
[![What's your name (thumbnail)](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-31-whats-in-a-name-2/6796338127_331eb390fc_t.jpg "What's your name (thumbnail)")](http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikrasmussen/6796338127 "View 'What's your name (thumbnail)' on Flickr.com")In preparation for her entrance into the school system in September, we recently began teaching Nora that her name is longer than just "Nora". A lot longer, in fact. I would be very, very surprised if there existed another person on the planet with Nora's two surnames. In Spain, you see, [people have two last names](/2009/01/28/whats-the-deal-with-last-names-in-spain/), the first from the father, and the second from the mother. Her first is Rasmussen, which is both difficult to [spell](/2009/02/20/fafmuffem/) and [pronounce](/2009/11/06/how-do-you-pronounce-rasmussen/). Her second last name is Matamoros – a fairly rare surname in Spain – that probably originated from [a myth about Saint James](/2007/07/25/santiago/) slaying moors.  Not surprisingly, she pronounces her Spanish surname better than her Scandinavian one, but she's just started learning them.

<iframe width="505" height="314" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fmPuqjD17zA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


What's in a name?


<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771489673_a66e5f4174_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image post-thumb" title="Friday Rainbow">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771489673_836bf14e2c_t.jpg" alt="Friday Rainbow"/>
</a>

My regular readers will be aware of my fascination of atmospheric effects, particularly as the sun disappears over the western horizon, but this afternoon, we were treated to some excitement on the eastern horizon, in the form of a double rainbow. I figure it's Nature's way of giving us something to smile about before dumping a dark, cold, rainy weekend upon us. Enjoy!  <a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771482441_bc525425e7_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Friday Rainbow">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771482441_e5db9d9d8b.jpg" alt="Friday Rainbow"/>
</a>

'bow in the forest.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771489673_a66e5f4174_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Friday Rainbow">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771489673_836bf14e2c.jpg" alt="Friday Rainbow"/>
</a>

'bow on the rocks.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771564721_a3b027b506_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Friday Rainbow">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771564721_dfdac3d46e_z.jpg" alt="Friday Rainbow"/>
</a>

The outer rainbow has its colors reversed.

Then, as I was transferring the above photos to my computer to upload, the western horizon turned gorgeous with a big mushroom-cloud-looking sunset formation, with some crepuscular ray action.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771625513_2a0366b3e0_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Sunset">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-27-friday-rainbow/6771625513_6ef1252dfe.jpg" alt="Sunset"/>
</a>

Have a great final weekend of January! It feels like it's almost 2013 already!


Friday Rainbow


<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-26-newt-gingrich-and-mitt-romney-face-swap/6767567409_4d3e5f0c95_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image post-thumb" title="Gingrich Romney Face Swap">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-26-newt-gingrich-and-mitt-romney-face-swap/6767567409_eaff26ca46_t.jpg" alt="Gingrich Romney Face Swap"/>
</a>

The more I watch the media coverage of the GOP presidential primaries, the more I'm struck by just how different Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are, physically. Newt's got a pretty spherical noggin, and Romney's is more oblong. My photoshop nerves are itching again, so I thought I'd try a face swap, like I did with [Prince William and his bride](/2011/04/26/princess-william-and-prince-kate/). I searched around the internet for two high resolution photographs in which they are looking more or less in the same direction and are lit from similarly positioned light sources. Ideally for this, you'd have them both in the same photograph, but they don't pose together that much. The result of my half hour of work is pretty mediocre, but I figure I'll share it anyway.  <a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-26-newt-gingrich-and-mitt-romney-face-swap/6763005385_c3157dfc97_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Newt Gingrich with Mitt Romney's Face">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-26-newt-gingrich-and-mitt-romney-face-swap/6763005385_a55d1c793a.jpg" alt="Newt Gingrich with Mitt Romney's Face"/>
</a>

It's _Leslie Nielsen_!

With their eyes aligned, Romney's mouth is much, much lower than Newt's, leaving very little chin on one image...

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-26-newt-gingrich-and-mitt-romney-face-swap/6763006083_3ff268d985_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Mitt Romney with Newt Gingrich's Face">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-26-newt-gingrich-and-mitt-romney-face-swap/6763006083_23c810eaee.jpg" alt="Mitt Romney with Newt Gingrich's Face"/>
</a>

…and a Jay Leno-esque chin on the other.

As I said…they're just so different!


Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney Face Swap


[![Union Rep (thumbnail)](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-26-union-rep/6762880057_5e59f3bcec_t.jpg "Union Rep (thumbnail)")](http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikrasmussen/6762880057 "View 'Union Rep (thumbnail)' on Flickr.com")Nora was being particularly cute recently during her nightly routine of barging into my office to interrupt my work and inform me of the state of dinner as it is progressing in the kitchen. So I grabbed the video camera and shot her. The result is pretty representative of her English abilities. The phrasing is a little off, e.g. "You no can work" instead of "You cannot work", but she has the general structure down. Sometimes it takes her a moment to figure out where her sentence is going. In general, I'd say her English skill is about 80% that of her Spanish.  Somehow she's picked up the British term "sitting room" – rather than the American "living room" – from her mother. My "close the door from the outside" trick didn't go so well in this video, but sometimes it works smoothly.

<iframe width="505" height="314" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BhMwrFoWaM0?cc_load_policy=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


Union Rep


<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-23-why-does-do-church-bells-chime-every-fifteen-minutes/204741805_5cbedcbcda_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image post-thumb" title="Bell Tower">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-23-why-does-do-church-bells-chime-every-fifteen-minutes/204741805_5cbedcbcda_t.jpg" alt="Bell Tower"/>
</a>

Where I grew up, there weren't any church bells that I could hear from my house, but there was one in the center of town near the municipal recreation center, where I spent many hours of my youth. As a kid, I became quite fond of [that Big Ben tune](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiKOhOzQyZg) that preceded the hourly chimes.  Now I live in a small town in Spain, so small that there is only one church, but I live in the building right across the street from the church, although luckily on the opposite side of the building. Still, the sound waves bounce very efficiently around the surrounding structures and are quite potent when they reach my abode. Several times I have had to pause business calls from my home office to wait for the church bells to quiet down.

It's more about piety than punctuality.

Our town church doesn't play [that Big Ben tune](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_Quarters), but it does chime once at the quarter hour, twice at the half hour, thrice at three quarters of an hour, and four times on the hour, followed by a longer note played a certain number of times to indicate what hour of the day it is (five times for 5 o'clock, etc.). There are more noisy displays when it's time for Sunday mass.

I used to think that this was somewhat handy to be aurally reminded of the time throughout the day, sort of a service to keep the townsfolk on their schedules. I still do, but I thought that was really the only purpose the hourly chimes served. Then I watched a TED Talk…

<iframe width="505" height="314" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2Oe6HUgrRlQ" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

In his talk, Atheism 2.0, Alain de Botton suggests that, by rejecting superstitious dogma, atheists have historically been throwing the baby out with the bathwater. He makes some interesting points, and I'm not sure I agree with all of it, but it did get me thinking, particularly his reference to church calendars. At various times of the year, church sermons discuss different Biblical stories, and a good priest will explain how the ancient story applies to modern life. Clearly the same could be done in a secular environment very easily, e.g. "It's autumn again, so let's reread _The Ant and the Grasshopper_." What religion accomplishes by assigning lessons to specific dates of the calendar is that, for a regular church attendee, the memories of all the teachings are less than a year old. It's a bit like taking the same course every single semester for your entire life. _You will learn it!_

Religions, in general, are experts of sociology and psychology; they must be to have survived millennia into our present-day meme pool. They are clearly providing something that humans desire. If we're going to make it past the first verse of John Lennon's _Imagine_, we've got to figure out how to fill those needs another way, and we still have a lot to learn about how to push those psychosocial buttons.

[![Mindfulness Bell](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-23-why-does-do-church-bells-chime-every-fifteen-minutes/179623143_8eab24c6a4_m.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecnote/179623143/ "Mindfulness Bell by thecnote, on Flickr")**_DING!_** Back to the church bells. **_DONG!_**

Historically, Christian churches have had bells to inform monks and the general townsfolk when it was time to come and worship. This was back before we all had mobile phones with push notifications, mind you. In medieval times, it's pretty easy to imagine that the church bells telling the monks when to pray could be quite handy to remind the other residents of the time of day, e.g. when to get up, or come in from the field, or whatever. Now, however, we have more advanced technology for that purpose.

When followers of more oriental religions are meditating, they will sometimes use what is called a mindfulness bell, which will ring every so often to remind the meditator to focus. If you've ever attempted meditation, you'll understand why a bell could be useful – yes, there's [an app](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mindfulness-bell/id380816407?mt=8) for that.

