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From: Robert
Date: June 30, 2004
To: lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: Last Samurai
I agree The Last Samurai wasn't quite realistic in Tom's training. To give you an idea how well the children were trained, one of the most famous Japanese swordsmen who ever lived, Musashi (sp?), made his first "kill" at age 13. He killed a grown man. Whew!
How do you tell a kid like THAT to go in Timeout??? ;-)
From: edt
Date: January 12, 2004
To: lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: about dr tom van flandern
Hi. Dude, flandern is a crackpot. I'm not gonna bother with the science details, you seem to have a layman's comprehension of the maths. More useful probably is this quote from Salon:
* * *
Van Flandern has argued that because of Einstein's theory of relativity, clock rates on GPS satellites should need to be adjusted continuously to keep them in sync with users on Earth. But they're not, he told the American Spectator (April 1999). The GPS programmers don't need relativity. "They have basically blown off Einstein," Van Flandern says.Is this true? Could this be a real crack in the "temple" of Einstein's theory?
I asked Neil Ashby, a professor of physics who works at the University of Colorado and specializes in theoretical general relativity with practical applications. "I am acquainted with Tom Van Flandern and his view," he told me. "It is incorrect to claim that no relativistic corrections are used after launch. Actually because GPS satellites are in eccentric orbits, they suffer frequency variations due to their varying speeds and varying heights above the Earth's surface. Information is transmitted down to the receivers from each satellite, which enables receivers to make a relativistic correction which accounts for these effects."
He added: "Einstein has not been 'blown off.' On the contrary, a great deal of thought has gone into the problem and all of the known special and general relativistic effects have been accounted for if they are predicted to be big enough to be important."
Other gravitation specialists, such as Charles Misner at the University of Maryland, Lawrence Mead of the University of Southern Mississippi, Clifford Will of the University of Washington in St. Louis and Steve Carlip of the University of California at Davis, confirm that special and general relativity are built into the software for GPS.
* * *
I'm not gonna even start with Flandern's "proof" that there are little green men on mars building huge faces.
Stick with Feynman, he is a true genius. The Salon article is good too.
--- edt
From: Don
Date: Mon Nov 24, 2003 6:14:05 PM
To: mailbag lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: Fusion Pens
I too was wondering just what was up with the "clear to color" Fusion pens. How do they work anyway?
No big deal, actually. Another writer (Sam, I think it was) pretty much got it. Take one apart and the "secret" is clear (so to speak...).
Let's look at the pen in 3 parts: 1) the clear reservoir (which contains the clear "ink"), 2) the "hidden" part in the white section near the tip, and 3) the tip itself.
Cutting between the reservoir and the white part reveals the only "mysterious" or "secret" part of the pen. That is, there is hardly any "clear ink" in it at all. In my brand-new Fusion pen there were maybe 4 drops. The pen barrel is very thick (at least twice, if not three times, as thick as a "normal" ink pen) and a clear plastic rod running down the length takes up most of the interior space. What ink there is is in the annular space between the barrel wall and the rod.
The white middle section is where the color is. The "clear" ink is transported to the color part via what looks like a glass felt plug or something (fairly standard stuff). There it flows through a very intense coloring medium (it looks like it might have originally been a dry powder, or maybe a dye-impregnated felt, but it's hard to tell). The color is weak towards the ass-end of the pen, but becomes stronger as it passes thru more of the color stuff. At the forward end of the white middle section the now colored ink looks just like any other ballpoint pen ink.
From there on out the pen is standard (in fact, so standard I think the tip has been taken directly from other Uni-Ball pens). A capillary takes the ink to the ball and when you write it, well, writes.
After a quick review of some of the more technical parts of the Sanford website and other net resources on pens and inks I can make a pretty good guess as to what the "clear" stuff is, and what the dye is that is used. However, that is (as they say) beyond the scope of this letter.
Don
Materials Engineer
From: Irvin T McCarville
Date: Fri Oct 3, 2003
To: mailbag@lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: cleaning sink drains
I heard the hardware guy on WMT radio today and he told a simple cleaner for kitchen drains. It was put baking soda down and then vinegar and cover it and after 15 minutes put boiling water. I didn't get measurements. Can you help me?
