{"id":247,"date":"2010-03-11T08:30:34","date_gmt":"2010-03-11T14:30:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2010\/03\/11\/100311_randomthursday\/"},"modified":"2022-04-11T16:58:11","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T21:58:11","slug":"100311_randomthursday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/03\/11\/100311_randomthursday\/","title":{"rendered":"Random Thursday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scattershooting while taking a break from what is nowadays my morning ritual: sweeping the sand left by the previous day&#8217;s windstorm from our driveway. (At least this morning I didn&#8217;t have to break out the shovel, as I did on Monday.)<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a style=\"font-size: 1em;\" href=\"http:\/\/freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/03\/10\/synchronicity\/\">This graph<\/a> has been showing up in various places across the web, but in case you haven&#8217;t seen it, it demonstrates the zeal with which Canadians follow their beloved sport of hockey. I think this phenomenon has also occurred during recent Super Bowls, except in inverse fashion, as people stay glued to the TV during commercial breaks, and use the game time to take care of, um, other business.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: .9em;\">And speaking of graphs, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.analyzemath.com\/graphing_calculators\/graphing_inverse.html\">where was this<\/a> when I needed it during Mrs. Hayter&#8217;s trig class in high school? This is an inverse graphing calculator, and it generates a series of equations that, when graphed, result in the phrase that you type into the form. We did this back in the day in said trigonometry class, drawing by hand a simple illustration, and then producing the equations that would map it out on graph paper. I still remember mine: a train locomotive. And I couldn&#8217;t graph it today if my life, and those of everyone I know, and everyone I <i>don&#8217;t<\/i> know, depended on it.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: .9em;\">And speaking of lives depending on something else, if you&#8217;re a bicyclist in Midland and want to use <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps?hq=http:\/\/maps.google.com\/help\/maps\/directions\/biking\/mapplet.kml&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;ll=37.687624,-122.319717&amp;spn=0.346132,0.727158&amp;z=11&amp;lci=bike&amp;dirflg=b&amp;f=d&amp;utm_campaign=en&amp;utm_medium=van&amp;utm_source=en-van-na-us-gns-bd\">Google&#8217;s new bike route maps<\/a>, be forewarned that doing so could be hazardous to your health. I just tried mapping a route from northwest Midland to downtown, and Google&#8217;s recommendation advises the cyclist to ride down the Andrews Highway, one of the busiest and least bike-friendly roads in the city. Google&#8217;s new offering obviously wasn&#8217;t designed with West Texas in mind (or vice versa).<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: .9em;\">And, finally, speaking of design (yeah, I&#8217;m stretching here), <a href=\"http:\/\/www.margaretshepherd.com\">here are some beautiful examples of creativity<\/a>, combining art with typography. Margaret Shepherd is a calligrapher who has discovered that a letter or word can do double duty.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scattershooting while taking a break from what is nowadays my morning ritual: sweeping the sand left by the previous day&#8217;s windstorm from our driveway. (At least this morning I didn&#8217;t have to break out the shovel, as I did on Monday.) This graph has been showing up in various places across the web, but in&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/03\/11\/100311_randomthursday\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Random Thursday<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random-thursday","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9846,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247\/revisions\/9846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}