Signore Galilei

I’ve written three posts in the past judging geometric shapes. For this post, I’m going back to that series, this time for irrational numbers. As per the conditions of the series, we are judging them as fine, lame, awesome, overrated (not as awesome as they seem), and underrated (more awesome than they seem). Fine: π…

No matter what I do, I always find myself back at the Mongol Invasion of the Khwarazmian Empire. Every time I go on a Wikipedia rabbit hole for long enough, I go back to reading about this specific war from the early 13th century. It’s some sort of attractor state for my brain, along with…

Artemis II is awesome and exciting. Basically none of that excitement is from the firsts it achieved or the records it set. It’s exciting because “oh my gosh look at those pictures!” and “Space! Rockets! Whoooosh! Nyooomm!”

This past weekend, I went to a reunion for the Harvard Glee Club, and it was nostalgic in all the best ways. For an introvert like me, there’s no entirely non-awkward way to tell someone you went to Harvard. The best trick I’ve found is to immediately shift the topic of conversation to something related.…

This week, I will be heading back to Inkhaven, the place where I started this blog. This time, as an alum, I have two new privileges compared to last time. First, I’m allowed to book one week at a time, rather than an entire month. As much as I loved Inkhaven the first time around,…

Hyderabad is a South Asian city with about ten million residents. Its name means “Lion City”, named for caliph Ali, one of the prophet Muhammad’s successors: Ali gained the epithet “Lion” after his lion-like valor in battle. Hyderabad was founded by the sultan Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah in 1591 to serve as his capital. It…

This is Abo Elementary School, in Artesia, New Mexico. It’s also a nuclear shelter. I remember seeing black and yellow fallout shelter signs in my own public school buildings growing up in the 2000’s and early 2010’s. Generally, the shelters these referred to were a concrete room in a larger building that had long since…

I recently came across the following joke map online: Surprisingly, and probably unintentionally, there’s a grain of historical truth to this “Megachusetts”. Massachusetts’ original colonial charter specified northern and southern borders, and that the colony should extend all the way from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean, or rather: “…from the Atlantick and Westerne…

Ah, alphabet.  Basically the backbone of books.  Certainly complex in its creation, contorted over centuries.  (Dictionary didacts have doubtless deduced my design for this diatribe.) Every English (etc.) elementary educator exudes each explanation essentially equally.  From our forebearers to the future, the form and function hold firm.  Guided, we get a given gallimaufry of glyphs…

You’ve read the title. Aircraft carriers of where powered by what? I was just as surprised as you are, but yes, they really did exist. I now introduce you to USS Wolverine and USS Sable: