Russian Sledges

calc() is a native CSS way to do simple math right in CSS as a replacement for any length value (or pretty much any number value). It has four simple math operators: add (+), subtract (-), multiply (*), and divide (/). Being able to do math in code is nice and a welcome addition to a language that is fairly number heavy.

But is it useful? I've strained my brain in the past trying to think of obviously useful cases. There definitely are some though.

Can't Preprocessors Do Our Math?

All CSS Preprocessors do have math functions and they are pretty useful. But they aren't quite as powerful as native math. The most useful ability of calc() is it's ability to mix units, like percentages and pixels. No Preprocessor will ever be able to do that. It is something that has to happen at render time.

Syntax

.thing {
  width: 90%; /* fallback if needed */
  width: calc(100% - 3em);
}

There must be spaces surrounding the math operator. You can nest.

Browser Support

It is surprisingly good. Can I use... is always great for checking out the details there. On desktop the concerns would be it's IE 9+, Safari 6+, and won't be in Opera until it is on Blink in 15+. On mobile, Android and Opera Mini don't support it at all yet and iOS just on 6.0+.

You'll have to make the call there. I've been able to actually use it in production in certain scenarios already.

Use Case #1: (All The Height - Header)

A block level child element with height: 100% will be as tall as it's block level parent element. It can be nice to make a colored module as tall as the parent element in some cases.

But now let's say the parent element becomes too small to contain all the content in the module. You want the content to scroll, but you want just the content to scroll, not the entire module. Just set overflow-y: auto; right? Not quite, because overflow-y is only useful if the content element itself has a set height that can be overflowed. We can't make the content element 100% high because with the header there, that will be too high. We need 100% minus the height of the header. If we know that header height, it's doable!

* {
  /* So 100% means 100% */
  box-sizing: border-box;
}
html, body {
  /* Make the body to be as tall as browser window */
  height: 100%;
  background: #ccc;
  padding: 20px;
}
body {
  padding: 20px;
  background: white;  
}
.area-one {
  /* With the body as tall as the browser window
     this will be too */
  height: 100%;
}
.area-one h2 {
  height: 50px;
  line-height: 50px;
}
.content {
  /* Subtract the header size */
  height: calc(100% - 50px);
  overflow: auto;
}

You might gripe that the header shouldn't have a fixed size. Might be cool someday if calc() could subtract measured sizes of elements, but that's not possible yet. You could set the header to overflow with ellipsis.

Check out this Pen!

Use Case #2: X Pixels From Bottom Right Corner

We can position background-image X pixels from the top-left corner easily.

background-image: url(dog.png);
background-position: 50px 20px;

That would put the dog 50px from the left and 20px from the top of the elements box. But what if you want it 50px from the right and 20px from the bottom? Not possible with just straight length values. But calc() makes it possible!

background-image: url(dog.png);
background-position: calc(100% - 50px) calc(100% - 20px);

Check out this Pen!

Use Case #3: Fixed Gutters Without Parents

Let's say you want two columns next to each other. The first 40% wide, the second 60%, but with a fixed 1em gap between the columns. Don't Overthink It Grids have fixed gutters, but they aren't true gutters in a sense. The columns themselves bump right into each other and the columns are made by internal padding inside those columns.

Using calc(), we can make the first column 40% wide with a right margin of 1em, then make the second column 60% wide minus that 1em.

.area-one {
  width: 40%;
  float: left;
  margin-right: 1em;
}

.area-two {
  width: calc(60% - 1em);
  float: right;
}

You could remove half the gutter from both if you wanted to keep the proportion more accurate. Now you have two true columns separated by fixed space without needing parent elements or using the internal padding.

Check out this Pen!

Use Case #4: Showing Math Is Easier To Understand

Speaking of columns, sometimes division math gets messy. Let's say you wanted a 7-column grid, you might have classes like:

.column-1-7 {
   width: 14.2857%
}
.column-2-7 {
   width: 28.5714%
}
.column-3-7 {
   width: 42.8571%
}

Not exactly magic numbers, but difficult to understand at a glance.

