Virtual Nations
I read an article in the 2002 July issue of Futurist magazine about a concept called a "virtual nation". This is a group of people throughout the world connected together by the Internet, occasional meetings, and maybe some pieces of land here and there to which the people belonging to the v-nation pledge their allegiance to. The impression I got from the article is that such a nation is spread more or less evenly throughout the population instead of being concentrated in a geographic area, like traditional nations such as India, the United States, and Russia are. One example I can think of is the Jewish or Israeli Diaspora, which has been a v-nation for a long time, until 1948, when it become the traditional nation of Israel.
This is an interesting idea. I can think of such groups in our country. For example, Charlottesville, Virginia is a traditional governmental group; specifically, a city. Its people are clustered within a certain area in Virginia. Toastmasters International could be said to be a v-group or v-nation then, as its members are dispersed among the population. It has a government (international directors, International President, and so forth) and traditions (the Toastmaster program, the CTM and other awards, for example). We can speak of how dense these "nations" are. It has the same population roughly as Charlottesville, but it is spread out much more evenly. My religion, the Unitarian Universalists, would be such a v-nation also; it has its set of 7 principles, for instance. For example, Boy Scouts has ten times as many members as Toastmasters, so it is ten times as dense. Further, the lines of demarcation between v-nations and traditional nations are not distinct; Americans are spread throughout the world, and Toastmasters are concentrated in southern California.
However, to treat these v-nations as nations in the traditional sense would be incorrect. The article calls al-Qaeda such a v-nation, but it does not have a geographic base where most of its members live. Further, calling al-Qaeda a v-nation may be one way of thinking of this anti-terrorist effort as a war, or rather, a v-war, since war is defined to be armed conflict between nations. I do not think it should be called a war, because that encourages others, such as Israel and India, to wage wars of terrorism on their own, heightening the level of tension in that part of the world. It's a worldwide police action instead.
Although to think of groups such as Toastmasters and Unitarian Universalists as a virtual, spread-out group is an interesting concept, they are not nations in the usual sense and should not be treated as such.
A Journey through Blogrealm
Blogtrek
Blogtrek
2002/06/07
2002/06/05
Mathematics in life
My profession is mathematics, so I see mathematical things in life. I noticed two problems today. One concerns presenting a speech involving overhead slides to an audience. You want to put the projector so the image is not blocked either by you the speaker or by the projector. This gets into some geometry; in particular, lines from a collection of points (attendees) to the projector and the presenter. Is there an optimal way to do it, a formula dependent on the geometry of the room you are giving the speech in?
The other concerns a church that wants to go from one service each week to two. How will the parking situation change? Will there be a big crowd between the two services, and what is the average distance from where you park your car to the church?
My profession is mathematics, so I see mathematical things in life. I noticed two problems today. One concerns presenting a speech involving overhead slides to an audience. You want to put the projector so the image is not blocked either by you the speaker or by the projector. This gets into some geometry; in particular, lines from a collection of points (attendees) to the projector and the presenter. Is there an optimal way to do it, a formula dependent on the geometry of the room you are giving the speech in?
The other concerns a church that wants to go from one service each week to two. How will the parking situation change? Will there be a big crowd between the two services, and what is the average distance from where you park your car to the church?
2002/06/01
K9 stars
I purchased a Sky and Telescope magazine today and read an article about the brightest red dwarf star in our sky, a rather obscure star named Lacaille 8760. It has a spectral type of M0. What does that mean? Astronomers long ago classified stars according to the spectrum that their light produce when passed through a prism. The classifications are now mostly by temperature, and some rearranging of the types were needed as more facts were discovered about stars. Today the sequence from hottest to coolest is O, B, A, F, G, K, M, with L and T added recently for brown dwarfs. A red dwarf star is of type M; it is cool as far as stars go but still a star. The types are subdivided into tenths; e.g., an F9 is hotter than a G2 is hotter than a G8 and so forth. Our sun is a G2 star.
The faintest red dwarf is interesting as there is a natural boundary at the faint end - between star and non-star. But there is no such boundary at the bright end. So saying the brightest red dwarf tends to make it a middle of the pack type of star. In fact, the next type up from M0 is K9. Now this reminds me of the Dog Star Sirius.
Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. It is bluish white and astronomers say that its spectral type is A1. But since it is the Dog Star I think the type should be K9 instead. Indeed, some legends of the past had Sirius as being a red star. I tried looking up K9 and Sirius in Google, and got an article about a K9 police dog named Sirius who died when the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11. He was the K9 star of the day.
So what's the type of Sirius? Well, given that it's the Dog Star, I would say that its type is K9.
