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In an attempt to gain some electronics knowledge, I bought $30 worth of components and breadboards from Amazon, and built a 2-transistor LED flasher.

United Launch Alliance, an aerospace industry roll-up of General Dynamics Atlas, Martin Marietta Titan and McDonnell Douglas Delta launch vehicle divisions, put out this incredibly awful set of 9 Sudoku puzzles on Twitter. The purpose was to whip up enthusiasm for the 2021-09-21 launch of Landsat 9.

Raymond Smullyan, my favorite mathematician, posed a large number of questions involving the Isle of Knights and Knaves. Inhabitants are either knights, who always tell the truth, or knaves, who always tell falsehoods.

One of the best Knight and Knave problems is Og and Bog from Smullyan’s book Logical Labyrinths

Og and Bog are brothers living on the Isle of Knights and Knaves, and one of them is the chief.

• Og says: Bog is the chief and he is a knave!
• Bog says: Og is not the chief, but he is a knight.

Which one is the chief?

There’s at least two things that one might conflate under the “Daily Coding Problem” rubric:

• An email list
• A book

They’re related, as the book is a byproduct of the success of the email list. Both are deficient, but for different reasons

That’s the shoulder and pelvic girdle of the plesiosaur (elasmosaur maybe) skeleton cast that the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery has on display.

A Museum You Should Visit

If you’ve got kids, and you’re in Fort Collins, CO, you should visit Fort Collins Museum of Discovery. There’s a large amount of really amazing exhibits good for kids from about 2 to 13. There are some decent northern Colorado exhibits for older kids and adults, but the emphasis is on youngsters.

I took this picture 2022-11-24T08:45:00-07:00. It confirms that the unusual arrangement of snow found in the Mystery of the Melted Snow wasn’t a one-off.

The first workable proposal for a space program is apparently Wernher von Braun’s Project Mars. Project Mars is a work of fiction, but it lays out a space program that could probably take humans to Mars with the technology of 1955.

Project Mars didn’t see print until 2006, although it’s technical appendix was published as The Mars Project. in 1953.

I looked out at my backyard early in the morning of November 5th. It had snowed the morning of November 4, but the sun came out that afternoon, melting most of the snow. This is the weird arrangement of snow that I saw.