Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43278563

Points: 27

# Comments: 5

He claimed that in the early days there was a lecturer or professor there that, at least in Eindhoven, was very important to his field of expertise. If I understood him correctly, this prof's ideas about engineering mechanical systems revolved around restricting the degrees of freedom as much as possible. A three legged table cannot wobble, but a four legged table can and usually does because it is overdetermined. In mechanical systems (for instance sensitive optical mechanics) reducing "wobble" is key. And the best way to reduce wobble is to make sure it cannot occur.

Here it gets interesting. My source claimed that this professor had laid down his ideas in a standard work in Dutch, which was never translated in another language, restricting its influence to Dutch mechanical engineers. He also claimed it is not a coincidence that Philips and later ASML took an early lead in designing optical systems.

Not sure if it is true, but an interesting story nonetheless.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40987427

Points: 273

# Comments: 259

Tangentially, I would love to have something like this in which I can "program" my own breathwork routines (reps and sets including breath holds). Been trying various apps, but haven't yet found one that ticks all my boxes. (Tips welcome.)

Docking was bloody hard indeed. Luckily you could buy a Docking computer. It took me another few years before figuring out why it would play The Blue Danube waltz by Strauss. :-)

> It seems that women who have liposuction on their hips and thighs do grow back some of their fat, but they grow it back in different places. [...] As it turns out, women’s fat isn’t the same as men’s. Each fat deposit on our body is a little bit different, but women’s hip, buttock, and upper thigh fat, or “gluteofemoral” fat, is chock-full of unusual lipids: long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, or LC-PUFAs. (Think omega-3. Think fish oil.) Our livers are bad at making these kinds of fats from scratch, so we need to get most of them from our diet. And bodies that can become pregnant need them so they can make baby brains and retinas.

> Most of the time, female gluteofemoral fat resists being metabolized. As many women know, these areas are the first places we gain weight and the last places we lose it. But in the last trimester of pregnancy—when the fetus ramps up its brain development and its own fat stores—the mother’s body starts retrieving and dumping these special lipids by the boatload into the baby’s body. This specialized hoovering of the mother’s gluteofemoral fat stores continues throughout the first year of breast-feeding—the most important time, as it happens, for infant brain and eye development. Some evolutionary biologists now believe that women evolved to have fatty hips precisely because they’re specialized to provide the building blocks for human babies’ big brains. Since we can’t get enough of those LC-PUFAs from our daily diet, women start storing them from childhood forward. Other primates don't seem to have this pattern.

> Meanwhile, we found out just a few years ago--again someone finally asked the question--that a human girl's fat may be one of the best predictors for when she'll get her first period. [...] That is how important this fat is for reproduction. Our ovaries won't even kick in until we've stored up enough of this fat to form a decent baseline.

Part of corresponding that way is becoming familiar with each other's handwriting. This can be laborious but it is rewarding in its own right.

When I was at the university I had a lengthy correspondence with a friend who had, even at that tender age, a well exercised hand: thick expressive staccato lines in pitch black fountain pen ink. They looked more like the outlines of spiky mountain ranges than words. Deciphering her handwriting would mean you had to go slowly, letting the words sink in one by one. Which only enhanced their impact for she wrote achingly beautiful letters. Her handwriting befitted her fearless character, complemented her writing and forced me to pay close attention. Try saying that about an e-mail in Helvetica 12pt.

Personally, I revel in these words, even if I never get to use them. Coming across a specialized term for something that was previously nameless feels like receiving a present, something to treasure.

There is this fabulous term in Dutch for railway tracks that have deformed by thermal stress (endangering the trains) that basically begs to be used metaphorically. As of yet I have not found myself in a conversation that requires its use. I am afraid it is one of those once in a lifetime words.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37867557

Points: 10

# Comments: 5