Corio... what? Coriolistic Anachronisms - A Vancouver Blog

Hi, I'm your friendly Coriolibot (as in "ro-bot").

It would seem Vince (shame on him) hasn't posted a fresh entry in a couple of days, so I am here to keep you entertained no matter what!

The post below is a random entry that we hope you haven't read before. Regular current entries follow. Enjoy, and come back soon for brand new posts!

Note: this random entry is served on a per-visit basis and will change if you reload the page. It will also not show up on regular RSS, Feedburner and Twitter feeds.

Random Entry: Vancouverites' Coffee Drinking Habbits Threatened  
 Next: Cherry Blossoms - Part 2 | Previous: Praise for a smile
Feb 19
   Vintage! This is a random post. The year was 2005...

Farewell to the Rock - Part 2

)arrow I get up early on my day off and jump in the shower. My A/C was broken and I’ve sweated all night under the miserable whisper of my ceiling fan. But the shower faucet coughs, spits out a few droplets, burps some air and then goes dead. The water has ran out. Again.

Yes, we do have a reverse osmosis unit to turn seawater into a very good quality fresh water. But it’s been broken for months. We also have six cisterns collecting rainwater. But the gutters are... yes, broken. And the cistern walls have been cracked by the fury of many hurricanes’ waves crushing against the house, so they wouldn’t hold the water very long any way. And any way, it hasn’t rained seriously in months.

So I swear silently in French, skip the shower and get dressed to go to the bank. Today is Thursday. The bank opens for five long hours. If I miss it today, it’ll go to next Monday. Twice a week is all we get, and that’s if the weather is good enough for Island Air to fly the two clerks in from the Brac...

 

2005-02-19 10:34 • Posted in On the road:

0 Comments

Display comments as(Linear | Threaded)
  • No comments

Add Comment


Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed


We now go back to current chronological entries:
Random Entry: Amazing vertical dancers ~  
 Next: Cherry Blossoms - Part 2 | Previous: Praise for a smile
Mar 6

Corio... what?

Before I trigger an avalanche of bemused comments, yes, I’ve changed the blog’s title. And no, I haven’t gone – completely – insane. I wanted something that would sound odd and yet compelling. So I used two of my favorite words, twisted them a little and… Voilà!

Ok, here’s the rationale behind it:

  • Anachronism: a person or a thing that is chronologically out of place (me).
  • Coriolis effect: the apparent deflection of a moving object that is a result of the earth’s rotation (to the right in the northern hemisphere and to the left in the southern hemisphere, as we all know).
  • Synthesis: a person that is chronologically out of place and apparently deflected off an initial trajectory. Or by extension, any blog entry posted by said person and thus exhibiting the same inherent characteristics.

Note: the Coriolis effect, as theories of Quantum physics do, supposes the presence of an observer. It is not an actual force and the object itself never deviates from its path through space. But the observer is standing on earth and gets fooled by the planet’s rotation. In other words, observers arrive with their own baggage and introduce their own flaw in the equation by believing what they see.

Blog readers ye be warned! All who wander are not lost. All who seem to deviate do not.

 

2006-03-06 14:54 • Posted in Schtroumpfissime:

2 Comments

Display comments as(Linear | Threaded)
  • 1 - jeeves says:

    « apart from you, is there an exemple of the coriolis effect you can give us ?
    Is the water going down the bath drain
    obeying the same law ? »

    Date of comment: 2006-03-06 18:23 •
  • 2 - Vince says:

    « Hehe, I can see someone’s done their homework...

    Well, indeed (in theory) the water down the drain should obey the effect (and hence drain counterclockwise in the northern hemisphere.)

    The problem with a water drain is that it’s a micro-system. The Coriolis effect applies mostly to macro-systems like the weather, and it is very subdued.

    In the sink example, there are too many variables that will have a greater influence on the rotation than Coriolis does; shape of the sink, initial disturbances, etc... But I read somewhere that if the system was perfect (no water movement prior to draining, no disturbance caused by opening the drain, etc.) it should work. »

    Date of comment: 2006-03-06 21:45 •

Add Comment


Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (*word*), underscore are made via _word_.
Standard emoticons like :-) and ;-) are converted to images.

To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly.
CAPTCHA

BBCode format allowed