"Kir léger"

En parties égales, ou à peu près ...

• eau cassis
• Cinsault rosé

À servir frais./HGL

PS, si vous avez un meilleur nom pour ceci que "Kir léger" n'hésitez pas de commenter!/HGL

Salade d'un sdf

Les haricots verts, c'est un peu sec, une fois qu'on a égoutté ... huile, beurre fondue, quelque chose serait bienvenu, non?

Les sardines, c'est assez fort en goût ... même avec du pain, c'est juste un peu trop, non?

Ah, mélanger ... les sardines, il y a de l'huile avec. Et les haricots verts, le goût est suffisamment fort pour rivaliser avec les sardines, mais pas du tout âpre (une fois qu'on a de l'huile).

Mais, le problème est, en quoi mélanger?

Bon - j'avais le petit bol en carton que j'avais eu pour un dessert de Hong Kong, à emporter, j'avais lavé les deux bols pour une éventualité comme ça, et il m'en reste un.

Être sans abri ne veut pas dire être sans goût!/HGL

PS - oui, c'était une salade composée très acceptable, sinon je ne serais pas en train de la partager (en recette) ici, non?/HGL

How to Tunnel Through a Mountain with Pre-Modern Equipment

Hannah Fry (a longstanding team member on Numberphile) had a lovely exposé about how the ends of the tunnel meet up:

Tunnelling through a Mountain - Numberphile
23rd Jan. 2022 | Numberphile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwrDX5qkwvA

She left however somewhat vague (though she offered suggestions) how they knew where E and S were, and that the elevations were equal on both sides, here I step in:

1) E, W and S, N:

5:54 Compasses - drawing tool, yes.
Magnetic tool for finding N, S, anything at right angles (E, W) and anything in between, no.

Marco Polo brought these latter ones from China. In his day magnetite was explained as:

• element earth
• under influence of Mars to make it iron
• and then under influence of Venus to make it attract.

Magnets worked even so, and as said, it was in China they were first used for compasses. In early modern times they were equipped with a paper that marked off not just quarters, not just eighth parts (NE, SW etc), not just sixteenths (NNE, ENE etc) but even thirtyseconds (E by N, ENE by N)* ... Belloc wrote an essay about a sailor who went mad as his captain or boatswain was explaining this.

Now - what did Polycrates (po-LEE-kru-TEES) use, as he lived before Marco Polo?

You might use the other type of compass or simply strings and pegs, in drawing straight angles, and that would include straight angles between a shadow marked at sunset and one marked at sunrise. At equinox these would be due W and E of what was throwing the shadow, and either way they would make a line due W-E, so that a straight angle would mark the exact time when the sun was in zenit, the shadow straight N.

Ensuing exchange:

Mark Tillotson

But the magnetic properties of iron were known the Greeks, its not a big stretch for them to have the compass - after all we get the word magnet from the greek region of Magnesia, so they had magnetic rocks and iron. Thales of Miletus described magnetic phenomenon (we only have second hand accounts of this apparently) - a lot of knowledge may have been lost to the ravages of time.

Hans-Georg Lundahl

@Mark Tillotson We have no direct reason to believe Greeks used magnets for compasses.

We have no reason to believe seafarers would have lost such knowledge if they had had it.

We have every reason to believe that Marco Polo got the magnetic compass from China. And that prior to him, it was unknown in the Mediterranean.

Greeks were not all that famous for practicality in using scientific discoveries. Nero used a lens as a magnifying glass, but corrective eye-glasses only came with the Middle Ages. Archimedes used a screw for elevating water slowly - around 1400, Europe had a practical push and lift pump and was attaching objects to each other with screws turned by screwdrivers. While screws for oil presses / wine presses already existed in antiquity, Europe added screws for woodcut pressing and printing with moveable types in the Middle Ages.

2) Elevation:

6:57 Build a momentary dam around the whole mountain or at least on one side the entrances need to have contiguity around the mountain.

Then fill that dam with water. Tada, entrance levels are equally high!

* Correction on these

"(in first quadrant) north by east (NbE), northeast by north (NEbN), northeast by east (NEbE), and east by north (EbN)"

Thank you, wiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Points_of_the_compass

Washing in Laundries? A Tip ...

Put a tennis ball or two into the machine.

If you wash without machines, you push the dirty clothes around with your hands, or if the water is too hot, with a wooden spoon. In a machine, you cannot get either hands or spoon into it, but a tennis ball will do the same work.

I got this tip from a man in the lavomatic who had it from his grandmother.

Best wishes with your washing!/HGL

Farce de fricassé

C'est une "salade de patates" on vient de me dire ce matin, de:

• patates
• (huile d'olive?)
• harissa
• thon

Et après on ajoute:

• œufs
• olives dénoyautés
• tomate

Pour le pain ou beignet, faudra attendre la recette.

Mon interlocuteur venait de la Tunisie./HGL

PS, paraît que certains au moins ajoutent salade méchouia aussi./HGL

PPS, je crois que l'instruction d'Inés pourrait être un peu plus instructive que ma conversation de ce matin:

❤recette fricassés tunisiens❤
Les delices d'ines | Ajoutée le 28 déc. 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyBcGaPk_K0

Getting a logo or URL for a poster the right distance of letters.

