A Problem Squared - 034 = Novel Seal of Approval and Family Seal of Removal

Episode Date: May 23, 2022

In this episode...   * How related are you to a Harbour seal?    * Bec gives some novel advice.    * Matt mends a mistake.    * And there's all sorts of AOB.    If you want to bid on the £5,000 t-shirt referenced in 006 of A Problem Squared, join us on the 26th of May, 2022! All proceeds go to Water Aid - links to come.    Bec's new book 'Now LiveScreaming' is out now! Go buy it!   You can find Yale's incredible evolutionary and ecological chat here: https://vertlife.org/ And just a little recap, seals are in the Mammalian order Carnivora. Humans are in the Mammalian order Primates - 82.1 millions years ago the 'magnorder' of Boreoeutheria split into Euarchontoglires (which later gave us Primates) and Laurasiatheria (which gave us Carnivora).   Bec also references ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King in her dinglett.   

Hello, this is Bec Hill from A Problem Squared, the podcast you are about to listen to. Just to let you know that the £5,000 t-shirt, which we referenced in earlier episodes of this podcast, is going up for auction. It's going to be a part of an exhibition on the 26th of May. The exhibition will be private, but the auction will be online and public. So if you would like a piece of the action, or indeed, if you could tell other people about it, that would be fantastic. Our aim is to try and get another 5,000 pounds for this t-shirt so that we can raise 10,000 pounds for WaterAid in total. So if you have no idea what I'm talking

about, go back to episode 006 and listen to sizing shirts and testing toasters. But if you don't want to know that much, that's fine. We're going to stick some links in the show notes here and you can check our socials at A Problem Squared for more information. Okay, enjoy the show. Hello, I'm Australian comedian, writer and artist Bec Hill, and I am joined by my co-host, Australian comedian, writer and mathematician, Matt Parker. And this is a Problem Squared. For any new listeners, this is a problem solving podcast, which is a bit like the government, in that often the problems we attempt to fix are outside our areas of expertise however matt uses enough technical jargon and charisma to

convince you it's solved and no one takes me seriously enough to care when i make them worse wow that's a great but depressing opening to a podcast at least for us the possible ramifications of our attempts to solve problems are limited mainly to people complaining on Twitter. Yeah, that's true. We are not, to our knowledge, in charge of a country. No, that is also. This is another reason why we're better than the government. And our taxes are optional.

People opt in. Yeah, that's true. I don't know how I feel about that. Taxes are optional. People opt in. Yeah, that's true. I don't know how I feel about that. But I think that's a problem for another time, because in today's episode... I solve the problem of how related you are to a seal. I'm going to give some novel advice. And we've got all the AOB you'd ever want to business.

So much business. Hello? you'd ever want a business. So much business. Hello. Bec, how you doing? I'm good. We are recording in separate countries this time. Separate hemispheres. It's pretty exciting. Indeed.

I'm in the cupboard, the famed cupboard. We're in the cupboard. Yep, yep. But we're, no, still the same one. I'm in Perth, the cupboarded cupboard. We are in the cupboard. Yep. Yep. But we're, no, still the same one. And I'm in Perth, the cupboard of Australia.

Yes. I'm finally out in Australia, visiting friends and family in, in my hometown of Perth, WA. And so, yeah. So not only are you recording from the cupboard and we're remote,

but this is a, I was gonna say a record level of remote, but as we were discussing before we started recording, you did dial in from Australia once before. So it's not a problem squared first. Yeah, I'm afraid not. But nevertheless, this is still exciting. What have you been up to?

It's still pretty special. Oh my goodness. I went to Darwin for the first time. Oh, I've never been either. No, and I hadn't been, nor was I expecting to. And I'm awful. I mean, I'd love to visit the Northern Territory at some point, but the flight that I booked with Qantas back in, oh my goodness, I booked it in 2019 to fly in 2020. It's been postponed a few times. I booked the direct flight from London to Perth. Is that 17 hours? Is that right? Yes.

