adrian is rad

2/2/2005

this guy is better at lists than I am

Filed under: — adrian @ 9:57 am

From 5ives:

Five things I suspect I’m not supposed to think about when watching those bands with messy hair who sound like Joy Division

  1. Wow. That’s a really expensive amp.
  2. That bass player has nice skin for someone who’s so unhappy.
  3. I wonder if they all have really cool apartments.
  4. Would it kill them to get a tambourine?
  5. Man. These guys sound a lot like Joy Division.

I’m still a total geek

Filed under: — adrian @ 12:08 am

Here are the controls on our stove:

I’d always assumed that Hi was the highest (ie “4”) and the numbers were out of order, like old stick shifts for manual transmission cars, when they were on the steering column, which go 1-N-3-4-2. (I’ve only been in one of these cars once; the cabs in Hong Kong had these.)

Andyl, on the other hand, assumed the numbers were in order and Hi meant “1.” The numbers were ordered from low (“Hi”/ 1) being the hottest and warm (5) being the coolest.

Basically we were in agreement about Hi being hotter than Lo and Warm being the coolest, but not about the order of 2 or 3. Which is hotter?

So we conceived of an experiment without a thermometer, which we didn’t have. We’d fill the same, cool pot to the same level with the coldest water our tap could produce. We’d cover it and put it on the same burner, preheated to the setting. Then we’d time it to see how long it took for the pot to boil (which we defined as the time when multiple bubbles rose within a short span of time, which is not really boiling, but a pretty identifiable time in the boiling of water). We’d repeated this for both “2” and “3” settings.

The results?

  • setting 3 36 minutes
  • setting 2 13 minutes

So the numbers are in order and some how “Hi” is actually the lowest number.

[Update: People don’t understand how I thought they were out of order and I’ll tell you this: I can’t understand how Hi is a low number rather than a high number. In temperature, 3 is hotter than 2 and 2 is hotter than 1 and “Hi” means 5 or 10 or whatever. Why does Hi have a number? Can’t it just be “Hi”? Hi has to have an implied number if there are 2 and 3 between Hi and Lo.]

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