I purchased a Sky and Telescope magazine today and read an article about the brightest red dwarf star in our sky, a rather obscure star named Lacaille 8760. It has a spectral type of M0. What does that mean? Astronomers long ago classified stars according to the spectrum that their light produce when passed through a prism. The classifications are now mostly by temperature, and some rearranging of the types were needed as more facts were discovered about stars. Today the sequence from hottest to coolest is O, B, A, F, G, K, M, with L and T added recently for brown dwarfs. A red dwarf star is of type M; it is cool as far as stars go but still a star. The types are subdivided into tenths; e.g., an F9 is hotter than a G2 is hotter than a G8 and so forth. Our sun is a G2 star.
The faintest red dwarf is interesting as there is a natural boundary at the faint end - between star and non-star. But there is no such boundary at the bright end. So saying the brightest red dwarf tends to make it a middle of the pack type of star. In fact, the next type up from M0 is K9. Now this reminds me of the Dog Star Sirius.
Sirius is the brightest star in the sky. It is bluish white and astronomers say that its spectral type is A1. But since it is the Dog Star I think the type should be K9 instead. Indeed, some legends of the past had Sirius as being a red star. I tried looking up K9 and Sirius in Google, and got an article about a K9 police dog named Sirius who died when the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11. He was the K9 star of the day.
So what's the type of Sirius? Well, given that it's the Dog Star, I would say that its type is K9.
2002/05/30
Contradictions
Today I went to my last class of Front Page. I told the class, populated with people I work with, about some of the problems with Front Page, namely that if you make non-Front Page edits to your web pages and then run Front Page again, it will mess up those pages. They thought that Front Page was a good package, however. My church is revising its web page, and they feel the problems of Front Page are too great and so they are going to use ASP and Dreamweaver. So I am a part of two web pages who contradict each other on the worth of Front Page. I will want to stick with them both and learn both Front Page and Dreamweaver, so I can use the best of both. But contradictions do annoy me. Logically they imply anything. That is, if Austin is in Texas, then if Austin is not in Texas, then Mickey Mouse is God. P -> (~P -> Q) is how it is written in logical notation. What they really mean is that at least one of the contradicting statements is false. I have to decide which.
I designed a wallpaper today for the month of June. What color should June be? February is red, December is red and green, March is green, January is white and so forth. That leaves cyan for June. This did not look like a likely color for the month. But I put together something based on cyan, and the result is quite attractive to me. The shades of blue-green that it has reminds me of a swimming pool, and of course in June is when the pools are first open for the entire month. I came up with this scheme:
White January snow
Red February valentine heart
Green March St Patrick's day shamrock
Purple April flowers
Yellow May sun
Cyan June swimming pool
Red White Blue July US Flag
Orange Red August heat
Blue September blue skies
Orange Black October halloween pumpkin and night
Brown November leaves and dying vegetation
Red and Green December holly and poinsettia
There are six primary and secondary colors and six tertiary colors for a total of 12, the same as the number of months. What if each month had to have a different one of these twelve colors? I came up with this:
Red February
Red-Orange August
Orange October
Amber November
Yellow May
Chartreuse September
Green March
Turquoise or Cyan June
Blue July
Indigo December
Purple April
Magenta January
where now I have indexed it by color rather than by month. So June is turquoise, just as above. So remember these when you design something for a given month.
Today I went to my last class of Front Page. I told the class, populated with people I work with, about some of the problems with Front Page, namely that if you make non-Front Page edits to your web pages and then run Front Page again, it will mess up those pages. They thought that Front Page was a good package, however. My church is revising its web page, and they feel the problems of Front Page are too great and so they are going to use ASP and Dreamweaver. So I am a part of two web pages who contradict each other on the worth of Front Page. I will want to stick with them both and learn both Front Page and Dreamweaver, so I can use the best of both. But contradictions do annoy me. Logically they imply anything. That is, if Austin is in Texas, then if Austin is not in Texas, then Mickey Mouse is God. P -> (~P -> Q) is how it is written in logical notation. What they really mean is that at least one of the contradicting statements is false. I have to decide which.
I designed a wallpaper today for the month of June. What color should June be? February is red, December is red and green, March is green, January is white and so forth. That leaves cyan for June. This did not look like a likely color for the month. But I put together something based on cyan, and the result is quite attractive to me. The shades of blue-green that it has reminds me of a swimming pool, and of course in June is when the pools are first open for the entire month. I came up with this scheme:
White January snow
Red February valentine heart
Green March St Patrick's day shamrock
Purple April flowers
Yellow May sun
Cyan June swimming pool
Red White Blue July US Flag
Orange Red August heat
Blue September blue skies
Orange Black October halloween pumpkin and night
Brown November leaves and dying vegetation
Red and Green December holly and poinsettia
There are six primary and secondary colors and six tertiary colors for a total of 12, the same as the number of months. What if each month had to have a different one of these twelve colors? I came up with this:
Red February
Red-Orange August
Orange October
Amber November
Yellow May
Chartreuse September
Green March
Turquoise or Cyan June
Blue July
Indigo December
Purple April
Magenta January
where now I have indexed it by color rather than by month. So June is turquoise, just as above. So remember these when you design something for a given month.
