Gamma Ray Bursters
At an amateur astronomer's meeting tonight I saw a NOVA video on gamma ray bursters. These are mysterious bursts of radiation, especially gamma rays, coming from some place in the sky that does not usually correspond to any star, galaxy, nebula, or other visible optical instrument. They are so powerful that if one were to occur 100 light years (that's 600 trillion miles) from here, it would wipe out human civilization; it would be like an atom blast everywhere on the Earth simultaneously. So what are they? The theory that came out in the video was that they are caused by really huge stars that collapse into black holes when they die. There are two objections to this argument. One is that usually huge supernovas in which a star (such as a Wolf-Rayet star) could become a black hole usually produce Type 1b or Type 1c supernovas, which are far less powerful than a gamma ray burster. More importantly, if really huge stars that become black holes produce gamma ray bursters ( also called hypernovas) when they die, certainly something like this would have occurred in the 4.6-billion-year history of the earth. That would have wiped out all life. I am alive, and I see all kinds of life around me - people, animals and plants, and the planet is fertile. Therefore, no such explosion could have occurred near here, and that eliminates stars becoming black holes as the cause of gamma-ray bursters. Then what are they? Like many astronomers, I feel I do not know. It is part of the never-ending quest for truth and meaning. Maybe we will know someday.
A Journey through Blogrealm
Blogtrek
Blogtrek
2002/10/14
2002/10/12
Star Collision
I have seen some terrifying, apocalyptic images as of late: the burning towers of Planeattack, the destruction of cities in the movies Armageddon and Independence Day, and in numerous artist renditions of the times billions of years in the future when the sun heats up and becomes a red giant, turning the Earth into a lava ball. I saw some more horrifying images yet in the current issue of Scientific American. The 2002 November issue shows what looks like a bright shining yellow lava asteroid about to collide with a dark, reddish Earth. But it was no asteroid. It was the Sun, distorted into the shape of an elongated bird egg by the approach of a white dwarf star from nowhere. Stars are so far apart that the chance of them colliding is remote, but maybe not that remote, as they attract to each other through gravity. The article says that if a white dwarf star, as massive as the Sun but in the volume of an Earth, were to collide with the Sun, it would ignite the entire Sun and blow it up leaving behind a nebula. There is a painting in this article that shows this. These two paintings are among the most striking I have ever seen. They do leave out a few points; for example, the mere approach of the white dwarf would have swung the planets into weird orbits or flung them out altogether, and the Sun is pictured as a normal-colored yellow object, whereas if this were to really happen, the Sun would have been blazingly bright, as it is now, and no reasonable picture could reflect this.
The article does give an "arithmetic" table for saying what happens if stars of different types were to collide. For example, if two red giants collide, they would throw off their outer envelopes and become a pair of white dwarfs. If two main sequence stars (such as the Sun) were to collide, the result would be a bigger main sequence star, and so forth. This gives an arithmetic of sorts. White dwarf + black hole = black hole (with disk). Red supergiant + neutron star = white dwarf + neutron star (with disk) and so forth. This operation is clearly commutative, since, for example, the Sun and a white dwarf are the white dwarf and the Sun. Is it associative? I thought at first yes, since there are ranks of objects and the same things always happen to them; for example, a red giant encountering any kind of star will turn into a white dwarf. However, (red giant + main sequence) + main sequence is not the same as red giant + (main sequence + main sequence), as in the former, one of the main sequence stars would get annihilated by a white dwarf, but in the second this does not happen.
I have seen some terrifying, apocalyptic images as of late: the burning towers of Planeattack, the destruction of cities in the movies Armageddon and Independence Day, and in numerous artist renditions of the times billions of years in the future when the sun heats up and becomes a red giant, turning the Earth into a lava ball. I saw some more horrifying images yet in the current issue of Scientific American. The 2002 November issue shows what looks like a bright shining yellow lava asteroid about to collide with a dark, reddish Earth. But it was no asteroid. It was the Sun, distorted into the shape of an elongated bird egg by the approach of a white dwarf star from nowhere. Stars are so far apart that the chance of them colliding is remote, but maybe not that remote, as they attract to each other through gravity. The article says that if a white dwarf star, as massive as the Sun but in the volume of an Earth, were to collide with the Sun, it would ignite the entire Sun and blow it up leaving behind a nebula. There is a painting in this article that shows this. These two paintings are among the most striking I have ever seen. They do leave out a few points; for example, the mere approach of the white dwarf would have swung the planets into weird orbits or flung them out altogether, and the Sun is pictured as a normal-colored yellow object, whereas if this were to really happen, the Sun would have been blazingly bright, as it is now, and no reasonable picture could reflect this.
