Author Archive: Conrad Schiff

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!

Merry Christmas from all the staff at Blog Wyrm. This year we’ve tried to make a special effort to be able to take time to be with friends and family and we hope each of you have as well.

Now onto the posts.

After over four years of blogging, About Comics is retiring for the foreseeable future. Comics fatigue brought on the pure pointlessness of modern comics is the cause. The cure has yet to be discovered. So it is a bittersweet time to say goodbye.

This month, Aristotle To Digital continues to analyze the chaos game method for creating self-similar fractals like the Sierpinski triangle.
The focus is on how a single iteration of the game maps points in the plane to other points in the plane through the various affine transformations.

Poor economic thinking honors no bounds of time or space. Throughout history and in all lands there have been bad arguments based on emotion and not on logic for how a society should use its precious, scarce resources. This month Common Cents examines a contemporary example all the way from Peru.

One of the most exciting and important aspects of continuum mechanics is the analysis of elastic waves in various media. Applications of the basic theory abound from understanding the motion and stability of bridges and buildings to Under The Hood derives a simple model for P and S waves in isotropic materials..

Enjoy!

According to T.S. Eliot, April is the cruelest month. But had Eliot been an American, he no doubt would have written something equally poetic about just how cruel November can be when in the country is in the throws of an election.

In years past, the nation seemed to be able to keep at least a semblance of its wits and sanity during such times. Now with our snowflake culture, our agitating press, and our super-sensitivity that triggers anger at the fall of a leaf, election season is indeed very trying.

We at Blog Wyrm respectfully point out that while voting is a civic duty and a privilege, one’s life is shaped by more by one’s individual choices than by the choices of our elected officials. Something to think about.

Thankfully, we can end November with a collective, cleansed palate, enjoying family company around the Thanksgiving table with the promise of holidays to come.

Now onto the posts.

About Comics finishes its two-part examination of the Coyote series by Steve Engelhart. From it Desert Noir beginnings to its Cold War conclusion, the highs and low of this of the short-lived but influential comics run is a slice of comics history worth pondering.

Fractals are amazing things. Part mathematical theory part art, they appear in many guises, from natural phenomena to computer generated imagery. This month, Aristotle To Digital begins a playful, rambling exploration of these amazing objects produced by flights of computer fancy.

The College Bowl season is almost among us. Whether you are a devoted follower of the SEC or a Big 10 fanatic or a die hard Notre Dame supporter, you have to admit that the NCAA leaves much to be desired. Common Cents takes a long look at how the NCAA keeps an uneven playing field for the economics of college football.

Young’s modulus here, bulk modulus there, shear modulus everywhere. Under The Hood untangles the wide world of elastic moduli and describes the generalized Hooke’s law that relates stress to strain.

Enjoy!

Well it’s almost that time of the year again. As the bite of cold sneaks into the autumn wind, carved pumpkins begin to appear on front stoops. Soon kids will journey out in their favorite costumes to wrangle as much candy as they can. Adults of all stripes indulge in a bit more theatrics. And horror movies become more prevalent on TV. We at Blog Wyrm wish all our readers a happy and spooky Halloween. Boo!!!

Now onto the posts.

There once was a time when books, movies, and TV took risks and experimented with new stories told in novel ways. There was also a time when comics took risks and experimented as well. This month’s About Comics takes a look at one such experiment – the short-lived but influential Coyote series by Steve Engelhart.

We all use linguistic hedges to modified the things we say. We can be very hungry or quite tired or somewhat bored. We employ phrases that convey different meanings when spoken compared to when read – think sarcasm. Any natural language processing machine that aims to pass the Turing test better know how to handle all these nuances. Aristotle To Digital looks at a particularly humorous hedge that is sure to present a challenge.

If you don’t recycle you are killing Mother Earth. That is the common wisdom. But as Common Cents shows, sometimes common wisdom is simple common trash.

This month’s Under The Hood looks at elastic deformation and presents the basic mathematical model for strain that results.

Enjoy!

We at Blog Wyrm recognize that the internet can be a wonderful place. The ability to connect with far-flung friends and family. A treasure trove of information at one’s fingertips. Videos, music, movies, books and more all at the push of a button. These features are rightly regarded as wonders of the modern age.

