Showing posts with label Randall Munroe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Randall Munroe. Show all posts

Sunday 5 April 2020

Coincidentally Coronavirus


I had no plans to post again today but still reading and enjoying  "What If" by Randall Munroe  and the latest question was "Could we eliminate the common cold if we stayed apart" . The common cold is a rhinovirus , that is it attacks the nose and throat and goes on to analyse that the basic concept probably would work but there are many other things that need to be taken into account and I was struck by the obvious correlation with the current COVID-19 that we are in at the moment.

Although they are different they are both virus based and a lot of the ways of combating them are based on stopping them from spreading, as all sensible people realise that prevention is far better than cure, unfortunately it is difficult to deal with the "stupid" segment who just ignore guidelines of what action to take.

I have been put in the "stupid" section because I go out for a walk or two each day. If I lived in flats or narrow streets and there were a lot of people around I would probably stay in , and maybe walk round the garden or garage. I live in Fenham  and the streets and footpaths are very wide (though it doesn't stop some couples from managing to take up the whole width of the footpath, almost playing Coronavirus Chicken, which forces me in to the road as traffic is a lot sparser but doesn't happen often)

So because I never planned to write this it's fairly short so my choice of music, so I reckon "The Safety Dance" by Men Without Hats is fine as it could be a description of the footpath scenario I described above.

Something Negative


It's into Sunday morning and one of the things this Social Distancing / Isolation is doing is (at weekends) allowing me to stay up very late knowing that I don't have to get up tomorrow morning. While I see people out , I don't see any gatherings and I am wondering if the cramped aisles of local shops (and supermarkets) may have to change. Certain people certainly know how to block your way.

I am now reading "What If" by Randall Munroe and it is quite interesting trying to seriously and scientifically answer some completely absurd questions. Randall Munroe is responsible for XKCD "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language". What does XKCD stand for (I think it looks like a Roman Numeral but the K knocks it out ("K" in European metrics is a thousand but "M" is a Roman thousand) but this is what it says on the site:

What does XKCD stand for? 

It's not actually an acronym. It's just a word with no phonetic pronunciation -- a treasured and carefully-guarded point in the space of four-character strings.

So follow the link to find out more and read the book to enjoy some absurdities , there is a section about lightning and tonight watching the final "Righteous Gemstones" episode Baby Billy got struck by lightning and forgave his brother in law and meeting his dead sister, so there's a coincidence.

So I only said something negative because the last post was something positive, so maybe we should get something dark and gothic to play out with, maybe "Bring on the Dancing Girls" (available as a free download from Bandcamp by clicking on the title) by Dead Eyes Opened who impressed my as a support band at the Cluny a few years back.