What I Learnt Today

Fancy Friday is part of our family lockdown ritual.

Jean Francois at Dip Café has been determined to be the #lastmanstanding in Byron, and has been serving take away meals throughout the lockdown. As we come out the other side (possibly? hopefully?) we were able to sit at Dip to sip our coffee, and get take away duck confit, coq a vin, potatoes au gratin and panna cotta for our Fancy Friday dinner. And it was good to see Pierre make an appearance.

Luckily, my godmother Maggie has taught me proper French.

But what I really learnt today was scrawled across the bathroom at the Byron Surf Club.

Pardon my French.

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Rube Goldberg machines have been a regular feature on WILT.

Now some of us have too much time on our hands and enough toilet paper to last until the next pandemic.

Previous WILTs

World Record: Rube Goldberg Machine

Is this the ultimate Rube Goldberg machine?

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Pablum is an American brand of baby cereal that dates from 1931. The trademarked name is a contracted form of the Latin word pabulum, which means “foodstuff”.

Just as ‘Spam’ now has a new meaning related to unsolicited email, the word ‘pablum’ now is used to refer to something that is bland, mushy, unappetizing, or infantile.

David Perell is a writer and teacher of writing who publishes a newsletter called ‘Monday Musings’. I recommend it.

This week pablum was his word of the week

A pablum is kind of like a cliche, but it focuses more on ideas and less on phrases. And like a cliche, it refers to an idea that’s overly bland or simplistic.

Whenever you write choose an essay topic, make sure there’s a standard counter-argument to it. For example, too many people build their essays around topics like “students should think critically for themselves” and “working hard will help you succeed.”

Yes, obviously. They’re the kinds of ideas that are repeated in CNBC articles called “10 Things All Successful People Do Before 8am.”

But interesting essay topics challenge the assumptions of your reader’s worldview.

What’s an example?

Topics like “bureaucrats are brilliant” or “travel is a terrible way to learn about the world” will yield much more interesting insights because they both counter the mainstream narrative. Thinking that bureaucrats are lazy or travel is a good way to learn about the world is a pablum.

From the sentence-level to the essay-level, the clearer the counter-argument to your ideas, the more interesting your essay can be.

PS. Thanks for being patient. It’s only been four and a half years since the previous post to WILT.

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When is a Schooner not a Schooner?

When it is a midi.

On a recent trip to South Australia (Happy Birthday Rosi), I was reminded that you have to do your homework before ordering a beer in different Australian states if you don’t want to look like a knob.

For example, don’t ask for a midi in Melbourne – that will identify you immediately as being from across the border. . Ask for a pot, instead. And they’ll also look at you askance if you ask for a schooner in either Melbourne or Perth.

And in Adelaide, if you want a midi, ask for a  schooner. If you want a schooner, ask for a pint. If you want a pint, ask for an Imperial Pint. Good grief.

Ever mindful of our community service obligations, we present this handy table.

 

Names of beer glasses in various Australian cities
Capacity	Sydney	Canberra	Darwin	Brisbane	Adelaide	Hobart	Melbourne	Perth
115 ml (4 fl oz)	–	–	–	–	–	small beer	foursie	shetland
140 ml (5 fl oz)	pony	–	–	pony	pony	–	horse/pony	pony
170 ml (6 fl oz)	–	–	–	–	–	six (ounce)	small glass	bobbie/six
200 ml (7 fl oz)	seven	–	seven	seven (ounce)	butcher	seven (ounce)	glass	glass
285 ml (10 fl oz)	middy	half pint / middy	handle	pot	schooner	ten (ounce)/pot	pot	middy/half pint
350 ml (12 fl oz)	schmiddy	–	–	–	–	–	–	–
425 ml (15 fl oz)	schooner	schooner	schooner	schooner	pint	fifteen / schooner	schooner	schooner
570 ml (20 fl oz)	pint	pint	pint	pint	imperial pint	pint	pint	pint
Notes: Entries in bold are common. Entries in italics are old-fashioned or rare.

(hat tip to Wikipedia)

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Whoo hoo. WILT has a new home.

Way back in the beginning of Internet time, each computer was identified by a number (an IP number, in fact, like 216.55.97.107).

As more and more computers joined the network, people had trouble remembering these numbers. In 1983, a human friendly ‘phonebook’ system was proposed and developed. This ‘Domain Name System’ is still used today. In 1985 there were a total of 6 domain names. Now there are about 300 million.

Initial there were sever ‘top level domains’ , .com, .edu, .gov, .int, .mil, .net, and .org.

If you could demonstrate that a particular domain name was appropriate to your company or organisation, it was assigned to you by a committee of the National Science Association – free of charge. Alas, the process was commercialised in 1995.

There are another 250 two letter top level domain (tld) names assigned to individual countries and territories. The pacific island nation Tuvalu was in luck – in 1999 they signed a 12 year deal for $50 million for the rights to resell their assigned tld .tv . After their first $1 million royalty payment, they could finally afford the $100,000 it cost to join the United Nations.

Australia’s .au tld was introduced in 1986. Kevin ‘Robert’ Elz from Melbourne Uni was personally responsible for assigning all .au names until the late 1990s. I first contacted him in the early 1990s. He maintained a policy in which there had to be a direct connection between a company’s official name and its domain name. In contrast, the world of .com is a first come first served free for all. Elz personally checked every application. He also is said to have introduced online text commentary for cricket matches. What a legend.

Since 1998, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) controls the domain name system. We have run out of all three letter and four letter .com names – everything from aaaa.com to zzzz.com is gone! (all the three letter combinations ran out in 1997!)

New domain names are cheap. A .com name can cost less than $10 a year, depending on which domain name provider you buy it from. (I use Go Daddy  for international names and Cheap Domains for .au). But there is a thriving market in re-selling ‘desirable’ names. The record sale of vacationrentals.com was $35 million, in 2007. Some people ‘harvest’ thousand of potential names in case they become valuable. In 2012, one man registered 14,962 domain names in 24 hours. http://whatIlearnttoday.com has been registered but never used. It is available for sale for $3296

Since 2001, as .com names get used up, ICANN has incrementally introduced new top level domains. You may have seen .info, .biz, .name or .me (as in http://wilt.me and http://lembke.me)

In 2013 the domain name world was further opened up as ICANN begun to auction off the rights to names such as .travel, .club, .xxx, .bike, .clothing, .guru, .holdings, .plumbing, .singles, and .ventures. As in http://halfdiet.club. And you can even register  .sucks.

The tld .today was introduced in late 2013. Soon after http://whatIlearnt.today was purchased by someone in the UK but never used. You can (quite legally and ethically) check who owns a particular name using a ‘whois’ server. I have been keeping an eye on whatIlearnt.today – it expired in January 2016. There is a period of grace between expiration and the domain name becoming available – and sometime this afternoon it was released for sale.

So if you look up ‘whatilearnt.today’ on the ICANN whois server you can check out who bought it!

So – celebrations for WILT’s new home at http://whatIlearnt.today

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