However, every silver lining has its cloud and the internet is no exception. Click bait, scam emails, spam, and unsubstantiated rumors masquerading as verified information are just the tip of the iceberg. All these, perhaps, can be coped with. But to start malforming the English language with new ‘e-speak’ is just a bridge too far. What was the straw that broke the camels back here at Blog Wyrm? Why that household word ‘Advertorial’. We don’t know what it means. We don’t want to. We just want it and words like it stop appearing. Too much internet is not good for anyone.

Now onto the posts.

With the The Infinity Gauntlet tangent now put to bed, About Comics returns to the previously scheduled space opera of Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. This post covers the two decades post Cosmic Odyssey and muses over just what makes the Fourth World better as a prop rather than a centerpiece.

Can we really make grammatically correct sentences using one word? How does whimsey, thought and language intersect? If you are curious about these questions then catch this month’s Aristotle To Digital for the answers.

According to some experts the gig economy is the next best thing since sliced bread. Other think its the newest way to destroy the common man. Most of us are left wondering just what is the gig economy and where does the truth lie. Common Cents takes a long look at the gig economy and shows that, as usual, the truth is far more nuanced that the usual polemic hacks want you to believe and that the basic laws of economics still apply.

This month’s Under The Hood presents an overview of the central point of continuum mechanics – relating material strain to the forces that cause it. Strong connections are made between the particle motion of classical mechanics and the recasting of Newton’s laws for a continuum.

Enjoy!

Ordinarily, we at Blog Wyrm like to usher our monthly stable of columns in with some light-hearted and pithy introduction. While this is the goal, it isn’t always possible to ignore some of the more serious aspects surrounding us, and we take some space to comment on more serious matters. We, at Blog Wyrm, are fundamentally disturbed by the hypersensitivity that we see on the internet. It is true that compassionate speech typically reflects a compassionate heart, but the converse is not true. Angry, thoughtless, and stupid speech does not, necessarily, mean that the person uttering it is intrinsically angry, thoughtless, stupid, or evil. We all act out at times and we all grow. A mode of discourse we found provocative and exciting at one point in our lives may be cringe-worthy and embarrassing at other points.

We would like to encourage everyone to treat others with a sense of charity. Applaud the good things said or done immediately but hold off scolding, chiding, or shaming someone based on a few badly worded tweets or for old posts that no longer fit the new behavior. Nobody should be subjected to what passes for the digital mob’s self-appointed role as judge, jury, and executioner. Those who go along with that may find themselves in need of some compassion when the mob to which they belong turns to consume them.

Now onto the posts.

The last three entries have been leading up to this, one of the most influential and iconic storylines in comics: The Infinity Gauntlet. This month, About Comics covers the classic story that served as the inspiration for Avengers: Infinity War, perhaps the biggest blockbuster movie of 2018.

We all know that what you think shapes how you talk, but what about the other way round? How much does how you talk influence the way you think? This month’s Aristotle To Digital delves into the current state of affairs in this interesting crossroads of the human experience.

There’s been a lot of cautionary talk about how, even though unemployment is low and the economy is growing nicely, workers wages are suffering. Stagnant wages and diminished purchasing power seem to be the common wisdom, but, is this really the correct analysis? Common Cents asks some probing questions whose answers suggest that the complete answer is nowhere near as clear-cut as the common wisdom would have one believe.

One of the central building blocks of modern physical theories, ranging from fluid flow to general relativity and quantum field theory, the stress tensor can be a bit intimidating. This month’s post in Under The Hood takes this mathematical object apart step-by-step showing how it has its roots in basic mechanics and how it can be understood by considering simple geometries.

Enjoy!

The Blog Wyrm staff is taking July off for summer break and some family celebrations. We will return with our regular columns in August. See you then!

The sports world became very interesting during the month of June with the happy case of the Washington Capitals. They were finally able to make their way past their old nemesis, the Pittsburg Penguins. Next, after faltering a bit, they clinched a berth into the Stanley Cup with a nail-bitter series with the Tampa Bay Lightning. And ultimately, they dispatched the Las Vegas Golden Knights fairly convincingly to finally win the Championship and bring success to a Washington D.C team for the first time in decades. Kudos to the Caps! Rock the Red!

