C. G. P. Grey

Thoughts on the Current State of Sync

C. G. P. Grey — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:27:19 +0000

There’s a problem with sync and its name is offline.

Sync on iOS is built on the false assumption that the Internet is everywhere. But the world of humans, airplanes and trains and subways and backroads and basements demonstrate otherwise. Holes of offlineness lurk everywhere and sync on iOS (both with iCloud and DropBox) really falls down hard if you step into one.

Offline Perils

On iOS, your data often isn’t on the phone until you try to access it. Doubtless there have been many a sad businessman who once in the air over the Pacific Ocean discovered that all his music didn’t get on the plane with him.

But that’s not all: did you rent a cabin far out in the woods to work on your book? If you didn’t download it to your iPad ahead of time, it’s going to be an unproductive retreat.

And the problem works the other way, too.

If you live in a city with a metro system you’ll be out of Internet range multiple times a day: and the data you generate on your iPhone might not make it back into the cloud.

For example: I use an app called Notesy to store ideas for future projects. And ideas flow freely while I’m slightly bored on the Underground.

Later, when I go to use the notes on the iPad version of Notesy – its empty. Why? Apps only sync when they are open. The solution isn’t a big deal: open Notsey on the iPhone then manually tell the iPad version to sync – but it’s an irritation that shouldn’t exist.

But the way iOS handles sync can lead to much bigger, serious problems: it’s possible to overwrite new versions of your data with old versions without warning.

Again, as example Byword is my text editor of choice and it uses Apple’s iCloud to sync documents. But because of the sync-only-when-open-rule this can happen:

Monday: Start writing a new script on my iPad.

Tuesday: Continue working on it on my Mac. No problems.

Wednesday: Go back to working on the iPad. But this time I’m offline for some reason. Because Byword can’t sync, I’m working on Monday’s version of the script and, the next time Byword on my iPad connects to the Internet it will replace Tuesday’s work.

While it’s possible to remember over the course of three days where the latest version of a document really is: 1) the user shouldn’t have to & 2) as the time between edits and the number of documents increases, errors are inevitable. Versioning is only useful when you know you've overridden something.

This kind of problem can destroy days or months of work[1]. The result is that I’m never 100% sure that what I’m working on is the current version.

And to be clear: this isn’t Byword’s, or any other app’s, fault. It’s a structural problem with the way iOS limits what apps can do.

That's not even getting started on the horror that can be unnoticed conflicts. For example, take a look at my TextExpander folder:

Thanks a lot, Dropbox.

As most of my work migrates to iOS, sync problems have moved from a nuisance to a business problem. Here’s a list of just my work-related iPad apps that depend on sync:

OmniFocus (Task management)
Agenda (Scheduling)
Byword (Long-form writing)
Notesy (Project notes)
Notes (Very brief ideas)
Downcast & Instapaper[2] (Speculative research)
Evernote (Non-text research Notes)
1Password (Secure website access)
TextExpander (Faster writing)
Dropbox (Document storage)
PDF Pen (Document storage)
Numbers (Finances)
Drafts (Rapid input)

There’s not a one where sync hasn’t messed up: sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Suggestions

Enough complaining, here are two suggestions for how Apple could fix the current problem with iOS sync.

1) Sync Requests

Just as OS X allows applications to specify their power requirements iOS would benefit from letting apps tell it what their sync needs are.

If the user adds data to an app on their iPhone while offline, the app should be able to tell iOS “please wake me up to sync as soon as the Internet is available.”[3]

Going back to my Notesy example from earlier, this would mean that notes created while underground would have a chance of making it to other devices without me having to manually update the app on my iPhone.

2) Midnight Syncs

Sync requests work when an app knows it has data to send to the cloud, but sometimes there’s data in the cloud that the app doesn’t know it needs.

To solve this, iOS should wake up apps to sync if the following three rules are true:

The device isn’t being used.
The device is plugged in and at 100% battery.
The device is connected to WiFi.

Then after spending a day writing in Byword on my Mac, the updates can spread to all my devices automatically.

3) Pin Data

Lastly, iOS should have a clearer way to pin data down to the device. That way specific documents or entire Apps could be given clearer priority for always keeping data locally.

Even with pinning data, sync requests and midnight syncs there would still be problems – sync is incredibly troublesome – but these three should go a long way toward getting rid of the kind of problems that temporarily being offline currently cause.

While it is possible to rollback to previous versions of files, often working on older versions of scripts creates structural conflicts that a simple diff can’t solve. This can lead to massive delays which in turn costs money. ↩
Downcast and Instapaper both have a feature that allows them to sync when you enter or leave a given location (such as your home). While this eliminates most of the problems mentioned above, it’s not a widely practical solution for several reasons: 1) Proper sync should not rely on the user running frequent errands. 2) Having every app on your phone wake up to sync every time you leave your house is a battery killer. 3) iOS devices are currently too RAM constrained to open every app at once anyway. ↩
Of course, this suggestion would decrease battery life. So perhaps the user would need to explicitly grant permission to some apps to be able to request this sync. ↩

Countries Inside Countries (Bizarre Borders Part 1)

C. G. P. Grey — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:30:39 +0000

Notes & Corrections:

If I didn't make it clear enough in the video, this is about land borders and thus doesn't include bridges. (Which is why Singapore isn't listed)
Lesotho is 70,000 times larger than Vatican City, not 70 times.

Script:

When it comes to neighbors, most countries have several options: like North to Canada or South to Mexico.

But there are countries that don't have this freedom of choice, not because they're islands but because they're trapped in another country. For example: tiny Vatican City, which fits inside of not just Italy, but also just Rome.

How Vatican City got surrounded is complicated, but not unique for there is also the Republic of San Marino, home to 30,000 citizens which Italy also completely surrounds. Italy, apparently, is a country that likes countries in its country.

But trapping nations is not just Italy's thing for there's also Lesotho, in South Africa which is both the largest encircled country at 70 times Vatican City's size and the most populated with over 2,000,000 citizens.

The thing that makes these three countries' borders bizarre is that any path in or out must go through the one and only neighbor they have.

But now take a look at The Gambia, which excluding that tiny ocean border, is as surrounded as any nation can get.

If we amend the previous rule to every land route, now we've made a category of single-neighbored nations. Which includes all four of these and countries like Portugal, where the only way in or out is through Spain. Who else is on this list?

Well, there's Monaco which must go through France, Qatar through Saudi Arabia Denmark through Germany, South Korea through North Korea (though South Korea might as well be an island nation for most practical travel purposes)

East Timor and Papua New Guinea both through Indonesia, Brunei through Malaysia

And there are two sets of twins: there is The Dominican Republic whose only neighbor is Haiti and Haiti, whose only neighbor is The Dominican Republic.

And the second set is: Ireland through the United Kingdom and the United Kingdom through Ireland.

A side note here:

While there are tons of 'British' places around the world, some of which border other nations -- these are not part of the United Kingdom. It's complicated.

Though if you wanted to, you could argue that the United Kingdom technically dug a land border under the channel to the continent, presumably to be closer to France, her best friend ever.

Finally, there's one more country in this category: Canada: the largest single-neighbored, nation in the world.

Credits:

Images: jamiejohn, Alaskan Dude, yeowatzup, little_frank, Di.Malealea

Music: Kevin MacLeod

Vatican City Explained

C. G. P. Grey — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 09:56:16 +0000

Script

Vatican City: capitol of the Catholic Church, home to the pope, owner of impressive collections of art and history all contained within the borders of the world's smallest country: conveniently circumnavigateable on foot in only 40 minutes.

Just how did the world end up with this tiny nation?

The short answer is: because Mussolini and the long answer is fiendishly complicated so here's a simplified medium version:

The popes used to rule a country called the Papal States that covered much of modern day Italy. It was during this 1,000+ year reign that the Popes constructed St. Peter's Basilica the largest church in the world -- and also built a wall around the base of a hill known as Vatican upon which St. Peter's Stood.

But the Kingdom of Italy next door thought Rome would be an awesome capital for their country and so conquered the Papal States.

His nation destroyed the Pope hid behind the walls of Vatican and conflictingly refused to acknowledge that the Kingdom of Italy existed, while simultaneously complaining about being a prisoner of the Kingdom of Italy -- which according to him didn't exist.

Rather than risk religious civil war by getting rid of the pope the Kingdom of Italy decided to wait him out assuming he'd eventually give up -- but religion is nothing if not obstinate -- and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 popes and sixty years later nothing had changed.

Which brings us to Benito Mussolini the then prime minister of Italy who was tired of listing to the Pope complain to Italian Catholics about his self-imposed imprisonment so Mussolini thought he could score some political points by striking a deal which looked like this:

1) Italy gave the land of Vatican to the Pope.

and…

2) Italy gave the Pope a bunch of apology money

In return

1) The Pope acknowledged that Italy existed and

and…

2) The Pope promised to remain neutral in politics and wars.

On the off chance that, you know, Mussolini thought this might be a thing.

The deal was signed and a new country, Vatican City was born.

And today the tiny nation on a hill has all the things you'd expect of a country: its own government that makes its own laws that are enforced by its own police, who put people who break them in its own jail.

It also has its own bank and prints its own stamps and issues its own license plates, though only its citizens can drive within its borders presumably because of terrible, terrible parking -- and as the true mark of any self-respecting nation: it has its own top-level domain: .VA

But, despite all these national trappings Vatican City is not really like any other country. Hold on to your fancy hat, because it's about to get weird:

To understand the Vatican: there are two people and two things that you need to know about: the famous pope, the incredibly confusing Holy See, The Country of Vatican City and along with that the almost completely unknown King of Vatican City.

But first the Pope: who gets a throne to sit upon and from which he acts as the Bishop for all the Catholics in Rome.

Actually all Bishops in the Catholic Church get their own thrones but because the Bishop of Rome is also the Pope his throne is special and has it's own special name: The Holy See.

Every time a Pope dies or retires there is a sort of game of thrones to see which of the bishops will next get to occupy the Holy See.

So while Popes come and go the throne is eternal. As such the name The Holy See not only refers to the throne but also all the rules that make the Catholic Church the Catholic Church.

When Mussolini crafted that aforementioned deal, technically he gave the land of Vatican City to The Holy See -- which, believe it or not, is a legal corporate person in international law. Basically every time you hear the words The Holy See think Catholic Church, Inc of which the Pope is the CEO.

