Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Yuka waited for Masha!

I just came across the word yahoo, and went to look up its etymology. I thought it was an exclamation, like yoo-hoo! something like Yay! or Whoa! or yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Turns out not at all. According to Wikipedia, for the name of the service yahoo com, Jerry Yang and David Filo chose the acronym they invented “Yet Another Hierarchically Organized/Officious Oracle” — yet another hierarchically organized Oracle. But that’s not why I went into the dictionary. I read in a book: “Because Kendrick thinks there are a bunch of yahoos from the beach”. It turns out, this is a reference to the people yahoos from “Gulliver’s Travels”. I can’t for the life of me remember all four parts—curious, has anyone of you read them all? Anyway, there are in the fourth part these filthy human-like creatures – yahoos (yahoo), inhabiting the country of virtuous horses-houyhnhnms. These houyhnhnms disdainfully viewed the yahoos but used them as labor animals. Moreover, these yahoos were seen by the houyhnhnms as such moral deformities that they seriously considered castrating all Yahoos to prevent their reproduction. If you look closely, the book isn’t for children at all. For example, there is a particularly unpleasant scene in the visit to Lilliput, where Gulliver urinates on the queen’s house to extinguish a devastating fire. This scene is regularly included in children’s editions, albeit in a sanitized form. Then there’s a scene in one of Gulliver’s last adventures where our hero has to defend himself from an extremely lustful female Yahoo, who apparently intends to rape him.

Lindalino, the most unusual place, is another name for Dublin (double “lin”). The flying city of Laputa is a harsh allegory for England and its colonial rule over Ireland—the name means “whore” in Spanish (la puta). As for the kingdom of Tribnia, it is an anagram of Britain. Its inhabitants call it Langden, an anagram of England.

So, I research further, and come across a reference to an interview with Yang and Filo. Their version differs from the corporation’s version with the hierarchical Oracle—Yang and Filo openly say that the roots of the name are from Swift’s “Gulliver”. The fact is that both founders were from Louisiana, where “yahoo” was common slang among students, used to designate themselves and other similar rustic and unrefined Southern residents.

And the Yahoo! site is still alive!

It turns out that in U.S. universities (specifically at Virginia Tech) among the elective courses, you can take ones like “Geography of Wine” and “Science of Brewing.” Specifically, a friend of mine, a friend of Liz’s, took the wine course, and besides the lectures, the program includes a group assignment where students buy several bottles, taste them thoroughly according to all the scientific principles and fill out forms that relate theory to practice.

Specifically, the wine and its geography course is worth three credits. That’s three lecture hours per week over a semester (15 weeks).

Probably, not everyone knows what these credits are. They are a unit of measurement for educational courses. They reflect the amount of work a student is expected to complete to finish the course. Typically, 1 credit is equivalent to 1 hour of classroom lectures _per week_ (or more; depending on the course) for an entire semester, plus the expected independent study workload. To earn a degree, a student must accumulate a certain number of credits, which is set by the program. These credits are distributed among mandatory courses (necessary for the specialization or educational program), elective courses within the specialization, and free electives (which can be chosen from any field of knowledge). The wine course is an example from the third category. Students usually register for courses at the beginning of each semester. They choose courses based on the requirements of their program, class availability, and counsel from a counselor— an academic advisor.

To earn a bachelor’s degree, you need about 120-130 credits. The bachelor’s program takes 4 years or 8 semesters or about 120 weeks. On average, students take about 15 credits per semester, which lasts 15 weeks (thus, in total over 4 years it comes out to 15*2*4=120), which means an average of 15 lecture hours per week. Dividing by five days, that is three hours per day. And for some courses, the actual number of hours in the classroom may be greater than the number of credits. And, of course, there’s also a heap of hours for independent study, which we’re not even counting here.

Some subjects can be passed in high school through AP/IB classes. Each university credits these courses differently. But often it helps save time and money, and many finish university in 3-3.5 years because of this.

Hooray! Our Lisa is heading to Germany to study at the Technical University of Braunschweig under the Study Abroad program for one semester. This opportunity is provided by her university, Virginia Tech, which allows a semester of study somewhere else in the world, and Lisa has chosen this place. And now, a whole journey awaits her. By car from home to the train station in Washington, by train to New York, then another train to the airport, then by plane to Stuttgart, another plane to Hannover, another train to Braunschweig, and then a taxi to the hotel.

We’ve got an emergency in the area. A cargo ship DALI (a loaded ship the size of a seven-story building) crashed into the Baltimore bridge, causing the structure to collapse in several places and fall into the river. It happened around 1:30 AM, so there were very few cars on the bridge, but there were workers. Emergency services are searching for at least seven people, and authorities have described the situation as “extremely critical.” Initial signs point to a technical cause, as equipment on the ship failed, but it’s still too early to say for sure.

Video shows moment when Baltimore’s Key Bridge collapses

https://www.wbaltv.com/article/baltimore-bridge-collapse-key-bridge-video/60304085

I just came across a video from a Chinese restaurant styled like a moving train carriage and remembered a letter to a friend from 2008 where I described this idea. One downside is that in the video, they eat right next to televisions, which creates a different effect from the perspective of those sitting compared to the viewpoint of the person filming. For better immersion for the seated guests, a projection screen should be placed three meters behind the window, but a much cheaper solution is to not place the “windows” so close to the people. Simply moving them back by a meter to a meter and a half would suffice, as it then tricks the peripheral vision.

It turns out that in English, “нога затекла” translates to “the leg/foot fell asleep” – as if it “went to sleep.” The process of it coming back to sensation is called waking up.

Scientifically, this is called paresthesia. The process is as follows: due to pressure, the blood flow in areas where nerves are located worsens, and without enough blood, the nerves cannot send signals to the brain. As a result, the brain receives mixed signals, which it cannot correctly interpret, causing a sensation of tingling or numbness. Thus, the cause is inadequate blood supply to the nerves.

Watching Poor Thing. Really cool

after the first hour:

– Professor Preobrazhensky — check

– Doctor Bormental — check

– Sharikov — almost there, but the opposite

– Vasnetsova — almost there too, just the opposite

waiting for Shvonder!