The only use of a measurement system is communication, and communication is obviously easier when the measurement system is shared by all parties. Given that the metric system is already used by nearly all of humanity, and given that it is a much more elegant system than the imperial system, it is only logical that the metric system be adopted by the United States as early as possible.
In terms of measuring temperature perhaps the imperial system is more intuitive; humans typically live in the range of 0 to 100 F. Furthermore, the smallest temperature change detectable by humans is thought to be about 1F. The Celsius scale has water freezing at 0C and boiling at 100C, which is more convenient in academic contexts, but potentially less convenient in everyday life, which occurs over the range of roughly -20C to 40C.
Now that we've seen the success of the imperial system, let's examine its failings.
As far as measuring sizes the imperial system is woefully awkward. In length the four units - inch, foot, yard, and mile - are all based on obscure historical precedents and are all commonly used. Yet the conversion between inches and yards (how good are you at dividing by 36?), or between miles and anything else, is more or less impossible to do precisely without a calculator. The metric system deals only in factors of ten from the base unit, a meter, which comes from the size of the earth. Similarly for volume, one milliliter is the same as one cubic centimeter (and so on with powers of ten) while imperial units have the fluid ounce, the cup (8 ounces, half of a pint), the pint (the size of one pound of water), the quart (2 pints), and the gallon (4 quarts, 231 cubic inches).
When measuring mass and weight, the imperial system is not only awkward but lazy. The metric system distinguishes mass (the amount of stuff something is made of) from weight (how hard something is pulled down by gravity). In the imperial system both are measured in pounds. Gravity is very close to constant on Earth - varying by less than one percent between Mount Everest and the Dead Sea - but this is still inelegant, particularly in a scientific context. Similarly to length and volume we see that imperial weight is measured in several distinct units: the avoirdupois ounce (about the weight of one fluid ounce of water), the pound (16 ounces), and the ton (2000 pounds). On the other hand the metric system, predictably, uses powers of ten from the base units gram (or ton, which is exactly one million grams) and Newton (on Earth, gravity is about 10 m/s/s so you get ten Newtons for each gram).
Seconds are used by both metric and imperial systems, so of course changing them is not up for debate - though the system could obviously be more elegant.
For all of time humanity has had one constant time scale: the day. It's a length of time that is natural to anyone who has ever lived outside the arctic and antarctic circles. The year is next, as it comes with the passing of seasons. However, the time scales we use in our day to day lives - seconds, minutes, and hours - are all arbitrary. One second is 1/86400 day. That means that we could have easily decided to put ten "hours" to a day, one hundred "minutes" to an "hour," and one hundred "seconds" to a "minute." In that case a "second" and a second would have been nearly the same and a few "minutes" (aka a few millidays) would have been about a few minutes.
We run into more arbitrary units and inelegance when we look at days and months. For example, we have twelve months which can be 28, 29, 30, or 31 days long, and, as such, generally don't divide into an even number of weeks. The year also does not divide into an even number of weeks. And perhaps my favorite: the names September, October, November, and December come from the numbers 7, 8, 9, and 10 (but they're the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th months).
It takes just over 365 days for the Earth to go around the Sun. Unfortunately 365 factors into 5*73. Five months of 73 days each and vice versa both seem pretty awkward. If we knock off one day, however, we find that 364 factors to 13*7*2*2. That allows for 13 months of 28 days or 14 months of 26 days. A month of 28 days will allow a whole number of weeks per month (a 26 day month can be divided only into two weeks of 13 day), which seems nice. Furthermore, 28 days is pretty close to the lunar month.
We end up neglecting 1.24 days per year. There's a whole family of proposed reforms to the Gregorian calendar which in large part vary in how they aim to deal with this little amount. It's a mess. Some favor keeping the equinoxes on the same date while others want the same date to always fall on the same day of the week. I like the idea of having a leap month every twenty years, which allows significant drift of equinoxes. (For higher order accuracy a leap month would need to be skipped once every few centuries, just like leap days are now). This is by no means a provably best system, but I think it is clear that we can do better than the current system.
| This blog is no longer being updated. You're looking for Cooking with Charles. |  |
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
Marriage
As religious definitions are laid out in ancient texts, I'm specifically discussing the government institution here. It's not the place of the state to tell a religious organization which ceremonies they are to perform, but the other side of that coin is that the legal definition of marriage ought to be based on facts and reason (as should any other legal policy).
