.

Earlier this week I heard a report on NPR about a new round of general strikes and protests planned in Greece. Two groups that had participated in previous strikes had decided not to participate this time, said the reporter. One of those groups: Journalists. According to the report, the Greek journalists decided that even though striking "showed brotherly solidarity", it might be counterproductive because they recognized that one of the most important things about a protest is publicity.

Ummm... I'm glad they figured that out.

Over on aroraborealis's annual anonymous crush/confession post, this comment...


... got this response (among many others):


There were several responses, some snarky, some reasonably attempting to make a point, none of which seemed to get through to that commenter. I tried to think about what this commenter's actual question, hidden under the aggression, was. When I thought I saw the question, to which I had an answer, I noticed that the answer I had in mind had not been given in any other comment. So I wondered, what if I ignored the snappishness and aggression in that comment, and just tried to answer the question, on the assumption that it was a real question and I had a real answer and it was perfectly understandable that this person had not yet thought of or come across this answer, and that didn't make them stupid.

( So I wrote this response... )

The eighteenth century, if it is to have a coherent character, must be allowed to divest itself of strict chronological limits and wriggle itself into the period from 1660 to somewhere in the 1780s; that is, from the Restoration to the decade when the American Revolution triumphed, the French Revolution began, and the Industrial Revolution got underway with Cartwright's power loom and Watt's steam engine.
[...]
The term "nineteenth century" is another verbal convenience of some elasticity. If you want it to mean a century, you use it to cover the period 1815-1914. The quarter-century from Bastille to Waterloo, 1789-1815, is then fitted in as a sort of entr'acte between eighteenth and nineteenth, featuring a special performance by the French Revolution and Napoleon.
-- Barbara Tuchman, Bible and Sword

lilairen's rant reminded me to post one of mine from about ten years ago that's come up again recently: What's with people pedantically claiming that this New Years wasn't the end of the decade, because technically decades start with years ending in 1?

Technically, any ten year period is a "decade". 1988 through 1997 was a decade. 1999 through 2008 was a decade. It actually doesn't need to even be a group of whole numbered years - decades start, and end, every day. The question isn't whether it was the end of a decade, because it obviously was; the question is which decade are we talking about when we say "the decade."

When it comes to centuries, the pedants have a point, because the way we name our centuries implies that we're counting them one by one from the beginning. While the years 1900 through 1999 were most certainly a century, "the twentieth century" is not quite the most accurate name for that exact set of years.

But decades? We don't see people calling them names like "the two hundred and first decade". You'd have to be daft to claim that the decades we referred to as "the twenties" or "the 1980s" must necessarily have begun in 1921 and 1981 rather than 1920 and 1980. Not only is it obvious what decade people mean when they say this December 31st was the end of "the decade", but the way we name decades is just as clear.

So, just to be clear:
- The 20th Century AD: 1901 - 2000 (which is a century)
- The 1900s: 1900 - 1999 (which is also a century)
- The 202nd Decade AD: 2011 - 2020 (which is a decade)
- The 2010s: 2010 - 2019 (which is also a decade)

- Any roughly 100-year period you name and describe in context: also a century.
- Any roughly 10-year period you name and describe in context: also a decade.

Next time someone says "the decade" didn't just end, ask them how often they've heard anyone talking about "the two hundred and first decade".

Yesterday, my housemate asked if Thanksgiving is a holiday all over the world, or mainly just here? We all knew that Canada has a Thanksgiving in October, but she had no idea if it's widespread in the rest of the world. I thought it was probably just here, and couldn't think of any other country that has it, but didn't know whether maybe a few others might... so I went searching the net.

Apparently, one other country in the world has a national Thanksgiving holiday. It's on October 25th, in between the Canadian (2nd Monday of October) and American (4th Thursday of November). Do you know which country, and what the holiday is commemorating?

Think of your answer. Then click here to check. Then come back and vote in my poll, and also leave a comment with your initial reaction once you found out (preferably before reading anyone else's comments).

[Poll #1490935]

I have the first floor of a 3-family in Central Square, Cambridge, a couple of blocks from the red line. It's the place mzrowan used to own before me. The owners of the third floor recently emailed me to say they want to sell this summer, and may put out a listing soon. Anyone I know want to live here?

At Solarfest a couple of years ago, I attended a home energy efficiency workshop. One of the questions from the audience was about saving energy by not opening the refrigerator frequently, and his answer was: it doesn't really matter. I was just reminded of this when my housemate mentioned feeling bad about not planning ahead when she's cooking, so she opens and closes the fridge repeatedly. A lot of people think this wastes a lot of energy, and it actually doesn't.

The guy who spoke at Solarfest told us about some actual research that had been done: Same-model refrigerators were loaded with the same amount of food. A "control" fridge was left closed for several days, while the "experimental" fridge had its door opened far more frequently than even the most scatterbrained person would do in normal life, and held open for longer than people usually hold the door open. At the end, with the refrigerators cooled down to their set temperature, they compared the amount of electricity used by both (they'd had meters attached), and found the difference to be insignificant.

It makes sense if you think about it. Refrigerators cool the air inside, but cooling air isn't the point; the point is to transfer some heat out of the stuff that's in the fridge, and keep excess heat from getting back into the stuff. Keeping air cool is a means to an end.

Air itself has very little heat content, because it's so thin. Most of the heat a fridge is concerned with is in the much denser solid/liquid food. If you put warm food in, some of its heat will transfer into the cooler air, and the fridge will have to continuously cool that air until all of the excess heat has come out of the food, which happens slowly.

When you open the door, all you do is cycle a bit of cool air out, forcing the fridge to re-cool some air, but that takes very little energy. Since heat transfers much more slowly into solids, very little heat gets into your food while you have the door open. After you close the door, the fridge quickly re-cools some air, expending very little energy. There's hardly any extra heat to transfer out of the solid stuff, so that air stays cold. To really "waste" energy, you would need to do more than cycle a bit of air out. You'd need to take the cold stuff out of the fridge, and replace it with warmer stuff. But that's the reason you have a refrigerator in the first place.

If you want use your refrigerator more efficiently, don't worry about how often you open the door. Instead, if you have food items out that you plan to put back into the fridge, and that you don't need to warm up before you use them, put them back into the fridge before they have a chance to sit out for a while and get warm. Stuff matters much more than air.

Edit: Simplified way of thinking about it: What matters is the transfer of heat (not temperature) into the fridge; that's what it uses energy to get rid of. You can't easily move much heat into the fridge with air; you mostly do it with solids and liquids.