|
Eunoia
Use Ctrl+ to enlarge this blog page if you need to.
AI bots are not permitted to scrape this site nor steal content. | ||
|
--> Most recent Blog  Comments Policy DSGVO Impressum Maths trivia Search this site  RSS Feed
Oh, and after the death of his old bulldog, Kosmo, he also has a new bulldog, Clara, since September 2018 :-)
Some of my bikes
My Crypto Pages 
 |
Sunday, September 29, 2024
Unexploded WW2 bomb againBack in April of 2018 I told you about a HUGE Brit WW2 bomb being found in our local city and the steps being taken to defuse it safely. My blog entries thereof were here (preparation) and here (log of defusing day).Now another, smaller, American bomb has been found. It weighs 500 kilos(1000 lbs) and so the evacuation radius is only 500 meters by rule of thumb. This means 535 buildings, 3200 people and their pets have to be evacuated. On saturday 60 supine patients from the Johannesstift hospital (in the zone) were moved to Bruder hospital outside the zone. Sunday morning will see 200 people from the old folks homes being transported to the evacuation sites (two school sports halls) by hundreds of helpers from nine organisations. Other residents must themselves leave the zone by 11am today. If they want, they can stay at the school halls too. Weather should be fine. Defusing should start at noon, if the police confirm there is noone in the danger zone. Main defusers will be Karl-Heinz Clements again and two assistants. When the bomb is defused and loaded onto a lorry and driven away, all-clear is sounded and people may return to their houses. The airspace is a prohibited zone until the all-clear. Police drones and infra-red cameras are used to check that no criminals break into houses that are evacuated. The 25 roads/streets into the zone will be blocked by police from 11 am until the all-clear. This time afaik gas-mains will be shut off too. This is a 6 meter deep american bomb so the old fuses are more dangerously dodgy than the 2018 Brit bomb; let us hope all goes well. Bus lines 5,6 and 12 are being diverted, but volunteers are driving shuttle buses until 10:45 for pedestrians from the zone. This time no trains are affected, the zone being smaller. But the swimming baths are closed, swimmers may use the baths in the neigbouring communities until 19:00 hours. No shooting at the fire-arm clubs allowed after 11 am to avoid any false alarms by the noise of guns etc. I wrote the paragraphs above in advance. If anything goes wrong I will add an update below on sunday evening. Cross your fingers (not you, Karl-Heinz Clements and two assistants, you gonna need yours!). Update 5 pm : There was a 2 hour delay as police had to forcibly remove uncooperative people from the danger zone. But now the bomb has been defused and removed from the site. All clear now; people returning home safely. 
Comments(4) First I saur(geddit?) was the movie favourite, the Velociraptor, found in asia from 73 million years ago, about the size of a large dog, 2 meters long and weighing 15 kilos. It had feathers on the arms
and on a stiff tail. Carnivorous, known to have eaten larger prey such as Proceratops.
Looking up, I saw a small Pterodactyl suspended from the ceiling as if in flight. These date from 150 million years ago and were found in Europe in what is now southern Germany.
This young one one weighed 2 kilos and had a wingspan of 1.5 meters. Hairy thin skin on the throat and wings and adults had a comb on the head. Look mid-wing and you can see how the "hand"
developed one looooooong finger which led the outer wing, and the remnants of 3 fingers mid-wing. Fish diet, it dove to catch them so had no feathers.
Outside at the eastern end of the parking lot was a teenage Iguanodon, dating from 139-112 million years ago and found in what is now asia, europe and north america (continents have moved). Herbiverous.
weighing 4 tons back then and being 9 meters long. Spikes on the thumbs were its only defence.
I did not walk to the western end of the parking lot to see the Styracosaurus, nor did I drive past it.
But I did notice that our airport has now been renamed in honour of my old boss Heinz Nixdorf,
who put on pressure to have it built five decades ago :-)
I also learned there are more dinos scattered about the city. I have to go to the large southern shopping mall at the weekend, so I will take photos of the fibreglass dinos there and show you next week.