2002/05/29
Warning
I took a course on a data system at my workplace last Friday, and looked at some of the course materials today. The first page of it was a poem by Jenny Joseph entitled "I shall wear purple". I looked it up on the Web and found it was really titled "Warning"; one site for it is http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/716.html. The poem seems to speak of what this woman will do when she is old and what she now feels she has to do. It seems to say to live you life when you can and don't wait. It reminds me a little of the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, by TS Eliot.
I got intrigued by misspellings on the Web. A search for netwrok in Google, for instance, produces a huge list of netwroks. I also get lots of netowrks, newtorks (what's a new tork?), and entworks. All of these asked if I meant network. I tried "new tork" and got a list of new torks, including the New Tork Times. "Newtork" got me a question of whether I meant network, even though New York is just as plausible. I tried "net york, net york", and this time it suggested New York, New York. Finding New York and network to be so close was interesting, as a lot of things are networked to New York. It all goes to show that the Spell Checker can still be effectively used more than it is.
I took a course on a data system at my workplace last Friday, and looked at some of the course materials today. The first page of it was a poem by Jenny Joseph entitled "I shall wear purple". I looked it up on the Web and found it was really titled "Warning"; one site for it is http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/716.html. The poem seems to speak of what this woman will do when she is old and what she now feels she has to do. It seems to say to live you life when you can and don't wait. It reminds me a little of the Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, by TS Eliot.
I got intrigued by misspellings on the Web. A search for netwrok in Google, for instance, produces a huge list of netwroks. I also get lots of netowrks, newtorks (what's a new tork?), and entworks. All of these asked if I meant network. I tried "new tork" and got a list of new torks, including the New Tork Times. "Newtork" got me a question of whether I meant network, even though New York is just as plausible. I tried "net york, net york", and this time it suggested New York, New York. Finding New York and network to be so close was interesting, as a lot of things are networked to New York. It all goes to show that the Spell Checker can still be effectively used more than it is.
2002/05/28
Keep it or nuts
My attic has reams of paper. Old Toastmaster and astronomy files back to the late 1970's, hundreds of books, income tax for every year since 1969, and all my paycheck stubs for all of the places I have ever worked. I need to throw much of this stuff out. They say you can throw out tax returns after 7 years. Then today I find that I needed a piece of paper from the year 1993! It seems the social security people say my Medicare wages were zero in that year. I worked in that year just like any other. I call them and they tell me I have to send them a copy of my W2 for that year. Well fortunately I kept all my tax records from way way back. I got it out, as well as my paycheck stub since the W2 was marginally readable. But this puts a question into my cleanup desires. I want to get rid of that old stuff, but you never know when you will need something.
I gave a talk on mathematics and religion today and convinced people that study too much of either will take you away from the real world. I wanted to convey to people the "just add one" philosophy, that no matter how far you have gone, you can go farther, and that there is always something to learn. No matter how huge a number you pick, I can pick a bigger one. I'll just add one to yours. This is why I believe in the Unitarian Universalist Fourth Principle: the quest for truth and meaning is never-ending.
I eat out every night this week, because of nightly activities. At least one of these meals will be paid for.
My attic has reams of paper. Old Toastmaster and astronomy files back to the late 1970's, hundreds of books, income tax for every year since 1969, and all my paycheck stubs for all of the places I have ever worked. I need to throw much of this stuff out. They say you can throw out tax returns after 7 years. Then today I find that I needed a piece of paper from the year 1993! It seems the social security people say my Medicare wages were zero in that year. I worked in that year just like any other. I call them and they tell me I have to send them a copy of my W2 for that year. Well fortunately I kept all my tax records from way way back. I got it out, as well as my paycheck stub since the W2 was marginally readable. But this puts a question into my cleanup desires. I want to get rid of that old stuff, but you never know when you will need something.
I gave a talk on mathematics and religion today and convinced people that study too much of either will take you away from the real world. I wanted to convey to people the "just add one" philosophy, that no matter how far you have gone, you can go farther, and that there is always something to learn. No matter how huge a number you pick, I can pick a bigger one. I'll just add one to yours. This is why I believe in the Unitarian Universalist Fourth Principle: the quest for truth and meaning is never-ending.
