Ambiguous Alert
"Amber alerts" have become popular in this country to warn of missing children and teenagers - alerts posted on highway signs and other places. At least one commentator suggests that this could be overused; e.g., a missing person could turn out to be a runaway or just merely hiding somewhere in the house. But there is another problem as well. Amber is a color. I know it is a girl's name and that it is named after a specific case, but it still is a color. An amber light warns that the traffic light is about to turn red, for instance. That could cause confusion with the national alert system for terrorism, at http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland It has us wondering what a red alert is. People could say there is an amber alert when all that he means is that the country is under an amber or yellow "elevated" terrorism alert, which it is right now, and not a missing person alert. So amber is ambiguous. Another name is needed, such as "missing person alert".
The Tapes
The Al Qaeda ("the Base") tapes shown today are a big public relations defeat for Al Qaeda. In this age of mediahyperism, the showing of tapes showing that Al Qaeda personnel gas dogs to death is going to turn people against the organization. Many in the US and its allies will solidify even more their feelings of disgust for the organization, and I wouild expect setbacks among fundamentalist Muslims in the Mideast as well. Many angry Muslims who describe America and Israel as the Great Evil will now describe Al Qaeda as just as evil. Al Qaeda will lose members and funds, and the Mideast will turn more to the west. Well, these Base people did it to themselves.
A Journey through Blogrealm
Blogtrek
Blogtrek
2002/08/19
2002/08/18
Farm Sanctuary
We visited the Farm Sanctuary today. This place is a farm where mistreated farm animals, including cows, pigs, goats, sheep, turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, and rabbits were brought back to health and allowed to live their lives in peace. The place had no dogs, cats, or horses. It had a gift store where you can buy T-shirts, vegetarian recipe books, organic products of all kinds, and bumper stickers with such slogans as “use your own skin” and showing cattle on it. Is that a request to refuse the support of cruel treatment of cattle, or a call to go naked?
We can refuse to support the mistreatment of animals but habits are hard to break. We were brought up on hot dogs, hamburgers, eggs, and milk, and it is hard to break the habit, especially with the great quantity of restaurants that offer beef, veal, and so forth in this country. It will be along time before we treat animals humanely, and in the meantime there is a greater need – the mistreatment of humans, in prisons, Iraq, Palestine, and other places.
I-99
On my trip to Rochester, NY, I found something interesting in Pennsylvania: signs saying “Future I-99”. This is the highest number any major cross-country interstate highway can have. An I-100 would be a spur to an I-0, if one were to ever occur. It would connect Corning, NY with Williamsport, PA. Up to now US 15 connects these two places. The route once went through towns, winded around mountains, and was slow to traverse. In the last 20 years I have seen improvements radically change the road. Now interstate-like highways connect Williamsport with Covington. However they have a lot fo work to do before the road can be called I-99. There is a gas station that causes the interstate like highway to lower to 55mph. He would have to be put on a spur to the highway at an exit. There is a two-lane highway built around a dam in the 1970’s. Much of this seems too narrow so another high bridge would have to be built. But so far, they arfe ramming laines into the existing highway, and I heard that a rhubarb was caused in southern New York by the prospect of I-99 coming up through their area.
I-99 sounds sort of final. It reminds me of the year 1999, the last before the Third Millennium. Is I-99 the last of the major highways? Sure, more roads may be built, but will any be finished? I understand oil will run out by the end of the decade and the need for highways would become moot. I-99, the final highway. It sounds so final, like a highway to the end.
Baseball’s Third Strike
I am not interested much in sports. The only American football I like is that by my graduate school, Northwestern. I could give a darn about basketball, hockey, and especially auto racing. But baseball is something that I have been interested in since I was a child. I followed the Rochester Red Wings (St Louis Cardinals, then Baltimore Orioles farm team) regularly. I stopped my interest in professional baseball because my favorite teams did not win, but more importantly, because there were other things that interested me more.
Now I hear that baseball is about to have its third major walkout – when large numbers of games get cancelled. The winner of the 2002 World Series may be the same as the winner of 1994’s World Series. I do think some players and teams get far too much money, and the entire thing has become a game in which the fan is the loser. In any case, baseball has it all wrong – you don’t walk on a called third strike.
West Nile Hype
Terrorism, lying accountants, a lagging stock market. Now we have something else to worry about. West Nile Fever. This disease came to this country in 1999 and has been spreading. The media is bringing about all kinds of dire warnings about West Nile Fever – such as that there will be soon a thousand cases and that it will spread to all the states. But how much of a threat is this disease, really? I have heard from this very same media that 2 out of 3 people who pick up the virus show no symptoms. That means West Nile is a non-disease for the majority of us. The vast majority of the rest will suffer a flu-like illness. Only rarely will the dreaded encephalitis-type symptoms develop. If that’s the case, where are all the dire warnings about ordinary flu? That kills the same percentage of people. How about lightning, vehicle accidents, and falls? How about AIDS? These kill more than West Nile will ever kill, and yet we don’t hear media clangor about them. This whole thing about West Nile is a media creation. Be careful, of course, but don’t make radical changes in your lifestyle simply because of West Nile, for there is a far more serious syndrome going around – Mediahypitis.
Snakeheads
Now they are going to kill all the fish in our pond to get rid of a few evil snakeheads. They are going to drain the pond. Guess what? Ordinary fish will die because they don’t have anything to breathe. But snakeheads will simply walk to the next body of water – perhaps the Potomac. And are we about to destroy the entire world just to catch a few evil snakeheads such as Saddam?
We visited the Farm Sanctuary today. This place is a farm where mistreated farm animals, including cows, pigs, goats, sheep, turkeys, geese, ducks, chickens, and rabbits were brought back to health and allowed to live their lives in peace. The place had no dogs, cats, or horses. It had a gift store where you can buy T-shirts, vegetarian recipe books, organic products of all kinds, and bumper stickers with such slogans as “use your own skin” and showing cattle on it. Is that a request to refuse the support of cruel treatment of cattle, or a call to go naked?
