Jim Medding’s Blog

Many small towns have a local newspaper and the one I live in is no exception. Once a week someone throws a paper onto the end of my driveway expecting that I’ll read it and patronize the local businesses who advertise in it. As you can imagine, there isn’t much worthy of being read in something produced with such low expectations. However, I have found that the police reports provide the most entertainment value.

Oh those wacky things my neighbors will do.

Occasionally, one can draw deeper value from the reports. Consider the following report:

Weapons violations: Three male juveniles were playing “war” with Airsoft guns in an abandoned lot. Two of the juveniles… had been warned the day prior about playing with Airsoft guns in the city limits… The guns were taken…

And then, 50 some minutes later:

Sex offense, other: Police received a report of four juvenile males “mooning” traffic by exposing their bare bottoms and honking their vehicle’s horn to get attention.

Well, it’s pretty obvious what happened here. After the police took their Airsoft guns away, they got with their friend who owns a car and went out to entertain themselves.

Maybe the toy guns weren’t so bad.

Having cleaned up a few messes myself during my career, I can really identify with this quote.

A lifetime in engineering gives you a very good antenna. It also cures people of any self belief they cannot be wrong. You clear up a lot of messes during a lifetime in engineering. I could be wrong on global warming – I know that – but the guys on the other side don’t believe they can ever be wrong.

David Holland in The Telegraph

There is no theorem that says the interesting things in the world are conserved, only the total of everything.

Richard Feynman, Cornell University lecture “The Conservation Principles” (#3), 1964

It’s Pi day!

“How does one celebrate Pi Day?” you might be asking.

Put Pi on your socks, obviously.

We’ve all seen them – “international” icons used to communicate a message without using written words. Some work and some don’t.

Since moving into a new building at work, I’ve been puzzled about the icon used to communicate evacuating the building during a fire. It just didn’t seem quite right. I though more about casually dancing down the stairs than about fleeing a burning building.

Care to cha-cha-cha your way out of the building?

No thanks, “aaaah , runaway!” seems more appropriate for the moment.

Then, I found an icon in an older building.

Yep, that’s it.

A recent text message exchange between my wife and myself has convinced me that perhaps it’s time to consider a cell phone upgrade.

Wife:

I found some glasses today and they are on order. They were reasonably priced although I am looking at some pricey sunglasses.

Me:

Ugh! Ok thanks for the warning

Wife:

I like the way you only respond to the last part of the message. Aren’t you glad I found glasses?

Me:

Txtg on stoopid phne hurtz. Am hppy much

Unfortunately, our current cell phone service provider has decided that any phone that can make sending text messages pain free should also be featured up so as to require a data plan. The idea of sending more money that the wad I’m already sending to the bozo’s who concocted such a stoopid idea has convinced me to continue to endure the hurtz.

Even though it’s one of the most famous motorcycle races in the world, the Isle of Man TT get’s very little attention here in the States. Well, perhaps outside of the motorcycle racing world here in the states. Then again, motorcycle racing just doesn’t get any attention here in the States.

I’m not quite sure why. Whenever I happen upon a televised race on some obscure cable channel, I’m always amazed at how riveting it is. Man perched on top of raw horsepower with nothing between his fragile flesh and hard unyielding objects but a thin piece of leather.

It kind of looks like this.

Recently, a date encoding in an auto-generated e-mail subject heading caught my eye. It was an interesting pattern. Being the type of person to see the street number of a house and think “I like that number” before realizing that it’s my birth date, I decided to treat myself and ruminate on the pattern. The curious date encoding was almost a binary number; next year it would be a binary number. But there’s a date code next year which is binary and it has a repeating pattern – 101010. Repeating patterns are even better.

“Nice to look at, but is there anything else about this date pattern which is interesting?” I thought.

“Hmm, I wonder what that is in decimal.”

The Answer is – 42.

So, we don’t have to wait 7.5 million years for a supercomputer to calculate the meaning of life. It has its own date which comes around every 100 years. Spread the word.

10/10/10 is the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything Day. Don’t miss it.

Recently, after I shared one of my favorite racing videos with a coworker, he responded by suggesting that since I liked old racing videos, I might like this one:

On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris early in the morning. The film was limited for technical reasons to 10 minutes; the course was from Porte Dauphine , through the Louvre, to the Basilica of Sacre Coeur.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit.

The driver completed the course in about 9 minutes, reaching nearly 140 MPH in some stretches. The footage reveals him running 20 real red lights, nearly hitting real pedestrians, and driving the wrong way up real one-way streets.

Upon showing the film in public for the first time, Lelouch was arrested. He has never revealed the identity of the driver, and the film went underground.

Wikipedia describes some of the facts about the video a bit differently, but it still leaves you using my daughter’s favorite expression – OMG.