It's 17 and a half to 18 and a half, depending on direction and wind and all that kind of jazz. So it's a long time in a cylinder in the sky. But I've done it before. And compared to like a stopover, I prefer it because once you're 13 hours in, instead of having to land like in Singapore or somewhere and then wait and then get on another plane and then another it's i think it's like another five hours from singapore to perth or something you're like it's another four hours and you're there

and that's it job done so and they've accommodated like the seats uh a bit further apart than on a standard 787 and there's like a standing room at the back of the plane. You can get up, you can walk around. It's all good. So I was like, you know what? I'm doing that. But it turns out because of the Western Australia border policies, they rerouted the flight via Darwin.

So without realizing, I realized at the the airport at the airport i found out oh wait which you know what darwin heathrow thankfully he's not not landing getting off like mom dad oh geez it's humid i did once fly to belfast and tried to see how long it would take before i knew which airport i'd flown into because oh yeah yeah, because they've got the international and the city airports. Yeah, exactly. And I was like, I couldn't remember which one I'd booked. I was on the plane. I was like, I don't know which airport I'm flying to.

And so I thought, let's see how long before I find out. It's like I was a decent way through the airport before I knew conclusively. I was at the distant one, not the one in the city. You started seeing buses for Derry. And you're like, oh, yeah. Exactly. Yeah, it was on this trip. I found out when I got to Heathrow, I the one in the city. You started seeing buses for Derry and you're like, oh, yeah. Yeah, it was on this trip. I found out when I got to Heathrow, I had four hours in Darwin

because I walked outside to go and explore a bit of Darwin. I was in jeans, very hot, very humid. I was not dressed or prepared. Didn't have a hat, no sunscreen. Oh, Matt. No. So I was like, I know where this is going to end in tears. So I did like a 15 minute, it's like a little walk you can do at the front of Darwin Airport,

where you kind of walk around past some trees and some signs. And then you get back into the airport and you sit and work for three hours while you wait for your flight. I can't work when I'm traveling. Really? It's a mix between getting travel sick and just my brain. I just can't focus because there's too many things happening. So weirdly, sometimes the travel part is more like holiday for my brain than an actual holiday because at no point do I feel like I need to

be working. Whereas I can be on holiday. I will still think I need to be working, but if I'm on a plane or a train or something, nah. There you go. So anyway, I ended up in Perth. How are you, how are you doing back? Well, I actually did go on a little bit of a traveling myself. The second Horror Heights book came out on, I want to say the 28th of April. It's been out for a wee while now. It's called Now Live Screaming. And the day that it came out, so it was a Thursday, I then got asked if I could last

minute go up to Glasgow and do their Saturday morning live show, Saturday Mashup on CBBC and talk about the book and do some silly fun games and stuff. So I went up to Glasgow last minute and it was, oh boy, was it fun. It's such a fun show. I got to like ride this tiny horse around the studio and I beat a 16 year old boy who's an actor on a very well received show. But I mean, I could have, as someone more than twice his age, I could have like, you know, let him win.

So at least he wouldn't be teased by his school friends. But did I? Nah. Nah. That's not the back way. I could have been slimed, but it was one of the other 16 year old actors. I lucked out. And then at the end, at the very end of the recording, because they have a little live audience as well with all the kids who watch the show.

the recording, cause they have a little live audience as well with all the kids who watch the show. They were coming out of the studio as I was waiting to go in and chat to one of the producers. So I had to wait for the stream of kids to all come out this doorway. And while I was waiting, one of the kids was like, Oh, can I have a high five? And I was like, yeah, sure. So I high-fived him. And because my hand was still up after his, the kid behind him high-fived me. The next kid's like getting in on that. And then it continued. So then it just looked like I was standing there waiting to high-five all the kids. At what point do you abandon your sequence of high-fives?

Every now and then there'd be one kid who'd be like, oh, they would notice and be like, oh. And you would realize that they didn't want to high-five. But by that point it was too late for me to pull the hand back because they would then go, oh, and bring their hand up. And it looked like I was trying to avoid a high five with a kid. And that's no one wants to look like that. So there's no easy way out of this. That's how I. Yeah.

