It’s funny how the brain works. While I was whittling away on my latest wood carving yesterday, I remembered an incident that happened more than 30 years ago. Why that memory surfaced yesterday is a mystery to me.
Growing up, my siblings and I were pretty avid readers, and our parents encouraged that. I recall bringing home the order forms from … the Scholastic Book Service(?) … and Mom writing checks for the books that I had selected. I don’t recall her ever balking at what or how much I wanted to read. And I did read every book I got through that service.
Anyway, one thing I ended up reading, although I don’t recall whether I or one of my siblings ordered it, was the Mrs. Coverlet series about three children who, due to one circumstance or another, were sometimes left unsupervised for extended periods. I honestly don’t remember much else about the books. Just bits and pieces, really. Including one scene in which the boy was singing his favorite Christmas carol: “Good King Wences car backed out on a piece of Steven.” At least I’m pretty sure that scene was in one of those books.
I think I understood at the time that the boy’s song was a … misinterpretation of some other song, but I didn’t know what the original song was. I had never heard Good King Wenceslas, but I was familiar with alternate song lyrics, having sung things like, “Jingle bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg.” But I couldn’t attach Good King Wences to anything.
And that’s the way it remained for 20 years or so, as far as I can recall. I do know that when I was in the movie theater watching Scrooged (1988), there was a scene in which a bunch of boys were singing Good King Wenceslas. I started laughing. I couldn’t stop. After 20 years I finally got the joke. I ended up having to step out into the lobby because I just could not keep quiet.
The good king backing out over Steven is an example of a mondegreen: a misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from a mishearing of the lyrics of a song. That’s different from parody, which is an intentional mangling of the song lyrics. What I find hilarious is that I read the misinterpreted lyric and had to wait two decades before I heard the original song and made the connection. That might be the longest I’ve ever had to wait to “get” a joke.
I’ve wonder from time to time what other little memory bombs are waiting for me. Things that I saw or heard many years ago, that I didn’t understand and didn’t pursue, and have forgotten about. Things that will pop up from the dark recesses of my brain when I encounter the answer to the question I forgot I’d even asked 20 or more years ago.
And I still can’t figure out what prompted me to think about that yesterday, sitting in my shop, idly whittling away on a piece of mesquite. The brain works in strange and mysterious ways.
I don’t understand why people won’t just call others by the names they want to be called. When I was seven years old I decided that I would be Jim rather than James, and everybody supported me. I’m pretty sure my family already called me Jim, but I know that to my kindergarten and first grade teachers I was James. After that, teachers would call me James on the first day of school, but I told them I preferred Jim and that was the end of it. I had one teacher who called me Jimmy, but … well, he was kind of a jerk. He was the gym teacher and I was maybe eight years old. Not much I could do about it.
I encountered someone just like my old gym teacher about 15 years later. He was a higher-up at a bank where I worked. He had the annoying habit of calling people by their given names, regardless of stated preference. He wasn’t directly in my chain of command although he was higher up enough that he could easily have had me fired if he wanted to. Fortunately, I didn’t interact with him often.
When I first met William, he greeted me as James. I smiled and shook his hand and said, “Nice to meet you, William. I prefer Jim.” We had a short conversation. The next time we met he again addressed me as James. I said to him, “William, I prefer Jim. Only my mom calls me James, and then only when I’m in trouble.” That didn’t work, either.
I found out over time that William’s annoying habit of mis-naming people was something of a joke among his subordinates at the bank. I honestly don’t recall if he had that same annoying habit with his bosses. Being young and a little unsure of my position, I let it slide. For the money I was being paid, I could put up with that jerk a few times a month.
As one of two programmer-slash-admins at the bank, I had to support anything computer-related. I guess I’d been there a year when I was to come up to the office to look at a screen one of the secretaries was having trouble with. The problem screen just happened to contain William’s personnel file. The name at the top of the screen was Alfred William <lastname>.
Yeah.
The next time I saw William was a few days later at a monthly meeting with about 50 employees. Part of that meeting involved the head of each department getting up and saying a few words, and taking a few questions. So when William was done with his talk I raised my hand and he called on me:
William: Yes. James? Me: Alfred … pause … I was wondering about . . .