The first amendment prevents the government from establishing marriage based on biblical prescriptions. And rules based on our sexual or reproductive habits would be an affront to personal privacy. As a result, from the standpoint of the government, marriage is little more than a statement of financial partnership; taxes can be filed jointly, money can be easily inherited, and insurance can be joined. Marriage also allows sharing of privileged information such as medical documents even when an individual is incapacitated.
When viewed this way it's obvious that gay marriage is just as valid as straight marriage. But it's not obvious at all that a marriage must be a contract between exactly two people.
It's clear that we can't go back to polygamous times - one man owning several wives - but I would contend that the problem with that is the gender asymmetry rather than the multi-adult household. There are Americans who choose to engage in non-binary long term romantic relationships. It's a small minority, of course, but so is homosexuality. Only a few percent of Americans are gay. And as we are learning in the marriage equality movement, allowing people who love one another to get married does not negatively affect anyone.
The only possible downside of group marriages that I have been able to come up with is that of tax evasion. A super-wealthy individual could in principle acquire dozens of dependents through a massive group marriage, thereby dodging their tax responsibilities. However, this right already exists, more or less, through the formation of a corporation or LLC.
The first amendment prevents the government from establishing marriage based on biblical prescriptions. And rules based on our sexual or reproductive habits would be an affront to personal privacy. As a result, from the standpoint of the government, marriage is little more than a statement of financial partnership; taxes can be filed jointly, money can be easily inherited, and insurance can be joined. Marriage also allows sharing of privileged information such as medical documents even when an individual is incapacitated.
When viewed this way it's obvious that gay marriage is just as valid as straight marriage. But it's not obvious at all that a marriage must be a contract between exactly two people.
It's clear that we can't go back to polygamous times - one man owning several wives - but I would contend that the problem with that is the gender asymmetry rather than the multi-adult household. There are Americans who choose to engage in non-binary long term romantic relationships. It's a small minority, of course, but so is homosexuality. Only a few percent of Americans are gay. And as we are learning in the marriage equality movement, allowing people who love one another to get married does not negatively affect anyone.
The only possible downside of group marriages that I have been able to come up with is that of tax evasion. A super-wealthy individual could in principle acquire dozens of dependents through a massive group marriage, thereby dodging their tax responsibilities. However, this right already exists, more or less, through the formation of a corporation or LLC.
Sex Education
The USA has the highest rate of unplanned pregnancy and abortion in the developed world. Everyone can agree that this is a problem.
The solution is not abstinence-only sex education. Empirically that's hardly better than none at all. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which has for decades conducted surveys regarding sexual and reproductive health, premarital sex is nearly universal among Americans. Abstinence-only sex education does not correlate with lower rates of premarital sex. It does correlate with lower rates of contraception use, and as a result higher rates of unplanned pregnancy. These correlations hold even when adjusted for socioeconomic factors.
The solution is obvious. Comprehensive sex education must be compulsory. Children should be literate in matters of sexual health by their teens, at which point half of them will be sexually active, educated or not. The government does not have control over the body of a child but it can do its best to ensure that he or she makes educated choices.
Since it is a fact that young people will have sex, even if they've been told it's unsafe, and even if they've signed an abstinence pledge, the effort must be to ensure that contraception is available to them when they do. This is particularly the case for those who live in poverty, as becoming pregnant at a young age creates positive feedback, sabotaging educational and career options, and making it less likely that the individual will rise from poverty.
Source
Source
The solution is not abstinence-only sex education. Empirically that's hardly better than none at all. According to the Guttmacher Institute, which has for decades conducted surveys regarding sexual and reproductive health, premarital sex is nearly universal among Americans. Abstinence-only sex education does not correlate with lower rates of premarital sex. It does correlate with lower rates of contraception use, and as a result higher rates of unplanned pregnancy. These correlations hold even when adjusted for socioeconomic factors.
The solution is obvious. Comprehensive sex education must be compulsory. Children should be literate in matters of sexual health by their teens, at which point half of them will be sexually active, educated or not. The government does not have control over the body of a child but it can do its best to ensure that he or she makes educated choices.