I eat out every night this week, because of nightly activities. At least one of these meals will be paid for.
2002/05/27
Forbidden subjects?
I installed IIS on my computer today to see how web pages that I am developing with ASP or Front Page will work when installed. One problem is that I am using Windows XP and IIS 5.1, and the site I want to go to uses Windows NT 4.0 and IIS 4.0. Therefore, I could expect some problems, since the two are out of sync. This is a problem of our times. We keep upgrading and upgrading all the time, and then you find you have to learn everything all over again because they've changed everything. That holds especially true now with all this .NET stuff going around.
I prepared a talk on mathematics and religion and found while researching for this that mathematicians that go in for religion-related subjects, such as infinity, have a tendency towards mental illness, as though they were entering forbidden territory. Certainly studying such mathematics will take you out of the real world, and cause problems because of that, but then I found mathematicians that managed to handle it OK without mental illness.
I installed IIS on my computer today to see how web pages that I am developing with ASP or Front Page will work when installed. One problem is that I am using Windows XP and IIS 5.1, and the site I want to go to uses Windows NT 4.0 and IIS 4.0. Therefore, I could expect some problems, since the two are out of sync. This is a problem of our times. We keep upgrading and upgrading all the time, and then you find you have to learn everything all over again because they've changed everything. That holds especially true now with all this .NET stuff going around.
I prepared a talk on mathematics and religion and found while researching for this that mathematicians that go in for religion-related subjects, such as infinity, have a tendency towards mental illness, as though they were entering forbidden territory. Certainly studying such mathematics will take you out of the real world, and cause problems because of that, but then I found mathematicians that managed to handle it OK without mental illness.
2002/05/25
Communication
Communication has been a serious problem in human relations for centuries. I have seen at least two such incidents this week.There are many ways such incidents could occur:
A teacher in a computer class, wanting his students to click on a button to turn a service, such as IIS, on, tells the class to press a button. Some students complain they have no such button. He goes to help them and straightens their situation out. He then repeats his request to the class to click on the button. Students who have already clicked the button click it again, turning the service off. Then they complain when they get error messages when they do things supposing the service is on.
The Breakfast Toastmaster club meets at 7:30 am on Thursdays in a municipal building in a city. Another one, the Nightspeakers Toastmasters club, meets in the same building in the same room at 7:30 pm on Thursdays. Jan, interested in Toastmasters, calls a contact phone number and gets Kelly, who tells Jan there is a club meeting at 7:30 this Thursday and we would like to have you there. Jan meant the Breakfast club, but gets surprised when Kelly shows up at the Nightspeakers club instead.
What happened to me this week is that I signed up for a class, and I was told two months ago that I was enrolled in it. I heard nothing more on it, and then when I showed up for it, I was NOT signed up. Apparently they had fewer slots than expected, and they dropped me from it. Not hearing this, I showed up anyway, and was able to take it anyway when someone else did not show up.
Using 24-hour time would have resolved the Toastmaster problem. That's why the military adopted it, when a miscommunication could mean the difference between life and death. The problem, however, is a tradeoff between telling everything that you can aboiut a situation, using up a lot of time; perhaps some of the message does not get through because there is so many things to remember, and not telling every detail about it, in which case a problem caused by that detail turns up. It is a tough problem to solve, and I believe that communication seems to work best when as people hold as many default assumptions in common as possible.
Communication has been a serious problem in human relations for centuries. I have seen at least two such incidents this week.There are many ways such incidents could occur:
A teacher in a computer class, wanting his students to click on a button to turn a service, such as IIS, on, tells the class to press a button. Some students complain they have no such button. He goes to help them and straightens their situation out. He then repeats his request to the class to click on the button. Students who have already clicked the button click it again, turning the service off. Then they complain when they get error messages when they do things supposing the service is on.
The Breakfast Toastmaster club meets at 7:30 am on Thursdays in a municipal building in a city. Another one, the Nightspeakers Toastmasters club, meets in the same building in the same room at 7:30 pm on Thursdays. Jan, interested in Toastmasters, calls a contact phone number and gets Kelly, who tells Jan there is a club meeting at 7:30 this Thursday and we would like to have you there. Jan meant the Breakfast club, but gets surprised when Kelly shows up at the Nightspeakers club instead.
What happened to me this week is that I signed up for a class, and I was told two months ago that I was enrolled in it. I heard nothing more on it, and then when I showed up for it, I was NOT signed up. Apparently they had fewer slots than expected, and they dropped me from it. Not hearing this, I showed up anyway, and was able to take it anyway when someone else did not show up.