We can refuse to support the mistreatment of animals but habits are hard to break. We were brought up on hot dogs, hamburgers, eggs, and milk, and it is hard to break the habit, especially with the great quantity of restaurants that offer beef, veal, and so forth in this country. It will be along time before we treat animals humanely, and in the meantime there is a greater need – the mistreatment of humans, in prisons, Iraq, Palestine, and other places.
I-99
On my trip to Rochester, NY, I found something interesting in Pennsylvania: signs saying “Future I-99”. This is the highest number any major cross-country interstate highway can have. An I-100 would be a spur to an I-0, if one were to ever occur. It would connect Corning, NY with Williamsport, PA. Up to now US 15 connects these two places. The route once went through towns, winded around mountains, and was slow to traverse. In the last 20 years I have seen improvements radically change the road. Now interstate-like highways connect Williamsport with Covington. However they have a lot fo work to do before the road can be called I-99. There is a gas station that causes the interstate like highway to lower to 55mph. He would have to be put on a spur to the highway at an exit. There is a two-lane highway built around a dam in the 1970’s. Much of this seems too narrow so another high bridge would have to be built. But so far, they arfe ramming laines into the existing highway, and I heard that a rhubarb was caused in southern New York by the prospect of I-99 coming up through their area.
I-99 sounds sort of final. It reminds me of the year 1999, the last before the Third Millennium. Is I-99 the last of the major highways? Sure, more roads may be built, but will any be finished? I understand oil will run out by the end of the decade and the need for highways would become moot. I-99, the final highway. It sounds so final, like a highway to the end.
Baseball’s Third Strike
I am not interested much in sports. The only American football I like is that by my graduate school, Northwestern. I could give a darn about basketball, hockey, and especially auto racing. But baseball is something that I have been interested in since I was a child. I followed the Rochester Red Wings (St Louis Cardinals, then Baltimore Orioles farm team) regularly. I stopped my interest in professional baseball because my favorite teams did not win, but more importantly, because there were other things that interested me more.
Now I hear that baseball is about to have its third major walkout – when large numbers of games get cancelled. The winner of the 2002 World Series may be the same as the winner of 1994’s World Series. I do think some players and teams get far too much money, and the entire thing has become a game in which the fan is the loser. In any case, baseball has it all wrong – you don’t walk on a called third strike.
West Nile Hype
Terrorism, lying accountants, a lagging stock market. Now we have something else to worry about. West Nile Fever. This disease came to this country in 1999 and has been spreading. The media is bringing about all kinds of dire warnings about West Nile Fever – such as that there will be soon a thousand cases and that it will spread to all the states. But how much of a threat is this disease, really? I have heard from this very same media that 2 out of 3 people who pick up the virus show no symptoms. That means West Nile is a non-disease for the majority of us. The vast majority of the rest will suffer a flu-like illness. Only rarely will the dreaded encephalitis-type symptoms develop. If that’s the case, where are all the dire warnings about ordinary flu? That kills the same percentage of people. How about lightning, vehicle accidents, and falls? How about AIDS? These kill more than West Nile will ever kill, and yet we don’t hear media clangor about them. This whole thing about West Nile is a media creation. Be careful, of course, but don’t make radical changes in your lifestyle simply because of West Nile, for there is a far more serious syndrome going around – Mediahypitis.
Snakeheads
Now they are going to kill all the fish in our pond to get rid of a few evil snakeheads. They are going to drain the pond. Guess what? Ordinary fish will die because they don’t have anything to breathe. But snakeheads will simply walk to the next body of water – perhaps the Potomac. And are we about to destroy the entire world just to catch a few evil snakeheads such as Saddam?
2002/08/15
Out of range
Numbers are getting out of their range. That is, numbers are wandering into the next higher range. The ranges are defined on my Hamlet page. What numbers not getting out of range means is that budgets can be billions of dollars but not googols. Here are some examples of why numbers don't get out of their ranges, one for each range boundary:
1. A committee of 1,500 can't get the job done.
2. If you sue for $30 trillion, you will never collect.
3. A googol or more years is preposterous - that's more years than there are elementary particles.
4. Disk drives are getting too big - the numbers of their possible states are inconceivable.
5. Logicians try too hard to define huge ordinal numbers and hence finite numbers. They can never exceed W, defined as the largest number that we will ever be able to define (notation due to Rudy Rucker).
Numbers are getting out of their range. That is, numbers are wandering into the next higher range. The ranges are defined on my Hamlet page. What numbers not getting out of range means is that budgets can be billions of dollars but not googols. Here are some examples of why numbers don't get out of their ranges, one for each range boundary:
1. A committee of 1,500 can't get the job done.
2. If you sue for $30 trillion, you will never collect.
3. A googol or more years is preposterous - that's more years than there are elementary particles.
4. Disk drives are getting too big - the numbers of their possible states are inconceivable.
5. Logicians try too hard to define huge ordinal numbers and hence finite numbers. They can never exceed W, defined as the largest number that we will ever be able to define (notation due to Rudy Rucker).
Recently, however, numbers are getting out of their range. I mentioned earlier that my home disk drive should have a literary number of possible values, as the sequence of characters can be or could be a literary work. But my current disk drive is 80GB, putting the total number of configurations in the inconceivable range instead. Now I hear that 9/11 families are suing rich Saudi families for $1 trillion. This is 100 trillion pennies and so comes close to being a scientific (a quadrillion or above) number instead of a statistical number (between a thousand and a quadrillion). Can they ever get that much?
There's a good reason why in our common life we almost never have numbers much greater than one quadrillion: 1,000,000,000,000,000. The total worth of the world is probably about $10-50 trillion, or in the early quadrillions of pennies. Objects that we meet in our lives, such as cars, buildings, hula hoops, gold necklaces, space shuttles and so forth, have to have a net worth less than that of the entire world, and to measure worth, we need at least a penny, which is coming close to being worthless nowadays. The worth of all these objects must therefore be less than a quadrillion of units we can perceive. This is why we see trillion a lot in our everyday lives, but not a quadrillion.
Numbers rarely get out of their ranges. I will never be able to use all of my disk drive, and the 9/11 families will never be able to collect all that money.
