2026-06-13

  • 8 topics
  • One minute each
  • Let's go

1. A Hebrew lesson

a. Common words and phrases

1. A Hebrew lesson

a. Common words and phrases

.תודה. בבקשה

(Todah. B'vahkeshah.)

Thank you. You're welcome.

1. A Hebrew lesson

a. Common words and phrases

.יריתי בציפור שלך כי היית איום

(yariti betzipur shelach ki hayeet ium)

I bolted your bird because you are the threat.

1. A Hebrew lesson

a. Common words and phrases

.תֹּאכְלוּ זכוכית

(to'chlu zchuchit)

Eat glass.

1. A Hebrew lesson

b. Shoreshim

  • "roots"
    • "shoresh" means "root", "-im" is pluralization
  • Means by which words are constructed in Hebrew and other Semitic languages

1. A Hebrew lesson

b. Shoreshim

Hebrew word pronunciation meaning
מֶלךְ (melekh) king
מַלְכָּה (malkah) queen
מַלְכוּת (malkut) kingdom

2. The history of birthdays

2. The history of birthdays

  • Egypt, ~3000 BCE

    Celebrations for birthdays of royalty (important for astrological reasons)

  • Rome, 100s CE

    Birthdays for non-royalty (and candles on cakes)

  • Europe, 1300s CE

    Every infant was given the name of a saint as a protector. People celebrated their saint’s day, not their own birthday.

  • Germany, 1700s CE

    Kinderfeste, root of the modern birthday party (This is when we start putting N candles on the cake)

  • Kentucky, 1893 CE
    Patty and Mildred Hill compose Happy Birthday To You, which will become the most recognized song in English

3. The mixolydian scale

  • It's just a major scale,
    except that the
    seventh note is flat

3. The mixolydian scale

4. Elephant grass

4. Elephant grass

  • Originates from sub-Saharan Africa

  • Grows to a height of 4-7 meters

Illus. Tony Roberts. Map from tropicalforages.info

4. Elephant grass

Things you can do with it

other than let elephants eat it:


  • Make paper

4. Elephant grass

  • Maize accounts for ~30% of all consumed calories in sub-Saharan Africa

    Stemborers eat ~10% of it annually

  • Desmondium can be used in conjunction with elephant grass as push-pull pest control

One third of all sub-Saharan calories thing: here. More about push-pull with elephant grass and Desmodium: here.

5. The golden ratio

5. The golden ratio

5. The golden ratio

Defined as the ratio of two lengths a/b, such that it is equal to the ratio of the larger length with their sum, a+b/a

5. The golden ratio

1.618033988749...

5. The golden ratio

5. The golden ratio

5. The golden ratio

6. Toilets

6. Toilets

  • Indus River Valley, ~3000BC

    The Great Bath at Mohenjo-Daro

    "Several courtyard houses had both a washing platform and a dedicated toilet/waste disposal hole. The toilet holes would be flushed by emptying a jar of water, drawn from the house's central well, through a clay brick pipe, and into a shared brick drain, that would feed into an adjacent soak pit (cesspit)."

thearchaeologist.org, "Sanitation of the Indus Valley Civilisation"

6. Toilets

  • England, 1596

    Sir John Harington, in his The Metamorphosis of Ajax, describes a flushing device

  • Scotland, 1775

    Alexander Cumming patents flushing toilet and provides the innovation of the S-pipe to seal odor away from the toilet bowl

  • England, 1883

    Twyford started using porcelain

sciencemuseum.org.uk, "A flushing story"

6. Toilets

  • Low Earth Orbit, 1983
    • Space Shuttle makes first flight with Waste Containment System (WCS): the first space toilet
    • Works by using a vacuum pump and airflow to direct waste into a water filtration system or a disposable bag

7. The art of Wylie Beckert

7. The art of Wylie Beckert

7. The art of Wylie Beckert

7. The art of Wylie Beckert

"To get hired by a specific client, it isn’t enough that work be “good” – it also has to be suited to the needs of the client...let’s say I want to get hired by [Wizards of the Coast]. The first thing I need to do is compare the work I’m doing to the work this client is hiring. Actually placing one of my own paintings among a few MTG pieces is rather eye-opening..."


Wylie Beckert, Creating a Targeted Illustration Sample, MuddyColors.com

8. Zeugma

zeugma nutz lol

8. Zeugma

The use of a word to modify or govern two or more words, usually in such a manner that it applies to each word in a different sense.

You are free to execute your laws, and your citizens, as you see fit.

Commander Riker

Yet time and her aunt moved slowly — and her patience and her ideas were nearly worn out before the tete-a-tete was over.

Jane Austen

1a Hebrew: phrases
1b Hebrew: שורשים (shoreshim)
2 History of birthdays
3 The mixolydian scale
4 Elephant grass
5 The golden ratio
6 History of toilets
7 The art of Wylie Beckert
8 Zeugma

Number four is elephant grass, a plant I learned about from the Magic: the Gathering card of the same name. It's native to sub-Saharan Africa, and it grows to a height of 4-7 meters, or 108 cheeseburgers on average. You can feed it to elephants, but you can also make paper with it, and you can also use it as part of a pest control method called push-pull. Maize is responsible for one-third of all the calories consumed in sub-Saharan Africa. It is parasited upon by an insect called the stemborer, which eats about ten percent of African maize crop yields annually. African farmers noticed that this insect is repelled by a plant called

<div> <img src="images/vis-104-elephant-grass.jpg" width="300" /> <img src="images/Pennisetum_purpureum_F.jpg" width="300"/> </div> <div> </div> <div> </div>

108 cheeseburgers

You plant the desmodium in rows alternating with the corn; the insects get repelled by the smell and jump into the elephant grass you've planted around the perimeter; they lay their eggs in it, and they don't hatch because the grass is hairy so they fall off Checkmate bugs

Audio clip here of my saying "Stav I think you forgot to color this one gold" Each fibonacci number in the talk will be gold Golden rectangle but it's pictures of me and my family

The notion that this is a cute way to inject wit into a sentence is the conclusion of this topic, as well as this presentation.

Fib sequence has two 1s, so that's why there's 1a and 1b