Using 24-hour time would have resolved the Toastmaster problem. That's why the military adopted it, when a miscommunication could mean the difference between life and death. The problem, however, is a tradeoff between telling everything that you can aboiut a situation, using up a lot of time; perhaps some of the message does not get through because there is so many things to remember, and not telling every detail about it, in which case a problem caused by that detail turns up. It is a tough problem to solve, and I believe that communication seems to work best when as people hold as many default assumptions in common as possible.
2002/05/22
Virginia D
One of the most interesting aspects of the past few years has been the design change in the US quarter dollar. Instead of a drab face and eagle, the coins each would honor a state in the USA. There would be 50 such quarter designs, or 5 per year for 10 years. I first got interested in this about the beginning of 2000 and have been eagerly awaiting the coming of each new coin. The next one is Louisiana, which comes out at the end of the month. But the big event of the day was the Virginia D. The Virginia quarter came out in late 2000; it came out early, and huge numbers of these coins appeared; they became almost as common as eagles, it seems. However, every single one of these coins had a P on the face side of the coin, indicating that it was made at the Philadelphia mint. I had seen lots of Virginia Ps, but absolutely no Virginias made at the Denver mint; those have a D on them. Today, when I went to the cafeteria where I worked and bought an orange juice, I got as change a Virginia D quarter. Finally, after a year and a half, I have one. Now the coin I am looking for is Ohio P; their production got disrupted by a closing of the Philadelphia mint for safety reasons; I already have two Ohio D's. I expect to be hunting for these coins until early 2009, when I will encounter the first Hawaii quarter. I think this is a welcome change to our currency designs and would like to see pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollar coins go through similar changes; e.g., Presidents for dimes, monuments for nickels and so forth. And it has also got me interested in something I have never been interested before - collecting coins.
One of the most interesting aspects of the past few years has been the design change in the US quarter dollar. Instead of a drab face and eagle, the coins each would honor a state in the USA. There would be 50 such quarter designs, or 5 per year for 10 years. I first got interested in this about the beginning of 2000 and have been eagerly awaiting the coming of each new coin. The next one is Louisiana, which comes out at the end of the month. But the big event of the day was the Virginia D. The Virginia quarter came out in late 2000; it came out early, and huge numbers of these coins appeared; they became almost as common as eagles, it seems. However, every single one of these coins had a P on the face side of the coin, indicating that it was made at the Philadelphia mint. I had seen lots of Virginia Ps, but absolutely no Virginias made at the Denver mint; those have a D on them. Today, when I went to the cafeteria where I worked and bought an orange juice, I got as change a Virginia D quarter. Finally, after a year and a half, I have one. Now the coin I am looking for is Ohio P; their production got disrupted by a closing of the Philadelphia mint for safety reasons; I already have two Ohio D's. I expect to be hunting for these coins until early 2009, when I will encounter the first Hawaii quarter. I think this is a welcome change to our currency designs and would like to see pennies, nickels, dimes, and dollar coins go through similar changes; e.g., Presidents for dimes, monuments for nickels and so forth. And it has also got me interested in something I have never been interested before - collecting coins.
2002/05/21
A little poem
Today I wrote a poem, but I'm not sure of its meaning. Here it is:
There'll never be a page
As pretty as a tree,
Until the tree free flights,
And flutters as far as see.
I added five new non-words to my nonword page (jimvb.home.mindspring.com/nonword.htm), with the main one being tensplitter. Apparently the main task of life is to ignore all those tensplitters in your life and double down to your goals.
Today I wrote a poem, but I'm not sure of its meaning. Here it is:
There'll never be a page
As pretty as a tree,
Until the tree free flights,
And flutters as far as see.
I added five new non-words to my nonword page (jimvb.home.mindspring.com/nonword.htm), with the main one being tensplitter. Apparently the main task of life is to ignore all those tensplitters in your life and double down to your goals.
2002/05/19
Conference Memories
I attended a Toastmaster District Conference this weekend. So many interesting events happened there that it became overwhelming; a lot of things I would like to blog seem to have been lost.
Some of the names of new Toastmaster clubs are interesting, especially the new clubs that have formed in the past year. Some of these are Motivators without Calculators, 10X and Mighty Mouths (reminding me of Mighty Mouse, which I saw when I was young - a cross between Mickey Mouse and Superman).
Some interesting aphorisms from Virgie Binford over the weekend: You cannot lead where you do not know. You cannot teach what you don't know. You cannot give where you don't have. You cannot share experiences that you have not had. You cannot return to where you have not been. In other words, if you don't have it, you can't give or share it with others. Perhaps these could be stated more positively; for example, You need to know in order to lead. To give or share with others, you need to have.