PRIMES is in P
That is grammatically correct. The problem called PRIMES is that of asking of a number whether it is a prime number or not; that is, whether it is divisible only by itself and 1. If I say 2773 = 47 x 59, you can check it out by multiplying those two numbers. To see whether 2773 is prime or not, we need to check all the numbers below 2773 to see if they divide 2773. There are tricks, such as only checking up to the square root of 2773, and only checking prime or odd numbers, but it still is a tedious task for large numbers. Fortunately, there is Fermat's little theorem which states that if you raise, say, 3 to the 2542 power and keep only the remainder upon division by 2543, then if 2543 is prime, you will get 1. But many composite numbers such as 561 will give 1 as well, so this is not quite a good test for primality. But if you bang around for numbers and raise them to the one-less power and get 1 every time, that is evidence, but not conclusive, that the number is prime. It was an open question as to whether it was easy to prove it is prime.
I heard in the news recently that the problem was proven to be easy; that is, "in P". This means the time it takes to solve it is proportional to some power or polynomial on the number of digits in the number. Checking each divisor out is exponentially complicated - the time it takes explodes exponentially with the number of digits in the number. The Indian mathematicians Manindra Aginwal, Nitin Saxena, and Neeraj Kayal found a much easier way of doing it, and have printed it in a paper that is available by going to http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/news/primality.html. You apply their algorithm to a number p, and in a fairly short time the computer says that it is either prime or composite. If it says it is prime, that settles it. If it says it is composite, then you have absolutely no idea of what the factors are. That is a much harder problem - so hard that secret codes and encryption are based on it.
So one by one these problems are being settled. The big one, that of P = NP, is still a long way from being solved. Will I see it in my lifetime?
That is grammatically correct. The problem called PRIMES is that of asking of a number whether it is a prime number or not; that is, whether it is divisible only by itself and 1. If I say 2773 = 47 x 59, you can check it out by multiplying those two numbers. To see whether 2773 is prime or not, we need to check all the numbers below 2773 to see if they divide 2773. There are tricks, such as only checking up to the square root of 2773, and only checking prime or odd numbers, but it still is a tedious task for large numbers. Fortunately, there is Fermat's little theorem which states that if you raise, say, 3 to the 2542 power and keep only the remainder upon division by 2543, then if 2543 is prime, you will get 1. But many composite numbers such as 561 will give 1 as well, so this is not quite a good test for primality. But if you bang around for numbers and raise them to the one-less power and get 1 every time, that is evidence, but not conclusive, that the number is prime. It was an open question as to whether it was easy to prove it is prime.
I heard in the news recently that the problem was proven to be easy; that is, "in P". This means the time it takes to solve it is proportional to some power or polynomial on the number of digits in the number. Checking each divisor out is exponentially complicated - the time it takes explodes exponentially with the number of digits in the number. The Indian mathematicians Manindra Aginwal, Nitin Saxena, and Neeraj Kayal found a much easier way of doing it, and have printed it in a paper that is available by going to http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/news/primality.html. You apply their algorithm to a number p, and in a fairly short time the computer says that it is either prime or composite. If it says it is prime, that settles it. If it says it is composite, then you have absolutely no idea of what the factors are. That is a much harder problem - so hard that secret codes and encryption are based on it.
So one by one these problems are being settled. The big one, that of P = NP, is still a long way from being solved. Will I see it in my lifetime?
2002/08/14
Imaginique
I went to a show at Busch Gardens last night to celebrate my birthday. We chose a weekday to do it because we figured the crowds would be less. But when we got there there were long lines waiting to get in. The gates opened up 30 minutes before the start time of 8:30 pm to an enormous outdoor theater. There was room for everyone. As far as the acts themselves - it was all in fantastic color and showed some differences from other events I have been to, especially concerts and circuses. Clowns called on audience members to mimic them. Then the show started, featuring a female singer and driving music, and three women high on trapezes. Then came these tube creatures who lead to two men setting on a plank on a ball. Then came this flying shirtless man using a white dangling cloth as a swing, followed by the "work of three" - three strong looking shirtless men doing all kinds of acrobatics including standing on each other in a 3-tower. Despite the crowds, we had no trouble getting home. The show was presented on one of these balmy summer nights. It was somewhat warm, but occasionally a breeze would come. It was a really nice night and a memorable one - the night we did something unusual and traveled an hour to see an imaginative show - Imaginique. Hope to see more of this in the theme parks in the future.
I went to a show at Busch Gardens last night to celebrate my birthday. We chose a weekday to do it because we figured the crowds would be less. But when we got there there were long lines waiting to get in. The gates opened up 30 minutes before the start time of 8:30 pm to an enormous outdoor theater. There was room for everyone. As far as the acts themselves - it was all in fantastic color and showed some differences from other events I have been to, especially concerts and circuses. Clowns called on audience members to mimic them. Then the show started, featuring a female singer and driving music, and three women high on trapezes. Then came these tube creatures who lead to two men setting on a plank on a ball. Then came this flying shirtless man using a white dangling cloth as a swing, followed by the "work of three" - three strong looking shirtless men doing all kinds of acrobatics including standing on each other in a 3-tower. Despite the crowds, we had no trouble getting home. The show was presented on one of these balmy summer nights. It was somewhat warm, but occasionally a breeze would come. It was a really nice night and a memorable one - the night we did something unusual and traveled an hour to see an imaginative show - Imaginique. Hope to see more of this in the theme parks in the future.
2002/08/11
Sports Society
We live in a sports society. I found this in the newspaper this morning. It was an editorial describing a hypothetical sale of baseball caps. These caps have pictures of birds on them with the name of the bird below it; nothing else. The birds on these caps are oriole, blue jay, goldfinch, and cardinal. The article commented that the goldfinch hat will sell much less than the other three, because it is not the name of a major league baseball team. That says something about our society. We are too hung up on sports. When we talk about Indians (either from India or American), there is a good chance we mean the ones from Cleveland. Mariners are not on ships but are on ballfields, quite often in Seattle. Reds are not communists or lefties; they are from Cincinnati. The Land of the Brave is Atlanta, Georgia. Vikings came from Minnesota, not Scandanavia. The only place which has patriots in this country is New England. And where does jazz come from? Certainly not from New Orleans. From Utah! Now, listen to all that Utah jazz. Cool, man.