So why do church bells chime every hour or sometimes every fifteen minutes?

Part of it is tradition and fondness of said tradition, but I'd like to propose that one of the reasons is to remind everyone, especially subconsciously, that God is there, not necessarily in a "Big Brother is watching!" sort of way, but just to remind the public of church teachings, doctrinal and otherwise, like a mindfulness bell. It's more about piety than punctuality.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-23-why-does-do-church-bells-chime-every-fifteen-minutes/204741805_5cbedcbcda_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Bell Tower">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-23-why-does-do-church-bells-chime-every-fifteen-minutes/204741805_5cbedcbcda_b.jpg" alt="Bell Tower"/>
</a>


Why does do church bells chime every fifteen minutes?


<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-20-state-of-the-offspring-address-january-2012/6748813023_48971e2940_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image post-thumb" title="Good Morning, Sunshine!">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-20-state-of-the-offspring-address-january-2012/6748813023_4489d9c44c_t.jpg" alt="Good Morning, Sunshine!"/>
</a>

We have had our first month of nocturnal ambulation. The first incident occurred while I was asleep in Nora's room. Often, if Nora cries at night, I will get up from my bed and go sleep in the guest bed in Nora's room. This enables me to calm her down without getting up using just my voice, nipping a possible crying episode in the bud. In the time it takes her to crescendo up to a cry that I can hear from my room plus the time it takes me to get up and make it to her room, sometimes the emotions have snowballed into a bawl that's harder to quash. On the night in question, I awoke at 3:00 AM to the sound of latex on latex; Nora was rubbing a deflated balloon over my ear. When I opened my eyes, I saw her big eyes there on the bed beside me staring intently. I told her that she had to go back to bed, and I put her there with little protest. It was only in the morning that I noticed that many of the objects, like her bedtime books had moved across the room to various places during the night.  A few nights later, while I was still up working, Nora got up and went into our room and turned on the light. By the time I got upstairs to see what was going on, I found her in our room staring at her blinking half-asleep mother. I walked her back to bed.

Two-year-olds still fall for the "Please close the door…no, from the _other_ side" trick.

Another time, I was downstairs working when I heard someone get up upstairs and go to the bathroom. Then I heard the person leave the bathroom and close a bedroom door. It had to be my wife. Two minutes later, the stairway light came on. I went to investigate and found Nora standing at the top of the stairs – blocked by the toddler gate, thankfully – peering down at me silently. I put her back to bed. Later the next morning, I mentioned to my wife that she'd woken up Nora the previous night, and she said she'd never gotten up. So perhaps Nora went to pee on her own? Who knows…

I have taken another step back from Nora's regular bedtime routine, opting to sit on the floor out in the hall, rather than on the guest bed while Nora falls asleep. It's a step in the right direction, and Nora seems to be taking to it well, although sometimes she will get up and come check on me and be ordered back to bed.

Our bedtime routine has also taken a turn for the adorable. When I tuck her in and give her a hug, she usually says, whether I have or not, "Poppy! You haven't shaved today! Tomorrow you can shave, okay?" Then she demands to kiss my nose, each eye, each ear, and hair. These moments are so precious to me.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-20-state-of-the-offspring-address-january-2012/6716894897_13afa36b73_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Checkout Lady">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-20-state-of-the-offspring-address-january-2012/6716894897_3d233326d6_m.jpg" alt="Checkout Lady"/>
</a>

The magi brought Nora a cash register, complete with toy foodstuffs and money. She absolutely loves playing with it, saying often, "What do you want to buy?" When her playmate chooses an item, she says, "I have to scan it!", and she presses the button on the toy bar code scanner, causing a loud BEEP sound. Then she declares, "You have to pay!", but is more than willing to open up the cash drawer to give her playmate some money to pay for the item. Her business model is slightly flawed, but then she's not in it for the money. Occasionally, the bar code scanner gets magically transformed into a telephone and she holds it to her ear and talks to [Rubén](/2011/11/07/arguing-with-ruben/), who, despite actually existing, has taken on a primary role in her cast of imaginary friends that she talks to around the house.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-20-state-of-the-offspring-address-january-2012/6691681693_5f0cb5eb26_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Nora y Nela">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-20-state-of-the-offspring-address-january-2012/6691681693_8cc7d2c3ed.jpg" alt="Nora y Nela"/>
</a>

This month we had to bid a fond farewell to Nora's favorite daycare worker, Nela. Nora and Nela have always had a special relationship. For instance, Nela was the first person to be allowed to braid Nora's hair. She had decided to leave daycare work, for which she's certified, and start a children's clothing store in town. We will still see her around, and Nora would be "graduating" out of daycare this September anyway, but it's sad to see her go. I took this photo of the two of them on Nela's last day.