Now back to the King. The King of Vatican City has absolute, unchecked power within the country's borders and his presence makes Vatican City one of only six remanning absolute monarchies in the world, including Brunei, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Swaziland. The King's absolute power is why Vatican City can't join the European Union because only democracies are allowed.

Through Vatican City does, strictly speaking, have a legislative brach of government -- staffed by cardinals, appointed by the pope -- the King of Vatican City can overrule their decisions and at any time for any reason.

So why do you never hear about the King of Vatican City? Because though King and Pope are two different roles, they just happen to be occupied by the same person at the same time -- which has the funny consequence that, because the Pope is elected and the King is all-powerful but they're the same guy it makes Vatican City the world's only elected, non-hereditary absolute monarchy.

It's this dual-role that makes untangling Vatican City so difficult because the Pope, depending on the situation either acts as The King of the country of Vatican City or the Pope of the Holy See.

Got it? No? OK, here's an analogy:

Imagine if a powerful international company, say Grey Industries, had a CEO who convinced the United States to give one of its islands to the Company which then made the island into a new country -- Greytropolis -- with an absolute monarchy as its government and the law that the King of Greytropolis is, by definition, the CEO of Grey Industries.

It's pretty obvious at that point that the CEO should move his corporate headquarters to the new nation -- so that the laws of the country can benefit the company and the company's global reach can benefit the country. As for the man in the middle sometimes it's good to the the CEO and sometimes it's good to be the king.

That is essentially Vatican City.

But if you're still confused, don't worry even other countries can't keep it straight. For example the United Nations has The Holy See the corporation as a member but not Vatican City the actual country. And The Holy See gives passports to Vatican City citizens that other countries accept even though those passports come from a company, not a country.

And speaking of Vatican City citizens, they are perhaps the strangest consequence of the Pope's dual role as religious leader and monarch.

While other countries mint new citizens with the ever popular process of human reproduction Vatican City does not. No one in Vatican City is born a citizen -- and that's not just because, within a rounding error, there are no female Vaticans.

The only way to become a citizen is for the King of Vatican City to appoint you as one. And the King only appoints you a citizen if you work for the Pope -- who is also the King.

And because the King is all-powerful your citizenship is at his whim. If you quit your job for the Pope, the King -- who is also the pope -- will revoke your citizenship.

These rules mean that Vatican City doesn't have a real permanent population to speak of: there are only about 500 full citizens -- which is fewer people that live in single skyscrapers in many countries -- and all these citizens work for The Holy See as either Cardinals or Diplomats or the Pope's bodyguards or other Catholic-related jobs.

So it's best to think of Vatican City as a kind of Sovereign Corporate Headquarters that grants temporary citizenship to its managers rather than a real city-state like Singapore: which has a self-reproducing population of citizens engaged in a variety of economic activities both of which Vatican City lacks.

But in the end, the reason the world cares about Vatican City is not because of the citizens within its walls but because of the billion members of its church outside those walls.

Credits

Images: Tony Perrottet, Marc Simonetti, chongeileen, Chris Wary, buzzwax, proimos (2), edwardlangley, duncanh1, sonofgroucho, phxdailyphotolady, antmoose, jetheriot, isa lias, kengz, joseag, erwin soo, jamiejohn, iamagenious, Toshio Kishiyama, Perrimoon, jeffd, gaspa, alecea, dgodin, & Mike Murphy

Music: Kevin MacLeod

Q&A with Grey

C. G. P. Grey — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 12:53:33 +0000

Hello Internet,

Here we are: 500,000 subscribers -- well, actually… by the time I finished this video it's a bit more than that -- but who knew that after I promised to do a Q&A that the pope would resign?

Anyway...

When I uploaded my first explanation video just over two years ago now, I would never have expected this: over half a million subscribers and 16 videos with over a million views. Who knew rapidly spoken educational videos could be so popular?

Thank you, Internet.

Now, as promised -- though slightly behind schedule -- it's time to answer some of your questions.

"What's your educational background?" Rodrigo, Campo Grande, Brazil

I went to school in New York where I earned two college degrees, one in physics and one in sociology. After that I moved to London and earned a PGCE in Science Education, and became a qualified physics teacher in England.

"How long does it take to create a video?" Tracey, Ohio

I've tracked my time to get an accurate answer and every minute of final video you see takes me between 10 and 20 hours of writing and animating to make. So a typical 5 minute video is 50 to 100 hours of work.

While that's a lot, it doesn't include the research phase which is difficult to quantify -- some of the videos I've made I'd been collecting notes on for more than a year before starting.

"What was you favourite video make?" Brittany P, UK

The 2012 video was the most fun by far -- mainly because I didn't have to do a lot of complicated research and I got to complain about things I don't like.

"What change would you make to the education system?" Lumbajack Gangsta, Austin, TX

Instead of grouping kids by age, I'd group try grouping them by ability instead.

The idea that just because a kid is 14-years-old they're ready for trigonometry is weird. No other part of human society organizes itself this way and for good reason: it artificially slows down the best and brightest.

"What is do you think should be in the curriculum but isn't?" Jamaal, Arizona

Computer programming. I was kind of shocked and horrified when I started teaching in the UK to discover there were no real computer programming lessons.

Of course, there are only so many classes in the day, and everyone wants their pet subject taught in schools, so the equally important question is what to get rid of to make room for computer programming and, without the slightest hesitation I'd ditch the foreign languages classes -- after all, computer programming is getting us closer and closer to a universal translator anyway.

"What do you do when you receive pennies?" johnjac, Owasso

I die a little inside thinking about how political systems can distribute tiny costs across large numbers of people to the benefit of a few.

"What's your favorite element?" Rasmus, Denmark

I don't have a favorite but I'm irrationally fond of Tungsten mainly because my wedding ring is made out of it.

"What's the story behind your logo?" Joshua B.

It's basically a personal flag for my love of science and technology.

When I first started this channel, I thought that I would make videos mostly about those two things, but for various reasons, that hasn't happened yet.

And besides, it's not like there's a shortage of good science channels on YouTube.

By the way, If you really like the logo, you can get it on t-shirts and now coffee mugs -- which is particularly appropriate as coffee is the fuel that without which these videos could not be made.

"What do you do in your free time?" Sam L, Higginsville, MO

I like to horseback ride through the mountains.

Nah, it's mostly just Reddit.

Speaking of which...

"Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses or 1 horse-sized duck?" techtakular, Alex, va

One horse-sized duck. The cube-squared law means the legs of a horse-sized duck probably wouldn't be structurally sound. Easy fight.

"Are there going to be more "politics in the animal kingdom" videos?" Oli

Yes, I'm sorry, I know this playlist is unfinished and, if any of the videos videos I've ever made can be said to be important, it's these.

I promise at least one more about the single transferable vote, but I don't make any promises about when that will happen.

"Do you think third parties will ever gain ground in the United States?" Kerl, Florida

No.

The problem isn't politics or voter apathy, it's the system that creates the politics and voter apathy.

The US election system is pretty much the worst in the civilized world -- often voting for a 3rd party isn't just a waste it's also a vote against your own best interests.

3rd parties really can't thrive under those conditions.

"What's one technology you wish to see before you die?" zigonick, MO, USA

Immortality technology.

Where do you get your ideas?

It's been my experience that creative projects are self-sustaining. The more you write, the more things you want to write about and the more you program the more programming ideas you have.

For me each video spawns more videos. The daylight saving one, for example, originally contained spots for information about longitude and time zones and the seasons that got cut but will probably become their own videos at some point.

Also, I listen to a monstrous number of audiobooks and podcasts. If you're interested, you can see some of my favorites here. These help me keep in touch with the wider world and expose me to ideas and information that I would not have come across on my own.

"If you could live at any time in history when would it be?" Bonnie, Scotland

I wouldn't.

Allow me to summarize all of human existence with this single graph.

"What's the best way be successful on YouTube?" Joe Kowalski, 44074

Make videos people want to watch.

I'm not trying to be glib here but when asked this question I see many YouTubers talk about the importance of upload schedules and managing your social media and collaborations, and my experience says that's completely backwards.

If you're videos aren't interesting, no one will care that you upload them regularly. And twitter followers don't get you views, views get you twitter followers and people who want to collaborate with you.

I know it's not very helpful advice, but it's the most truthful advice I can give.

"What is the most interesting fact you've ever been told." Stu1278, England

It's difficult to pick just one from an entire lifetime, but last year Veritassium visited me in London and walked me through the process by which trees get water from their roots to their leaves.

That sounds really boring but it was one of the most mind-blowing conversations I've had in a long time.

"How often do you engage with professionals while you research?" theLarom, Washington, DC

For me, being confused and frustrated with a topic is a vital part of figuring out how to explain it to others so I'd say 95% of research I do on my own.

If I'm really out of my depth on a topic -- like the debt video and the pope video -- I try very hard to find an expert to look over the final draft of my script but time constraints and finding trustworthy experts is sometimes a bit difficult.

"What is your favorite internal organ?" trint99, DFW, TX

The Brain -- because it's the one that's me.

"Is there any part of science do you want to be proven wrong?" Jrod N, Massacusetts

Yes, the current interpretations of the ultimate fate of The Universe all make me sad.

"Can you answer 10 questions in under 30 seconds?" YouReadMeName

1: "What is your favorite scientific study ever published?" Marie, Reno, NV

Unskilled Are Unaware: Further Explorations of (Absent) Self-Insight Among the Incompetent.

Link in the description.

2: "Hogwarts house?" Zeinoun Awad, Lebanon

Ravenclaw. (I'd hope)

3: "Celsius or Fahrenheit?" Kubez

Fahrenheit.

4: Kirk or Picard

Picard.

5: "Do you wear glasses?" Spartacus McFancy Pants

Uh, yeah.

6: "Favorite empire?" Caleb Glickman, USA

The second one. Those monks were awesome.

7: "How can a country be totally self sufficient -- as in no imports or exports?" Amberjack1973

Simple, resort to a medieval level of technology.

8: "Favourite sport?" soccernhlfan, Canada

No.

9: "Should science play a bigger role in politics?" Dip, London, UK

What, you mean the method by which we determine truth? Yeah, I think it should.

10: "Can you answer 10 questions in under 30 seconds?" YouReadMeName

Apparently.

Alright, thanks to everyone who submitted questions -- it's been fun, Internet.

Credits:

Music by: Broke for Free.

NEW: C. G. P. Grey Coffee Mug

C. G. P. Grey — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 17:15:51 +0000

Thanks to the good people at the DFTBA store you can now order a C. G. P. Grey coffee mug. Go order one and get over-caffeinated today.

