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!