Since it is a fact that young people will have sex, even if they've been told it's unsafe, and even if they've signed an abstinence pledge, the effort must be to ensure that contraception is available to them when they do. This is particularly the case for those who live in poverty, as becoming pregnant at a young age creates positive feedback, sabotaging educational and career options, and making it less likely that the individual will rise from poverty.
Source
Source
Written English
Despite being the most widely spoken language on Earth (though Mandarin has far more native speakers), English is very poorly constructed. Sentence structure and verb conjugation aside, we can critique the very phonetic system that written English uses. Between phonetic degeneracies and pronunciations imported from other languages (eg. pizza, ballet, school), it is not at all obvious from the spelling how many words in the English language pronounced. Since the purpose of written language is to record the oral tradition this is an obvious problem.
The problem is historical, of course; English was built over the course of centuries and through the merging of cultures. Significant efforts have historically been made to standardize it and have, to various extents, been successful. But, unlike ever before in history, the majority of all written English right now is screened by computers. Emails and internet content of course never make it to print, but even books and newspapers are arranged digitally. The standard spell-check dictionary means that an imposition of phonetic changes to English would be much less technically difficult - and much less painful - than it has been in the past.
If we assume (semi-reasonably) that the ubiquity of automated typesetting would handle implementation, we can simply outline the changes that would need to be made.
Sometimes in English it's just the case that the wrong letter is used in a word. For example, there's no need to have PH or GH make a sound like an F; we have the letter F! Similarly, G is used as in GORGE or GROAN, leaving J perfectly suited for words like JILL and GEORGE. The letters S and Z see this problem as well, though perhaps due to their similar sounds and our lazy pronunciation. Z is pronounced as in OOZE, ZEST, and TOPAZ. S is as in SLEEP, SONG, and OATS. Though CHARLES is spelled with an S, it's obviously pronounced with a Z.
Silent letters are almost a non-issue. Since they aren't pronounced, nobody should even notice if they're removed; note that THROUGH is already often abbreviated THRU. This could also be done for some vowels, usually E. Removing the E from the end of a word like DONE necessitates a root change (to DUN) but in some cases the letter is just outright skipped; note that CHARLES is universally pronounced CHARLZ.
The next two issues go hand in hand. Some consonants are redundant, and some sounds don't have letters.
The letters K and S are unambiguous (ignoring for a moment the existence of digrams like SH). And between the two of them they obsolete the letter C (which is sometimes a K and sometimes an S) and the letter X (which is always pronounced KS). We also see that Q is redundant with K, perhaps having QU replaced by KW or KOO.
(English has several consonants - Y and W - which defy their definition. In the middle of a word, Y produces a sound that could just as easily be attributed to I; see for examples OYSTER and ACRYLIC. At the end of a word it's perhaps EE or IE, depending on the word, but certainly some vowel sound or diphthong. W, on the other hand, is always a short OO. Whether that's deserving of its own is a topic for discussion by someone better versed in vowel architectures than I am.)
Looking at the consonants we can see that we've freed up, at least, C, X, and Y. And we have without letters the digrams CH, SH, and TH. The obvious solution is to use the character Y to mean TH, the character X to mean CH, and the character C to mean SH.
So rather than CHARLES, we would write my name XARLZ. It has one vowel, appropriate for a word with one syllable, and each letter represents a unique consonant sound.
When we move on from consonants to vowels, the whole issue becomes much more complicated. Phonetically English has at least a dozen vowel sounds, and of course we have only five characters for them. In Spanish this is solved by the extensive use of diphthongs while in Hungarian the use of dots, accents, umlauts, and double accents is used to cheat them up to fourteen vowel characters. As a result neither language has the vowel ambiguity we see in English. It's not obvious which, if either, of these two is best but they do offer a proof of concept that vowels can be done in a consistent way.
Beyond that we reach the topic of capital letters. They serve no real purpose. Capital letters are used to begin sentences, titles, and proper nouns. However, sentences and titles are denoted using punctuation and style as well. And a proper noun is clear from context in all but the most obscure situations. When reading, the meaning of a word is clear whether not it's capitalized.
