Is This What’s Going On? A Set of Questions of Global Concern.

Posted on 17 July 2016 by RobertLovesPi

Is This Whats Going On

I have a set of conjectures, and want input from my friends and blog-followers about them. How much of this has actually happened over the past months, weeks, and days?

1. The Chinese have been buying huge amounts of silver, thus driving up its price, because…

2. The political and business leaders in Greater China are, themselves, sick of living in an environmental nightmare based on decades of high consumption of oil and dirty coal, and are working on building enormous numbers of solar panels to get away from fossil fuel consumption, using lots of silver, which has the highest reflectivity of any element. China’s silver buying-spree is being misinterpreted, globally, because China is not well-understood, outside China.

3. These leaders of China have to breathe the same air, for one thing, as many Chinese people with much less power, and going green is the pragmatic thing to do. It is quite Chinese to be pragmatic. Living in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Taipei, or other population centers, air quality is a major issue, as is global warming and other environmental concerns — all issues which many Americans are in the habit of ignoring.

4. As the Chinese phase themselves out of the human addiction to fossil fuels, total global oil consumption drops. Evidence: gasoline prices fell. I was buying for under $2 a gallon a week ago.

5. Falling oil prices have led to severe economic problems in the oil-producing countries of the Middle East. Higher-than-usual amounts of political stability have rippled through the Middle East through the last five years, and this has intensified further in recent months. The latest such development has been in Turkey, often seen as the most politically stable country in the Muslim world, is going through an attempted(?) coup, on the far side of the Middle East from China.

6. In the USA, one of the people running for president is a reactionary xenophobe, as well as a populist demagogue, and is running against an opponent with little to no ethical principles who is winning by default because she’s running against Trump. Donald Trump and his people (and he has a lot of people) have been spewing Islamophobia and Sinophobia, and they’ve been doing it loudly.

7. Many people all over the world are reacting to the Trump Trumpet o’ Hate, and freaking out. Various end-of-the-world scenarios are been floated publicly, especially in cyberspace. People are getting “off the grid” if they can, either because it’s a good idea, or because they’re panicked. In some places, efforts are actually being made to use the force of government to stop people from weaning themselves off the services of utility companies.

8. Few people realize that a lot of this is a set of unintended consequences of China (of all nations) leading the charge to do the right thing regarding oil addiction, from an environmental and ecological point of view, plus having a lunatic run for the White House.

9. The rising price of silver, panic-in-advance about a widely-expected coming collapse of fiat currencies, and the pronouncements and predictions of Ron Paul and his ilk, are all feeding off each other, in an accelerating spiral. In the meantime, the political instability in Turkey is capping off a slight rise in gas prices over recent lows, just in the last week.

10. Most Americans don’t know much about a lot of this because we’re at a point in the current, nasty election cycle that America as a people has simply forgotten (again) that the world outside the United States actually exists. Ignorance about the Middle East, economics, environmental science, and Greater China is widespread in the best of times. Thanks to (a) the “Donald and Hillary Show” playing 24/7 on cable news, (b) civil unrest at home (brutality on the part of some, but not all, police), and (c) a backlash against Black Lives Matter, with horrible behavior from some, but not all, of the protesters on all sides, and (d) an anti-or re-backlash against BLM is in “full throttle” right now, and (e) unrest abroad (Turkey, etc.), these certainly aren’t the best of times.

I invite anyone to weigh in on the subject of which of the above conjectures are valid, and which are invalid. I have deliberately cited no sources, yet, because I am asking for independent peer review, and so do not wish to suggest sources at this point. In addition to “Which of these statements are correct, and which are wrong?” I am also asking, “What am I missing?”

The Great State of Memphis?

Posted on 12 September 2015 by RobertLovesPi

This is a real ad. Except from cropping away the rest of the webpage where I found it, I did not alter it.

When did Memphis gain statehood?

Silly U.S. Map Puzzle #5

Posted on 2 August 2015 by RobertLovesPi

What do the colors on this map mean?

If you wish to check your answer, or just what to know what the solution is, just scroll down.

And keep on scrollin’. . . .

Solution:

Of the other 49 states in the USA, how many are adjacent to this one? The answer to this question determines the color of each state.

One point of clarification: if it takes a lengthy trip by boat or ship to get there, I didn’t count it as an adjacent state . . . so, for example, Minnesota and Michigan didn’t make each other’s lists. Simply going over a bridge isn’t enough for this sort of separation, though, which is why Arkansas and Tennessee did make each others’ lists of adjacent states. Had I interpreted water borders differently, this map would have some differences.

Another way this map could be altered would be to count states that meet others only at a single point, rather than a border with non-zero length. This would change the colors of the “four corners” states of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado, but would have no effect on the other 46 states.

Silly U.S. Map Puzzles #4a and 4b

Posted on 30 July 2015 by RobertLovesPi

First, for puzzle #4a, what are the meanings of the colors on this map?

For puzzle #4b, what do the colors mean on this second, similar map?

To find the answers, simply scroll down.

Keep scrolling….

Solution:

In the first map, consider the number of letters in the name of each state. Is this number prime or composite?

In the second map, consider the number of characters, rather than letters, in each state’s name. This number is different for states with two-word names, due to the single character, a blank space, needed to separate the two words. Again: prime, or composite?

Silly U.S. Map Puzzle #3

Posted on 30 July 2015 by RobertLovesPi

What is represented by the colors on this map?

The answer may be found by scrolling down.

Keep scrolling….

Answer:

Do any of the borders of this state contain squiggles? (Note: if you think New Mexico is the wrong color, check the part of that state which borders El Paso, Texas.)

Silly U.S. Map Puzzle #2

Posted on 30 July 2015 by RobertLovesPi

What is represented by the colors on this map?

