Looks like Europe has made it a lot more difficult to dispose of your old credit card than the debt that’s on it …
With my current credit card being set to expire soon, the bank recently sent me a replacement one to helpfully enable me to keep maintaining their bottom line in the future. Being bored (or braindead, your choice), I made the mistake of reading through the instructions that came with the new card. In addition to the usual advice to destroy your credit card like a ninja on acid and speed to keep your information safe, there was also something new. After having made the sushi, you were no longer allowed to dispose of all the bits in the normal household waste because the chip and all the what-not in the card meant that it now officially counts as electrical waste. As such, the card had to be disposed of separately as if it were an old mobile phone or a TV. The new card even has the appropriate (and extremely ugly) symbol to indicate this.
(Funnily enough, the current EU regulations define a lot of things as electrical waste, but not credit cards specifically. Presumably they must fall under the rather all-inclusive “and other products and equipment for the collection, storage, processing, presentation or communication of information by electronic means” for IT and Telecommunications Equipment in Annex II.)
Problem is, electrical waste is not really all that easy to recycle. Paper, yes. Plastic? Even though they burn most of it anyway, also not a problem. Even batteries are relatively easy. But not electrical waste. A quick search through the City of Not-Bielefeld webpages did, however, reveal two general-purpose recycling centres (or what we used to call city dumps when I was a kid) “conveniently located close to you.” Now, if there is one thing that is thankfully true about most (working) dumps, it is that they are usually not conveniently close to anything and especially not where people live. The same is the case here in Not-Bielefeld, where the two dumps are about 8 and 12 km (and usually downwind at that) from where I live.
So, if we want to do this by the book, this being Germany and all, me being environmentally friendly translates out into a minimum 16-km car ride. That works out to about 0.8 l of diesel or about 1.30 EUR at today’s overinflated, no-the-oil-companies-are-not-using-the-war-in-the-Ukraine-as-yet-another-excuse-to-further-gouge-us oil prices. Alternatively, I could hop on the bus to the tune of 5.40 EUR for a 90-minute round trip.
All for one expired credit card …
True, I could save up all my electrical waste to make the trip worth it and have been doing this for about five years now. Even after all that time, the “pile” still only consists of two USB cables and one set of dead headphones. And now one old credit card on top of that. Still not worth the trip.
Fortunately, only my new credit card has that special symbol, which means that I can throw the shrapnel of my old card into the normal trash with a clear conscience, right? And, in five years time, if I do it right, technically the only piece of the then old card that has to be properly recycled is the bit with that ugly symbol on it …
Everyone knows the abbreviation IT these days. (But probably no one knows that it dates to 1958 …) My feeling is that its modern incarnation is often missing a few letters ahead of IT. Just like admin, IT departments love to inform us how they are only there to serve us when the reality is that their whole purpose seems increasingly to make their own lives easier by offering us, well, SHIT.
I’ve detailed any number of examples of this in this blog already. Like gaudy warning labels to save us from junk e-mails that come from outside the University of Not-Bielefeld system but can be tricked out by a simple spoofing of the sender’s e-mail address. Or airline ticketing systems that can book you on any number of code-shared flights with any number of partner airlines but can’t make seat reservations with those partners because of “technical restrictions”.
Even the banks are happily playing along with this …
I’ve got a pair of loans with a bank that I’m generally happy with. The service is impersonal and the rates and conditions are arbitrarily extortionary, both of which are a great deal better than I’m generally used to. I recently noticed that only one of my loans was showing up via online banking (who checks in that regularly to see how much they still owe, right?) and figured that I might as well get the second one up there too. Applied for this, immediately got the login details, and noticed that the username was different from my other one. In other words, a completely separate account with its own completely separate, impossible-to remember password (hint to the IT “specialists” out there: passwords do not have to be stupidly complex to be secure, just long and not obvious) and completely not what I was after.
When I telephoned the bank to explain that I curiously wanted both loans to be shown simultaneously, they replied that this was “technically impossible” because of the different user-account numbers even if I possibly and technically was the same user. Having ungraciously learned to admit defeat in such instances (call-centre people know even less about SHIT than the SHIT department), I just went with it and tried to activate this other account. Everything went smoothly until I started. Opened the website, entered my other user-account number, and was greeted with the message that my appTAN verification system was not yet activated and please refer to the appropriate letter for more information. The appropriate letter, however, only referred to a mobileTAN verification system. Another phone call, another round of excuses, and another letter coming my way, this time via snail mail for some reason.
It, of course, gets sillier …
… and lazier.