High fived a bunch of kids by accident. I felt very cool, though. I felt very validated by the end of it well there you go, it was good yeah, highly recommend in fact there is video footage of me on the tiny horse somewhere, I'll see if we can put that up on Instagram

or Twitter. It sounds like you went to a seaside resort not a TV show if I'm being entirely honest when I say tiny horse I mean like a toy one for children like a toddler would push around. I don't want a pony. No, just though it's a tiny horse. I'm like, maybe that's what they call ponies these days.

Sounds harsh, doesn't it? Yeah. Not big enough to be a full-size horse. Poor small horse stuck in a studio. So yeah, that's what I've been up to. High five your kids. Yeah. I'm available for high fives of all ages.

How long were you there high-fiving for? Like, were you late to see the producer or was it a... Hours. I have a running joke with fellow maths YouTuber James Grime where, because we're often hanging out with each other and like other mass people or whatever but when we go to say goodbye we'll go to shake hands but one of us will go to shake hands you want to go to high five and then we're like oh and then we'll but then we'll both swap and then depending on how we feel we'll do like several minutes of, no, but we, oh, hang on. Are we? No. Yeah.

Every time. I'd be standing there going, just kiss already. It's a real just kiss already kind of situation. It's great. But then eventually we'll commit to a handshake and then we just both walk away. It's. I like. Of all the unspoken running gags i've got with my friends the awkward handshake high five misunderstanding with james grime is my favorite that's nice i thoroughly recommend

the one where as someone high fives you you just hold their hand just slowly wrap your fingers around this but that looks like you're going into like a, that must be a type of high five, the grab and grasp, right? That's going to be a. Yeah. But if they're not, if they're not expecting it, it's real awkward. Yeah. I also very much enjoy the purposefully missing high five.

Yep. Yep. Where you will go very far away from where they're going. If there's anyone out there who has any awkward high five stories or indeed wants to show us a high five that they do with someone else, get us on Twitter at A Problem Squared. Our first problem for this episode is for you, Matt. It's from Jordan Elder, who says, how many nth cousins and how many times removed are you from the common harbor seal that's the whole problem that's the whole problem

and i'm glad that jordan made it clear it's the common harbor seal and not just seal because then you might have thought the singer you're right you're right and that would have been much easier i'm sure to work out i feel like because i mean conceptually every organism is a relation to some extent to every other organism because as far as we're aware life only started once on earth and has just been forking ever since that's a way to put it Thank you. It took me a moment there just to check. And so the harbour seal, common harbour seal, they're very widespread. You'll find them in Scotland, is in theory a distant relation to all humans. So all I had to do was work out what relation to all humans and then put that in the kind of the cousin terminology so i i mean i don't know what we want to deal with first do we want to deal with the ridiculous way that we name relations that we want to work

oh my goodness can we okay like a yes i yep i did this bothers me so much to the point that i i'm not sure if i've brought it up on a previous episode can we talk about back to the future was was my answer already so boring you can totally change the conversation. It's because in the third Back to the Future film. The one in the Wild West. Yeah. Marty McFly's grandfather or great-great-grandfather, he looks like Marty. Right.

But his great-great-grandmother looks like his mum. Oh. He's played by the same actor who plays his mum. Gotcha. They're the McFly's. And the surname, as we know in our culture, the male surname passes down. So why is there someone who looks like his mum

with his dad's surname? That means that his parents must be related. It must be his paternal great-great-grandparents, right, because the surname is passed down. But yet the genes that influence appearance somehow have to end up in his mother's ancestral line for that to make any sense. Yeah.

Which means that they're like third cousins or something now i don't know if i'm gonna be able to help you with that specific problem fair but we'll table it for a future episode when we can draw the full family tree what i can try and help you with is what third cousin means because i had to sit down and draw a diagram and look at some websites to try and just because like your immediate relatives have simple names you have parents you have siblings you have offspring it's all very straightforward you have cousins you have nieces and nephews nibblings i don't know if there's like a generic nibblings. Do you have nibblings? A nibbling is a sibling once removed. And when you say once removed, you're saying?

