Winter Shadow: Newsletter Challenge (01/06/09)

Cleverly thought of, Randall ! I added as well.

Welcome Chris .

Hi cnpower, Don't you see there were a lot of answers posted already! LOL.

Apparently they're calculating from the Chinese New Year, since by the Gregorian calendar the 6th was two days ago...

perfect!

WHAT THE??????

abadee, abadee, abadeee uh thats all folks.......

Perhaps this will clarify matters?

Are you implying that, any idea you pick up there, you have to ask yourself "Pourquois?"?
But perhaps "Pourqui?" would be even better

Are you a puzzled granma ?

One idea Id've loved to have picked up is to have staked a few acres around Porquois which are of some of the richest gold fields up there.

Huh - ain't you got enough - duck with golden beak.
(Just jealous)

Don't sound so surprised - there's nothing Ducky's relatives like better for winter relaxation than swimming round the pond to keep it clear of ice. Clearly, the sauna's just a latter-day refinement.

And yes, all that experience with the effects of sunning yourself in the snow has sharpened his appreciation of what's useful for the auld ayes.

My relativistic equation for winter refinement.....THE POND.

I have another for summer.

Great flowers for -35^OC. Looks to include geraniums and busy lizzies to misname but two.

But I really like the blue shadow in the water (whoops, was that almost on-topic?). Even my garden doesn't run to such refinements
What well-healed establishment provided the photo-opportunity?

Begonias.......and that is a very small pond in the solarium/greenhouse I built. It acts like a solar collector on sunny days....even at -35'C....facing WSW.

Thanks for the compliment. I'll pass it on to Mrs.Greenthumb Duck. She'll be pleased to know someone thinks we're well healed.

Should that sort of double-barrelled name be hyphenated? (Guess we should consult KrisDel on that one, so long as their fees aren't too unreasonable)

"Haberniated". One tin of Tuna, and a sack of Cashew. Pay up, or you get sent more of the same.

Presumably it is as cool and refreshing as this one is warm and inviting?

Yep........though I have been to the feeder streams in Florida and they're amazing to swim and dive in. Acidic water feels great. Ponce de Leon had the right idea.

I do appreciate all your well argued reasonings over this thread. Just for my education, could you please explain me in a few words(if it possible) - what does it mean to be colorless? As I could notice or/and interpret some part of cr4 members referred to colorlessness as a blackness, another part as transparency third one as opacity.

Thank you,

caramba.

I would say, that colourless means white, grey or black - the spectrum of light is flat (stright horizontal line) meaning the same intensity for each wavelength (or frequency as you wish). Something similar to what is called "white noise" in electronics.


But it is not true if we want to define, what we see as colourless. There are three different colour sensitive cells in the human eye, sensitive in red, green and blue region of spectra. If the response from each one is the same - we see black/grey/white (depending on the intensity). But the iluminating spectrum does not have to be flat (see for example spectra of white LED, or white mercury bulbs). Thats a very short an simplified explanation, see #61 for the interesting comment on "automatic" colour correction made by our eyes and brain.

It very much depends on context. In most instances, it would mean near-perfect transparency, like quartz glass. But it also could mean a total lack of light (black) as in a deep cave or mine. It also can mean equal intensities of all wavelengths (white) light. It has to be interpreted by the usage.

Where does Iceland Spar fit in ?

Our local grocer changed its 'symbol group' from Spar to Nisa some years ago - and I think you know what happened to Iceland.

what happened to Iceland..

....do you mean the possibilty of another cod war to get money, or taking over Frank W's ? Fear not for your local grocer, I'm sure Tesco Express will offer him/her a job. Gordy is on the case, so all will be well.

Cod bless him............

.....and forgive Tony the stretch mark he left in his cheek.

They said they could negotiate a better deal through Nisa.
But we don't need another Tesco around here - we already have an accessible Sainsbury to keep Waitrose on their toes (and the RR out)

"We don't need another Tesco "

If Sainsbury/Asda/QuckyMart or anyone uses this, I want commision !