At my normal bank where I have my savings account, a recent update to their online-banking service means that I now have to log in three separate times just to view the transactions on my account. Once to get into the system in the first place, once again immediately afterwards to see if I really meant it, and then a third time to actually call up the transactions. When I contacted their SHIT department about it, the problem naturally lay on my end, not their update. Maybe my cookies were too restrictive. (Funny. They were just fine before the update.) If not, I could always use another browser. (True. I could also use another bank that likes my cookies the way they are.) How about just trying to do your job instead of making up lazy, SHITty excuses all the time?
And the list goes on and on …
Now, even if you don’t like my extra, suggested letters in front of IT, you should at least consider flipping the order of those two letters to match their commonly exclaimed excuse of “technically impossible” .
I know that I’m doing a lot of these bonehead comments of the day lately, or at least a lot more of them than my regular entries, but it’s a good news, bad news kinda thing. The good news is that admin here in Not-Bielefeld and surroundings have gone relatively quiet again. The bad news is that I still read CNN for my daily news summary.
Anyway, here’s a gem of a comment about last night’s Eurovision 2023 contest and one of its positive side effects:
“It also catapulted the dockside city of Liverpool – the home of the Beatles – onto the continent’s cultural map.”
Rob Picheta, CNN
Aside from the usual, senseless hyperbole that the mainstream media attempts to pass off as news (anyone recall offhand which city was sitting on the cultural catapult just last year?), can you spot the (other) internal stupidity in the quote? Rob’s even helpfully set it off in hyphens for you …
Once more the American legal system is punishing businesses for underestimating the creative stupidity of their customers. Remember the famous 1994 McDonald’s coffee case where McDonald’s was sued successfully for selling “defectively manufactured” (i.e. hot) coffee that was “unreasonably dangerous” because an older lady managed to spill an entire cup of it on her lap in a car?
Well, as reported by CNN, Round 2 of the bonehead court of the day took place in Florida yesterday …
The culprit? Another McDonald’s. The scene of the crime? Another McDrive. (Drivebys were never so dangerous …) The weapon? An “unreasonably hot” 2019 Chicken McNugget that burned the thigh of a four-year old girl when it fell out of her hands and got wedged in the seat beside her. The verdict? Liability on the part of both McDonald’s and the franchise owner Upchurch Foods in addition to negligence on the part of the latter. (The jurors, however, agreed that there was “no inherent defect in putting McNuggets on the market and no breach of implied warranty.” Phew …)
Really? C’mon …
I’m not necessarily trying to assign any blame here. Lawyers are well known as mouthpieces paid to win cases, regardless of what relationship the latter have to either common sense or reality, neither of which are really legal concepts. And we’ve all been there as parents, where a split-second, industrial-strength brain fart can result in serious harm.
Just suck up some personal responsibility and don’t try to blame Ronald McDonald for not looking after your child when you didn’t. We’ve all done it, but that still doesn’t mean that feeding your toddler in the backseat of the car is necessarily safe nor that the backseat is a licensed restaurant. And even though the reality is that fast food is often unreasonably tepid, there’s still the reasonable expectation that it could be hot, especially when it comes out of a deep fryer somewhere north of 160 ºC and we are unreasonably demanding that it be served to us now because we’re at the drive through.
Ok, for the sake of argument, let’s just say that those Chicken McNuggets were indeed unreasonably hot and that the parents were not unreasonably inept. At least two questions come immediately to my mind.
First, what is the definition of “reasonably hot”? (Or, in the case of the 1994 coffee, “reasonably dangerous”?) It seems like a lot of literal pain could be avoided here if this one simple quantity could somehow be spelled out explicitly. However, part of the problem might be that “reasonably hot” is not a simple quantity and seems to be context-dependent. For instance, when talking about the weather, it being reasonably hot outside is usually a warning that it’s too hot. By contrast, someone who is pointed out to you at the singles’ bar as being reasonably hot usually isn’t and definitely isn’t the morning after.
Second, even if we do manage to figure out what a “reasonably hot” Chicken McNugget is, how do McDonald’s & Co. even begin to implement this? Has anyone ever investigated the thermodynamics of a Chicken McNugget so that McDonald’s knows how long they have to wait after it comes out of the deep fryer before they can sell it? Or would each and every McDonald’s have to hire someone to fire one of those forehead thermometers at each and every McNugget every 30 seconds or so?
Hmm. Actually not a bad idea. There’s probably more than a few million thermometers going spare now that the corona pandemic is over …
With Russian forces stalled menacingly close to the EU’s eastern borders for over a year now, it’s comforting to know that similar threats are being recognized and neutralized here in western Europe on a daily basis too.
