Monthly Archive: March 2019

Every year two things conspire to make March a less-than-ideal month.  The first is the weather and the second is daylight savings time.  To explain why these two things make March so miserable let me begin by saying that, in this particular case, change is bad, really bad.

To start, the weather doesn’t just change it changes over and over and over again.  A single transition, either abrupt or gradual would be a fine recipe for Mother Nature to get my vote of support.  Hot or cold, rainy or dry, windy or calm, as long as she makes up her mind and sticks with it, I’m onboard.  But during the month of March, Mother Nature seems to mimic the worst moments of that vacillating prince of Denmark, by name Hamlet.  To be or not to be cold that is the question.  Perhaps today the wind shall blow fiercely followed by rain for a day, heat for the next, and then resampling of winter followed by a dash of autumn.  If only she would pick a theme and go with it all would be well.

But even in her most capricious moods where she dithers between this and that I might be able to cope.  But then rides into town another change, this one of our own making: the transition from standard to daylight savings time.  Savings for whom I would like to know?  Surely not for me and my health.  Exactly why we engage in this biannual torture to ourselves is beyond me.  I don’t believe it either saves daylight or money or even marriages.  I am willing to bet that far more decisions are made in March to get divorces simply by virtue that people are cranky due to the ‘spring ahead’ we must all endure.

Simply said, this March was not a high point for the Blog Wyrm staff.  Nonetheless, we shouldered on and did our duty.  And speaking of duty, now onto the posts.

Each year the promise of virtual reality seems even further than the year before.  Tales of old, when the VR concept was new, envisioned a shiny future where men and women routinely lose themselves in a virtual world far more appealing than the real one.  So far that future has never came to pass and, increasingly, it looks like it never will.  But so what?  As this month’s Aristotle To Digital argues, mixed and augmented reality make better use of the technology than a fully immersive VR environment ever could.

Once the quintessential sport of the United States, Major League Baseball has been relegated to the second tier in the last thirty years.  Given that pitcher and catchers are already hard at work and that opening day is just around the corner, Common Cents examines some of the economic reasons behind how America’s past time aged past its prime and looks at some of the steps being pursued to try to re-capture it glory days.

Fluid mechanics is a notoriously difficult subject to learn.  Multiple pictures, various notations, and many forms all add up to one staggering lack of pedagogy.  This month Under The Hood tries its hand a minimalist approach to deriving the basic equations of fluid mechanics from a few basic principles and a fierce discipline to stick to those and nothing else.

Enjoy!

If you are reading this you may be wondering to yourself: “Wait a minute, I thought that Blog Wyrm goes live with new content on the last Friday of the month.  What is going on with a new issue coming out on March 1?”  Well, the answer is quite simple – we need to have a better calendar.

February is by far the single worst month of the year in terms of scheduling.  And this year, the last Friday of that month was on the 22^nd.  That date was ridiculously early and so we opted to put out “this month’s” issue “next month”.  Of course, “next month’s” issue will be out on March 29.

Now back to the better calendar idea.  Over the years (forgive the pun), there have been many suggestions on how to make the calendar better.

For example, the International Fixed Calendar proposes a 13-month year, with each month consisting of 28 days.  Each week begins on a Sunday and ends on a Saturday.  Every month has a Wednesday the 11^th and a Friday the 13^th and so on.  The one remaining year belongs to itself and is a holiday for all.  George Eastman used this calendar, by his account, to great success in running Kodak (an image of the Kodak factory calendar can be found here).  Leap years would work as always with the additional day doubling the holiday for all.  In such a calendar, Blog Wyrm would come out 13 times a year and always, without the slightest variation, on Friday the 27^th, a fine number and a perfect cube to boot.

Alternatively, we could use the Shire calendar as described in J.R.R. Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings.  There were twelve months in a year, by Shire reckoning, each with 30 days.  The remaining 5 days were a holiday for all – Hobbits love holidays, and feasts, and gifts.  While it is true that the final Friday of the month would shift around, at least there would be no turn-around time as short as what happened this year.

Now onto the posts.

Can computer math be art? Can inanimate hunks of glass, plastic, and metal produce natural, organic shapes? Can we have fun while answering all these questions? Join this month’s Aristotle To Digital as it answers these and many other questions courtesy of the chaos game.

We all have a feeling that health care could be better. Maybe the costs could be lower or more people could be covered. We all sympathize with those who don’t have the same perks we do. But is a single-payer solution really going to solve anything. Common Cents argues that there are concrete things we can get behind to improve health care outcomes without embracing Medicare-for-all.

Sometimes a special something comes along that makes you pursue things a little bit differently. Those too-good-to-pass-up moments that demand your attention. Well, Under The Hood has discovered one such moment and revisits an old subject, the stress tensor, with a shiny, new approach that is too good not to see print.

Enjoy!