You'll have to nick in some for Tina, don't forget!

It doubles as a navigation device...

Absolutely right. Though one property is polarization the ability of this mineral to split images into separate parts resulted in the making of the Roelofs prism which is used to either calibrate surveying instruments or determine geographic position by using sun shots. It was an invaluable instrument to those who were far in the field.

Essentially, I agree with both EnviroMan and kajot - but with one partial exception: the term "white" when applied to a light source either requires a reference or is at best a very vague descriptor. So, returning to "colourless":

Applied to a material or a system, "colourless" always means that the spectral power distribution of the light re-emitted is the same as the incoming light. So in principle it can be used for windows or scatters, be they white or grey (as black is in reality only ever dark-grey, that too)

Applied to a light source or colour of reflected lightt, colourless can only mean either:
a) that the colour essentially is the same as either a stated reference or one that appears obvious (for the case of the light emitted by the shadow, that would be the surrounding snow; for light emitted by lamps a specific version of white could )
b) that the intensity is insufficient for us to perceive colour (rarely)

When used for light sources, "white" gets even more confusing...

I'm so grateful to Physicist, EnviroMan and kajot for very detailed answers on my specific ques.

Agreed with EnviroMan's "context" and with Physicist's "applied material or system" as well as with kajot's ""automatic" colour correction made by our eyes and brain".

From elementary school course I could recall only about misconception of ancient people(Pluto and others) where eyes were considering as a light sources.

I'm not savvy in optic in no way unless I had 10 y experience in printing press business. It's so specific experience as printmen being very pragmatic people use features of so subjective and restricted abilities of color perception only for their business wellbeing.

From above I conclude (for myself). Before any color devoted discussion is getting started participants should come to shared point(s).

Anyway I've truly enjoyed to observe the development of this thread which putted in good order my before chaotically arranged and biased knowledges of that. Neither Google nor wiki can substitute alive conversation.

Thanks again.

Reminder of what BS really stands for (Have another nice day)
________________

BTW - these were the top two nouns in the list of meanings for "fag" - which of them did you intend?

• a servant for older boys, in British public schools
• fagot: offensive term for an openly homosexual man
  (and I thought that meant "a senior moment")
  

It's part of my Obama tribute act. Don't you recall my recent pic.....

Anyways, go amuse yourself with this fantastic problem, the second part of which remains unsolved ;

http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/33848/Dice-problem

After that, cut along and get me some muffins, else you'll get a damn good thrashing.

By next tag-line will be much more subtle.........

Proving the maximal situation (e.g. 4096 sub-cubes requiring 12 cuts) would be quite straightforward. However, submaximal situations require attention to the details of dependencies (the implications of 'you can't cut two orthogonal sides simultaneously'), which renders an otherwise simple proof tedious. I fear that it will end up with induction, which is not interesting. So it won't happen unless I think of something more elegant .

[The problem of course is the constraint of zero waste. If you were happy to have smaller cubes and some wasteage, you could get up to 784 equal cubes using just ten cuts.]

Oh go on, give me an argument. You asked me to.

You're right - it shows the start of a process of induction - but only waves its arms at the tricky bits. I would have liked to do it by "total surface area of cuts" - but so far the argument is comparably full of holes (puns intended)

....sort of "death by a thousand cuts". There's probably a terribly bad economics joke in that, but it's too early.

Do you keep any pets ? I'm considering working up another little tease, though equines would be too obvious to include. My own preference would be a canary, although I feel a cat (white) would be suitable for yourself. Any allergies don't matter, because my intended menagerie is going to be very jumbled up. Very. It's a sort of occupational-hazard based thing

I don't know why you want to know, but in case it helps: my wife keeps kats, the 's' being another story that's not worth telling. Our outside pets include about a dozen pheasants, a family of moorhens, a few robins, and more hedge-sparrows than you could shake a tablecloth at. (N.B. apart from the miscoloured squirrels, the other outside creatures are too boring, too shy, or too independent to call pets)

Overnight (yes, you are allowed to feel sorry for me) I realised that I could find a way to ignore the extraneous detail - and this makes the proof of the dissection quite straightforward (though doubtless I'll fail to make the simplicity properly apparent once the necessary number stuff is included). I'll submit it when I have leasure to edit it properly.

