Archive for March, 2005

But Sometimes I Wonder

Posted by on Wednesday, 23 March, 2005

I’ve been trying to clean my house up for the past couple of days. Of course, anyone who’s ever lived with me knows that I have a tendency to leave complex calculations scrawled on the back random pieces of paper all over the house. Sometimes I get a curiosity in my head and I can’t stop until I’ve figured out, say, the angle between faces of a dodecahedron. (116.56 degrees.) You know how it is.

Today however, I found something truly perplexing. An envelop had the word “Joy” pencilled in one corner, then off to the side and slightly below it, written lightly, what appeared to be “(shire)” [with the parentheses], and directly below that and darker, the word “Breakfast.”

Having satisfied to myself that it was indeed my handwriting, and going questionable assumption that I was in my right mind when I wrote them, I eventually figured out that there actually is a relation between these words, although exactly what my purpose was in writing them still eludes me. Bonus points to whoever else can figure out the connection.

That’s One I Never Thought Of

Posted by on Tuesday, 15 March, 2005

It was recently suggested that some of my eccentricities could indicate that I may have high-functioning autism. I don’t know that I buy it, and if I’ve gone this long without anyone noticing, I’m not sure that it even matters.

Interestingly though, did you know that one possible sign of autism in children is that they don’t smile? I didn’t.

In the Beginning

Posted by on Tuesday, 8 March, 2005

A couple of weeks ago I went again to the Round Earth Society meeting to hear a guest speaker, one of the physics professors, talk about the origins of the universe. She talked about how in the first moments of time, the universe was composed of a “soup” of sub atomic particles, so hot that electrons could not stick with protons, and whenever a light wave would hit an electron, it would bounce off in another direction. So the whole thing was just a cloudy mass of particles and scattered energy. As the universe expanded and cooled, electrons began to associate with protons, light was able to pass through without being scattered and continued going in whatever direction it happened to be going, even to this day.

This was all well and scientific sounding, but I just sat there dumbfounded thinking, “So what you’re essentially saying is, ‘In the beginning, the universe was formless and dark… and then there was light’?”

I must say, I was not prepared for that.