One often hears about “communication problems” and “communication skills” in regards to relationships. What is it that makes communication effective or ineffective? First, we have to answer, “effective for what?” All communication has a goal. What that goal is varies by situation. It could be to convey information, to seek out information, to make someone…
Author: Kenneth
Cat owner, educator, learner
Stories in the history of written language (part 3)
In Part 1 and Part 2, we looked at some of the ways in which written languages have developed and creative ways in which they have been used. Here, we’ll look more into the interactions between languages and the relationship between language and speech. Writing another language’s sounds When two language communities come into contact,…
Ways of scrambling a message: Permutation polynomials over the integers mod n through the lens of monoalphabetic substitution ciphers
When Julius Caesar was on his military campaign in Gaul, he sent coded messages by courier back to Rome using a simple cipher. The so-called Caesar cipher is a letter shift by three places. In other words, every instance of the letter A gets replaced with the letter D, B gets replaced with E, C…
Why rockets don’t need to push against anything (it’s rocket science)
How can a rocket work in empty space without something to push against? While you may or may not be aware of the answer yourself, this question is perplexing to many people. I invite you to consider why this situation is confusing. I assure you it is not a matter of mere ignorance, and you…
I wrote a poem: “A first research experience in mathematics”
A dark fog surrounds me.I see that something is there,but I can’t make it out.I squint and the edges begin to sharpen,but then are lost again to the darkness.My eyes are beginning to adjust now.For a moment I seem to recognize the shape,but then it is gone again.I reach out for it.It’s too far away.As…
The failure of manosphere terminology
The “manosphere” is a loose collection of movements, groups, and ideologies that are connected by certain views on masculinity, femininity, and relationships. It includes the Red Pill, the Black Pill (a more extreme version of the Red Pill), MGTOW (“Men Going Their Own Way”), incel subculture, pick-up artists (PUA), men’s rights activists (MRA), GamerGate, and…
How we can know the earth is a ball without relying on modern science or traveling long distances?
Flat earth conspiracy theorists have become a loud (if not very large) group since the turn of the millennium. While there are many specific arguments for a flat earth, which are not worth debunking here, all such arguments rely on an underlying principle that one’s senses are trustworthy and we should believe that things are…
How do you graph something in 4D?
This post is a brief explanation for non-experts of a graphing technique you might have seen but not completely understood. As always, we’ll go over some necessary concepts first. Complex numbers If we want to solve an equation like x2+1=0, we get stuck because we need to take the square root of -1, but no…
Thinking about infinit(ies): The math tea argument
Are there undefinable numbers? Numbers that exist, but that we can’t identify or talk about? According to one argument, there must be such numbers, since there must be more numbers than definitions. Preliminaries First, some background about infinity. We’ll start by talking about the foundations of math using set theory. A set is an unordered…
Osteopathy’s public image in the wake of widespread medical misinformation
A few weeks ago (late summer 2023), YouTuber Owen Morgan published a video about Sherri Tenpenny, a former doctor whose testimony before the Ohio legislature about COVID-19 vaccines went viral in 2021. Notably, Tenpenny has claimed that the vaccine was making people magnetic, that this had something to do with 5G wireless communication, and also…
thoughts on mind 