Case in point: this CNN story yesterday on how Belgian customs in collaboration with the Comité Interprofessionnel du vin de Champagne (CIVC) helped to protect the EU economy from being destabilized by a dangerous ring of counterfeiters. The miscreant here is that well known criminal organization of the Miller Brewing Company, which was apparently trying to pass off their Miller High Life (AKA “The Champagne of beers”) as real Champagne. Luckily for the EU, there’s Belgium, which bravely stood up and destroyed 2352 cans of the contraband brew (or, in terms a Canadian can understand, 98 twofers), thereby garnering them the accolade of bone-head customs of the day.
“If a counterfeit is proven, as is the case here, we also consult each other on the decision to destroy these goods and on the way in which we have them destroyed.”
Kristian Vanderwaeren, general administrator of the Belgian General Administration for Customs and Excise
Sorry, Kris, it’s not a counterfeit, but a comparison. Nice try though. A counterfeit would be if Miller claimed that it was Champagne. Instead they really only likened it to the stuff because just like the real bubbly, High Life is unusually highly carbonated. In this sense, it’s no different than using the word champagne to describe the colour of something because, well, it has the same colour as the original French stuff. Going to go after all the paint companies now too? The CIVC would and even implied in 2013 that Apple was only trying to benefit from the Champagne brand name when trying to use the word to describe the colour of the then new iPhone 5S. (Hint to the CIVC: it’s probably your brand, and not that of the world’s most valuable company, that would be the one only benefitting from this association.)
(Admittedly, there seems to be an important, if picky difference in play here, namely that between “Champagne” and “champagne”. Apparently, if you use the capital letter at the start, it better be the real stuff. If not, then it can be any sparkling wine. Seems like the French have been living next to the Germans for too long.)
But, let’s face it, no one, and especially not the Belgians who actually know more than a thing or two about beer, is ever going to mistake Miller High Life for Champagne. And, even if the Belgians understandably enough disavow High Life as being beer, this doesn’t automatically make it Champagne either.
Apart from the obvious question of “who cares?”, the real question here is why the CIVC haven’t gotten their little white gloves dirty before now and gone after Miller more generally for trademark infringement instead of getting their Belgian bulldogs to do their dirty work for them here. (By contrast, the CIVC found it more important in this “incident” to explicitly point out (probably not in English) that the fake Champagne was destroyed “with the greatest respect for environmental concerns.” Please …) According to the CNN article, Miller has been using the modern Champagne slogan since 1969 after modifying it from the previous one of “The Champagne of Bottle Beer”, which only dates back to about 1906. I thought that part of the obligation of owning a trademark was also defending it. A century isn’t long enough to notice?
(As it turns out, there actually is no trademark to defend because Champagne is merely a protected word, not trademarked.)
On top of that, it’s hard to sympathize with a claim of trademark infringement (i.e., unauthorized use of a protected word) here given that Champagne the Drink lifted its name from Champagne the Region where it’s produced. Are the people that live there, especially the more bubbly personalities, counterfeiters now too?
You have to wonder why the CIVC is being so hyperaggressive here. Through its policies, the village of Champagne, Switzerland was forced to stop using the word Champagne to describe their still wine despite its history being about as old as the French stuff. (Ever even heard of Swiss wine before? Me neither. Huge threat averted there, CIVC.) After all, you don’t see Coca-Cola going nuts because “coke” (which is trademarked) happens to also be a generic term for any kind of soft drink in many places. Same thing for Kleenex. Very few brands have achieved this kind of envious recognition. On top of that, the word champagne is also often synonymous with luxury (coke too, but in a different context), whether for bubbly or beyond. Apart from the real problem of the real counterfeiters, that all represents really good advertising for the Champagne brand.
Whatever …
I’ve commented previously about how France’s impact on the world stage over the past two centuries has largely been limited to getting the points at the Eurovision Song Contest also being announced in French. Looks like Belgium is struggling to reach even that niveau …
These are boom times for the airline industry and thank God too! After the recent corona pandemic scuttled any number of airline companies and forever left its mark on our meeting structures and travel habits, it was an open question whether or not the industry would ever recover or even be as relevant any longer.
All the bankruptcies, fears, and futures, of course, turned out to be a bigger load of crap than Jeff Goldblum famously commented on in the original Jurassic Park movie. Take this quote for example:
Travel data company Cirium found that 43 commercial airlines have failed — completely ceased or suspended operations — in 2020 so far, compared to 46 in all of 2019 and 56 throughout 2018.
