Category: Guidance

Find answers to questions you never knew existed.

They Suddenly Appear

Duncan Leave a comment

Driving can be a dangerous activity, especially for critters who venture onto busy motorways. The evidence is spelled out in lumps of blood and fur on the side of the road – animals should avoid moving vehicles. Unfortunately, animals must often cross these paths at their peril to forage for food or locate a mate. Their demise is one of the many consequences of using automobiles for transportation. But let’s think for a moment, why do birds get hit by cars?

If you’ve ever struck a bird with your car, then you probably felt bad for the poor creature, but kept on driving as you should have. Yes, you are a bad person for killing an innocent and beautiful creature, but we’re not here to dispense judgement, we’re here to find out why a bird, which can fly, was hit by a car, which cannot.

Flight gives birds the ability to travel at nearly any height they choose. If you don’t understand the mechanics of flight, think of it as swimming in the air. Some birds can reach heights of 30,000 feet during migration, but most of them fly below 500 feet over shorter distances. There are two competing theories which attempt to explain why birds choose to fly at vehicle height instead of easily soaring above traffic.

The first possible conclusion is obvious: birds aren’t intelligent enough to know that they shouldn’t fly in front of cars. This explanation is logical and convincing, but not very interesting.

The second conclusion is that the birds that fly in front of cars are actually teenage male birds trying to show off to their friends and potential girlfriends. Why else would they dart out at the last second when they can clearly hear and see a vehicle approaching? Birds, like humans, want to be cool, and sometimes being cool means taking risks. There’s nothing cool about flying safely over a car to the other side of the road.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because all of his friends were watching.

The Good Stone

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Most of us think we are a pretty good person. Although we may not declare the fact with words, our self-righteousness is spoken by our actions. We all do things that we know aren’t right, but we do them anyway because they aren’t really that bad, like spitting our gum on the sidewalk or writing a blog while we’re at work. However, each of us has a list of things we would never do, because those things are really wrong, like stealing a car or cheating on a spouse. This list of inconceivable acts keeps us safely elevated above others, so that we may gaze down with contempt at those who do not hold to our standards.

This system also applies to social laws, ensuring that we don’t fall into that stereotypical group of people we enjoy disliking so much. We may have a nice house, but we don’t waste money like those people. We may not have the best kept yard, but at least we don’t have car parts lying about like them. Even if we were to break one of our rules, we would have a completely logical reason for this exception. All of our deeds are reasonable and fair, neither too hot nor too cold.

Basically, the idea is that, no matter who we are, we can use certain rules and behaviors to distinguish ourselves from others. We create an arbitrarily line in the sand, or a point on a slope, based on what we feel is right and say, “Anything beyond this point is unacceptable.”

As shown above, you rank somewhere slightly above average goodness which those people cannot seem to attain. Wait, why is A Stone on the graph? The reason is that the whole system we have set up to measure our goodness uses only negative indicators. We think we are good because we don’t swear too much, drink too much, drive too fast or watch too much television, but, according to that standard, a rock is superior to us in every facet.

A stone will never hurt, never steal, never lie,

Never will it curse you, or ever leave your side.

But a stone will never love, never smile, never give,

And never will it praise you, for it will never live.

Be better than a stone.

Cut

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Hair is an important part of our identity; our hair makes us feel beautiful, confident and cool. Whether it’s braided, dyed, spiked, straightened, shaved or grown down to the ankles, hair is one of two primary outward social identifiers, the other being clothing. The style with which we wear our hair can surely solicit ridicule from certain groups, or praise from others.

Our locks can also open the door to success. A short, clean haircut says, “I’m ready for a promotion,” while a greasy, unkempt ponytail ensures unemployment. It is said that even the color of our hair can send signals about our lifestyle and character. Blondes, for example, are commonly known to be hyperactive, overbearing and obnoxious, while brunettes are intelligent, professional and socially responsible.

Hair can be sexy, too. A woman with dark, luscious curls flowing down her shoulders may draw many men’s eyes her way. But, for all the power, beauty and strength that our hair can project, it is all destroyed once detached from our scalp.

When two lovers share an intimate moment, they may gently caress each other’s hair, but only a disturbed individual would caress that hair once it is removed from the head. Likewise, many of us try to infuse our hair with an exotic aroma to attract the opposite sex, but smelling some hair that isn’t attached to a person is not acceptable. Once our the crop of our crown is cut it transforms into trash, filthy as any other unwanted body matter. This phenomenon also occurs with finger and toenails, but they are less often admired or caressed than our hair.

The only way that cut hair may be restored is by making a wig, but wigs made from other people’s hair are still kinda gross.