I didn’t get to finish because he turned red, pointed at me and then the door, and said in a very soft, threatening voice: “Get. Out. Of. Here. … Now.”
Understand, I fully expected to be fired. But by then I knew that my programming skills were in demand and I could find another job easily enough if I had to. I decided that if they fired me, I wouldn’t fight it. Why would I want to work for a company that thinks it’s okay for a senior manager to openly disrespect people? I was laughing as I drove home that night.
I didn’t get fired, and William never called me James again. And I never called him Alfred again, although I did wonder why he had such a reaction to me using his correct first name. Did he have some serious hatred of his given name? Or perhaps he got angry because I showed him obvious disrespect in public. Whatever the case, he started calling people by their preferred names.
I don’t know for sure that the following is true, but I have some evidence to support it.
William went to my manager’s manager and told him to fire me. My chain of command refused, and William escalated the issue to his manager. William’s manager talked to one of his peers, who happened to observe the incident and after some checking around discovered William’s bad habit. William’s manager told William that it was his own darned fault that he was embarrassed in public, and that there wasn’t going to be any retaliation.
Point is, calling somebody by a name other than the one that they prefer to be called by is a sign of disrespect. Actually, of contempt. What you’re saying, when you call somebody by a name other than the one they want to be called by, is that their preferences do not matter to you. I don’t care if that person is a casual acquaintance, or your 50-year-old daughter. If you continually mis-name somebody, you are intentionally being disrespectful, and you can expect nothing but disrespect, or contempt, in return.
Oh, and if I mis-name you–call you by a name other than the one you prefer–please correct me. Be nice the first time. And maybe the second time? I do make a sincere effort to address people as they prefer, but I make mistakes all too often. And, truthfully, I’m more likely to forget your name altogether than I am to call you by the wrong name.
That makes me nervous. I don’t know what the likelihood of failure is here, but the cost of failure can be pretty high. Something goes wrong and pieces of the ISS start raining down on a populated area. Back in March, some junk from the ISS that was supposed to burn up in the atmosphere crashed through two floors of a family home in Florida. The family has filed a claim with NASA, requesting that they pay for damages.
The debris that fell on the house in Florida was part of a 2.9 ton pallet of batteries. The International Space Station weighs something like 460 tons, and it’s not just one solid piece. Undoubtedly pieces would break off as it’s falling through the atmosphere, and some of those pieces could fail to burn up. Whereas I suspect whoever came up with this idea has taken that into account, I don’t see how they’re going to solve that problem.
I especially don’t see how they’re going to solve that problem within the constraints of the budget: $843 million.
It’ll be interesting to understand how SpaceX is planning to do this. I just don’t see how they could deorbit the station intact and expect it all to burn up in the atmosphere. And I don’t see how they can disassemble the station into smaller parts and deorbit them individually for less than a billion dollars. How will they guarantee that pieces won’t fall to Earth in populated areas?
I wonder. Is it possible to deorbit the station on a trajectory that doesn’t pass over populated areas, and has a very low likelihood of shedding pieces that would deviate dangerously from that trajectory? I’ll have to look into that.
Do not trust the responses you get from AI queries.
You cannot rely on the answers provided by the mainstream AI implementations. Specifically, Microsoft Copilot, Meta AI, Google Gemini, and ChatGPT (and others, I suspect) will return responses with important information missing, self-contradictory responses, responses that differ in important ways from each other, and responses that are not consistent with well-known facts.
I’m not saying that you shouldn’t use those tools, only that you must verify any information you get from them. That means reviewing the references they supply and making up your own mind what the truth is.
In short, AI is a great way to find references, and the summaries the AI responses produce will surface relevant search terms that you can follow up on. But know up front that the summaries will be flawed, and you cannot depend on them to be truthful.
Thinking otherwise can be dangerous. Let me give one example.
I had cause today to look up information about armadillos and leprosy. My go-to for quick information is Wikipedia. The Armadillo article tells me:
Armadillos are often used in the study of leprosy, since they, along with mangabey monkeys, rabbits, and mice (on their footpads), are among the few known species that can contract the disease systemically.
