Hi, I'm Rauf Aliev.

Easter Traditions: Påskekrim, Bunnies, and Ancient Pizzas | April 20 2025, 15:24

It turns out that Norway has a unique Easter tradition called “påskekrim (translated from Norwegian as “Easter crime). Every Easter, Norwegians voraciously consume detective novels and thrillers, watch crime series, and listen to audio investigations. This tradition is so well-established that bookstores before Easter create special sections featuring new detective stories (marked as “påskekrim), crime-themed TV series are broadcasted, and sometimes even milk cartons carry short detective tales.

The tradition began in 1923 when two young Norwegian authors—Norrdahl Gryug and Nils Lie—released a detective novel titled “The Train to Bergen Has Been Robbed at Night. On the eve of Easter, the publishing house placed an advertisement for the novel on the front page of one of the largest newspapers, styled it as real news. People mistook it for an actual event, and the book instantly became a hit. Since then, the tradition has taken root.

Additionally, it turns out that the “Easter Bunny” originates from German Lutheran practices, where the bunny initially played the role of a judge, evaluating children’s behavior—whether they had been obedient or disobedient—at the beginning of the Easter period, similar to Santa Claus’s “naughty and nice” list. Moreover, according to lore, this creature carries a basket filled with painted eggs and sometimes candies and toys, which it leaves in the homes of children. Thankfully, not in a stocking!

By the way, it’s sometimes a bunny and sometimes a rabbit. Apparently, it’s not that important.

There’s another dubious but quite popular interpretation. According to it, the name “Easter” comes from Eostre (Eostra), a Teutonic goddess revered as a goddess of spring and fertility. According to Teutonic myth, a little girl once found a dying bird and prayed for assistance from Eostre. The goddess appeared, crossing the rainbow bridge—the snow melting under her feet. Seeing the bird gravely injured, Eostre transformed it into a hare and told the girl that from then on, the hare would return every year, carrying eggs dyed the colors of the rainbow. However, it’s noted that Eostre’s name is only mentioned once—by Bede the Venerable in his work De Temporum Ratione (“The Reckoning of Time”). No other mentions of this name exist. Moreover, there are no tales or legends associated with Eostre; thus, anything told about her is considered apocryphal. Yet, no better explanations seem to exist.

And shifting from hares and goddesses to something more down-to-earth, it turns out that even pizza has an Easter past. The earliest recorded use of the word pizza dates back to May 997 and is found in a Latin notarial document from the city of Gaeta, which was then part of the Byzantine Empire. The text says that a tenant was to annually give the bishop twelve pizzas and a pair of chickens on Easter. So, who knows—perhaps the first festive Easter pizza was not a margarita but something between a ritual and a rent.

Dumplings and Density: A Culinary Physics Exploration | April 18 2025, 18:08

Suddenly, it hit me – why not have some dumplings? So now, for the second day in a row, I’m devouring dumplings, with three different kinds in the fridge already. Plus, I bought some herring, and Nadya, without coordinating, also brought some. The fridge is surprised; it hasn’t seen either in a long time.

So, while I eat another serving, I’m googling why dumplings float. It’s not trivial, by the way.

Overall, the physics of this floating process is complex. They don’t float just because. Let’s start with the dough. It contains starch which absorbs water and swells (gelatinization), increasing the volume. Inside, the proteins in the dough denature, creating a more rigid structure. Some water evaporates/boils, forming bubbles. Result: the density of the dough decreases, aiding the floating. Meanwhile, the proteins in the meat also denature, become denser, and release moisture, decreasing the meat’s volume. The fat melts. Thus, for the meat itself: density increases, which counters the floating. Moreover, water penetrates inside the dumpling where it wasn’t before, also acting against the floating, as it simply becomes heavier. But the moisture released from the meat (juice) and water in the meat itself can boil, forming steam bubbles inside the filling. These bubbles offset the densification of the meat, and overall density of the filling also decreases (or remains the same).

In the end, the reduction in density of both the dough and the filling (due to the bubbles) leads to a decrease in the overall density of the dumpling, making it float.

Salt barely affects the cooking speed. Although salt raises the boiling point of water (Raoult’s law), to significantly speed up cooking, you’d need to add so much (10g per 2L) that the dumplings would become unbearably salty. In normal amounts, salt is just for taste.

