@david_megginson@mstdn.ca
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

david_megginson

@david_megginson@mstdn.ca

#Tea drinker. Urban dweller. #Gardener. Classical guitarist. #Standards wonk. Grounded pilot. Pantheist. Jane Jacobs fanboy. #Language nerd. 25-year #vegetarian. 30-year #Linux user. #Disabled. Open-* and humanitarian #aid person. Former medieval philologist (Ph.D, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 1993). Living on unceded Anishinabe Algonquin territory.

Header picture: Large reddish-orange letters spelling "Hintonburg", some lying flat on the sidewalk for use as benches.

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RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

It will always blow my mind that Fundies use the Bible to explain why women should be submissive uneducated stay at home baby machines, while the Bible's own description of the "Perfect" woman is a Land owning female boss who is praised by her husband and her city for her contributions.

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

@RickiTarr Just so. The is a threat to many established churches; that's why the Catholic church used to burn people at the stake for translating it into languages laypeople could understand, and why fundamentalist pastors today still keep a tight rein on how their flocks are allowed to interpret it.

We wouldn't want anyone to take Rabbi Jesus' objections to public prayer and religious elites, or his support for radical social justice TOO literally, now, would we? 😕

david_megginson, to analog
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

Among my hobbies, probably the weirdest one is circular slide rules. I was introduced to them 22 years ago when I started flying lessons, and have since branched out from the E6B to non-aviation circular rules. I like them because

  1. they're analogue, and
  2. they remind us of the correct level of precision.

Additionally, they make great fidget toys.

(See also my little website https://e6b.org/ )

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

@nyrath The DC-3 (designed exclusively using ) has never crashed due to a design defect, according to people I talked to at McDonnell-Douglas in the late 1990s. You can't say the same for Boeing's latest aircraft. I suspect there are two reasons for that:

  1. GIGO: People trust the output of computers and skip common-sense sanity checks.
  2. The DC-3 was overbuilt (to be on the safe side), while modern CAD allows companies to cut things closer to the margins for extra $$$.

jd, to books
@jd@mstdn.ca avatar

In 2023, the Ottawa Public Library was asked to remove seven books from its stacks.

Complaints covered everything from alleged racism or promotion of hatred to reports of inaccurate information or objectionable content.

‼️ The library took no action on any of the complaints.
(via CBC News)

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

@jd I'd be fine with attaching warnings to racist or otherwise harmful books, but not with removing them completely. Libraries are for researchers as well as casual readers.

Or is the suggestion just to move them from the public stacks to a private area and make them available by request, like with rare books and special collections?

david_megginson, to random
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

During the Soviet occupation, Polish artists found that imagining new posters for Western films was a reasonably safe creative outlet. Some of them are wonderfully bizarre, and my spouse likes to put up reproductions (yes, I know they're crooked).

david_megginson, to random
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

… That's not quite true with light piston twins, many of which can barely hold altitude with one engine out, and which demand a quick reaction and very good-pilot technique.

The grim pilot joke about piston twins is that the second engine is there to take you to the scene of the accident — until a few years ago, they had a much-higher fatal accident rate than piston singles, but that has been improving with better training and more awareness of the limitations.

david_megginson, to Aviation
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

Once there was a saying "If it ain't Boeing, I'm not going " Back then, Airbus had been plagued by issues with its fly-by-wire control systems, which (at the time) could override the pilot's inputs and fly a plane into the ground.

Fast foward a few decades and Airbus's systems are pretty reliable, since they've been forced to allow that their algorithms aren't always smarter than the pilots (aviation regulations are written in blood, as another saying goes).

…/more

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

… Now it's Boeing that's in the news every few days because of quality-control issues.

The thing about taking shortcuts, cutting oversight, and squeezing pennies in aviation is that the problems don't always surface right away.

You think you got away with it, but then years or decades later stuff starts falling off b/c of wrong fasteners, shoddy work, poor design, etc. You might never win back that public trust, even if your overall safety record is still good.

david_megginson, to Ottawa
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

The Remic Rapids lookout beside the Ottawa river is almost accessible for wheelchairs and walkers, except for one small step between the two ramps. C'mon Ottawa, we can fix this kind of thing.

cc @jleiper (though it's probably an NCC thing).

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

@stephanie (Also, I should note that the small step is no longer a barrier for me personally, but I remember how it felt when it would have been.)

david_megginson, to fediBots
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

I notice spambots at newsmast.community have started reposting everything I write with certain hashtags.

I'm blocking the bots individually as they pop up, but I wonder if we need more concerted action for the entire site.

david_megginson, to music
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

I no longer attend any church, but I still like to listen to organ music on Sunday mornings. Into my teens, I attended an old church with good acoustics and a big pipe organ. The Queen's University Dean of Music was the organist. That's where I learned my love of baroque music.

I'm fortunate that the church was already socially-progessive then, and now has flown the rainbow flag for decades to show that it welcomes everyone because of who they are (not despite it).

david_megginson, to random
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

UN head:

What has been unfolding in Gaza for the past 138 days is unparalleled in its intensity, brutality and scope. Tens of thousands … killed, injured or buried under the rubble. Entire neighbourhoods razed to the ground. Hundreds of thousands of people displaced, living in the most abject conditions even as winter sets in. Half a million people on the brink of famine. No access to the most basic needs: food, water, health care, latrines.