.column-1-7 {
   width: calc(100% / 7);
}
.column-2-7 {
   width: calc(100% / 7 * 2);
}
.column-3-7 {
   width: calc(100% / 7 * 3);
}

Check out this Pen!

Use Case #5: Kinda Crappy box-sizing Replacement

I'm a fan of universal box-sizing: border-box; because it means you don't have to do much math to figure out how big an element actually is, our adjust that math when things like border and padding change.

If you want to replicate what box-sizing does, you could use calc() to subtract the values as needed.

.module {
  padding: 10px;

  /* Same as box-sizing: padding-box */
  width: calc(40% - 20px);

  border: 2px solid black;

  /* Same as box-sizing: border-box */
  width: calc(40% - 20px - 4px);
}

box-sizing has far better browser support than calc() though, so this would be rarely used.

The Future?

I think it will be interesting when we can use the attr() function in places other than the content property. With that, we could yank the value from HTML elements, run calculations on them, and use the new numbers to do design-y things. Like colorize inputs based on the numbers they contain.

Perhaps we could even use it to do fancy things with the <progress> elements like turn it into a speedometer like on this page. Perhaps something like:

/* Not real */
progress::progress-bar {
  transform: rotate(calc(!parent(attr(value))*18)) + deg);
}

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A Couple of Use Cases for Calc() is a post from CSS-Tricks

Practically everybody has heard of the fabled Grass Mud Horse (cǎonímǎ 草泥马), which is a pun for "f*ck your mother" (cào nǐ mā 肏你妈). China Digital Times, which pioneered research on "sensitive words", including "Grass Mud Horse", has just introduced a new feature, which should prove to be a useful resource for China scholars and journalists: "Two Years of Sensitive Words: Grass-Mud Horse List".

You will observe that not one of the tones of cǎonímǎ 草泥马 ("Grass Mud Horse") matches the corresponding tone in the original cào nǐ mā 肏你妈 ("f*ck your mother"), yet no one has the slightest difficulty in comprehending that the former is meant as a pun for the latter.

The problem of the importance of tones for understanding was extensively discussed in the comments to this Language Log post. Note especially this comment, where it is pointed out that expressions like "wo cao ni ma" (original tones 3 4 3 1 ["I f*ck your mother"]) will be understood regardless of the tones that are applied to them. Indeed, from the 80s up to the present day, my colleagues and I have been extensively experimenting with toneless written Mandarin and have found that speakers with native fluency automatically add the correct tones, so long as the text is written in an orthographically proper form. By "orthographically proper", I mean that the official rules for word formation, punctuation, and so forth are followed. Of course, we want our learners of Chinese languages to get the tones "right", so for pedagogical purposes and in dictionaries, tones should definitely be marked. It's the same with primary and secondary stress in Russian, which are marked in language textbooks and dictionaries, but not in typical texts for adults.

Let us examine these four variations of "wǒ cào" (which have been circulating on Weibo [China's Twitter clone]):

N.B.: No Chinese characters are given for the four items that are being explicated.

The glosses read as follows:

biǎo fènnù 表愤怒 ("indicates anger")

biǎo jīngtàn 表惊叹 ("indicates surprise")

biǎo qīngmiè 表轻蔑 ("indicates contempt")

biǎo yíwèn 表疑问 ("indicates doubt")

All four variants are saying "I f*ck [your mother]", but they employ a variety of tones to convey different nuances and emotions.

