Tired of only seeing some relatives at funerals,

we've planned some road trips. The south loop was earlier this year. We just finished the central-east trip. In retrospect, it was probably wise to not include Florida as part of the plan. Of course we dropped the North Carolina leg--I'm not in the finest shape to help out.

Gas mileage through West Virginia wasn't quite nice. Minivans... As we ate our snacks at a rest stop there, a young lady drove up in a car leaking some kind of fluid from the front, who promptly got on the phone. I asked if she was OK--she'd hit a deer, and apparently it went under her car. I'd not thought of that damage vector before. (We didn't see any deer.)

I listened a lot, and learned some things about building airports and dog training for deer hunting and building garden hardware, and about family I'd not been in close contact with for a while--some things joyful and some sad.

Allegheny cemetery

One feature not frequently remarked on is the groundhogs, who leave surprise holes here and there to twist the unwary ankle.

Many of the older stones were eroded by acid rain, and are difficult to make out, but there's a great deal of what is essentially public artwork honoring the memory of people you've never heard of (and some you have). I gather that the Winter mausoleum is the most famous. Winter copied the design of the Woolworth mausoleum: a pseudo-Egyptian temple with busty Greek-style sphynxes and heiroglyphs that mixed real phrases and gibberish, and doors showing the proprietor being aided by de-animal-headed Egyptian gods.

Many of the mausoleums have stained glass within, which you can view through the front door's grating--Winter's has 3 panels. Oddly, even the good Father Pitt/Dr Boli only mentioned one of them--which shows Winter as Pharoah enthroned. Modesty seems not to have been Emil Winter's most prominent virtue.

Yes, the noses of the bronze figures on the door show signs that visitors have been rubbing them, and the snooty sphynxes show similar signs, though not on the nose.

It isn't just rich businessmen who are buried in the cemetery, of course, a friend and confidant "of the illustrious Washington" is also buried there. Daniel O'Niell's statue shows him still at his editor's desk, and the (presumably recopied) stones for Ebenezer Denny and his wife Nany Denny ("Stop, Passenger! and here view whatever is admirable summed up in the character of Mrs. Nancy Denny...") tell of older ways of memorializing.

Many plots had a little walled flower garden above the grave--sometimes a painfully small grave with small numbers on the stone. Once there was a fashion for headstones shaped like scrolls, which, combined with the flower-garden cavity gives the impression of a giant sardine can being opened with a rolling key.

Karl Lennart Gronros from Finland had a stone paid for by his friends so that all would know that the 24-year-old was a mechanical engineer.

It is a bit disconcerting to see so many headstones for people younger than me.

Risks

I've heard the stories from North Carolina about officials blocking aid workers (though nothing so far on followup), and also people saying that the authorities have to manage who gets in so as to keep out looters and other predators. It hasn't been mentioned, but they need to keep out amateurs who'll get into trouble and need rescue themselves. (I've also read testimony that they haven't seen anything like that kind of friction with authorities--I'd bet it's more a function of who the folks on the ground are instead of policy.)

We need to balance risks. Predators flock to the scene--they already have. But the risks from them seem, so far, relatively low compared to the risks of locals running out of clean water and medicine. It isn't a nice way to think about things, but in an emergency you have to triage and spend your energies efficiently, and some people are going to get murdered who wouldn't have been if you spent the time to vet everybody every time, but more will live because they got uncontaminated water to drink in time, or got shelter when their home and roads washed away.

We're not always good at evaluating risks.

Grim says the Feds haven't shown up yet in his area, but local and private assistance are helping a lot.

Reminder

Their web site mentioned a 9am service, which was early enough for us to attend and still continue travelling. The service turned out to be a Sunday School, which turned out to be the pastor lecturing on background and interpretation of the passage in Revelation addressed to the church in Philadelphia.

I'm fairly bald, and couldn't tear out much hair--his background was amazingly confused. He mixed decades and centuries, put Nero in the 300's, explained that Catholic meant imperial (didn't seem to know about the Orthodox at all), explained to the assembled that Baptists maintained a parallel unbroken tradition back to the apostles and didn't break away from the Catholics, and when one woman asked him afterwards why he didn't end with prayer, asked that she show him in scripture where this was illustrated or commanded. (Acts 20:36)

I prayed I could find some way of contributing positively, and was granted such an opportunity. But the situation was also a good reminder--I know a fair bit about the Church's history, and the background for the faith, but the important parts lie elsewhere. His history was a garbled mess, but his talk about Jesus' message to the church was fine.