Imagine you were writing the German word PFEFFERMINZ. On a cardboard, with a pen or pencil, by hand.

You start out, at approriate distance P and Z and take an E right between them - but why?

Because the second E in PFEFFERMINZ is right between P and Z (this is also the reason why Eduard Haas III gave PEZ candy its name, as abbreviation of PFEFFERMINTZ).

Shall we check?

P P
F (1)
E (2)
F (3)
F (4)
E E
R (1)
M (2)
I (3)
N (4)
Z Z

Right. Four letters between P and E, four between E and Z.

Next two letters (see you later, PEZ, perhaps), or in this case four letters ... why four, why not two? With an uneven number of intervening letters, it would logically be two, the mid letter between P and E, the mid letter between E and Z. But with an even number of intervening letters, there are two mid letters in each stretch.

P P F (1) E E F F F (1) E E R (1) M (2) I (3) N (4) Z Z

P P F (1) E E F F F (1) E E R (1) M M I I N (1) Z Z

As you can see, some are already next to each other, so, now we have four stretches with one intervening letter each. Once they are all filled in, the word is fully written out:

P P F F E E F F F (1) E E R (1) M M I I N (1) Z Z

P P F F E E F F F F E E R (1) M M I I N (1) Z Z

P P F F E E F F F F E E R R M M I I N (1) Z Z

P P F F E E F F F F E E R R M M I I N N Z Z

Now, PFEFFERMINTZ has exactly 11 letters. This means there is a mid letter and this means the two new stretches of unwritten letters will be four letter spaces long, with two mid letters instead.

Anything in a series of 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 25 (1+4n) will have uneven new stretches too, so you go for two mid letters on of each stretch in the second stage as for the one mid letter in the whole stretch first step. If you think of it, this means, you can also divide words with two thirds letters, if there are stretches (original and perhaps subsequent) that arrive in words with 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22, 25 (1+3n) letters.

ROBBERS has a total of seven (so is HTTP:// btw) ...

R R O (1) B (2) B (3) E (4) R (5) S S		R R O (1) B B B (1) E (2) R (3) S S		R R O (1) B B B (1) E E R (1) S S
R R O O B B B (1) E E R (1) S S		R R O O B B B B E E R (1) S S		R R O O B B B B E E R R S S

I could just as well have gone from two ends to middle B. The main thing is, you start at end points, you continue to mid point or mid points, you go on from there. I am not going to detail each case for you.

Here is an example with more than one line, and I did longest, middle line first:

H

T

T

P

:

/

/

|

(7, + 5 before, + 5 after)

L

-

O

-

A

N

T

I

M

O

D

E

R

N

I

S

M

|

(17)

.

B

L

O

G

S

P

O

T

.

C

O

M

|

(13, + 2 before, + 2 after)

If it looks uneven, it is because I (in ANTIMODERNISM) and M (in COM) are superposed on equal space, and computer printed letters don't quite do that. If you do it by hand, as this is meant for, you can make the I slightly slanted to be a bit broader, the M slightly narrower or the vertical lineup slightly less even, so the horizontal distances get more even. By the way, here is the link to Latest on Antimodernism which is what the URL is URL to. It's a blog where I put widgets with latest five posts on each of the blogs that are featured in widgets on it.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
Conversion of St. Paul
25.I.2019

Updated with bold letters for the ones being added to a layout./HGL

Square Root Extraction

Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere : Sqrts · Recipes from Home and Abroad : Square Root Extraction

Here is a fairly normal procedure:



First group is 2. Nearest lower square is 1 of which the square root is 1. Write 1 in the result.

Write 1 to the left. Then write 1 under it. Multiply and write the result 1 under the 2.

To the left, you add 1 and 1 and get 2. Further right, you take 1 away from 2 and get 1.

Next to that 1, you put down the 8 from above, and then ...



2 in 18 is 9. So, one could write 9 in the result after 1.

However, this will lead to 29 * 9 = 267 sorry, 261 which cannot be deduced from 189 once you put down the 9 beside the 18.

Now, erase the 9 from everywhere, I'll skip trying with 8, and go to trying with next lower, 7.

Write 7 in result, 7 after 2 and 7 under that 7. Now multiply 27 * 7, this should land you with 189, which deducted from 189 leaves nothing, meaning 289 is the exact square of 17.

Is 27 * 7 really 189?



Seems so. So, sqrt(289)=17.

Here I show completed process for sqrt(121) = 11:



First group was 1, nearest lower square is 1 of which the square root is 1. Write 1 in result, 1 under the 1 to the left, multiply to get 1 to deduct from 1, add to get 2 to divide the 02, get 1 as result, put 1 in result, put 1 after the 2, put 1 under this 1, then multiply, 21 * 1 = 21, deduct from 021, leaves nothing.

Enjoy! A word of caution, though. I tried this on 2.00|00|00|00|00|00|00|00|00 ... and at about 8 decimals of the result, I got a value which did not square to 1.9999 ... plus some decimals at the end, but to 2.0000 ... plus some decimals at the end. I don't know why, generally, this should not happen, but I haven't detected my mistake, if such.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Timothy the Deacon
19.XII.2018