It took me a few years to retrain myself to leave one space following a period when inputting to a computer rather than two as we did in the old days when typing. At least one study shows that it, indeed, makes a difference to the reader.
Excerpt #1 - of interest to writers everywhere:
Ammo for Space Pedants: Are Two Spaces Better Than One?
April 28th, 2018
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“The most recent edition of the American Psychological Association (APA) Manual states that two spaces should follow the punctuation at the end of a sentence. This is in contrast to the one-space requirement from previous editions. However, to date, there has been no empirical support for either convention. In the current study, participants performed (1) a typing task to assess spacing usage and (2) an eye-tracking experiment to assess the effect that punctuation spacing has on reading performance. Although comprehension was not affected by punctuation spacing, the eye movement record suggested that initial processing of the text was facilitated when periods were followed by two spaces, supporting the change made to the APA Manual.”
Elegant Friend and I were marveling, as we beheld a smoker the other day, that people continue to develop the vile habit.
Excerpt #2 - of interest to smokers and those who behold them:
Cigarettes That Are Visually Offputting (research study)
April 27th, 2018
A number of countries have passed laws which require cigarette manufacturers to show ‘denormalising’ images on their packaging. To take things a step further, why not make the cigarettes themselves more unappealing? This was the question tackled by a joint Australian – New Zealand research team in 2015.
A set of potentially unpleasant cigarette designs were experimentally tested – of which the most effectively off-putting was found to be this one :
“The stick featuring the ‘minutes of life lost’ graphic was markedly less appealing and less likely to be chosen than all other sticks tested. “
Friday and Saturday, while Hunky Husband was in Junction City KS teaching some advanced courses in disaster response, I scurried about, accomplishing things that I don't tackle when HH is at home. One such project was hanging a rather heavy mirror in my bedroom. The mirror had previously hung over the back of the bar in our previous home, in a "landscape orientation". In my bedroom, it was to hang in a "portrait orientation". That change meant that I needed to install a new hanging wire.
Fortunately, the mirror had originated as one of the two mirrors that hung over our two double dressers in our shared bedroom of that house; thus, the factory-installed support fittings had been installed to accommodate either orientation (on our dressers, no wires were used, but brackets and posts had attached the mirrors to the dressers.) I used "heavy duty" braided wire, strung through the hanging fittings such that the wire formed a continuous loop. Cutting either end of the wire to leave an excess inch, I wound the ends, around the wire to provide "locking" of the ends together, by friction. I did think about the sufficiency of friction to bear the load, but decided it would suffice.
Excerpt #3 - of interest to heavy picture/mirror hangers, or anyone who wears clothing made from fibers:
A physics discovery: Why Clothes Don’t Fall Apart
April 24th, 2018
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In his celebrated Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences, Galileo identified a fascinating puzzle in the mechanics of ropes…. From a modern perspective, we would say that the mechanical integrity of ropes derives from frictional contacts between fibers, and Galileo’s rope problem is but one exemplar of a host of related frictional phenomena in fiber assemblies, of which perhaps the canonical case is the ‘staple’ yarn.
The problem of how staple yarns transmit tension is addressed within abstract models in which the Amontons–Coulomb friction laws yield a linear programing (LP) problem for the tensions in the fiber elements. We find there is a percolation transition such that above the percolation threshold the transmitted tension is in principle unbounded. We determine that the mean slack in the LP constraints is a suitable order parameter to characterize this supercritical state. We argue the mechanism is generic, and in practical terms, it corresponds to a switch from a ductile to a brittle failure mode accompanied by a significant increase in mechanical strength.
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