It's not just baseball and football. This is a country where the death of Dale Earnhardt is more important than the death of Richard Nixon. It's all over the place. Maybe this is just a way of getting levity in a world full of bad news. But I rather either watch the news or go out running or swimming then watch sports on television. And maybe you will see me wearing a goldfinch hat some day.
We live in a sports society. I found this in the newspaper this morning. It was an editorial describing a hypothetical sale of baseball caps. These caps have pictures of birds on them with the name of the bird below it; nothing else. The birds on these caps are oriole, blue jay, goldfinch, and cardinal. The article commented that the goldfinch hat will sell much less than the other three, because it is not the name of a major league baseball team. That says something about our society. We are too hung up on sports. When we talk about Indians (either from India or American), there is a good chance we mean the ones from Cleveland. Mariners are not on ships but are on ballfields, quite often in Seattle. Reds are not communists or lefties; they are from Cincinnati. The Land of the Brave is Atlanta, Georgia. Vikings came from Minnesota, not Scandanavia. The only place which has patriots in this country is New England. And where does jazz come from? Certainly not from New Orleans. From Utah! Now, listen to all that Utah jazz. Cool, man.
It's not just baseball and football. This is a country where the death of Dale Earnhardt is more important than the death of Richard Nixon. It's all over the place. Maybe this is just a way of getting levity in a world full of bad news. But I rather either watch the news or go out running or swimming then watch sports on television. And maybe you will see me wearing a goldfinch hat some day.
2002/08/10
People and Mathematics
I did an interesting summary of my activities. I do them in a computer program that inputs events in a code in an ASCII document and produces a calendar showing me the activities, with each day split into Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. I was able to input the document into Access, then Excel, where I made some pie charts. They were revealing. My occupation takes much of my time, about 168 days a year. In the rest, Toastmasters and my Unitarian Universalist congregation each come next with about a month of time each. Astronomy takes only half as much, and SUUSI half of that; that is only one week out of the year. Mathematics only takes two days - a convention every half-year. I broke out my SUUSI involvement and found that, compared to non-SUUSI times, I spend much more time on nature trips, especially to water, dancing, writing and personal growth, and some music. I also spend time on mathematics and astronomy, much of it my own workshops.
The problem is that if I want to be a mathematical columnist, writing and mathematics needs to dominate my time. But devoting time to math takes it away from people, because people are not too keen on mathematics. My activities have been drawn to people; hence SUUSI, UU congregation, and Toastmasters. It seems like my biggest problem when I retire is finding things to do during that time. It will probably have something to do with mathematics, be it teaching or applying it to something. But how to prepare? In any case I may want to go out into nature, dance, and write more than I do now.
I did an interesting summary of my activities. I do them in a computer program that inputs events in a code in an ASCII document and produces a calendar showing me the activities, with each day split into Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. I was able to input the document into Access, then Excel, where I made some pie charts. They were revealing. My occupation takes much of my time, about 168 days a year. In the rest, Toastmasters and my Unitarian Universalist congregation each come next with about a month of time each. Astronomy takes only half as much, and SUUSI half of that; that is only one week out of the year. Mathematics only takes two days - a convention every half-year. I broke out my SUUSI involvement and found that, compared to non-SUUSI times, I spend much more time on nature trips, especially to water, dancing, writing and personal growth, and some music. I also spend time on mathematics and astronomy, much of it my own workshops.
The problem is that if I want to be a mathematical columnist, writing and mathematics needs to dominate my time. But devoting time to math takes it away from people, because people are not too keen on mathematics. My activities have been drawn to people; hence SUUSI, UU congregation, and Toastmasters. It seems like my biggest problem when I retire is finding things to do during that time. It will probably have something to do with mathematics, be it teaching or applying it to something. But how to prepare? In any case I may want to go out into nature, dance, and write more than I do now.
2002/08/05
Letter to Jesus
Today I heard of a case in Ohio where students were asked to send a letter to someone who had a big influence in their lives. One student wrote his to Jesus. His teacher told him that he could not do that because Jesus did not exist. The student replied that he existed for him, and his mother sued the school for $15 million. Ouch. People like to sue all over the place these days. I don't think the student or his mother have a case. Part of the assignment was to get a written reply, and it seemed unlikely in his case. Besides, if I was in that class, hearing that a student was writing to Jesus, I could have written to Santa Claus, or to Superman, or to Mickey Mouse, telling him how much I loved his TV show. Of course some people really think that he exists now; essentially these people would be writing to themselves, in my opinion, for only in their minds does he exist, just like Santa Claus exists in my mind. The assignment was to write a letter to a live person and get a reply, and this the student did not do. Give the student, and his mother, an F.
Today I heard of a case in Ohio where students were asked to send a letter to someone who had a big influence in their lives. One student wrote his to Jesus. His teacher told him that he could not do that because Jesus did not exist. The student replied that he existed for him, and his mother sued the school for $15 million. Ouch. People like to sue all over the place these days. I don't think the student or his mother have a case. Part of the assignment was to get a written reply, and it seemed unlikely in his case. Besides, if I was in that class, hearing that a student was writing to Jesus, I could have written to Santa Claus, or to Superman, or to Mickey Mouse, telling him how much I loved his TV show. Of course some people really think that he exists now; essentially these people would be writing to themselves, in my opinion, for only in their minds does he exist, just like Santa Claus exists in my mind. The assignment was to write a letter to a live person and get a reply, and this the student did not do. Give the student, and his mother, an F.
2002/08/04
Praise be to Gourd
This morning at my church's Sunday service, I was given a real treat. It was not a service to God, but rather to Gourd. Instead of the usual Sunday service with sermon, hymns, and readings, the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra performed for our service. This orchestra gave us uplifting music, the type that we want to hear to uplift us in a Sunday service. The music was not only created by this orchestra, it was grown out of the soil from which all of us eventually came. The orchestra grows its own gourds. This group would be a hit at SUUSI, and at many other places as well. For a good Sunday service or an entertaining evening, consider going to a concert from this group. I bought their CDs and will listen to it on my way to work. It's a great way to start the week, for as the group says, "In Gourd We Trust".
