It’s been over a month since my last post. Probably not unusual for a lot of writers (I don’t care much for the name ‘blogger’) — and it probably doesn’t matter much to the half dozen readers who hit my site in a month — but it bothers me a bit. So, whether it’s long or short, interesting or not, I’m gonna try to put something new on these pages every day.
And if most days go like this one, it’ll be coming in just under the wire. Like this one.
Bryce had a part in a dramatic production at school this month; Robert Fulghum’s, All I Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten. Bryce did a great job, in his parts… his solo performance of “Tomb With A View” was memorable; some guy visiting the gravesite he had purchased for himself, enjoying the view above while stretched out on his back. Grave-shopping is something I’ve considered from time to time. Not sure where I’d want to be buried or whether it matters. Just something to think about.
Tonight on the radio, Chuck Swindol was reciting the lines from one of the other skits in the play that was also memorable… I think the title was “Cinderella”. Anyway, I did a little googling, and came up with the story online. Not sure if it’s kosher to post it online or not, but I figure if it was already there and I give credit to Fulghum, we ought to be square. I’ll be happy to pay royalties for every cent I make from having it on my site! Read the rest of this entry »
The Human Marvels really doesn’t describe this site accurately; something more along the lines of Human Oddities would be closer to the mark. Basically a collection of stories about sideshow freaks and people born with bizarre physical deformities, how they dealt with being different, and how people treated them. Very interesting reading.
Neatorama.
Not much more to say than that; just a collection of neat stuff found on the Internet. Kinda like BoingBoing without the scuzz and left wing political rhetoric.
Here’s a panoramic photo of San Francisco in the wake of the great earthquake & fire of 1905. Click the link to see a high-resolution version of it (warning: very large file)
Words fail me.
I was reminded tonight of a “Caleb-ism” from a while back. Caleb went running out the door in cold weather with no shoes on, and I shouted at him, “Hey! You don’t want to go out there in bare feet!”
He stopped & looked at me with that “What the hey are you talking about” look, and said, “I don’t have bear feet; I have boy feet,” and proceeded to run outside.
Gotta love that kid!
While I’m at it, another bare feet story, this time from Emily. While at the day care one day she had her shoes off, and one of the day care workers commented that she had “such dainty feet.” So for a long time “dainty” was synonymous with “bare”; Emily never had bare feet, she had dainty feet.
Labor Day is upon us once again. How time flies.
That means it’s been four years since I broke my ankle. How’d I break my ankle? Well, what I like to tell folks is that I was trying to rescue orphans from a burning building, but it’s hard to keep a straight face with that story. The truth though, is pretty humbling.
We had bought little aluminum kick scooters for the kids years earlier, and although I used them from time to time when camping or chasing the kids around the block, they were always too small for me. I had to bend over to reach the handlebars.
Then one day I saw an older lady riding what looked to be an adult-sized kick scooter through Spellerberg Park, and I thought, “That is for me!” Soon after I found them for sale at Shopko, and they were even marked down, and I bought one. And it was a fun ride!
bound4Life; “What does it sound like when 10 million people pray for the same thing?”This site gives me Holy Spirit chills. This organization is now focusing its efforts in support of the abortion ban here in South Dakota, a newly passed law which has been referred to a public vote and will be on the ballot this November. While many see the abortion issue as political in nature, I firmly believe it is spiritual, and the only way the November referrendum will pass is with God’s help. We need to pray.
I had never heard of bound4life before this morning, but it reminds me of one of my favorite verses; Job 40:3-5;
Job Promises Silence
3 Then Job answered the LORD and said:
4 “Behold, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I lay my hand on my mouth.
5 I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but I will proceed no further.”
How often do we speak in our prayers when we should be silent? Watermark has an excellent song called Still on their album Constant that talks about our need to be silent before God. We all know Psalm 46:10 well enough, but we don’t heed its words well enough.