Hyacinth

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A water hyacinth is an aquatic plant which floats on the surface of a lake or pond, much like a water lily. Unlike water lilies, however, the hyacinth is not rooted in the soil; it floats freely with its roots hanging several inches below the surface. The soil-less nature of the water hyacinth may seem unremarkable, but only until we explore the implications of such a trait.

Because a water hyacinth’s roots are not in the soil, the plant must receive all of its nourishment from the water in which it floats. This means that every element and nutrient required to make a reproducing, photosynthesizing plant is present in that water. In essence, a water hyacinth is made out of water.

Now let’s go over what we’ve learned about water hyacinths and the origin of babies to decipher what this implies about the genesis of humans.

  1. Babies are made out of food.
  2. Water hyacinths are made from water.
  3. Plants are made out of dirt.
  4. Animals are made out of plants, which are dirt.
  5. Humans are made from animals and plants, which are made out of dirt.
  6. Humans are made from dirt.
  7. God rested.

Snowflakes

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No two objects are the same. Even a dime, one of billions produced since the Coinage Act of 1792, is not completely identical to any other dime. Of course, comparing one dime to another with our eyes may yield apparent inconsistencies, but we are not just comparing their general shape and composition, we are comparing them down to the atom, quark and string.

The reason why we will be examining dimes, rather than the more traditional snowflake, is because coins are produced under highly controlled conditions and are intended to be identical. Of course, this is true of all coins, but dimes are particularly shiny and cute. Modern American dimes are 91.67% copper and 8.33% nickel, so at least we know that their composition is always consistent, or do we? They may all be 91.67% copper, but what about the decimal place after the 7, or the one after that? We could go on and on until we reach the final decimal place which measures only a single atom of copper. Let’s begin.

We’ll start by calculating how many grams of copper are in a dime.

2.268 * 0.9186 = 2.079 g Cu

Now we divide our copper content by one mole.

2.079 / 63.546 = 0.03272 mol Cu

Then multiply the result by Avogadro’s number.

0.03272 * 6.02 ^ 23 = 27,895,400,042,860,190 atoms of copper in each dime.

Since the U.S. Mint began production, there have been 86,426,821,377 dimes pressed, which is nothing in comparison to the copper atom count in every dime. Given these numbers, it seems unlikely that two of these coins have identical composition, especially since we are ignoring the fluctuation in both the copper to nickel ratio and total number of atoms in the dime.

Every object also experiences different events and conditions from the moment of its creation. Everything is subjected to varying degrees of light, heat and pressure, which makes it more unique. As soon as you touch something you deposit oil, bacteria and flakes of skin onto it, leaving a part of yourself behind.

If we take into account the shape of the coin there is even more room for dissimilarity. Unlike mass, location has no smallest unit of measure because we live in an analogue world. When we measure properties such as length or location, we are using numbers, which are digital, to describe something that cannot be perfectly measured. An atom can be one yoctometer further along on an axis than another atom, or less, because location is not limited by being comprised of physical units. But what if we compare something more basic, like an atom, instead of a dime? At least we can say that each atom of copper in a dime must be the same as the others, can’t we?

For simplicity’s sake, let’s ignore the fact that there’s 29 different copper isotopes and pretend there’s only one type of copper. We have to look at what an atom is made from, then measure those units’ exact count and location. Scientists now say that beyond the quark and gluon, there are strings which are the ultimate building block of matter. The theory is that the frequency with which they vibrate determines all physical properties in our universe. Of course, once we start examining the exact frequency of the vibration, we encounter another analogue property and arrive right back at square one.

It seems unbelievable that of the trillions and quadrillions of physical objects on our planet, no two are equivalent, but, as we learned before, even events that have a statistical possibility may be impossible.

There is always another decimal place.

Kilometerage

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The traditional way in which we have measured fuel consumption for automobiles in America has been in miles per gallon (mpg). Since many countries are use the metric system, there has been a shift away from using mpg. Now this sounds like a great move, since the metric system is far superior to its imperial counterpart, but instead of simply converting miles to kilometers and gallons to liters, giving us kilometers per liter (km/l), we are now stuck with liters per hundred kilometers (l/100 km). It may seem like an insignificant difference, but there is a movement aimed at extinguishing mpg from the face of the Earth and replacing it with l/100 km. So if there’s people out there making websites and handing out pamphlets, there must be an obvious advantage to using the l/100 km system, right?

Proponents of the l/100 km system, or 100kers, try to confuse you by asking questions like, “Which saves more gasoline, going from 10 to 20 mpg, or going from 33 to 50 mpg?” Then they tell you that the answer is that the first option saves five times as much gas as the second. Upon hearing the correct answer, you are then shocked and upset, confused by why a 10 mpg change is much greater than a 17 mpg change. Instead of questioning why math is so dumb, let’s answer a better question: what is a consumption per unit system actually measuring?