This morning at my church's Sunday service, I was given a real treat. It was not a service to God, but rather to Gourd. Instead of the usual Sunday service with sermon, hymns, and readings, the Richmond Indigenous Gourd Orchestra performed for our service. This orchestra gave us uplifting music, the type that we want to hear to uplift us in a Sunday service. The music was not only created by this orchestra, it was grown out of the soil from which all of us eventually came. The orchestra grows its own gourds. This group would be a hit at SUUSI, and at many other places as well. For a good Sunday service or an entertaining evening, consider going to a concert from this group. I bought their CDs and will listen to it on my way to work. It's a great way to start the week, for as the group says, "In Gourd We Trust".
2002/08/03
An old friend
My wife's friend B. from her workplace called recently asking for her. She was working, so B. talked to me about a computer problem she was having, concerning a reply that she had gotten from a singer whom she had emailed recently. I solved her problem, but I also found out that the web site of this singer is http://www.everon.50megs.com. I looked up that web site and ran into an old friend, Dan Fogelberg.
I remember that his song "Nether Lands" was one of those used for something called "Free Form Dance" at my Unitarian church back in the early 1980's. We would meet at the church and clear the furniture out of some of the religious education classroom areas (it was an open-court type setting). We would play some songs and then dance to them as we see fit. There were variations, such as dancing around in circles around someone or having one person freeze and another dance around the frozen person. I found the whole thing enjoyable and "Nether Lands" was used frequently as the song we danced to. It was a good choice, with dramatic melody and dynamics changes. I liked it so much that I bought Dan Fogelberg's album. Sadly, the free form dancing went away by the mid 1980's and I have never seen it again.
Tonight I got out my Daniel Fogelberg record and played it. Yes, record. It was a 33 1/3 rpm vinyl LP disk. I got out our 29-year-old phonograph and hooked some boombox speakers to it and played it. I remembered quite well the strains of that old tune. It brought back the days of the free form dance. I was pleased to find out that he is still recording and performing, and that he is a favorite of a friend of ours.
Maybe one of these days free form dance will return to my UU congregation. In the meantime I will play my phonograph and remember.
My wife's friend B. from her workplace called recently asking for her. She was working, so B. talked to me about a computer problem she was having, concerning a reply that she had gotten from a singer whom she had emailed recently. I solved her problem, but I also found out that the web site of this singer is http://www.everon.50megs.com. I looked up that web site and ran into an old friend, Dan Fogelberg.
I remember that his song "Nether Lands" was one of those used for something called "Free Form Dance" at my Unitarian church back in the early 1980's. We would meet at the church and clear the furniture out of some of the religious education classroom areas (it was an open-court type setting). We would play some songs and then dance to them as we see fit. There were variations, such as dancing around in circles around someone or having one person freeze and another dance around the frozen person. I found the whole thing enjoyable and "Nether Lands" was used frequently as the song we danced to. It was a good choice, with dramatic melody and dynamics changes. I liked it so much that I bought Dan Fogelberg's album. Sadly, the free form dancing went away by the mid 1980's and I have never seen it again.
Tonight I got out my Daniel Fogelberg record and played it. Yes, record. It was a 33 1/3 rpm vinyl LP disk. I got out our 29-year-old phonograph and hooked some boombox speakers to it and played it. I remembered quite well the strains of that old tune. It brought back the days of the free form dance. I was pleased to find out that he is still recording and performing, and that he is a favorite of a friend of ours.
Maybe one of these days free form dance will return to my UU congregation. In the meantime I will play my phonograph and remember.
2002/08/02
Storm
This area of the country is affected by a prolonged drought. The forecast was for more of the same: high in the mid 90s, low in the 70s, and a 20 percent chance of an isolated thunderstorm. Well we got our 20 percent today. Boy did we ever. It showed up as a little blip to the northeast of here, but then I heard the thunder. I went outside and saw several vivid strokes of lightning in a row towards the northeast. I went in, wondering how big this was going to be. The blip on the radar showed signs of growing as well as heading to the southwest, a direction that storms don't often take in this neck of the woods. But soon I heard the thunder get louder until it BAMmed!!! almost after the brilliant flash. Then it poured. At first slowly, but then it started filling up the rain gauge until it was up to an inch. Several power blips occurred; I hoped that we were not going to have an outage with the power company on strike. Then the sky started falling. Clack, clack, clack, instead of the usual pitter patter. It was pea-sized hail. I was wondering if it was going to get any bigger. But it didn't. After a while the storm abated, came back again, and then went away. The weatherman said it was heading down I-85, but the next radar I saw of it, it was gone! Poof! Not a speck on radar.
The storm appeared, grew, boomed, poured, flashed and hailed, then it went away without a trace. Like something that just happened in the day. An ephemeral flame. A quantum particle. A brief thought in the mind that fleets the next time one thinks. And although we got an inch and a quarter and the torrent hit the reservoir, most areas went dry. And so the drought continues, and we need rain badly…
This area of the country is affected by a prolonged drought. The forecast was for more of the same: high in the mid 90s, low in the 70s, and a 20 percent chance of an isolated thunderstorm. Well we got our 20 percent today. Boy did we ever. It showed up as a little blip to the northeast of here, but then I heard the thunder. I went outside and saw several vivid strokes of lightning in a row towards the northeast. I went in, wondering how big this was going to be. The blip on the radar showed signs of growing as well as heading to the southwest, a direction that storms don't often take in this neck of the woods. But soon I heard the thunder get louder until it BAMmed!!! almost after the brilliant flash. Then it poured. At first slowly, but then it started filling up the rain gauge until it was up to an inch. Several power blips occurred; I hoped that we were not going to have an outage with the power company on strike. Then the sky started falling. Clack, clack, clack, instead of the usual pitter patter. It was pea-sized hail. I was wondering if it was going to get any bigger. But it didn't. After a while the storm abated, came back again, and then went away. The weatherman said it was heading down I-85, but the next radar I saw of it, it was gone! Poof! Not a speck on radar.