Themes. This year's theme was "The Power of One". It reminds me of "The Army of One". In any case, 1 to any power is still 1. My philosophy is "Just Add One", so that makes 1+1 = 2. Now 2 to the 100th power is an enormous number. This year's theme is "Walk the Talk". That reminds me of a Neil Diamond song where the lyrics are "Money talks, but it don't sing and dance and it can't walk." It is the same theme as Virgie's. If you are going to talk about doing it or having it, you need to do it and have it; else you don't show yourself as being sincere. Money is not sincere; in fact, it is downright hypocritical.
If I were the District Governor, my theme would be "Toastmasters is a Fire." Starting a Toastmasters club or keeping one going is like trying to keep a fireplace fire burning. You need the fuel of members, the air of a good educational program, and the heat of enthusiasm to keep a Toastmasters club going. Take one away and it folds or becomes merely a social club. Indeed, Toastmasters is like a fire.
A number of errors have come up recently. Many of these are caused by word processors so that the erroneous letter string constitutes a word. For example in the past you may get steepl instead of steel. Nowadays, you get steal instead, so that "steel pipes" becomes "steal pipes" and means foul play where none had been intended. Yesterday I saw this version of the golden rule: You should threat others as you would have them treat you. A Freudian slip on the part of the computer?
I attended a Toastmaster District Conference this weekend. So many interesting events happened there that it became overwhelming; a lot of things I would like to blog seem to have been lost.
Some of the names of new Toastmaster clubs are interesting, especially the new clubs that have formed in the past year. Some of these are Motivators without Calculators, 10X and Mighty Mouths (reminding me of Mighty Mouse, which I saw when I was young - a cross between Mickey Mouse and Superman).
Some interesting aphorisms from Virgie Binford over the weekend: You cannot lead where you do not know. You cannot teach what you don't know. You cannot give where you don't have. You cannot share experiences that you have not had. You cannot return to where you have not been. In other words, if you don't have it, you can't give or share it with others. Perhaps these could be stated more positively; for example, You need to know in order to lead. To give or share with others, you need to have.
Themes. This year's theme was "The Power of One". It reminds me of "The Army of One". In any case, 1 to any power is still 1. My philosophy is "Just Add One", so that makes 1+1 = 2. Now 2 to the 100th power is an enormous number. This year's theme is "Walk the Talk". That reminds me of a Neil Diamond song where the lyrics are "Money talks, but it don't sing and dance and it can't walk." It is the same theme as Virgie's. If you are going to talk about doing it or having it, you need to do it and have it; else you don't show yourself as being sincere. Money is not sincere; in fact, it is downright hypocritical.
If I were the District Governor, my theme would be "Toastmasters is a Fire." Starting a Toastmasters club or keeping one going is like trying to keep a fireplace fire burning. You need the fuel of members, the air of a good educational program, and the heat of enthusiasm to keep a Toastmasters club going. Take one away and it folds or becomes merely a social club. Indeed, Toastmasters is like a fire.
A number of errors have come up recently. Many of these are caused by word processors so that the erroneous letter string constitutes a word. For example in the past you may get steepl instead of steel. Nowadays, you get steal instead, so that "steel pipes" becomes "steal pipes" and means foul play where none had been intended. Yesterday I saw this version of the golden rule: You should threat others as you would have them treat you. A Freudian slip on the part of the computer?
2002/05/17
I shall write several books by 2022
I went to Friday ("hospitality") night at the District 66 Toastmaster conference. The most interesting event was the talk by Virgie Binford, a local motivational speaker. She had us do some exercises. One was to tell our partner (we were paired into partners) what we expect to be doing in 5 years (2007) and 20 years (2022) from now. I said that in 5 years I would be retired and having another job concerning either mathematics instruction, web site hosting, or both, and that by 20 years (I will be pushing eighty then) I will have written several books. I already have all the speeches I have given in 15 years of Toastmasters and 25 years of Astronomical Society. I would write to tell the world my story and how I believe things can be better.
In another exercise she had us ask each other's birthdays. Mine is August 13; my partner's was August 8. But a pair of women in front of me turned out to have the same birthday! It was August 5, so we have four early August birthdays within seats of each other in the audience. In addition, both my partner and I were Division Governors in the same year. Coincidences? Yes, probably. All it takes is 23 people in the room for two to turn up with the same birthday - look it up, "birthday surprise" in Google. So what happened tonight was nothing out of the ordinary.