Okay. So that confirms what I thought: armadillos can carry leprosy. I didn’t know about the others, though. So I learned something new. Cool.
And, yes, I’m aware that it’s not a good thing to depend on Wikipedia as my only source of information. I don’t. However, my experience over the last 20 years is that Wikipedia is a very reliable source for factual information. I’ve rarely found a case where a Wikipedia article is flat wrong about something, and even more rarely have I found a Wikipedia article that is self-contradictory. An article might miss some important information or contain an unsupported statement here or there, but for the most part I’ve found articles on Wikipedia to be very high quality. In addition, Wikipedia articles generally supply an exhaustive list of references that I can (and do!) go to if I want to confirm something. In this particular case, I did consult the references for the pertinent facts that I’m presenting here. I’m satisfied that the one sentence I quoted above from the Wikipedia page on armadillos is true, if perhaps incomplete.
Anyway.
I’ve been playing with the AI products from Meta, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI. So I thought I’d ask each of them the same question: Can armadillos carry leprosy? The responses I got differed, and in some cases contradicted each other and what I’d learned from the Wikipedia article. So I thought I’d ask a second question: What animals can carry leprosy? The table below gives a brief summary of the answers. Full text of both answers from each of the AIs is at the end of this post.
Can armadillos carry leprosy?
What animals can carry leprosy?
Copilot
Only armadillos can carry leprosy.
Nine-banded armadillos, red squirrels, and chimpanzees can carry leprosy.
Meta AI
Armadillos are one of few animals that can carry leprosy.
Only armadillos can carry leprosy. Red squirrels, chimpanzees, and soil amoeba also can carry leprosy.
Gemini
Only armadillos can carry leprosy.
Nine-banded armadillos, red squirrels, and chimpanzees can carry leprosy.
ChatGPT
Armadillos are one of few known animals that can carry leprosy.
Armadillos, mangabey monkeys, chimpanzees, and nine-banded armadillos can carry leprosy.
Wikipedia
Armadillos are one of few known animals that can carry leprosy.
Armadillos, mangabey monkeys, rabbits, and mice can carry leprosy.
Summary of AI and Wikipedia responses
Do you understand now why you can’t rely on any one source? The AIs are great tools for surfacing potentially useful information. But you should be able to see from the table above that not one of them (including the non-AI Wikipedia) provides complete and self-consistent information. And they’re all different in important ways.
Which one do you trust?
None of them. The AIs are very good at surfacing and summarizing information. But the information they surface and the summaries they provide are not completely reliable. They, like Wikipedia, are just the first step in learning about something new. You have to follow up and verify every assertion made. You have to identify the conflicting assertions and resolve them. That means reading and evaluating the references that the AIs (and the Wikipedia article) provide.
The primary difference between a Wikipedia article and the AI responses is that last step: human intervention. The Wikipedia article is created by people who actually know what they’re writing about. They found the sources (sometimes authored one or more of the references), read and evaluated them, determined through various means which sources were reliable, and put all the information together into a meaningful article that somebody less knowledgeable than the author (or authors–often many different people contribute to a single Wikipedia article) can glean useful information from.
The AI responses, on the other hand, are 100% computer generated. These AIs have at their disposal what is essentially the sum total of all published human knowledge, including verifiable fact, speculation, fiction, and falsehoods that were intentionally created to deceive. But they have no way to evaluate the veracity of any particular statement. They don’t know fact from fantasy. Can’t separate truth from fiction. All they can do is say, in effect “Lots of people say this, and others say that.” Then they put it all together into something that looks like a detailed answer to your question. Actually, it is an answer to your question: an unreliable answer written by a brilliant idiot.
I’ve come to think of these AIs as consummate bullshit artists. They are adept at seamlessly mixing truth and falsehood together into a (usually) coherent whole that looks fine on the surface but doesn’t bear close scrutiny. It’s up to you to separate the fact from fiction.
Full responses to both of my questions from each of the AIs are provided below.
