Things you should know by now, but only just discovered

We learned what they were at some point, but the presentation is lost in my memory. Then we learned to calculate them from abstract problems using slide rules, or tables in a large book. Then we moved on to other topics.

My problem is that they were never presented to me as having practical value. It was just "you have to know this", and the problems were not grounded in any utilitarian setting. So of course to me they were bizarre, arbitrary numbers that one looked up in a table or pushed around plastic bars to get at...

Sigh... The '70's really sucked in some ways.

I just realized what the "6 10 21" in the Blade Runner 2049 trailers is.

deftly wrote:

I just realized what the "6 10 21" in the Blade Runner 2049 trailers is.

...and?!

PaladinTom wrote:
deftly wrote:

I just realized what the "6 10 21" in the Blade Runner 2049 trailers is.

...and?!

It adds up to 37. In a row.

I just realized what the 2049 in the Blade Runner 2049 title is.

Spoiler:

It adds up to 69.

Alz wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:
deftly wrote:

I just realized what the "6 10 21" in the Blade Runner 2049 trailers is.

...and?!

It adds up to 37. In a row.

Still don't get it.

PaladinTom wrote:
Alz wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:
deftly wrote:

I just realized what the "6 10 21" in the Blade Runner 2049 trailers is.

...and?!

It adds up to 37. In a row.

Still don't get it.

Spoiler:
PaladinTom wrote:
Alz wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:
deftly wrote:

I just realized what the "6 10 21" in the Blade Runner 2049 trailers is.

...and?!

It adds up to 37. In a row.

Still don't get it.

Spoiler:

Some of this is speculation. The original movie took place in 2019. Rachel was 2 years old, and Nexus-6 had a 4-year lifespan. It's her grave marker, in the date format the rest of the world uses. She died on October 6, 2021. Which means her incep date was October 6, 2017, which is also the date of the movie premiere.

deftly wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:
Alz wrote:
PaladinTom wrote:
deftly wrote:

I just realized what the "6 10 21" in the Blade Runner 2049 trailers is.

...and?!

It adds up to 37. In a row.

Still don't get it.

Spoiler:

Some of this is speculation. The original movie took place in 2019. Rachel was 2 years old, and Nexus-6 had a 4-year lifespan. It's her grave marker, in the date format the rest of the world uses. She died on October 6, 2021. Which means her incep date was October 6, 2017, which is also the date of the movie premiere.

So, Half Life 3 confirmed?

Jonman wrote:

I have an interesting-sounding job.

The reality of it is 50% spreadsheet-ninja, and 50% rules-lawyer. The only unusual part is that occasionally, my office goes faster and higher up than yours does.

Still kinda jealous. I've spent 21 years trying to figure out how to get my office into the back seat of an F-15. One of these days!

Boudreaux wrote:
Jonman wrote:

I have an interesting-sounding job.

The reality of it is 50% spreadsheet-ninja, and 50% rules-lawyer. The only unusual part is that occasionally, my office goes faster and higher up than yours does.

Still kinda jealous. I've spent 21 years trying to figure out how to get my office into the back seat of an F-15. One of these days!

You're right, that would be cool! Not gonna happen for me either, though. My occasional flying office isn't that much different from flying commercial - we're not allowed to sit in the fancy business class or 1st class seats for fear of damaging them before the airplane is handed off to the customer, so I sit in a regular economy class seat, staring at data on a laptop screen.

I do get to play with all the buttons I can find though. Including the "turn the airplane into a Pride parade" button:

IMAGE(https://c1.staticflickr.com/8/7102/7276112274_bc8bc33eef_b.jpg)

Ha! Yeah I think I remember you posting that before. That's awesome.

The closest I get is sitting in the backseat of a 15 or 18 during engine runs in a hush house. Which is cool, but it's also basically the dry humping of fighter jet experiences.

That is the bestest best airplane pic, Jonman.

Boudreaux wrote:

Ha! Yeah I think I remember you posting that before. That's awesome.

The closest I get is sitting in the backseat of a 15 or 18 during engine runs in a hush house. Which is cool, but it's also basically the dry humping of fighter jet experiences.

Indeed. I've done my share of dry humping Apaches back in the day. Used to sit in the avionics integration rig, which had a mock-up of the aircraft (tandem cockpits, with the avionics installed in representative locations), with the radar on the roof above, the FLIR unit just outside the window, and the cannon and rocket pods installed on stands behind clear plastic walls, plumbed into hydraulics so they were actuatable.

Used to sit there with the helmet on, cannon slaved to the helmet, and track passing trucks by looking at them in all their green fuzzy night-sight glory. Weren't allowed to dry-fire the cannon as it caused plaster to fall off the ceiling in the office below.

Robear wrote:

That is the bestest best airplane pic, Jonman. :-)

Couldn't find a gif of it, so you can't see the rainbow slowly scrolling down the length of the cabin.

