The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XLIII

As a way of naming the collection of luminous bodies against the background of the night sky, would you prefer the word "starscape" or "starfield"?
 
Starfield, easy choice.
 
What book on philosophy would you choose for a 20 year old mathematics student as her first book? Assuming they haven't read anything on philosophy at all. I have to buy a present and I'm sure it will be a book. Right now my choice is to find top rated philosophy books on good reads.com and choose one.

Any particular recommendations @Kyriakos and other posters from related fields, please?
 
dusters said:
What book on philosophy would you choose for a 20 year old mathematics student as her first book? Assuming they haven't read anything on philosophy at all. I have to buy a present and I'm sure it will be a book. Right now my choice is to find top rated philosophy books on good reads.com and choose one.

Any particular recommendations @Kyriakos and other posters from related fields, please?
Click to expand...
This is a very nice book:
 
Kyriakos said:
This is a very nice book:
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot. I remember you suggested this book already some time ago. I had forgotten about it. For 13 euros it is super cheap. I will order it eventually.

As for my present, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that the book has to be old and popular enough to have been translated into either Latvian or Russian. The students in question aren't that good with English.
 
dusters said:
Thanks a lot. I remember you suggested this book already some time ago. I had forgotten about it. For 13 euros it is super cheap. I will order it eventually.

As for my present, I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that the book has to be old and popular enough to have been translated into either Latvian or Russian. The students in question aren't that good with English.
Click to expand...
Mathematics and (Greek or not) Philosophy:


If any such niche book is translated, it might be that :)
 
How about ‘Riddles in mathematics’ by Eugene Northrop?
 
Is there a "Wind farms are too ugly" movement in northern Europe?

One feature I have noticed driving across northern Europe is really big wind farms that seem well integrated into agriculture. These do not exist in the UK at that scale or that level of integration with intensive arable farming, though the landscape is very similar, particularly in East Anglia. The right/tories are really anti onshore wind power, I think in large part because they think the windmills are ugly.

How has the reception been in the areas of northern Europe which have these giant wind farms been?

Spoiler It is hard to find a picture that captures the scale you get driving through them :
This one is far more dense and diverse than most, but captures the integration with farming that I have never seen in the UK
 
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I don't know if you would call it a movement but one of the general complaints about them here is that they are ugly.

We do have wind farms here in the west of Ireland but practically development is more focused on the east where the power is actually needed.
 
I think potential cheaper electricity definitely outweighs whatever aesthetic consideration I have for a wind farm, though I never really thought of a wind turbine that way (beautiful or ugly)!
There is definitely no such movement here in Portugal and we have a big share of renewable energy sources in place, though we did have a big eco crime committed to make wave for a solar farm. This was a very disgusting lost my faith in humanity type event for many here, myself included.

Over 500 animals slaughtered as Portuguese estate makes way for massive solar energy park​

www.portugalresident.com

Over 500 animals slaughtered as Portuguese estate makes way for massive solar energy park

Over 500 animals have been slaughtered in a walled estate in Azambuja purportedly making way for a massive solar energy park.
www.portugalresident.com www.portugalresident.com
Over 500 animals have been slaughtered in a walled estate in Azambuja purportedly making way for a massive solar energy park.

Uproar began over social media last weekend after photographs of ‘the massacre’ were uploaded by some of the Spanish hunters who had taken part.

“We did it again!” extolled one in English, then reverting to Spanish to proclaim a ‘super record hunt!’: 540 animals with 16 hunters’.

The horror of the incident was outlined by the Silvino Lúcio, vice-president of Azambuja town council, who told online Fundamental that this couldn’t be called ‘a hunt’. It was a massacre, he stressed: “Those animals had no way of escape… they were confined within the property’s walls” and the forest that should have afforded them some protected has been denuded.

It was a ‘cull’, in other words, of deer and wild boar as the estate itself is planning a gigantic solar park, despite being designated as an ecological Reserve (REN).

News of the solar park came during this pandemic year – and has generated ‘revolt’, particularly among environmentalists.

