At this time of year, at this latitude, “sunset” is a rather diffuse business. Sometime after 10 pm the sun dips below the horizon a little east of North and then appears again around 3 am a little south of East.
These were taken on the Baltic (latitude c. 59.7ºN), while just leaving the Stockholm archipelago, looking roughly North-North-West at about 9pm.
Summer’s not over, but the days are getting shorter again.
Mathematics trivia – but I do like the elegant solution.
At Wimbledon the men’s and women’s tournaments each start with 128 players. The question somebody asked yesterday was how many matches would be played in each tournament. Of course the winner would play 7 matches in 7 rounds (27 = 128).
The long-winded solution to the total number of matches = 64+32+16+8+4+2+1 = 127
But the elegant solution is, of course, that with 128 players and one winner there are only 127 losers and therefore 127 matches are necessary and sufficient for them to lose.
Clearly with 2n participants there must be 2n-1 matches.
And more generally, formulated as a matter of logic,
“In any knockout tournament, the number of matches is one per loser and therefore one less than the number of contestants”
First came Grexit, which threatened, but never came to pass,
Then came Brexit which took a goodly bit of brass,
Next, of course, was Nexit as the Dutch showed their class,
Followed closely by Swexit which showed the EU to be an ass.
Le Pen was shrill in calling for a Fraxit,
Even the Lega Nord saw benefit in an Ixit,
Latin solidarity raised the spectre of a Poxit and a Spaxit,
And the Germans desperately resisted any Gexit.
The Danes couldn’t wait to implement a Dexit,
Which stirred the Greeks enough to go through with their Grexit,
Agitated Finns were not too slow to go ahead with Fixit,
And Brussels couldn’t survive the final straw of a Bexit.
The polls open in the UK in about 10 minutes. By this time tomorrow we shall learn that the UK has probably voted to remain in the EU – by a surprisingly large margin.
(Neither “leave” or “remain” fit my desires, since I would like to see the UK stay in the EU but I would like the EU to suffer a very bloody nose. A third alternative “remain with conditions” would have been my preference).
The Brexit campaign has been a boon for cartoonists and there have been many very good ones. (A simple Google search produces a huge number and the quality is pretty high).
My favourite is one by Alexander Dubovsky in Cartoon Movement because it matches my view of a dysfunctional EU with the UK threatening – with the risk of being overwhelmed – to leave a rudderless raft.
european disintegration by alexander_dubovsky
Time to take a few days off.
shades of green
summer pink
My attempts at losing weight are primarily undermined by my liking for cheese. Not that beer and rice and potatoes don’t contribute, but the connection with cheese is – for me – pronounced and immediate.
So I looked at some data on cheese consumption and obesity data for the US which is readily available. A similarity of shape between growth of obesity prevalence and cheese consumption is apparent. But the similarity is much more pronounced with the consumption of Italian rather than the total amount of cheese or just American cheese ……..
But avoiding Italian cheese as a sop to my cheese addiction is not going to help me…
Indian Americans now totally dominate the US Spelling Bee competition. It was the third straight year of joint winners at the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Nihar Janga, 11, of Austin, Texas, and Jairam Hathwar, 13, of Corning, New York, were declared co-champions at the National Spelling Bee on Thursday.
May 26, 2016; National Harbor, MD, USA; Jairam Hathwar, 13, of Painted Post, N.Y. (L), and Nihar Janga, 11, of Austin, Texas (R), celebrate as co-champions during the 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center. Image : Reuters
Seventeen out of the last twenty one winners (from 1999 to 2016), including all champions for the most recent nine years (from 2008-2016, including 2014, 2015, and 2016’s pairs of co-champions, for a total of twelve champions during this interval), have been Indian Americans, reflecting the recent dominance of students of this community in this competition. Indian Americans make up less than one percent of the U.S. population. In 2016, Nihar Janga from Austin, Texas, became the youngest ever champion when he won the title at the age of 11.
The 2016 Scripps National Spelling Bee featured co-champions for the sixth time in the competition’s history, the previous occurrences having been in 1950, 1957, 1962, 2014, and 2015. (Wikipedia)
It must be genetic. But for some reason the spelling gene does not express itself in India. Obviously some epigenetic factor is in play.
My hypothesis is that all Indians have the spelling gene but it is only expressed when triggered by a geographical factor to be found only in the US.
Related:
Why are Indian-Americans sweeping the US spelling bee?
The k2p blog 