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10,000 Ricochetti
The economic mess in Greece is a result of faulty math. No matter how much the leaders in Athens wanted two plus two to equal pi, the laws of arithmetic didn’t allow it. Even the silly socialists of the European Union couldn’t pretend to violate those rules forever.
The Greeks, of all cultures, should understand how this math stuff works. These are the people who gave us Euclid, Pythagoras — and who can forget Eudoxus of Cnidus? (Am I right, ladies?) Back in those good old days, the Greeks used letters of the alphabet to represent numerals. They chose mu to represent 10,000, since the full name was myriad.
I’m no numerologist, but myriad pops up again and again among the greatest moments in Western civilization:
- The Greek Army of the 10,000 marched against Persia’s 10,000 Immortals.
- The Bible references the number 10,000 more than 50 times.
- There are 10,000 species of birds.
- Minnesota is the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”
- The old guy in Up tied 10,000 helium balloons to his house.
- I once owned a 10,000 Maniacs cassette, but I let my girlfriend keep it because I only liked that one song.
Like these pivotal times in world history, Ricochet is also tied to the number 10,000. That is how many official members we need to keep this site a going concern for the long term. We’re close to that — tantalizingly so — but need to get over that bubble. And what happens when we do? I’m not promising a renewal of Western civ to create a new golden age of peace, prosperity and plenty, but that is a likely side effect.
When you become a member, you will enjoy the lively give-and-take with the internet’s smartest, most civil community, free of those annoying trolls you find everywhere else. You can post your own stories and maybe even see a few on the front page. You can attend meetups where you’ll meet your favorite authors, editors, and members, and perhaps even con me into buying you a shot of ouzo. You’ll also show that a smart, friendly site can make the free market work on the web.
Have a month free on me. Click here and enter the coupon code “JOIN” to see what you think. Then you will enter the annals of history as a member of Ricochet’s Myriad. Eudoxus of Cnidus would have wanted it that way.
Published in General
Wait just a dang minute. There are close to 10,000 of us maniacs? There are only like 5 of us that post anything.
Ah, but many more read.
Last night I invited 1o folks to join. If they do can I have another coffee cup?
Not until I get my coffee cup.
I think I can enlighten everyone on the significance of 10,000.
When we have 10,000 Ricocheti our combined psychic energy will allow us to control the Nexus. With it we shall unleash an asteral construct of immense proportions upon the world. With its power we will subjugate this dimension and spread across the stars.
Or maybe we will go give Claire a podcast.
Both sound good to me.
Ooops. Sorry.
You may be dead to me.
Only if they each invite 10 folks to join.
Then I’ll want a free t-shirt.
I could give you 10,000 reasons to join Ricochet, and not all of those are Dime jokes.
9,999. Brad.
But I’m worth 5 maniacs, aren’t I? Also, wasn’t I supposed to get a cup for upgrading to Thatcher status?
Carcat74 – If you’re owed a mug be patient. I’ve been on the road for three of the last four weeks. Will be catching up this week.
But we seem to be down one Creepy Lurker. He reincarnated under some other nom de plume.
It’s hard to come up with a post when Spin and the others have already said all the good stuff.
need to get over that bubble
Quick! Join Ricochet! Jon has started mixing his metaphors and he won’t be able to stop until we have 10,000 members!
I was thinking of starting a “99 bottles of beer” type thread here, but I couldn’t come up with a decent rhyme. Also, counting down from 10,000 to zero might be viewed as an excessive use of resources.
10,000 Ricochetti? Oh my. Watch out everyone.
He goes by Caitlin now. Actually, I think he changed his name to Judge Mental.
Call me dense but who is this Dime? Is he really as hand-some as they say?
I thought it was nom de guerre.
Well, no one will ever accuse you, Fawlty, of excessive use of resources.
there are some things that each of the ricochetti (is that spelled with two t’s or one?) can do to help spread the faith.
family members: i gave my son a rico membership for christmas, he actually enjoys the podcasts so the website was a natural follow on
facebook: the evil empire can be used to our advantage, i shared jon’s debt analysis post (with that wonderful graph) directly from here and then started a thread with my friends over there. i shamelessly dropped ricochet’s name in the post. hey,.. it’s free advertising
harry’s shave: sponsers count, you’re going to need to shave anyway, some day, the razors are excellent, buy them (i can’t wait to see the ricochetti reply to that “need to shave comment”). ditto the great courses, and you can listen to them while you are shaving.
name dropping: it’s easy. few of my ideas are original (i know, i know, that comes as a shock but it’s true). so in conversations i’ll name drop “i was reading jon gabriel over on ricochet last night and he had an interesting notion ….. oh, you haven’t hit ricochet yet, well ….” you get the picture.
this is just a few ideas, i’m sure there are more…
I think actually that would be correct in the PIT.
It’s good to be green. You should try reducing your carbon sockprint.
Minnesota – 10,000 lakes. In 1991, Gorbachev visited Minneapolis, and I heard the BBC say: “…and now Gorbachev travels to Minnesota, the land of a thousand lakes…”. Clearly, someone in the BBC fact-checking department decided that 10,000 was a typo. Ah, the start of my distrust in popular media.
10,000 is my comfortably linear number for repetitions in a computer test.
I open up a PowerShell window and type this:
1..10|%{($x=10000)/(measure-command{1..$x|%{}}).TotalMilliseconds}
On my laptop, which is slightly old and not a real performer, I get:
… which is the same test (do nothing 10,000 times) run ten times in order to avoid taking a fluke as gospel. I would call this a 10, but to be slightly more formal I would pitch the highest and lowest and average the remaining eight.
I have a hopeless little netbook which routinely turns a 1. There’s some sort of whoop-de-doo gaming rig at the local store that turns 112 all day long. I have my eye on a display odel (last one, must go!) for $679 that runs 75 and has a detachable battery, which is important to me. VERY tempted — this machine can’t last forever.
Running the test on a decent all-in-one, but which I am not really in the market to buy.
—
I have some graphics somewhere around here showing why 10,000 is the magic number. Ah, there it is. The graph below shows the speed score generated by the one-line script above if you run it just once, or ten times, or a hundred, ten thousand, a million. Low rep counts generate low scores due to start-stop overhead.
nice test BDB. My work laptop runs about 30; I’ll test my gaming rig when I get home tonight. (a Doghouse laptop)
This reminds me of the story of Churchill rating women out of 1,000 (in reference to how many ships their face could launch). Should we have ratings for Ricochet members using ‘maniac’ as the unit?
Seems reasonable, but what’s the baseline for measurement? With the ships launched, we know that one Helen = 1,000 ships, but how do we know what equals one maniac? Alternately, how do we decide how many maniacs a member is worth?