Sounds bad, doesn’t it? 43 so far and it’s only October! But wait a minute. October 8th was already a little more than three-quarters of the way through 2020. If you extrapolate those 43 bankruptcies over the course of the full (leap) year, it comes out to 56 (actually 55.8, but 0.8 of an airline can’t go bankrupt) or dead on the value from the very non-corona year of 2018. And, if you take an actual look through the data, you realize that many of these bankruptcies occurred either before or very early on in the pandemic, meaning that, like in the years before, most of these airlines were going to fail anyway. Corona simply kicked them to their rightful place on the curb that little bit sooner is all.
And, in the end, Zoom, Skype & Co. weren’t all that much of a threat to commercial flying either, despite some predictions that business traffic would never fly above 50% of pre-pandemic levels again. Instead, things were pretty much back to normal and then some by the Spring of 2022. And that’s perhaps not really surprising either for anyone who’s ever done a lot of virtual meetings.
But what has all this got to do with admin? Well, nothing really up to now, but please fasten your (hi-tech) seatbelts for takeoff.
The story is somewhat complicated. My wife and I are flying to Canada for vacation this summer, but whereas I’m starting out from Not-Bielefeld, she’s doing the same from Croatia. We arranged it, however, that we’d meet up in Frankfurt and take the same flight over to Canada and then return to Not-Bielefeld together. Because of the separate starting points, we had to buy the tickets individually (me through an online portal, her directly through an airline), even if we were on most of the same flights together. And, it worked!
Well, up until we had to make the seat reservations that is …
The internet has changed things a lot for the airline industry, particularly in being able to offer bad service in an impersonal fashion at the lowest price possible more efficiently than ever before. Up until a few years ago, I didn’t mind buying my tickets online. Although the foundation of that process is still in place today—I can still see exactly which flights are available and at what price—the pricing policies have changed dramatically. Before, the price used to include a reasonable amount of luggage and usually a seat too. Now, in an effort to show the absolute lowest prices possible, the ticket price barely gets you in the door of the plane. Anything beyond that, like seats or luggage, have become bookable extras.
(And, although I have no data beyond my own paranoia to back this up, I’m pretty sure that this whole system was dreamed up more for the convenience (read: bottom line) of the airlines than for us. Yes, the base ticket price probably is indeed cheaper, but the airlines undoubtedly more than make up the difference through the necessary “extras”. Although some passengers will save money through the new system, most probably won’t.)
In short, for a price, you now need to make your seat reservations ahead of time, which we reluctantly had to fork out for here seeing as how we’d kinda like to sit together for the eight plus hours and not just leave it all to chance.
The problem was the Frankfurt to Canada leg: presumably only one single plane, but code-shared between at least three airlines so that it’s not clear to anyone who’s flying the damn thing in the end. Now, although I booked my ticket through an online portal, I was able to make a seat reservation for this leg through LU. (As I’ve stressed before, the policy of this blog is to not name any names, so I’m using randomly assigned letters to represent the airlines involved to guarantee their anonymity.) My wife, who booked directly with AC, couldn’t. The AC website said that because the flight was being operated by EU, we needed to book her seat through them. The booking service for the EU website, however, forwarded us immediately to the LU website, which even more immediately informed us that no seat reservations were possible for this leg. Huh?
Ok, switch to Plan B: the phone and an actual human …
… even if they’re not in Germany.
First LU, who were the last and seemingly the most direct line in the chain. But who also informed me that only five seats in total were available for allocation for the flight, none of which were close to the seat that I had booked. When I told the customer-service agent that this could not be true because the whole back of the plane was available when I booked my seat a few minutes before (which according to their website was free of charge, but, according to my credit card, still somehow cost me 35 EUR), he got self-righteous and I got a long lecture about how it wasn’t LU’s fault, but EU’s. He then got really self-righteous when I asked him why I was able to book my reservation through LU and how it could exclusively be the fault of EU when they belong to the same parent company as LU. The call did not end well.
And especially not for LU …
Fun fact: it seems like call centres (or at least those for LU) have difficulty ending the phone calls such that it’s usually up to the caller to hang up. I didn’t in this case, expecting that LU would. After about 10 seconds though, I heard the agent saying that the connection was still open and could I please hang up. Which I ignored. Another 20 seconds or so and the same request to which I gave the same response. Another 20 seconds later and I got put on hold. Then after about two minutes, the agent finally managed to drop the call on his end.
Second stop: EU because they were the ones to blame according to LU. Again, the same story about there only being five available seats. (Which I was starting to believe at this point because I don’t trust either EU or LU to be coordinated enough for it to be a well-rehearsed lie.) Same general answers as to how this could be the case (“dunno”, “not our fault”, and even “wasn’t trained for things like this”), but at least without the huffiness.
