- Amazon open a brick and mortar store: Full story here. If true this is really really odd since I thought they saved time and money by not having stores.
- You may have heard of some music groups releasing Vinyl albums in recent times. They come with an MP3 chip so I doubt the buyers ever use Vinyl,but the size allows for more interesting art. What did people record on before Vinyl. Wax Cylinders! Some music groups have released songs on wax cylinders! See here for a release a while back by Tiny Tim (the singer, not the fictional character) and here for a release by a group whose name is The Men Will Not Be Blamed For Anything.
- An error in Google Maps lead to Nicaragua accidentally invading Costa Rica. Even more amazing--- This excuse was correct and Google admitted the error. See here for details.
- There was a conference called Galileo was wrong, The Church Was Right for people who think the Earth really is the centre of the universe (my spell checker says that `center' is wrong and `centre' is right. Maybe its from England). I assume they mean that the sun and other stuff goes around the earth in concentric circles, and not that one can take any ref point and call it the center. The conference is run by Robert Sungenesis who also wrote a book on the topic (its on Amazon here and the comments section actually has a debate on the merits of his point of view.) There is also a website on the topic here. The Catholic Church does not support him or his point of view, and in fact asked him to take ``Catholic'' out of the name of his organization, which he has done. (ADDED LATER- A commenter named Shane Chubbs, who has read over the relevent material on this case more carefully than I have, commented that Robert Sungenesis DOES claim that we can take the center of the universe to be anywhere, so it mine as well be here. If thats Roberts S's only point, its hard to believe he got a whole book out of it.) OH- this is one of the TRUE points.
Computational Complexity and other fun stuff in math and computer science from Lance Fortnow and Bill Gasarch
Wednesday, April 01, 2015
Which of these stories is false
I would rather challenge you than fool you on April fools day. Below I have some news items. All but one are true. I challenge you to determine which one is false.
Vinyl albums don't come with an MP3 chip.
ReplyDeleteI looked it up and you are right but what I wanted to really say is also right.
DeleteMany vinyl records come with Digital Downloads (not MP3). I speculate that people
don't really use the vinyl, but like the cover art, the look at feel.
Re: #4, Your assumption is incorrect. His claim appears to be that since you can take any point as your center of reference and the laws of mechanics still work, there is no reason not to use the center of Earth as the reference point. So, not concentric circles, but Lorentz mechanics.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your correction- I will note it in the post itself.
DeleteAll the stories are true...
ReplyDeleteYES, all of the stories were true.
ReplyDeleteApril Fools!
However, you were not fooled! Bravo!
As noted above all of the stories were true.
ReplyDeleteHere is my take on them:
Amazon to open brick and mortar store. This news inspired the post. whenI first saw it I thought it had to be from The Onion. I still find it hard to believe.
Songs released on Wax Cylinder- all it takes for this to be true is one or two people to do this odd thing.
Googe Map story: Also I find hard to believe, though its true.
Galileo: Again, just takes one weird guy. I wonder how many people went to his conference? As commenter Shane Chubbs points out Robert Sungenesis's point seems to be that any point can be taken as the center of the universe. That actually is true but doesn't seem worth having a conference about. I blogged about this conference a while back, pairing it with an inverse story- seems like it could be true
but was in the onion:
http://www.theonion.com/video/christian-groups-biblical-armageddon-must-be-taugh,17491/