Several times this month, upon seeing me open the cabinet where we store Nora's medicine, she has said, "Poppy, what are we going to do? \[_cough! cough!_\]" I suppose that, after having to deal with a sick child that refused medicine to the point where she had to be held down with almost all my weight, I've got to be in favor of pharmaceutical companies erring on the side of "too appetizing" for medicine, and pretend hypochondria is just a consequence we've got to accept.

This month I learned that two-year-olds still fall for the "Please close the door…no, from the _other_ side" trick. Sometimes when she's in my office picking items off my desk, asking inquisitively, "What is this? To do?" I have to ask her to leave so I can continue working, and this trick is working wonders at the moment.

<iframe width="505" height="314" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/gMLfSgx1h_Y?cc_load_policy=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I recall learning this song before I knew what the heck a submarine was, and I'm pretty sure that Nora still doesn't even know what "yellow" means. It holds a special place in my marriage because of a special night in a bar in the Scottish highlands when we had a particularly fun time singing it in a large crowd. The fact that we can learn songs without having any clue about their meaning still amazes me.

Nora is definitely to the age where one must be careful of everything said around her, because it will be repeated without filter to anyone she has even a little confidence in. Her mother brought home about fifty 1, 2 and 5 euro-cent coins, totaling maybe 2€, from a jar she'd been throwing loose change into at work. Next thing we know, Nora is saying, "Mommy took a _lot_ of money from work and gave it all to me!" to everyone in the local supermarket. Of course they know that Marga's not an embezzler (or do they!?), but every single one of them remarked about how Nora's phrasing didn't make it sound very good.

How much longer is this post? A little bit, but not too much.

I recently had to following conversation with Nora…

> Erik: Ow! Don't hit me with that toy. Nora: Why? Erik: Because it hurts, and I don't like things that hurt, do you? Nora: A little bit. Sometimes. But not too much.

She's not really a moderate masochist; this is her canned diplomatic response to any question requiring a yes/no or quantitative answer. e.g. Do you want some juice? How much do you love Poppy? Are you a Democrat? You have to admit that it's a clever, [if utterly meaningless](/2006/08/23/moderation-proof/), response you'd expect out of the most agile politician. She's not yet three; no need to commit to any positions yet.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-20-state-of-the-offspring-address-january-2012/6748813023_48971e2940_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Good Morning, Sunshine!">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-20-state-of-the-offspring-address-january-2012/6748813023_4489d9c44c.jpg" alt="Good Morning, Sunshine!"/>
</a>

The state of the offspring is strong!


State of the Offspring Address - January 2012


![](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-19-why-www-is-stupid/200px-WWW_logo_by_Robert_Cailliau.svg.png)Back when the internet first began way back in yesteryear, there were many protocols (i.e. ways of transferring data). There was telnet for actually logging into command shells on remote servers; there was FTP for transferring files to and from remote servers; there was Gopher, which provided a very user-friendly system of menus to navigate to get to various information; and there was HTTP for requesting these newfangled documents with hyperlinks in them. Because of the interconnectedness of these hypertext documents, Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau coined the phrase World Wide Web. There was a previous long-standing practice of naming servers by the internet service they provided, so FTP servers had a "ftp." prefix, Gopher servers had a "gopher." prefix, etc. So naturally they started naming these "web" servers with a "www." prefix.  Very quickly, this web of hypertext documents took over as the dominant protocol for most users to access information over the internet. I would guess that 99.9% of people that use the internet these days don't even know that other protocols have – and still do – exist. I still have to use FTP occasionally at work to download product catalogs from suppliers, and I use FTP to update my blogging software, and your email client, for those of you who haven't completely jumped to web-based email clients, is still using POP or IMAP and SMTP, but no one uses Gopher to search for airline tickets or [Costa del Sol adventures](http://www.cheapholidays.com/costa-del-sol/). It's almost all HTTP these days.