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/2/21/the-worlds-moral-failure-in-gaza-should-shame-us-all

david_megginson, to Sliderules
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

Airplane altimeters over-read in colder-than-normal temperatures. If you were on a plane before the digital age and it had to clear a ridge, this is how the flight crew decided whether they were actually high enough to make it.

You don't need to have an E6B analogue flight computer (though it's fun); just hit any key to see the complex steps — one really hoped the navigator hadn't skipped their morning tea or coffee. 🙂

https://e6b.org/calc.html#true_altitude

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

And yes, it was dangerous when propeller planes were already flying close to their service ceilings and margins were slim. The Allies lost nearly 600 cargo planes and over 1,600 crew supplying the Chinese army from India during (to the Himalayas. not enemy fire).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hump

david_megginson, to comics
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

XKCD: stop being so accurate about how strategists and senior managers think. It's creeping me out.

https://xkcd.com/2899/

david_megginson, to languagelearning
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

Old Norse "vík" meant cove or inlet (c.f. placenames like "Narvik" and "Reykjavik").

Scandinavian pirates who did hit-and-run raids from the water in the early Middle Ages were sometimes called "Víkingar" (cove people).

It's a modern English affectation to apply the "Viking" label to all early-Medieval Scandinavians (influenced by 19th-century German romaniticism??).

The Anglo-Saxons rarely used the term, preferring "Dene" (Danes) or "Norðmenn" (Northerners) for all Scandinavians.

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

(The rarely-attested Old English word for the northern pirates, "wicingas", doesn't survive into Modern English, so we've reborrowed the Scandinavian cognate.)

david_megginson, to music
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

I just came back to Heitor Villa-Lobos' Étude N°1 after more than three decades, and noticed that it's marked "Allegro non troppo."

That's funny, because it seems that every guitarist (including a younger me) succumbs to the temptation to play it as "troppo" as they can. 🙂

chad, to random
@chad@mstdn.ca avatar

I don't care what anyone says, Nickelback is a rock band of our generation.

Fight me.

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

@chad Nickleback's fine for Alberta. Here in Ontario, we have/had our own OK-but-overhyped band, The Tragically Hip.

Let's have an inter-provincial competition to see which band's songs bore me to sleep first. 🙂

enobacon, (edited ) to ebikes
@enobacon@urbanists.social avatar

In the last five years, caused only 3.8% as many injuries as bathrooms. Wear your bathroom , and shame your friends and family until they stop taking baths

without a helmet.

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

@enobacon I have no skin in any e-bike safety debate, but my skin crawls when I see nonsense statistics.

Only about 7% of Americans use an e-bike at least once a month (according to YouGov), and they likely use them a lot less often than they use the bathroom. Also, bathroom injuries happen disproportionately to people with disabilities or the elderly, because it can be wet and slippery, have sharp corners and edges, and is often visited during the night when balance isn't at its best).

david_megginson, to Korean
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

It's funny how the common terms for relatives-by-marriage reinforce cultural stereotypes about France and England, e.g.

English: "sister-in-law"

French: "belle-sœur"

david_megginson, to Ottawa
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

It's March and I'm getting ready to start my first seedlings in a couple of weeks (Ottawa, hardiness zone 5a). I pulled my seedling stand out of the garage, cleaned it off, and clamped on the grow lights I got for Christmas.

This will be year 2 starting from seed, so I will learn from all the mistakes I made in year 1 and everything will turn out perfectly. right? … Right? … RIGHT? … (um, is this thing on? 😕 )

david_megginson, to academia
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

The European Middle Ages to non-medievalists: knights, damsels, castles, jousts, vikings, and stories about dragons!

The European Middle Ages to medievalists: land charters, church councils, Latin manuscripts, corroded remnants of farming implements, and counting the animal bones in excavations of middens.

(p.s. Knights were mostly a**holes, and the Crusades were mass war crimes.)

#MiddleAges #Medieval #academia

david_megginson, to Aviation
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

News-O-Matic: Discount airline ___ strands ___ passengers in ___ for ___ days during March Break because of (bankruptcy | cancelled flights | misc. shenanigans).

It's frustrating for the people involved, but when it's so predictable every year does it qualify as news?

david_megginson, to gardening
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

Last year I started plants from seed indoors without a heat mat, and it typically took a couple of weeks before I saw the first sprouts.

This year I'm using a heat mat, and the time to first sprout has been much shorter:

  • Cherry tomatoes: 4 days
  • Eggplants: 7 days
  • Basil: 3 days

Still waiting on peppers (7 days) and dill (4 days). Other seeds will go in soon.

david_megginson,
@david_megginson@mstdn.ca avatar

I've also managed to force myself to thin my tomato seedlings early, which is heart-breaking (I got all these seedlings to sprout, and now I have to kill 2/3 of them?!?!) but improves the chances for the most-viable ones by uncrowding them.

No one warned me that gardening is a cruel and ruthless pursuit.

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