Quaoar
Everyone knows that Pluto is a planet, or is it? It is so much smaller than the smallest planet Mercury. If Pluto is a softball, then Mercury is a soccer (or foot) ball. But it is so much larger than anything else. Not any more. Pluto is now known to be a Kuiper Belt object, a collection of large asteroids beyond the orbit of Neptune. Other Kuiper Belt objects are known; for example, Pluto's own satellite Charon. There are others, such as Varuna and Ixion. These two worlds are slightly bigger than Ceres, the largest Mars-Jupiter asteroid. Just recently another Kuiper Belt object was discovered to be even larger than Varuna and Ixion; it was named Quaoar and it is 777 miles across, or about the size of the Great Lakes region in the USA and Canada. This is so large compared to Pluto that it is hard to claim that Pluto is a planet. One would then have to call Quaoar a planet; then one would have to call Varuna and Ceres planets, and so forth until we have thousands of planets. It is easier to call Pluto not a planet but a huge asteroid; the biggest in the Kuiper Belt, although what would happen to the claim of Pluto being a planet if a Kuiper Belt object bigger than Pluto were found?
By the way: Quaoar. It is pronounced sort of like you have a speech impediment: kua-o-are. Where did it come from?it differs from quasar in just a single letter. It is from Los Angeles county Native American myth; a good description, from, is: "Their only god who came down from heaven; and, after reducing chaos to order, out the world on the back of seven giants. He then created the lower animals,” and then mankind." I think they mean "cut the world". But the quotation, from www.angelfire.com/journal/cathbodua/Gods/Qgods.html, shows a progression from chaos to order, the opposite of Coyote's direction; Coyote introduced disorder when he scattered the stars all over the place. As such, then, this asteroid represents order, something that Kuiper Belt objects don't seem to have.
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2002/10/07
Brakes
Today I took my van in to have the brakes repaired. They are soft and you press the pedal to the floor before they take hold. The repair place replaced the master cylinder and fixed some brake pads. The problem returned so I took it back. They said there was nothing wrong with it. Huhhh?? I drove it; I did not really believe it, but if you can't get someone to repair something because that person does not think it needs repair, there is not much you can do. It got bad enough so I felt I had to take it in. So I did, this time to the dealer. They bled the lines and said that when a master cylinder is installed the lines need to be bled in a special way. I wonder if the first place knew this. I hope it is repaired, now. I am a little concerned that they corrected the symptom without finding the cause. What caused the air to get into the brake system? If they simply bleed the lines, the cause will get the air back into the system. I hope it is ready because I have a long trip coming
Today I took my van in to have the brakes repaired. They are soft and you press the pedal to the floor before they take hold. The repair place replaced the master cylinder and fixed some brake pads. The problem returned so I took it back. They said there was nothing wrong with it. Huhhh?? I drove it; I did not really believe it, but if you can't get someone to repair something because that person does not think it needs repair, there is not much you can do. It got bad enough so I felt I had to take it in. So I did, this time to the dealer. They bled the lines and said that when a master cylinder is installed the lines need to be bled in a special way. I wonder if the first place knew this. I hope it is repaired, now. I am a little concerned that they corrected the symptom without finding the cause. What caused the air to get into the brake system? If they simply bleed the lines, the cause will get the air back into the system. I hope it is ready because I have a long trip coming
2002/10/05
Wiccan Invocations
I heard in the paper that Chesterfield County, Virginia rejected a Wiccan priestess' request to perform invocations for them. This shows that Chesterfield County's officials don't bother to find out what Wicca stands for or what Wiccans believe. They have this old image of witches on brooms. The county attorney, says, "Wicca is neo-pagan and invokes polytheistic, pre-Christian deities" and for that reason he rejected the Wiccan's request. He should not reject Wicca for what it is but should consider what Wicca does and what Wiccans do. Further, what if I object to a non-pagan, monotheistic Christian deity? I would find an invocation to such a deity offensive to me.
I think Chesterfield County should either reconsider its decision and allow the Wiccan to give invocations in Chesterfield County, or do away with invocations altogether. It is hard to do an invocation without breaking the principle of separation of church and state stated in the First Amendment.
Further, I feel that the Richmond Times-Dispatch this time has disgraced itself with its report of the incident. "Chesterfield gives witch the broom." That shows that the people on the staff of this newspaper have brooms in their brains. They are imprisoned by the witch stereotype. They should have simply said "Chesterfield rejects Wiccan's invocation request".
Sputnik
2002 October 5 was the 45th anniversary of the launching by the Soviet Union of Sputnik I. I was 11 years old when this occurred. I was in the living room of my parents' house, and they were watching TV. All of a sudden a special alert came on the black-and-white TV. The "Russians" had launched an Earth-orbiting satellite in orbit called Sputnik I and it was giving off a beeping sound: beep, beep, beep... The first thing I said was "shoot it down", for we were all trained to hate the Soviets and their Communist form of government. But my father said that they won't do that because the satellite will do good for everyone.
But it was a shock to people. Headlines persisted for some time after the launch of Sputnik. People became afraid that they may develop continental missiles capable of sending nuclear warheads to the United States. In some ways this event resembles Planeattack, the terrorist attacks of 2001 September 11, in that both events were jolting reminders that our country was no longer secure within its borders. Interest everywhere in mathematics, science, and engineering skyrocketed. This increased interest in the sciences and space led to the US space programs and Kennedy's moon challenge, which was successfully met in 1969.
And Sputnik ushered in humanity into the Space Age, into a world where we casually use satellites for such things as locating your place (GPS), cellular telephones, and cable television broadcasts. It was our first step into space.
Virginia Association of Astronomy Societies
I attended this conference in Ashland, Virginia today and heard several good talks, including one wherein the presenter showed how a picture in a darkened room can show up rather easily in today's CCD equipment. It was followed by a picnic and skywatch near Ashland in which I located several interesting objects in my telescope. I regard this is a summertime conference, since the temperatures were in the upper 80s. It may be the last day of summer. Highs in the low 70s are called for next week.
I heard in the paper that Chesterfield County, Virginia rejected a Wiccan priestess' request to perform invocations for them. This shows that Chesterfield County's officials don't bother to find out what Wicca stands for or what Wiccans believe. They have this old image of witches on brooms. The county attorney, says, "Wicca is neo-pagan and invokes polytheistic, pre-Christian deities" and for that reason he rejected the Wiccan's request. He should not reject Wicca for what it is but should consider what Wicca does and what Wiccans do. Further, what if I object to a non-pagan, monotheistic Christian deity? I would find an invocation to such a deity offensive to me.
I think Chesterfield County should either reconsider its decision and allow the Wiccan to give invocations in Chesterfield County, or do away with invocations altogether. It is hard to do an invocation without breaking the principle of separation of church and state stated in the First Amendment.
Further, I feel that the Richmond Times-Dispatch this time has disgraced itself with its report of the incident. "Chesterfield gives witch the broom." That shows that the people on the staff of this newspaper have brooms in their brains. They are imprisoned by the witch stereotype. They should have simply said "Chesterfield rejects Wiccan's invocation request".
Sputnik
2002 October 5 was the 45th anniversary of the launching by the Soviet Union of Sputnik I. I was 11 years old when this occurred. I was in the living room of my parents' house, and they were watching TV. All of a sudden a special alert came on the black-and-white TV. The "Russians" had launched an Earth-orbiting satellite in orbit called Sputnik I and it was giving off a beeping sound: beep, beep, beep... The first thing I said was "shoot it down", for we were all trained to hate the Soviets and their Communist form of government. But my father said that they won't do that because the satellite will do good for everyone.
But it was a shock to people. Headlines persisted for some time after the launch of Sputnik. People became afraid that they may develop continental missiles capable of sending nuclear warheads to the United States. In some ways this event resembles Planeattack, the terrorist attacks of 2001 September 11, in that both events were jolting reminders that our country was no longer secure within its borders. Interest everywhere in mathematics, science, and engineering skyrocketed. This increased interest in the sciences and space led to the US space programs and Kennedy's moon challenge, which was successfully met in 1969.
And Sputnik ushered in humanity into the Space Age, into a world where we casually use satellites for such things as locating your place (GPS), cellular telephones, and cable television broadcasts. It was our first step into space.
Virginia Association of Astronomy Societies
I attended this conference in Ashland, Virginia today and heard several good talks, including one wherein the presenter showed how a picture in a darkened room can show up rather easily in today's CCD equipment. It was followed by a picnic and skywatch near Ashland in which I located several interesting objects in my telescope. I regard this is a summertime conference, since the temperatures were in the upper 80s. It may be the last day of summer. Highs in the low 70s are called for next week.
2002/10/03
Billions and billions!
One of the foremost media people and scientists in our lifetime has been Carl Sagan, who brought the universe and its wonders to TV audiences everywhere. One of his hallmarks was the phrase "Billions and Billions", resulting from the way he said "billions". He said it with an increased emphasis on the "b". There was a good reason why he did it, and that was illustrated by an incident on the stock market on 2002 October 2, Thursday.
On that day the averages ambled about the zero line all day, then suddenly tumbled at the end of the day for a loss. Maybe there were economic factors involved, but something else happened that could have caused much of that drop. Bear Stearns, Inc input an order to sell four million shares of stock. Now some misunderstanding of human voices, perhaps over the telephone must have occurred. It was not a computer error. Somehow it got entered in as four billion shares of stock. That is an enormous number, and that would influence the averages. Someone caught it and halted all but $622 million of the sale.