The pheasants sound interesting. No matter how hard I try to remember the obvious difference, I always muddle up moorhens and coots. Hedgehogs like the clutter of leaves and twigs that carpet my garden, which is an excellent excuse not to tidy it up.

Please accept my apologies for causing any pericombobulation while you were asleep.

One thing at a time:
Come the summer the peasants will try to eat out of our hands when we sit on the terrace.
A coot "eats shoots and leaves". It has a white forehead and beak. My way to remember the difference is that a moorhen is moor colourful. But what I really like about moorhens is that they are a kind of avian hedgehog, as their diet includes insects and slugs. (The authentic hedgehogs love the log piles and the bonfire heap, which they seem to share with the frogs; so I can't fire it up anytime between November and the end of March).

I don't recollect combobulating any more peris than normal last night - but maybe I was sleep-mixing anyway, as I did notice a few crushed metaphores lying in the Kenwood this morning.

I like the coot's one ! Very good indeed, though I'll doubtless one day find myself looking at one and wondering why I'm think about banks. It'll come back when they have me trussed up

My neighbours would go mad if they saw me lighting up a bonfire - they're rather partial to the hedgehogs visiting them and their pristine garden. It's astonishing how well they can climb, and they can run almost faster then I can !

Sounds like you live in the countryside. Mad rooks and all that.

"they can run almost faster then I can" - are you really that unfit?

Plenty of rooks in the ash trees (many years ago we adopted one that had survived when the nest fell after a storm; in late spring it tried to feed us through the ear, then one day it joined a flock and flew away).

But we still have neighbours. (I prefer interacting with people to be a matter of choice).

You've clearly not seen Sonic ! Anyway, ≈2m/s isn't bad, especially if scaled up; I make that 7.2 kph. If, as a very rough approximation, a human has legs 10 times longer, then the hog is doing the equivalent of a stonking great 72 kph !

Neighbours can be a drag, but it's luck of the draw really (unless you own several thousand acres). I find family more irritating, since you don't get to choose them, but again it's luck of the draw. If CR4 had a 'miserable old git' badge, I'd be tempted to wear it. It would be a little bit untrue, but I feel a certain affinity with the likes of Victor Meldrew.

I must away to discover how ash trees fly........

No M.O.G. badge needed (Del please note) - other than in my murky avatar, people can see me coming. Maybe you could design one for nutkin?

Will your picture glow all red if you get excited ? I gave up trying to figure such things after current buns. As for my own morphings, it's all explained in the book.

If you're properly colourblind you can imagine that it already has

Trust me, it takes very little for my imagination to run riot ! I'll just print your picture out, and try to remember how we separated out all the colours from ink at Skool.

The New challenge is a yawn - seems very similar to something posed by Ejay Do you have any nice ones (like the pyramid dissection) in your stash of knowledge ? Even my animal related thing would have been more entertaining than arguing the toss over light again. It might get answered early, but at least those who wanted to could print it off and solve at leisure. S'pose I can't grumble if I don't offer anything up myself, but....what the heck, I just like grumbling. Something using microwaves just came to mind - I must go put on my thinking hat............

Here's a good one: not really suitable for a challenge question because once it's solved it's done.

Nearly everyone has seen the problem where you have to draw 4 straight lines through a matrix of 9 (3x3 dots) without taking the pencil off the paper and without retracing any lines.

Can you see these dots? If you haven't seen it before and can't work it out, I guess I could give you the solution.

This ones a bit trickier three by four square matrix of dots: five lines PLUS you have to finish where you started. All the other obvious rules apply (the dots are infinitely small, and the lines are not infinitely long):-

Have fun.

Randall