How to Become Pope

C. G. P. Grey — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 12:48:33 +0000

Script:

Let's say you want to become pope, head of the Catholic Church and shepherd to over 1 billion faithful.

What requirements must you have for this lofty position:

1) Be a catholic and

2) Be a man.

Which seems a little thin… and, while it's technically possible for a regular Sunday Catholic to become pope, the last time this happened was essentially never because becoming pope isn't like becoming president, you can't just run for office. Selecting the pope is an inside job and the men who do it are the cardinals, and while in theory they can select any catholic man to become pope, in practice they prefer to elevate one of their own.

The last time a non-cardinal become pope was more than 600 years ago. So, while it isn't an official requirement, it's an unofficial, official requirement.

Thus in order to be pope you'll first need to be a cardinal and to do that you'll need to start climbing the catholic corporate ladder.*

Step 1: Become a Priest.

Unlike some churches where you can fill out a form online and -- poof -- ordained. The Catholic Church treats becoming a priest as a real, you-need-training profession. So you're going to require a lot of education: usually a college degree in Catholic Philosophy and then a masters in divinity.

In addition to your educational qualifications, you must also be:

A man
Unmarried,
Willing to remain celibate forever.†

If you meet these requirements, and have been working with the church, then you can be officially ordained as a priest. Which basically means you get to run a Catholic Church, or work with another priest who does.

But, you want onward and to do that you need to take the job of the man who just made you a priest.

Step 2: Become a Bishop

Bishops are a much more select group: while there are about 400,000 catholic priests world wide, there are only about 5,000 bishops.

While priests get churches, bishops get cathedrals, from which they oversee a number of local churches.

To advance your career you must wait for a bishop in your area to be forced into retirement at age 75 or die sooner than that -- freeing up space for you.

But you can't just apply, because there's already a secret list of potential bishops that's updated every three years based on who the current bishops in your area think would make a good replacement for one of their own.

To be on that list, in addition to the obvious requirement of being a pious person, you should also:

Be least 35 years old
Have been priest for at least five years
Have a doctorate in theology (or equivalent)

Assuming you're all these things, your name may, or may not be on the secret list. The local bishops then give that list to the pope's ambassador for your country, known as the Apostolic Nuncio.

The Nuncio picks three priests from the list, does in-depth research on them, conducts interviews and selects the one he thinks is best.

But it's not over, because the Nuncio sends his report to Vatican City and the congress of bishops who work there reviewing potential appointments from around the world.

If the congress of bishops doesn't like any of the three candidates, they can tell the Nuncio to start over: returning to the list, picking another three candidates -- doing more research, more interviews and sending off the results.

When the congress of bishops is happy with one of the Nuncio's candidates that name is given to the pope, who can reject the candidate and start the whole process over.

It shouldn't be a surprise that from a vacancy to a bishop's replacement can take months and, on occasion, years.

But assuming that a bishop in your area retired (or died) at the right time and you were on the secret list of good priests and the Nuncio picked you and you made it through his interview and the congress of bishops approved you and the pope didn't veto you -- poof now you're now a bishop.

But you're still not on top. The penultimate promotion is...

Step 3: Become a Cardinal.

Despite the fancy name and snazzy red outfits to match cardinals are not the bosses of bishops, they are bishops, just with an additional title and additional responsibilities -- the most notable of which is electing the new pope.‡

The only way to become a cardinal is to get to current pope to appoint you as one -- and of the 5,000 bishops, only about 200 are ever cardinals.

But let's say your ambition doesn't go unnoticed by the pope and he makes you a cardinal -- now it's time to play the waiting game for his death or retirement -- and with popes death is vastly more likely.

When either happens the cardinals under the age of 80 are brought to Vatican City where they are isolated from the outside world -- presumably by taking away their cell phones and tablets and carrier pigeons. Once sequestered, the election of a new pope can begin.

These elections are never exactly the same because the ex-pope leaves instructions on how he wants his replacement to be picked, but in general it works like this: four times a day the cardinals go to the Sistine Chapel to vote -- to become pope one of them must get a 2/3rds majority.

There's a big dose of mustn't-be-too-hasty here as the cardinals don't just raise their hands, or use a modern preferential voting system, but instead write down one name on a piece of paper stand before the alter and say a long latin phrase, before officially casting the ballot.

Once all the cardinals have done this, the votes are counted and then burned.

This why TV news stations covering the election of the pope use super-modern-hd-livestreaming cameras to look at a chimney. If the smoke is black, no new pope.

The high victory threshold, and tediously slow voting process, is why it takes so long to elect a new pope. It's usually at least two weeks of voting four times a day six days a week (with one day a week for prayer) but the record length is three years.

Assuming you, eventually, win the support of your fellow cardinals, you have one final thing to do before becoming pope: pick yourself a new name.

There is no formal rule, you can name yourself anything you like but it's tradition to take the name of a previous pope.

Upon your acceptance of the job, the final ballots are burned clean to make the smoke white and announce to the world that a new pope has been selected.

So that's the career path: be born into the right half of the population, become one of a billion catholics, then one of 400,000 priests, then one of 5,000 bishops, then one of 200 cardinals, wait for the current pope to die or retire, and convince 2/3rds of your fellow cardinals to select you as the one, the only pope.

Notes & Corrections

Recent papal elections have been shorter than two weeks.

Credits

Images: Carolus, pchidell, scotbot, prayitno (2), francisco_osorio, jamesbradley, imagesbywestfall, the-o, jamiejohn, bren, playingwithpsp

Music: Kevin MacLeod

Special Thanks: Joseph Heschmeyer & Aldean Hendrickson

The Debt Limit Explained

C. G. P. Grey — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 17:36:59 +0000

Script:

The debt limit is kind of a financial weapon of mass destruction chained to the United States government by the United States government.

Confused? Then it's time for The United States debt limit Explained.

To understand the debt limit you need to know the US splits financial responsibility between the president and congress.

The president has two jobs when it comes to money:

1. Collect taxes and...

2. Spend those taxes to run the government.

This might give you the impression that the president, with regards to money, is all-powerful. Especially when you hear news reports on 'the president's new budget' or his plan to 'raise taxes on haberdashers' or 'lower taxes on apiarists'.

But reality is just the opposite and the president is the one who takes orders.

From whom?

Congress.

Congress has the jobs of setting the tax level and determining how much the government will spend by writing a budget.

So while the president does get to submit budgets to congress, and asks for changes in the tax level, these are just requests that congress doesn't have to pay attention to.

Congress can add or subtract anything they want from the president's budget or throw it out entirely and write a new one. The same goes for the level of taxes.

So congress decides what it wants: bridges, tanks, buildings, courts, robots on Mars, robots on Earth, National Parks, whatever and approves a budget with that stuff in it.

Once approved the president's is required by law to spend the money Congress listed in the budget and pay for it using the taxes that congress set.*

As long as more taxes come in than spending goes out everything is fine.

But, almost always, Congress puts more stuff in the budget than they cover with taxes which means the president must borrow money to cover the difference.†

In most countries the story ends here because if their legislatures approved more spending than they have income, they've also implicitly approved the necessary borrowing -- but not in America. Here Congress also limits the total amount of debt the United States can have.

A debt limit sounds like a good idea until you see the real-world consequences of these two branches of government interacting.

As the total amount borrowed gets closer to the limit, Congress usually points to the president and acts shocked, shocked that his reckless spending has brought us so close to the debt limit that they, reasonable, prudent Congress have set.

And while it's technically correct that the president has borrowed this money, congress has forced him to do it, by approving a budget that the president is legally obligated to spend without also approving the necessary taxes to cover that spending.

So the debt limit fight is essentially the government version of the playground favorite: 'stop hitting yourself' except with added terror for everyone watching.

For, it's important to note, the debt limit is not about future spending -- it's not a credit card on which the limit will be raised so a crazy government party can be thrown -- the debt limit is about paying bills already incurred.

For example, the government hires a company to repave a federal highway. But if the US is at the debt limit, when the company asks to be paid after the work has been done, the government can't. This shakes trust in the US and since large parts of the global economy depend on the dollar being trust worthy, messing with that trust is a big deal.

But there is a way out: Congress can raise the debt limit and, because of the aforementioned terror, they always have.

So… if not raising the debt ceiling is potentially disastrous and the solution is simple and always taken in the end: why does this debate last months‽

Because: politics.

The debt limit isn't in the constitution, congress created it themselves and from their point of view, the debt limit is awesome because:

1. It creates a problem that...

2. Congress can (technically) blame on the president who...

3. Needs the solution that only they can provide

Congress gets to use the threat of mutual financial self destruction as leverage in negations that they benefit from extending until the last… possible… second.

Special Thanks:

Neil H. Buchanan & Kyle McMahon.

Credits:

Music: David Rees.

Images: The Noun Project, Jonathan Keating, Luis Prado, Andrew Forrester, Juan Sebastian Rickenmann & Anuar Zhumaev.

Why TV News is a Waste of Human Effort: One Example Worth a Trillion Dollars

C. G. P. Grey — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 19:14:37 +0000

I almost never watch TV news, but on the rare occasions it crosses my path, I’m left both depressed and enraged. The most recent example I came upon while researching my next video is this clip on the trillion dollar coin.

The clip isn’t special, it’s just like all the others from every news channel, but it caught me at exactly the wrong time and irritated me enough to write the nearly 2,000 words that now lay before you, dear reader.

So, if you like, go watch that clip and then come back here and let me talk about it as an example of everything that’s wrong with TV news in vastly more detail than it deserves.

Fear Leads to Hate, Hate Leads to Ratings

The segment starts by telling you that the previous news story you were supposed to fear is over, but fear not, there is more fear to fear:

“So we survived the fiscal cliff after all. The next dire circumstance you’re gunna hear us talking about around here is the debt ceiling which, make no mistake, has the capacity to crash the US economy.”

(Emphasis added)

‘Wow. Sounds pretty serious,’ you might think to yourself. ‘I better watch the rest of this segment’.

Onward:

“So wouldn’t it be just like the current thinking in Washington, and the cast of characters there, if they could mint a coin they could spend that could solve the problem.”

(Emphasis added)

The anchorman has already conveyed, by implication:

Washington is doing things wrong because
The people working there are fools who
Want a magic coin to fix all their problems

Now, I have no opinion on the trillion dollar coin – and perhaps all three points are true. But these points are not facts, they’re just assertions with nothing to back them up that color the rest of the report.

Twenty seconds in and the viewer is already primed for two emotions: fear the debt ceiling, hate the guys with a (possible) solution.