The mayor of Munich bangs in the tap into the first beer barrell and shouts O'zapft ist! as soon as the beer flows. He has been doing this for 9 years now, so it only took him 2 blows
of the hammer this year :-) First beers in all tents are very welcome, the beer tents can hold 7000 people each, and there are many of them :-)
Over 20 minutes this year until the first (korean or japanese?) tourist passed out from the strong beer in the 1 liter glasses aka Mass. Next up//down was a 24 year old american girl used to Bud Lite.
Sadly, a Mass of beer costs over 15 Euro this year; I remember when it cost about 6 Marks (=3 Euro) in the early 1970s, nevertheless PROST!
Comments(1) You see, the Mental Arithmetic World Cup was being held not 20 miles north, in HNF (the world's largest computer museum), so I popped along to see the demonstrations of their prowess
by the savants on saturday.
This competition is held every 2 years; the next are the olympics thereof in Dubai. This time there were 34 participants who qualified (not me), 5 of whom were from
Germany, 18 countries were represented. About 150 spectators came to watch, sadly no schoolclasses, but a dozen enthusiastic and quite bright children.
The first demo had the expert call for six-digit numbers from the audience, whereupon he calculated their square roots mentally within seconds rounded correctly to
five decimal places; 100% correct by my calculator.
The second demo was to sum up 10 columns of 10 ten-digit numbers mentally. The columns and the expert's answers are shown in this photo.
Congratulations Aaryan on your new world record (previously held by a Korean girl in 100 seconds). Savants indeed!
Next was an Englishman, a computer-science teacher, who memorised ten random 10-binary-digit numbers in 141 seconds.
Then a Dutchman who had (long) words spoken to him and he told us the number of letters in each word before the next one was said.
I could do that! But maybe not as fast :-( He took 5 mins 19 seconds for 50 long words, only two of which he got wrong (just 1 off).
Next another (Hungarian?) guy asked for many 6 digit numbers and 3 digit numbers, dividing the 6 digits by the 3 digits to 5 places. Only 93% correct though. I could deliver 100% wrong answers much faster ;-)
Finally, flash numbers. Firstly, single digits flashed every 300 milliseconds. Then 2, 3,4, and 5 digits . Finally ten 10 digit numbers added correctly in just 1 ½ minutes.
All in all, an interesting evening, demonstrating what the human brain is capable of doing. Now I'll take a back seat, far behind all these people! On sunday I tried some of their various
problems and found that I am 6.3 to 17.4 times slower, if I can do them at all. Reality slows me down!
Comments(1)
A test alarm is to make cell phones and sirens ring, howl and buzz loudly throughout Germany on the nationwide warning day.
Separate siren signals are emitted for A,B, and C disasters. Fire and flood to be added. Cybersecurity is still ignored.
The warning, announced for around 11 a.m., will be triggered on Thursday (12 September) by the Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance (BBK) in Bonn.
Citizens will then receive a warning message on their cell phones via the Cell Broadcast System. The test alarm will then also be broadcast via radio and television stations
and on city information boards. Anyone who has warning Apps such as Nina or Katwarn installed on their smartphone should also receive a notice of the test warning this way.
Municipalities can also use additional warning devices such as loudspeaker vans and sirens.
The siren register is however still incomplete.
In many places, old sirens have been upgraded or new, modern sirens have been installed in recent years.
Due to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine and the devastating flood in the Ahr Valley in 2021, many responsible people at federal,
state and local levels have become convinced that this warning device should also be available to alert the population in crisis and disaster situations.
However, a nationwide overview of where sirens are available and where there are regional gaps is still missing, as a spokeswoman for the BBK admitted when asked.
"The densification of siren locations is in the hands of the municipalities and is supported by the federal and state governments through funding programs," the Federal Office said.
As the test results come in, I will add to this blog entry. Local data first.
11:00 Siren goes off 1 km away downwind, barely audible. Background noise 29dB (=quiet room), with siren 30dB; 31dB on the front porch. Easily overheard.
New firestation and siren are downwind with the prevailing wind, not upwind like the old one. Was this not taken into account in the planning phase?
This mobile phone too old to support Cell Broadcast, so no warning there either. SWMBO's newer phone was on and got the Cell Broadcast.
No national summary on TV by 16:00 hours.