Question 1: Can armadillos carry leprosy?
Microsoft Copilot
Yes, armadillos can carry leprosy. Specifically, the nine-banded armadillo is known to harbor the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae, which causes leprosy. This makes them the only animals besides humans known to carry the disease.
Transmission to humans can occur through direct contact with armadillos or by handling or consuming their meat. However, the risk of contracting leprosy from armadillos is relatively low, and the disease is now highly treatable.
Meta AI
Yes, armadillos are one of the few animals that can carry leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease. They are natural carriers of the bacteria that causes leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae. While the risk is low, humans can contract leprosy from armadillos through contact with their saliva, urine, or other bodily fluids. It’s important to exercise caution and avoid direct contact with armadillos, especially if you live in areas where leprosy is common.
Here are some facts about leprosy and armadillos:
Leprosy is rare: Leprosy is a relatively rare disease in the United States, with only a few cases reported each year.
Armadillos are common carriers: Armadillos are one of the primary animal carriers of leprosy in the southern United States.
Contact with armadillos increases risk: People who handle or eat armadillos, or come into contact with their bodily fluids, are at higher risk of contracting leprosy.
Early treatment is key: Leprosy is treatable with antibiotics, but early detection and treatment are crucial to prevent long-term nerve damage and disability.
Google Gemini
Yes, armadillos can carry leprosy. In fact, they are the only other mammal besides humans that can naturally harbor the bacteria that causes leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae.
Studies have shown that a high percentage of armadillos in the southern United States, particularly nine-banded armadillos, carry the leprosy bacteria. In some areas, estimates are that 15-20% of armadillos are infected. While the exact way leprosy is transmitted from armadillos to humans is not fully understood, it is believed that close contact with armadillos or their environment may be a risk factor.
Here are some ways people might come into contact with the leprosy bacteria from armadillos:
Direct contact: Skinning or handling an armadillo with bare hands.
Inhalation: Breathing in dust or dirt contaminated with armadillo droppings.
Ingestion: Eating undercooked armadillo meat.
Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease that attacks the skin, nerves, eyes, and mucous membranes. However, it is important to note that most people are not susceptible to leprosy and the risk of transmission from armadillos is considered low.
If you are concerned about leprosy, talk to your doctor. Early diagnosis and treatment can prevent permanent nerve damage and disability.
ChatGPT
Yes, armadillos can carry leprosy. In fact, they are one of the few known animal species that can transmit the disease to humans. Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, is caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. Armadillos can harbor this bacteria, and transmission to humans usually occurs through direct contact with armadillos or their bodily fluids.
In regions where leprosy is endemic and armadillos are present, there have been documented cases of people contracting leprosy from handling or consuming armadillos. Therefore, it is advised to avoid contact with armadillos, especially in areas where leprosy is known to occur, to reduce the risk of transmission.
Question 2: What animals can carry leprosy?
Microsoft Copilot
Leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, primarily affects humans, but certain animals can also carry the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. Here are some animals known to carry leprosy:
Nine-banded armadillos: These are the most well-known animal carriers of leprosy, particularly in the southern United States.
Red squirrels: In the UK, red squirrels have been found to carry strains of leprosy, although there have been no reported cases of transmission to humans.
Chimpanzees: Some wild chimpanzees in Guinea-Bissau and Ivory Coast have been observed with leprosy.
These animals act as reservoirs for the bacteria, but the risk of transmission to humans is generally low.
Meta AI
The following animals can carry leprosy:
Armadillos: The only other animals that carry leprosy, besides humans, are armadillos. They are the natural carriers of the bacteria that causes leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae.
Red squirrels: They are known to develop leprosy in the UK, but there have been no recorded cases of transmission from red squirrels to humans.
Chimpanzees: There have been recorded cases of leprosy in chimpanzees in Guinea-Bissau and Ivory Coast. However, more research is needed to determine if humans can contract leprosy from chimps.
Soil amoeba: Research by The Leprosy Mission in India demonstrated that soil amoeba can also be a reservoir for leprosy bacteria.
Google Gemini
There are only a few known animal species that can carry leprosy, and among them, the nine-banded armadillo is the most well-documented case.