To complicate matters further, I should note that, because the actual character for writing the "cao" syllable of "wo cao" is considered to be incredibly vulgar (cào 肏, which consists of "enter" over "flesh", both graphically depicted), it doesn't exist in normal fonts, and even when using large fonts or writing by hand, nearly all "decent" folk avoid using cào 肏, substituting for it cāo 操 (which literally means "grasp; hold; operate; do; exercise"). Cāo 操 is thus both a graphic and euphemistic substitution for cào 肏. Nonetheless, although they are pronounced with different tones, everybody (even those who would never themselves use cào 肏, know full well that cāo 操 in the first tone is standing in for cào 肏 in the fourth tone. Thus, what used to be wǒ cào 我肏 ("I f*ck") has now become wǒ cāo 我操 ("I do [i.e., f*ck]").

The question of how intonation relates to tone also has an important bearing on the interaction between musical tune and linguistic tone. What happens when the contours of a melody are superimposed on the lyrics of a song? For example, what is the result when a rising second tone syllable meets a falling glissando? Well, the melody is going to win out over the tone, just as intonation wins out over the tones in the examples discussed above. Yet, since the linguistic tones have been distorted or completely changed, how is meaning conveyed? These are questions that deeply perplex students of Chinese music theory.

To get an idea of how powerful intonation can be, just think of the little syllable "oh" in English, which can mean any number of things depending on the way it is uttered and suprasegmental aspects of the sentences in which it occurs.

[Thanks to David Moser]

…A little overreaction here perhaps?

It’s a nice idea: hook up a vintage Volkswagen Karmann Ghia with Arduino so it can monitor social media buzz and literally run on tweets, hashtags, views and likes. It’s part of an exercise by non-profit MindDrive to engage at-risk youth by getting them to convert the Karmann Ghia car into an electric car. Hmm, probably best to bring lots of smart devices on the ride in case the car runs out of juice on the highway.

The post Car runs on Tweets, likes and shares appeared first on Lost At E Minor: For creative people.

Fabienne Hurst writes:

When the then-Berlin-based drug maker Temmler Werke launched its methamphetamine compound onto the market in 1938, high-ranking army physiologist Otto Ranke saw in it a true miracle drug that could keep tired pilots alert and an entire army euphoric. It was the ideal war drug. In September 1939, Ranke tested the drug on university students, who were suddenly capable of impressive productivity despite being short on sleep.

From that point on, the Wehrmacht, Germany’s World War II army, distributed millions of the tablets to soldiers on the front, who soon dubbed the stimulant “Panzerschokolade” (“tank chocolate”). British newspapers reported that German soldiers were using a “miracle pill.” But for many soldiers, the miracle became a nightmare.

As enticing as the drug was, its long-term effects on the human body were just as devastating. Short rest periods weren’t enough to make up for long stretches of wakefulness, and the soldiers quickly became addicted to the stimulant. And with addiction came sweating, dizziness, depression and hallucinations. There were soldiers who died of heart failure and others who shot themselves during psychotic phases. Some doctors took a skeptical view of the drug in light of these side effects. Even Leonardo Conti, the Third Reich’s top health official, wanted to limit use of the drug, but was ultimately unsuccessful.

Full Story: Der Spiegel: WWII Drug: The German Granddaddy of Crystal Meth

(Thanks Trevor)

See also: An Interview with Infamous Meth Chef Uncle Fester

cyber-ecco:

holy shit get me shorts made out of this

smithsonianlibraries:

The Great Sea Serpent.  As depicted in the Natural History of Norway, so it must be real! Right? 

Ok, maybe 1755 was a bit before peer review…

bad-postcards:

GREAT SLOTH BEAST

MEGATHERIUM

Pronounced: meg-a-THEE-ree-um
Literally, “great beast”

Megatherium was the largest of the ground sloths, and although apparently very awkward and slow-witted, his great size and strength protected him from the large meat-eaters of his time. He lived during the Pleistocene epoch which began 1 million years ago.

Thunderbeast Park - Hiway 97 - Chiloquin, Ore. 