It is clear now why Sagan said "billions". He wanted to distinguish "billion" from "million". The two sound alike but are vastly different in size. A billion is 1,000,000,000 (in America, that is). A million is 1,000,000, or a thousand times less. They sound alike; in fact, "m" and "b" are relatives of each other, along with "p". All are made by parting the lips. So I can understand how "million" sounded like "billion". This means of course that the error was one involving the human voice.
We should learn the names of large numbers and know how big they are. Here is a table:
There are names beyond these, such as quintillion, sextillion and so forth, and one can go to a web page of large numbers to see them all. But, as I show below, these are rarely used. Learn these numbers and these names, and say them properly. Also take into consideration the country you are in - in Great Britain and some other places, a billion is 1,000,000,000,000. This will help avoid errors that result from mistaking a million from a billion.
The Quadrillion Principle
This principle asserts that quantities that we use in everyday life and usage cannot exceed a quadrillion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000. This explains why "trillion" is frequently used in our society, but "quadrillion" is much rarer, and "quintillion" and higher numbers are almost never heard of. The reason is this. The gross world product is somewhere near $10 trillion. The smallest unit that we work with is a penny. $10 trillion are a quadrillion pennies. This is the maximum amount we can conceive in terms of the minimum. It follows that all other quantities in our life must fall between these and be less than a quadrillion. For example, the number of rabbits in the world must be less than a quadrillion. For a rabbit is worth greater than a penny, maybe $10 or $100 or so; certainly it takes more than this to feed it. Further, the total worth of all the rabbits in the world must be less than the GWP. For otherwise, we would catch and buy up all the rabbits to increase the worth of everything. Therefore the total number of rabbits is less than their total worth, which in turn is less than the GWP which is a quadrillion pennies. So the number of rabbits is less than a quadrillion.
One of the foremost media people and scientists in our lifetime has been Carl Sagan, who brought the universe and its wonders to TV audiences everywhere. One of his hallmarks was the phrase "Billions and Billions", resulting from the way he said "billions". He said it with an increased emphasis on the "b". There was a good reason why he did it, and that was illustrated by an incident on the stock market on 2002 October 2, Thursday.
On that day the averages ambled about the zero line all day, then suddenly tumbled at the end of the day for a loss. Maybe there were economic factors involved, but something else happened that could have caused much of that drop. Bear Stearns, Inc input an order to sell four million shares of stock. Now some misunderstanding of human voices, perhaps over the telephone must have occurred. It was not a computer error. Somehow it got entered in as four billion shares of stock. That is an enormous number, and that would influence the averages. Someone caught it and halted all but $622 million of the sale.
It is clear now why Sagan said "billions". He wanted to distinguish "billion" from "million". The two sound alike but are vastly different in size. A billion is 1,000,000,000 (in America, that is). A million is 1,000,000, or a thousand times less. They sound alike; in fact, "m" and "b" are relatives of each other, along with "p". All are made by parting the lips. So I can understand how "million" sounded like "billion". This means of course that the error was one involving the human voice.
We should learn the names of large numbers and know how big they are. Here is a table:
| thousand | 1,000 |
| million | 1,000,000 |
| billion | 1,000,000,000 |
| trillion | 1,000,000,000,000 |
| quadrillion | 1,000,000,000,000,000 |
There are names beyond these, such as quintillion, sextillion and so forth, and one can go to a web page of large numbers to see them all. But, as I show below, these are rarely used. Learn these numbers and these names, and say them properly. Also take into consideration the country you are in - in Great Britain and some other places, a billion is 1,000,000,000,000. This will help avoid errors that result from mistaking a million from a billion.
The Quadrillion Principle
This principle asserts that quantities that we use in everyday life and usage cannot exceed a quadrillion, or 1,000,000,000,000,000. This explains why "trillion" is frequently used in our society, but "quadrillion" is much rarer, and "quintillion" and higher numbers are almost never heard of. The reason is this. The gross world product is somewhere near $10 trillion. The smallest unit that we work with is a penny. $10 trillion are a quadrillion pennies. This is the maximum amount we can conceive in terms of the minimum. It follows that all other quantities in our life must fall between these and be less than a quadrillion. For example, the number of rabbits in the world must be less than a quadrillion. For a rabbit is worth greater than a penny, maybe $10 or $100 or so; certainly it takes more than this to feed it. Further, the total worth of all the rabbits in the world must be less than the GWP. For otherwise, we would catch and buy up all the rabbits to increase the worth of everything. Therefore the total number of rabbits is less than their total worth, which in turn is less than the GWP which is a quadrillion pennies. So the number of rabbits is less than a quadrillion.
2002/09/30
Rochester Red Wings and Minnesota Twins
Google, already by far the most useful search engine, in my opinion doubled its usefulness recently by including a News search engine in its repertoire. This search engine searches for the latest news on a search term. This will revolutionize news on the Web. So far the networks and newspapers have been putting up the same old stilted stuff all the time, and they duplicate each other. Google will change all that. Now you can search for whatever you want. If you want the latest on Venus Williams, type that in and you will get stories on her that the big ones aren't reporting. If you want the very latest of stories, Google will not accept a complete blank or even the word "the" but if you try a moderately common word such as "time", it will come up with stories that have occurred only minutes ago. Talk about breaking news! Google breaks them before all but one of the news breakers do. Too bad we don't have Google on the TV set. That will come next.
But I would like to comment on one piece of news that Google News helped me find. I wanted to find out about the Rochester Red Wings and five other professional baseball teams and see how they paired up; the Red Wings had declared free agency so they could look for a new club. I recommended in an earlier blog that Rochester pair up with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Nashville Sounds go with the Atlanta Braves, and the Richmond team (the Breeze?) associate with the Orioles. That would have sharply cut travel costs.
Instead, travel costs increased. A Google news story said the Rochester Red Wings paired up with the Minnesota Twins. That took me by surprise. The Twins? They are far away and the Twins were threatened with extinction a while ago. The Twins had the Edmonton Trappers as their farm club, so I wanted to find out what happened to them. A search on "minnesota edmonton" told me that Edmonton switched to the Montreal Expos. Another surprise. So I went to "expos lynx" and found that Montreal's farm team, the Lynx, mated with the Orioles. So instead of Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta three-cycling AAA farm teams, Baltimore, Minnesota, and Montreal did instead. And it increased travel costs. The total "by crow" mileages among the original pairs was 1,460 miles; next year for these teams it will be 3,050 miles. This year two of the distances (Baltimore-Rochester, Ottawa-Montreal) were drivable, but next year they all will have to go by plane, except maybe Baltimore-Ottawa. So why didn't they go according to saving driving costs? There were other considerations.
First of all the Rochester Red Wings had five losing seasons in a row, and that is rare for that franchise. The Red Wings owners and fans felt that the Orioles were not serving their needs well, so they ditched them. The Hometown Annapolis web site said it best, I felt: "Talk about embarrassment: Have you ever heard of a minor-league team ditching a major-league team? It always happens the other way around! But not to Peter Angelos' hapless Orioles. And you know what? Next year's team could be worse than this year's -- because there is no talent in sight."
Secondly, the Wings fans wanted Pittsburgh for their parent club. According to the Democrat and Chronicle", 56 percent of the fans wanted Pittsburgh, 25 percent Baltimore, 12 percent Minnesota and the rest others. But the Pirates snubbed them. They continued with the Nashville Sounds for another two years, even though by switching to Rochester, they could have set off a chain reaction that would have saved big travel bucks. After that, the Red Wings and Twins were an obvious match and that's the way it came out.
So personal and emotional feelings about these teams seems to have trumped travel economy in the pairings between major league and Triple-A minor league for 2003. That is too bad in a way because it means increased consumption of petroleum, a commodity that will get scarce in the years ahead. Another thing this says is that even long-standing relationships can come to an end eventually. The Baltimore-Rochester match lasted 42 years, the longest among any of the pairs of teams in baseball. I still remember the headlines in the Rochester newspapers when I was 14 years old. Red Wings break with Cardinals, sign with Orioles. The Red Wings ditched the Cardinals because the Cardinals saw fit to snatch 4 star Red Wings in the height of playoff and pennant contention to play on the Cardinals instead, angering the fans.
I also heard tonight that the new name of the new Triple-A ball club in Albuquerque, New Mexico will be the Isotopes. This came from a cartoon show, the Simpsons, about a team called the Springfield Isotopes that moved to Albuquerque. A survey revealed that the older the fan, the more he dislikes the name "Isotopes". I think it is cute and original, and far better than "Dukes". It's a good choice, that is, unless it reminds people of stores of radioactive material in the area.
Spaceship Earth
One may object to my proposal the other day of a higher gasoline tax. The less and fewer taxes we have the freer we are. Indeed, if the resources for the way you want to live are readily available, maybe little or no government is the best. However, resources are not readily available. In fact, we may run out of cheap oil in a few years. It is like being on a spaceship, say, going to Mars. There resources are scarce indeed and the inhabitants need to live according to strict rules, otherwise, the spaceship will fail and they all will die. But isn't Earth then just another spaceship? Instead of being 80 feet wide, it is simply much larger, 8,000 miles wide. But it still is a spaceship. It has finite resources. So we may need to live according to some rules to ensure that our only spaceship that we know of survives. This means use solar energy, recycle, drive hydrogen cars or ride a bike, and so forth. Cut back on petroleum usage (which is why the tax). And above all don't squander our resources on anti-human events such as wars.
