The Daily Thonky

In an earlier post, I described how to convert Celsius temperatures to Fahrenheit in your head. Since I wrote that article, I have improved my own technique and wanted to share it.

Let’s say it’s 20°C outside. Double that and you get 40. Add 40 to 32 to get 72, then subtract 4 from that to get 68°F.

Let’s say it’s 15°C outside. Double that and you get 30. Add 30 to 32 to get 62, then subtract 3 from that to get 59°F.

Let’s say it’s 32°C outside. Start with 30°C. Double it to get 60, add 60 to 32 to get 92, then subtract 6 to get 86. Now, to add the remaining 2°C that you left out a moment ago, first double it to get 4, and add it to your original result: 86 + 4 = 90°F. Now, subtract .4 to get 89.6°F.

See how it’s done? (Step 1) You double the Celsius temperature and (step 2) add it to 32. Then (step 3) move the decimal point of the doubled temperature one place to the left and (step 4) subtract it from your result. If you have trouble, you can break it down into smaller steps like with the last example.

From time to time, I will introduce you to a band or musician I like. In this edition I will introduce you to English pop group Saint Etienne.

Saint Etienne are an English (i.e. from the UK) band named after a famous French football (a.k.a. soccer) team.

The band members are Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley, and Pete Wiggs.

They make pop music. You might describe it as “electro-pop,” if you insist upon classifying music into genres. Really, though, their music spans a multitude of styles, so you’ll probably like at least one of their many songs.

Bob and Pete were music journalists before starting the band, so they love music and they know what it takes to make a good pop song.

All three band members love film and TV, and you’ll sometimes hear random samples from a TV show or movie at the beginnings and/or ends of their songs.

They pine for the heady days of the musical British invasion of the 1960s, and want to make music that recalls everything that was good and nothing that was bad about the music of those days.

As such, some of their songs are homages to pop songs of years past; “Split Screen,” from their album Good Humor, captures the sounds of the ’60s, while “Stars Above Us,” from Tales from Turnpike House, has more of a ’70s, disco-era feel.

Their songs capture the ups and downs of everyday life: relationship woes, changing times, the secret lives of real people.

You can watch some of their music videos at YouTube, check out their MySpace profile, and listen to samples of their songs on Yahoo! Music (which is where I first heard their music, incidentally).

Their official web site has plenty of information (hint: click the big subway station markers on the map to get to the different sections of the site).

Their news page will tell you what they’re up to now.

Their photo gallery has pictures of the cheeky trio. Some photos contain silly content; view at your own discretion.

Buy stuff from their official store, including some spiffy T-shirts, all of their studio albums, and more.

Join their fan club for exclusive CDs and updates.

Catnip can cause curious comportment in cats. Their behavior may include rubbing the catnip with their faces and bodies, chewing or licking it, frisking, becoming happy and excited, or becoming happy and drowsy.

It is thought that catnip has this effect on cats because it contains a chemical called nepetalactone, which is similar in its molecular structure to feline pheromones. Thus, it is speculated that a cat exposed to catnip seems happy, excited, and perhaps even agitated because it may be instinctively reacting to a perceived mate.

After a few minutes, though, the cat will lose interest, perhaps because it realizes that the scent was a false alarm, or perhaps for biochemical reasons. Whatever the case may be, it will take a couple of hours for the cat to become susceptible to the effects of catnip again.

It should be noted that only two-thirds of the cat population of the world are affected by catnip; the other one-third of all cats do not react to it in any special way. The strange reaction to catnip only occurs in cats who are genetically predisposed to it.

Pseudo-archaic shop names like Ye Olde Shoppe are incorrect. The Ye of ye olde stock phrase is a misreading of what was once written Þe Olde. In Early Modern English, the letter Þ (which represented either the voiced dental fricative or the voiceless dental fricative sound, the same way th does in modern English) looked much like our modern letter Y. So Ye Olde should actually be Þe Olde, and it means The Old.

If you are sitting at a computer (which I assume you are doing right now), one of the easiest ways to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit is to simply go to Google and type in something like “18 C to F“. Before the list of Google results, the converted temperature will be displayed at the top. This works in the other direction, as well.

In addition, you can convert things like liters to quarts, kilometers to miles, light-seconds to kilometers, and so on.

You can even get estimates of currency conversion. Dollars to yen, euros to pounds, Turkish liras to Mexican pesos… you name it, Google has it. Just be aware of their disclaimer; you should only use the results as an estimate.

You can also do basic calculations by typing things like 5+2*2.

Read the full list of mathematical commands you can use.

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their rightful names.”

As a logophile, I am often irked when I hear people mangling the names of things: objects, animals, software….