Last chance: AC. After all, they directly sold us my wife’s ticket and so must have some control over it, right? Wrong. Same five seats but with the explanation that this was a known problem when code-sharing with EU and that no one, not even EU, can allocate seats on their flights easily. Granted, another cop out, but at least not a mindless one. I actually got the feeling that the guy knew what he was talking about here, also because he mentioned that AC was working with EU to try and find a solution that he personally hoped would come very soon because he was tried of explaining this nonsense to the customers all the time.
But wait! Because then it got really, really stupid …
The very next day, I get an e-mail from LU saying that I need to call them back because of some problems with my reservations. The problem? Yup, that Frankfurt to Canada leg. Despite charging me 35 EUR for my free seat reservation and despite the LU website still showing me as having the seat reserved, the LU agent told me that it was really only a seat “preference” insofar as EU blocked the actual reservation. “Very sorry” and all but “Not our fault.” And what about the website and my 35 EUR? No answer to the former and the refund, like refunds to credit cards always seem to do, will take up to one to two weeks.
Sigh …
But back to EU and their five available seats. Maybe now we could get a pair together???
By now, of course, you realize that the answer to that pipe dream was hahahahaha. Despite only an entire day having gone by and the flight not being for another three months, the five seats had vanished so that there was nothing left at all. Not for me, not for my wife. Probably not for the pilot either. (Part of this, however, was my fault. When I asked about my old seat “preference”, I was told that it was already booked by someone else, which the LU website confirmed to still be me.) After about a half hour of this, I finally asked to talk to a superior only to get put on hold for at least 25 minutes. It was pretty obvious that they were trying to get rid of me (remember, they don’t seem to be able to end the calls from their side), but didn’t calculate with me being stubborn.
Now, I say “at least” because at that point, I called up the call centre again, but in parallel from my landline to request that the first agent take me off hold and actually deal with the situation. No chance, of course, but the new agent was able to cancel my previous preference and reserve a seat for me in the row behind it. Forget five seats or no seats. For some mystical reason, the whole back of the plane was available to me again. (All to the tune of another 35 EUR on my credit card, but at least I had a real reservation again.) And for my wife? Nada. As in nada even on my lap, under the seat in front of me (which had been mine), or in one of the overhead bins.
And guess what? As soon as I got off the phone with EU and checked the LU website, the new seat reservation was already in place! Together with a unpaid bill for 35 EUR for this new seat reservation. Or, more likely, preference again. (Which it was. One week later and LU removed the preference together with another, paid reservation for another leg of the journey.)
It’s crazy. Think about it: would you trust an airline that can’t even allocate seats on its own plane (and (much) time on the phone has revealed that it physically is indeed an EU plane) to actually be able to fly the damn thing?
In the end, even the seat reservations (not preferences) that we could make online were, like the airline seats they’re associated with often are, a pain in the ass. For instance, to book my seats for the other legs of the journey, I had to go through two separate airlines to do it. Why? Why can’t it be like the tickets? When my wife and I bought our tickets, we each bought all the tickets for all the legs at once. There was no warning that we couldn’t purchase the tickets for some of the legs because they were with a different airline. Now, if the other airline can automatically get its money for the legs of the journey that it’s responsible for (which is by far the biggest chunk of the ticket price), it surely can also get the cash for the bums that are on those legs. Where’s the problem? The connectivity is there: as I said, as soon as I made the seat reservation with the one airline, it showed up for all the others as well.
But, as I was (repeatedly) told, it’s all down to the difference between code-sharing and interlining. Or perhaps, just perhaps, maybe a lack of will on the part of the airlines? The repeated message I heard after spending 25+ minutes on hold with EU made it abundantly clear that they were giving preference to customers that booked directly with them rather than with ones foisted upon them by their code-sharing partners. Although the message claimed that it was because of “technical restrictions”, it seems quite clear that someone ordered those “restrictions” to be put in place.
People love to complain about Ryanair and their money-grabbing antics. But at least the system works there. Instead, looks like the pandemic missed out on a few choice candidates for bankruptcy here …
If, unlike me, you’ve ever wondered what day Easter Sunday will fall on in some given year, you could look at a calendar. Or you could ask Google.
Or you could quickly work it out for yourself using this simple calculation for our bonehead calculation of the day (BCD):
Divide x (= the desired year of the Gregorian calendar) by 19 to get a quotient (which we ignore) and a remainder A. This is the year’s position in the 19-year lunar cycle. (A + 1 is the year’s golden number.)
