Why did the apple fall from the tree?
Things at rest tend to stay there, you see
A force drew it that way
(As F=ma)
Apple pushed head; head pushed equally
Event: Publication by Isaac Newton of Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica
Year: 1687
Learn more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophi%C3%A6_Naturalis_Principia_Mathematica
Posted in This Day in History | 
No Comments »
Shakespeare himself proposed the idea that family names really aren’t that important–though the eventual outcome of Romeo and Juliet strongly suggests otherwise– but let’s take a look at a few anyway.
Theoman quickly recognized D as Tanaka, a name meaning “middle of the rice field.” It is common, yes, but not the most common; Tanaka ranks 4th.
Famous person named Tanaka: Tiger Tanaka, James Bond’s ally in You Only Live Twice
A Fan promptly rattled off a list of his favorite Japanese companies and ball-bumbling, light-hitting infielders. Most of them are, in fact, actual family names (Nintendo is not), and one of them even appears on this list, though not in the order he identified it: B is Suzuki, which means “bell tree.” It is the second most common family name in Japan.
Famous person named Suzuki: Ichiro Suzuki, who is so famous he doesn’t even need a family name (also: Kissy Suzuki, one of the only Bond girls to die a natural death, also from You Only Live Twice)
Shirley went to opposite ends of the spectrum, looking for both a hero and a villain, but neither actually ended up being on the list. The second character in A is indeed daunting, but you’d better get used to writing it, because it’s part of the most common family name in Japan: Sato. The characters literally mean something like “helper wisteria,” though the second character could refer to the Fujiwara, an extremely prominent political family in Japan’s classical period.
Famous person named Sato: Gordon Hisashi Sato, the cell biologist who discovered that polypeptide factors required for the culture of mammalian cells outside the body are also important regulators of differentiated cell functions and of utility in culture of new types of cells for use in research and biotechnology, whatever the heck that means.
And now for the rest. I know A Fan, at least, will be kicking himself for not trying this, but the names ended up being ordered in sequence: A, Sato, is the most common; B, Suzuki, is second; C, Takahashi, is third. Takahashi means “high bridge.”
Famous person named Takahashi: Takahashi Rumiko, the wealthiest manga artist in Japan and creator of Ranma 1/2 and InuYasha, among others
Last (out of the top five, at least) is E, Watanabe, which means something like “border crossing.”
Famous person named Watanabe: Ken Watanabe, star of Letters from Iwo Jima and featured in The Last Samurai, Batman Begins, and Inception
No one won this time, so this week I thought I would give you something a little bit more fun to do. Rather than simply guessing words, you will be making words. In honor of the holiday, try your hand at creating a word for “fireworks.” Feel free to use any of the following kanji (or, if you are so inclined, any others you might know):
meaning “sky”
also meaning “sky,” but often with a somewhat more grandiose significance; “the heavens”
meaning “explosion”
meaning “fire”
meaning “thunder”
meaning “to roar; to resound”
meaning “flower”
meaning “bright”
meaning “festival”
meaning “to soar”
Points will be awarded for creativity, explanations, and, I suppose, accuracy. I won’t tell you how many characters are in the “correct” answer, but I will say that compounds of 2 or 4 characters are much more common than those of other amounts.
Finally, as a bonus, pick out the red, white, and blue from this lineup of colors:
Posted in Know Your Picture Characters | 4 Comments »
Day 233:
A lot of the world’s more fantastic coincidences end up being blamed on the common alarm clock. You know the story: if the alarm hadn’t failed to go off, then Person X would not have been at Location Y at precisely the right time to meet Person Z or experience Event, uh, Omega. The idea is that the balance of our lives is so delicate that even the most minor rescheduling can have drastic consequences. People like to think of their lives in this way, because otherwise they would have to stop wasting time daydreaming and get some actual work done.
One particular alarm clock, however, despised this view. It had, on several occasions (often after consuming one or two beers), argued that it was a double standard. How could it be fair to place all the blame on the clock? “It takes two to tell time!” it would yell, the tipsy alliteration driving its friends to cautiously back away from the conversation. “One to display, and one to read!” Yes, the clock is at fault, but the human bears some of the responsibility as well, for accepting what the clock says without question. How can timepieces be held to standards of perfection greater than those of their makers? The idea is ludicrous. And laughable. And . . . hey, where’d everybody go?
After growing tired of trying to express his point with words (and of always having to take a cab home alone at the end of the party), the alarm clock decided to try a demonstration. It would go off not one minute early, not ten minutes early, but several hours early. The world would still be dark. No other humans would be awake. If the human realized the error and went back to bed, then it would definitively prove the Dual Burden of Temporal Responsibility Theory. And if he didn’t, well, then he was just a hopeless idiot.
The other explanation as to why the alarm clock went off at 3:44 AM on that Friday morning is that Peter Hamlin—who happened to own this particular clock—simply screwed up when he set it the night before. As a matter of fact, that makes a lot more sense. That first explanation was downright silly, don’t you think?
Then again, you have to wonder: why would he be resetting the alarm at all for a morning that, at least up until the previous night, was not supposed to be significantly different from any other?
What Peter’s clock failed to realize is that humans thrive on routine. Sure, there are a few eccentrics who live life without a schedule, but there are also clocks without numbers. You know, those analog ones that only have hands, where you just have to guess what time it is? It takes all kinds to make a world.
Anyway, the point is that regularity defines most people’s lives, and any irregularities can upset them with ease. Humans are given cues and respond as they have been trained to. Show a Days of Our Lives actor the teleprompter from Star Trek and he’ll read it, no matter how inappropriate the lines may be (actually, the effect may be an improvement). Alarms are just another cue: they go off, we complain, we get up. That’s the way it goes. We are Pavlov’s dogs, except we never got a treat in the first place; we’re simply salivating for work. Pavlov’s dogs got a sweet gig.
A scholar of logic, like the alarm clock, might reason that a person woken earlier than necessary would simply go back to sleep. Anyone familiar with the human condition would not be at all surprised to learn that as soon as the alarm rang Peter bolted into the shower, or that thirteen-and-a-half minutes later he was sitting at the table with a spoonful of cereal in his hand, looking out the window and thinking, “What the hell?”
Sadly, not all cues have a programmed response.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »