Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

I remember the class asking my high school geometry teacher, “Why do we need to know about sines and cosines? How will we use this in real life?” He didn’t give us much of an answer, and at least in my life the answer was that I didn’t need trigonometry, not until now. I finally figured out what it’s good for in my life.

I’m looking at the Maine state legislature and would like my computer to put icons for each member of a legislative committee on a circle, equidistant from one another. Why? Well, later on, I intend to draw lines between the members’ icons in order to express something about the relationships between them. But for now my problem is to get a nice, neat circle of dots, each representing a legislator. For committees with size X, the dots should be placed (360/X) degrees away from one another on the circle. For a committee of 12 people, then, there should be dots placed at 0 degrees, 30 degrees, 60 degrees, 90 degrees, 120 degrees … and so on, all around the circle.

That’s all well and good, but what are the x,y coordinates for a point 30 degrees along in a circle? Trig!

The center point of a circle and a point along the edge of a circle mark two points of a right triangle; the third point in the example to our left forms a right angle along the horizontal axis of the circle.

For an image of width W and height H, the center point of the circle will be (W/2),(H/2). The radius r of the circle is W/2, and it is also the hypotenuse of the right triangle. The location to place our dot on the edge of the circle will be (W/2)+b,(H/2)-a. We can set the values of the width W and height H of the image. All we need to do is figure out the values of a and b for angle A. Those values are

a = r * Sin(A)
b = r * Cos(A)

What’s A? It’s whatever we want it to be. To find a series of 12 dots for 12 legislators, we can draw a series of right triangles all the way around the circle, each anchored at the circle’s center point and at the edge of the circle, with angles in increasing increments of 30 degrees. For each triangle, we can use the sine and cosine of A to find out how where to place our dots.

Here’s the Maine state legislature’s Appropriations Committee, drawn by a computer using the GD graphics commands in the language PHP. Republicans are pinkish, Democrats are bluish.

This process can be used for any number of dots representing any number of committee members.

There’s how I’ll use trigonometry in real life, Mr. Sobieraski.

Minnesota Republican Representative Michele Bachmann loves to appear on FOX News and complain about government spending and those awful liberals who live off the government teat. She’s gone so far as to declare that Americans should slit their wrists rather than allow the U.S. government to expand health care coverage so that fewer of us get sick.

You just knew there was another shoe, didn’t you? Yep, Michele Bachmann has been the recipient of more than a quarter of a million dollars in government subsidies over the past decade.

Whoopsie-doodle!

This is my favorite time of the year for pumpkins: not on Halloween, when the orange gourds blaze in menacing glory. I like the look of pumpkins that linger a few weeks later on. They’ve dried out and shrunk inward upon themselves a bit, adding a hint of pathos. The mouths of the formerly toothsome pumpkins curl inward, making the Jack O’ Lanterns resemble senior citizens looking out and yelling at all the kids to get off their lawn.

They’ll be compost soon, completely unrecognizable. Pumpkins make great compost material, right up there with cucumbers and spinach in their decomposing glory. But why toss ‘em right away? Let ‘em linger, just at the time when the growth of the past summer is finally petering out. My challenge each year is to leave the pumpkins out long enough to really get some character, but to get them before the bottoms rot out and they fall off the shovel and all over the place. I didn’t move them in time last year. Let’s see what happens this season.

How late do you leave out your pumpkins, and what is their final destination?

Cracked magazine notices our t-shirts for kids, notices that there are political messages on some of them, and calls it “political brainwashing!” I suppose anything that has an idea in it, including Cracked, might influence the kiddies. Wouldn’t that be brainwashing, too?

There’s another possibility, one that Cracked doesn’t seem to have considered. Maybe the editors of Cracked hang out with particularly dull kids all the time, but there are children out there — I’ve even met some of them — who have their own brains, their own opinions, and a desire to express themselves. It’s the kookiest thing…

… but maybe a few of these kids wearing shirts up to size 12 are picking out their own. Stranger things have happened.

Are you feeling wistful at the news that Barack Obama has clinched the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination? Did you have another first choice? Hillary Clinton, maybe, or Christopher Dodd, or John Edwards? Well, here’s a way to express that wisty feeling while still supporting Barack Obama in the general election:

Look at what’s going on in seemingly sedate Central NY:

Whoda thunk? The “if you need a ride” note at the top adds a nice touch.

Frustrated by the stalled development of human society, I find refuge in the new green growth of spring.

I don’t subscribe to cable television — it’s a lot of money to pay every month for a lot of commercial-laden dreck. I don’t watch the commercial networks over the air on television either for the same reason. But I do watch PBS, and so do my kids, and I value a good number of their programs. I didn’t want to lose the ability to watch PBS in the February 2009 switchover from analog to digital signals. I also noticed that the PBS station here in Columbus, Ohio has been broadcasting three channels with digital signals. One of those channels broadcasts Ohio state legislative deliberation along with a local civic and political talk show and the occasional speech or public forum. That’s a service of great benefit to me as a political blogger, and I wanted to take advantage.

So off I went to DTV2009.gov and got my complimentary Department of Commerce coupons for $40 off a converter box that would allow me to watch digital television on my analog TV. I bought a converter, which after the coupon only cost me $19.99. It easily installed, and that’s nice.

But then I discovered that even though I live very close to downtown Columbus itself, my indoor antenna can’t pick up PBS digital stations! None of the PBS stations come in. That is a major bummer on a personal level — and it also makes me realize on a social level that if I can’t pick up the PBS digital station and I’m living right here in central Columbus, there must be many people also in the city or living outside the city who receive PBS analog signals and will lose that PBS station come February 2009.

From the vantage point of me and many people like me, the conversion from analog to digital television isn’t an upgrade — it’s a blackout.

P.S. Anybody have any ideas about how I can boost the signal inexpensively? I rent and don’t have permission (or frankly the money) to attach a big outdoor antenna.

Usually, you know, he wears a suit with the sleeves down. But in this picture you can see his forearms and everything. I wonder if he will get a burn that way. Probably keeping the sleeves down at most outdoor events is a good idea.

As I wrote earlier, I have failed in my first attempt to write a novel during National Novel Writing Month. The goal was to write 50,000 words during the month of November. I burned out on the task on just the third day, finding it to be un-fun and feeling the need to accomplish other tasks.

I’m not going to jump back on the NaNoWriMo bandwagon for this year. But I have been thinking about why I fizzled. I think the answer is that I didn’t structure the attempt enough. I just had an idea in my head and jumped right in, flailing around for a few days and getting really tired in the process. I’m not ashamed to say I failed, big time. OK, maybe a bit ashamed. I’d like to do better.

So I’m going to start again at the beginning of next month, but I’m going to do things differently. December will be Figure Out the Parameters of How I’m Going to Structure My Novel Month. January will be Compose the Particulars of the Structure for My Novel Month, and the rest of the year will by my Novel Writing Year. It’s a longer period of time for a long project. I think this is more realistic, less rushed and panicky than National Novel Writing Month, and so I think I’m more likely to succeed. I will try again, at a less manic pace.

Wish me luck! I would appreciate any advice anyone might have to offer.