The storm appeared, grew, boomed, poured, flashed and hailed, then it went away without a trace. Like something that just happened in the day. An ephemeral flame. A quantum particle. A brief thought in the mind that fleets the next time one thinks. And although we got an inch and a quarter and the torrent hit the reservoir, most areas went dry. And so the drought continues, and we need rain badly…
2002/08/01
Winning speech contests
I attended a Toastmaster meeting recently in which two speakers talked about winning speech contests. One speaker gave a talk on how to evaluate another speaker. This does not seem to be about contests, except that one of the upcoming contests is about evaluation. He used a football analogy which did not always fit. The other one spoke about humorous speech contests; his humorous remarks kept our attention on him. He did say we should avoid "blue humor"; it will never win. But it did win one year at a regional conference where a speaker talked about her passionate desire for a candy bar. He said the speech had no purpose or message. To me it did - it illustrated how the flaws in our society's sexual ethics lead some to weird pursuits. He said a speech about bathroom functions wasn't funny. But it drove the audience to stitches. But he was right - the contestant did not win. I would not have selected that one as the winner either. All this shows we can't make hard and fast conclusions about things. We can't categorically say that blue speeches are inappropriate or will not win, or that they will win. It depends on the audience, which brings up an important speaker's maxim: know your audience.
I attended a Toastmaster meeting recently in which two speakers talked about winning speech contests. One speaker gave a talk on how to evaluate another speaker. This does not seem to be about contests, except that one of the upcoming contests is about evaluation. He used a football analogy which did not always fit. The other one spoke about humorous speech contests; his humorous remarks kept our attention on him. He did say we should avoid "blue humor"; it will never win. But it did win one year at a regional conference where a speaker talked about her passionate desire for a candy bar. He said the speech had no purpose or message. To me it did - it illustrated how the flaws in our society's sexual ethics lead some to weird pursuits. He said a speech about bathroom functions wasn't funny. But it drove the audience to stitches. But he was right - the contestant did not win. I would not have selected that one as the winner either. All this shows we can't make hard and fast conclusions about things. We can't categorically say that blue speeches are inappropriate or will not win, or that they will win. It depends on the audience, which brings up an important speaker's maxim: know your audience.
2002/07/30
Waking Up
One of the things I did at SUUSI was to take a song-writing workshop from Peter Mayer. He played in concert at SUUSI, but I never got to see him because I preferred to contra-dance. But I saw him at the workshop. He gave us the fundamentals of song-writing, inlucing rhyming, developing ideas, and developing music for the ideas. I came up with two ideas, namely a dance in a storm and a ballad about John Walker. Unfortunately, both of these ideas have already appeared in song.
Today I played one of his CDs and got attracted to "Dancing Song", in which he and his partner dance for their lives, and "Waking Up", about getting away from some of the unnecessary stuff we do in our lives. The last one would make a good theme song for next year's SUUSI, with a theme of "Simple Gifts".
One of the things I did at SUUSI was to take a song-writing workshop from Peter Mayer. He played in concert at SUUSI, but I never got to see him because I preferred to contra-dance. But I saw him at the workshop. He gave us the fundamentals of song-writing, inlucing rhyming, developing ideas, and developing music for the ideas. I came up with two ideas, namely a dance in a storm and a ballad about John Walker. Unfortunately, both of these ideas have already appeared in song.
Today I played one of his CDs and got attracted to "Dancing Song", in which he and his partner dance for their lives, and "Waking Up", about getting away from some of the unnecessary stuff we do in our lives. The last one would make a good theme song for next year's SUUSI, with a theme of "Simple Gifts".
2002/07/29
Press Button to Destroy Evil Empire
About 25 years ago I read a Mad magazine parody of the movie Star Wars. It showed the final scene when Jedi fighters swooped down to the center of the Death Star with the mission of destroying it from inside. In the Mad version there is a button at the center of the Star saying "press button to destroy evil empire". I also see this gimmick used in a number of other places. For example, the ending of Independence Day shows a plane going up into the center of the invader ship seemingly pressing the button that destroys the evil empire. I see some humor in this; it is that the fearsome bad guys have seemingly purposefully made it easy for the good guys to destroy them. It dehumanizes the enemy. Just press the button and see them blow up. It makes it seem easy. Some of our leaders may think it is easy to win a war simply by pressing the right button. Further, it is a metaphor for some of the problems we encounter in our lives. There often is no button you can press that will solve your problem. No button that can bring you your ideal mate, no button that can give you an A on an exam, no button to increase the worth of your stock portfolio, and no button to eliminate poverty and its causes. Just press the button and it will destroy your evil empire. Just like I press a button up in the upper right corner of this form to publish this blog. Self-destruct, Evil Empire!
About 25 years ago I read a Mad magazine parody of the movie Star Wars. It showed the final scene when Jedi fighters swooped down to the center of the Death Star with the mission of destroying it from inside. In the Mad version there is a button at the center of the Star saying "press button to destroy evil empire". I also see this gimmick used in a number of other places. For example, the ending of Independence Day shows a plane going up into the center of the invader ship seemingly pressing the button that destroys the evil empire. I see some humor in this; it is that the fearsome bad guys have seemingly purposefully made it easy for the good guys to destroy them. It dehumanizes the enemy. Just press the button and see them blow up. It makes it seem easy. Some of our leaders may think it is easy to win a war simply by pressing the right button. Further, it is a metaphor for some of the problems we encounter in our lives. There often is no button you can press that will solve your problem. No button that can bring you your ideal mate, no button that can give you an A on an exam, no button to increase the worth of your stock portfolio, and no button to eliminate poverty and its causes. Just press the button and it will destroy your evil empire. Just like I press a button up in the upper right corner of this form to publish this blog. Self-destruct, Evil Empire!
2002/07/28
Back to real life
I am back from SUUSI. I came up with two ideas for songs, talked with a Barney doll, and contradanced and squaredanced at night. I gave my own two workshops; they were well-received. I went on two great nature hikes, to Dismal Falls and upper Cascades, both in the Blue Ridge. Some of the ideas I got at SUUSI: "I love you with all my gut."; "You can't lean on yourself."; "If you fight for what you believe, you could get hurt." The last night was one of the wildest in my life, and after SUUSI I visited the Bedford WW II memorial to the backdrop of a threatening thunderstorm, BOOM!! - made it really dramatic.