Torricelli
I heard on the news that Torricelli, incumbent in New Jersey, is quitting the race to continue as Representative from that state. The media are saying that could turn things over to the Republicans. I don't think so. The prime determiner of election results is the economy. A good economy favors incumbents; a bad one favors challengers. The economy was sour in 1980, and incumbent Carter was defeated in a landslide. The economy was sour in 1992, and Bush I, having won a highly popular war with a 90% approval rating, was defeated by someone who had been known to have had extramarital affairs (only four years after the Gary Hart incident!). The economy was taking off with the dot-com boom in 1996, and sure enough, Clinton was re-elected despite scandal clouds growing around him. The economy determines everything, it seems. Right now the economy is really bad; the stock market keeps wanting to go down, down, down. And if this is the case from now to November, GOP control of the House and Senate will go down, down, down. If Torricelli's opponent wins, there will be an upset elsewhere that will give control of the Senate to the Democrats. The media harp on the prospect of the Great Oil War of 2003 making Bush popular, but in my opinion, the prospect of this war coming is one of the main reasons why the stock market is so sullen right now. If the economy continues as bad as it is now, Democrats will take both houses in November.
Google, already by far the most useful search engine, in my opinion doubled its usefulness recently by including a News search engine in its repertoire. This search engine searches for the latest news on a search term. This will revolutionize news on the Web. So far the networks and newspapers have been putting up the same old stilted stuff all the time, and they duplicate each other. Google will change all that. Now you can search for whatever you want. If you want the latest on Venus Williams, type that in and you will get stories on her that the big ones aren't reporting. If you want the very latest of stories, Google will not accept a complete blank or even the word "the" but if you try a moderately common word such as "time", it will come up with stories that have occurred only minutes ago. Talk about breaking news! Google breaks them before all but one of the news breakers do. Too bad we don't have Google on the TV set. That will come next.
But I would like to comment on one piece of news that Google News helped me find. I wanted to find out about the Rochester Red Wings and five other professional baseball teams and see how they paired up; the Red Wings had declared free agency so they could look for a new club. I recommended in an earlier blog that Rochester pair up with the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Nashville Sounds go with the Atlanta Braves, and the Richmond team (the Breeze?) associate with the Orioles. That would have sharply cut travel costs.
Instead, travel costs increased. A Google news story said the Rochester Red Wings paired up with the Minnesota Twins. That took me by surprise. The Twins? They are far away and the Twins were threatened with extinction a while ago. The Twins had the Edmonton Trappers as their farm club, so I wanted to find out what happened to them. A search on "minnesota edmonton" told me that Edmonton switched to the Montreal Expos. Another surprise. So I went to "expos lynx" and found that Montreal's farm team, the Lynx, mated with the Orioles. So instead of Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta three-cycling AAA farm teams, Baltimore, Minnesota, and Montreal did instead. And it increased travel costs. The total "by crow" mileages among the original pairs was 1,460 miles; next year for these teams it will be 3,050 miles. This year two of the distances (Baltimore-Rochester, Ottawa-Montreal) were drivable, but next year they all will have to go by plane, except maybe Baltimore-Ottawa. So why didn't they go according to saving driving costs? There were other considerations.
First of all the Rochester Red Wings had five losing seasons in a row, and that is rare for that franchise. The Red Wings owners and fans felt that the Orioles were not serving their needs well, so they ditched them. The Hometown Annapolis web site said it best, I felt: "Talk about embarrassment: Have you ever heard of a minor-league team ditching a major-league team? It always happens the other way around! But not to Peter Angelos' hapless Orioles. And you know what? Next year's team could be worse than this year's -- because there is no talent in sight."
Secondly, the Wings fans wanted Pittsburgh for their parent club. According to the Democrat and Chronicle", 56 percent of the fans wanted Pittsburgh, 25 percent Baltimore, 12 percent Minnesota and the rest others. But the Pirates snubbed them. They continued with the Nashville Sounds for another two years, even though by switching to Rochester, they could have set off a chain reaction that would have saved big travel bucks. After that, the Red Wings and Twins were an obvious match and that's the way it came out.
So personal and emotional feelings about these teams seems to have trumped travel economy in the pairings between major league and Triple-A minor league for 2003. That is too bad in a way because it means increased consumption of petroleum, a commodity that will get scarce in the years ahead. Another thing this says is that even long-standing relationships can come to an end eventually. The Baltimore-Rochester match lasted 42 years, the longest among any of the pairs of teams in baseball. I still remember the headlines in the Rochester newspapers when I was 14 years old. Red Wings break with Cardinals, sign with Orioles. The Red Wings ditched the Cardinals because the Cardinals saw fit to snatch 4 star Red Wings in the height of playoff and pennant contention to play on the Cardinals instead, angering the fans.
I also heard tonight that the new name of the new Triple-A ball club in Albuquerque, New Mexico will be the Isotopes. This came from a cartoon show, the Simpsons, about a team called the Springfield Isotopes that moved to Albuquerque. A survey revealed that the older the fan, the more he dislikes the name "Isotopes". I think it is cute and original, and far better than "Dukes". It's a good choice, that is, unless it reminds people of stores of radioactive material in the area.
Spaceship Earth
One may object to my proposal the other day of a higher gasoline tax. The less and fewer taxes we have the freer we are. Indeed, if the resources for the way you want to live are readily available, maybe little or no government is the best. However, resources are not readily available. In fact, we may run out of cheap oil in a few years. It is like being on a spaceship, say, going to Mars. There resources are scarce indeed and the inhabitants need to live according to strict rules, otherwise, the spaceship will fail and they all will die. But isn't Earth then just another spaceship? Instead of being 80 feet wide, it is simply much larger, 8,000 miles wide. But it still is a spaceship. It has finite resources. So we may need to live according to some rules to ensure that our only spaceship that we know of survives. This means use solar energy, recycle, drive hydrogen cars or ride a bike, and so forth. Cut back on petroleum usage (which is why the tax). And above all don't squander our resources on anti-human events such as wars.
Torricelli
I heard on the news that Torricelli, incumbent in New Jersey, is quitting the race to continue as Representative from that state. The media are saying that could turn things over to the Republicans. I don't think so. The prime determiner of election results is the economy. A good economy favors incumbents; a bad one favors challengers. The economy was sour in 1980, and incumbent Carter was defeated in a landslide. The economy was sour in 1992, and Bush I, having won a highly popular war with a 90% approval rating, was defeated by someone who had been known to have had extramarital affairs (only four years after the Gary Hart incident!). The economy was taking off with the dot-com boom in 1996, and sure enough, Clinton was re-elected despite scandal clouds growing around him. The economy determines everything, it seems. Right now the economy is really bad; the stock market keeps wanting to go down, down, down. And if this is the case from now to November, GOP control of the House and Senate will go down, down, down. If Torricelli's opponent wins, there will be an upset elsewhere that will give control of the Senate to the Democrats. The media harp on the prospect of the Great Oil War of 2003 making Bush popular, but in my opinion, the prospect of this war coming is one of the main reasons why the stock market is so sullen right now. If the economy continues as bad as it is now, Democrats will take both houses in November.
2002/09/29
Outer Banks
We signed up to go to a vacation on the Outer Banks in two weeks. I am looking forward to it, to walks on the beach, spotting all sorts of unusual birds, and looking out at a dark sky at night. There seems to be something mysterious about a piece of land that is so far away from everywhere else.
Three Pocket Speeches
I now have three pocket speeches. A pocket speech is a speech that you can give right away at occasions, usually Toastmaster meetings. Usually I have trouble coming up with just one. So how did I come up with three? The first one was about this very activity, blogging. It is an introduction to blogging and what it has meant for me. The second one is my response to Governor Warner's drastic budget cuts; I argue he should raise the gasoline tax instead. My third one is the introductory speech to the Virginia Association of Astronomy Societies convention this coming weekend. I will give a practice speech of this to the Richmond Three-Letter Toastmaster meeting this Wednesday. I think this blogging helps me get topics for pocket speeches. If so I can expect to have even more pocket speeches in the future.
We signed up to go to a vacation on the Outer Banks in two weeks. I am looking forward to it, to walks on the beach, spotting all sorts of unusual birds, and looking out at a dark sky at night. There seems to be something mysterious about a piece of land that is so far away from everywhere else.
Three Pocket Speeches
I now have three pocket speeches. A pocket speech is a speech that you can give right away at occasions, usually Toastmaster meetings. Usually I have trouble coming up with just one. So how did I come up with three? The first one was about this very activity, blogging. It is an introduction to blogging and what it has meant for me. The second one is my response to Governor Warner's drastic budget cuts; I argue he should raise the gasoline tax instead. My third one is the introductory speech to the Virginia Association of Astronomy Societies convention this coming weekend. I will give a practice speech of this to the Richmond Three-Letter Toastmaster meeting this Wednesday. I think this blogging helps me get topics for pocket speeches. If so I can expect to have even more pocket speeches in the future.
2002/09/26
Two Fumbles
Two humorous mistakes were made recently, one by a computer or a robot, and the other by a human. The computer whaaa was made by Google. Recently Herta Däubler-Gmelin, the justice minister in German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government, made an apparent comparison between President Bush and Hitler: she said "Das hat auch Hitler schon gemacht". This means "Hitler also had done it"; the word "schon" means "already" but in this phrase it is more for emphasis. I put the sentence into Google and it said "Do you mean 'Das hat auch Hitler schoen gemacht' ?" That really put words into Herta's mouth. It now says "Hitler also had made it beautiful."
