R E F L E C T I O N S

"An organized desk must be a sign of an organized mind." ~ John M Sometimes I fear that I'm developing an obsession with being organized. I wonder if I'm spending more time getting organized than taking action. Maybe I just enjoy the time spent setting up a calendar, writing a budget, or preparing to clean out a closet. Maybe as long as there is something to "put in order" I'll be happy. I imagine myself to be some sort of superhero. My goal is to fight the forces of disorder and to remedy whatever is lacking methodical arrangement or function. To remove the complexities, disorganization, and undue busyness of the world. It's getting to the point where I must leave some place in my life, maybe even many places to keep disorganized. Why? It's like having money in the bank. I'll always have something to rely on when things just become too organized. I need to fight disorder to help give my life some meaning. Whenever I try to u...

While I was looking for the history of pedometers on the web I came across this illustration of a device used by the Romans. Here is a closeup: A description on how it worked: A gear with one tooth (A) fastened to the wheel of the cart turned a larger wheel (B) with 399 short teeth and one long tooth (C). The tooth turned the drum (D) with teeth and holes for pebbles. As the drum was turned, a rounded pebble would fall into the metal bowl (E), indicating that the cart had traveled one Roman mile. I lost the link to this site but here's a link with more information: http://encyclopedia.tfd.com/pedometer

I wanted to find a way to make notes in a book without marking it up. A book that has yellow highlighter marks, underlining, scribbling, and folded corners not only looks bad; it makes the book almost useless to the next owner. It’s even worse if the book is not yours. Library books, books barrowed from friends, are books that should be kept clean. My system is a sort of code for the location of passages in the book with room for any notes I want to make. I'll start with the simplest case. 1. Use an index card as a bookmark. 2. Write the pages you want to come back to separated by a dash. 3. To the right make notes if needed. Example: 12 - 15 means pages twelve through fifteen. Here’s how it works if you need more detail than only the page numbers: 1. In the left side of the card write the following sequence of numbers: Page number followed by a period. 2. Then the paragraph number (1st paragraph = 1, 2nd = 2, etc.) followed again by a period. Note: a paragra...

The other day I was thinking about what is real. I explored some ideas I've come across in my search for reality. I'm not sure if these ideas are from something I've read or seen in a movie or where. 1. There are the physical limits of our perceptions: optical illusions, night vision... 2. Then there are the philosophical disagreements on the actual nature of reality: physical matter only or spiritual only or some combination. I have a feeling that there is something missing in what we experience. A thought came to me. The possibility of the existence of events and even beings in the brink between what is assumed to be real and what is assumed to be fictitious is not easy to ignore. I thought about one of my favorite authors Poe who wrote about the strange. Then by chance or maybe it wasn't chance. Maybe something in the nature of things led me to find while I was at the post office a stamp of Edgar Allen Poe. I bought two stamps. Later I remembered a q...

“Nothing intelligible can be written which, with time, I cannot decipher." Edgar Allan Poe I've always had a fascination with secret codes but they can get too complicated. I looked for a code that was very easy to use yet almost impossible to decipher. For me that code is the substitution of numbers for letters that appear in a book, magazine or other text. The only way I can see this being solved is if the people involved know what book, magazine or text is being used. Here is my version: FIRST: Both the sender and receiver of the message must have the same copy of text. This means the same book, magazine, etc. SECOND: Find the words that you need in your message then indicate their location with numbers. That's it! Here's how it works: First number = the page of the text being used. Second number = the paragraph on that page. Third number = the sentence in that paragraph. Fourth number = the word in that sentence. For exa...

The other day I watched a technician from my cable company's internet service install a "wireless" device so my wife could get the internet on her laptop. I also purchased a "wireless" printer. He connected something called a "router" (anyway that's what I thought he said) with a foot long cable to another device which I already had to connect to my desktop PC to the internet (I'm not sure what it's called). This was then connected to another cable that goes outside where it eventually disappears into the ground. "Why are there so many wires? I thought this was going to be wireless." "Yeah, it is," he said. "But I don't understand. You have a wire connecting a device to another device that connects into the cable. Then there is a wire plugged into the electrical outlet. Then the printer is plugged into another electrical outlet. Then the laptop is plugged in so it can recharge its battery. Now I have...

What is reality? We experience the world through our senses and then interpret these experiences from our unique individual perspectives. We believe our senses give us a true picture of what exists outside our minds. Without our senses we would be trapped inside our minds with only our thoughts and emotions so we must rely on our senses to give us a "true" presentation of the outside world. Optical illusions are entertaining and easily demonstrate how we can be mistaken about what we believe is real. Follow the link below to see examples of these illusions on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_illusion Believers in ESP claim to have the ability to obtain information without using the physical senses. Although this ability has never been proven by science; most people have experienced hunches, gut feelings, premonitions, intuition or other unexplainable ways of “just knowing” something. This only adds to the uncertainty of what is real. After exper...