The Mac OS X operating system was released in 1999. It is, in essence, analogous to Microsoft Windows on PCs; it is software that runs behind the scenes on an Apple computer and manages the programs and files that the person at the computer is using. Most Macintosh computers in use today use Mac OS X; it is the most recent operating system released for Apple computers.

The proper way to write it is “Mac OS X” or just “OS X”. Writing “OSX” or “MACOSX” is highly confusing to the uninitiated.

Writing “MAC” instead of “Mac” is also highly confusing, egregious, and offensive. “Mac” is the correct nomenclature, because “Mac” is a nickname for “Macintosh”. So, unless you are shouting, “MAC” is incorrect.

The proper way to pronounce it is “mac oh ess ten”, not “mac oh ess X”. You read the “X” as the number 10; it is a roman numeral indicating that it is the tenth verison of the Macintosh operating system.

Update: Read about my improved technique for Celsius to Fahrenheit conversion.

Many Americans know only the Fahrenheit scale of temperature measurement, and thus have difficulty when visiting another country that primarily uses the Celsius scale. This entry aims to help you learn the Celsius scale. If you just need to quickly convert something to something else, read my quick quantity conversions with Google Calculator article.

One Celsius degree is worth 1.8 Fahrenheit degrees. This means that if you add 10°C to a Celsius temperature, you add 18° to the corresponding Fahrenheit temperature. So:

0°C = 32°F
10°C = 32°F + 18 = 50°F
20°C = 50°F + 18 = 68°F
30°C = 68°F + 18 = 86°F
40°C = 86°F + 18 = 104°F

…and so on.

This also means that if you add 5 to a Celsius temperature, you add 9 to the corresponding Fahrenheit temperature. So:

0°C = 32°F
5°C = 32°F + 9 = 41°F
10°C = 41°F + 9 = 50°F
15°C = 50°F + 9 = 59°F
20°C = 59°F + 9 = 68°F
25°C = 68°F + 9 = 77°F
30°C = 77°F + 9 = 86°F
35°C = 86°F + 9 = 95°F
40°C = 95°F + 9 = 104°F

For every 5 Celsius degrees, you can add 10 and subtract 1 from the Fahrenheit temperature.

For every 10 Celsius degrees, you can add 20 and subtract 2 from the Fahrenheit temperature.

For every 1 Celsius degree, you can add 2 and subtract .2 from the Fahrenheit temperature.
For every 2 Celsius degree, you can add 4 and subtract .4 from the Fahrenheit temperature.
For every 3 Celsius degree, you can add 6 and subtract .6 from the Fahrenheit temperature.
For every 4 Celsius degree, you can add 8 and subtract .8 from the Fahrenheit temperature.

Say, for example, that you want to determine the Fahrenheit equivalent of 23°C. Here is how I would do it, step by step.

1. Start with 32°F.
2. 10°C is 32+20-2:
   • 32+20 = 52
   • 52-2 = 50°F.
3. 20°C is 50+20-2:
   • 50+20 = 70
   • 70-2 = 68°F.
4. 23°C is 68+6-.6:
   • 68+6 = 74
   • 74-.6 = 73.4°F.

Notice that you could have added 40 and subtracted 4 to get 68°F right away, because you are adding 20 twice, and subtracting 2 twice. This shortcut can be used for Celsius temperatures ending in 5, as well. To illustrate, I will convert 27°C to Fahrenheit.

1. Start with 32°F.
2. 25°C is 32+20-2+20-2+10-1. This is the same as 32+50-5:
   • 32+50 = 82
   • 82-5 = 77°F.
3. 27°C is 77+4-.4:
   • 77+4 = 81
   • 81-.4 = 80.6°F.

So if you want to get to 25°C, you add 50 (which is the same as 25 times two) and subtract 5 (which is ten percent of 50) from 32. Then to get 27°C, add 4 and subtract .4 as usual.

It is important to also add .18 for each .1 degree of Celsius. If the temperature is 26.8°C, but you calculate 26°C, you get 78.8°F. However, 26.8°C is 80.24°F. That is 1.44 degrees more than the initial result. In general, you will probably be OK adding .2 for each .1 degree of Celsius. Doing so in this example (adding 8 times .2, or 1.6) gives you 80.4°C.

With practice, you may be able to use this method to calculate Celsius temperatures in your head.

Of course, the best way to learn Celsius is to buy a digital thermometer that can switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit, and use it to tell you what the Celsius temperature is outside. That way, you will associate the Celsius temperature with how it actually feels outside.

You can also make Weather.gov (my favorite weather web site) give you temperatures in Celsius if you add &degrees=C to the end of the forecast URL. There is also a link near the bottom of every forecast page that says “Text Forecast (°C)”; you can use that to switch to Celsius.