The other was by a human; in particular, NBC's Tom Brokaw. In talking about today's five-person murder during a robbery in Norfolk, Nebraska, Mr. Brokaw said, "It happened in a quiet town, Norfolk, Nebraska, whose main claim to fame is that it was Johnny Carson's birthplace. It is no longer." Huhhh?? Since when does a person's birthplace change? Did someone go back in the past and move his parents to a different town? This misplaced phrase has Orwellian overtones. Johnny Carson was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He was always born in Norfolk, Virginia. He was never born in Norfolk, Nebraska. It's like Oceania being at war with Eastasia, whereas people heard yesterday it was at war with Eurasia. But Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, and all the history books need to be rewritten. Tom needs to be more careful with his sentences to make sure that they refer to what he intended them to refer to; in this case, to the quietness of this heartland town in rural Nebraska.
Someone says it is human to err, but to make big mistakes requires a computer. I say both humans and computers can make big mistakes at times.
Two humorous mistakes were made recently, one by a computer or a robot, and the other by a human. The computer whaaa was made by Google. Recently Herta Däubler-Gmelin, the justice minister in German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's government, made an apparent comparison between President Bush and Hitler: she said "Das hat auch Hitler schon gemacht". This means "Hitler also had done it"; the word "schon" means "already" but in this phrase it is more for emphasis. I put the sentence into Google and it said "Do you mean 'Das hat auch Hitler schoen gemacht' ?" That really put words into Herta's mouth. It now says "Hitler also had made it beautiful."
The other was by a human; in particular, NBC's Tom Brokaw. In talking about today's five-person murder during a robbery in Norfolk, Nebraska, Mr. Brokaw said, "It happened in a quiet town, Norfolk, Nebraska, whose main claim to fame is that it was Johnny Carson's birthplace. It is no longer." Huhhh?? Since when does a person's birthplace change? Did someone go back in the past and move his parents to a different town? This misplaced phrase has Orwellian overtones. Johnny Carson was born in Norfolk, Virginia. He was always born in Norfolk, Virginia. He was never born in Norfolk, Nebraska. It's like Oceania being at war with Eastasia, whereas people heard yesterday it was at war with Eurasia. But Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia, and all the history books need to be rewritten. Tom needs to be more careful with his sentences to make sure that they refer to what he intended them to refer to; in this case, to the quietness of this heartland town in rural Nebraska.
Someone says it is human to err, but to make big mistakes requires a computer. I say both humans and computers can make big mistakes at times.
2002/09/25
Tax Fuel Hogs!
I find my quest for a teaching position has been thwarted by Governor Warner's budget cuts. That has put a hiring freeze on six out of nine schools in this area. This may mean that I would want to get a non-teaching position instead, or continue working where I am. This is disappointing, and in my opinion, not necessary. I think that instead of cutting programs all over the place, Governor Warner should recommend instead an increase in the gasoline tax. We need to conserve on gasoline and petroleum even more than on water, as you can find out by reading the papers in www.oilcrisis.com I think that a 40 cent a gallon increase would allow the state government to eliminate most of the cuts, although an exact computation would require knowledge of the budget and of gasoline consumption. The increase would also help encourage development of alternative sources of energy such as hydrogen and wind. I urge Governor Warner to lift the hiring freeze and to increase the tax on gasoline.
I find my quest for a teaching position has been thwarted by Governor Warner's budget cuts. That has put a hiring freeze on six out of nine schools in this area. This may mean that I would want to get a non-teaching position instead, or continue working where I am. This is disappointing, and in my opinion, not necessary. I think that instead of cutting programs all over the place, Governor Warner should recommend instead an increase in the gasoline tax. We need to conserve on gasoline and petroleum even more than on water, as you can find out by reading the papers in www.oilcrisis.com I think that a 40 cent a gallon increase would allow the state government to eliminate most of the cuts, although an exact computation would require knowledge of the budget and of gasoline consumption. The increase would also help encourage development of alternative sources of energy such as hydrogen and wind. I urge Governor Warner to lift the hiring freeze and to increase the tax on gasoline.
2002/09/24
The God Test
I hit upon an idea to find what a person is really like. I am not sure that there is an Ultimate Being of some sort, a universal God. In my opinion the evidence is against it. Instead, when someone invokes God, like thanking God that they are safe from some tragedy or thanking God for helping them achieve some coveted award, they are talking about their own God. In a sense, to one's self, one's self is God. I think a lot of problems in this world would vanish once people recognize that the God they worship is really part of themselves. Only one person that I know of (besides myself) has recognized this: in a book, she writes "I am Grandmama God".
Therefore, to find out what a person's personality is like, ask them why they believe in God and what God has meant for them in their lives. This is fairly easy for someone who believes in God; for an atheist or agnostic such as myself, it is much harder; for such a person, ask them, if they believed in God, what kind of a God would it be. If the person is Christian and believes strongly that Jesus is their salvation and that He is a constant part of their lives, ask them what Jesus as meant for them. I will take myself as an example. I do not believe in a traditional God, so I will have to imagine that I do believe in a God. What would He be like?
My God would be a tasker and a riddler. He would always be presenting me riddles for me to solve. What is life all about? Where does the Universe end? Is it true that P is not equal to NP? How should I structure my life? My life would be an endless quest for the Truth that God represents. He would not give me much comfort, since He knows I have all I need to comfort myself. The reason that the stars are disorganized is that God made them that way. He would be the Constant Question, the Reason behind the Chaos, why Chaos appears in Order so much of the time; he would even riddle me on whether He exists, why I am me and what is it all about anyway. The traditional God that most closely resembles mine is Coyote of western Native American myth, the Rabbit of Cherokee and other eastern Native American myth and Loki of Norse myth.
That is, if I believed in a God. What does that say about me? It says I am a seeker, a trickster, and one who is trying to understand it all but can't quite get it.
I hit upon an idea to find what a person is really like. I am not sure that there is an Ultimate Being of some sort, a universal God. In my opinion the evidence is against it. Instead, when someone invokes God, like thanking God that they are safe from some tragedy or thanking God for helping them achieve some coveted award, they are talking about their own God. In a sense, to one's self, one's self is God. I think a lot of problems in this world would vanish once people recognize that the God they worship is really part of themselves. Only one person that I know of (besides myself) has recognized this: in a book, she writes "I am Grandmama God".
Therefore, to find out what a person's personality is like, ask them why they believe in God and what God has meant for them in their lives. This is fairly easy for someone who believes in God; for an atheist or agnostic such as myself, it is much harder; for such a person, ask them, if they believed in God, what kind of a God would it be. If the person is Christian and believes strongly that Jesus is their salvation and that He is a constant part of their lives, ask them what Jesus as meant for them. I will take myself as an example. I do not believe in a traditional God, so I will have to imagine that I do believe in a God. What would He be like?
My God would be a tasker and a riddler. He would always be presenting me riddles for me to solve. What is life all about? Where does the Universe end? Is it true that P is not equal to NP? How should I structure my life? My life would be an endless quest for the Truth that God represents. He would not give me much comfort, since He knows I have all I need to comfort myself. The reason that the stars are disorganized is that God made them that way. He would be the Constant Question, the Reason behind the Chaos, why Chaos appears in Order so much of the time; he would even riddle me on whether He exists, why I am me and what is it all about anyway. The traditional God that most closely resembles mine is Coyote of western Native American myth, the Rabbit of Cherokee and other eastern Native American myth and Loki of Norse myth.
That is, if I believed in a God. What does that say about me? It says I am a seeker, a trickster, and one who is trying to understand it all but can't quite get it.
2002/09/23
How many people do I know?
I did a lot of stuff today, on my day off on Monday; applied for some teaching positions, planned a trip to the Outer Banks, and planned for a cluster of three meetings that decided that they all wanted to go late in the day on the 24th. For my blog today, I will comment on how many people do we know. Is it 50? 5,000? 700? How could we know? I tried to find the answer several ways. My definition of know is: A knows B if and only if, if B had died in Planeattack, then A would have noticed it. Here is what I tried:
1. Automobile accidents. 40,000 people die each year in auto accidents. This has happened for the past 50 years (since I was 6). That's a total of 2,000,000 people killed in accidents from 1952-2002. I knew 4 people in my lifetime that died in auto accidents. This means I knew 4 out of 2,000,000 people or one in 500,000 people. Since there are 282,921,406 people in the US, it follows that I know 282,921,406/500,000 or 566 people.
2. Random selection. Randomly select people out of my workplace and all the organizations I belong to. Make an allowance for others and then take ratios for each org and add them together. This gives me about 400 or so.
3 Planeattack. This gave me the idea for this blog. I saw an article in the newspaper that criticized a poll that said that 1.2 percent of all people say they know someone who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or Pennsylvania. That's 0.012*282,921,406 or 33,890,208. This means the average person who died (there are 3,034 of them) knew 33,890,208/3,034 or 11,170 people; actually, higher, since people know the same people, whereas the division implies they are disjoint. This is also too high. That was the newspaper's argument. Something was wrong with the poll.