Nine-banded armadillo: This armadillo species, found in the southern United States and parts of South America, is the only mammal besides humans known to naturally harbor the bacteria that causes leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae. In fact, some armadillo populations can have infection rates as high as 20%. While the armadillos themselves rarely show symptoms from the infection, they can transmit it to humans through close contact or consumption of armadillo meat.
Red Squirrels: There have been some isolated cases of leprosy identified in red squirrel populations in the United Kingdom. However, there is no evidence that squirrels can transmit the disease to humans.
Chimpanzees: A recent study (late 2021) identified leprosy in wild chimpanzees in West Africa. More research is needed to determine if chimpanzees can transmit the disease to humans.
ChatGPT
Several animals have been identified as potential carriers of leprosy (Mycobacterium leprae), including:
Armadillos: Armadillos are well-documented carriers of leprosy and have been implicated in transmitting the disease to humans in some regions, particularly in the southern United States.
Non-human Primates: Certain species of non-human primates, such as chimpanzees and mangabey monkeys, have been found to carry Mycobacterium leprae. They can potentially transmit the disease to humans through close contact.
Nine-banded Armadillos: This specific species of armadillo, found primarily in the Americas, is particularly known for its association with leprosy.
While these animals can carry Mycobacterium leprae, it’s important to note that human-to-human transmission is the primary route of leprosy infection worldwide. In regions where leprosy is endemic and where these animals are present, there may be a risk of zoonotic transmission (animal to human), especially through direct contact or consumption of infected animal tissues.
You’re looking at the interface for selecting the publish date in WordPress. With it, you can backdate posts, schedule posts to be published in the future, or tell it to post your entry right now. It’s a simple enough interface that has an annoying quirk.
The day and year entry fields are, as you can see, numeric. But if I click on the Year field, for example, and hit the Up arrow key, the year is increased. That is, 2008 becomes 2009, etc. And if I hit the Down arrow key, the year is decreased. It’s a nice convenience feature. That feature works on the Day entry field, as well. That’s really nice when I make a post that I want published in a day or two.
And then there’s the Month entry field. Pressing the Up arrow in that field decreases the month! Really. If I tab over to that field and hit the Up arrow, the month turns to April. Ugh!
Don’t get me wrong, I understand why it works that way: the Month entry field is a combo box that has the months listed in order, from January through December. And if you click on the combo box the list of months drops down and you can scroll through them with the up and down arrow keys. In isolation it makes perfect sense. In combination with the Day and Year entry fields, though, it’s maddening. If I want tomorrow or next year, I hit the Up arrow. If I want next month I hit the Down arrow. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!
Everybody loves the Moon. But we, people in general, don’t know much about it. We know it follows an approximately monthly cycle and it has something to do with the tides. Oh, and 50 years ago for a brief period we sent some guys up there to check it out.
That’s really too bad. The Moon is fascinating. The unusual nature of the Earth/Moon relationship could very possibly be a major reason life developed on Earth. Or, put another way, without that particular relationship, it’s quite possible that life would not have developed here.
By the way, it’s odd that of all the objects in the sky, we attach the definite article (“The”) to only three of them. The Sun, the Moon, the Earth. But we don’t say, “the Jupiter” or “the Titan,” “the Betelgeuse.” Even more curious is that, as far as I can tell, we use the Moon’s name to reference satellites of other planets. As in “Titan is Saturn’s largest moon.” Kind of like “She’s my girl Friday” refers to Robinson Crusoe’s servant and friend.
I also wonder if the “Holy Trinity” that I learned about in Catechism class can be traced back through earlier writings and associated with the celestial trinity of Sun, Earth, Moon. There’s certainly a whole load of mysticism associated with Sun and Moon, and I can easily envision a path for that evolution. Whether it can be documented is another matter entirely.
And another aside. I really like that Radiolab provides a text transcript of their episodes. While I’m driving I’ll hear something that I want to go back to later. It’s a whole lot easier to search the transcript than try to find a particular word or sentence in a 40+ minute audio file. Although I wonder if that will be the case for much longer . . .
