@loke In normal terms, v can never exceed c, so v2/c2 would always be a value between 0 and 1 (if v=c and that ratio is 1, delta T would dilate to infinity). if we apply the same logic to imaginary terms, one would presumably assume that v could never exceed ic. If v = ic, the denominator would become sqrt(2) and delta T would shrink to ~70% of delta T prime. I think we must assume that imagination cannot reduce apparent time more than that.

Large values of v indicate material presented very quickly or which is very boring. Careful empirical analysis has indicated that for large lectures, v is approximately 0.9c (where c is the speed of light). For departmental seminars is is ~0.75c and for conference presentations ~0.8c.

The length of a lecture according to your mind is dependent on the confusion-boringness factor, v. This represents the relative speed at which your brain can absorb the material versus the speed at which is presented, corrected by the level of boredom generated by the lecture style and material.

Why lectures seem to last forever?
An explanation based on the time dilation principle of Einstein's special theory or relativity (1905).

Note 1: Also applies to many other types of presentations.
Note 2: I originally came up with this idea 35 years ago, after one week as a freshman college student.

Because your knowledge is remaining relatively stationary while the lecture is shooting ahead astronomically, you view the lecture from a different frame of references than it actually occupies. Since the actual time (dT') is measured by the lecturer, the apparent length of time according to your mental reference frame (dT) dilates and becomes longer than the actual time. According to the relativity formula, dT = dT' / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2).

Based on this we can determine that the large 1 hour and 20 minute lecture with v = 0.9c, appears to last 3 hours and 4 minutes, the 50 minute seminar with v = 0.75c appears to last 1 hour and 16 minutes, and the 15 minute conference presentation with v = 0.8c appears to last 25 minutes.

Note that v could be an imaginary number in the imaginary case one actually find the material interesting, in which case time would shrink and the lecture would appear to end faster than it actually does.

@zarfeblong That is very interesting. Following Tokien, "Fantasy" as a marketing label was largely pushed by Lester Del Rey, who had a very narrow view of what should be considered under that umbrella (basically, stories that largely mimicked a lot of Tolkien's structure). The genre as we think of it obviously both predates and has survived (and spread) beyond his narrow viewpoint, but he is likely most responsible for the the return of the "fantasy" moniker as a marketing tool in the 70's.

Attention Academics: The Anthropic settlement includes many academic works. A book I edited is listed and eligible for a claim, as well as other books that I wrote chapters for (I'm not personally eligible for a claim on those, but the editors/publishers are). If you've ever written or edited a book, check to see if its part of the settlement and make a claim:
https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup

and meta-analytic rain cloud plots

rainforest plots

MetaWin 3.1.0 released today

Available at https://www.metawinsoft.com

Major new features are a number of additional data graphing options, including:

Population genetics of bedbugs shows that their population has tracked human expansion, with a major surge when humans started forming cities.

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2025.0061

Love songs in the sand: Researchers listen in to fiddler #crab courtship https://phys.org/news/2025-04-songs-sand-fiddler-crab-courtship.html

Constraints on percussive seismic signals in a noisy environment by European #FiddlerCrabs, Afruca tangeri https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/228/7/jeb249323/367607/Constraints-on-percussive-seismic-signals-in-a

"For fiddler #crabs, vibrational signals are a crucial part of their courtship routines... males with larger claws produced higher-energy seismic signals, with higher amplitude drumming spikes. This appears to prevent the male from being dishonest about their size"

Preparing for fall graduation, as one does

@zarfeblong My biggest issues with mastodon have been findability... because of the decentralization there is no effective way to search for topics or particular users who are not on the same instance. There are pros and cons of this, but it intensifies silo'ing, which is not always a good thing.

Bluesky is going to (or has) inherited many of the flaws of Twitter, but it offers an easy mechanism for finding specific people and topics that appears functionally impossible for mastodon.

Cool study showing that female fiddler crabs (at least in one species) rely on body color (not just claw color) to identify conspecific males.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2024.07.016

(Reminder) We're searching for an Assistant Professor (primarily) teaching position in
#Bioinformatics

https://vcu.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/2/home/requisition/6317?c=vcu

We're searching for an Assistant Professor (primarily) teaching position in #Bioinformatics

https://vcu.csod.com/ux/ats/careersite/2/home/requisition/6317?c=vcu

P.S.--For those wondering there are about 13,000 more fiddler crab observations on iNaturalist that I haven't reviewed yet, so in theory there should be about 4-5 more double handed males waiting for me to discover on the site.

Major caveats: (1) some of the observations are only of female crabs which would lead to overcounting the denominator; (2) many observations include multiple individuals which would lead to undercounting the denominator

Minor caveats: (3) in some photos you cannot see the claws and could miss a double-handed male; (4) we are assuming no photographer bias in capturing double-handed males; (5) we are assuming I haven't missed any when making IDs.