4 Look it up in Google. Look up "average person knows * people". The asterisk is a wild card. I get answers of 200, 500, 250, 2000, and 300. Further in a church, according to one web page, the average person knows 62 people regardless of the size of the church; but I would presume that if the church is smaller than 62 people, then the average person knows everybody. Further, a "meganetworking" person knows 3,500 people.
This shows that nobody really has a hold on how many people one knows. My feeling is that I know about 500-1000 people, with about 100 of these fairly well on at least an acquaintance basis. But I still would like for someone to come up with a good figure for this.
I did a lot of stuff today, on my day off on Monday; applied for some teaching positions, planned a trip to the Outer Banks, and planned for a cluster of three meetings that decided that they all wanted to go late in the day on the 24th. For my blog today, I will comment on how many people do we know. Is it 50? 5,000? 700? How could we know? I tried to find the answer several ways. My definition of know is: A knows B if and only if, if B had died in Planeattack, then A would have noticed it. Here is what I tried:
1. Automobile accidents. 40,000 people die each year in auto accidents. This has happened for the past 50 years (since I was 6). That's a total of 2,000,000 people killed in accidents from 1952-2002. I knew 4 people in my lifetime that died in auto accidents. This means I knew 4 out of 2,000,000 people or one in 500,000 people. Since there are 282,921,406 people in the US, it follows that I know 282,921,406/500,000 or 566 people.
2. Random selection. Randomly select people out of my workplace and all the organizations I belong to. Make an allowance for others and then take ratios for each org and add them together. This gives me about 400 or so.
3 Planeattack. This gave me the idea for this blog. I saw an article in the newspaper that criticized a poll that said that 1.2 percent of all people say they know someone who died at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, or Pennsylvania. That's 0.012*282,921,406 or 33,890,208. This means the average person who died (there are 3,034 of them) knew 33,890,208/3,034 or 11,170 people; actually, higher, since people know the same people, whereas the division implies they are disjoint. This is also too high. That was the newspaper's argument. Something was wrong with the poll.
4 Look it up in Google. Look up "average person knows * people". The asterisk is a wild card. I get answers of 200, 500, 250, 2000, and 300. Further in a church, according to one web page, the average person knows 62 people regardless of the size of the church; but I would presume that if the church is smaller than 62 people, then the average person knows everybody. Further, a "meganetworking" person knows 3,500 people.
This shows that nobody really has a hold on how many people one knows. My feeling is that I know about 500-1000 people, with about 100 of these fairly well on at least an acquaintance basis. But I still would like for someone to come up with a good figure for this.
2002/09/21
Skywatch
I went to the RAS-Science Museum of Virginia skywatch last night, where we show the public the stars. I have been to several of these in the past year. Each one is different. Each one is a different journey to the moon and stars and each one has a different public wanting to view the stars. Last night was highlighted by a surreal moonrise in clouds above the DMV building, and by an early appearance of Venus. I arrived so early that only three people, all showing the sky with telescopes like I did, were there, along with about four people from the public. But these people were lucky because I was able to find Venus low on the horizon and show it to them. It showed a banana-moon crescent in the telescope view. This lasted about five minutes, then Venus set in a cloudbank and was gone for the rest of the night.
It was a balmy night, a leftover from the departing summer, and I felt that added to the atmosphere. Lots of people were there because of an article about us in the local newspaper. We could not show much, only the moon and for some with go-to telescopes, the beautiful gold-blue double star Albireo. Many people did enjoy seeing the Moon anyway; it was a new experience for many. The children appealed to me especially, because it reminded me of when I first learned about astronomy as a child; when I was about 9 I attended a skywatch at a local school and found the images of the planets in the telescopes intriguing.
The only unfortunate thing about skywatches is that they are apt to get clouded out, and the light pollution is so bad that only the planets, Moon, and brightest stars are visible. But I am still hoping for another ethereal experience next month when I once again show the public the stars at a skywatch.
I went to the RAS-Science Museum of Virginia skywatch last night, where we show the public the stars. I have been to several of these in the past year. Each one is different. Each one is a different journey to the moon and stars and each one has a different public wanting to view the stars. Last night was highlighted by a surreal moonrise in clouds above the DMV building, and by an early appearance of Venus. I arrived so early that only three people, all showing the sky with telescopes like I did, were there, along with about four people from the public. But these people were lucky because I was able to find Venus low on the horizon and show it to them. It showed a banana-moon crescent in the telescope view. This lasted about five minutes, then Venus set in a cloudbank and was gone for the rest of the night.
It was a balmy night, a leftover from the departing summer, and I felt that added to the atmosphere. Lots of people were there because of an article about us in the local newspaper. We could not show much, only the moon and for some with go-to telescopes, the beautiful gold-blue double star Albireo. Many people did enjoy seeing the Moon anyway; it was a new experience for many. The children appealed to me especially, because it reminded me of when I first learned about astronomy as a child; when I was about 9 I attended a skywatch at a local school and found the images of the planets in the telescopes intriguing.
The only unfortunate thing about skywatches is that they are apt to get clouded out, and the light pollution is so bad that only the planets, Moon, and brightest stars are visible. But I am still hoping for another ethereal experience next month when I once again show the public the stars at a skywatch.
2002/09/20
10890
I used to record and analyze my dreams a lot. I still record them but don't get as much time to look at them. My dream last night, though, was really interesting. I dreamed that I was looking at some calendars, from the 20th and 21st centuries, until I found a calendar for the year 10890. I thought when I saw the calendar that the people of that time would have to contend with another digit in the year. Soon after I woke up I realized the significance of that number. Take any four-digit number. Reverse the digits and subtract the smaller from the larger number. Then take the remainder, reverse its digits and add it to the remainder. The result will almost always be 10890. Once in a while you get zero, and sometimes you get 9999. But usually you get 10890. I may write up a paper or column for my mathematics page about it. The analysis would be somewhat complex, as it would itemize exactly how the carries and borrows would occur. I am usually not that interested in problems like this for they seem artificial and based on our base ten system of numeration. But this one has links to automata theory, which examines systems in which a string of symbols becomes another string according to some rules. Automata can get quite complicated, as in the Game of Life. Adding and subtracting numbers have their counterparts in automata by interpreting the symbol strings as the digits of numbers. So I find a problem like this interesting. I had first found out about it when I was a child, and now I suddenly dream about it.
I used to record and analyze my dreams a lot. I still record them but don't get as much time to look at them. My dream last night, though, was really interesting. I dreamed that I was looking at some calendars, from the 20th and 21st centuries, until I found a calendar for the year 10890. I thought when I saw the calendar that the people of that time would have to contend with another digit in the year. Soon after I woke up I realized the significance of that number. Take any four-digit number. Reverse the digits and subtract the smaller from the larger number. Then take the remainder, reverse its digits and add it to the remainder. The result will almost always be 10890. Once in a while you get zero, and sometimes you get 9999. But usually you get 10890. I may write up a paper or column for my mathematics page about it. The analysis would be somewhat complex, as it would itemize exactly how the carries and borrows would occur. I am usually not that interested in problems like this for they seem artificial and based on our base ten system of numeration. But this one has links to automata theory, which examines systems in which a string of symbols becomes another string according to some rules. Automata can get quite complicated, as in the Game of Life. Adding and subtracting numbers have their counterparts in automata by interpreting the symbol strings as the digits of numbers. So I find a problem like this interesting. I had first found out about it when I was a child, and now I suddenly dream about it.
2002/09/18
Advanced Access
I just finished a two-day course on Advanced Access. I had not taken elementary or intermediate Access but nevertheless I found instead much of the course old hat and easy. I did learn a few things and the instructor said I had more of a grasp on things than he did. Perhaps I should take certification exams? I wonder if I would be happy teaching things like Access instead of mathematics to people. But maybe that's a way. Get experience teaching computer, then teach mathematics, then become a mathematical columnist somewhere.
I just finished a two-day course on Advanced Access. I had not taken elementary or intermediate Access but nevertheless I found instead much of the course old hat and easy. I did learn a few things and the instructor said I had more of a grasp on things than he did. Perhaps I should take certification exams? I wonder if I would be happy teaching things like Access instead of mathematics to people. But maybe that's a way. Get experience teaching computer, then teach mathematics, then become a mathematical columnist somewhere.
2002/09/16
Twilight Zone
Today I heard on NPR a description of how Rod Serling developed his Twilight Zone show, despite frequent objections from the Television Establishment. They mentioned several of my favorite episodes, including "Beauty and the Beholder", in which an injured woman had her face remade to be "ugly" but she looked perfectly normal to us, and the doctors and others were the ones with pig faces, as well as another episode in which a man wandered by himself all alone in a town. Some of my other favorites include those where: gremlins kept occurring outside the window of an airliner in a storm; aliens land with a book entitled "How to Serve Man" only at the last minute people discover it was a cookbook; a man describes people into his tape recorder and makes them suddenly materialize; astronauts are lost and land on a foreign looking planet only to discover it was Nevada; a man dies and winds up in a place of eternal happiness where he had all the pleasure and women he wanted so he asks for Hell instead and is told he already is in Hell; one in a war where a soldier sees halos on the heads of soldiers that subsequently die, and then sees it on his own mirror reflection, and one in which a man gives a recalcitrant woman a love potion and then she keeps going after him and he can't get rid of her. I saw these episodes when I was a teenager, and the memory of them sticks in my mind. I would like to see it again; I hear they are playing it again but wonder if it will measure up to the original.