Marian McCarville
Hi!I'm not sure how you found our website, as we don't usually discuss clogged drains or home-brew cleaning methods. Nevertheless, I searched on Google.com using the search string "drain clog vinegar baking soda" and found the following site which I hope you will find helpful (it even includes the measurements!):
http://www.care2.com/channels/solutions/home/113
Good luck, and thanks for visiting LunchWithGeorge.com!
From: Chris
Date: Med Sep 17, 2003
To: mailbag@lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: Amazing Research
Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Fcuknig amzanig huh?
From: Sam
Date: Mon Sep 15, 2003
To: mailbag@lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: Uniball Fusion Pens
I was also curious about how these Uniball Fusion pens work. However, I couldn't find any information online. Well, when in doubt, call the company. I can't say for certain that the mystery is solved, but what I've heard makes sense.
Discussing this in another forum, I heard from someone who works at a store that sells the pens. He said that a Sanford rep told him that the clear gel reacts with the metal ball at the tip of the pen. This sounded rather farfetched to me, so I decided to call the company myself. According to the Sanford rep I talked to, here's how the pen works:
There is a reservoir near the tip of the pen that contains a concentrated dye. When the clear gel passes through the reservoir, it picks up some of the dye.
It seems as though the reality is not as cool as the mystery, but that method sounds reasonable to me.
Love the site.
Take care,
Sam
From: Toni
Date: Fri Aug 22, 2003
To: mailbag@lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: How the pen works
My incomplete theory: The tube that runs through the center of the pen is isolated from the liquid except at the tip. The tube contains a gas of some sort that interacts with the liquid to change the color. If you take the pen apart, the gas escapes and the liquid stays clear. The pen I gave Kevin today that had the ink turn blue in the pen probably has a leak between the gas tube (maybe due to being in my car since Tuesday in the AZ heat). Any other ideas? Toni
From: Kevin
Date: Wed Aug 13, 2003
To: mailbag@lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: Fusion Pens
WOW!! The fusion pen secret is well kept, I will tell you that much. I went to all my best sources and nobody has any idea how they work. All I could find out is that the technology is called "Clear to Color, Ink Innovation". The pens were first released in early January of this year at a tech expo. They were given away to big companies by Sanford representatives. The process is copyrighted by Sanford and, at least to my knowledge, NO ONE on the net has any idea how they work. By the way someone opened one up and the gel remained clear! One thing I found which may be a key is that the ink doesn't last as long as normal ink-- it fades after a few months.
Kevin
From: Fred Glover
Date: Tue May 13, 2003 6:16 PM
To: Mailbag@lunchwithgeorge.com
Subject: How does this work?
Here's one for you.
http://mr-31238.mr.valuehost.co.uk/assets/Flash/psychic.swf
How does this work?
fredg
But it's a dry heat.
[Wow... very well done. Here's my analysis:Since the formula involves subtracting the sum of the two digits, all of the numbers in a "tens" group (example: 90 through 99) will all map to the same number once you apply the formula. Take a look at the table below... as you start at 99 and work your way downward toward 90, the number you are subtracting (sum of the digits) decreases by one each time, just as the number from which you are subtracting from decreases, meaning the answer to all of them is the same, 81. The same phenomenon occurs for all numbers within a "tens" group.
They put the same symbol on all of these numbers (note they are all multiples of 9), and on a few more just to make it look random... but no matter which number you pick to apply the formula, it will map to a multiple of 9. They also mislead the user by changing the magic symbol for each iteration!
Very clever.
--Paul
99 - (9+9) = 81
98 - (9+8) = 81
97 - (9+7) = 81
96 - (9+6) = 81
...89 - (8+9) = 72
88 - (8+8) = 72
87 - (8+7) = 72
...
79 - (7+9) = 63
78 - (7+8) = 63
...
...
29 - (2+9) = 18
28 - (2+8) = 18
...
19 - (1+9) = 9
18 - (1+8) = 9
...
9 - (9) = 0
8 - (8) = 0
...]
