Yesterday I received this iPad.
I am now trying out the onscreen key board.
It seems a little easier than the other real keyboard, though it is “touchy” as in pretty sensitive.
We’ll see how it goes. But overall I’m pleasantly surprised how convenient it is.
More later….
This is an item about some reflections on Amber, a wondrous natural material.
I'm so intrigued by amber, that I'm keen to learn a lot more about it.
Could this be my retirement pursuit that's worthy of such attention, I wonder.
Amber is the hardened resin from plants such as pine trees. It's magical for many reasons, but one of them is that it can be transparent. One can see straight through some pieces, and see things that have been trapped within the amber - like insects.
Could there be a way to 'monetize' an interest in Amber?
The answer is almost surely Yes, provided one devoted sufficient attention to the project.
The entrepreneurial spirits are juiced at the notion.
Another appealing feature of amber is its durability.
Durable as long lasting.
Would you believe that a lot of the amber we can now see was created a few hundred Million years ago?
Almost (?) unimaginable.
An old Q & A game featured a typical question: Is the object: Animal, vegetable or mineral ? (implying that those were the only true answers available.)
In this context, amber is a vegetable (tree resin) masquerading as a mineral (like glass).
My current understanding is that natural amber is 'mined'. That is taken from the ground, often deep in the ground. It has been fragmented over the eons, and is now mixed with minerals (sand, or sandstone, or rock like stuff). The fragments are smallish - not unlike gold nuggets in a gravel bottomed stream.
Miners separate the rocks from the resin. Then they sell the resin bits, after some processing, as amber.
Jewellery makers fashion some great treasures from the amber - which can be reheated, and molded and worked.
I wonder if there would be an interest, or market, for amber trinkets with custom inserts baked into the stuff. Perhaps a locket of hair. Or a four leaf clover. Or an image of a loved one.
The object would be visible, with clarity, yet encased in a plant based product, millions of years in the making, and good for a few more million years.
A topic that could lead to many ideas for short pieces
and to start...
25,000,000,000
Number of the Week.
For folks who don't care for all those digits, especially the zeros, the Number of the Week is more conveniently written - 25 Billion.
Less conveniently, one could also say 25 thousand millions. And that's a lot.
Now it turns out that there's an interesting statistic involving 25 billion, in the field of energy.
Energy is frequently measured in kilowatt hours.
A kilowatt hour is 1,000 watts of energy maintained over a period of one hour.
So if you had a 1 kilowatt of energy, the electrical kind, then you could keep a 1,000 watt lightbulb shining bright for 1 hour. Or if you had 10 lightbulbs of 100 watts each, you'd get one hour of good light till the energy ran out.
Now try and imagine 25 billion kilowatt hours of electrical energy.
One way to do that is to imagine the world's 8 billion people. And you can then imagine each person in the world, man woman and child, rich or poor, each running a 100 watt lightbulb - then there would be enough electricity in 25 billion kilowatts for that person to keep the light on for a month at an hour a day.
Ahh, you say, but where would that energy come from?
Well it could be the electrical grid. In turn that energy might have come from a natural gas fired electrical plant, or from waterfalls (hydro electricity) or from a nuclear reactor.
But here's the neat thing.
In theory you could get that energy from a single kilogram of bananas. That's like 6 bananas.
Yup, just six bananas hold enough Energy to make 25 Billion kilowatts of electricity. It's just the conversion thingy that's the hurdle.
Know that this theory has wide spread acceptance in the scientific community. Virtually universal approval.
And the theory is most famously expressed by Albert Einstein's equation:
e=mC2 or energy is equal to the mass multiplied by the speed of light, squared.
And now to repeat the reveal.
One kilogram of bananas (mass) holds the energy of 25 billion kilowatt hours.
Society's mission should now be clear.
Let's find a practical way to get that energy out of the bananas.
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Few routine experiences give me as much joy as a warm shower in the morning.
I've been known to say: This is the best.
What a miraculous system it is - all the components nicely working together to deliver a wonderful feeling.It's readily repeatable, with consistent outputs, a great deal of the time.