Down and South
I have found objectionable the use of "south" to mean "down", as in "the Dow is headed south". I feel it is wrong; the Dow is going down instead, and furthermore, I feel it disparages southerners of all types - southern US, Third World, and Australians, for example. But I now see by a notable example that one should also not do the reverse; namely use "down" to mean "south". I had not thought of that one. But when the three Arab-Americans were detained in southern Florida because the authorities thought they were a terrorist threat, one of the things that they allegedly said at a Shoney's was "Do we have enough to bring it down?". According to news reports, a lady at the restaurant thought it meant a building, in these post-Planeattack days. But they said they meant a car instead. They used "down" to mean "south" to Miami. They should have said "Do we have enough to bring it south?" or "do we have enough to bring it to Miami?" Then there would have been no misunderstanding. But one thing this whole episode brings up is that one should use "down" to mean "down and "south" to mean "south" and not confuse the directions.
Today I heard on NPR a description of how Rod Serling developed his Twilight Zone show, despite frequent objections from the Television Establishment. They mentioned several of my favorite episodes, including "Beauty and the Beholder", in which an injured woman had her face remade to be "ugly" but she looked perfectly normal to us, and the doctors and others were the ones with pig faces, as well as another episode in which a man wandered by himself all alone in a town. Some of my other favorites include those where: gremlins kept occurring outside the window of an airliner in a storm; aliens land with a book entitled "How to Serve Man" only at the last minute people discover it was a cookbook; a man describes people into his tape recorder and makes them suddenly materialize; astronauts are lost and land on a foreign looking planet only to discover it was Nevada; a man dies and winds up in a place of eternal happiness where he had all the pleasure and women he wanted so he asks for Hell instead and is told he already is in Hell; one in a war where a soldier sees halos on the heads of soldiers that subsequently die, and then sees it on his own mirror reflection, and one in which a man gives a recalcitrant woman a love potion and then she keeps going after him and he can't get rid of her. I saw these episodes when I was a teenager, and the memory of them sticks in my mind. I would like to see it again; I hear they are playing it again but wonder if it will measure up to the original.
Down and South
I have found objectionable the use of "south" to mean "down", as in "the Dow is headed south". I feel it is wrong; the Dow is going down instead, and furthermore, I feel it disparages southerners of all types - southern US, Third World, and Australians, for example. But I now see by a notable example that one should also not do the reverse; namely use "down" to mean "south". I had not thought of that one. But when the three Arab-Americans were detained in southern Florida because the authorities thought they were a terrorist threat, one of the things that they allegedly said at a Shoney's was "Do we have enough to bring it down?". According to news reports, a lady at the restaurant thought it meant a building, in these post-Planeattack days. But they said they meant a car instead. They used "down" to mean "south" to Miami. They should have said "Do we have enough to bring it south?" or "do we have enough to bring it to Miami?" Then there would have been no misunderstanding. But one thing this whole episode brings up is that one should use "down" to mean "down and "south" to mean "south" and not confuse the directions.
2002/09/13
Orisinal
I have to admit some of the stuff I have been commenting on lately has been rather heavy. I will choose something more light-hearted tonight. If you are searching for some good video games that are not violent, no Dooms or Dragons or anything of that sort, try Orisinal at www.orisinal.org. Earlier I had commented on the Bubble Bees game. This is the game where you blow bubbles and try to catch bees and once in a while a clock, in them, hopefully two or three at a time. I play this when I want a break from what I am doing. Yes, you catch bees with bubbles. And you catch clocks. That is what makes these games so neat. They are nonsensical and silly, and are generally, but not always, nonviolent.
I found out tonight that there are about a score of other Orisinal games you can play. I tried a few. Some of them I could not get, like the one on stars. How are you supposed to catch them? In one you are a kid on a bicycle trailing a kite, and you are supposed to speed up or slow down to make the kite go up or down so it can catch little starlets that are flying around, but NO BIRDS! If you hit a bird, you are penalized and too many hits and you are out of the game. This whole idea is silly, and the idea of avoiding hitting birds promotes the idea of protecting the environment. Some are romantic. A video game about falling in love? The attempt here is a cruising Freddy Eynesford Hill at a building serenading his paramour with a guitar. She responds by throwing roses at him but the other neighbors don't take kindly to the noise and they throw teapots and coke bottles at him. The object is to collect as many roses as possible without getting hit. Cute.
Some of them have some violence. In "Snowboarding", you see skaters skating peacefully on a frozen pond until you hurtle huge snowballs at them to wipe them out. Some really get crazy. The ozone hole is damaging the environment of penguins so you are supposed to shoot them and thereby encase them in a big ice cube. That saves them. That's right. You hear it right. That saves them. Ok…
My favorite is still the Bubble Bees. The best of the others I saw tonight is "It takes Two". In this ludicrously cute game, a puppy and a kitten bounce up and down on a see-saw at your command. Fruit, pies and other food fly in the air and you are supposed to hop the kitten and puppy up and down on the see-saw to have them hit the food for points. You can either hop the kitty from above onto food or you can plop him on the see-saw causing the doggie to pop up in the air and hit a pizza and a hot dog.
To me these games will appeal to children up to about age 12 and to adults from 35 on up. Doom people between 12 and 35 years old seem to be too tied up in reality to appreciate a game of this sort but I invite them to try it too.
I have to admit some of the stuff I have been commenting on lately has been rather heavy. I will choose something more light-hearted tonight. If you are searching for some good video games that are not violent, no Dooms or Dragons or anything of that sort, try Orisinal at www.orisinal.org. Earlier I had commented on the Bubble Bees game. This is the game where you blow bubbles and try to catch bees and once in a while a clock, in them, hopefully two or three at a time. I play this when I want a break from what I am doing. Yes, you catch bees with bubbles. And you catch clocks. That is what makes these games so neat. They are nonsensical and silly, and are generally, but not always, nonviolent.
I found out tonight that there are about a score of other Orisinal games you can play. I tried a few. Some of them I could not get, like the one on stars. How are you supposed to catch them? In one you are a kid on a bicycle trailing a kite, and you are supposed to speed up or slow down to make the kite go up or down so it can catch little starlets that are flying around, but NO BIRDS! If you hit a bird, you are penalized and too many hits and you are out of the game. This whole idea is silly, and the idea of avoiding hitting birds promotes the idea of protecting the environment. Some are romantic. A video game about falling in love? The attempt here is a cruising Freddy Eynesford Hill at a building serenading his paramour with a guitar. She responds by throwing roses at him but the other neighbors don't take kindly to the noise and they throw teapots and coke bottles at him. The object is to collect as many roses as possible without getting hit. Cute.
Some of them have some violence. In "Snowboarding", you see skaters skating peacefully on a frozen pond until you hurtle huge snowballs at them to wipe them out. Some really get crazy. The ozone hole is damaging the environment of penguins so you are supposed to shoot them and thereby encase them in a big ice cube. That saves them. That's right. You hear it right. That saves them. Ok…
My favorite is still the Bubble Bees. The best of the others I saw tonight is "It takes Two". In this ludicrously cute game, a puppy and a kitten bounce up and down on a see-saw at your command. Fruit, pies and other food fly in the air and you are supposed to hop the kitten and puppy up and down on the see-saw to have them hit the food for points. You can either hop the kitty from above onto food or you can plop him on the see-saw causing the doggie to pop up in the air and hit a pizza and a hot dog.
To me these games will appeal to children up to about age 12 and to adults from 35 on up. Doom people between 12 and 35 years old seem to be too tied up in reality to appreciate a game of this sort but I invite them to try it too.
2002/09/11
Hypermedia Day
I was going to go to a memorial service but I didn't. All the books in my attic crashed onto the floor, so I needed to straighten that out. But I didn't go mainly because I got overdosed on Planeattack. I have been dwelling on it too much and thinking about towers falling and people running for their lives. But although this is something I could have done something about, the media did not help much. They overdosed us all today on Planeattack, devoting entire news segments to the anniversary and wiping out all other programming. I did not get much local news at all because the local news program was devoted to national ceremonies.
Although I think there should be memorial services throughout the nation today to help those still suffering from depression and grief to assuage their sorrow, the media does not need to broadcast it all. There were plenty of other news today. How about the primaries in Florida? Once again their electoral process has failed them. What about the threat of war with Iraq and the resulting rise in oil prices? That will hit your pocketbook eventually. Johnny Unitas, the American football star, died today. I did not hear a bit about any of this on the national news tonight. I heard mostly about Planeattack, an event that has already happened.
Besides, why all this focus on a tragedy that killed 3,000 people? Auto accidents kill 44,000 a year; we don't hear about them. About a decade ago, a conflict between rival tribes in Rwanda, Africa killed 200,000 people. This surely was a vaster tragedy. If Planeattack had called for wiping out all other programming for a week, surely we should have heard nothing but what happened in Rwanda for a whole year. But we only got two weeks of occasional headlines about one of the greatest tragedies of our time, and I did not hear of much people feeling sorrow for those who lost loved ones there.
Because of this media overattention on the terrorist attacks of last year, I propose we call this day Hypermedia Day. It is also Remembrance Day, but it is also the day that mediahypism went to its extreme. I think Laura Bush was right. We would have been better off today turning off the TV set.