Everybody knows what to call big numbers when it comes to a dozen or so digits, but what about when the numbers get bigger than that? I was reading an article on Damn Interesting about the physical difficulties in folding a piece of paper, and tried to figure out how long a piece of paper would be needed to make 51 folds (which is impossible, by the way.) It’d take a lot of paper. 164,888,007,565,194,000,000,000 miles of paper to be (reasonably) exact.
That got me to thinking how a number that large would be expressed. There’s always powers of ten, which would make that number 1.659×10²³. That works out to be But that doesn’t really do much for me. And I started wondering what that number would sound like when expressed in thousands, billions, trillions, and so on. And I found that there really are names for these really big numbers. And they go like this…
| thousand | 4 to 6 digits |
| million | 7 to 9 digits |
| billion | 10 to 12 digits |
| trillion | 13 to 15 digits |
| quadrillion | 16 to 18 digits |
| quintillion | 19 to 21 digits |
| sextillion | 22 to 24 digits |
| septillion | 25 to 27 digits |
| octillion | 28 to 30 digits |
| nonillion | 31 to 33 digits |
| decillion | 34 to 36 digits |
| undecillion | 37 to 39 digits |
| dodecillion | 40 to 42 digits |
| tredecillion | 43 to 45 digits |
| quattuordecillion | 46 to 48 digits |
| quindecillion | 49 to 51 digits |
| sexdecillion | 52 to 54 digits |
| septendecillion | 55 to 57 digits |
| octodecillion | 58 to 60 digits |
| novemdecillion | 61 to 63 digits |
| vigintillion | 64 to 66 digits |
| unvigintillion | 67 to 69 digits |
| dovigintillion | 70 to 72 digits |
| trevigintillion | 73 to 75 digits |
| quattuorvigintillion | 76 to 78 digits |
| quinvigintillion | 79 to 81 digits |
| sexvigintillion | 82 to 84 digits |
| septenvigintillion | 85 to 87 digits |
| octovigintillion | 88 to 90 digits |
| novemvigintillion | 91 to 93 digits |
| trigintillion | 94 to 96 digits |
| untrigintillion | 97 to 99 digits |
| dotrigintillion | 100 to 102 digits |
| tretrigintillion | 103 to 105 digits |
| quattuortrigintillion | 106 to 108 digits |
| quintrigintillion | 109 to 111 digits |
| sextrigintillion | 112 to 114 digits |
| septentrigintillion | 115 to 117 digits |
| octotrigintillion | 118 to 120 digits |
| novemtrigintillion | 121 to 123 digits |
I’m sure there’s more somewhere, but that’s what I was able to find, and it’s plenty impressive. I’m not even sure how to pronounce some of those words.
In the process of digging up this information, I ran across several really cool math-related websites. One of the best has to be the Kokogiak Megapenny Project, which helps to visualize large numbers using, of course, pennies. For example, did you know that ten million pennies stacked up would make a cube 6 x 6 x 6 feet. If all those pennies were laid out flat, side-by-side, like a huge carpet of pennies, it would nearly cover one acre. If stacked in a single column it would reach 9.88 miles into the air. Oh, and it would weigh in at around 31.3 tons. That’s a lot of coin.
Baldwin-Motion builds some awesome ’69 Camaro knockoffs. Well, not exactly knockoffs.
They look like ’69 Camaro’s and actually use the coachwork from real ’69 Camaros, but the resemblance ends at the shell. The guts are all new, and all business; 2″ x 3″ tubular steel backbone/spine chassis running through the console and welded to the body, fully independent custom-fab rear suspension, 600-HP 540-CID Big-Block V-8 (or a 450-HP 427-CID in the convertible), and optional stuff to make 1,000 HP, Tremec TKO 600 5-speed transmission, etc…
The body is original, each limited edition machine is built from a donor car, so that each can be registered and insured anywhere. The premiums for that insurance are probably way out there, but if you can afford the car, you’d better be prepared for the insurance too.
Base price for all this beauty is $189,000 (or $169,000 for the SS-427 convertible.) If only I had disposable income like that… What trouble I could get into!