Divide x by 100 to get a quotient B and a remainder C.
Divide B by 4 to get a quotient D and a remainder E.
Divide 8B + 13 by 25 to get a quotient G and a remainder (which we ignore).
Divide 19A + B – D – G + 15 by 30 to get a quotient (which we ignore) and a remainder H. (The year’s epact is 23 – H when H is less than 24 and 53 – H otherwise.)
Divide A + 11H by 319 to get a quotient M and a remainder (which we ignore).
Divide C by 4 to get a quotient J and a remainder K.
Divide 2E + 2J – K – H + M + 32 by 7 to get a quotient (which we ignore) and a remainder L.
Divide H – M + L + 90 by 25 to get a quotient N and a remainder (which we ignore).
Divide H – M + L + N + 19 by 32 to get a quotient (which we ignore) and a remainder P. Easter Sunday is the Pth day of the Nth month (N can be either 3 for March or 4 for April). The year’s dominical letter can be found by dividing 2E + 2J – K by 7 and taking the remainder. A remainder of 0 is equivalent to the letter A, 1 is equivalent to B, and so on).
(The following figure is the same thing, I think, or at least does the same thing, just for the more visually inclined.)
With lots of spare time this weekend because Easter means that everything here in Not-Bielefeld is either closed or illegal (including, of course, public viewing of the morally questionable 1974 Japanese anime production of Heidi, Girl of the Alps), my thoughts wandered back to the question of why Jesus seems to die on a different day each year. As it turns out, Good Friday this year does indeed fall on one of the two days when most scholars agree that he was crucified on (April 7th, the other being April 3rd) and I got to wondering how often that this was the case.
A quick bit of reading (AKA “research”) revealed even more quickly just how complicated the whole timing of Easter thing actually is. (As well as how many only vaguely relevant but still damn interesting rabbit holes Google can lead you down sometimes.) Most people know Easter as being the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox (but actually, if inaccurately, fixed as March 21st). Or something vaguely like that. But, even after you wrap your brain around that definition to figure it out, it’s still only the end approximation of a long, drawn-out process designed to essentially standardize a variable date, in part by reducing its dependency on the Hebrew calendar (which seems to be even more complex). Despite the definition, Easter actually has nothing to do with a real full moon officially, which could cause it to occur on different days in the same year depending on where you are on the Earth. Instead, the Paschal computus formula developed by the Church to calculate Easter each year, the earliest known forms of which go back to at least 222 AD, uses a Paschal full moon, the 14th day of a lunar month. (The modern version of the formula uses golden numbers and epacts, both derived from the lunar cycle and is so complex, you wonder how anyone ever came up with it. Or how they could justify getting away from the Hebrew calendar on the grounds of simplicity in the first place.)
All so much simpler and directer than just using the actual day that Jesus died, now isn’t it?
(Perhaps a step in the right direction is an actual standing, but unenforced 1928 English law, last reaffirmed in 1999, that fixes Easter Sunday as the Sunday following the second Saturday in April. As such, Easter would still wobble, but only between April 9th and April 15th, making it much more of a typical British fix than a German one.)
Formulas but not full moons aside, the problem with the timing of Easter is just that: it is determined in part by the moon, the timekeeping functions of which are, at best, limited to delimiting how long a month is. (But realistically “at worst” because it does a pretty crummy job at it for most months. It also doesn’t help that the length of the lunar cycle itself varies by nearly two days depending on your frame of reference, the moon’s (sidereal) vs. your’s (synodic). (The latter is also true for the length of the year, but the difference there is only about 20 minutes, which for me is close enough to the annoying academic quarter that it too should simply be ignored.) As such, Good Friday can fall anywhere between March 20th and April 23rd in any given Gregorian year.
But I got to wondering how often it fell on any given day in that 35-day period and, in particular, on those two days when most scholars agree that Jesus actually died?
Using data from Robert Harry van Gent (and there are many, many other such webpages; seems I’m not alone in my weird thoughts …), I plotted just how often Good Friday has occurred on any given day from 1583 to 3000 AD. (The odd starting year is because it’s the year after the Gregorian calendar was mandated into use by Pope Gregory XIII. And, yes, I realize that all the data and all the formulas are for Easter Sunday, not Good Friday. I just see the latter as having temporal, if not logical, priority. Hard to have a resurrection without a crucifixion after all. Just add two to all the dates if you disagree.) Immediate hindsight told me that this should all be a non-issue. All things being equal, each of those 35 days have just under a 3% chance of being Good Friday.