Planeattack: One Year Later
On September 11 last year nineteen young men saw fit to hijack airplanes and fly them into three of our national landmarks, killing about 3,000 people. It was the worst event to have hit our country since the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Like most people, I found some of the events unbelievable and somewhat apocalyptic. I first found out about it when I saw the headline on the CNN web page: "Breaking News: Plane crashes into World Trade Center". My first thought is that this is like the crash of a plane into the Empire State Building in 1945. But I soon found that the towers had serious wounds on them and were smoking into the sky. Shortly after this I saw the towers fall and I heard of the attack on the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. It traumatized me, just like it did most everyone else in the country; of the worst events in my life, this one ranks third. I found it hard to imagine 650 employees of the same company and same office suddenly killed, or 343 firefighters killed. Many acts of heroism occurred that day, but it was still a day of great tragedy. It leads me to wonder: why did it happen, and how can we minimize the chance that anything like this will occur again?
First of all, why did it happen? With most disasters, there are usually several causes. We may not have been watching people at the airports closely enough. Most hijackings up to now have resulted in people going somewhere else other than intended, rather than crashing into a building, so this caught people by surprise. Perhaps security was lax on the airlines. Maybe the FBI did not see the signs of it coming. Then there are the hijackers themselves. What made them do this?
First of all crashing a plane into a building and killing yourself is not something that we would normally do. These people were driven by some other force. It is my belief that this force is a fanatical belief in God coupled with an intense hatred for Israel, Jews, and anything Western. These people believed that they were truly fighting the forces of evil; they were sacrificing themselves to their cause. They were so caught up in their belief that they were willing to do anything for it. What is needed in this world is a healthy belief in self, and a desire to live life to the fullest. If these fanatics had been furthering their own future and causes instead of following the hateful beliefs of those who told them that this was a one-way ticket to heaven, Planeattack would never have happened.
But why did they have this fanatical belief? The reason for that lies in the widespread hatred of Middle Easterners for the United States and Israel. Hatred for Israel is easy to explain. Israel took over land which had been held by Arabs for centuries and is looked upon as an intruder. They are also envious of the United States and its prosperity and feel Americans get too big a slice of life's pie. We consume a lot more oil, food and other resources than they do and live a better life. They also don't like the invasion of Western culture, especially celebrityitis and media hype, into their lands. So it is not enough to heighten security, declare Delta and red alerts, arrest guilty and innocent people of Middle Eastern origin, and declare a "war" on terrorism. We need to address in addition the inequity between the rich and developing nations of this planet and this is not going to be easy. We need to work the processes of peace and develop ways of sharing the world's resources so that liberty, freedom, and just will be the province of all. To me this is the best way of ensuring that a tragedy of this magnitude never happens again.
I was going to go to a memorial service but I didn't. All the books in my attic crashed onto the floor, so I needed to straighten that out. But I didn't go mainly because I got overdosed on Planeattack. I have been dwelling on it too much and thinking about towers falling and people running for their lives. But although this is something I could have done something about, the media did not help much. They overdosed us all today on Planeattack, devoting entire news segments to the anniversary and wiping out all other programming. I did not get much local news at all because the local news program was devoted to national ceremonies.
Although I think there should be memorial services throughout the nation today to help those still suffering from depression and grief to assuage their sorrow, the media does not need to broadcast it all. There were plenty of other news today. How about the primaries in Florida? Once again their electoral process has failed them. What about the threat of war with Iraq and the resulting rise in oil prices? That will hit your pocketbook eventually. Johnny Unitas, the American football star, died today. I did not hear a bit about any of this on the national news tonight. I heard mostly about Planeattack, an event that has already happened.
Besides, why all this focus on a tragedy that killed 3,000 people? Auto accidents kill 44,000 a year; we don't hear about them. About a decade ago, a conflict between rival tribes in Rwanda, Africa killed 200,000 people. This surely was a vaster tragedy. If Planeattack had called for wiping out all other programming for a week, surely we should have heard nothing but what happened in Rwanda for a whole year. But we only got two weeks of occasional headlines about one of the greatest tragedies of our time, and I did not hear of much people feeling sorrow for those who lost loved ones there.
Because of this media overattention on the terrorist attacks of last year, I propose we call this day Hypermedia Day. It is also Remembrance Day, but it is also the day that mediahypism went to its extreme. I think Laura Bush was right. We would have been better off today turning off the TV set.
Planeattack: One Year Later
On September 11 last year nineteen young men saw fit to hijack airplanes and fly them into three of our national landmarks, killing about 3,000 people. It was the worst event to have hit our country since the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941. Like most people, I found some of the events unbelievable and somewhat apocalyptic. I first found out about it when I saw the headline on the CNN web page: "Breaking News: Plane crashes into World Trade Center". My first thought is that this is like the crash of a plane into the Empire State Building in 1945. But I soon found that the towers had serious wounds on them and were smoking into the sky. Shortly after this I saw the towers fall and I heard of the attack on the Pentagon and the plane crash in Pennsylvania. It traumatized me, just like it did most everyone else in the country; of the worst events in my life, this one ranks third. I found it hard to imagine 650 employees of the same company and same office suddenly killed, or 343 firefighters killed. Many acts of heroism occurred that day, but it was still a day of great tragedy. It leads me to wonder: why did it happen, and how can we minimize the chance that anything like this will occur again?
First of all, why did it happen? With most disasters, there are usually several causes. We may not have been watching people at the airports closely enough. Most hijackings up to now have resulted in people going somewhere else other than intended, rather than crashing into a building, so this caught people by surprise. Perhaps security was lax on the airlines. Maybe the FBI did not see the signs of it coming. Then there are the hijackers themselves. What made them do this?
First of all crashing a plane into a building and killing yourself is not something that we would normally do. These people were driven by some other force. It is my belief that this force is a fanatical belief in God coupled with an intense hatred for Israel, Jews, and anything Western. These people believed that they were truly fighting the forces of evil; they were sacrificing themselves to their cause. They were so caught up in their belief that they were willing to do anything for it. What is needed in this world is a healthy belief in self, and a desire to live life to the fullest. If these fanatics had been furthering their own future and causes instead of following the hateful beliefs of those who told them that this was a one-way ticket to heaven, Planeattack would never have happened.
But why did they have this fanatical belief? The reason for that lies in the widespread hatred of Middle Easterners for the United States and Israel. Hatred for Israel is easy to explain. Israel took over land which had been held by Arabs for centuries and is looked upon as an intruder. They are also envious of the United States and its prosperity and feel Americans get too big a slice of life's pie. We consume a lot more oil, food and other resources than they do and live a better life. They also don't like the invasion of Western culture, especially celebrityitis and media hype, into their lands. So it is not enough to heighten security, declare Delta and red alerts, arrest guilty and innocent people of Middle Eastern origin, and declare a "war" on terrorism. We need to address in addition the inequity between the rich and developing nations of this planet and this is not going to be easy. We need to work the processes of peace and develop ways of sharing the world's resources so that liberty, freedom, and just will be the province of all. To me this is the best way of ensuring that a tragedy of this magnitude never happens again.
2002/09/10
Front Street Syndrome
Last year on this date, the worst terrorist attack ever occurred on American soil. America responded to this by invading Afghanistan and helping the opposition overthrow the tyrannical Taliban and replace it with a more moderate regime, and American troops also helped the Northern Alliance kill, capture or chase out as many Al Qaeda forces as possible. So does this cure the problem of terrorism from Al Qaeda? Maybe not. We may have created Front Street Syndrome.
When I was growing up a notorious street in the city I grew up near (Rochester, New York) named Front Street was well known to be the hangout for all the bums in the city; those that did not have a home and were possibly addicted to alcohol as well. The city tried to chase them out by rebuilding the area and making it look nice, but this merely scattered the homeless people, with some showing up rather surprisingly in better areas of the city. So just like the bums in this city that were scattered all over the place, so too are the Taliban and Al Qaeda now, possibly making the job of going after them more difficult.
Media Hype again
This time the headline read "September 11 weighs on the market", explaining why the stock market averages are down again. How can a date weigh? This does not obviously mean a person of the opposite sex for which you have an amorous appointment, who happens to be overweight. There are better names for the tragedy of last year, such as Planeattack. But still, how can an event weigh? It's just another way of creating drama in a situation which does not call for it. My belief is that most stock market movements are random, and those that aren't are caused more of the time than not by the media.
Last year on this date, the worst terrorist attack ever occurred on American soil. America responded to this by invading Afghanistan and helping the opposition overthrow the tyrannical Taliban and replace it with a more moderate regime, and American troops also helped the Northern Alliance kill, capture or chase out as many Al Qaeda forces as possible. So does this cure the problem of terrorism from Al Qaeda? Maybe not. We may have created Front Street Syndrome.
When I was growing up a notorious street in the city I grew up near (Rochester, New York) named Front Street was well known to be the hangout for all the bums in the city; those that did not have a home and were possibly addicted to alcohol as well. The city tried to chase them out by rebuilding the area and making it look nice, but this merely scattered the homeless people, with some showing up rather surprisingly in better areas of the city. So just like the bums in this city that were scattered all over the place, so too are the Taliban and Al Qaeda now, possibly making the job of going after them more difficult.
Media Hype again
This time the headline read "September 11 weighs on the market", explaining why the stock market averages are down again. How can a date weigh? This does not obviously mean a person of the opposite sex for which you have an amorous appointment, who happens to be overweight. There are better names for the tragedy of last year, such as Planeattack. But still, how can an event weigh? It's just another way of creating drama in a situation which does not call for it. My belief is that most stock market movements are random, and those that aren't are caused more of the time than not by the media.