Once removed means that there's a mismatch in the generations. They would be your cousin or sibling or whatever, but they're off by one generation from where you are in the generation. Yeah, it's my siblings' children. Yeah, yeah. But before we go too far into that, let's just establish what even are cousins. So if you work your way straight up your ancestral chain, you've got parents, and then you've

got grandparents, and then you've got great-grandparents, and then the sentence is pretty straightforward. You've then got great-great-grandparents, great-great-great-grandparents. I was a little annoyed. We use grand, and then we use great. I'm like, well, why don't we just use, we could just use the same. In fact, I just shortened it to G. You've got your parents, then you've got G parents, and then you've got G squared parents, and then G cubed parents.

And in fact, your parents are the zero, G to the zero parents because they're your parents. You're making them sound very cool now. Yeah. I'm pretty sure, isn't that a song? G to the zero. Edge to the zero. to the... So the number of Gs

tells you how far up your ancestral chain you have to go before you get to someone. And then when you come back down to someone else that you're related to, how far up you had to go

before you track back down again tells you how removed a cousin they are. And it's always one one less than the g value so the cousin value always matches the g value of the parent you had to go to so your siblings you only have to go up to your parents and then down to your siblings so they're actually your zeroth cousins because you have to go to the g0 parent your first cousins you have to go up to your g1 parents your grandparents and then down your second cousins you have to go to your great grandparents yep wait wait because i'm thinking oh but it's my parents siblings so it just goes

like that but of course you're talking siblings, so it just goes like that. But, of course, you're talking about, like, who birthed them. Yes. That's a very good point. Because normally we think about it, in terms of siblings, sideways connections. We do, yeah. Whereas I'm going family tree rules,

where everything has to go up through direct descendants. So your siblings, you have to go up to your parents and then down, because then they birthed separately, or acquired your siblings you have to go up to your parents and then down because then they birthed separately or acquired your siblings somehow if you were doing this tree on like a piece of lined paper yeah then siblings and cousins and all that we would all be on the same line because we're all the same generation but it's how many vertical lines we need to go up But it's how many vertical lines we need to go up. Exactly. And back down. In fact, I drew pretty much that.

There's my sketch. Oh, you have? Yeah. We're going to pop this on socials as well if anyone needs a visual guide. I'll do that. I normally, oh my goodness, I should take more care doing these sketches because I end up showing them than having to put them on social media and that people can see the crude drawing I did to work out all the different levels. So if you want to work out your cousin relationship to someone, you just find the nearest common ancestor only going up

through direct descendants and then down the other side and whatever g-value they were, and then down the other side. And whatever G value they were, that's the level of cousin you are to that person. Assuming they're on the same generation as you. If they're on a different generation, they're still the same level cousin, but now they're a certain number of times removed.

So if they were the same generation as your parents, they're once removed. If they're the same generation as your parents, they're once removed. If they're the same generation as your grandparents, they're twice removed, right? So if my cousin has a kid, then that cousin is my first cousin. Correct. And their kid is also my first cousin, but they're once removed. Exactly. Because your cousin and your cousin's offspring, you're still related through the same ancestor. That hasn't changed.

They're just a different layer of the generation going up and down. It's an X and Y axis. It's an X and Y axis. There you go. Now, in that case, the ancestor between you and your cousin and their offspring is your grandparent, your G1 parent. Yeah. But for your cousin's offspring, that's actually their G2 parent. That's their great grandparent.

So the question now is which one do you use to label the cousin relationship? And the convention is the smaller one. So whoever's closest to the ancestor gets to define the name of the cousining. And then the difference between the one that came first and the other one is how removed. The cousining is my favorite horror film, by the way. The call is coming from inside the family. And so that's how cousin names work. You get two humans, you work out their closest common ancestor, you work out what G value that is for the older generation,