I am back from SUUSI. I came up with two ideas for songs, talked with a Barney doll, and contradanced and squaredanced at night. I gave my own two workshops; they were well-received. I went on two great nature hikes, to Dismal Falls and upper Cascades, both in the Blue Ridge. Some of the ideas I got at SUUSI: "I love you with all my gut."; "You can't lean on yourself."; "If you fight for what you believe, you could get hurt." The last night was one of the wildest in my life, and after SUUSI I visited the Bedford WW II memorial to the backdrop of a threatening thunderstorm, BOOM!! - made it really dramatic.
2002/07/24
Blog from SUUSI
Here I am at SUUSI. I need to come up with ideas for a song in a workshop that I am taking. I gave my stories of the sky workshop yesterday. Today is the halfway point of SUUSI, and am going on a nature hike today. A high point was listening to Relative Viewpoint, the group who sings a different Pledge. I met a woman who has ahd misexperiences like I have had, including of course Planeattack (9/11). Basically I am here to recenter my life, as are many other people here in Blacksburg.
Here I am at SUUSI. I need to come up with ideas for a song in a workshop that I am taking. I gave my stories of the sky workshop yesterday. Today is the halfway point of SUUSI, and am going on a nature hike today. A high point was listening to Relative Viewpoint, the group who sings a different Pledge. I met a woman who has ahd misexperiences like I have had, including of course Planeattack (9/11). Basically I am here to recenter my life, as are many other people here in Blacksburg.
2002/07/19
Moon in Clouds
Tonight I went to a star presentation near the center of my home city where we show the public the stars. It was a muggy night with occasional storms, and I could see flashes in the distance from a distant thunderstorm. The only good objects out tonight were the Moon and Venus. So I showed the public both of these objects. But what intrigued me the most was the pattern of clouds in front of the moon. At times the Moon would light the back clouds, while being covered by a front cloud. That looked like a real glory. In fact, it looked very much like some astronomical objects, such as the Lagoon Nebula. I will remember this night as the night of the Moonglow.
Tonight I went to a star presentation near the center of my home city where we show the public the stars. It was a muggy night with occasional storms, and I could see flashes in the distance from a distant thunderstorm. The only good objects out tonight were the Moon and Venus. So I showed the public both of these objects. But what intrigued me the most was the pattern of clouds in front of the moon. At times the Moon would light the back clouds, while being covered by a front cloud. That looked like a real glory. In fact, it looked very much like some astronomical objects, such as the Lagoon Nebula. I will remember this night as the night of the Moonglow.
2002/07/17
Send the robots (or rabbits) after them!
Today an unusual thing happened when I tried to call home at lunchtime from work. I got a message saying that the number I called had Call Intercept and that I had to say my name after the beep. Then my wife at home had to press a number to get me. This is my Call Intercept service, which I got to block calls that come from things like "unavailable" and "private". The vast majority of these are telemarketers and junk callers, which is the reason I got the service.
What happened is my workplace changed its phone system so instead of coming up with a trunk number when I call home, it comes up "unavailable". That set off my Call Intercept. Why my workplace would want to identify or confound itself with telemarketers beats me. If I did not have Call Intercept, the call would come up as "unavailable" and the answerer at home would assume it was a telemarketer and not answer. Fortunately, the service comes with a password. I enter it and instead I come up as "priority caller". It still blocks telemarketers, so I am going to keep it.
I have a similar problem with web pages. When I access a web page, sometimes I get pop-up windows. So I obtain Analog-X's Pow! and Pow! those windows out of existence. However, I find that sometimes sites I want to see get Powed too so I have to turn it off. Email is an eternal problem, with its flood of spam. So I get a robot to handle that. That robot is the Rules Wizard of Outlook. I tell Outlook, for example, to delete messages whose subject contains "million", "anyone", "viagra", "credit", and so forth; I did an analysis which shows these words appear much more frequently in the subject of spam than in the subject of legitimate mail. Once in a while legitimate mail gets hit by the Wizard, so I go into "Deleted Items" and rescue those messages.
A woman who I met tonight, who I shall call L, came up with the best solution of all. Send a virtual rabbit after the spam, to nibble on the spam and gobble it up before it hits my mailbox.
Today an unusual thing happened when I tried to call home at lunchtime from work. I got a message saying that the number I called had Call Intercept and that I had to say my name after the beep. Then my wife at home had to press a number to get me. This is my Call Intercept service, which I got to block calls that come from things like "unavailable" and "private". The vast majority of these are telemarketers and junk callers, which is the reason I got the service.
What happened is my workplace changed its phone system so instead of coming up with a trunk number when I call home, it comes up "unavailable". That set off my Call Intercept. Why my workplace would want to identify or confound itself with telemarketers beats me. If I did not have Call Intercept, the call would come up as "unavailable" and the answerer at home would assume it was a telemarketer and not answer. Fortunately, the service comes with a password. I enter it and instead I come up as "priority caller". It still blocks telemarketers, so I am going to keep it.
I have a similar problem with web pages. When I access a web page, sometimes I get pop-up windows. So I obtain Analog-X's Pow! and Pow! those windows out of existence. However, I find that sometimes sites I want to see get Powed too so I have to turn it off. Email is an eternal problem, with its flood of spam. So I get a robot to handle that. That robot is the Rules Wizard of Outlook. I tell Outlook, for example, to delete messages whose subject contains "million", "anyone", "viagra", "credit", and so forth; I did an analysis which shows these words appear much more frequently in the subject of spam than in the subject of legitimate mail. Once in a while legitimate mail gets hit by the Wizard, so I go into "Deleted Items" and rescue those messages.
A woman who I met tonight, who I shall call L, came up with the best solution of all. Send a virtual rabbit after the spam, to nibble on the spam and gobble it up before it hits my mailbox.
2002/07/16
The New World Trade Center
Today six designs for a new World Trade Center were publicized. I looked at them, and they seem similar to each other, but I do have definite preferences among them. I suppose half the bloggers in the world will be commenting on the new designs, so here is my opinion of them, along with the one that is my favorite:
1. Plaza. I like the tall building in this design. We need a tall building of some sort to inspire us. There are four other moderately tall buildings which give a sense of mass. The design could have made better use of the blank space near the tower footprints, and the big tower seems separated from the others. I would give this design three stars (on a scale of 0-4).