Vacuous Words in a Silly Voice

At 33 seconds in, we get the weird reporter voice. Why do TV people talk like that? If you go months without hearing a TV report, your first reaction to ‘the news voice’ is ‘what’s wrong with that guy?’

(Hypocrite deflection: this is not my normal speaking voice either but I try, perhaps unsuccessfully, to modulate my voice to add emphasis to a story.)

Now come news clips from other news shows talking about the same topic – or at least we must assume so, given their brevity and lack of context.

My favorite is this guy:

It’s worse than WWII, WWI and the Mongol Invasion combined

"Take all the fights we’ve had and put ’em all in one fight."

That sounds pretty serious. Perhaps if a trillion dollar coin can solve a fight that’s the size of every fight ever combined, we should look into it.

Cue the ridiculous and embarrassing revelation music and the reveal of an animated trillion dollar coin. This must be the solution to our problem! Can’t wait to learn about it.

Dear Princess Celestia, I Didn’t Learn Anything!

Now it’s time to, you know, explain something. Right?

Nope.

Simpsons did it.

It’s Simpsons time and Homer’s insightful remark that a trillion dollars is, quote: “a spicy meatball!”

In case you didn’t notice, that Simpsons show was about a trillion dollar bill and we are discussing a trillion dollar coin. Picky yes, but the two forms of cash have different laws regarding how they are created. Which isn’t a big deal, it’s just the whole reason the trillion dollar coin story exists in the first place.

Now, perhaps, you think I’m complaining too much. But take this into account: The Simpsons clip is exactly half way through the video, and so far you don’t know more than what the headline already told you: that a trillion dollar coin may be a thing.

Also, there is apparently a law that requires puns in all published TV news segments and at 1:17 we get it:

"...an idea getting a lot of currency online"

(Emphasis not added, the reporter really leans into that word. All that’s missing is a laugh track.)

We’re told that the trillion dollar coin is supported by a petition with over 6,000 signatures on Whitehouse.gov – which sounds impressive unless you’ve ever been to Whitehouse.gov where you’ll find 23,000 signatures for a Joe Biden reality TV show (which might not be a bad idea), 34,000 to build a Death Star as a jobs program (my personal favorite) and, of course, the 125,000 who wanted Texas to secede from The Union.

But still: 6,000 probably sounds like a lot to people who get their news from TV and have never been on the Internet.

Finally, at 1:20, just 60% of the way into the video, we get a reference to someone who might know what he’s talking about: a nobel-prize winning economist who thinks the trillion dollar coin is a good idea.

Thankfully, the story doesn’t burden us with why this economist thinks it’s a good idea. We’re just told the headline of his article: “Be ready to mint that coin” with no further comment.

At 1:28 is the closest we get to an explanation of anything:

"In theory the treasury would mint the trillion dollar coin and then walk it over to the Federal Reserve for deposit so the government can pay its bills."

That sounds like an explanation, but take a moment: close your eyes and think about that sentence.

Has it informed you about anything? Unless you’re already deeply involved in government fiscal policy – and thus would have no need to watch this video in the first place – that simple little sentence answers nothing and, on reflection, raises a ton of questions:

Who or what is the Federal Reserve?
Why do they get the trillion dollar coin?
How does the government pay its bills if it just gave the coin to the Federal Reserve?
Why doesn’t the government just use the coin to pay its bills directly?
If the treasury can print as many coins as it wants, why do we even have a national debt?
Wait a second, just what the heck is money anyway‽

Hopefully, all will be told in the next breath of the reporter:

Whoops!

I guess not: just a joke about dropping the coin into the sewer using a shot that makes me think of every dropped-lightsaber reaction in the Star Wars prequels.

Is it Secret? Is it Safe?

I don’t know about you, but the questions just raised in my mind about the existential nature of money make me want to know if the treasury can really do such a thing as print infinite cash. So here is the answer:

"Is it legal? Technically the treasury doesn’t need the permission of congress to mint platinum coins."

If you read those two sentences carefully (or if you’ve researched this story already) you’ll notice that the statement sidesteps the question.

Let’s rephrase that:

“Is it legal to murder? Technically, you don’t need the permission of congress to gun down a man in cold blood.”

So… not really an answer.

The legality of minting the trillion dollar coin is an interesting, and unresolved question. (Warning, actual constitutional analysis by constitutional lawyers.)

It’s by no means clear that it is legal. For the executive branch to be able to mint endless money on a technicality is almost certainly something that would end up in the Supreme Court.

Thankfully, the TV news segment doesn’t bring up the complicated reality of the situation.

Oooo… Shiny!

Next up is how big a platinum coin worth a trillion dollars would need to be… if you melted it down for the value of the platinum.

Again, this has nothing to do with the treasury minting a trillion dollar coin. Fiat coins don’t contain metal worth their face value – that’s the whole point of modern currency.

But, nonetheless, this segment leaves a casual viewer with the impression that idiots in Washington want to make a coin the size of an airplane – reinforcing the sentiment in the opening of the piece.

And then there’s the statement:

"Some suggest it’s [the trillion dollar coin] a political ploy"

Followed by a clip of The Colbert Report – a television show that actually uses humor well to inform – saying nothing about a political ploy at all.

A Final, Non-informative But Memorable Point

At last we come to the thing that really matters: whose face will go on the coin. The choices are three living people, two American politicians and – in a curve ball so curvy it would hit its pitcher in the face – one Canadian teen pop idol.

lol wut? We all know it needs to be Ed Meeses on that coin.

I understand this is supposed to be some sort of joke, but it irritates me on so many levels, not least of which is that federal law prohibits depicting living people on US coins. I don’t know if anyone in government really thought it necessary to pass a law requiring Americans on American money as well.

The report also says it will be a ‘political battle’ about the face on the coin. It won’t. The law in question gives full authority to the Treasury to pick the design.

So, we’ve made it to the end. And, all told, you’ve learned nothing of any substance that wasn’t mentioned in the title of the story. Thanks, TV news. You’re really doing your civic duty on this one.

The end.

P.S. It’s Not My Fault!

To be clear: I’m not laying this terrible segment on the shoulders of its reporter, Kevin Tibbles. I looked him up and his bio is pretty serious. He has won four Emmys, worked around the world in Iceland, Thailand, Panama, Dubai and my adopted city of London. The guy interviewed Tony Blair, Mikhail Gorbachev, David Petraeus, and Nelson Mandela.

He’s a real reporter.

The blame is not his – or any reporters’.

The best reporters of today find themselves as Lando Calrissian in Cloud City: victims of circumstances beyond their control. TV news has huge fixed costs and decreasing revenues. That math results in a desperate ratings grab and terrible conditions.

The news station probably told Mr. Tibbles: “Give us something on the trillion dollar coin, make it less than two minutes long, don’t go into detail and make it funny. Oh, and we need it in two hours.”

Were I in his situation and given the same requirements, I could do no better. And, from most of what TV news has to offer, its clear no other reporters do much better either.

But, that’s no reason to watch the news. Ever.

The Difference between Holland & the Netherlands

C. G. P. Grey — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 18:19:13 +0000

Script

Welcome to the Great nation of Holland: where the tulips grow, the windmills turn, the breakfast is chocolatey, the people industrious, and the sea tries to drown it all.

Except, this country isn't Holland. It's time for:

The Difference Between Holland, the Netherlands (and a whole lot more)

The correct name for this tulip growing, windmill building, hagelslag eating, container ship moving, ocean conquering nation is the Netherlands.

But confusion is understandable -- the general region been renamed a lot over a thousand including as:

The Dutch Republic
The United States of Belgium and
The Kingdom of Holland

But it's not just history that makes this country's name confusing because the Netherlands is divided into twelve provinces:

Groningen
Drenthe
Overijssel
Gelderland
Limburg
Brabant
Zeeland (Which, by the way, is the Zeeland that makes this Zeeland, new)
Friesland (With adorable little hearts on its flag)
Flevoland
Utrecht, and here's the confusion:
Noord (North) Holland and
Zuid (South) Holland

These provinces make calling the Netherlands 'Holland' like calling the United States 'Dakota'. Though unlike the Dakotas, which are mostly empty, save for the occasional Jackalope, the two Hollands are the most populated provinces and have some of the biggest attractions like, Amsterdam and Keukenhof.

Chances are if it's Dutch, and you've heard of it, it's in one of the Hollands.

Even the government's travel website for the country is Holland.com -- officially because it sounds friendlier, but unofficially it's probably what people are actually searching for.

Confusion continues because: People who live in the Hollands are called Hollanders, but all citizens of the Netherlands are called Dutch as is their language. But in Dutch they say: Nederlands sprekende Nederlanders in Nederland which sounds like they'd rather we call them Netherlanders speaking Netherlandish. Meanwhile, next door in Germany, they're Deutsche sprechen Deutsch in Deutschland. Which sounds like they'd rather be called Dutch.

This linguistic confusion is why Americans call the Pennsylvania Dutch Dutch even though they're Germans.

To review: this country is the Netherlands, its people are Dutch, they speak Dutch. There is no country called Holland, but there are provinces of North and South Holland.

Got it? Great, because it's about to get more complicated.

The Netherlands is part of a Kingdom with the same name: The Kingdom of the Netherlands -- which is headed by the Dutch Royal Family.

The Kingdom of the Netherlands contains three more countries and to find them we must sail from the icy North Sea to the Caribbean and Aruba, Curaçao, Sint Maarten.

These are no territories, but self-governing countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands and as such they have their own governments, and their own currencies.

Geography geek side note here:

While Aruba and Curaçao are islands, Sint Maarten is just the Southern Half of a tiny island also named Saint Martin the other half of which is occupied by France and also named Saint Martin. So despite being separated by Belgium on the European map, The Kingdom of the Netherlands and the French Republic share a border on the other side of the world on an island so nice they named it thrice.

But why does the Kingdom of the Netherlands reach to the Caribbean anyway? Because, Empire.

In the 1600s the Dutch, always looking to expand business, laid their hands on every valuable port they could. For a time, America's East Coast was 'New Netherland' with its capital city of New Amsterdam. There was New Zealand, as mentioned previously, and nearby, the king of the islands, New Holland. Though the empire is gone, these three Caribbean nations remain.