which may not strictly be older age, I guess, but the older generation, whoever has the smallest G value, that's the value used for the nth cousin and then the number removed is how far further down the other person is in the family tree so just to clarify what you've just said my cousin's kid could either be defined as my first cousin once removed yep or i guess they could see me as their second cousin because it goes up to the second grandparent correct and that yep technically you would be strictly speaking their second cousin negative one removed oh because you're going that way. You're in the other direction. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Conservation of cousins. It's just in the eye of the beholder. That's, yeah. And so that's how cousins work. That's the convention as far as I can tell from everything I've read and the way I understand it now. That's all I have to do is work out

when was the most recent common ancestor of both Jordan, who asked about the problem, and a common harbor seal. Work out which of them is the smallest number of generations away to establish

the cousin level, and then work out how many more generations it takes to get to the other one, and that out how many more generations it takes to get to the other one. And that's how many times removed piece of cake. And if you want, you could have chosen any problem. Who I could, I saw this one and went, oh, that's fun.

Brought this on yourself. Matt. I really did. I really did. Partly. I thought I've always wanted to work out how the cousin nomenclature works because i've never known and i was like this will force me to actually look it up and i'm glad i did because the whole jeath power parents very pleasing and then i thought i get to be annoyed at biologists

for a while as well because nothing's ever certain so so now i'm gonna say some names of types of animals and they're all gonna be pronounced wrong so bear with me so uh seals thankfully are mammals and humans are mammals so our most common recent ancestor would have been a mammal as well because we're both mammals seals are in the carnivora order of mammals which involves there's a lot in carnivora. You're talking, that's where your dogs and your cats hang out. It's one of the most diverse orders of mammals. Humans, we're also mammals, but we are in the primates order.

So different order. And so I had to look up when did primates and carnivora split off? So if you track both of them back, the primates, you end up going, oh my goodness, Euracontaglias. Huh, pronounced that wrong. That's the Magna order? It's a type of higher level order that then split into a bunch of other orders that included primates. And the ones that eventually split and gave us our friends the seals was the Laraceatheria.

We'll put all these in the notes. And they came from a super order, the Boreoetheria. Pronounced that wrong. I looked them all up. And then I found a really helpful website that Yale have made. It's called vertlife.org. I highly recommend it. It's like a very cool spiral diagram that shows you where each species in order within mammals splits off from each other. And so that's what I ended up using. And they give you rough dates of when each split happened. So Yale say it happened 82.1 million years ago. And I didn't see the same number twice in my research. A bunch of places are like, oh, it should be after the dinosaurs went extinct or before or here or there. And often the fossils don't exactly mesh

up with the looking at the DNA and seeing how much it's changed as an estimate of how long ago they separated. But all the estimated amounts of time were around 80 million years. And so I've gone with Yale's 82.1 million years. That's how long ago we had a common ancestor with a common harbor seal. Problem is, since we parted ways with seals, there's been a bunch of other kind of intermediate species in between. But how many generations is that? And different animals have different numbers of years on average between generations. Yeah. So it's not like I can't just divide that because humans are about on average 30 years between 29 or something between generations. But we've not been humans for the last.

And that's now as well. It was shorter. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was like, oh, my goodness, how am I going to work out how many generations it's been when it's a whole bunch of animals, some of which we don't even know what they were. So what I did was I found major split points between the different orders. And then I approximated each section of the evolutionary journey with a modern animal.

I need to make it very clear. I'm aware that they weren't a modern animal. I need to make it very clear. I'm aware that they weren't that actual animal. So for example, very early mammals are described as being like rats, rat-like. Now, obviously rats didn't evolve for tens of millions of years later, but they were very similar to rats. That's how we understand them in a modern sense. So what I've done is I've just assigned modern animals that are as close as possible to the sorts of mammals that were alive in the different parts of this ridiculously big family tree. And so 82.1 million years ago, we split into some animals that were a bit like rats and some that were a bit like shrews. The seals were from the shrew line and humans were from the rat line. So we were basically a bit like rats until 74.2 million

years ago. Then we were a bit like lemurs until 29.3 million years ago. And then we were basically primates for the last 30 million years, give or take. And so rats have an average of about a year between generations. Lemurs, I found some great research into lemurs. A lot of the time I was just kind of estimating it, but I found an empirical estimate of the generation time of mouse lemurs. Amazing. There you are. Someone did all the hard work. Two and a half years.

So I put that in. And I've gone with a generation for primates. I used the value for gorillas. It's about 20 years. And so if you take each time period and divide it by the generation for the animals I've assigned,

you get 27.3 million generations between the most common ancestor we have with seals and us, which I'm just going to call 27 million. I'm not prepared to have it any more precise than to the nearest million. So we are 27 million generations away. Whereas seals were a bit like shrews until 75.2 million years ago. Then they're a bit like dogs until 26.1 million years ago. And then they've been a bit like seals-ish for the last 26.1 million years. Shrews have about a year between generations. Dogs, I didn't use modern dogs. Wolves, there's different values in research between about 4.1 and 4.7 years.

I've used an estimate of four and a half years per generation for wolves. And seals. There's some great research. I used the lifetime reproductive success of northern elephant seals. Bit of research coming out of Canada there. And I used that to estimate seals have about 7.7 years per generation. I'm aware that's the Northern Elephant seal, not the Common Harbour seal.

But I'm using it to approximate 26.1 million years of seal evolution. So let's just go with it. You run them all through, I got a value of 21.2 million generations for seals, which I'm going to round 21 million so it turns out which is which is fewer generations so the seals have had fewer generations because their dog-like ancestors i assume have longer generation times than Lima-like ancestors. So they get to decide what level cousin we are.

We are 21 millionth cousins. Six million times removed. The end. There you are. Like a seal. Oh my goodness, Matt. I'm so impressed. I'll be posting the family tree that he's drawn on socials.

I'll take a photo of that and we can share that. It's not great, but go with it. The X is where you are. The X marks where the viewer is in the family tree in my diagram. So you are. If you ever see a seal, you're 21 millionth cousins. Six million times removed. How amazing is that? Now, next time you're at the beach, you're 21 millionth cousins. Six million times removed. How amazing is that?

Now, next time you're at the beach, it's actually a family gathering. Ah, life, eh? Life. I tell you what, Matt, I've also found a family tree for McFly's. I'm trying to work out. Why you were listening intently to my working out. I brought it up and then I didn't do anything with it because I can't listen and do workings out. So that's why I waited until now to say it.

That's very kind of you. I found a McFly family tree from Back to the Future. Of course you did. And we can see that Mighty McFly's mum, Lorraine, her surname's Baines. She comes from the Baines family. And then George is his dad, McFly's mum, Lorraine, her surname's Baines, she comes from the Baines family, and then George is his dad, McFly. And we can see that Maggie McFly is Marty McFly's great, great, great grandmother. Yeah, G3 parent. Yep. And she is identical to his mum. So that means that Maggie McFly might have been a Baines

or, you know, somehow related to the other family before she became a McFly. Ah, gotcha. Right, so you're saying there's another ancestor one up who has descendants both Maggie McFly and Lorraine, now Baines. Yes. So that would have been George's. Zero, one, two, three.

Yeah, a G3 from George. So Marty McFly's dad is probably third cousins with his wife. Yes, yes. That's the only logical conclusion. Which is legal, I believe. I think that's fine. You've fixed the only major issue with the depiction of time travel. Or maybe there's future, back to the future,

stories that won't turn into films that explain this churning of the family tree. That's true. I'm glad I got some closure on that as well. Thanks, Matt. I think you're welcome. Beck, we have a problem here sent in by a Darren who says they have written a third of a novel. Oh, there you go. Good fraction of a novel. Oh, except they don't know if it's bad or worth completing.

If it's bad or worth completing. They want to know, how can I find out whether or not it's bad without letting anyone I know read it or putting it on the internet for everyone to read? So somewhere between, they don't want people they know to read it. They don't want everyone to read it. How do they find out if it's good or bad? Bec, have you solved the problem? Well, first of all, it's bad because it's not completed. If you bought a book.

It's a third of a novel. It's, yeah. You've got a book. It's a third of a novel. It's, yeah. And you got a third of the way through and it just stopped. You'd be like, why doesn't this have a middle or ending? Maybe it starts and it's very confusing. What if it's not contiguous? What if it's every third page?