To characterize the similarities and differences between “geek” and “nerd,” maybe we can find the other words that tend keep them company, and see if those linguistic companions support my position?

koichialtair:

Brockhaus & Efron encyclopedia ( russian: Энциклопедический словарь Брокгауза и Ефрона) published in the Russian Empire from 1890 to 1906 by an editors association from Leipzig and Saint-Petersbourg 

The Vespa Years.

Gary Cooper.

GET THE KVLT.

holdnoquarter:

Today I came across goats playing on a trampoline while I was driving around and it was the happiest thing I’ve ever seen.

For over a year, people visiting the Boston Museum of Science took off their shoes for science. Visitors strutted on a 20-foot-long mechanized gait carpet and a special plate that measured how their feet landed and pushed off when they walked.

The German language is known for its jawbreakingly long words, and I mastered a few of them when I was learning the language. One I remember (I hope this is right) is Feuerversicherungsgesellschäften, or “fire insurance companies.” But according to The Independent, there are even longer ones, and the longest has just been deep-sixed:

It has 63 letters and would span more than four Scrabble boards, but is no more after a change in EU law.

The word, abbreviated to RkReÜAÜG (and reproduced at the bottom of this article to avoid page display problems!) means “beef-labelling monitoring assessment assignment law” and was conceived in 1999 in the wake of the BSE crisis. Now Brussels has relaxed testing rules and the law has been ditched, along with RkReÜAÜG.

Where does that leave a language fond of words so long they require a sip of water to get through? The longest word in Duden, the German dictionary, is Kraftfahrzeughaftpflichtversicherung (36 letters; “motor-vehicle liability insurance”) but Guinness World Records also records Rechtsschutzversicherungsgesellschaften (39 letters; “insurance firms providing legal protection”).

What’s was longest word, though? Get a load of this:

Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz

Holy. Crap.

Michael Birken lays out, in detail, a method for teaching a computer to draw arbitrary 8-bit images by playing Tetris, strategically deploying blocks of various colors to cause exactly the picture you want to emerge. The method is (as you'd imagine), starkly terrifying in its complexity, but the video speaks for itself.

The algorithm converts pixels from a source image into squares in the Tetris playfield, one row at a time from the bottom up. To generate an individual square, the algorithm assembles a structure consisting of a rectangular region fully supported by a single square protruding from the bottom. When the rectangular region is completed, its rows are cleared, leaving behind the protruding square. Three examples of the process appear below.

The algorithm can also generate multiple squares with a single structure as shown below.

During construction of a row, all of the squares produced by this method must be supported. In the images above, the generated squares are supported by the floor of the playfield. However, if an arbitrary row contains holes, it may not provide the support necessary for the construction of the row above it. The algorithm solves this problem by constructing a flat platform on top of the row with holes. In the animation below, a platform is built above a row comprising of a single red square. The platform is a temporary structure and inserting the final piece removes it.

Tetris Printer Algorithm (via Hacker News)

One of my friends went to Harvard’s graduation ceremony last Thursday, and I asked him who the main speaker was (the speaker at my own ceremony, when I got my Ph.D. there, was Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn).  When my friend replied, “Oprah Winfrey,” I about fell over.  Oprah Winfrey?  That peddler of woo, lachrymose feel-good guru, promoter of questionable science—she got an honorary doctorate of laws and gave the main speech?

I am appalled. Of all the substantive and non-wooish people Harvard could have lured with an honorary degree, they chose Oprah? Yes, I admire her work ethic and the determination that helped her attain superstardom by overcoming a horribly hard childhood and early life, but she’s still a symbol of attitudes that contravene the dictates of reason.

According to several accounts, her talk was just a string of platitudes—but of course nearly all graduation speeches are. The Reuters link above says this, for instance (but judge for yourself, as I’ve put the video below):

In a commencement address at the Ivy League school outside Boston, Winfrey told the graduates that they were bound to stumble no matter how high they might rise, but that “there is no such thing as failure — failure is just life trying to move us in another direction.”