> The World Wide Web is the only thing I know of whose shortened form takes three times longer to say than what it's short for.
> 
> â€” Douglas Adams, _The Independent on Sunday_, 1999

In Spanish, it's even worse, since each W requires four syllables with _uve doble_. Stephen Fry has suggested we say "wuh wuh wuh", but that sounds like a dog barking to me.

Given the ubiquity of hypertext "web" documents, for me, it comes down to this:

**The fact that you have to put the http:// before all of your web addresses anyway already tells your browser and the server and everybody that you're looking for a hypertext document, _so the "www." is entirely superfluous!_**

But old habits die hard, even if they are a waste of resources. Just think of all the bandwidth we are dedicating on a daily basis to sending those four bytes to represent the "www." across the wires!

Even Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the whole darn thing, [said back in 1999](http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/www.html) that the WWW prefix was outdated:

> Nowadays, however, the web server may be far and away the biggest service foo company has, and it might make sense to give it pride of place. Remember you can only do this with one service. You could use http://foo.com/ which is after all easier to type, even though people expect to have to type the "www".

This issue seems even more important now that we're in the age of Social Networking in which web links are passed around in dizzying quantities, giving rise to an entire industry of URL shortener services.

I hope that more and more companies will figure this out and buck the trend. It's easy enough to forward a URL with "www." to one without it, so your customers will still find you. In the mean time, you can find me at erikras.com, not www.erikras.com.


Why WWW is stupid


<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-18-sopa-y-pipa/6720446211_7f3d9802f7_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image post-thumb" title="Vota contra SOPA y PIPA">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-18-sopa-y-pipa/6720446211_443346427c_t.jpg" alt="Vota contra SOPA y PIPA"/>
</a>

The internet has pretty much shut down today. Well, most of the sites that make the internet entertaining, such as [Fark](http://www.fark.com/), [Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/), [The Oatmeal](http://theoatmeal.com/) and [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.com). They are protesting possible US Congressional legislation that could potentially give the US Government the power to shut down any internet site that any corporation claims is violating copyright laws. This "shoot first, ask questions later" approach is rather ridiculous to anyone that takes even the briefest moment to consider the consequences. [Learn more here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Learn_more). Anyway, I thought I'd join in the protest by providing a graphic that uses some images to playfully demonstrate what these acronyms mean in Spanish.  _Sopa_ is Spanish for "soup", and _pipa_ is Spanish for a smoking pipe, but more commonly it refers to a variety of seeds with an outer shell, usually referring to sunflower seeds.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-18-sopa-y-pipa/6720446211_7f3d9802f7_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Vota contra SOPA y PIPA">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-18-sopa-y-pipa/6720446211_443346427c.jpg" alt="Vota contra SOPA y PIPA"/>
</a>


SOPA y PIPA


[![Friday the 13th Facts and Theories](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-12-friday-the-13th-calculator/801295398_48eb229a19_t.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/kire/801295398/ "Friday the 13th Facts and Theories by kire, on Flickr")I've always been fascinated by superstition, and _friggatriskaidekaphobia_ – or, to be more clear, _paraskevidekatriaphobia_ – strikes me as a particularly interesting one. The origin can only be traced back into the 19th century. I am disappointed to discover that experts find little reason to associate it with the slaughter of the Knights Templar on October 13, 1307, exactly seven hundred years before my wedding day. Oh well, something else [Dan Brown got wrong](/2009/10/05/dan-browns-the-lost-symbol-is-anti-science/). As if to show just how arbitrary the choice of Friday is, the Spanish speaking world fears _Tuesday_ the 13th, and they even have their own tongue-twisting phobia word: _trezidavomartiofobia_.  Several months ago, one of my journeys down the rabbit hole of Wikipedia found me reading more about Friday the 13th, and I was fascinated to discover that, of all the days of the week, the thirteenth day of any given month is statistically more likely to be a Friday.

How was this discovered? The Gregorian calendar – the one we use in modern 21st century western society – repeats itself every 400 years. Therefore, to calculate how many times the thirteenth falls on each day of the week, we only have to examine 400 years, or 4800 months. A bloke by the name of B.H. Brown did this by hand in 1933, but now we have computers. The program to do this is completely trivial once you have a calendar algorithm to follow the Gregorian calendar like all modern computer languages have built-in. Trivial or not, I couldn't resist...let's calculate how many times the 13th falls on each day of the week, shall we?