And when a nice, warm/hot water shower is not handy or convenient, well, the day comes up a little short.
perhaps to be continued...
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I don't beilieve I ever knew how to spell 'alleys'/'allies' by which I mean marbles.
As a kid, a grade schooler, all I ever called them or the pastime was alleys.
Know what I mean? The small ,spherical (less than 1cm diameter), variously coloured glass objects.
Some seem quite delicate, but boy can they take abuse. They operate just fine from 200 degreesC to minus 50C. Drop them on concrete - no problems. Take a bunch of them, put them in a regulation purple Crown Royal flannel bag, and smack 'em together vigourously - no problems. Throw them up against a brick wall - no damage.
All the boys I knew, best I recall, had marbles at one time or t'other.
For a stretch a boy's alleys were the most obvious signal of wealth or status.
It was how many you had, how unique some were ('beauts' we called them), how good/lucky they were in games, and what their pedigree was (perhaps claimed in a game from the bully down the street).
Guys sought them out, usually buying them or getting them as gifts, or trading them at fluctuating values, and they learned the arts of collecting.
Teachers didn't much care for them.
Invariably they caused a commotion or at least a distraction.
On the other hand they also operated as a placator - sort of like TV - at their best transfixing whoever was within range.
And of course there were Rules about Marbles near or in the School.
I recall playing two types of games.
Each boy played with his own alleys. This was no team pursuit.
In one game players gently tossed a marble towards a brick wall, close to the ground.
The alley would bounce off the wall with a pleasing sound, jump forward and roll on the ground.
The ground in front would have been smooth and level, but for a hole (depression) tennis ball size or so, carved from the ground a pace or two from the wall.
Now that ground could have been sand or gravel in the warm season, or packed snow in the cool season.
The object was to get all your alleys in the hole first - each player taking turns, one marble toss at a time.
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Quick note for something that ought to be much fuller.
I think we are at an inflection point - on a number of societal dimensions - a key one being how our societies have been responding to the Covid phenomena.
Consider this. Covid arrived roughly Jan 2020. The western media got the memo around March, a couple of months later. The media frenzy grew, and kept growing - outpacing the case counts even, which counts were front page, above the fold, news day after insufferable day - for near two years.
(nota bene: case counts as a thing are on the down slide in the media consciousness these last couple of weeks, a byproduct of the Health Wizards declaration that they will stop counting cases - if I understand correctly. How prescient, I say (perfect timing with skyrocketing case numbers which counts/numbers are of no apparent significance .) This factoid may be considered a data point for timing.
Now, a full year into the hysteria, my recollection is that I did not know, personally, anyone who had died from Covid. Heck among people I would consider acquaintances - measured in hundreds, I did not even know of someone who had the virus - symptoms or none.
Eventually I did come to know of some cases personally. But if memory serves, without exception the symptoms were mild or modest.
Things have changed, recent like.
I can not put a precise date on it. But after a chuggy start, the last 2 or 3 weeks (or could it be 5 or 6?) has seen a big uptick in the number of people I know have gotten the viral infection. Son Jay. Then twin Maureen. Then Jay's missus Michele. This is a small sample to be sure. It is also highly relevant. Mark my prediction.
The end is at hand.
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I figure you can safely say: It's a new world out there.
For clarity I write on Saturday eve, Sept. 18, 2021 at 277 Elm.
Just saw a pitch onscreen for a new 'app'. It deals with astronomy and stars.
It has info in its database of some 100,000,000 stars - that's a hundred million - or a hundred thousand of thousands.
This number blows me away - metaphorically of course. Wowsie.
All this in a single app that is readily accommodated in the memory of most phones I see these days.
Fuggetabout the memory thing and just reflect on the knowledge base.
I gotta figure that when I first took a computer course - 1970 - there were not 100,00,000 identified sky objects in our known universe. So not only have we, as a species, discovered and observed these objects, we have given them names and trajectories, and put it all in an app, which you carry on your phone in your pants pocket. Amazing.
