News and Views

Devon finally has a new job, working for Spectra Sensors. He’ll be doing programming as an intern, for a 3 month term. I guess it will be renegotiated at that time.

He still lives in Pasadena near his old company, but the new job is about 30 miles away in Rancho Cucamonga. Good thing he has a Prius!

No, he didn’t go anywhere yet. I’m talking about his spine.

He went to see a neurosurgeon last week, and was told that he is not a candidate for surgery. He’s too young, and his back is not bad enough.

So it’s back to the “pain specialist” to see what our next option is.

Here’s an article from Mechanics Illustrated in 1968 forecasting what our lives were expected to be like in 2008. You can either page through the images of the article above, or read it in plain text below.

I think we’re a little behind schedule…

Today is the spring equinox, when the night is just as long as the day. Normally the equinox falls on March 21, but because this year was a leap year it has shifted back a day. It will slowly shift forward to the 21st over the next three years.

In the winter the earth’s axis is tilted away from the sun. In the summer, it’s tilted towards the sun. Today, the earth’s axis is tilted exactly sideways relative to the sun; neither towards it nor away.

If you were at either pole today, you would see the sun skimming the horizon, all the way around without moving up or down at all.

If you were at the equator you would see the sun rise directly in the east, rise straight over head, then set directly in the west.

Happy Equinox!

Derek has started a blog here.

Look for some interesting posts this summer from half way around the world.

A few months ago I reported that my City League basketball team had an “undefeating season”, and ended at 0-8.

In the off season we picked up a 6’7″ center and have done much better this time around. We are currently 4-3, and last week we beat the previously undefeated first place team by 19 points.

Tomorrow we start the tournament, which will extend over three weeks. Unfortunately they took the top few teams from our league and pushed them up to the tournament in the next division, so we will probably be playing some more competitive teams.

I’ll post the results here.

Today is “Pi Day”, the day we celebrate the relationship between the circumference and diameter of a circle. Can you guess why? Some people on this day mark the time of 1:59:26 as Pi second. I’m afraid that time has already passed as I write this, unless you live well west of Arizona.

Pi is an irrational number, meaning it cannot be expressed as the ratio of two integers. For most practical purposes, however, it can be approximated by 22/7. In fact, in England they sometimes celebrate Pi Day as July 22.

Pi is used in advanced applications far beyond this simple diameter-circumference relationship. It turns up in physics, electronics, geometry, trigonometry, number theory, astronomy, biology almost all branches of science, engineering and art.

Pi has been calculated to over a trillion digits by computer, but this is only an interesting mathematical exercise. With only about 39 digits, given the exact diameter of the universe you could calculate it’s circumference to the width of a hydrogen atom. For most household purposes 3.14 is sufficient, accurate to better than 1/10 of a percent.

Here’s more info on Pi, and on Pi Day

Here’s Pi to a few significant digits (I haven’t memorized it quite this far yet):

3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751058209 7494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651 3282306647093844609550582231725359408128481117450284102 7019385211055596446229489549303819644288109756659334461 2847564823378678316527120190914564856692346034861045432 6648213393607260249141273724587006606315588174881520920 9628292540917153643678925903600113305305488204665213841 4695194151160943305727036575959195309218611738193261179 3105118548074462379962749567351885752724891227938183011 9491298336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798 6094370277053921717629317675238467481846766940513200056 8127145263560827785771342757789609173637178721468440901 2249534301465495853710507922796892589235420199561121290 2196086403441815981362977477130996051870721134999999837 2978049951059731732816096318595024459455346908302642522 3082533446850352619311881710100031378387528865875332083 8142061717766914730359825349042875546873115956286388235 3787593751957781857780532171226806613001927876611195909 2164201989380952572010654858632788659361533818279682303 0195203530185296899577362259941389124972177528347913151 5574857242454150695950829533116861727855889075098381754 6374649393192550604009277016711390098488240128583616035 6370766010471018194295559619894676783744944825537977472 6847104047534646208046684259069491293313677028989152104 7521620569660240580381501935112533824300355876402474964 7326391419927260426992279678235478163600934172164121992 4586315030286182974555706749838505494588586926995690927
210797509302955321165344987202755960236480665499119

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is well known as an advocate for protecting American’s rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Many people have the opinion that the organization is anti-religion, because of many well-publicized cases where they have taken the side of people objecting to public prayer or other religious observances.

But did you know that there are many cases where the ACLU has advocated for peoples rights to practice their religion? For example:

— The ACLU supported a Christian minister who wanted to preach to the public and distribute leaflets on the sidewalks around a downtown bus station in Spokane, WA.
–The ACLU threatened to file suit against a policy prohibiting baptisms in the park, forcing a change in the policy.
–The ACLU represented a high school student whom school authorities suspended and then attempted to expel for wearing T-shirts with religious messages.
–The ACLU represented a student whose yearbook entry, a Bible verse, was deleted because of its religious content. The school agreed not to censor students’ yearbook entries based on their religious or political viewpoints in the future.
–The Iowa Civil Liberties Union filed a brief supporting a group of Christian students asserting their right to distribute religious literature during non-instructional time.

There are lots of other examples here.

There is some interesting research out there indicating that drinking artificially sweetened foods actually causes weight gain, at least in rats.

The rats that were given artificially sweetened food tended to eat more of other high calorie foods when they were available. The hypothesis explaining the data is that “artificial sweeteners condition the body to no longer associate sweetness with calories, thereby disrupting its ability to accurately assess caloric intake. This disruption… may lead to overeating.”

See this for the simple summary, or this for the full paper from a medical journal.

This could help explain the surge in obesity in this country. Drinking diet drinks to lose weight may be like using gasoline to put out a fire.

Gisele flew to Pasadena to spend a couple of weeks with Devon.

Her brother and several other friends live nearby, so she will have lots of people to celebrate Chinese New Year with (Feb 7).

Derek and I are still in Tempe, bach’ing it.