The article does give an "arithmetic" table for saying what happens if stars of different types were to collide. For example, if two red giants collide, they would throw off their outer envelopes and become a pair of white dwarfs. If two main sequence stars (such as the Sun) were to collide, the result would be a bigger main sequence star, and so forth. This gives an arithmetic of sorts. White dwarf + black hole = black hole (with disk). Red supergiant + neutron star = white dwarf + neutron star (with disk) and so forth. This operation is clearly commutative, since, for example, the Sun and a white dwarf are the white dwarf and the Sun. Is it associative? I thought at first yes, since there are ranks of objects and the same things always happen to them; for example, a red giant encountering any kind of star will turn into a white dwarf. However, (red giant + main sequence) + main sequence is not the same as red giant + (main sequence + main sequence), as in the former, one of the main sequence stars would get annihilated by a white dwarf, but in the second this does not happen.
2002/10/11
The Silliness of Evil
The word "evil" is used more often than it used to be. Evil hijackers, axis of evil, Saddam is evil and so forth. I really don't believe there is such a thing as evil, and I believe that more often or not it means what the "other guys" are. The word has even got a connotation of being comical. There's Evil Kneivel, for instance. "Evil Empire" has a silly sound to it, as in "Press Button to Destroy Evil Empire". Synonyms for "Evil" also sound silly, for example, wicked, sin (as in "sinful chocolate"), and misdeed. By far the silliest is the German word böse . I saw one web site, for example, say "Simpson ist böse". The word sounds funny to me, perhaps because when I learned it, it was in a story about children and their parents. When the parents get angry with their children, the story refers to the parents as "böse". So I came to regard the word as similar to "mad" in English, but the difference is that to say someone is angry, informally, in English you say that they are crazy ("mad"), whereas in German you say that they are evil ("böse"). So I suppose Brits and Americans go crazy when they get angry, and Germans become evil. The whole idea of evil is crazy anyway.
The word "evil" is used more often than it used to be. Evil hijackers, axis of evil, Saddam is evil and so forth. I really don't believe there is such a thing as evil, and I believe that more often or not it means what the "other guys" are. The word has even got a connotation of being comical. There's Evil Kneivel, for instance. "Evil Empire" has a silly sound to it, as in "Press Button to Destroy Evil Empire". Synonyms for "Evil" also sound silly, for example, wicked, sin (as in "sinful chocolate"), and misdeed. By far the silliest is the German word böse . I saw one web site, for example, say "Simpson ist böse". The word sounds funny to me, perhaps because when I learned it, it was in a story about children and their parents. When the parents get angry with their children, the story refers to the parents as "böse". So I came to regard the word as similar to "mad" in English, but the difference is that to say someone is angry, informally, in English you say that they are crazy ("mad"), whereas in German you say that they are evil ("böse"). So I suppose Brits and Americans go crazy when they get angry, and Germans become evil. The whole idea of evil is crazy anyway.
Columbus Day
Columbus Day is coming up. This holiday was celebrated on October 12 when I was young, but, like many other holidays, it was moved to Mondays; in particular, the second Monday of October. I don't regard it as an important holiday, especially when many see it as a symbol of colonialism instead of the discovery of the New World. Nevertheless, attendance was low at my workplace today, and we were let out an hour early. This shows that even minor holidays are increasing in importance as of late. I feel the 10 major US holidays rank like this in importance:
1. Yule (December 25)
2. Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November)
3. New Year's Day (January 1)
4. Independence Day (July 4)
5. Memorial Day (last Monday in May)
6. Labor Day (first Monday in September)
7. Martin Luther King Day (third Monday in January)
8. Veterans' Day (November 11)
9. Presidents' Day (third Monday in February)
10. Columbus Day (October 12)
Columbus Day is coming up. This holiday was celebrated on October 12 when I was young, but, like many other holidays, it was moved to Mondays; in particular, the second Monday of October. I don't regard it as an important holiday, especially when many see it as a symbol of colonialism instead of the discovery of the New World. Nevertheless, attendance was low at my workplace today, and we were let out an hour early. This shows that even minor holidays are increasing in importance as of late. I feel the 10 major US holidays rank like this in importance:
1. Yule (December 25)
2. Thanksgiving (4th Thursday in November)
3. New Year's Day (January 1)
4. Independence Day (July 4)
5. Memorial Day (last Monday in May)
6. Labor Day (first Monday in September)
7. Martin Luther King Day (third Monday in January)
8. Veterans' Day (November 11)
9. Presidents' Day (third Monday in February)
10. Columbus Day (October 12)
Which President was the Best?