## 13th Histogram Calculator

When you click "GO!", the calculator will start from today, January 13, 2012, and count which weekdays fall on the thirteenth of the month over the next 400 years until January 13, 2412. Here's a hint: it goes up to 688.

GO!Reset

Sunday

0

Monday

0

Tuesday

0

Wednesday

0

Thursday

0

Friday

0

Saturday

0

<script type="text/javascript">jQuery(function () { var formatDate = function (date) { return ['January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December'][date.getMonth()] + ' ' + date.getDate() + ', ' + date.getFullYear(); }; var start = new Date(2012,0,13); var end = new Date(start.getFullYear() + 400, start.getMonth(), start.getDate()); var status = jQuery('#friday_status'); var weekdays = ['Sunday', 'Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday']; var next13th = function (date) { if (date.getDate() < 13) return new Date(date.getFullYear(), date.getMonth(), 13); else if (date.getMonth() == 11) return new Date(date.getFullYear() + 1, 0, 13); else return new Date(date.getFullYear(), date.getMonth() + 1, 13); }; var reset = function () { for (var i = 0; i < 7; i++) jQuery('#friday_' + i).text('0'); status.text(' '); }; var disp = function (date) { status.html('<span style="width:110px;float:left;">' + formatDate(date) + '</span> is a ' + weekdays[date.getDay()]); var cell = jQuery('#friday_' + date.getDay()); cell.text(new Number(cell.text()) + 1); } var calc = function (date) { for(var i=0;i<72;i++) { if (date.getTime() < end.getTime()) { disp(date); date = next13th(date); } } if (date.getTime() < end.getTime()) window.setTimeout(function () { calc(date); }, 0); }; jQuery('#friday_start').text(formatDate(start)); jQuery('#friday_end').text(formatDate(end)); jQuery('#friday_go').click(function () { reset(); calc(start.getDate() == 13 ? start : next13th(start)); }); jQuery('#friday_reset').click(reset); });</script>

Exciting, huh? There was only one Friday the 13th in 2011, in May, so I've been waiting months to post this.


Friday the 13th is most common 13th


[![Sunset Flock (thumbnail)](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-09-sunset-flock/6669537629_03c6a60632_t.jpg "Sunset Flock (thumbnail)")](http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikrasmussen/6669537629 "View 'Sunset Flock (thumbnail)' on Flickr.com")During the months when the northern hemisphere of our pale blue dot on which I reside is leaning away from our stellar space heater, the light from our star enters my office window at sunset and distracts me from my work, causing me to get up and go to the window to shut the blinds. Depending on the formations of water vapor in the atmosphere, the view of the setting sun can be either boring and gray or spectacularly amber and crimson. Today, when I went to shut the blinds, I saw a lovely display of long wavelength visual electromagnetic radiation, which I felt compelled to take a photograph of.  <a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-09-sunset-flock/6667703237_6bd3717da1_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="January Sunset, With Bird">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-09-sunset-flock/6667703237_698d2d6d7c.jpg" alt="January Sunset, With Bird"/>
</a>

This occurrence is so common that I felt it didn't deserve much more than [a tweet](https://twitter.com/#!/erikras/status/156416519499288578). What I heard a few minutes later was, ironically, exactly that, a bunch of tweeting. It is [fairly common](http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikrasmussen/6441048273/) for birds to be perched on my building's antenna at dusk, but today there were so many that they didn't all have a place to sit. And then I saw...

Flocking birds really must be one of the most gorgeous phenomena in all of Nature. The natural ebb and flow and organic rhythm of their movement is what ballet dancers mimic on stage. Up and down and left and right, all in perfect synchronicity, and…_without a choreographer!_

What I love most about flocking birds is that we scientifically minded apes, using computers, have figured out just how incredibly simple an algorithm is needed to create such a seemingly complex emergent phenomenon. I know, because [I wrote a program to do it](http://applet-bots.sourceforge.net/applets/swarm.html). And yet, none of the beauty of said phenomenon is lost by our understanding of it.

My ability to identify birds is almost as strong as my ability to identify flowers or mushrooms or insects in that it's pretty much non-existent, so I don't know if these were starlings, and could thus merit the awesome term _murmuration_, a word which came to the attention of [internauts](/2009/08/25/internauta-favorite-spanish-words/) recently with [that video from Ireland](http://vimeo.com/31158841). My video is not nearly as jaw-dropping as the one from Ireland, but I was certainly mesmerized as I was filming it and the several times I've watched it since. I just wish I'd had a less obstructed view and a better microphone to capture the _whoosh!_ as they changed direction in an instant.