And while four countries in one kingdom, isn't unheard of, it doesn't stop there, because the country of the Netherlands, also extends its borders to the Caribbean and three more islands: Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

These are not countries in a Kingdom, but are cities of the Country of the Netherlands and they look the part. Residents of these far-flung cities vote in elections for the Dutch government just as any Hollander would. Though, weirdly, they don't belong to any province and they don't use the Dutch currency of Euros, they use Dollars instead. It's kind of like if Hawaii wasn't a state, but technically part of the District of Columbia, all the while using the Yen.

These cities of the Country of the Netherlands and these countries in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, are together are known as the Dutch Caribbean. And their citizens are Dutch citizens. Which, because the Kingdom of the Netherlands is a member of the European Union, means these Dutch Caribbeans are also Europeans.

So in the end, there are 6 Caribbean islands, four countries, twelve provinces, two Hollands, two Netherlands and one kingdom, all Dutch.

Notes & Corrections

The ç in Curaçao should be pronounced with an 's' sound.
Frieslanders will often claim that the little hearts on their flag are actually waterlillies, but that's only because they are embarassed by the little hearts on their flag.

Kindle Paperwhite Review: Brighter, Better, Fatter

C. G. P. Grey — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:41:52 +0000

I used to read a lot, but as I aged and gained responsibilities, books became less central to my life. When I moved to a new city with a poor local library that was just a little too far out of the way my habit of reading died a silent death – and it took more than a year before I even realized.

Then, one day, it hit me: ‘I’ve forgotten about reading. I need to fix this’. My local library wasn’t going to move any closer to my apartment, so I looked into getting a Kindle and settled on the non-touch, D-pad version. Access to books was no longer a problem, and my reading went up.

But not by a lot.

Why? I loved my new Kindle and, reading my first book on it, The Diamond Age was a joy. But my optimal reading time is just before bed and, though the D-pad Kindle’s screen was great, its low contrast made night-time reading, even with an Anglerfish-style book light, difficult.

So when Amazon announced the Kindle Paperwhite, I ordered one immediately with the hope that it might replace my current Kindle and the improved, glowing screen would increase the amount I read.

First Impressions: Fatter, Brighter, Better

My first thought on lifting the Paperwhite was: ‘This feels like a brick’. Of course, it’s nowhere near that heavy, but I was accustomed to the weightless feeling D-pad Kindle.

The D-pad Kindle weighs 5.98 ounces (170g) while the Paperwhite is 7.5 ounces (213g). It’s only 25% heavier but that’s enough to make the Paperwhite just a bit too heavy to comfortably use one-handed.

The back of the Paperwhite feels like it’s covered with hard rubber. This might make the Paperwhite more resistant to drops, but it feels cheap – as though it has been engineered with careless children in mind.

But, the initial tactile impression aside, turning on the Paperwhite revealed why I bought it in the first place: the screen.

E-ink screens are nothing like computer screens. My D-pad Kindle has been the most enjoyable reading experience since my trusty old Palm III. But, the reason these screens are so great is because they’re not backlit.

Reading on a computer or iPad is like looking into a flashlight upon which paper cutout words have been placed. Sort of like the bat signal: it’s readable, but not ideal.

This really hurts my eyes.

The absence of light was the key selling feature on the previous Kindles, so I was dubious about adding a light, in spite of Jeff Bezos’s nanoimprinted promises.

But, I was wrong to doubt. The paperwhite has achieved what I thought impossible: an illuminated screen that doesn’t blast light in you eyes. The effect is as though there’s a magic lamp in the room that only shines evenly across the Paperwhite’s screen.

In comparison the D-pad Kindle’s screen looks hopelessly low contrast with its dark gray text on light green-gray background.

The Paperwhite’s screen with its illumination is much higher contrast. Though I never thought I would, I leave the light on all the time. I didn’t realize how constrained by room lighting I was before when I wanted to read – always needing to align myself with a source of lighting before getting started. Now, there is no awkward couch position or room illumination that isn’t perfect for reading.

Unfortunately, the screen has a darker area near the top-center that is a little irritating. I’ve exchanged my Paperwhite not once, not twice but thrice (Amazon’s customer service is great) trying to get a perfect screen but they all have some slight amount of blueish, brownish distortion.

The only reason this bothers me is because the rest of the screen looks so good. Even with the slightly dark patch, I’ve never read a page of text this well illuminated. It’s just beautiful – now if only Amazon can just get the lighting even across the whole screen, it will be perfect.

There is also some irregular light at the bottom of the screen, where the LEDs are, that I’ve heard people complain about but, it doesn’t bother me as the shadows (mostly) don’t reach the text.

Typographically Dubious

The Kindle Paperwhite comes with six typeface choices: Baskerville, Caecilia, Caceilia Condensed, Futura, Helvetica and Palatino. There was a big fuss at the product announcement over how the typefaces were lovingly handcrafted to be pixel perfect on the new screen – and perhaps they were – but Amazon should have picked better typefaces to pamper.

Helvetica is the IBM of typefaces: boring, but no one ever got fired for using it. Futura, the other sans-serif, is great for the Internet but hideous for reading long-form text.

Baskerville is a fine, honest typeface but not the best choice for the Paperwhite. While the increased resolution of the Paperwhite is an improvement over the previous generations, it’s still not quite good enough to render a thin typeface like Baskerville at a small size. A full page of Baskerville looks a bit uneven with some of the letter forms lighter than others – almost like a photocopy.

This leaves just two typefaces: Palatino, a thin serif which suffers from the same problems as Baskerville, and Caecilia which, by means of attrition, is the only reasonable choice.

The sizes, margin and line spacing options are fine, though could perhaps do with a bit more granularity – I’m never quite settled between text size four (a bit too small) and size five (a bit too large).

There is one further mistake that is completely unforgivable: Kindle’s full justified text is an abomination in the eyes of the typographic gods.

Seriously, full justified text is only used by students trying to puff up the look of their papers and by those who don’t know any better.

It’s terrible is because full justified text makes the spaces between words uneven which is a more uncomfortable reading experience. I understand that doing proper text hyphenation, giving you both a straight right side to paragraphs and even spacing between the letters is difficult, but is it too much to ask for from the largest ebook retailer in the world? I think not.

Terrible, uneven spacing.

Barring text hyphenation, I beg of thee, Jeff Bezos please give Kindles the option to left-justify text. All I want is even spacing between my words.

Better than a Book or an iPad

This review may thus-far seem like mostly complaints, but don’t get me wrong: my Kindle Paperwhite is better than a book or an iPad.

The worst thing about reading on my iPad is that I’m reading on my iPad. Email and Twitter are just a double-home-button press away. As the Internet has become more the center of my life it’s increasingly difficult not to check in on it. One of the Kindle’s biggest advantages is its inability to get on the Internet in a remotely usable way.

“So what,” you say. “Books haven’t been able to get on the Internet since 1440”. True, but books from the library are disgusting objects filled with germs and stains of uncontemplatable origins. Newly bought store books are better (minus the expense) but still heavy, awkward to hold at the beginning and the end, and are completely unsearchable. Which brings us to the next section:

Touchscreen: The Highlight of a Workflow

The vast majority of books I read are non-fiction and many of these are read not for pleasure but as research for my videos. As such, being able to highlight books and reference those highlights later is a must.

Though I’m heavily invested in Apple’s ecosystem, I don’t use iBooks because of their limited highlights. While iBooks does allow you to highlight text it’s nearly impossible to get those highlights out in a useful way, to say nothing of simply trying to look at them on a laptop.

Amazon, however, is nothing if not omnipresent and has Kindle readers for the iPhone, iPad and most importantly, desktop computers. When I’m working on a video I can easily pull up a related book on my Laptop and see the highlights I’ve made.

I can even go to the Kindle website and copy the highlights into Evernote. Awesome.

The Paperwhite’s touch screen is good enough that it makes typing out notes attached to highlights a possibility – something I wouldn’t ever consider doing with the D-pad Kindle, even though it was theoretically possible.

But the touch screen does come with a big cost over the D-pad…

Click!

Lets imagine you’re reading a book. What’s the thing you’re going to do the most? That’s right: turn the page.

Now imagine that you’re in charge of making the world’s best ebook reader. What experience should you make the most pleasant? That’s right: page turning.

One of the best features of the D-pad Kindle was the dedicated page-turn buttons on the side of the device. They weren’t great buttons, but an adequate physical button for a frequently used task is 1,000 times better than the best touch-screen function could ever be.

Removing the buttons from the Kindle Paperwhite is a baffling decision. Page-turn buttons never made accidental pages and resting a thumb on the button, waiting to turn the page was simple and mindless.

As lazy as this sounds, a swipe or tap is a tiny distraction for every page turn. Gestures also make using the device one-handed just a bit more difficult.

The Kindle Paperwhite has three basic touch zones: most of the screen turns the page, while about an inch along the top brings up the menu and a bar along the left side goes back a page.

As I usually hold my Kindle in my left hand I looked for the setting to flip the tap zones to a left-handed mode. But, sadly, there is none. While it’s not too uncomfortable to do a swipe with my left thumb to turn the page, it’s another little dagger in my side that makes me miss the physical buttons of the D-pad Kindle.

The advantage of a dedicated ebook reader is that it’s a dedicated ebook reader. Unlike the iPad which has to be flexible, the Amazon engineers know exactly what people will use a Kindle to do: read. Taking away a button for the most-used task is a poor decision. If put in charge of the Kindle hardware team my number one priority would be to find the most satisfying button to click.

TL;DR

In the end, the Kindle Paperwhite reminds me a lot of my 3rd generation Retina iPad: a device with a great screen, that comes with some compromises.

But I bought the Kindle Paperwhite, to increase the amount I read, particularly when in bed, and to that end it is an unqualified success.

There is a little detail in the Paperwhite that I didn’t think much of at first but now can’t imagine reading without: on the bottom of the page it displays the approximate reading time left in the chapter – and this is no guess, but based on your actual reading speed. This seemingly minor addition allows me to make intelligent how-sleepy-am-I vs how-much-do-I-want-to-read-the-next chapter decisions that makes the whole process of reading at night frictionless.

If you’re thinking about getting an ebook reader, the Kindle Paperwhite, despite some of its irritations, is the one I highly recommend.

Thoughts on the New YouTube Design

C. G. P. Grey — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 16:52:29 +0000

1st: Stop Freaking Out

Let’s get this out of the way: YouTube, doesn’t change the design arbitrarily just to annoy you. They change it to try and improve it – and they aren’t just guessing at what might be better. YouTube does A/B tests to see how changes affect things like the number of videos watched, channel subscriptions and advertising revenue.

It’s reasonable to assume that YouTube releases new designs when user time spent on the site increases, even if you personally don't like change. That’s good news for video creators and viewers.