So far

Traveling has been calm, setting aside the occasional lunatic driver, and visits with kinfolk have been very pleasant. And the hotel stays were simple to cancel--though the Black Mountain one had to go through the national number, since the local phones were not up. See Grim for updates to the situation there--when he's able to.

Even as far away as Louisville and Cincinnati we saw trees and branches down.

Minor amusement

I know I should use the time walking laps more productively, but I find it hard to compose in my head: I start a scene, but keep circling back to the beginning. Praying gets distracted too. So. Factoring numbers, anybody?

Everybody knows how to check if (in base 10) a number is divisible by 3: just add the digits, and if the sum is divisible by 3, so is the original. 9 is easy too: just add the digits, and if the sum is divisible by 9, so is the original. 2 is easy: is the right-most digit even? 5 is easy: is the right-most digit 0 or 5? 4 and 8 are easy to do sequentially, or you can look at the last two digits: if divisible by 4, the whole number is. The last 3: if divisible by 8, the whole number is.

Ah, but 7? Hmm. (Spoiler; there's a simple way to check, but I didn't know it then.)

If we've a number k whose digits are $N_n N_{n-1}...N_2 N_1 N_0$, where $N_0$ is the units digit, $N_1$ the 10's, and so on, we can write this as $\sum_i N_i 10^i$. That's trivial. Suppose we divide by 3, but divide each of the $10^i$ terms. For $i=0$ (i.e. 1), we have 0 R1. For $i=1$ we have 3R1, then 33R1, 333R1, etc. Now we have two parts: $\sum_i N_i 33..3$ (a nice integer) and a remainder of $\sum_i N_i (1) / 3$. The leftover part, the sum over the digits, determines whether the number is divisible by 3. OK, that's pretty simple, and proves that the old rule, which we knew already.

Dividing by 9 works the same way, except that the integer part after dividing by 9 is $\sum_i N_i 11..1$ with 1's instead of 3's. The remainders are also 1, just as before and the remainder term is also a sum of the digits, divided by 9.

How about 7?

i	$10^i$	integer	remainder
0	1	0	1
1	10	1	3
2	100	14	2
3	1000	142	6
4	10000	1428	4
5	100000	14285	5
6	1000000	142857	1
	etc

So, If you create the sum $1 N_0 + 3 N_1 + 2 N_2 + 6 N_3 ...$, if the sum is divisible by 7, so is the original number.

Granted, it's not as nice as the simple digit sum, but it works.

Before you ask, no, I only worked out the sketch of this on the track. I need pen and paper as much as the next person.

For those who have been snickering, yes, I looked this up and found the easy way too.

One way to think about the problem is to note that if you think of dividing the number into all the digits except the units digit, and the units digit, there'll only be 1 or 2 possibilities for the units digit for which the whole is divisible by 7. So maybe breaking the number up that way would be productive; maybe there's a simple relationship.

$k = 10 \times A + B$, where $B$ is a single digit. Now noodle around a bit: multiply by $5$. $5 \times k = 50 \times A + 5 \times B = 49 \times A + A + 5 \times B$. Part of that is obviously divisible by 7, so if $A + 5 \times B$ is divisible by 7, the original number is also. E.g. 4627 $4627 = 10{\times}462 + 7$, so $A=462$ and $B=7$. The formula says $462 + 5 \times 7 = 497$. Inspection says that's divisible by 7, so the original was too. Obviously you can use the formula $A - 2B$ as well. You'll find both easily on search engines.

Suppose we wanted to find a similar formula to tell us about 11. We need 2 digits for $B$, so we rewrite our number $k$ as $100 \times A + B$. Looking closer we see $100 \times A + B = 99 \times A + A + B$. Since 99 is already divisible by 11, we immediately see that if $A + B$ is divisible by 11, so is the original number. Check 7271: $72 + 71 = 143$, which is $11 \times 13$.

For 13, it isn't hard to see that $A + 3 \times B$ works: try it with 8593.

No doubt there are tables of these simple tricks somewhere

Yes, the church nursery posts a number in the sanctuary if a parent needs to come see to their child. And yes, I try to factor it.

Thinking about Rome

Roman values at ACOUP, hat tip to AstralCodex

The guardroom was one rod long and one rod wide

I have always found the temple measurements in Ezekiel 40-42 to be rather obscure. Why are these measurements supposed to be important enough to keep track of? They are clearly for a future or a possible temple, not one that existed then or since.

Revelation echoes this, with a twist: "Get up and measure the temple of God and the altar, and those who worship in it. Leave out the court which is outside the temple and do not measure it, for it has been given to the nations". That's suggestive: measurement relates to possession or ownership, perhaps? God owns it in the ultimate sense, but the temple is for the worshippers.