<iframe width="505" height="314" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/GmvTocRgNTg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

As quickly as they arrived, they departed, leaving me feeling lucky to have witnessed their momentary aerial ballet.


Sunset Flock


<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646067913_777577bac1_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image post-thumb" title="Fire in Colindres - Incendio en Colindres">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646067913_946958e810_t.jpg" alt="Fire in Colindres - Incendio en Colindres"/>
</a>

On Kings Day, my family woke up excited to see what presents the Magi had brought us. We looked out our sixth story window and saw fog. But there was something strange about the fog; it was moving very quickly and…billowing. Smoke! One of the old houses that our bedroom window overlooks was billowing white smoke, and a fireman was perched on a cherry picker spraying water down into the interior of the house. It's three hours later as I write this and they are still spraying even more water and more smoke is billowing out. I took some photos.  <a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646276325_39ba39cd22_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Incendio de Reyes en Colindres">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646276325_c6263f631b_z.jpg" alt="Incendio de Reyes en Colindres"/>
</a>

The house with the brick ground floor is the one that has burned down. I walk by it every day. I've shopped in the store to the left, but the building to the right has been abandoned with aging _Banco Santander_ decals on it for the six years I've been living in Colindres.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646272997_9eb2981a77_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Incendio de Reyes en Colindres">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646272997_2c8ce34467.jpg" alt="Incendio de Reyes en Colindres"/>
</a>

Because of the weather today, the smoke is completely invisible from ground level.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646064793_943b44d629_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Fire in Colindres - Incendio en Colindres">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646064793_4ecd0e1c10.jpg" alt="Fire in Colindres - Incendio en Colindres"/>
</a>

But seen from above, you can clearly see just how much of it there is.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646067913_777577bac1_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Fire in Colindres - Incendio en Colindres">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646067913_946958e810_z.jpg" alt="Fire in Colindres - Incendio en Colindres"/>
</a>

The house is totally gutted. No, I don't know why there's a bathtub on the neighbor's balcony. It's been there ever since we bought our house.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646269821_19771c084a_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Incendio de Reyes en Colindres">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646269821_930c52bd39.jpg" alt="Incendio de Reyes en Colindres"/>
</a>

The neighborhood is filled with that thick acrid smell that triggers strong emotions in anyone that has ever experienced a house fire. My closest brush with a fire was when a dorm room at my boarding school burned down. No one was hurt, but it was a traumatic night, and the emotions are still vivid.

<a href="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646278315_f160164232_o_d.jpg" target="_blank" class="flickr-image" title="Incendio de Reyes en Colindres">
  <img src="https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-06-neighborhood-kings-day-fire/6646278315_f7a152daec.jpg" alt="Incendio de Reyes en Colindres"/>
</a>

I hope everyone got out okay. Disasters are always sad, but it's especially poignant when it happens on one of these days when Society expects us to be joyous.


Neighborhood Kings Day Fire


[![I asked my mother for fifty cents (thumbnail)](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-04-i-asked-my-mother-for-fifty-cents/6637081793_94d359bfbf_t.jpg "I asked my mother for fifty cents (thumbnail)")](http://www.flickr.com/photos/erikrasmussen/6637081793 "View 'I asked my mother for fifty cents (thumbnail)' on Flickr.com")When my parents last visited, I got to hear my mother sing songs to my daughter that I haven't heard since I was a child and she was singing to me. One of them was this rhyme that Nora has come to call "July", since she loves to emphasize the ultimate word. It goes like this:

> I asked my mother for fifty cents To see the elephant jump the fence. He jumped so high, He reached the sky, And didn't come down 'til the fourth of July

Searching for the origins of this rhyme has been quite interesting. It seems to primarily be a playground rhyme sung whilst jumping rope. There are some indications that the origin is from the African American traditions in the southern United States. For instance, it is included on the 1956 album [_Music from the South, Vol 5_](http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=6070).