Ultimately, it's not a novel. It is still an incomplete novel. It's too bad. It's too bad. Got it. Got it. Okay. I would say that that's it.

That's the answer. Now, whether or not it's worth completing that that's it. That's the answer. Now, whether or not it's worth completing, that's a personal choice, really. It's, you know, what do you define as whether something is worth completing? You could complete it and you might not be happy with it. In fact, I would say that the first time you write any book that you're going to rewrite it, you're going to want to rewrite it. I mean, even Stephen King doesn't do story structures or anything like that. He just sits down and writes. He still rewrites it entirely

again afterwards. Even nonfiction. I always tell people who are writing a nonfiction book for the first time, when you finish writing the book you're halfway there because the the first completed draft is not the final book that's approximately half the effort to write it the other half of the effort is the rewrites and changing it and doing it again i would say it's i would say it's even less than the effort and then half the effort i i think you should complete it regardless, but you will need to rewrite it and rewrite it again because everyone's book is bad the first time they write it. And whether you think it's worth completing, like if you're enjoying it, do it. And if you're not, then don't. If you feel that would be a waste of time, if you didn't want to rewrite it or

do anything with it, then don't do it a novel is not like a sandwich where if you eat a third of a sandwich and you're like that was delicious the rest of the sandwich will also be great whereas a narrative is more like a cat If you've only got a third of it, that's not good. That's not going to help. Yeah, yeah. And a third of a cat is not a cat. But a third of a sandwich.

That's true. That's not bad. You've just had a small sandwich. So writing a book is more like a cat than a sandwich. And yeah, and also being bad is subjective as well. It comes, no one is going to agree on the same thing. So if you finish it and you think it's great, it could be that no one else likes it, but it felt like it was worth it because you're happy with it.

Or you could finish it and not be sure and everyone could love it or half people could love it and half people could hate it. So I would say finish writing it first and then once it's written, take some time off, go back to it and then see how you feel about it when you read it back. And you'll know whether you're happy with that or whether you want to rewrite it or whether you're comfortable by that stage to show other people for their advice. I would recommend the book On Writing by Stephen King. It's called On Writing. There's some other very good books out there, which I can't remember the names of.

They should have used a name like On Writing. Then I would remember. Book title is a bit like a book. If you just had the first third of the title you don't know if the title's gonna be book titles are a lot like cats i think i think we went past the ending like a way back didn't we oh business any other businesses it's the remix it's it's my type of business i have a correction oh someone called vax headroom great name well done vax headroom has pointed out i made a maths mistake they're saying in episode 031, I said that 4096 is 2 to the power of 14. And they are correctly pointed out it is 2 to the power of 12.

But first of all, I don't want to just assume that they're right that I was wrong. So I've asked Lauren, our producer, could you play in the part of episode 031 in question like you've got to round it up to get 4k you've also got 4096 pixels by 2160 which is more image it's a bit wider it's also a power of two which is deeply deeply pleasing two to the power of 14 oh my goodness caught red-handed oh no oh this is exciting this was like watching the amber head and johnny depp case oh that's how embarrassing i'm really sorry i'm sorry everyone i don't know why my brain did that i think it's because on the fly i just thought i'd chuck in what power two it is but i know i know that two to the power of ten is about a thousand and that's that's easy to remember and then you

just look at roughly what multiple of a thousand is and four is two squared so i should have known it was two to the twelve i'm sorry everyone i apologize i'm i'm too I'm too sorry I'm please forgive me I'm gonna say the rest of what Vax Headroom says because it is very exciting Vax Headroom says they know it's two to the power of 12 this is why it stuck with them so heavily when you said the incorrect number because a 12-bit analog to digital converter has a max value of $4,995, and I use them all the time in the software I write to control spacecraft. What? Oh, well done. Well done, Vax Headroom.

Slipping in a little brag there. Look, we all live in households where someone is in charge of controlling spacecraft. That's perfectly normal. Yeah, you've got Lucy and I've got Pudding, who, as we know, went to the edge of the solar system. See, exactly. There you go.