That being said, it’s still possible to have strong feelings about changes to the site which, as someone who spends far too much time on YouTube, I certainly do.

Aesthetics

While I do have complaints, in general I’m pleased with the redesign. It's lighter and more spacious than the previous cosmic-panda-based design that I was not a fan of. It was cramped and dark and and heavy. The new design is more in the Google+ aesthetic – which some people don’t like – but l do. The bold colors, particularly the red for the page selector, on white are very Google-ish to my eye.

But, colors aside, the first thing you’re probably going to notice is the odd choice of left-aligning the whole site. It’s not really noticeable on my laptop but looks incredibly dumb on a large screen.

It's difficult to A/B test for 'looks dumb'.

Thankfully, the channel pages remain centered, but it gives the impression that some poor YouTube engineer forgot to close a DIV tag on the rest of the site. Also, the left alignment really triggers my OCD when watching videos in the big (but not full-screen) view:

Video: Y U NO ONE INCH BIGGER?!?

Comments: Better, But Still Terrible

The addition of user icons to discussion is much welcome. The icons make regular commenters and friends in discussion much more visible.

The quality of comments, however, still leaves something to be desired.

But, YouTube can’t ever improve something in comments without making something worse. At the bottom of the page there used to be a link to see all comments which has been replaced by a ‘show more’ button.

It might not seem like much of a deal, but the ‘all comments’ link allowed you to sort comments by thread, which the ‘show more’ button does not. YouTube threading is terrible, but better than nothing. I thought that the feature had been removed entirely until I found it by accident lurking in the 'all comments' header that looks exactly like the other two unclickable headers.

You’ll Watch What We Want & You’ll Like It

YouTube now dumps you on the ‘what to watch page’ by default. Perhaps it’s good for casual users without many subscriptions, but with 60+ subscriptions it’s a jumbled pile of crap with out-out-order uploads mixed in with playlist updates and videos people liked.

YouTube seems to treat subscribing to channels as merely information to feed into their algorithm to better suggest what you ‘really’ want to watch. I subscribe to channels because I want to watch them – and YouTube’s design changes have caused me to often miss new videos uploaded by the people I follow. More and more I find myself leaning on the subscription digest to guide my YouTube viewing.

Weirdly, 'What to Watch' recommends videos I’ve already seen. Also I’m not sure what the ’Hide this Activity Button is supposed to do. My guess is that it’s supposed to be like the long-lost x button, but the wording is unclear at best (does it hide just this video or all videos from that channel?) and, when I tried to test it out of my own upload page, it seemed to do nothing at all.

Just what is this button supposed to do?

All I want is a reverse chronological order list of uploads from the channels I subscribe to where I can remove the videos I’ve already seen. Is that too much to ask?

YouTube Should be the World's Best TV, Not the World's Worst Social Network

The social integration is hideous and has to stop. If I want to see what videos my friends are talking about on Facebook, I'll go to Facebook. Actually, I never go to Facebook in the first place, because I'm not really interested in what people I knew 15 years ago think is funny.

YouTube need to make the sit-back-and-just-watch-something experience better, which brings us to the next section:

Playlists: Vastly Better

The old, terrible, buggy playlist scroll along the bottom has been replaced with a more elegant one alongside the video. Playlist deserve this much nicer implementation. YouTube is too 'active' an experience right now, with users having to choose a new video to watch every couple minutes. While that might not seem like a big deal, decisions are tiring. The nicer YouTube can make playlists the longer people will watch.

TL;DR

In summary, the new YouTube design is better than the last. It's visually an improvement even though it still has usability issues and is developing social-network-wannabe issues.

Can Texas Secede from The Union?

C. G. P. Grey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:37:40 +0000

I decided to make this video after the fuss about the latest petition let Texas secede from The Union. While these stories do pop up every few years the WhiteHouse.gov petition is interesting because it asks people when they sign for their state of residence.

I asked on Twitter if anyone could scrape the data and one of my followers, Ben Buchwald, came through. After shoving the raw data into a spreadsheet, here are the results:

The giant blue wedge is people from Texas, the big green wedge is people who didn't want to give their location, and the 2% to 1% wedges are the rest of the states, Puerto Rico and, interestingly, a few American military personnel overseas.

However, a graph like this isn't really very informative. The interesting question is which states most want Texas to go. Sorting by number of signatures isn't helpful because then you just end up with a graph of population. So I've divided the number of signatures by population to yield a graph of per-capita support for Texas secession in the other 49 states:

This graph was the exact opposite of my expected results: I guessed that Democratic states, such as New York and California would top the list and Republican States would be at the bottom, but the graph shows the exact opposite.

It looks like support for Texas leaving the Union is highest among those who a Texas exit would hurt the most politically.

Script

Can Texas Secede from the Union?

America's second most populated and second largest state is always first to remind you that it was once an independent nation: The Republic of Texas.

Unlike California's three-week, almost accidental flirt with independence (and a hideous flag) the Republic of Texas was a real country with its own presidents, and laws and currency for a decade from 1836 until 1846 when it joined the Union to become the 28th state, thankfully evening out the number of stars.

This happy marriage led pretty much immediately to the Mexican-American war over the question of over how big Texas was. America, as the victor, got to decide the answer: very big.

While Texas gave up its complete independence to join The Union, it didn't give up its independent streak -- and filed for divorce, along with several other states, a scant 15 years later. This domestic dispute was settled not with flowers but with force, something that many are still grumbly about today.

But History aside in modern times could Texas still be a real country? In other words: could Texas succeed if it secedes?

In terms of population, an independent Texas would be the world's 46th largest country with 26 million citizens. And, those citizens would make Texas the 13th largest economy. So the New Texas Republic would be comparable to Australia, except in the size department.

But what about the Federal money that goes to Texas? Those interstate highways don't build themselves, you know. For a majority of states, independence would be a financial problem. Mississippi, for example get two dollars from Washington for every one it sends in taxes so an independent Magnolia Republic would be bankrupt almost instantly.

But not Texas, which gives more money to the federal government in taxes than it gets back. There's no reason why independent Texas couldn't keep those highways paved and give its citizens a small happy-Texapendency-day Tax cut.

So from a financial perspective: The New Texas Republic gets a check.

Now the question is can Texas legally secede? And the answer is... no... not at all.

Despite popular belief, even by politicians who should know better, the Texas constitution does not include a get-out-of-The-Union-free clause no matter how much Texans, or citizens of other states, wish that it did.

However, the Texas Constitution does have a weird clause that allows it to divide itself into five states without the approval of congress. So Texas could, any moment, explode into the states perhaps named North Texas, South Texas, East Texas, West Texas and Austin -- which would quintuple its power in the Senate -- but not necessarily help it gain independence because there is no legal process for a state to exit The Union.

Though the constitution is mute on the issue, secession has come before the supreme court and, shockingly, the Supreme Court of the United States decided that States can't leave the United States.

But the legal question is, weirdly sort of moot. After all, the First Texas Republic didn't pop into existence out of nowhere -- Texas was originally a State of Mexico, which didn't allow Texas to leave, but leave Texas did anyway, though under less than harmonious circumstances.

While it's hard to imagine war between the New Texas Republic and the United States it isn't hard to imagine who would win that fight. Texas does have its own military, but seriously, nobody beats America in the war business.

So the only way Texas is leaving is if it can convince the United States to change its laws to let it leave. Which only as a chance of being discussed seriously if a majority of Texans want independence, which isn't remotely the case.

So while a New Texas Republic is interesting to think about -- particularly for some non-Texans, as of now it's a long way from becoming a reality.

Credits:

Images by rutlo and photoshop help from Larom Lancaster.

]]>

HyperAnalyze: Over Thinking My Two Favorite Podcasts

C. G. P. Grey — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:47:22 +0000

Much of my work involves tediously animating stick figures -- a time consuming, but mentally barren task. To keep my sanity during this process I listen to podcasts, a lot. Downcast, my podcasting app of choice, shows more than fifty subscriptions, all of which form an endless river of audio that has a prominent place in my life.

I've been thinking about the shows I listen to and why after an announcement from Marco Arment, the host of Build and Analyze.

Marco revealed on Twitter that Build and Analyze would end in a few episodes -- and I was incredibly disappointed. I felt compelled to send him a tweet saying that his podcast, along with Hypercritical by John Siracusa were my two favorites.

Three hours later, Siracusa announced the end of his show, as well.

I spent the evening disappointed. Mopey, even. Which, on reflection, felt ridiculous.

I've seen podcasts come and go, even podcasts that previously held the title of favorite, without much reaction on my part. Why was I sad this time? Thinking it over, each podcast had discussed half of the answer to my question in their previous shows.

Many podcasts, like RadioLab and 99% Invisible are, at their heart, well-produced radio shows. Old formats in a new medium.

But Build and Analyze and Hypercritical were different and Marco said it himself in a recent episode: they're natural podcasts. They're what the medium is best at, people just talking without the overhead or overproducedness of radio.

Both in both shows the respective hosts talk with Dan Benjamin about the things that interest them. (Dan hosts a number of podcasts at 5by5.) In Hypercritical Siracusa has a Steve-Jobs-like ability to explain the problems with things in an incredibly informative way. In Build and Analyze Marco is a thoughtful person, talking about what makes products good, family and business. And coffee.

While the podcasts are ostensibly about their topics, they're really an ongoing conversation.

Regular listening creates a (false) feeling of being part of a social group where people know each other: Mondays it's coffee with Marco and Dan, and then Fridays it's lunch with Siracusa and Dan. Sometimes Marco and Dan talk about Siracusa and sometimes Siracusa and Dan talk about Marco. I'm there too, a silent participant, doodling on my laptop, sipping my coffee, listening without anything to add -- content in the same way old friends can be.

Repeat natural podcasts like these every week for months and the end result is my monkey mind feels like it knows Siracusa, Marco and Dan though my human mind knows better.

As a person who's work has brought him some low-level of Internet fame, I understand it's weird -- and sometimes slightly creepy -- to be on the receiving end of that. But, nonetheless here I am, stuck with that same, irrational feeling of being sort-of friends with two people I don't actually know.

Two people who just died.

Not literally, of course.

Siracusa described the other half of why I'm sad now in a podcast about when Steve Jobs had retired from Apple. Siracusa attempted to write an article about Steve Jobs but what he produced was an obituary, even though the man was still alive at the time. Why?