It later appeared as a verse in Rufus Thomas' 1965 classic, _Walking the Dog_, which was covered by [Jackie Shane](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUYW2iwimBw), [The Rolling Stones](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lnkm9ReVyo), [The Who](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMbRcBOsuyU), [The Sonics](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLvxLoyC_nY), [The Count Bishops](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRnMlQNGu1s), [Stevie Ray Vaughan](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwA51EMdPdc), [The Grateful Dead](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMJDszeLumM) and [Aerosmith](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AftzNnmhC-A), among [others](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walking_the_Dog). Quite a list, eh? Here's the original version, which I think might be the best of them all:

<iframe width="505" height="420" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/M6AZNywvF-s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I suspect the version my daughter learned from her grandmother is much closer to the original playground chant. Without further ado, I present _I Asked My Mother For Fifty Cents_:

<iframe width="505" height="314" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/rcR4H-jzmoM" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


I asked my mother for fifty cents


[![Proposal shot @ 7000'!](https://d1js6qm6cshi0v.cloudfront.net/oldblog/2012-01-04-viral-video-idea-skydiving-proposal-gone-wrong/281597750_b163bb53c1_t.jpg)](http://www.flickr.com/photos/mark_wilson/281597750/ "Proposal shot @ 7000'! by Skydiver Mark Wilson, on Flickr")The video starts with an attractive, rugged adventurous-looking guy and a group of his friends out in a corn field at night pushing around a long board as if they are making crop circles. In the 15 second clip, the protagonist twice checks with his best friend behind the shaky camera – "You getting this?" "Yeah, dude. This is gonna be _awesome_!"

\- CUT -

Now it's the daytime with our protagonist, who is clearly a veteran skydiver, is giddy as he walks to an airplane with his girlfriend who is excited, but a bit timid, about doing her first solo jump. She murmurs something to this effect and he comforts her. The best friend cameraman whips the camera around on himself and gives a grin and a wink as they all three climb into the plane. \- CUT -

It's noisy now in the plane up at jumping altitude. Our threesome are pumping themselves up with excitement and anticipation. The pilot says, something cliched like "Okay, bombs away!" and they open the door, and jump simultaneously, with the couple holding hands. Some excited screaming, and then the protagonist waves to his girlfriend and points down at the ground. The camera shakily pans down and we can see what they had been up to the night before. In the corn field below is written "WILL YOU MARRY ME, SUSAN?" The girlfriend squeals with delight and gives the thumbs up, and they hug, causing them to somersault a bit.

The cameraman shouts a barely audible "Okay, guys, that's enough!" and the couple push apart and prepare to pull their chutes. The girl pulls her cord, but nothing happens. She freaks out a little bit, but her more experienced fiancé reminds her about her secondary cord. She pulls that, and nothing happens. We hear the camera man utter an "Oh my god!" Our protagonist goes to his fiancé's pack and tries to pull loose the chute. The camera man pulls his cord and we briefly lose sight of the free falling couple. The camera is lowered and we see them plummet to the ground, landing with a puff of dust right in the flattened dot of the question mark.

The video continues shakily, to let the audience marinate in their horror, as the cameraman lands in the corn sobbing. We get a brief shot of his face before he reaches behind the camera and it cuts to black.

After a second, we see the text with the sponsor's name, and some message like,

> You handle the romance.
> 
> Let _ErikRas Insurance_ keep you safe.

Is that a complete non sequitur? Yes. Does anyone care? No.

### What's Needed?

The budget for making such a video could be kept pretty low. You need three skilled skydivers and maybe two or three jumps worth of takes. You need a field where you can film the initial scene of corn flattening. And the rest is computer effects. Any halfway descent Hollywood effects studio could generate the 3D model of the message written in the corn and sync it to the motion of the camera, probably with some sort of grid of bright dots on the ground that would later be edited out. And then you just need a 3D model of two humans with parachute packs on to fall to the ground.

### Why It Will Work

The best viral videos are the ones that get forwarded both by those who love them _and_ by those who hate them. You'll have plenty of haters, people annoyed a corporation for tugging at their emotions or who simply think it's distasteful. And it _is_ distasteful…but it's also sensational and shocking. Searching the internet for "skydiving marriage proposal" turns up several people who have thought of popping the question at terminal velocity, even some that have [written it on the ground](http://rvthereyet.ca/2010/06/27/weekend-in-review/). The whole point of viral video marketing is to get your company name out there and into people's heads. A video like this, if done well, would _definitely_ get passed around. Neither confirming nor denying that the video was faked will only add to the publicity.


13 posts from January, 2012