I’ve mentioned before that my blog went offline during the COVID lock down. I had an issue with my hosting provider that I didn’t handle promptly, and I ended up losing some data. My 100 Birds Project site went offline at the same time. I re-started the blog although until recently haven’t been posting much, and I kept saying “one of these days” I’ll restore the content that I lost.
In the last week, I’ve managed to get the 100 Birds Project almost completely restored. All that’s left is the bird index and then checking all the internal links for consistency. That work should be done before the end of next week. That was the easy one, with only about 110 pages.
Restoring my blog is going to be a much longer project. I haven’t counted them, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there are 500 or more blog entries from 2007 to 2020. There’s no real rush, though. I could easily restore one month of blog entries a day and probably be done in a few months. Certainly by the end of the year. Likely, I’ll do it considerably quicker than that.
And then maybe I’ll consider converting my old blog entries (from October 2000 until March 2007) to WordPress. That’ll be a much longer project because I was … more prolific early on.
Eight or ten years ago I was at a friend’s ranch to collect some wood from a fallen tree. While he was showing me around the property (about 300 acres), he asked me what those “big warts” were on his oak trees. I explained what burls are and how they form. He wanted to see what they looked like inside. We found a tree that was pretty clearly almost dead, and he went to work with his chainsaw. I ended up with two burls. I carved a bowl from the smaller one and gave it to Todd and his wife as a “Thank you.” I kept the larger one.
That piece of wood was about two feet long, 16 inches wide at its widest point, and five inches deep.
I drilled a bunch of holes in the top with the intention of letting the wood sit in the garage and dry for a while. Then I turned it over and removed the bark with the angle grinder. I also ground down a semi-flat spot for the base and finished it with the belt sander.
Then I got impatient. Why wait for the wood to dry? Why not rough carve it first, I thought, and then put it up in the rafters? A bowl with 1″ thick sides will dry a whole lot faster than a big ol’ oak burl.
So that’s what I did. It took me a couple hours of swinging that angle grinder to get the general shape of the bowl. I went over the whole thing with a 36 grit sanding disc, and then put it up in the rafters to dry for a while. That was June of 2016.
Four years later I was rearranging stuff up there in the rafters and I ran across the unfinished bowl. It was well dried by then. Happily, I had left the sides thick enough that it didn’t warp or twist horribly. I spent an hour or so touching it up with the big angle grinder and re-flattening the bottom (it warped a little bit), detailed it with the smaller (2″) Foredom angle grinder, and started hand sanding.
The hand sanding took several days. One thing I discovered is that sanding oak burl or any other highly figured wood can be incredibly frustrating. It’s often difficult to tell the difference between a tool mark and a natural feature of the wood. Even up close, a whorl can look an awful lot like a tool mark. Or vice-versa. This becomes increasingly frustrating as sanding continues at the higher grits and the surface becomes smoother. I can’t remember how many times I was sanding at 600 grit, for example, and had to step back down to 60 or 100 to sand out a tool mark and then feather around it to smooth the depression. Fortunately, by the time I got to 800 grit I’d found and fixed all the tool marks.
I eventually sanded the entire bowl to 2000 grit, and the wood shone like nothing I’d ever made before. It was beautiful.
The slightly darker areas there are just water. From 600 grit to 2000 grit, I sanded it wet. The dark spots are where the wood hadn’t yet shed the moisture. What astonished me about this was how smooth and shiny the wood was without any kind of finish on it.
I decided that I didn’t want to put any kind of polyurethane or varnish on the bowl, but I wanted something to preserve the wood and prevent it from drying out completely and crumbling. I’d had good luck with mineral oil in the past, so that’s what I used. It took two weeks and something more than a quart of mineral oil. I’d apply a coat of oil, let it soak in for a day, and apply another coat. I kept that up until the wood just wouldn’t absorb any more.
The bowl now sits on the living room coffee table. It is, I think, my personal favorite of all the things I’ve carved. I suspect I could be convinced, over time as I age, to part with most of my other carvings. But this bowl will likely be in my possession until the day I die.