But, of course, all things are not equal …
Frequency with which Good Friday will fall on any given day from 1583 to 3000 AD. Made with Plot2 using data from Robert Harry van Gent and leaning on the official colours of Easter. (Didn’t know before now that they existed either, huh?) The two red bars represent April 3rd and 7th, with the salmon bar in between being my compromise solution of April 5th. The thick dashed line is the expected frequency over the 1418 years when all things are equal whereas the thin dashed line is the real expectation (scaled from the total cycle of 5 700 000 years) knowing that things are not.
For starters, the first and last weeks get progressively shortchanged for similar, but different reasons related to boundary effects. For Easter to occur in the first week, the (Paschal) full moon and the equinox have to line up just right or else the Easter bunny thinks it’s a groundhog and snoozes toward the middle of the window. By contrast, the last week has to hope that Easter hasn’t already gotten a better offer beforehand.
But, even when you get past the boundary areas, Good Friday still hops around a good amount to play favourites (e.g., April 3rd, but not April 7th). Again, all things here being equal (no boundaries anymore …), Good Friday should fall on each day about 48 times, but its real distribution is instead surprisingly large, ranging from 36 to 63 times per given day. It must be said, however, that these 1418 years are only a small sample that are absolutely nothing compared to the total of 5 700 000 years (and not just “about 5 700 000” but exactly 5 700 000) before the whole cycle starts up again.
And even in that complete, quasicrystallic Easter cycle (thanks again for the data, Robert), although the thin red dashed line has flattened out a lot, there’s still quite some bounce left in it that shows a curious periodicity of two to three days??? (For those more curious than this periodicity, April 3rd is riding the top of its local wave and April 7th the bottom, with my compromise of April 5th being a really well-behaved compromise by being right in the middle.) But then the last mini-cycle before the boundary disappears in favour of building to a unique mini-spike of 23 000 extra times for April 17th, 29 days (or pretty dead on one (synodic) lunar cycle) after the spring equinox starting off the whole exercise.
Umm, right …
I think I learned something, although not necessarily the answer to what I was asking this weekend. And, although the timing of Easter has the fingerprints of admin all over it, there’s not really much admin being talked about here today. (Sorry about that.) I guess it could count as a bonehead calculation of the day (BCD), but even that’s stretching it. (Ok, I stretched it.) Maybe spare time on my side isn’t necessarily such a good thing after all …
With increasing political polarization marching seemingly uncontested across the globe, it was time for some good news on the political front and CNN, as well as many other news outlets, promptly delivered.
This is a victory for local democracy.
Finally! After being under threat for so long and from so many different corners, democracy got the well deserved victory it so badly needed. Unfortunately, to fully appreciate why this is my bonehead comment of the day, more of the quote is needed for context.
On September 1, there will be no more rental scooters in Paris. … This is a victory for local democracy.
Anne Hidalgo, Mayor of Paris
Don’t get me wrong, I hate the things (or at least the myopic morons on them) as much as anyone else. But, getting rid of e-scooters counts as a victory for democracy? May 8th, 1945 was a victory, even locally in Paris. If only the ancients Greeks could see what has become of the form of politics that they named and popularized. Odds are that they’d be shouting something other than “εὕρηκα!“
Admittedly, the results of the referendum were undisputedly overwhelming, with nearly 90% of the votes cast saying to ditch the things. The problem, however, is that the turnout was even more undisputedly underwhelming, with only 7.46% of the registered voters in Paris (or a mere 103 000 out of 1.38 million people) actually being bothered enough to cast a vote. Sounds much more like the victory belonged to apathy than it did to anything else.
Then again, this is Paris. I suppose that any political process that doesn’t involve the burning of cars (or e-scooters) must count as a victory of some sort …
With all the excitement, coverage, and concern about AI these days, I was simply curious if ChatGPT could do a better job at admin than real admin types could. (And by “better”, I mean better for us as the end users. After all, the real point of admin is to take work off our hands, not shove their work into ours.)
Trivial? Well, maybe … (But then Google also reveals that I’m not the first to come up with the term “AdminGPT”.)