Also, there is such a phenomenon as osmosis which is the reason for the tasty broth. Water penetrates inside the dumpling through the porous dough (osmosis), making the filling juicier. Substances from the filling leach into the water, making the broth tastier and fattier.

Curating a Diverse Bookshelf: Art, Science, and Beyond | April 18 2025, 17:28

The books requested a new home. Brought the home, settled the home, group photos from the housewarming.

Fed the pics to ChatGPT, got a booklist. Edited a bit, it makes mistakes.

Top shelf – art. I only keep the best in the list:

1. Alla Prima II by Richard Schmid

2. Virgil Elliott – Traditional Oil Painting

3. Anatomy for Sculptors – Uldis Zarins

4. Anatomy of Facial Expression – Uldis Zarins

5. Form of the Head and Neck – Uldis Zarins

6. Impressionism by Bomford, Kirby

7. Lessons in Classical Painting by Juliette Aristides

8. The Practice of Oil Painting & Drawing by Solomon J. Solomon

Second shelf – science and other science pop

Sergey Yastrebov “From Atoms to the Tree” (biology, chemistry)

Kukushkin – Clapping with One Hand (biology)

Burlak — The Origin of Language (linguistics)

Eric Kandel – In Search of Memory (biology)

Andrew Solomon- Far from the Tree (biology)

Richard Dawkins – The Selfish Gene (biology)

Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens (history)

Yuval Noah Harari – Nexus (history)

The Elegant Universe, Brian Greene (physics)

Carl Zimmer – Life’s Edge (biology)

Carl Zimmer – She has a mother’s laugh (biology)

Semikhatov — Everything That Moves (physics)

Poluektov – Mysteries of Sleep (psychology)

Noga Gál – The Living and the Dead Word (linguistics)

Kitaigorodsky – Entertaining Theory of Probability (mathematics)

Steven Pinker- How the Mind Works (biology, psychology)

Robert Sapolsky – Determined (biology, psychology)

Neil deGrasse Tyson – Accessory to War (astrophysics)

Flavor by Bob Holmes (biology)

Jared Diamond – Guns, Germs, and Steel (biology)

Marilyn Sheldrake – Entangled Life (biology)

Wolfram – A New Kind of Science (mathematics)

Frans de Waal – Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? (psychology)

Eidelman – How Propaganda Works (psychology)

Peter Godfrey – Metazoa (biology)

Asya Kazantseva – Who Would Have Thought! (hard to say)

Asya Kazantseva – Someone Is Wrong on the Internet (–“–)

Asya Kazantseva – The Brain is Material (–“–)

Gordon – Structures, why things don’t fall down (architecture)

Thomas Heatherwick – Humanize (? design, architecture?)

Ed Yong – I Contain Multitudes (biology)

Po Bronson, Arvind Gupta – Decoding the World (biology)

Jonathan Haidt – The Anxious Generation (psychology)

Plus, some books there are biographies and fiction. Unfortunately, many good books I’ve read and would like to put on the shelf are not in paper but in digital or left behind in a past life.

Recommend what else I might like.

Unzipping the Literary World | April 18 2025, 15:29

Bookcase.zip

Exploring the Intriguing History and Ecology of Kangaroos and Camels | April 17 2025, 22:47

Interesting. It turns out that before Russia imposed a temporary ban on kangaroo meat imports, it consumed 70% of all kangaroo meat produced in Australia.

It turns out that not only do camels roam in Australia, but there are more of them than in Central Asia and the Middle East, and Australia actively sells them to Saudi Arabia, for instance. Moreover, camels were introduced to Australia from the Middle East by Afghans, who left quite a significant (and positive) mark on the history of Australia.

For example, here’s a photo of the Ghan train — it features a camel on its logo. This is no coincidence; it is actually named after those Afghans who brought the camels.

Also interesting is that camels are originally from our regions. Yes, the USA is, in fact, the homeland of camels. According to some estimates, camels first appeared in North America between 40 and 50 million years ago, and 3 million years ago, they crossed into Asia via a land bridge in the Bering Strait area, and then made their way to Africa. In recent years, convincing evidence has been found that these animals inhabited almost all of North America. And of course, the climate was different back then.