It's business as usual. Well, I've got some any other business as well, any other buttness, because one thing, this is in relation to episode 033, where we talked about... The previous one to this one. Yes, we talked about fart pills and Frank wrote in and said, the question is, did Matt know that Luton Mallon, which is the name of the inventor of the French fart pill, is French for clever gnome, before describing said individual as looking a bit like a gnome.

Now, I'd like to clarify I did not do that in like an insulting or derogatory way, but also I did not know that. My French is not sufficient to know that their name meant clever gnome. Yeah, so clearly either that is nominative determinism or more likely. I just think sometimes I'm randomly wrong and sometimes I'm accidentally right.

But I thought I'd also give an update because since you went to Australia Matt, the pills arrived. The fart pills arrived from France. I'm very excited. And so I've been taking them. Oh, good. I expect nothing less.

My farts do not smell of roses, as they purport to do, but genuinely surprised by this, have not been as gassy. I haven't changed my diet in any way, and I asked my husband if he could pay more attention to, you know. Fill in the logbook. Neither of us have, even to the point that my, well, let's just say when I leave the bathroom, not as bad as usual. Wow.

Now, I don't think I've been trialing them for long enough. It could just be a variety of other factors. I've still got some left. I'm going to keep taking them and report if I notice any specific changes that lead me to a conclusion. But so far, finding that rather interesting. And thank you to the literally ones of people who wrote in and offered to help. It was more than one. Ones.

That's like we had three. Because it's like, you know, you've got like tens of people. Yeah. That could be 20 or 30 people. Right? Ones of people means single digits of people. No? Yes?

I don't know how I feel about that. So as I was saying, I feel that's perfectly legit. I feel another twitter poll coming either way let us know on okay fine do it we'll do a twitter poll but as i was saying ones of people three people have offered to help put together a wiki so we can document all the problems we have solved on problem squared we can count the dings all those things so thank you very much to those three people we're going to form a little focus group We'll come up with a plan and in a future episode, we will put a call out for any extra help and volunteers we need to make that happen. We will answer the problem.

How many problems have we de-problemed? And speaking of Twitter polls, a final piece of any other business, the results are in from our, have you heard of the film dunstan checks in poll have you heard of the film the options were lol yes sounds vaguely familiar or nah no idea matt would you like to guess it's gonna be nah no idea and for the record to preserve the sanctity of the data i did not partake in the poll. Nah, no idea is going to be like 50%. And then kind of remember it 30, remember it fondly, 20%. Okay. Well, nah, no idea.

You're not far off, 44%. Oh, close. But 42%, yes, totally remember it. Wow, that's more than I expected. Yeah. So there you go that that if you hadn't heard of it you are in the majority but only just and as always we want to thank you our wonderful listeners for tuning in for telling people to listen to the show and if you haven't already then that is a passive-aggressive reminder that you should tell people to listen to the show.

And for leaving us reviews, we really appreciate it. But especially we'd like to thank our Patreon supporters who are the reason that we can afford to do this. So voluntarily taxed to make this possible. That's it. Using our randomizer, here are the three that we would like to thank in this episode. Camden Blake Brock Campbell Sam Willis I would watch them in an action film

those three they are good action names aren't they yeah well like a detective agency Blake, Campbell and Willis so cool Camden, Brock and Sam. Cam, Brock, Sam.

If they don't know each other already, they should. They should chat on the Patreon forum or whatever happens on there. This episode was brought to you by Matt Parker, myself, Beck Hill, and our producer, Lauren Armstrong-Carter. Bec, just before we go, a confession. I forgot to bring my cards to Australia. Aha! Which means, no, hang on, hang on, hang on.

Which does mean I've lost track of which ones I've asked and which ones I haven't. I realized this this morning and I ran down to the shops and bought a pack of cards. And I can't remember exactly where I was up to. So I'm going to have to go back a couple of steps. Bec? Uh-huh. Is this your card? For the record, I'm holding up eight cards.

Yes, one of them is my card. Yes. All right. I'm back on track.