I went to Friday ("hospitality") night at the District 66 Toastmaster conference. The most interesting event was the talk by Virgie Binford, a local motivational speaker. She had us do some exercises. One was to tell our partner (we were paired into partners) what we expect to be doing in 5 years (2007) and 20 years (2022) from now. I said that in 5 years I would be retired and having another job concerning either mathematics instruction, web site hosting, or both, and that by 20 years (I will be pushing eighty then) I will have written several books. I already have all the speeches I have given in 15 years of Toastmasters and 25 years of Astronomical Society. I would write to tell the world my story and how I believe things can be better.
In another exercise she had us ask each other's birthdays. Mine is August 13; my partner's was August 8. But a pair of women in front of me turned out to have the same birthday! It was August 5, so we have four early August birthdays within seats of each other in the audience. In addition, both my partner and I were Division Governors in the same year. Coincidences? Yes, probably. All it takes is 23 people in the room for two to turn up with the same birthday - look it up, "birthday surprise" in Google. So what happened tonight was nothing out of the ordinary.
2002/05/16
Cancel the World!!
Everybody's been cancelling things today. A Toastmaster meeting that I was to attend around lunchtime was cancelled because three people could not make it. A class on Front Page I was taking at night was cancelled because of an illness in the instructor's family. So I went to a Sky Watch at night instead, part of Chesterfield's summer Parks and Recreation Program. There I found out that two large families had cancelled their reservations to this watfch. That meant only two people came out to it. There were more astronomers there than telescopes, and more telescopes than patrons! It makes me wonder where all these people go to, that don't come to events that therefore have to be cancelled. If the entire world is going to be cancelled today, then at least let's reschedule it.
Everybody's been cancelling things today. A Toastmaster meeting that I was to attend around lunchtime was cancelled because three people could not make it. A class on Front Page I was taking at night was cancelled because of an illness in the instructor's family. So I went to a Sky Watch at night instead, part of Chesterfield's summer Parks and Recreation Program. There I found out that two large families had cancelled their reservations to this watfch. That meant only two people came out to it. There were more astronomers there than telescopes, and more telescopes than patrons! It makes me wonder where all these people go to, that don't come to events that therefore have to be cancelled. If the entire world is going to be cancelled today, then at least let's reschedule it.
2002/05/15
Inspirational Sayings
Today has been a day of inspirational sayings all over the place. I started the day with a few and I even heard a speaker give them out one at a time like a standup comic. The best was "If it ain't broke, break it! Got to get some sunshine in here." Some of the others I heard were:
You are what you think about all day.
There is never an end. For if there were, you would just add one and go one step farther.
Tarzan doesn't let go of the grapevine until he has another grapevine in his hand. (Bill Stewart)
on the other hand, If you are at the end of your rope, let go and fly! (a derivative of "Just add one" above, but also of Charlie's Law, which says that everything turns out right if you let it.)
It has also been a day of problems, with the Internet going down at work and traffic jams on my way home late at night.
Today has been a day of inspirational sayings all over the place. I started the day with a few and I even heard a speaker give them out one at a time like a standup comic. The best was "If it ain't broke, break it! Got to get some sunshine in here." Some of the others I heard were:
You are what you think about all day.
There is never an end. For if there were, you would just add one and go one step farther.
Tarzan doesn't let go of the grapevine until he has another grapevine in his hand. (Bill Stewart)
on the other hand, If you are at the end of your rope, let go and fly! (a derivative of "Just add one" above, but also of Charlie's Law, which says that everything turns out right if you let it.)
It has also been a day of problems, with the Internet going down at work and traffic jams on my way home late at night.
2002/05/14
The Beast in the Web
Twice now I have printed web pages and had the right sides chopped off at the end; they printed too wide. Someone told me that the standard printing width of a web page was 700 pixels. I thought for sure 640 was more likely since that number is part of a standard screen resolution (640x480). I did some testing and found out we were both wrong. The maximum number of pixels in a web page before it overflows on the right appears to be 666. If so, then someone had fun injecting The Beast of Revelation's number into HTML and the Web.
Twice now I have printed web pages and had the right sides chopped off at the end; they printed too wide. Someone told me that the standard printing width of a web page was 700 pixels. I thought for sure 640 was more likely since that number is part of a standard screen resolution (640x480). I did some testing and found out we were both wrong. The maximum number of pixels in a web page before it overflows on the right appears to be 666. If so, then someone had fun injecting The Beast of Revelation's number into HTML and the Web.
