Proud of You, VCM!

I am a couple of weeks behind in my Only Connect viewing, so I only saw this ep this evening. The connection between these clues is that they are all part of the Passover Seder. The contestants guessed the clues were things that were all considered responsible for causing aggressive behaviour. 

?????

Anyway, am proud of Ms Coren Mitchell. Not because this clue was on her show (and as a script consultant presumably she has some say in the content), but because she referred to the bitter herbs as maror in a natural way that suggests she knows her onions. Brava!

Graham's Number

So TIL two things. First of all, that TIL is short for "Today I learned". So I learned that. And I learned that there are some numbers that are so big that they are given names. There's a Googolplex, as seen in the illustration. Wiki says that "in 1920, Edward Kasner's nine-year-old nephew, Milton Sirotta, coined the term googol, which is 10 to the 100th, and then proposed the further term googolplex to be 'one, followed by writing zeroes until you get tired.'" My kind of maths!

Of course then they found even bigger numbers, as one will if you keep counting between now and infinity. There was Moser's Number. There was Skewes's Number. And then today on Only Connect someone mentioned Graham's Number, which is even bigger. Can't really get my head around that. So rather than learning what Graham's Number actually is, I have learned that there isn't enough space in the observable universe to actually write it down. I feel better about not having a big enough brain.

This also reminds me that when there is a concept that is too big to cope with 24/7, sometimes by naming it, by defining it on that level, we can keep it near us without being too overwhelmed. Then, when we feel able to look behind the name, we can have a go at relating to it on a more personal level. It could be numbers. It could be God, also.

When is a Day Longer Than a Year?

Stretching my brain as always, the latest series of Only Connect hurt my brain today when VCM mentioned a planet whose day is longer than its year. How can it be? But it is so.

Rav Google informs me:  a day on VENUS is longer than a year (on Venus). It takes Venus longer to rotate once on its axis than to complete one orbit of the Sun. It takes 243 Earth days for Venus to rotate once (the longest rotation of any planet in our Solar System), and only 224.7 Earth days to complete one trip round the Sun.

Took me several minutes to get my head round that. 

Put in my Place by Wikipedia

Catching up on my Only Connect episodes, I was quite chuffed the other day when VCM responded to an answer being "The Star of David on the Israeli flag" by calling it a "Mogen Dovid" in a lovely Ashkenazi accent.

Cut to just now, watching a quarter-final wall, and 'shofar' is included as a Brass instrument. My dudgeon immediately raised to a very high point, I was all ready to e-mail the show (possibly to offer to be VCM's rabbinic consultant for all future eps) and point out that a ram's horn is not made of brass. However, a small voice in a corner of my mind suggested that maybe I should check before foolishly rushing in.

From the Wiki entry on "Brass instrument":

"A brass instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by sympathetic vibration of air in a tubular resonator in sympathy with the vibration of the player's lips. Brass instruments are also called 'labrosones' or 'labrophones' from Latin and Greek elements meaning 'lip' and 'sound'.

The view of most scholars (see organology) is that the term "brass instrument" should be defined by the way the sound is made, as above, and not by whether the instrument is actually made of brass. Thus one finds brass instruments made of wood, like the alphorn, the cornett, the serpent and the didgeridoo, while some woodwind instruments are made of brass, like the saxophone."

Schooled. My apologies to VCM & Only Connect for doubting you.