Moreover, I read that there is such a thing as “kangatarianism” — a practice of following a diet that excludes the meat of all animals except kangaroo, for environmental and ethical reasons.

Also, it turns out that there are tree kangaroos (Tree-kangaroo). Also, in English, a group of kangaroos is called “a mob” – a gang 🙂 However, in Australian English, mob is not used in the same connotation as “mafia” or “gang”. Indeed, a group of crows with their “murder of crows” isn’t too far off either.

Oh, how could I not mention etymology! There is a legend that the word “kangaroo” means “I don’t understand”. I thought so too until I looked into it.

Actually, “kangaroo” originates from the Guugu Yimithirr language, an Indigenous language of northern Australia, where gangurru specifically refers to a type of kangaroo. But it’s not that simple 🙂

It all starts when James Cook asked the Guugu Yimithirr what the animal was called — they answered gangurru, which did indeed denote it. The English borrowed this word as kangaroo.

Latter, half a century later, the etymology starts to get tangled. In 1820, a certain Philip King sailed along a river near Cook’s landing place and recorded a list of words from the local Guugu Yimithirr dialect. Everything matched Cook’s records — except for one word. When asked “what is that animal called?”, they didn’t answer gangurru, but minha. It means that Cook clearly made a mistake. If minha is “kangaroo”, then what is gangurru?

This is where the myth begins. Some begin to think: maybe Cook misunderstood? Maybe he asked about the animal, and they didn’t understand him — and gangurru meant “I don’t know”? This version is a fabrication, and it didn’t go further than speculation, but it’s a funny story, historically plausible, and it began to be repeated. Thus, it turned into a persistent legend.

Then the confusion reversed. “Kangaroo” — then and now — became the stereotypical word from the “aboriginal language”. Every European settler coming to Australia knew exactly one word from Guugu Yimithirr — and only that one. The problem is that there were hundreds of languages in Australia, many of which were weakly or not at all related to Guugu Yimithirr. They simply did not have the word gangurru or its equivalent.

That’s where the problems arose. For example, settlers arrived in the area of modern Sydney and tried to “communicate” with the local people, i.e., they just yelled “kangaroo” at them. This would hardly have helped, but it is important to remember the geography: the Guugu Yimithirr lived on the Cape York Peninsula, in the far north of Australia, and the Sydney aborigines — the Iora people, speaking Dharuk language — lived almost at the other end of the continent. They didn’t know what the word “kangaroo” meant, so they assumed the Europeans were particularly interested in their domestic livestock. When cows began to be unloaded from the ship, the locals asked: “Is this your ‘kangaroo’?”

Such is the story.

Also, it turns out, kangaroos are good swimmers. In the second photo, a kangaroo tail sold in our town. For the dogs to gnaw on.

Unraveling Danish Numerical Peculiarities | April 17 2025, 16:58

Today I learned something interesting about numbers. Turns out, the French are not the most convoluted when it comes to naming the tens up to a hundred. It seems the Danes hold that title.

In Danish, 92 is “tooghalvfems. It breaks down like this: “to” is two (2), “og” means and, and “halvfems” is 90. But why halvfems? halv means “half,” that much is clear. However, in this context, it’s not literally 0.5. When used with numbers ending in “-fems,” it signifies “minus half of the next multiple of twenty. Then comes fems: This is a shortened form of fem gange tyve, which means “five times twenty, thus, halvfems translates to “halfway into the fifth twenty”. The fifth twenty ranges from 80 to 100. Halfway equals 90 🙂

50 is “halvtreds” in Danish. Here “halv implies “halfway to the next multiple of twenty”. treds is the condensed form of tredje sinde tyve, which translates as “three times twenty, or 3 × 20 = 60. Thus, halvtreds can be understood as “halfway to sixty, that is: 60 – (0.5 × 20) = 60 – 10 = 50.

It’s clear that this is because of the vigesimal (base-20) numbering system.

I recalled the French because they too have 80 = quatre-vingts (four twenties), 90 = quatre-vingt-dix (four twenties and ten), 75 = soixante-quinze (sixty and fifteen).

P.S. Thanks to Timofey for the tip