I think if I were a new user, I’d be stumped here with absolutely no idea how to proceed. I pressed the “Cancel Download” button on an Amazon Photos pop-up, and got this message box as a result:
(And before you say anything, the “three dots” menu up there just has notification options settings.)
The stated options here, as I see it, are:
Cancel the download, possibly causing Amazon Photos to crash.
Block the app. Which disables downloads until I go fiddle with the options.
But there’s a third option: Press the “X” button in the upper right corner and …? The popup text for that button says “Move this notification to the notification center”. But I have absolutely no idea what effect that will have on the download.
I think many users will be confused by this notification, primarily because it’s trying to convey too much information and in doing so fails to convey some critical information.
Popup notifications like this should present a clear and unambiguous warning message, and two options: do the thing, or don’t do the thing. Nothing else. Just those two unambiguous and clearly marked options: “Do It”, and “Don’t”.
But this notification is a mess. It does have a clear and unambiguous warning message. But then there’s this extraneous information about blocking the app, information that can only serve to confuse the user. And there are two clearly marked options. But they’re labeled “do the thing” and “do something else.”
What if I don’t want to do either one? Oh, well, that’s a third option, clearly marked by the “X” up there in the corner.
I contend that the “Block app” option shouldn’t be there. The text about blocking the app should be replaced with “To change automatic download settings, go to Settings > Automatic file downloads”. And the options should be “Cancel Download” and “Continue Download”. And the “X” button can continue to do what it’s doing (nothing, I think) to the download.
I don’t know what UI genius came up with this design, but I’m surprised that it was approved. Probably there’s some silly internal UI standards document that says notifications can have only up to two buttons. There’s nothing in the standards doc about clear and unambiguous choices. Somebody decided they needed three options, and used the dialog close button (the “X”) to provide the third. Technically, it meets the standard . . .
I recently made a hat out of hardware store twine, a project I’ll write about here. Soon, I hope. In creating the hat, I of course needed to know how large to make it. So I had Debra measure my head. I then divided that by π to get the diameter for the hat layout. Nothing magical there, but it got me to thinking about hat sizes.
In the US, hats are sized in 1/8 inch increments. Like 6-5/8 or 7-3/4. The number is computed by measuring the circumference of the head in inches 1 centimeter above the ears, and dividing by π. An alternate method is to take the circumference in centimeters and divide by 8.
What?
An example. Debra measured my head at 23 inches. Divided by π gives 7.32. That’s easy enough. Also, 23 inches works out to 58.42 centimeters. Divide that by 8 and you get … 7.30. Close enough for hat sizing! (So, yeah, my hat size is halfway between 7-1/4 and 7-3/8)
That works because to convert from inches to centimeters you multiply by 2.54. And (2.54 * π) is equal to 7.97. Or, showing my work . . .
Hat size = (circumference in inches) / π Circumference in centimeters = (circumference in inches) * 2.54 Hat size = (circumference in centimeters) / (π * 2.54)
It’s kind of a cool estimating trick. You can estimate the diameter of any circle by dividing the circumference in centimeters by 8. The problem of course is the unit conversion: measure in centimeters and get the result in inches.
When I need to estimate with π, I use a two-step process. First, I multiply by 3. Then I add five percent. For example, a circle with diameter of 7 inches has a circumference (π * D) of 21.99 inches. Estimating, (7 * 3) = 21, and five percent of 21 is 1.05, giving me an estimated circumference of 22.05 inches. The mental arithmetic of (times three plus five percent) is a whole lot easier for me than (times three point one four). Also, a simple (times three) is often enough to tell me what I need to know.
Or, if I’m dividing by π, I first divide by 3, which again is often enough to give me the answer I need. If I need a bit more precision I’ll subtract five percent. The result will be about one half percent less than the actual number. Again, close enough for a quick estimate.
I don’t often have to work with π2 when estimating, but a similar trick works pretty well. Just multiply by 10 and then subtract 10 percent. That is, π2 is about 9.87. So if you multiply by 10 and then subtract 10%, you’ll be about 3% high. Again, that’s close enough for a quick mental estimate.
