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[Rant] Today my Google news feed shows: First egg-shaped wind turbine is turned on: Result has experts in shock, as it has shut down all solar panels I'd seen this or something similar a month ago, so knew it was just gibberish. But it does elicit fond memories of better days, when editors...

(I hope this is the right forum for this discussion, though perhaps it should be folded into Politics!) It is a truism that now is the first time in American history that young people (Millenials" and "Generation Z") expect to be -- and will be -- LESS well off than their parents. And this is...

Let A be a finite set of positive integers, and N = |A| be the size of A. We shall say that A is pleasant if for all x,y ∈ A x / gcd(x,y) ≤ N (The gcd(x,y) -- greatest common divisor -- is the largest positive integer that divides both x and y.) For example, suppose A = {2, 3, 4, 5, 6}. N = 5...

Let me confess at the outset that I guess I have read little literary fiction compared with many of you. So my remarks suffer from small sample size. (Most of the fiction I do read is popular spy/crime/detective thrillers.) Fiction is classified by length into novels, novellas, and short...

Wasn't proving Fermat's Little Theorem by counting necklaces really nifty! That's a very well known result -- I think even I discovered the argument many decades ago. BUT there's another Theorem by Fermat which has an elegant proof based on counting shapes, and that proof was discovered just a...

This week for show and tell I will outline part of the Y-chromosome clading tree in humans. It will take me several posts. I am posting this in Social Sciences rather than Natural Science because the science and technology of DNA is of no interest in my topic. Let us instead interest...

I tend to get fascinated with useless trivia! It's not so bad: It "keeps me off the streets", and once upon a time some of the useless trivia was just useful enough to build up a small nest-egg for me. Unfortunately -- Fair Warning! -- sometimes I share the useless trivia at IIDB. 8-) First...

The "efficiency" of photosynthesis is an ambiguous term: losses occur at various stages of the process, beginning with the incoming photons: Many photons are of the wrong wavelength, or not aimed at a chlorophyll. However one key step in photosynthesis is said to be almost 100% efficient. The...

Before prescribing future money, let's review the history of money. In this thread I propose to discuss money in the 20th century and earlier. There are 21st century innovations: "Quantitative Easing" Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin but to keep the conversation...

I'm delighted to learn that Jason will soon tell us how money creation works in his vision. Over to you, Jason.

Poor Sir Isaac. Once considered the greatest scientific genius who ever lived, many of his ideas have been refuted. His Law of Gravitation produced a tiny error when used to predict the orbit of Mercury. Albert Einstein had heart palpitations when he found that his own theory predicted that...

...for "woke" culture by referring to blacks as Nigras and women as bitches? Or does that not go far enough -- we should use the words nigger and c*nt? Yet instead of these important and quintessentially Republican issues, some of the debate focused on the size of Trump's hands! "If my hands...

A favorite parlor game is to rank the U.S. Presidents -- Who were the "Greatest"? Let's keep the discussion out of Politics by ignoring Presidents since Reagan; there are few candidates for "Great President" in the 21st century anyway. A good starting point for Presidential rankings is...

Religious skeptics like to point out that the God (Yahweh) of the Old Testament is very different from the God (Father) described by Jesus in the Gospels. Yes: These were two very different entities. I am particularly interested in evidence from ancient documents, including Old and New...

Let's compile a list of the most poignant scenes in movies. I'm starting with one that isn't particularly poignant -- that's to encourage others to participate! ("I can think of scenes much more poignant than that one.") What does "poignant" even mean anyway? One dictionary suggests that a...

IIDB has several Members who are very competent historians. I ask them to help me to understand how present-day politics compares to past crises. In a recent thread I compared the present Trumpist political dystopia in the U.S. to the American Civil War and the rise of Hitlerism in 1930's...

Inspired by Alcoholic Actuary, I plan on placing some more probability puzzles in this thread. I'll assign them Roman numerals. Please feel free to add other puzzles of your own, labeling them with the next Roman numeral. I have three "nifty" puzzles to start with, ranging from the quite easy...

Girls just want to have fun is a song written by Robert Hazard and made famous by Cyndi Lauper. But a little-known fact is that the original lyrics were "Mathematicians just want to have fun!" Hazard just couldn't get the meter to scan properly with the original lyrics. A rather famous example...

I don't see a thread to actually predict the winner of the Pres. election. I'll just report now on odds implied by the punters at Betfair. Last summer, Trump and DeSantis had the #1 and #2 slots. In August DeSantis was ahead: 22% / 20% / 16%, with Biden as #3. November it was 27% / 17% / 15%...

I find it fun to make lists. What is the best depiction of The Ten Ages of Man ? (Feel free to define 8 or 12 ages, or whatever, instead of 10.) At this scale it makes little sense, I think, to separate Bronze and Iron Ages. Early Stone Age -- humans develop speech and use of fire and tools...