I shall write several books by 2022

I went to Friday ("hospitality") night at the District 66 Toastmaster conference. The most interesting event was the talk by Virgie Binford, a local motivational speaker. She had us do some exercises. One was to tell our partner (we were paired into partners) what we expect to be doing in 5 years (2007) and 20 years (2022) from now. I said that in 5 years I would be retired and having another job concerning either mathematics instruction, web site hosting, or both, and that by 20 years (I will be pushing eighty then) I will have written several books. I already have all the speeches I have given in 15 years of Toastmasters and 25 years of Astronomical Society. I would write to tell the world my story and how I believe things can be better.

In another exercise she had us ask each other's birthdays. Mine is August 13; my partner's was August 8. But a pair of women in front of me turned out to have the same birthday! It was August 5, so we have four early August birthdays within seats of each other in the audience. In addition, both my partner and I were Division Governors in the same year. Coincidences? Yes, probably. All it takes is 23 people in the room for two to turn up with the same birthday - look it up, "birthday surprise" in Google. So what happened tonight was nothing out of the ordinary.

Cancel the World!!

Everybody's been cancelling things today. A Toastmaster meeting that I was to attend around lunchtime was cancelled because three people could not make it. A class on Front Page I was taking at night was cancelled because of an illness in the instructor's family. So I went to a Sky Watch at night instead, part of Chesterfield's summer Parks and Recreation Program. There I found out that two large families had cancelled their reservations to this watfch. That meant only two people came out to it. There were more astronomers there than telescopes, and more telescopes than patrons! It makes me wonder where all these people go to, that don't come to events that therefore have to be cancelled. If the entire world is going to be cancelled today, then at least let's reschedule it.

Inspirational Sayings

Today has been a day of inspirational sayings all over the place. I started the day with a few and I even heard a speaker give them out one at a time like a standup comic. The best was "If it ain't broke, break it! Got to get some sunshine in here." Some of the others I heard were:

You are what you think about all day.
There is never an end. For if there were, you would just add one and go one step farther.
Tarzan doesn't let go of the grapevine until he has another grapevine in his hand. (Bill Stewart)
on the other hand, If you are at the end of your rope, let go and fly! (a derivative of "Just add one" above, but also of Charlie's Law, which says that everything turns out right if you let it.)

It has also been a day of problems, with the Internet going down at work and traffic jams on my way home late at night.

The Beast in the Web

Twice now I have printed web pages and had the right sides chopped off at the end; they printed too wide. Someone told me that the standard printing width of a web page was 700 pixels. I thought for sure 640 was more likely since that number is part of a standard screen resolution (640x480). I did some testing and found out we were both wrong. The maximum number of pixels in a web page before it overflows on the right appears to be 666. If so, then someone had fun injecting The Beast of Revelation's number into HTML and the Web.

Committment

Today I went to a meeting of our local astronomy society, where I am the President. Tonight's talk was a tape recording of the talk to the astronomy society ten years ago, on 1992 May 11. The talk was about the building of our 7-inch refractor telescope that started around 1962 May; it was completed in 1963 October, or just in time for a regional astronomy meeting. It took a lot of weekends digging, bricklaying, and accurate positioning of materials to build this observatory, and it was a volunteer effort. Today the scope is ruined by the lights of an expanding city, especially those of a shopping center that was built right next to the observatory in the mid 1980's. In today's day of the instant sound bite and self-actualization, could the same project be accomplished today? Would people have the commitment? According to Strauss and Howe, (www.fourthturning.com), maybe not. It's a question of building our own large telescope or each of us go out and buy our own medium-sized scope and being satisfied with that.

Mother's Day (continued)

The Unitarian church service today called for us to bring in three flowers to the Mother's Day church service. We brought in a Japanese iris, a climatis, and a huge yellow iris that let itself be known to the world. Not everyone brought in flowers, however. The idea was to redistribute them out to us - not picking the one you brought in. We wound up with one tiny, red, red rose, about an inch wide. Somehow to me that one little rose tells more to us than the three original flowers put together.

Mother's day

Everything's good about Mother and apple pie? I found out recently that Mother's day celebrations
may make some people feel sad. For example, those people who could never have children,
especially women, who actually bear the child to the world. Should we discontinue Mother's (and
Father's) day for that reason?

Actually every holiday has its negative side. Valentine's day is hard for those who try to
find a significant partner and can't find one and so are single. Easter and Christmas
do not make non-Christians feel that happy. Memorial day is missed for those who have
no contact with those who have fought our nation's wars. And so forth.

But certainly we should honor those who begat us and brought us up. We need to consider
both sides.

Non-words

I find that blogging is a good place to announce things on my site, such as new non-words or
mathematics articles. So here are my two newest ones: gorm, meaning intelligence, and
to gotch, meaning to confound or surprise.