2002/05/13
Committment
Today I went to a meeting of our local astronomy society, where I am the President. Tonight's talk was a tape recording of the talk to the astronomy society ten years ago, on 1992 May 11. The talk was about the building of our 7-inch refractor telescope that started around 1962 May; it was completed in 1963 October, or just in time for a regional astronomy meeting. It took a lot of weekends digging, bricklaying, and accurate positioning of materials to build this observatory, and it was a volunteer effort. Today the scope is ruined by the lights of an expanding city, especially those of a shopping center that was built right next to the observatory in the mid 1980's. In today's day of the instant sound bite and self-actualization, could the same project be accomplished today? Would people have the commitment? According to Strauss and Howe, (www.fourthturning.com), maybe not. It's a question of building our own large telescope or each of us go out and buy our own medium-sized scope and being satisfied with that.
Today I went to a meeting of our local astronomy society, where I am the President. Tonight's talk was a tape recording of the talk to the astronomy society ten years ago, on 1992 May 11. The talk was about the building of our 7-inch refractor telescope that started around 1962 May; it was completed in 1963 October, or just in time for a regional astronomy meeting. It took a lot of weekends digging, bricklaying, and accurate positioning of materials to build this observatory, and it was a volunteer effort. Today the scope is ruined by the lights of an expanding city, especially those of a shopping center that was built right next to the observatory in the mid 1980's. In today's day of the instant sound bite and self-actualization, could the same project be accomplished today? Would people have the commitment? According to Strauss and Howe, (www.fourthturning.com), maybe not. It's a question of building our own large telescope or each of us go out and buy our own medium-sized scope and being satisfied with that.
2002/05/12
Mother's Day (continued)
The Unitarian church service today called for us to bring in three flowers to the Mother's Day church service. We brought in a Japanese iris, a climatis, and a huge yellow iris that let itself be known to the world. Not everyone brought in flowers, however. The idea was to redistribute them out to us - not picking the one you brought in. We wound up with one tiny, red, red rose, about an inch wide. Somehow to me that one little rose tells more to us than the three original flowers put together.
The Unitarian church service today called for us to bring in three flowers to the Mother's Day church service. We brought in a Japanese iris, a climatis, and a huge yellow iris that let itself be known to the world. Not everyone brought in flowers, however. The idea was to redistribute them out to us - not picking the one you brought in. We wound up with one tiny, red, red rose, about an inch wide. Somehow to me that one little rose tells more to us than the three original flowers put together.
Mother's day
Everything's good about Mother and apple pie? I found out recently that Mother's day celebrations
may make some people feel sad. For example, those people who could never have children,
especially women, who actually bear the child to the world. Should we discontinue Mother's (and
Father's) day for that reason?
Actually every holiday has its negative side. Valentine's day is hard for those who try to
find a significant partner and can't find one and so are single. Easter and Christmas
do not make non-Christians feel that happy. Memorial day is missed for those who have
no contact with those who have fought our nation's wars. And so forth.
But certainly we should honor those who begat us and brought us up. We need to consider
both sides.
Non-words
I find that blogging is a good place to announce things on my site, such as new non-words or
mathematics articles. So here are my two newest ones: gorm, meaning intelligence, and
to gotch, meaning to confound or surprise.
Everything's good about Mother and apple pie? I found out recently that Mother's day celebrations
may make some people feel sad. For example, those people who could never have children,
especially women, who actually bear the child to the world. Should we discontinue Mother's (and
Father's) day for that reason?
Actually every holiday has its negative side. Valentine's day is hard for those who try to
find a significant partner and can't find one and so are single. Easter and Christmas
do not make non-Christians feel that happy. Memorial day is missed for those who have
no contact with those who have fought our nation's wars. And so forth.
But certainly we should honor those who begat us and brought us up. We need to consider
both sides.
Non-words
I find that blogging is a good place to announce things on my site, such as new non-words or
mathematics articles. So here are my two newest ones: gorm, meaning intelligence, and
to gotch, meaning to confound or surprise.
2002/05/10
I am taking a Front Page course. So far this has turned out to be like several courses I have taken in the past - too easy for me. I took it to find out how to deal with Front Page's messing up your web page files. I have found some of what happens, including Front Page's webbot, and I found that applying a theme wipes out everything else. Still it is good to know some of these technologies, especially when my workplace foots the bill.
Also it seems every time I go to class, big storms come. What's so stormy about Front Page? One class was wiped out by a power outage, and in the others, held in a windowless room, a storm came and I could see it on the radar. it is strange to see a storm only by how it shows up on a radar such as Intellicast's or the local TV station's. All you see is a red blob over the area you live in; you don't see or hear the thunder and lightning that comes with it.
Also it seems every time I go to class, big storms come. What's so stormy about Front Page? One class was wiped out by a power outage, and in the others, held in a windowless room, a storm came and I could see it on the radar. it is strange to see a storm only by how it shows up on a radar such as Intellicast's or the local TV station's. All you see is a red blob over the area you live in; you don't see or hear the thunder and lightning that comes with it.
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