No it isn’t, because “life” is not trying to do anything to us. Lord! Ceiling Cat!

At any rate, at least one major news outlet saw this degree for what it is: a tacit endorsement of woo and antiscientific attitudes.  At the Time Magazine “Ideas” site, rika Christakis and Nicholas A. Christakis note excoriate Winfrey and Harvard in a piece called “Oprah as Harvard’s commencement speaker is an endorsement of phony science”:

But Oprah’s particular brand of celebrity is not a good fit for the values of a university whose motto, Veritas, means truth. Oprah’s passionate advocacy extends, unfortunately, to a hearty embrace of phony science. Critics have taken Oprah to task for years for her energetic shilling on behalf of peddlers of quack medicine. Most notoriously, Oprah’s validation of Jenny McCarthy’s discredited claim that vaccines cause autism has no doubt contributed to much harm through the foolish avoidance of vaccines.

. . .But this vote of confidence in Oprah sends a troubling message at precisely the time when American universities need to do more, not less, to advance the cause of reason. As former Dean of Harvard College, Harry Lewis, pointedly noted in a blog post about his objections, “It seems very odd for Harvard to honor such a high profile popularizer of the irrational. I can’t square this in my mind, at a time when political and religious nonsense so imperil the rule of reason in this allegedly enlightened democracy and around the world.”

Indeed! What were the folks at Harvard thinking when they extended this invitation?

I am heartened, though, that the writers of the Time piece are both at Harvard, and were bold enough to speak out:

Erika Christakis, M.P.H, M.Ed., is an early childhood educator and Harvard College administrator. Nicholas A. Christakis, M.D., Ph.D., is a professor of medicine and sociology at Harvard University. The views expressed are solely their own.

Well, my Ph.D. isn’t worth a plugged nickel now. What if Chicago revokes my professorship?

If you want to see her Harvard speech, here it is. I can’t bear to watch.

Read 14 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Red Army traffic controller in central Berlin. 

via azathfeld

Jornada continental de apoyo a Vietnam, Cambodia y Laos 15 al 21 de Octubre. / Continental conference in support of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos 15 to 21 of October. 

girlgoesgrrr:

 

TODAY IN TURKEY

National Protest: Istanbul: 01-02JUNE2013

ACAB Worldwide

WAKE UP — SIGNAL BOOST

One month after the New York Times hosted the “Is Cursive Dead?” debate, North Carolina declared that cursive is very much alive. House Bill 146, nicknamed the “Back to Basics” bill, was given final approval by the state senate last Thursday and awaits Governor Pat McCrory’s signature. The bill requires public elementary schools to instruct students in cursive writing so that kids can “create readable documents through legible cursive handwriting by the end of fifth grade.”

The national Common Core Standards for English Language Arts do not include any mention of handwriting, so the 45 states who have adopted the standards are left to pass supplementary legislation to cover the exclusion. North Carolina is just one of at least ten states that have considered requiring or recommending that students be taught to write in cursive.

The “Back to Basics” act, effective this upcoming school year, will also mandate that students “memorize multiplication tables.” The national standards require that students know how to solve problems using multiplication and division by Grade 3 but offer no recommendation of how those operations are to be taught in schools. Critics of the bill have called it an example of legislative overreach in the classroom, but supporters suggest that it merely aims to ensure that schools are teaching the time-honored “basics” of elementary education.

While handwriting expert Kate Gladstone has argued that “mandating cursive to preserve handwriting resembles mandating stovepipe hats and crinolines to preserve the art of tailoring,” there is something to be said for the teaching of cursive. Students should be able to read the script of this country’s historical documents, and the fine-tuning of writing as a motor skill can never hurt, as many professions -- despite the triumph of the digital age -- still require legible, fast notation.

(from Legends of Skyfall #1: Monsters of the Marsh, 1985)

And that, kids, is why you should steer clear of Stevie Nicks.