2. Square. This one has a large open space, a huge trapezoidal courtyard, and a cylindrical 80-story tower. I don't like this one as well because of the cylindrical tower - it reminds me of some industrial building instead. I give this one two stars.
3. Triangle. This builds a building where the North Tower was. I hope this will be a memorial and museum! The tallest building is unusual, as though one put a Pez box on top of the tower. I find this design wanting in some respects, so I give it two stars.
4. Garden. Very high tower is a plus for this design. The footprints are left bare, and the buildings are connected together. Although I prefer box or Art Deco style buildings to pyramids, this one appeals to me a lot and I give it three and a half stars.
5. Park. There are interesting concepts in this design. An obelisk in the courtyard marks the memorial to those who died here. The four tall buildings are attractive and give a sense of protective warmth to those in the memorial area. The really tall building is thin, so not impressive looking from the east or west, and it seems to be hidden away from the rest, as though protecting it from some scourge from the water west of the city. I still like the design and give it three stars.
6. Promenade. I find this really attractive, with its sidewalks, four pillar buildings with give the area a feeling of structure and strength, and there are twin towers within them. The towers could have been higher and wider, but the other aspects of this design, including a small memorial building within the structure, and the excellent use of space in an area made hard to design in by the desire to keep the footprints clear, make this my favorite design and I give it four stars.
There you have it - I vote for design number 6, World Trade Center Memorial Promenade. It will add to the beauty of the New York skyline. However, I also like designs 4 and 5. We will see what they decide.
Today six designs for a new World Trade Center were publicized. I looked at them, and they seem similar to each other, but I do have definite preferences among them. I suppose half the bloggers in the world will be commenting on the new designs, so here is my opinion of them, along with the one that is my favorite:
1. Plaza. I like the tall building in this design. We need a tall building of some sort to inspire us. There are four other moderately tall buildings which give a sense of mass. The design could have made better use of the blank space near the tower footprints, and the big tower seems separated from the others. I would give this design three stars (on a scale of 0-4).
2. Square. This one has a large open space, a huge trapezoidal courtyard, and a cylindrical 80-story tower. I don't like this one as well because of the cylindrical tower - it reminds me of some industrial building instead. I give this one two stars.
3. Triangle. This builds a building where the North Tower was. I hope this will be a memorial and museum! The tallest building is unusual, as though one put a Pez box on top of the tower. I find this design wanting in some respects, so I give it two stars.
4. Garden. Very high tower is a plus for this design. The footprints are left bare, and the buildings are connected together. Although I prefer box or Art Deco style buildings to pyramids, this one appeals to me a lot and I give it three and a half stars.
5. Park. There are interesting concepts in this design. An obelisk in the courtyard marks the memorial to those who died here. The four tall buildings are attractive and give a sense of protective warmth to those in the memorial area. The really tall building is thin, so not impressive looking from the east or west, and it seems to be hidden away from the rest, as though protecting it from some scourge from the water west of the city. I still like the design and give it three stars.
6. Promenade. I find this really attractive, with its sidewalks, four pillar buildings with give the area a feeling of structure and strength, and there are twin towers within them. The towers could have been higher and wider, but the other aspects of this design, including a small memorial building within the structure, and the excellent use of space in an area made hard to design in by the desire to keep the footprints clear, make this my favorite design and I give it four stars.
There you have it - I vote for design number 6, World Trade Center Memorial Promenade. It will add to the beauty of the New York skyline. However, I also like designs 4 and 5. We will see what they decide.
2002/07/14
Packrats and pastburners
First, a few short snippets. I heard a media maven say that the airlines are all in the same boat. How can airlines be in a boat? They fly planes. The maven meant that the airlines were all in the same plane. I find that there are so many conniptions to using Microsoft Access that I feel it is an Access of Evil. We just had an incident in Iraq; maybe it was a case of "you zero us in, we zero you out."
Now the feature blogentation: One thing I find hard to do is to get rid of all the stuff I have accumulated in my lifetime, much of it junk. I.e., I tend to be a packrat at home. My attic is crammed with papers, and it takes time to sort through them all. But every once in a while, a record is needed somewhere, and I can find out what I was doing with it in 1983 or something. I would not have it if I had been throwing out all my stuff all along. It seems to me that a pattern like that should have a name; i.e., packrat should have an opposite. So let me invent one: pastburner. That will be my latest non-word of the week.
A pastburner is a person who continually throws out all or most past stuff and lives with only the present records. People who live in the here and now, mainly perceiving (P) types, tend to be pastburners. But I am a pastburner at work, for one good reason. During the last 12 years, there have been many reductions in force, moves, remodelings, and reorganizations and it seems that many of these put me in surroundings more cramped than before. This forces me to throw out stuff, and yes, it has hurt at times not to have the old records. Then again, what good are the old records? And what good are the present ones? The future often is different from both. Maybe we should question those who would want these records - other people, or perhaps, even ourselves.
First, a few short snippets. I heard a media maven say that the airlines are all in the same boat. How can airlines be in a boat? They fly planes. The maven meant that the airlines were all in the same plane. I find that there are so many conniptions to using Microsoft Access that I feel it is an Access of Evil. We just had an incident in Iraq; maybe it was a case of "you zero us in, we zero you out."
Now the feature blogentation: One thing I find hard to do is to get rid of all the stuff I have accumulated in my lifetime, much of it junk. I.e., I tend to be a packrat at home. My attic is crammed with papers, and it takes time to sort through them all. But every once in a while, a record is needed somewhere, and I can find out what I was doing with it in 1983 or something. I would not have it if I had been throwing out all my stuff all along. It seems to me that a pattern like that should have a name; i.e., packrat should have an opposite. So let me invent one: pastburner. That will be my latest non-word of the week.
A pastburner is a person who continually throws out all or most past stuff and lives with only the present records. People who live in the here and now, mainly perceiving (P) types, tend to be pastburners. But I am a pastburner at work, for one good reason. During the last 12 years, there have been many reductions in force, moves, remodelings, and reorganizations and it seems that many of these put me in surroundings more cramped than before. This forces me to throw out stuff, and yes, it has hurt at times not to have the old records. Then again, what good are the old records? And what good are the present ones? The future often is different from both. Maybe we should question those who would want these records - other people, or perhaps, even ourselves.
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