But that ‘revolt’ is nothing on the repulsion generated by the images of last weekend’s carnage.

Azambuja council appears to be taking the matter further: has complained to the ICNF (forestries institute) and to central government (see below).

Say reports today, the hunt was organised at Herdade/ Quinta Torre Bela by Spanish company ‘Hunting Spain Portugal Monteros de la Cabra’.

Local paper O Mirante and national tabloid Correio da Manhã both refer to Hunting Spain Portugal (initially described as Hunting Pains Portugal) as an organisation that organises hunts in Spain and Portugal every year.

CM suggests the owners of Torre Bela ‘guaranteed the hunt went ahead in land designated as a hunting zone’.

But such has been the level of disgust that today minister for the environment João Pedro Matos Fernandes has revoked with immediate effect Torre Bela’s hunting licence.

Says Diário de Notícias, Matos Fernandes has been “shocked” – describing the online post showing the lines of dead animals as a “vile act of bragging”.

Political party PAN is also hotly pursuing this horror about which no official public entity appears to have had forewarning.

Latest news via TSF radio is that an investigation is underway with Public Ministry personnel already ‘on the ground’.

Matos Fernandes told TSF this morning that those involved will “very probably be criminalised”. He was referring to ‘the organisers, those who have the (hunting) licence and very possibly the hunters who took part’.

At this point it’s impossible to tell whether the furore will affect the massive solar energy installation planned for Torre Bela – an area described by local paper Valor Local in September as “equivalent to 775 football pitches but which jars with the fact that it is also forest and agricultural land, surrounded by a unit of particular landscape”.

Stresses O Mirante online: “Portuguese environment agency APA is evaluating the environmental impact study for the installation of more than 650,000 solar panels at Quinta da Torre Bela. Last week Azambuja municipal council had a meeting with representatives of the firms responsible for the installation of the panels who guaranteed the preservation of the biodiversity of Quinta da Torre”.
Click to expand...
 
Samson said:
How has the reception been in the areas of northern Europe which have these giant wind farms been?
Click to expand...
There are at least 4 or 5 separate windfarms in my neck of the woods (small town, north Germany), and I drive past one of the bigger ones every day on my way to and from work (apart from a period about a decade back, when that road was closed for ~6 months while they built another 8 turbines, nearly doubling the total). While I realise "bigger" is very much a relative measure here — none of these windfarms are as extensive as the one you posted — if you go up the hill in the middle of town, you can see turbines in just about every direction.

And despite that, in the 18+ years I've lived here, I can't recall ever seeing a single letter in the local freebie-paper from a Disgusted-of-Tunbridge-Wells-type complaining about them (plenty of complaints about other things, but not the windfarms!). Judging by the attitudes I've been witness to, I get the impression that — as you might expect — it's generally similar to the UK, with an individual's degree of opposition to windfarms roughly proportional to their distance right-of-centre (/degree of delusionality!).

(e.g. AFAIK) the AfD manifesto (= Germany's UKIP!) still explicitly considers 'anthropogenic climate change' to be some kind of ivory-tower academic / leftist conspiracy-theory, i.e. even if it's happening — which it probably isn't, it's just sunspots, blablabla — it's a natural process and therefore not something they can — or need to — do anything to try and mitigate :rolleyes:
Spoiler Just as a semi-random point of comparison re. the AfD... :
A lot of their supporters are also antivaxxers, and I'd be willing to make a (small!) bet that a "covid-cases per capita" map of Germany would show a similar W / SE divide as just about every other QoL-measure does — cf. that collection of maps that @Tee Kay (?) posted in the Altered Maps thread a couple of months back.
 
How common is the word 'bonkers' in America? I'm reading the Wikipedia article on the disappearance of Maura Murray, and in one passage cadaver dogs are described as going "bonkers". This is supported by a citation from a book by a certain James Renner, who is an Ohioan according to Google. It could be that the word was used by Renner, or could (more probably) be quoting the volunteers in the search (who would most likely be American).
 
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