Let’s face it, most people don’t know their mpg, let alone their km/l or l/100 km. When you ask someone what kind of mileage their car gets, the answer is something like, “I put $40 in there every two weeks,” or, “I can go three weeks before I have to fill up.” These answers are worse than useless, as we are not told the value of any variables in the equation.

Before we continue, let’s get a handle on what we’re measuring by calculating the mpg for an average car at the pump. Imagine that, after starting with a full tank of gas, you drove your Chevrolet Cavalier 300 miles, then decided it was time for a refill. After topping up, the display shows 10 gallons pumped. To find out how many mpg your car gets, you simply divide miles driven by gallons pumped (300m/10g) which gives us 30 mpg. What this number means is that for every gallon of gas you pump into your car you can drive 30 miles. Confused? No.

Similar to the previous example, let’s pretend that you drove your Cavalier 450 kilometers and then pumped 30 liters of gas to fill it up. Now to get your km/l you preform the same calculation as you would to get mpg, except you are dividing kilometers driven by liters pumped, which results in 15 km/l. However, if you’re a 100ker, you will divide liters pumped by kilometers driven, then multiply the answer by 100, resulting in 6.67 l/100 km. The meaning of this number is less obvious to the average driver, unless you are only driving in 100 kilometer increments.

So since we now have a grasp on how to calculate each of these measurements of mileage, let’s see if they are really that different. mpg measures miles driven per gallons used. km/l measures kilometers driven per liters used. l/100 km measures liters used per 100 kilometers driven. The third option is slightly different than first two because it is actually just the reciprocal of the second option multiplied by 100. The reason they use 100 kilometers is that dividing liters used by kilometers driven gives you a very small number between 0 and 1, as all modern consumer vehicles drive more than one kilometer for every liter of fuel they use. So if the third option is just the second one flipped upside-down, why all the debate? Let’s do some graphing. For the sake of comparison we are going to leave out mpg and use only kilometers and liters.

The graph above shows the mileage, or, more accurately, the kilometage of two vehicles. All vehicles plotted on this graph will show a straight line, unless they have inconsistent fuel consumption, which they don’t. The first line shows a vehicle which gets 4.5 km/l, likely a sport utility vehicle or large truck, while the second line represents a small sedan, showing an impressive 15 km/l. We can see that after driving 100 kilometers, the first vehicle consumes around 22.2 liters of fuel, while the second consumed only 6.67.

The confusion begins when 100kers compare the two lines on the graph and wonder why the difference in (km/l) is not the same as the difference in liters used. Basically, the amount of fuel used should not vary as you move along the graph. What they want is a graph which compares km/l  to liters used, but you can’t make that graph because there’s no way to know how many liters you are using unless you define how many kilometers you are driving. So we will plug in 100 km and graph how many liters are used every 100 kilometers as the km/l changes.

Now we have a nice graph which we can use to see how many liters we are saving as we adjust the km/l, just what the 100kers want. But why should everyone in the world use a system that is more difficult to calculate and less obvious in terms of daily use? At its core, the issue is that these people think fuel economy should always be used to determine how much fuel you can save when driving a set distance. What if you wanted to know how many kilometers you could drive with a set amount of fuel, or how many liters you will burn when driving any distance other than 100 kilometers? Apparently these questions aren’t worth asking.

The l/100 km method is also inconsistent with our fuel consumption language, since as fuel economy increases, l/100 km decreases. A vehicle that gets 2 l/100 km is twice as fuel efficient as one which gets 4 l/100 km. In addition, as fuel economy improves in the future, the number may drop below 1, which means that we could see hybrid sedans advertised with a fuel consumption of 0.33 l/100 km. Eventually we will switch to l/1000 km, all because of those selfish short-sighted 100kers.

So if you think that every motorist should do more calculations and use an ambiguous fuel consumption system which approaches zero as fuel economy increases, just so those who analyze fuel economy don’t have to do extra math, then go on, go the wrong way. We never wanted you with us anyway.

Beyond Boredom

Duncan 2 Comments

There is no excuse for being bored. At every turn we are assaulted with an onslaught of optical and audible amusements. Video games, television, music and movies can easily keep boredom at bay, but at what price? Entertainment often pacifies our mind and neutralizes our imagination. As we all know, the deepest discussions arise during long drives and the most insightful thoughts flow forth from sleepless nights. Silence is a friend to the thoughtful, an essential ingredient in meditation.

There are certain circumstances in which the mind is permitted to wander, but they only come to pass once one has crossed the threshold of boredom. Sleepovers are a great example of this. As children, we all knew the adventure of spending a night at a friend’s house. For some reason, our friends’ toys always seemed more interesting than our own, so much of the day was spent enjoying the things that our friends found tiresome. But once the Sun had descended and the house was still, it was time for the real magic.