Robear wrote:

Logarithms are just the inverse of exponents. If someone had said that sentence to me in, like, 8th grade, my school life would have been vastly improved.

How logarithms clicked for me was visualizing the integral of 1/x. Always adding smaller and smaller amounts, but never ending. Exponential function was just an inverse then of logarithmic one. With those two pieces of information, constructed in my head in 5 minutes, I finally understood like 2 years of painfully impenetrable math.

MoonDragon wrote:
Robear wrote:

Logarithms are just the inverse of exponents. If someone had said that sentence to me in, like, 8th grade, my school life would have been vastly improved.

How logarithms clicked for me was visualizing the integral of 1/x. Always adding smaller and smaller amounts, but never ending. Exponential function was just an inverse then of logarithmic one. With those two pieces of information, constructed in my head in 5 minutes, I finally understood like 2 years of painfully impenetrable math.

Huh?

MoonDragon wrote:
Robear wrote:

Logarithms are just the inverse of exponents. If someone had said that sentence to me in, like, 8th grade, my school life would have been vastly improved.

How logarithms clicked for me was visualizing the integral of 1/x. Always adding smaller and smaller amounts, but never ending. Exponential function was just an inverse then of logarithmic one. With those two pieces of information, constructed in my head in 5 minutes, I finally understood like 2 years of painfully impenetrable math.

I always thought you can experience the logarithm through experiencing diminishing returns. If you put in some effort in the beginning you get a lot out of it, but then you put in more and more energy and you get less and less out of it.

And therefore: why bother learning more than is absolutely necessary to pass the exam?

If you actually try to watch those Youtube Gimli Glider videos, they stop at the end of segment 2, which is at the worst possible place. Part 3 has been removed, so you can't easily watch the whole thing.

This is the same video, except with an American announcer instead of a British one:

https://vimeo.com/55800609

The announcer delivers identical lines, just with a different accent. If you got stuck at the end of the second Youtube slice, you can pick up at 2/3 of the way through this one.

Moondragon, thank you, that is indeed the other piece of the puzzle for me. Derivatives change like exponents; integrals change like inverse exponents?

It’s funny that this connection exists, because when I finally learned calculus, I learned it from a physicist, and he didn’t give a damn about the underlying proofs. He was all about delta vee over time and approximations in your head. So calculus clicked for me when it was directly attached to engineering problems, and it was no problem then.

Math is a lot more fun than I thought it was when I was in high school.

Boudreaux wrote:

Ha! Yeah I think I remember you posting that before. That's awesome.

The closest I get is sitting in the backseat of a 15 or 18 during engine runs in a hush house. Which is cool, but it's also basically the dry humping of fighter jet experiences.

It's funny, I was asked the other day whether I regret hurting my medical career chances by staying out in the fleet for so long. My response was essentially "hell no, I got to achieve my dream of getting catapulted off an aircraft carrier in a fighter a bunch of times." Between achieving that dream and finding my awesome wife, I'd have to be kind of an ass to regret the damage to my career. Not many get the privilege!

My nightmares about having to do a maths exam when I skipped most of the classes are going to get worse now, aren't they.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

My nightmares about having to do a maths exam when I skipped most of the classes are going to get worse now, aren't they.

Naked and with your hands shrinking logarithmically so you can no longer use the pencil.

Not naked. Just underwear.

Mermaidpirate wrote:

My nightmares about having to do a maths exam when I skipped most of the classes are going to get worse now, aren't they.

Skipping class gives you more time to learn and practice, plus you get to piss off class mates when you only show up on test days and still get 100%.

RawkGWJ wrote:

Not naked. Just underwear.

Asymptotically naked.

krev82 wrote:

Skipping class gives you more time to learn and practice, plus you get to piss off class mates when you only show up on test days and still get 100%.

I'll have to remember this next time I have a nightmare about a test for a class I hadn't been to all semester and I'm not even sure where it's located. Any tips on finding the damn classroom?

SillyRabbit wrote:
krev82 wrote:

Skipping class gives you more time to learn and practice, plus you get to piss off class mates when you only show up on test days and still get 100%.

I'll have to remember this next time I have a nightmare about a test for a class I hadn't been to all semester and I'm not even sure where it's located. Any tips on finding the damn classroom?

It's your dream. The classroom is wherever you will it to be!

That's actually how I beat a chasing dream dragon once. I stopped, yelled 'this is MY dream', turned around and spit fire until nothing but bones were left.

dejanzie wrote:

It's your dream. The classroom is wherever you will it to be!
That's actually how I beat a chasing dream dragon once. I stopped, yelled 'this is MY dream', turned around and spit fire until nothing but bones were left.

That's awesome! I feel like I sometimes have some control in my dreams, so I'm keeping your and krev's suggestions tucked in my subconscious and hope to be able to call on them in times of need!

Michael Clarke Duncan died some years ago