notes from past week

[eub]

In the Arboretum we noticed lots of these things on posts, upright black cylinder with four perhaps-nozzles, or sensors, or cameras. On posts of varying height, some a good twelve feet tall and sturdy six-inch wood, others just on a pipe out of the ground, some right at ground level. What are they?

"Chassis" is cognate with "capsicum".

Urinal usage quiz.

Winter-squash latkes work well.

My Cheese of Many Colors, even after cutting all the *visible* infestation off, was also of many tastes -- some parts sharp Cheddar, some parts nutty, some buttery.

Chickadees can get through the squirrel barrier to the feeder. They have an easier time getting out than in: going out they hop from the feed and land sitting half-through a hole, with their center of mass over a wire; then they fall forwards and fly from there. Going in they land on the outside of the cage, dangling from a wire, and then the difficult step is kipping themselves up over their feet, from which point they can hop onto the feeder. Why don't they land on the outside body-over-feet? They can do it from flight onto a twig. Well, here they have to get their head and forebody through the hole, which is a very tight target to hit (a couple of mm radius, given that when they try to fit through a slightly-squashed hole they barely do), and maybe they can't hit that at speed, or flinch from the onrushing cage.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Animules with their eyes on the sides of their heads (mostly prey) have a hard time with the kind of 3-d vision we (eyes in the front) take for granted. They can see a whole lot behind them that we have to figure out in other ways though. It's possible that they can't really grasp what's happening fast enough to do it from flight, wheras popping OUT is from a seated position.

I don't know what's going on in the Arboretum.

I want some latkes now.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

And thank you for the urinal usage quiz.

I think perhaps I have been warped by living with mostly women and/or extremely modest men my whole life, and have a urinal/dealing-with-men's-bathrooms boundary that would seem unusual given many of my other stances.

[eub.livejournal.com]

I don't actually see most of these subtleties in action. This is maybe the urinal etiquette of the court of Louis XIV. The buffer zone of one urinal, yes, and some one-step lookahead to optimize for that.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

Do you suppose the thingumbs at the Arboretum are a watering system, with misters?

My ex-gf had a finch that *enjoyed* doing a Millenium Falcon impression: diving towards a closing door and going through sideways just as the door closed. It would wait for that moment. It got old and slow and died that way, but in the meantime it was spectacularly good at hitting a moving, closing, very narrow target at full flight speed. Its reflexes were markedly faster than a human's. It would fly up, when I was sitting there reading a book, land on my cheekbone, peck me in the eyeball to get a little bit of water from the corner of my eye where tears build up, and fly off again, all before I could even blink reflexively.

[eub.livejournal.com]

land on my cheekbone, peck me in the eyeball to get a little bit of water from the corner of my eye where tears build up, and fly off again, all before I could even blink reflexively.

That's, uh, very impressive if perhaps annoying to the water-source.

Konrad Lorenz had a magpie(?) who was similarly quick, would sit on his shoulder I think, and if he opened his mouth for an instant it would succeed in feeding him a worm. (If he was careful not to open his mouth, it would decide his earhole would do as well.)

[eub.livejournal.com]

Could be watering -- there were pipes in the system. It just didn't look quite like a watering system designed to criteria I'm familiar with.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

Another urinal question:

There are three urinals, all currently unoccupied, two "tall" and one "short" one at the end.

 1   2   3
|-| |-|
\_/ \_/ |-|
        \_/

Assume that most people using this bathroom are adults, and intrinsically prefer to use a tall urinal. Which one do you use?

Answer: (highlight to make visible) Paradoxically, the less-preferred urinal 3 is the correct choice. Taking the middle urinal 2 is unthinkable since it guarantees future adjacency in the event of a mid-session arrival, and 1 is risky because someone with more tall-urinal-preference than good sense might arrive and take 2.

Thus, the delicate balance between self-interest and altruism can be seen to be fundamental to all important aspects of human civilization.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

A more advanced question, one whose answer I am unsure of myself, is what to do in the followin superficially similar situation:

 1   2   3   4   5
 o
|#| |-| |-| |-|
\#/ \_/ \_/ \_/ |-|
 H              \_/

That is, five urinals, #1 currently occupied, #5 short. I think good cases can be made for #3, #4, and #5.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

3, as above: you want to leave a space for the next guy even if that means he has to use the short one.

[shandrew.livejournal.com]

My time at DFW yesterday reminded me of this post.

I entered the lavatory, and all but one (center) urinal was occupied. Each was separated by a modesty panel. As i entered the urinal and unzipped, the occupant to the right of me shifted his left foot away from me, and in complete synchronicity, the occupant to the left of me retracted his right foot. There was a strong rhythm to the urinals that day; the ticking clock of the pattering feet celebrated the holidays gloriously.

[jcreed.livejournal.com]

Lovely!

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

You always use #1 because if you use #2 anyone who comes in is forced to stand beside you, and you don't want to use #3. The next guy who comes in will use #3 after a short feeling of conflict.