On the other hand the concept of capitalization adds a whole dimension of arbitrary rules to writing. Is "Pokemon" supposed to be capitalized? How about "god"? In what cases do you capitalize the second part of a hyphenated word in a title? Should "French fries" and "Brussels sprouts" be capitalized? Each of these questions has a correct answer (though it may depend on context or who you ask) yet none of them add any any information to the text.
The problem is historical, of course; English was built over the course of centuries and through the merging of cultures. Significant efforts have historically been made to standardize it and have, to various extents, been successful. But, unlike ever before in history, the majority of all written English right now is screened by computers. Emails and internet content of course never make it to print, but even books and newspapers are arranged digitally. The standard spell-check dictionary means that an imposition of phonetic changes to English would be much less technically difficult - and much less painful - than it has been in the past.
If we assume (semi-reasonably) that the ubiquity of automated typesetting would handle implementation, we can simply outline the changes that would need to be made.
Sometimes in English it's just the case that the wrong letter is used in a word. For example, there's no need to have PH or GH make a sound like an F; we have the letter F! Similarly, G is used as in GORGE or GROAN, leaving J perfectly suited for words like JILL and GEORGE. The letters S and Z see this problem as well, though perhaps due to their similar sounds and our lazy pronunciation. Z is pronounced as in OOZE, ZEST, and TOPAZ. S is as in SLEEP, SONG, and OATS. Though CHARLES is spelled with an S, it's obviously pronounced with a Z.
Silent letters are almost a non-issue. Since they aren't pronounced, nobody should even notice if they're removed; note that THROUGH is already often abbreviated THRU. This could also be done for some vowels, usually E. Removing the E from the end of a word like DONE necessitates a root change (to DUN) but in some cases the letter is just outright skipped; note that CHARLES is universally pronounced CHARLZ.
The next two issues go hand in hand. Some consonants are redundant, and some sounds don't have letters.
The letters K and S are unambiguous (ignoring for a moment the existence of digrams like SH). And between the two of them they obsolete the letter C (which is sometimes a K and sometimes an S) and the letter X (which is always pronounced KS). We also see that Q is redundant with K, perhaps having QU replaced by KW or KOO.
(English has several consonants - Y and W - which defy their definition. In the middle of a word, Y produces a sound that could just as easily be attributed to I; see for examples OYSTER and ACRYLIC. At the end of a word it's perhaps EE or IE, depending on the word, but certainly some vowel sound or diphthong. W, on the other hand, is always a short OO. Whether that's deserving of its own is a topic for discussion by someone better versed in vowel architectures than I am.)
Looking at the consonants we can see that we've freed up, at least, C, X, and Y. And we have without letters the digrams CH, SH, and TH. The obvious solution is to use the character Y to mean TH, the character X to mean CH, and the character C to mean SH.
So rather than CHARLES, we would write my name XARLZ. It has one vowel, appropriate for a word with one syllable, and each letter represents a unique consonant sound.
When we move on from consonants to vowels, the whole issue becomes much more complicated. Phonetically English has at least a dozen vowel sounds, and of course we have only five characters for them. In Spanish this is solved by the extensive use of diphthongs while in Hungarian the use of dots, accents, umlauts, and double accents is used to cheat them up to fourteen vowel characters. As a result neither language has the vowel ambiguity we see in English. It's not obvious which, if either, of these two is best but they do offer a proof of concept that vowels can be done in a consistent way.
Beyond that we reach the topic of capital letters. They serve no real purpose. Capital letters are used to begin sentences, titles, and proper nouns. However, sentences and titles are denoted using punctuation and style as well. And a proper noun is clear from context in all but the most obscure situations. When reading, the meaning of a word is clear whether not it's capitalized.
On the other hand the concept of capitalization adds a whole dimension of arbitrary rules to writing. Is "Pokemon" supposed to be capitalized? How about "god"? In what cases do you capitalize the second part of a hyphenated word in a title? Should "French fries" and "Brussels sprouts" be capitalized? Each of these questions has a correct answer (though it may depend on context or who you ask) yet none of them add any any information to the text.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Soup Swap
This is a bit delayed, but I'm finally getting my recipe from Soup Swap (which was almost four weeks ago!) up here. It was a swimming success and Soup Swap II will hopefully happen sometime in the next few months.