I know that a lot more people are a lot more concerned about how, for example, students will use AI to cheat on their essays and the like. But, let’s be realistic about this. First, and most importantly, this kind of cheating will seriously reduce the number of excruciatingly awful term papers I have to suffer through each year. And, if you think about it, essays and term papers are the ultimate in open-book exams anyway. What’s to prevent the students from already cheating on them? You can buy these things online or have someone else write it for you for a fee. Hell, the whole expectation on our side is for some form of cheating insofar as the students should be recycling a bunch of other people’s ideas in the process. Is getting AI to do the research for this really that much different than asking Google or Wikipedia (or, from my golden, analog years, an encyclopaedia) for help? Quicker, faster, more efficient, and less effort, no question. But fundamentally different? Dunno …
So, with ChatGPT already showing to me that it could do a damn good job writing a sarcastic blog entry about admin (and good enough that I was duly impressed / unduly jealous as well as that my wife was fooled by it), I wanted to see how good it was at actually doing admin instead of just taking potshots at it. In particular how good is it at creating forms, an abomination against the laws of nature that I might have already griped about numerous times elsewhere in this blog?
The task? Create a work-safety assessment form asking about the specific hazards and specific precautions against corona in a university workplace setting.
The result? Et voilà …
Have you received training on how to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in your workplace?
Yes
No
If yes, please check any of the following topics you were trained on:
Proper hand hygiene
Proper cough and sneeze etiquette
Proper use of masks or face coverings
Physical distancing measures
Identifying symptoms of COVID-19
Reporting procedures for suspected or confirmed cases
Other (please specify):
Have you been provided with the necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect yourself from COVID-19 exposure in your workplace?
Yes
No
If yes, please specify the PPE that you require:
Have you received training on how to properly use and maintain your PPE for COVID-19 safety?
Yes
No
Have you been informed of the policies and procedures for reporting COVID-19 symptoms or exposure in your workplace?
Yes
No
If yes, please describe the policies and procedures:
Have you been informed about the potential risks of COVID-19 in your workplace?
Yes
No
If yes, please check any of the following that apply:
Close contact with individuals who may be infected
Exposure to contaminated surfaces or objects
Inadequate ventilation or air circulation
Poor physical distancing measures
Inadequate cleaning and disinfection practices
Other (please specify):
Are there any areas in your workplace where physical distancing measures are difficult to maintain?
Yes
No
If yes, please specify the areas:
Are there any areas in your workplace where mask or face covering usage is difficult to maintain?
Yes
No
If yes, please specify the areas:
Have you observed any unsafe practices or conditions related to COVID-19 safety in your workplace?
Yes
No
If yes, please describe the unsafe practices or conditions:
Have you reported any unsafe practices or conditions related to COVID-19 safety to your supervisor?
Yes
No
If yes, were the concerns addressed promptly?
Yes
No
N/A
Have you been provided with the necessary resources to maintain proper hygiene and cleanliness in your workspace?
Yes
No
If yes, please specify the resources:
Have you been provided with any accommodations or alternative work arrangements to reduce your risk of COVID-19 exposure in your workplace (e.g. working from home, adjusted work schedules)?
Yes
No
If yes, please describe the accommodations or alternative work arrangements: Have you received any communication regarding COVID-19 safety measures and updates from your employer?
Yes
No
If yes, please specify the type of communication and frequency: Is there anything else you would like to share about COVID-19 safety measures in your workplace?
Thank you for taking the time to complete this form. Your responses will be used to evaluate COVID-19 hazards in the workplace and ensure that appropriate measures are taken to ensure the safety and well-being of all employees.
Now that’s pretty darn good, if not one heckuva lot more polite than the forms I’m used to filling out from the University of Not-Bielefeld. Getting thanked to fill out a form?! I always feel like the forms I’m filling out are more threatening than anything. And not just threatening in the direct sense of it simply being a form, but also with the more than implicit hint of “do this or else”. Granted, and despite some specific topics arguably being missing, the ChatGPT form is still a little longish, but we are talking admin here.
However, by comparison, the first version of the equivalent form from the University of Not-Bielefeld was nine pages long, complete with exclamation marks and surprise reverse checkboxes where suddenly “yes”, the default and correct answer for the last half page, meant “wrong answer”.
The real beauty of the ChatGPT form though and the reason why the University of Not-Bielefeld form was nine pages long comes down to a difference in perspective about who should be doing most of the admin work. As you can see, the ChatGPT form uses a lot of free-text fields, which are highly flexible but make it more difficult to pigeonhole the answers. In other words, someone has to read these answers and respond accordingly. By contrast, the university form (as well as its evil brethren) tended to be more rigid through being more specific. More pre-specified scenarios and so less post-specified thinking.
I can understand this, but only to a point. After all, the job description of admin has to include admin, shouldn’t it? It can’t really be a big surprise to anyone thinking about admin as a career that some paperwork might be involved sometimes. (The surprise instead to me is that anyone seriously thinks about it as a career choice.) My point is simply that they should be letting us do our work by not doing theirs …
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