Jim Flanigan Looks at the World
Turning the Mundane into Fundane Since 2015
As I walked today, I was reminded of one additional New Year’s resolution I need to make for 2024. I walked past our local elementary school where my wife works. There it was, staring at me in the face again. How can kids learn anything in that school with this sort of topsy-turvy nonsense plastered on the windows?
Continue reading “Resolving to Resolve Again”
There was a little bit of internet freakout over the date of the last day of 2023 being shown as …
12 31 23
So, 123 123. That is, unless you live outside the US where it would be shown as …
31 12 23
311 223 is definitely not as fun or interesting as 123 123.
However, I found today’s date on New Year’s Day much more interesting.
Continue reading “Happy New Math Year!”
I heard today was Lovelace Day, and I immediately wondered why 1970’s adult film actress Linda Lovelace should have a day named after her. After the film that made her famous in 1972, she did become an anti-pornography advocate in the 1980s and beyond. I guess that’s good, but getting a whole day for that? That seemed like a stretch to me.
Then I saw the full name is Ada Lovelace Day, a day to celebrate the achievements of 19th century mathematician Ada Lovelace and all women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). That’s kind of cool and makes sense. Women in STEM rock. There’s not much more for me to do than apologize profusely in a deeply throaty voice and ask, “Am I a bad guy?”
Editor’s Note: Maybe not. I can’t believe I am standing up for this idiot, but Countess Ada Lovelace and Linda Lovelace are somewhat connected through computer languages. From this guy’s blog, we learn “Years ago when I was a university professor, I remember talking about the Linda programming language for a few minutes in a graduate computer science class. Linda is not an acronym. It’s named after a woman named Linda Lovelace. When Linda was being invented, the Ada programming language was new and the topic of much interest in computer science. Ada was named after Ada Lovelace, a woman who was an assistant to Charles Babbage. Ada is often incorrectly identified as having written the first sort-of computer program for Babbage’s hypothetical computer. Anyway, the inventors of Linda named it after Linda Lovelace, a movie star who was the subject of much interest at the time.” I don’t know if that is all true or not. But as for Jim, in conclusion … Idiot? Yes. Bad Guy? Probably not.
I’m exhausted here on the 11th of my 12 Days of Blogging. I can barely lift my fingers to type this post. Instead of a staccato rat-tat-tat on the keyboard, it is a legato click … click …click.
I am out of blogging ideas (never stopped me from blogging before), but I am in my fantasy football playoffs, and I noticed something very unusual that I figured I would share. In the first round of the playoffs, playoff seeds #1, #3, #5, & #7 won their first round games.
Hmm, seeds #1, #3, #5, & #7 advanced. I don’t know about you, but those numbers seem very odd to me.
I have found that the most popular blog posts I write involve food, travel, health & exercise. Everyone (including me!) is tired of political posts. We all know Trump is awful, and while you’ve been reading this sentence, he’s now done another terrible thing which is blah, blah, blah. I find that I need to write some political posts for personal cathartic reasons, and they barely get noticed … except for my post titled “It All Adds Up to the Mark of the Beast.” If you don’t recall it (And why would you? It was eminently forgettable), go ahead, click the link, and take a look. It’s number rubbish, because I’m a math geek, but I happened to notice a disturbing trend for that months-old post …
I was a math major for 2 & 1/2 years in college until we started learning about number systems that don’t really exist except in theory. The voices in my head that don’t really exist except in my head seemed eager to try those theoretical number systems. That was a red flag for me. I immediately switched to a business major and doomed myself and career to selling products made with quality that only existed in theory.
However, what has stuck with me for lo these many years since college is the beautiful precision of mathematics and the gum from my dorm room floor. So I was appalled this holiday season when I took a look at this bottle of sparkling water we were serving …
Continue reading “Math is Supposed to be More Precise Than This”
Jim Flanigan Looks at the World 