Simplicity is not simple
The theme for SUUSI 2003 is "Simple Gifts", i.e., the idea of simplifying your life as much as possible. Yesterday the lead article title of a magazine "Math Horizons" startled me. It's title: "Simplicity is not Simple: Tessellations and Modular Architecture". The article was about dividing up two-dimensional space (e.g., office space) into identical regions or cubicles. The square grid is one way of doing it, but hexagons save on partitions (but I have yet to see a workplace that resembled a beehive). Their point was that the problem of making things simple is not simple. In this case the obvious answer was not the optimal one. A quote from a mathematician in the article named Gregg Fleishman: "Making a good system from only a few pieces which are not too hard to machine or build is quite difficult".
Another example I can think of is, say, a UU District Executive who wants to visit all the congregations in his District. To make the job as simple as possible, she would want to minimize the total mileage she has to drive or fly. The very problem of determining the order of congregations she should visit (which one first, which one second, and so forth) is itself one of the most difficult problems in mathematics. You could check all the possible routes but with 15 congregations that would take millions of years. However, no one has come up with a solution that is that much better, and many think there isn't one. However, even that problem, that of proving for certain there isn't one, is itself an even harder mathematical problem (the P = NP conjecture).
Seeking simplicity leads to contradictions. We get contradictions when we look at the Ultimate. An omnipotent God that can lift a stone that is so big that even God can't lift it; an omnipotent, omniscient, good God in a world with evil, the smallest number that cannot be expressed in less than twenty words (that phrase has less than twenty words), the SET of EVERYTHING (just add that very idea of such a SET to that SET), and the set of all sets that are not members of themselves (is the set in itself?) are all examples of such contradictions. And simplicity joins this list.
So simplicity is not all that simple. Seeking simplicity is a complex journey, and one of the things I hope we learn next year is how to pursue simplicity in a world of antinomous complexity.
The theme for SUUSI 2003 is "Simple Gifts", i.e., the idea of simplifying your life as much as possible. Yesterday the lead article title of a magazine "Math Horizons" startled me. It's title: "Simplicity is not Simple: Tessellations and Modular Architecture". The article was about dividing up two-dimensional space (e.g., office space) into identical regions or cubicles. The square grid is one way of doing it, but hexagons save on partitions (but I have yet to see a workplace that resembled a beehive). Their point was that the problem of making things simple is not simple. In this case the obvious answer was not the optimal one. A quote from a mathematician in the article named Gregg Fleishman: "Making a good system from only a few pieces which are not too hard to machine or build is quite difficult".
Another example I can think of is, say, a UU District Executive who wants to visit all the congregations in his District. To make the job as simple as possible, she would want to minimize the total mileage she has to drive or fly. The very problem of determining the order of congregations she should visit (which one first, which one second, and so forth) is itself one of the most difficult problems in mathematics. You could check all the possible routes but with 15 congregations that would take millions of years. However, no one has come up with a solution that is that much better, and many think there isn't one. However, even that problem, that of proving for certain there isn't one, is itself an even harder mathematical problem (the P = NP conjecture).
Seeking simplicity leads to contradictions. We get contradictions when we look at the Ultimate. An omnipotent God that can lift a stone that is so big that even God can't lift it; an omnipotent, omniscient, good God in a world with evil, the smallest number that cannot be expressed in less than twenty words (that phrase has less than twenty words), the SET of EVERYTHING (just add that very idea of such a SET to that SET), and the set of all sets that are not members of themselves (is the set in itself?) are all examples of such contradictions. And simplicity joins this list.
So simplicity is not all that simple. Seeking simplicity is a complex journey, and one of the things I hope we learn next year is how to pursue simplicity in a world of antinomous complexity.
2002/09/08
Planeattack
Earlier I said I had suggested to columnist Kathleen Parker, who wanted a better name for last year's terror than September 11, a better name. Since I have not heard from her, I will mention it now, just before the anniversary. I suggested "Planeattack". It describes what happened: planes made an attack. It was the airplanes themselves that attacked, not objects from the airplanes, as was the case with the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941. It applies to all four incidents on 2001 September 11. I had thought of "Towerfall" earlier, but that applies only to the two attacks on the World Trade Center. So I turned to "Planeattack", and I will be calling it that from now on. If anyone can think of a better name, let me know.
Earlier I said I had suggested to columnist Kathleen Parker, who wanted a better name for last year's terror than September 11, a better name. Since I have not heard from her, I will mention it now, just before the anniversary. I suggested "Planeattack". It describes what happened: planes made an attack. It was the airplanes themselves that attacked, not objects from the airplanes, as was the case with the Pearl Harbor attack of 1941. It applies to all four incidents on 2001 September 11. I had thought of "Towerfall" earlier, but that applies only to the two attacks on the World Trade Center. So I turned to "Planeattack", and I will be calling it that from now on. If anyone can think of a better name, let me know.
Turnings
The service at the Unitarian church I attend had a responsive reading that started with:
"Now is the time for turning."
Turnings are interesting; I had been interested in Strauss and Howe's theory of generational turnings in The Fourth Turning. Their theory is that our present time is about to turn into a Fourth Turning; i.e., a period of crisis similar to the Great Depression and World War II. So I hear them proclaim in church that the turning is about to occur.
The reading goes on to say that we can't get out of our current stagnant pattern of life by doing the same things, as we then get the same results we had been getting. We need something to jolt us out of this reverie. I feel like I may be nearing such a point in my life, and according to Strauss and Howe, so is American society. Dotcomitis, celebrityitis, mediahypism, political correctness and corporate deception have been going on too long. Something needs to happen to jolt us out of this, and this is Strauss and Howe's Fourth Turning. They say the previous or Third Turning is a period of growing disorder; I disagree. It is a period of order, when the same things happen over and over again like a broken record and something needs to hop to get the tune playing again or to play another tune. It is a suboptimal stable equilibrium. We need to get out of this to achieve new heights.
AOL Deception
I see them everywhere now. America Online (AOL) discs free for the taking from numerous places, including stores, bundled software, and offices. They say, "Get 1,025 hours of AOL free with AOL 7.0". That sounds like a lot of hours. But if you look at the smaller print, you find that you have to use these hours up in 45 days. If you get out your calculator and multiply the 24 hours a day that there is only that many of by 45 days, you get 1,080 hours. AOL is deceiving us. It may be true what they say. However, the only way you are going to use up 1,025 hours in 45 days' time is to be continuously online 24/7 except for 55 hours. You need far more than 55 hours of sleep in that time. What they are really saying is that you get 45 days of free time on AOL. It is all too easy to deceive by using numbers out of their range. 1,080 hours sounds like far more time than 45 days, yet they are the same amount of time. Further, "hours" in internet service provider (ISP) language usually means time that you are actually logged into their system, whereas "days" connotes time that you are subscribing to their service, regardless of whether you are logged in. So 1,080 really sounds like a lot, like it may last a year or more. But it lasts only 45 days. So AOL should state this up front, in much larger font than the1,025 hours. Their putting 1,025 (which is the wrong number anyway) in the biggest font instead of 45 to me constitutes misleading advertising. They should terminate this practice immediately.
The service at the Unitarian church I attend had a responsive reading that started with:
"Now is the time for turning."
Turnings are interesting; I had been interested in Strauss and Howe's theory of generational turnings in The Fourth Turning. Their theory is that our present time is about to turn into a Fourth Turning; i.e., a period of crisis similar to the Great Depression and World War II. So I hear them proclaim in church that the turning is about to occur.
The reading goes on to say that we can't get out of our current stagnant pattern of life by doing the same things, as we then get the same results we had been getting. We need something to jolt us out of this reverie. I feel like I may be nearing such a point in my life, and according to Strauss and Howe, so is American society. Dotcomitis, celebrityitis, mediahypism, political correctness and corporate deception have been going on too long. Something needs to happen to jolt us out of this, and this is Strauss and Howe's Fourth Turning. They say the previous or Third Turning is a period of growing disorder; I disagree. It is a period of order, when the same things happen over and over again like a broken record and something needs to hop to get the tune playing again or to play another tune. It is a suboptimal stable equilibrium. We need to get out of this to achieve new heights.
AOL Deception
I see them everywhere now. America Online (AOL) discs free for the taking from numerous places, including stores, bundled software, and offices. They say, "Get 1,025 hours of AOL free with AOL 7.0". That sounds like a lot of hours. But if you look at the smaller print, you find that you have to use these hours up in 45 days. If you get out your calculator and multiply the 24 hours a day that there is only that many of by 45 days, you get 1,080 hours. AOL is deceiving us. It may be true what they say. However, the only way you are going to use up 1,025 hours in 45 days' time is to be continuously online 24/7 except for 55 hours. You need far more than 55 hours of sleep in that time. What they are really saying is that you get 45 days of free time on AOL. It is all too easy to deceive by using numbers out of their range. 1,080 hours sounds like far more time than 45 days, yet they are the same amount of time. Further, "hours" in internet service provider (ISP) language usually means time that you are actually logged into their system, whereas "days" connotes time that you are subscribing to their service, regardless of whether you are logged in. So 1,080 really sounds like a lot, like it may last a year or more. But it lasts only 45 days. So AOL should state this up front, in much larger font than the1,025 hours. Their putting 1,025 (which is the wrong number anyway) in the biggest font instead of 45 to me constitutes misleading advertising. They should terminate this practice immediately.
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