Speaking of championship material, the Blog Wyrm staff went all out this month to provide our usual stable of winners.

Part cosmic con job, part adventure story, Jim Starlin’s resurrection tale Thanos Quest explains how the Mad Titan comes to recognize the true power of the Infinity Gems and lay hold of all six for a second time. About Comics reviews this fascinating link between the earlier setup work by Engelhart and Starlin and the subsequent Infinity Gauntlet we all know and love.

This month’s Aristotle To Digital returns to the A* algorithm with a few clarifications and tips on the finer details and a shame-faced apology for an earlier error. Fortunately, the error wasn’t very serious but it does cause confusion and we at Blog Wyrm strive to get it right.

Now that the Supreme Court has removed the Federal prohibition that prevent states from legalizing sports gambling many are asking how we can protect the integrity of college sports. Common Cents proposes that the best way is to provide so-called college student-athletes with some skin in the game that will make it unlikely that any of them will be tempted to fix a game.

Building on earlier posts , Under The Hood links the Reynolds Transport theorem with the Flux Transport Theorem, thus completing the derivation of two of the central tools needed to describe continuum mechanics.

Enjoy!

May! Memorial Day Weekend! Summer (at least in the commercial or social sense) is upon us; air conditioners, summer driving, cookouts abound. I suppose that I should be talking about all the fun and games and summer delights but there is something I need to get off of my chest, once and for all, in print.

The name of the system of units that most of the world uses and that the US uses for scientific analysis is known as the SI units (Système international or International System of Units in English). It is not the metric system.

The major selling point when the ‘metric system’ began to penetrate the US was that the units were based on decimal divisions. Each increment in units is based on a power of ten. 10 millimeters makes a centimeter, 10 centimeters makes a decameter, and 10 decameters make a meter. And that is a great advantage. Far better than 12 inches making a foot, 3 feet making a yard, and 1760 yards to a mile.

But that doesn’t mean that the SI units themselves are particularly useful for everyday living or that the old English units must be banished never to see the light of day. Let me make some points to support this assertion.

First, the SI units of length and temperature leave something to be desired. The meter is approximately one yard, which is too big for recording ordinary lengths (sports and fabric measurements not withstanding). Typically, the centimeter and millimeter do all the heavy lifting for common objects. Human height is measured in terms of meters and centimeters. No one even speaks of the decameter. Far worse is measuring temperature in units of degrees Celsius. The base SI unit is Kelvin, not Celsius, and one converts between the two by adding or subtracting 273 as appropriate. Considering that the human body can sense about 1 degree Fahrenheit differences in temperature, a SI thermostat should optimally work in half degrees.

Second, there are machine shops all over the US where metric inches are used quite nicely to produce precision parts. One can go to a shop and order a part with a dimension of 3.456 inches. So, the inch is perfectly reasonable as long as one avoids feet.

Finally, with the advent of digital signal processing, twos-based units are more convenient than 10s-based. A great many data sets or simulations are truncated or padded to get powers of 2.

So, please, do yourself a favor, do your country a favor, and do the world a favor and call ‘the metric’ system by it real name and recognize it for what it is, a system of units, some good, some bad, and some ugly.

Speaking of good, we have our usual quartet of good columns this month.

Comics and philosophy are rarely spoken of in the same sentence but good stories can come from deep roots. Join About Comics as it continues its exploration of the origins of the Infinity Stones, focusing on the ontology developed by Steve Engelhart and the philosophy of Jim Starlin.

What do pigeons, bugs, and bits all have in common? Each plays a serious role in Aristotle To Digital light-hearted look at the mathematics of file compression and computer programs.

Do equal-pay-for-equal-work laws really aid those people most in need of economic justice? Contrary to popular wisdom often found circulating in the trendy set, Common Cents argues, using strong economic principles, that these laws in fact harm the ones they intend to help.

One of the core theoretical tools in continuum mechanics is the Reynolds transport theorem that describes how a physical quantity, such as volume or density, changes as the material flows. Under The Hood builds up the mathematics needed to understand this important identity and how it relates to the material derivative.

Enjoy!