Comments(1)
Bad Sassendorf-Lohne : About 30 miles WNW of here, Cessna 172 (4-seater) crashed on takeoff departing after a plane-meet.
Two on board, an 89 and an 83 year old. Both dead; plane went up in flames (on extended centreline?).
Police shut the airfield down, so other planes had to stay overnight. Cause unknown. FYI, I am 80 myself with over 5000 hours as pilot-in-command, but no longer instruct.
A C172 is VERY easy to fly, grass runway is plenty long (830 metres) even for aborted takeoff, so I have no suspicions to put forward.
Korbach ; About 25 miles SE. Piper Cub, 2 seater crashed on takeoff. No fire. Both on board injured and hospitalised.
Runway is grass, 600 m long, so should be no problem for a Cub even for an aborted takeoff.
Bamberg(Bavaria) : Cessna crashed on takeoff, hitting the fence and caught fire. Runway is asphalt about 1 km long if I remember correctly,
Cessna should only need about 220 metres. Pilot died in hospital.
Hermutshausen (near Stuttgart) : Ultralight biplane crashed on take-off from 80 feet altitude after scraping a tree. 2 on board (pilot 54 and his son 11), both hospitalised. No fire. No photo.
Uetersen : Ultralight biplane crashed on landing attempt from 60 feet altitude when scraping trees. No injuries. No fire.
Gutersloh : Ultralight biplane hit the trees. No fire. Pilot dead afaik :-(
Did noone check for density altitude? I would have expected less than 0.3 accidents , so what went wrong?
Comments(3) A child of age 1 can recognise around 50 words. The active vocabulary (= words used) is less, the passive vocabulary(= words recognised) is 50.
For comparison, my dog knows about 70 commands. A three year old child is up to 1000 words in its passive vocabulary, active vocabulary is always less than passive.
By age five, already 10,000 words are recognised; these counts are for the American subset of English. I do not have the data for German, but new words can be strung together from existing ones which is why
DanubeSteamshipCompanyCaptain'sWidowPensionFund is a translation of ONE valid German word.
Most adult native speakers know between 20,000 and 35,000 words passively, the rest have to be looked up in a dictionary.
They learn about one new word every day until middle age when vocabulary acquisition slows almost to a stop.
William Shakespeare's works contain about 25,000 to 30,000 unique words, some only occur once and many he made up himself; his audiences
could usually grasp the meaning from the context of their usage. However, only about half of the words he made up are still in use today, the other half has fallen into disuse,
e.g. What tonguepad mouthfriend would depucelate my frigorifick shapesmith? These are all words in Samuel Johnsons dictionary.
Shakespeare wrote 37 plays and 154 works, totalling 884,429 words. Over 7,000 of these words he used only once and he introduced
almost 3,000 new words into English, so his audience had to guess from the context what he meant, as have schoolchildren ever since ;-)
UK lexicographer Susi Dent estimates the average UK English native speaker to have 20,000 words in their active vocabulary and 40,000 in the passive set.
The most used 25 words occur in 33% of written texts; the most used 100 words in 50% of student writing and the most used 1000 words in 89%.
Blogreaders can estimate the size of their passive vocabulary by taking a large dictionary, opening it at random, and counting the number of
definitions they know and multiplying by half the number of pages in the dictionary (half because of counting words on a double page).
Active bloggers similarly can use their blogs to count the number of words in their active vocabulary in their writings.
So my own passive vocabulary is about 58,000 words and actively I write about 31,000+ words. What are yours?
Ed had to look up e.g bemphites, attic, acrophonic, thrice. Cop Car has so far
only had to look up e.g. desmodromic. YMMV. I am not counting my blog entries written in Lallans, Latin, German etc only in UK English.
Then there is the case where words you know are strung together to give a term you may not know e.g. quantum loop gravity. There are also typos. e.g. tern instead of term; oops, my bad.
I think it OK to expand your passive vocabularies via this blog and do not want to dumb it down. After all, you can choose to ignore it if
too highbrow. What are your opinions?
Comments(8)
| |
Blog Dewey Decimal Classification : 153
| Index/Home | Impressum | Sitemap | Search site/www |  |