The corollary of Spoon Day.
Donating forks to the dining hall
131–140 of 231 posts
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#132My first teaching job was at an old, prestigious boys' boarding school in Australia. (When I say old , it was old for Australia.) Every boy, whether a boarder or day-boy, and every staff member received a hot lunch in the dining halls each day. There were two dining halls: most of the boys at in the less ornate one, but the oldest boys and the staff ate in the more formal dining hall. Portraits of all the previous he…
The "knife tree", the unholy offspring of The Shrike and the Tree of Pain in Dan Simmons' "Hyperion"...
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#133This could have been a follow-up to "The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1322240/
That was a great read
Delighted to see a shout-out to Veet Voojagig in there!
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#134Reminds of of the replacement of "threeks" at the UW-Madison campus in the 1980s. At the time, it was common for satirical parties to win student elections and do odd things like cover the campus with plastic flamingos. One of the satirical parties was upset that the UW-Madison cafeteria didn't have true forks (with four tines) but only "threeks" (forks with three tines). So they decided to work with friends at North…
Don’t tell me “fork” and “four” are related. Did my homework: “Old English forca, force (denoting a farm implement), based on Latin furca ‘pitchfork, forked stick’; reinforced in Middle English by Anglo-Norman French furke (also from Latin furca ).” Four in Latin is quattuor. Scared me there.
No. A forked stick does not have 4 branches, nor does a fork in the road.
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to copper.orgs fact page, the "average" single family home (whatever that means) has 151 pounds of copper pipe. The current scrap price for #1 copper where I live is $2.88. That comes out to around $446. That would maybe cover the cost of the pex itself, OR the cost of fittings and tools, but probably not both.
I'd argue keep the copper in place as much as possible. PEX is plastic. I'm sure it contributes to all the microplastics/PFAS we see all over the place.
superstitious nonsense
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
According to copper.orgs fact page, the "average" single family home (whatever that means) has 151 pounds of copper pipe. The current scrap price for #1 copper where I live is $2.88. That comes out to around $446. That would maybe cover the cost of the pex itself, OR the cost of fittings and tools, but probably not both.
I'd argue keep the copper in place as much as possible. PEX is plastic. I'm sure it contributes to all the microplastics/PFAS we see all over the place.
I would bet that running a single load of synthetic clothes in the dryer creates more microplastic than making 1000 cut and crimped connections of PEX tubing.
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#137There's a common pattern in population dynamics that I've observed, which probably has a formal name: A given system with (to simplify) two types of behavior: good and bad will tolerate and self correct up to certain percentage of bad actors (call this the jerk threshold, JT) after which all participants switch to the bad behavior. Examples are line formation for a service, cutting people off in traffic, stealing from common areas, hoarding office supplies, etc.
Anecdata: When I travel back to the country I've grown up I resort back to being a jerk in traffic and cutting in lines because you have to.
I've always wondered what the JT for different situations is, before the system breaks down, e.g. what percentage of people in a line have to cut in before everybody abandons the concept of forming the line.
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
However, Latin quattuor and english four are related through the PIE word kʷetwóres, as basically all words for 4 in indoeuropean languages are
In my humble linguistics experience where there's smoke there's fire - many new languages words that sound similar may have and common abstract ancestor in one of the old proto languages
Yet 'consume' and 'consummate' have entirely separate origins so it isn't always a safe assumption.
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#139There's a common pattern in population dynamics that I've observed, which probably has a formal name: A given system with (to simplify) two types of behavior: good and bad will tolerate and self correct up to certain percentage of bad actors (call this the jerk threshold, JT) after which all participants switch to the bad behavior. Examples are line formation for a service, cutting people off in traffic, stealing fro…
They've actually had to try to make people more of a jerk in the midwest, and instruct them on why the "zipper merge" is NOT bad: https://www.dot.state.mn.us/zippermerge/
Otherwise if there's a sign that says "Left Lane Closed 10 Miles Ahead" everyone will get in the right lane for ten miles.
Re: Donating forks to the dining hall
#140There's a common pattern in population dynamics that I've observed, which probably has a formal name: A given system with (to simplify) two types of behavior: good and bad will tolerate and self correct up to certain percentage of bad actors (call this the jerk threshold, JT) after which all participants switch to the bad behavior. Examples are line formation for a service, cutting people off in traffic, stealing fro…
Speaking of population dynamics, I enjoyed the "Parable of the Polygons"[1]. It shows with simple simulations an example of individual biases being different from collective biases. This difference leads to different collective behavior depending on environmental conditions. Similar to your example of individuals having a certain "jerk"ness, but the collective can pass a "jerk" threshold, which leads to an increase in jerk behavior.