Apple Keynotes were the only way people knew Steve Jobs. While Jobs had a personal life, it wasn't available to the public. So when Steve Jobs retired, it felt like he died because the part of his life that we got access to was over.

And so it is with these podcasts for me: the part of Marco's and Siracusa's life that I got access to, their weekly conversations on interesting topics is retired.

They're still alive and on twitter, both still write on the web and both may guest on Dan's new podcast, but their regular shows were a metronome in my unstructured work life: Marco started the week and Siracusa ended it.

My human mind is thankful for all the hours of insight, humor and learning that they've given me over this past year, but my monkey mind will still be sad for a while about the loss of friends it never really had.

Digital Aristotle: Thoughts on the Future of Education

C. G. P. Grey — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:00:00 +0000

Blog

Ever since I started working as a teacher seven years ago, the future of education has been on my mind. I'm not sure that my most recent vlog has well articulated my thoughts on the matter, but it's a start.

I'm the first to admit that I do a bit of handwaving at the end of the video about Digital Aristotle -- near-artificial-intelligent software doesn't just pop into existence. But I'm comfortable with the handwaving for two reasons:

Technology evolves much faster than people expect.
Real AI isn't necessary for my vision of Digital Aristotle anyway.

There is a lot to be done with just simple testing across massive groups of students and this is something that the people at The Khan Academy, among others, are working on.

One last point that I'd like to be clear on: almost by definition a computer program can't teach social skills. There will always be a place where working adults send their kids to be socialized. Because of that I don't think that schools are going anywhere in the long term, I just don't think that the formalized education part of those schools will be anything like what we do now.

Credits

Special thanks to YouTube EDU in general and Angela in particular for arranging the event.

YouTube EDU Artwork by Jessica Fan.

Music by Broke For Free

Images by jbird, johanl, gsfc, mike52ad, gsfc, mwichary, lobsterstew, wwworks, x1brett, lxn271, moyermk, frtz, alancleaver, dubsar, jasonff, epugachev, urosvelickovic, 56155476@N08, fakeeyes

HELP WANTED: You Playing a Board Game [CLOSED]

C. G. P. Grey — Sun, 28 Oct 2012 19:11:24 +0000

Hello Internet,

Once again, I'm calling on you for some help making my next video. If you'd like to participate, I'm looking for video footage of you playing a board game. Here's what I want:

1) A close up shot (no faces, just hands) of you playing a board game. It can be really close -- no need to show the whole board. The shot should be:

2) Well lit and high resolution

3) Show some sort of action: rolling the dice, moving a piece, trading cards, etc.

Bonus points if the game is one of the following: Chess, Go, Monopoly, Risk, Snakes & Ladders, or Candyland. If you have some other interesting game, feel free to submit it as well.

Super bonus for these specific shots:

Trading money in monopoly
Landing on a square and buying it in monopoly
Building a house / hotel in monopoly
Someone losing very badly at chess getting checkmated
Someone losing at Risk and getting pushed back into Australia
Moving and falling down a snake, then someone else winning on the next roll.
Making a move in Candyland

If you can do this, please send me the clips at Grey@CGPGrey.com and include your twitter account or website for credits. (If the file is too large for email, you can also share it with me via Dropbox)

The sooner you can get the video to me the better -- thanks in advance for any help.

What If the Presidential Election is a Tie?

C. G. P. Grey — Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:28:18 +0000

Script:

The United States, picks its president with the Electoral College, 538 votes distributed by population (mostly) to the 50 States and DC. To become president you need to win a majority of those votes. But, 538 is an even number, so what happens when the race for president is tied?

Don't worry, there's an 18th century solution to the problem: if the Electoral College is tied, the House of Representatives breaks that tie.

As the name implies, the House is filled with representatives from each of the states. The more people in a state, the more Representatives it has and their are 435 in total -- thankfully an odd number and guaranteed tie breaker... except there's a catch: each representative doesn't get one vote, it's each State that gets one vote. So, Florida's 27 representatives have to decided amongst themselves who to support before casting Florida's one vote to help break the tie.

Meanwhile, thinly-populated Alaska's sole representative, has only to consult himself before casting Alaska's vote.

This is an incredibly disproportionate system because just ten states, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, and North Carolina contain more than half the population of the United States but get only 20% of the votes if the race for president is tied and the other 40 states with less than half the population get 80% of the votes.

While an exact tie is unlikely, this system is also used if they're more than two candidates for president and none of them gets a majority in the Electoral College.

Which is exactly what happened when four candidates ran for president in 1824. Andrew Jackson got the most votes from Americans and the most votes in the Electoral College, but not a majority, so the race was turned over to the House of Representatives voting as states who picked John Quiny Adams instead.

In a modern America with more states a three-way race can have horrifically disproportionate results: consider a third-party candidate who the loves the small states and who the small states love in return.

He gets the fewest Electoral College votes, but enough to ensure that neither of the two more popular candidates get a majority so now the House decides the winner -- and those 26 smallest states representing just 17% of the population can pick their man as president even though 83% of Americans didn't vote for him.

It's unlikely, but it really shouldn't even be possible.

Anyway, all this talk of presidents has left the Vice President unmentioned: a reasonable person might assume, just comes along with the President, but no.

When there's a tie the Senate independently picks the Vice President so the United States, could end up with a President from one party and with a Vice President from the another, which might make for some very uncomfortable meetings.

But even this crazy system for resolving a tie isn't guaranteed to work because are 100 members of the senate and in the House of Representatives they're forced to vote as 50 states and many of those states have10 or 8 representatives making the whole system tie-tackular with all of those even numbers.

So if the House can't pick the president but the Senate has picked the Vice President then the Vice President becomes acting president until the House can make up its mind. But if neither the House can pick the president nor the Senate can decide the Vice President then the speaker of the House becomes president until either branch of congress picks someone.

So this systems is how the United States would resolve a tied race for president, though it might be faster (and more fair) to just flip a coin.

Of course you could just get rid of the electoral college, and thus this whole crazy system, and instead have a national vote, perhaps even with something fancy like preferential voting, maybe that's just a crazy idea.

The (Secret) City of London Part 2

C. G. P. Grey — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 15:55:43 +0000

The City of London is a unique place -- it's the city in a city (in a country in a country) that runs its government with perhaps the most complicated elections in the world involving medieval guilds, modern corporations, mandatory titles and fancy hats, all of which are connected in this horrifying org chart. Why so complicated?

Though the new Skyscrapers might make you think the City of London is relatively young, it's actually the oldest continuous government on the Island of Great Britain.

The City of London predates the Empire that Victoria ruled, the Kingdoms Anne united and the Magna Carta that John, reluctantly, signed.

While the London which surrounds the city only got to electing its first Mayor in 2000, the list of Mayors who've governed the City of London is almost 700 people long going back more than a thousand years.

The City of London's government is so old there's no surviving record of when it was born -- there are only documents, like the Magna Carta, which mention the pre-existing powers the City of London already had at that time.

While a government like the United States's officially gets its power from the people, and Parliament gets its power from the Crown, (which in turn gets it from God), the City of London gets its power from 'time immemorial' meaning that the City is so old, it just is.

And that age brings with it unusual and complicated traditions, the most notable of these, perhaps, is that in city of London elections, companies get votes.

Quite a lot actually, about 3/4th of the votes cast in City elections are from companies with the remaining 1/4th from residents. The way it works is that the bigger a company is the more votes it gets from the City of London. The companies then give their votes to select employees who work, but do not live, within the city and it's these employees who do the actual voting at election time.

The result is that the Common Council, the bureaucratic beating heart of the City of London, has about 20 common councilors elected by residents of the city and about 80 elected by companies of the city.

The reasoning behind this unusual tradition is that for every 1 person who lives in the City of London, 43 people commute in every day. In total that's 300,000 commuters using City services and whose employment depends on the City of London being business friendly.

The man in charge of the common council and who heads The City's government is The Right Honorable, the Lord Mayor of London.

Now, suppose you want to be Lord Mayor,

Surely, just as in that other London all you'll need do is

a) Be a British, Commonwealth, or EU citizen, who has

b) lived in the city for a year, and who

c) wins the election

Right? No, in The City of London, that's not nearly enough. Ready for the qualifications list?

Before you even run for Lord Mayor you need have been a Sheriff of The City of London.

But before you can be Sheriff, you need to be an Aldermen.

What's an Aldermen? Well, the City of London is divided into 25 wards, and each Ward elects one Aldermen to represent it on the Court of Aldermen -- a sub-section of the common council.

Before you can run for Alderman, you need to gain Freeman Status... and who gives out freeman status? Why none other than the very Court of Aldermen you're trying to get elected to.

Which might just seem like a conflict of interest. Luckily there is another way to get the freeman status -- join one of the City's Guilds -- sadly, they aren't called guilds, they're called Livery Companies (a name which is both more boring and less descriptive), but the remnants of medieval guilds many of them are and within the City there are 108 of them to choose from including, but not limited to,

The Apothecaries

The Fishmongers

The Masons

The Mercers

The Scientific Instrument Makers

The Bankers

The Shipwrights

The Wheelwrights

The Butchers,

The bakers,

Two different candlestick makers,

and the most exciting of all: The Chartered Accountants!

Many of these guilds, like the Fletchers, have become charities, but some are still active, such as the Goldsmiths who test the quality of British coinage and the Hackney carriage drivers who license taxi drivers.

To join one of these guilds you'll either need to meet the professional requirements, or for the charities like the Haberdashers you'll need the approval of two existing members, others won't tell you how to become a members.

If, you meet none of the Livery Companies membership requirements, but you think you'll be a clever clogs and start your own Livery Company and grant yourself freeman status, tough luck because new Livery Companies need to be approved by, you guessed it, the Court of Aldermen.

But let's assume one way or another you get the official freeman status certificate, now you can finally run for Aldermen of a Ward -- after the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Committee also approves of you.

But, that small barrier passed, you can win election as Aldermen in either one of the 4 wards where people live or the 21 wards where companies live.

Once on the court of aldermen to continue your path to the Mayor's Office in Guildhall, you must now be elected as sheriff, but this time it's the members of the Livery Companies who pick the sheriffs.

So if the Livery Company members elect you as Sheriff, after you have successfully completed your term then you can finally run for Mayor.

But, surprisingly the, residents of the City of London don't vote for the Mayor, our old friends on the Court of Aldermen do.

So in summary, once you get freeman status from either the court of aldermen or the livery companies and after your ward elected you as alderman and then the livery companies elect you as sheriff and after your term as sheriff ends but while you're still on the court of aldermen then you can run for Mayor.