If you give up, you can scroll down to find the answer.

Keep scrolling….

Answer: the colors show whether the name of each state starts with a letter in the first, or second, half of the alphabet.

Silly U.S. Map Puzzle #1

Posted on 30 July 2015 by RobertLovesPi

What is represented by the colors on this map?

If you decide to give up, you can scroll down for the answer . . . but, I promise, the solution to this puzzle is extremely simple.

Keep scrolling, if you’re looking for the answer….

Answer:

The map shows how many words are in the name of each state.

Earth’s Oceans’ and Continents’ Relative Surface Areas, Analyzed, with Two Pie Charts

Posted on 29 July 2015 by RobertLovesPi

I’ll start this analysis with a simple land/water breakdown for Earth’s surface:

The two figures in the chart above are familiar figures for many — but how does “land” break down into continents, and how does “water” break down into oceans, as fractions of Earth’s total surface area? That’s what this second chart shows.

With continents, I placed them on the chart to make it easier to see physically-connected continents as sets of adjacent wedges of similar color, separated only by thin lines. The most obvious example of this is Europe and Asia, which are considered separate continents in the first place only for historical reasons, not geographical ones. Combine them, into Eurasia, and it has 36.3% of Earth’s total land area, which is (36.3%)(0.292) = 10.6% of Eath’s total surface area. Even then, Earth’s three largest oceans (the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans) are each larger than Eurasia.

There are other naturally-connected continents, albeit with much smaller land connections — narrow enough for humans to have altered this fact, only a “blip” ago on geographical time-scales, by building the Suez and Panama Canals. In the case of the Suez, its construction severed, artificially, the naturally-occurring land connection between Eurasia and Africa, and the term “Afro-Eurasia” has been used for the combination of all three traditionally-defined continents. Afro-Eurasia has 56.7% of Earth’s land, but that’s only (56.7%)(0.292) = 16.6% of Earth’s total surface area. That’s larger than the Indian Ocean, at (19.5%)(0.708) = 13.8% of Earth surface area. However, both the Atlantic Ocean, at (23.5%)(0.708) = 16.6% of Earth’s surface area, and the Pacific Ocean, at (46.6%)(0.708) = 33.0% of Earth’s surface area, are still larger than Afro-Eurasia.

The Pacific Ocean alone, in fact, has a greater surface area than all of Earth’s land — combined.

The other case that can be made for continent-unification involves North and South America, since their natural land connection was severed, only about a century ago, by the construction of the Panama Canal. Combine the two, and simply call the combination “the Americas,” and that’s 28.5% of earth’s land, which is (28.5%)(0.292) = 8.3% of Earth’s surface area. (I didn’t simply call this combination “America” to avoid confusion with the USA.) The Americas, even in combination, are not only smaller than each of Earth’s three largest oceans (the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific), but also smaller than Afro-Eurasia, or Eurasia — or even Asia alone, by a narrow margin.

By the way, there are lots of things that don’t show up on the second chart above: islands, inland seas, lakes, rivers, etc., and there’s a good reason for that: on the scale of even the larger pie chart above, all these things are so small, compared to the oceans and continents, that they simply aren’t large enough to be visible.

Places I Have Been, #2: When Was I Last There?

Posted on 11 July 2015 by RobertLovesPi

This is a more detailed version of one of the earliest posts on this blog, “Places I Have Been.” In this version, I color-coded the states and provinces to show when I was last in each of these places (the color-coding is explained below the picture). Also, no, I haven’t left North America — yet — but visits to all the other continents on Earth, plus the Moon, are definitely on my lifetime “to do” list.

Here’s the color-key. It starts in the present, and then proceeds in reverse chronological order.

Red — I’m here right now. Arkansas is also the state where I have spent well over 90% of my life, and I was born here, as well, 47½ years ago (January, 1968).

Pink — These are states I’ve been to since turning 45, not counting where I am at the moment. It’s also the set of states my wife and I have visited together — so far.

Purple — I was last in each of these states during the first half of my forties.

Dark blue — I was last in Kansas in my thirties, flying there, with two other math teachers, for an educational conference.

Yellow — Louisiana is the only state which I last visited in my twenties.

Green — These are states I last visited at age nineteen. So far, that’s the furthest I have traveled in a single year. The green Mexican state on the map is Chihuahua, where I visited Cuidad Juárez, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas.

Light blue — These are the states and provinces I last visited as a “tween” (ages 10-12). The Northern vacation trip was with my family, and, so far, that’s the only time I’ve been to Canada. Virginia made the map when I won a trip to Washington, DC (too small to be seen above), as one of a busload of young newspaper carriers, for selling twenty newspaper subscriptions to Arkansas Gazette — one of America’s many “lost newspapers,” and one which I very much miss. Alabama and Florida are included because of a field trip, all the way to Key West, with a college class — one of the benefits of growing up as a “professor’s kid” who spent a lot of time on campus.

Brown — I have been to South Carolina once, but I wasn’t even close to ten years old at the time, and now I barely remember this family trip to the Atlantic coast.

Gray — I was so young, when my parents took me to Colorado, that I have no memories from that trip at all. I don’t think my younger sister had even been born yet, in fact. All I remember is being told, much later, that, yes, I have been to Colorado.

Where Are This Blog’s Readers?

Posted on 13 September 2014 by RobertLovesPi

More hits come to this blog from inside the USA than any other country. Considering that I live here, that isn’t surprising. However, my international readers do outnumber what are confusingly called “Americans,” at 54.7% to 43.7% of hits to this blog.

When the hits from outside the U.S.A. are considered at as a set, a slim majority of that set is held by six nations, each with over 1,000 hits. India leads this group, followed by Russia. After those non-English-dominated countries come the English-dominated U.K. and Canada, in that order. Germany and the Philippines round out this group.