After making camp in the living room and watching an R-rated movie, the television was turned off and, after a few moments of silence, the conversation would begin. Conversation like this can only happen once all avenues of entertainment are exhausted, once boredom is no longer an option. Dreams, fears, love and weakness are exposed as we confess our deepest longings to each other.

Another situation that allows for the transition beyond boredom occurs when children are dragged off on a family camping trip or brought to their grandparents’ house for a holiday dinner. Entertainment is scarce, forcing children to use their imagination and environment to find excitement. Basements become dungeons, sticks turn into swords, dolls transform into audiences and younger brothers become slaves. When children don’t have toys, they make toys. This behavior is another example of restriction fathering invention.

In many ways our minds function as distinct bodies with muscles and a digestive tract. Our minds need input (food) which can be anything from rock concerts to romance novels, or even blogs. Obviously, some of this brain food is nutritious and will promote a healthy, robust mind. Video games would rank as something like mental McDonald’s – it will keep us alive, but just barely. If we were to exclusively consume lower forms of input, our minds would decay into lethargic dependence, only craving the next dose.

Our minds also require output (exercise) such as composing music, painting a picture or writing an exam. These mental workouts can vary in length and intensity, with some offering more benefits than others. The more intense exercises, such as writing an essay or organizing an event, would be the metal equivalent to weightlifting or long-distance running, while activities such as writing e-mails or having a casual conversation, would be akin to a mild walk or chair aerobics session.

Too often our brains are oversaturated with low quality input and never stretched by high intensity output. Most of us don’t even know what it’s like to be bored – to have a hungry mind. This is why boredom should be embraced, not avoided. Boredom forces us to exercise our minds, to stop cramming it full of nutrient-stripped waste and be creative.

Put your brain on a diet. Get bored.

Engine House

Duncan 1 Comment

Despite the vast entertainment and luxury that can be found in urban environments, many of us long to escape, to get away, to a more peaceful and natural setting. There is something in us that can be satisfied only by a raw experience with the strength and tranquility of nature. Exploration and adventure are inescapable aspects of human imagination. Indeed, we long to travel the world, see new sights and overcome challenges, but we are restricted by our affection for comfort. This is why camping exists.

Camping is a diluted simulation of primal existence. Depending on the age and taste of the participants, the comfort level of a camping experience can range greatly.

To some, camping is a way to escape the grasp of technology and tedium. Hoping to renew their spirit, these hardy folk tend to employ tents and sleeping bags rather than more inviting facilities. The grass is their floor, the trees are their walls and a nearby bush is their lavatory. A flint-lit flame guides them by night, enchanting and entrancing with gaze lost deep in the flicker.

For young people, camping is as much an escape from society as it is from sobriety. Often unable to recall the origin of various bruises and swellings, the young camper is usually too intoxicated to be concerned with sleeping arrangements or niceties.

After years of hard work and stress, camping can be an attractive lifestyle choice for the aged. They are often observed piloting enormous bus-like vessels, known as recreational vehicles, down the highway. RVs vary in size and complexity; they can be as large as a log cabin and are extravagantly furnished. Satellite television and leather upholstery ensure that these campers must never endure a moment of silence or discomfort. An RV attempts to combine the transportation capabilities of an automobile with the habitability of a house. Unfortunately, when combining these two, the RV’s inventors decided that the exterior must be painted with a design that does not resemble an automobile or a house. It usually has strange arcs and waves splashed across a beige background. Whatever your opinion of this design, if somebody asked you to paint their house or their car, you wouldn’t choose something like this:

Now it’s obvious that sleeping in a king size bed while watching television could hardly be considered camping. At some point camping loses its essence, ceases to be camping and becomes something else. Thick-skinned pioneers may say that it ends when you bring shelter or matches, some say electricity or plumbing ruins all of the fun, while others contend that sleeping in anything bigger than a tent is the stake in the ground. Whatever the case, it’s clear that there is a camping chasm between survivalists and seniors.

By now you’re probably thinking that there should be a word to describe this comfort-coated camping, and you’re right.

Miles Prower

Duncan 1 Comment

Cats do not consciously control their tails. To observe this, simply do the following:

  1. Find cat.
  2. Subdue cat.
  3. Hold tail of cat firmly in hand.
  4. Observe movement of tail in relation to cat.

As you will see, the motion of the tail often does not coincide with the cat’s disposition. Usually the tail swings and swirls in random directions while the cat itself lies motionless. It’s hard to imagine a use for this strange attribute, but then again, it’s also hard to imagine a use for a cat.