About Wyrd Smythe
The canonical fool on the hill watching the sunset and the rotation of the planet and thinking what he imagines are large thoughts.
The seventh post I published here, Yin and Yang, introduced my fascination with the Yin-Yang idea of duality, that life is filled with pairs of opposites (left-right, day-night, black-white). Since then, I’ve written a number of posts about some of those pairs.
In that first post I mentioned that life was also filled with threes (and some of the other numbers, but especially threes). As we look around, we see an awful lot of things that do come in triplets. Today I thought I’d finally get around to tripping on life’s triples.
Ready? Then: One… Two… Three… Let’s go!
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10 Comments | tags: rule of three, three, three-legged, three-pole, triangle, tricycle, trilogy, trinary, triple, tripod, Yin and Yang | posted in Life
Put on your arithmetic caps, dear readers. Also your math mittens, geometry galoshes and cosine coats. Today we’re venturing after numeric prey that lurks down among the lines and angles.
There’s no danger, at least not to life or limb, but I can’t promise some ideas won’t take root in your brain. There’s a very real danger of learning something when you venture into dark territory such as this. Even the strongest sometimes succumb, so hang on to your hats (and galoshes and mittens and coats and brains).
Today we’re going after vectors and scalars (and some other game)!
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16 Comments | tags: 2D, 3D, azimuth, coordinates, declination, dimensions, direction, elevation, location, scalars, speed, Technology, vectors, velocity | posted in Math
They came so very, very close! After four years of season-long disappointment and mediocrity, my Twins were blessed with, literally, a winning season. Last Sunday they ended the 2015 season with a record of 83-79 (.512) — four games above the .500 mark!
The Post-Season ship left the dock on Tuesday; my Twins were not on board, but they only barely missed having a berth. It wasn’t until the penultimate game last Saturday they knew the ship would sail without them. They were in the hunt that long!
So thanks for a fun season, Twins! (And an even better one next year!)
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10 Comments | tags: baseball post-season, Kansas City Royals, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, Texas Rangers, Twins 2015 | posted in Baseball
It happened again. I offered someone a small tip that would have — in a very small way — raised the excellence of their life. The response was (and I quote), “lol [whatever].” I can’t say I was very surprised because it happens all the time.
In fact, laughing it off is the more benign reaction. I’ve learned that it can be dangerous to point out the correct use of “their” and “they’re” and “there.” (Grammar Rules: They’re there for their purpose.) Some folks get downright hostile with regard to their own precision and excellence.
This is one of many human behaviors I have a hard time understanding.
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21 Comments | tags: excellence, ignorance, stupidity, whatever, willful ignorance | posted in Life, Rant
Go Twins!
It’s officially fall, the season named after what the leaves are doing now (at least in places where they came up with the word, “fall”). Did you ever notice how the two seasons of transition both are named after action verbs? Or how appropriate those verbs are to the cycle of life happening in those transitions? Life springs forth to sunny summer and falls asleep to weather winter.
The autumnal equinox was at 08:21 UTC. Here in middle America, by a standard we call “Central,” summer fell at 3:21 AM. I slept through it, so I didn’t hear any noise it might have made. (Sometimes you can hear a distant thud, but that might be a whole bunch of leaves coincidentally all falling at once.)
Today also marks the final dozen (exciting!) games for my Minnesota Twins!
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5 Comments | tags: autumnal equinox, baseball post-season, baseball season, Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, equinox, fall, Kansas City Royals, Los Angeles Dodgers, Major League baseball, Minnesota Twins, MLB, New York Mets, Texas Rangers, Toronto Blue Jays, Twins 2015, Win Twins | posted in Baseball
It’s been a wait of almost a year (the last episode of season 8 aired in November 2014), but The Doctor is finally back!
The best science fiction show ever on TV continues to deliver with a gripping and engaging cliffhanger first episode for season nine.
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7 Comments | tags: Alex Kingston, Christopher Eccleston, David Tennant, Doctor Who, Freema Agyeman, Martha Jones, Matt Smith, Myanna Buring, Peter Capaldi, River Song, science fiction, Scooti Manista, The Doctor | posted in Sci-Fi Saturday, TV
Those with a life-long interest in what is now called STEM are almost universally fans of cartoonist Gary Larson. It is almost unheard of to walk into the workspace of any science or technology worker and not find a few of Larson’s cartoons posted.
For me, Larson is up there with people like Terry Pratchett as being brilliant observers of the human condition and also brilliant in their ability to express their observations. Some of Larson’s work is just plain funny (really funny), but a lot of it is philosophical and extremely insightful.
For some Friday Fun, I thought I’d show you some of my all-time favorites.
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17 Comments | tags: blah blah blah Ginger, Bummer of a birthmark, cartoons, funny, Gary Larson, humor, My brain is full, The Far Side, What we say to dogs | posted in Books
Some months ago, someone commented that I apparently watched a lot of TV. A recent Nielsen report claims the average American watches 5 hours per day, although age and race are factors. Children (2-11) watch a bit over 24 hours per week, and those 65 and older watch over 50 hours per week. It’s apparently close to a flat line with a dip in the teens.
My 50-64 age group supposedly watches nearly 44 hours per week (6.3 hours per day). For this TV Tuesday post, I thought it’d be interesting to see just how much I actually do watch.
It turns out I do watch a lot of TV; here’s the proof…
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19 Comments | tags: ABC, Angie Harmon, Bill Lawrence, Castle (TV series), CBS, Doctor Who, Elementary (TV series), For The Record, FTR, Grimm (TV series), HBO, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Leverage (TV series), Lisa Edelstein, Lucy Liu, NBC, NCIS, NCIS:New Orleans, Rizzoli & Isles, Sherlock (TV series), Sherlock Holmes, Showtime, TBS, The Blacklist, TNT | posted in TV, TV Tuesday
Guaranteed calorie-free, fat-free, sugar-free, and gluten-free. Also taste-free and scent-free:
Made only with “green” free-range electrons!
H.B. to an old friend. A long road winds from there to here.
Score: Three!
Leave a comment | tags: Happy Birthday, sun sign | posted in Life
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