My soup was a sort of chicken and veggie concoction based on this previous recipe. I made significant changes to the vegetables used, some for better and some not.
Ingredients
1 large can (28oz) diced tomatoes
1 quart vegetable stock
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 cups cubed chicken
2 cups chopped carrots
2 cups cubed pumpkin
2 cups sliced zucchini
2 cups chopped red onion
Procedure
Add all ingredients to a large pan. Boil, stirring occasionally, until all vegetables are tender. I did this on the stove and served it in a crock pot, but it's probably doable in a crock pot too.
Vegetable amounts are approximate; you can see in the picture that I was a bit heavy on the pumpkin and a bit light on onions and zucchini.
I didn't realize it as I was cooking it, but this is significantly more vegetable than I had last time, but with the same amount of spice. I would increase each of the spices by about 50%. I also wish I had, like last time, used a clearer broth. This one was pretty dark and it didn't give me the flavor I was looking for. I think I used vegetable bullion cubes before.
The pumpkin was used because I had one around. Others thought it was pretty good but I wasn't a big fan. I think a better addition would be 2/3 dry cup brown rice. Since brown rice takes a while to cook I would then probably add the rice and chicken, boil for fifteen minutes or so, then add the vegetables. If you boil the vegetables for too long they will get mushy.
Overall, this is still a fine recipe. It's even better if you have some bread to dip in it. I'm not sure how many it serves; it was sampled by eight-ish people and left significant leftovers. Probably something like 6 large servings.
I would also like to draw your attention to a few of the other soups that were featured at Soup Swap. I've just got a few pictures here; Sarah has more and is compiling the recipes to send out to everyone.
Most unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of my fridge after soup swap; Between Sarah and me we had just short of ten pounds of soup!
My soup was a sort of chicken and veggie concoction based on this previous recipe. I made significant changes to the vegetables used, some for better and some not.
Ingredients
1 large can (28oz) diced tomatoes
1 quart vegetable stock
1 tsp turmeric
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 cups cubed chicken
2 cups chopped carrots
2 cups cubed pumpkin
2 cups sliced zucchini
2 cups chopped red onion
Procedure
Add all ingredients to a large pan. Boil, stirring occasionally, until all vegetables are tender. I did this on the stove and served it in a crock pot, but it's probably doable in a crock pot too.
Vegetable amounts are approximate; you can see in the picture that I was a bit heavy on the pumpkin and a bit light on onions and zucchini.
I didn't realize it as I was cooking it, but this is significantly more vegetable than I had last time, but with the same amount of spice. I would increase each of the spices by about 50%. I also wish I had, like last time, used a clearer broth. This one was pretty dark and it didn't give me the flavor I was looking for. I think I used vegetable bullion cubes before.
The pumpkin was used because I had one around. Others thought it was pretty good but I wasn't a big fan. I think a better addition would be 2/3 dry cup brown rice. Since brown rice takes a while to cook I would then probably add the rice and chicken, boil for fifteen minutes or so, then add the vegetables. If you boil the vegetables for too long they will get mushy.
Overall, this is still a fine recipe. It's even better if you have some bread to dip in it. I'm not sure how many it serves; it was sampled by eight-ish people and left significant leftovers. Probably something like 6 large servings.
I would also like to draw your attention to a few of the other soups that were featured at Soup Swap. I've just got a few pictures here; Sarah has more and is compiling the recipes to send out to everyone.
 Sarah made French onion soup, complete with cheesy toast. |  Taylor made a spicy chicken chili. |
 Ricky brought a hearty venison stew. |  Aaron and Katie brought wonton soup. |
 Bryn brought a festive Korean soup that you assemble on the spot. | We also had Caitlin's creamy broccoli soup and Alec's cheesy potato and onion soup |
Most unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of my fridge after soup swap; Between Sarah and me we had just short of ten pounds of soup!
Monday, October 3, 2011
French Toast
This is a very simple recipe, and fast enough that you can even make it in the morning before work. From cracking the first egg to chowing down is something like fifteen minutes.
Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 oz vanilla yogurt (approx) (a little smaller than an egg)
1/2 tsp cinnamon... I'm guessing at the amount here. A few shakes of the cinnamon shaker.
baguette
butter
topping
Procedure:
Slice some baguette. How many slices you need will depend on the size of your baguette. Mine was pretty small and I used about eight. I like to cut them diagonally to get that nice angle, plus it makes the slices bigger.
A crunchy baguette is fine, since it will soften up as you cook it, but if it's stale it'll be difficult to cut without breaking it. A baguette only lasts a few days before turning into a rock, so make sure you do something with it if you have one sitting around!
Mix the eggs, yogurt, and cinnamon. Butter a pan. Dip the slices of bread completely, one at a time, in the egg mixture. You will probably want to use a fork to flip them around and perhaps flop some egg on top of them. Slop the toast into the pan. It should cook for a minute, maybe less, then need to be flipped. Wait another minute and serve.
I like to eat my french toast with black cherry jam. Sarah likes maple syrup heated up in the microwave. Applesauce is also a good topping. Sometimes I even just put a slice of pepper bacon on my french toast with nothing else.
This recipe works just fine with regular bread too. Two eggs is about the right amount for four pieces of bread.
Ingredients:
2 eggs
1 oz vanilla yogurt (approx) (a little smaller than an egg)
1/2 tsp cinnamon... I'm guessing at the amount here. A few shakes of the cinnamon shaker.
baguette
butter
topping
Procedure:
Slice some baguette. How many slices you need will depend on the size of your baguette. Mine was pretty small and I used about eight. I like to cut them diagonally to get that nice angle, plus it makes the slices bigger.
A crunchy baguette is fine, since it will soften up as you cook it, but if it's stale it'll be difficult to cut without breaking it. A baguette only lasts a few days before turning into a rock, so make sure you do something with it if you have one sitting around!
Mix the eggs, yogurt, and cinnamon. Butter a pan. Dip the slices of bread completely, one at a time, in the egg mixture. You will probably want to use a fork to flip them around and perhaps flop some egg on top of them. Slop the toast into the pan. It should cook for a minute, maybe less, then need to be flipped. Wait another minute and serve.
I like to eat my french toast with black cherry jam. Sarah likes maple syrup heated up in the microwave. Applesauce is also a good topping. Sometimes I even just put a slice of pepper bacon on my french toast with nothing else.
This recipe works just fine with regular bread too. Two eggs is about the right amount for four pieces of bread.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Skittles Vodka
Hey all, Sorry for my long time away. I've been busy and haven't had much time for exciting recipes. However, today I've got something pretty exciting. You may have seen posts about Skittles Vodka floating around the internet in the past few months. Well, I did too. So I made some. It's great.
My first batch was with the classic Skittles. I split them up by color and did each one separately. I did end up mixing yellow and green ("lemon" and "lime"), which was pretty good. But I felt that red and orange just tasted like chemicals and the purple one like cough syrup.
I went back through with the Skittles Blenders and had a much better experience. That's what I'm going to share with you.
The first thing you need to do is choose your color (or colors). I used a mix of pink (Strawberry Lime Blast) and yellow-orange (Mango Lemonade Freeze). An entire bag of Skittles will make about one and a half liters/quarts, so all of two colors makes about twenty ounces.
The first thing you do is add the vodka to your jar of Skittles. They should start to melt just about immediately. If you look closely you'll be able to see the color sloughing off of them.
More updates soon, I hope! I have a few more waiting to go.
My first batch was with the classic Skittles. I split them up by color and did each one separately. I did end up mixing yellow and green ("lemon" and "lime"), which was pretty good. But I felt that red and orange just tasted like chemicals and the purple one like cough syrup.
I went back through with the Skittles Blenders and had a much better experience. That's what I'm going to share with you.
The first thing you need to do is choose your color (or colors). I used a mix of pink (Strawberry Lime Blast) and yellow-orange (Mango Lemonade Freeze). An entire bag of Skittles will make about one and a half liters/quarts, so all of two colors makes about twenty ounces.
The first thing you do is add the vodka to your jar of Skittles. They should start to melt just about immediately. If you look closely you'll be able to see the color sloughing off of them.
 |  |
More updates soon, I hope! I have a few more waiting to go.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)