In Genesis there's a different kind of "measurement"; a measurement by foot, and one that puts Abraham in the place he/his is to possess. "Arise, walk about the land through its length and breadth; for I will give it to you."

I have no clue what the measurement numbers are supposed to signify in Ezekiel (if it's a physical future temple, why? in light of Hebrews 10), but I like the idea that measurement might signify "we are there." Measuring is something people do, even if is only "how many of us fit."

Black Mountain, NC

What's interesting to see/do around there? The Biltmore doesn't sound like my cup of tea. I gather there are a number of scenic areas nearby. My wife has a conference at Ridgecrest.

Advice

A reader has asked whether she should return to college after dropping out several years ago. She’s still young, not yet thirty. Advice is dangerous stuff. If taken and the outcome is unhappy, the advice-giver has set himself up for resentment and blame. Rather, I urged my reader to examine her motives and expectations. She’s smart and better-read than most of her contemporaries, so a typical college curriculum could crush her.

Titan testimony

The BBC is reporting on Lochridge's testimony about the Titan's implosion. The pictures are hair-raising--but lack explanation. Delamination as dramatic as that in the picture on the left would almost certainly have been spotted when the submersible was checked after a dive--and why would it delaminate so deep in the structure? What was the test they used that created that split?

The places of greatest stress, and greatest likelihood of water infiltration, would be where the composite met the endcap (or a penetration, but you get extra longitudinal compression from the endcap). I'd expect microscopic water infiltration at an edge flaw to cause the outer layer to delaminate (maybe with a little crackling noise?). That makes the composite structure just a tiny bit thinner there, and exposes the next layer to the water. Maybe there's a flaw handy; maybe not. But I (and apparently quite a few others) would expect material fatigue after a while, and the next layer's boundary with the endcap to slowly fribble.

The picture on the right screams for context. Is that supposed to be a typical layer? Do they pull regular test samples? (If not, why not?)

FWIW, when the leak broke through, the water speed would have been about 270m/sec--end to end in 24msec. A blink is about 100msec. Leaks are bad things

Signs of the times

We'd been having the local paper delivered for over 30 years, and went to online-only a couple of months ago. Delivery was just too expensive to justify. I'd looked at the publishing company's financials a few years ago, and we're not the only ones--what's keeping revenues up for them is printing fliers and whatnot for a wider and wider range.

Two obvious signs of problems are the size of the paper itself (getting slimmer and slimmer) and the ratio of ads to copy (larger and larger)

One I hadn't thought of is the comics. They'd been going with a half-page, of which two were popular re-runs (Peanuts and For Better or Worse). The online edition had an additional page, with a mix of popular and less so--including (would Madison subscribe to a newspaper without it?) Doonesbury.

I hadn't bothered to ask how much these subscriptions cost the newspaper, but I assume that the more popular strips cost more, the reruns a bit less, and the less popular and the drama serials still less.

They just redid their amusements pages, and pretty much everything is new. I get the sense that the comics are a bundle, and not the top-tier bundle either. If my gut reaction that the mix isn't tailored to the community isn't enough evidence: they got rid of Doonesbury. Zippy may aim for a similar demographic, but I'm not familiar enough to say, nor do I care to do the research.

It's no skin off my nose, but that's another metric to watch.

I suppose I should start examining the sports section a bit more carefully. Local sports news is something that they can't acquire just by piggybacking on the national wire services. I figure that'll be the last thing to be cut, and when I see cuts or shortcuts there, the paper will be almost dead. Maybe counting bylines?

Tis the Gift to be Simple

"Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven."

I'll not try to unpack all of that, but one thing little children are good at is "being in the moment." Not for long; steadfastness is not one of the frontline virtues in a child. But there's something admirable in the pure enjoyment of the taste of icecream. The flip side is the pure horror and rejection of the abomination of cottage cheese. Oh wait, that's me as an adult.

A rainbow to me as an adult isn't a "pure thing": it recalls the other rainbows I've seen and made, and who I was with, and other memories fun and sad. A bath is a simple sensual pleasure, and maybe it recalls other baths and other oceans. But it isn't perfected by having the radio play Carmen while I'm eating a fudge sundae. Adding too many other related pleasures can detract from fully enjoying any of them.

Our pocket shrines help keep us out of the moment, of course, but so (at least for me) does the "narrator", the "drunken monkey stung by a scorpion". And neither is good for steadfast concentration and enjoyment.

I need to work more on "doing one thing at a time."