Today Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize. It was well deserved. Jimmy Carter lived much of his life seeking peace everywhere, with the Camp David accords, Haiti, and numerous other places. In my opinion he was the best President in my lifetime. Here is my ranking of the men who served as our President in my lifetime:
1. Jimmy Carter. High regard for people and peace.
2. John F. Kennedy. Started an optimistic new age: Camelot
3. Harry Truman. Was able to say what he meant.
4. Gerald Ford. Served as well as he could for a president that was not elected.
5. Bill Clinton. Able to achieve things with people, but his amorous pursuits did him in.
6. Lyndon Johnson. Developed the Great Society, but the Vietnam War was our biggest failure.
7. George H. W. Bush (father). Won a war but could not bring around the economy.
8. Ronald Reagan. Symbolizes optimism but also "moral majority" and Iran-Contra.
9. George W. Bush (son). Angered world with non-involvement in anti-racism and ecological concerns, too martiocratic.
10. Richard Nixon. Opened China but Watergate was the worst scandal in our history.
Today Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize. It was well deserved. Jimmy Carter lived much of his life seeking peace everywhere, with the Camp David accords, Haiti, and numerous other places. In my opinion he was the best President in my lifetime. Here is my ranking of the men who served as our President in my lifetime:
1. Jimmy Carter. High regard for people and peace.
2. John F. Kennedy. Started an optimistic new age: Camelot
3. Harry Truman. Was able to say what he meant.
4. Gerald Ford. Served as well as he could for a president that was not elected.
5. Bill Clinton. Able to achieve things with people, but his amorous pursuits did him in.
6. Lyndon Johnson. Developed the Great Society, but the Vietnam War was our biggest failure.
7. George H. W. Bush (father). Won a war but could not bring around the economy.
8. Ronald Reagan. Symbolizes optimism but also "moral majority" and Iran-Contra.
9. George W. Bush (son). Angered world with non-involvement in anti-racism and ecological concerns, too martiocratic.
10. Richard Nixon. Opened China but Watergate was the worst scandal in our history.
2002/10/10
To Anacreon in Heaven
Toastmaster Table Topics become blog topics. That's an easy transition. The one from today's meeting is "To Anacreon in Heaven". I was called upon to explain if anyone under the age of 50 knows the words to the Star Spangled Banner. [Warning: this hyperlink plays music.] I don't think it has anything to do with age. Most people know the words to the first verse but not the other verses. They were written by Francis Scott Key, and reflects the relief and joy that people found when they saw, throughout all the fighting at night, that the US Flag was tattered, but still flying over the fort. It seems to have been trivialized in our society to the extent where the last two words seem to be "play ball!"; perhaps we should reread the verses and ponder over their meaning.
Many people don't know the origin of the music. It was once a drinking song! "To Anacreon in Heaven" was sung in bars in colonial America in the 1700s. The range of the music is wide, an octave and a half. Not many of us have that kind of vocal range. It was purposely written that way, along with pompous and provocative words, to test the ability of people to sing it when half drunk. It begins "To Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee…" and the first verse terminates with "The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine", referring to the ancient Roman god of wine and merriment. So next time we hear that anthem play, think of the drinking song which underlies it.
Toastmaster Table Topics become blog topics. That's an easy transition. The one from today's meeting is "To Anacreon in Heaven". I was called upon to explain if anyone under the age of 50 knows the words to the Star Spangled Banner. [Warning: this hyperlink plays music.] I don't think it has anything to do with age. Most people know the words to the first verse but not the other verses. They were written by Francis Scott Key, and reflects the relief and joy that people found when they saw, throughout all the fighting at night, that the US Flag was tattered, but still flying over the fort. It seems to have been trivialized in our society to the extent where the last two words seem to be "play ball!"; perhaps we should reread the verses and ponder over their meaning.
Many people don't know the origin of the music. It was once a drinking song! "To Anacreon in Heaven" was sung in bars in colonial America in the 1700s. The range of the music is wide, an octave and a half. Not many of us have that kind of vocal range. It was purposely written that way, along with pompous and provocative words, to test the ability of people to sing it when half drunk. It begins "To Anacreon in Heaven, where he sat in full glee…" and the first verse terminates with "The Myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's Vine", referring to the ancient Roman god of wine and merriment. So next time we hear that anthem play, think of the drinking song which underlies it.
2002/10/07
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.
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.
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.
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