And -- assuming the other aldermen select you, finally take your place as The Right Honorable, The Lord Mayor of London -- for one year, with no salary. And you have to cover your own expenses, which will be quite considerable as your new job consists mostly of making hundreds of speeches a year around the world promoting city business.

But you do get that fancy hat, which just might make it all worth while.

Special Thanks

Econe Fine Jewelry, for the use of their image of the Freeman of the City certificate and to the Museum of London.

Selected Sources

Credits

amplifieduk, louisephotography, herry, damo1977, g4egk, shelleylou2000, stewc, Sam Winters, Econe Fine Jewellery, idleformat, richardfisher, neutronboy, kachkaev, Diliff

The (Secret) City of London

C. G. P. Grey — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 12:01:37 +0000

Script

The Great City of London, known for its historical landmarks, modern skyscrapers, ancient markets and famous bridges. It's arguably the financial capital of the world and home to over eleven thousand people.

Wait, what? Eleven... thousand?

That's right: but the City of London is a different place from London -- though London is also known for its historical landmarks, modern skyscrapers, ancient markets, famous bridges and is home to the government, royal family and seven million people.

But, if you look map of London crafted by a careful cartographer that map will have a one-square mile hole near the middle -- it's here where the City of London lives inside of the city named London.

Despite these confusingly close names the two Londons have separate city halls and elect separate mayors, who collect separate taxes to fund separate police who enforce separate laws.

The Mayor of the City of London has a fancy title 'The Right Honourable the Lord Mayor of London' to match his fancy outfit. He also gets to ride in a golden carriage and work in a Guildhall while the mayor of London has to wear a suit, ride a bike and work in an office building.

The City of London also has its own flag and its own crest which is awesome and makes London's lack of either twice as sad.

To top it off the City of London gets to act more like one of the countries in the UK than just an oddly located city -- for uniquely the corporation that runs the city of London is older than the United Kingdom by several hundred years.

So how did the UK end up with two Londons, one inside of the other? Because: Romans.

2,000 years ago they came to Great Britain, killed a bunch of druids, and founded a trading post on the River Thames and named it Londonimium. Being Romans they got to work doing what Romans do: enforcing laws, increasing trade, building temples, public baths, roads, bridges and a wall to defend their work.

And it's this wall which is why the current City of London exists -- for though the Romans came and the Romans went and kingdoms rose and kingdoms fell, the wall endured protecting the city within. And The City, governing itself and trading with the world, grew rich.

A thousand years after the Romans (yet still a thousand years ago) when William the Conqueror came to Great Britain to conqueror everything and begin modern british history he found the City of London, with its sturdy walls more challenging to defeat than farmers on open fields.

So he agreed to recognize the rights and privileges City of Londoners were used to in return for the them recognizing him as the new King.

Though after the negotiation, William quickly built towers around the City of London which were just as much about protecting William from the locals within as defending against the Vikings from without.

This started a thousand-year long tradition whereby Monarchs always reconfirmed that 'yes' the City of London is a special, unique place best left to its own business, while simultaneously distrusting it.

Many a monarch thought the City of London was too powerful and rich. And one even built a new Capital city nearby, named Westminster, to compete with the City of London and hopefully, suck power and wealth away from it. This was the start of the second London.

As the centuries passed, Westminster grew and merged with nearby towns eventually surrounding the walled-in, and still separate City of London. But, people began to call the whole urban collection 'London' and the name became official when Parliament joined towns together under a single municipal government with a mayor.

But, the mayor of London still doesn't have power over the tiny City of London which has rules and traditions like nowhere else in the country and possibly the world.

For example, the ruling monarch doesn't just enter the City of London on a whim, but instead asks for permission from the Lord Mayor at a ceremony. While it's not required by law, the ceremony is, unusual to say the least.

The City of London also has a representative in Parliament, The Remembrancer, whose job it is to protects the City's special rights.

Because of this, laws passed by Parliament sometimes don't apply to the City of London: most notably voting reforms, which we'll discuss next time. But if you're curious, unlike anywhere else in the UK elections in the City of London involve Medieval Guilds and modern companies.

Finally, the City of London also owns and operates land and buildings far outside its border, making it quite wealthy.

Once you start looking for The City's Crest you'll find it in lots of places, but most notably on Tower Bridge which, while being in London is operated by City of London,

These crests everywhere when combined with the City of London's age and wealth and quazi-independent status make it an irresistible temptation for conspiracy nuts. Add in the oldest Masonic temple and it's not long before the crazy part of the Internet yelling about secret societies controlling the world via the finance industry from inside the City-state of London. (And don't forget the reptilian alien Queen who's really behind it all.)

But conspiracy theories aside, the City of London is not an independent nation like the Vatican is, no matter how much you might read it on the Internet, rather it's a unique place in the United Kingdom with a long and complicated history.

The wall that began all this 2,000 years ago is now mostly gone -- so the border between London and its secret inner city isn't so obvious. Though, next time you're in London, if you come across a small dragon on the street, he still guards the entrance to the city in a city in a country in a country.

Notes & Corrections:

0:09 The Population of the City of London is 7,000, not 11,000.
1:56 since the characters are in (what will be) England I should have had them say say 'recognise' not 'recognize'
3:49 The Freemason's Hall is actually a couple streets just outside the border of the City of London.

Credits

transtek, stuart-lee, neonbubble, photogentic, neutronboy, anirudhkoul, timfrostuk, William Hall, mcgraths, Arpad Lukacs Photography, brostad, grana71, thetravelguru, pikous, herry, nanagyei, elias_daniel, Diliff, stewdean, Fremantleboy, dickpenn, fgr1986, malcnhg, aroberts, celesteh, mein-halle, raidy, edwin11, idleformat, asw909, londonmatt.

Special thanks to WearScience.com for the reptile Queen image. Go buy their great shirts.

Thoughts on the BrainSTEM Unconference

C. G. P. Grey — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 21:48:42 +0000

Making educational videos on YouTube, as you might expect is a solitary, experience. And that's great for me because I'm a solitary guy: happiest when walking through city streets in anonymity.

But many months ago Henry Reich, who runs Minute Physics on YouTube, encouraged me to travel across the ocean and come to a conference to meet with some of the best YouTubers to talk about the changing world of science education.

At the time, I had yet to make a video that could really be considered science education -- I wasn't sure what to expect and pretty sure that I wouldn't belong. I anticipated being the odd one out and the requisite awkwardness that would follow.

What I got instead was a life-changing few days I will never forget.

The conference was called BrainSTEM and hosted in Waterloo, Canada at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics.

I've rarely seen a building that so perfectly matched my sense of aesthetics: purposeful minimalism. The building maximizes the productivity and interconnectedness of its inhabitance with its big, clean, open spaces bridged by unexpected stairways and passages. Walls are either glass to view the outside world or blackboards to write the formulae that explain it all.

It was in this magnificent setting that I had the privilege of meeting the YouTubers who are doing some of the best education videos on the site and whose minds I most wanted to understand.

But it's strange to meet someone you've only known through the screen. There is a false, asymmetric closeness you feel that the other person cannot reciprocate. But, it's doubly strange when you each have that asymmetric feeling toward the other.

However, in my experience, this foreknowledge of life and work turbocharged conversations -- allowing everyone to skip the preliminaries and run full speed through three days of whirlwind discussions. Not just with YouTubers but also with brilliant researchers, educators, producers and PhDs. All of us exchanging ideas on how to improve what we do. In that environment I fought my instincts to fade away, instead driving myself from 7:00AM to midnight three days in a row so as not to miss a thing.

And then, all too soon, it ended and I found myself on a flight to the United States -- completely and utterly drained, requiring days to recover and process my thoughts.

But, while the BrainSTEM conference lasted, it was glorious.

Thank you to Henry, the Perimeter Institute and Communitech for making it all happen.

If, like me you are interested in how other people get work done, take a look at this video by Brady Haran on how Henry makes his MinutePhysics videos:

Also, Derek Muller from Veritasium captured the behind-the-scenes mood of the conference perfectly in his video:

Header photograph by: Andre Recnik

How to Pronounce Uranus

C. G. P. Grey — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 18:54:37 +0000

A few sharp-eyed viewers noticed that in my last video about why Pluto is no longer a planet I said aloud all of the planet names except one: Uranus. This video is sort of a reply to that.

Uranus is unique among the planets for both a natural reason – its horizontal axis of rotation – and also a human reason: it is a Greek God among Romans.

Roman Name	Greek Name	God of
Mercury	Hermes	Trade & Travel
Venus	Aphrodite	Love
Mars	Ares	War
Jupiter	Zeus	King of the Gods
Saturn	Kronos	Time
Caelus	Uranus	The Sky
Neptune	Poseidon	The Sea

Why the German chemist Bode thought that the Greek name was better than the Roman, we may never know. But it’s interesting to note that Herschel explicitly thought that a Roman name for the planet was a bad idea. In his letter to Sir Joseph Banks in 1783 he says:

In the fabulous ages of ancient times the appellations of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, were given to the planets, as being the names of their principal heroes and divinities. In the present more philosophical era, it would hardly be allowable to have recourse to the same method, and call on Juno, Apollo, Pallas or Minerva, for a name to our new heavenly body. The first consideration in any particular event, or remarkable incident, seems to be its chronology; if in any future age it should be asked, when this last-found planet was discovered? It would be a very satisfactory answer to say, “In the reign of King George the Third.” As a philosopher, then, the name of GEORGIUM SIDUS presents itself to me, as an appellation which will conveniently convey the information of the time and country where and when it was brought to view.

It was pretty tricky trying to find actual occurrences of The Georgium Sidus or the other names being used in print. Here it is in an 1820 Nautical almanac listed as Georgian. I felt pretty lucky to have stumbled upon the 1823 Encyclopædia Britannica and the article mentioned in the video.

Related to the previous video on Pluto that same edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica lists Ceres and Pallas as planets:

I also tried using Google’s ngram search to compare the frequencies of the different names over time, but since ‘Herschel’ is both a name for people and a name for the planet it’s difficult to come up with a fair comparison:

There are a few other little things that I wanted to fit in the video but didn’t make it:

The name Neptune was suggested as an alternative to The Gorgium Sidus as a nod to Great Britain’s’ dominance over the sea.
While all the planets have Greek names for their moons, Uranus’s moons have Shakespearean names.

Credits

Images by: Jack Fusco, dennism2 & pikous

Music by: Broke For Free

Special Thanks

The Royal Institution. Go check out their YouTube channel.