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Package #1
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2452
Day off (call and confirmed), been busy the last couple days and so it was a little in doubt...
A large list of errands that included thrift shops, picking up a Wii and some accessories for my daughter's 9th birthday (the grotesque spoiling of children by the absent parent, most single parents can relate...), then a quick peruse of the transit map of Calgary and a bus up to collect my package from eBay.
Now it's perfect, I don't want to open it, perfectly wrapped, small, lightweight, and after I pick it up and get it home I put it on the desk without opening it. All the way from Tibet, although the postmarks all read China.
I have to open it, I've had messages from the vendor on eBay, he wants to know if I've received it, he wants his feedback...
But I nap, briefly, first, a pleasant medley of dreams interrupted finally by a call from 403-310-2255. Unknown number. More on that later.
Unpack the thrift shop finds, a Beanie for the daughter as well, she already has it, but bought it full price for $10, mine was a dollar and so I bought it to illustrate the financial benefits of recycling, a copy of the 1970's version of the "Lord of the Rings" on DVD for a colleague at work, other small trifles.
Then I open it. I'd leave it in the package for a week or two yet, were it up to me, but I have to inspect it for damage, leave feedback.
It's perfect, exactly as described, better even, for the price a bargain and I want to message the seller now and order a dozen more (if he can round them up at the price I won it at...). I've found a small spot on a wall and hung it up - it's perfect.
I'd take a picture so you could see, but it's better you take my word. It's perfect.
The Pioneer Anomaly
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1800
Small observations can often mean large scale changes in the way we look at the universe. Little semantic things, like whether the Earth goes round the sun or the Sun goes round the Earth.
Small changes in the way we think can have profound impacts on the way we interact, manipulate and predict the world around us.
The Pioneer Anomaly is one such small observation. Since exiting the solar system (inner) and reaching the outer solar system, both the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft (launched in the 70's) have slowed down more than any single factor can account for. Like the diminishing of the mass of the Kilogram, it's a small effect that might have big implications about the way we look at the universe.
Further Reading: Planetary.org, Cosmos Magazine
Kilogram Losing Mass
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Ideas & Questions
- Hits: 1746
Now it's a curious thing, but the official Kilogram (the standard from which the measurement is derived) is losing mass.
Not much, very little in fact, but there's really no good explanation for it. Not yet. Perhaps some of the platinum/iridium used to make it have evaporated, although that doesn't sound like something that metal does. Not over as small a time as 100 years. Maybe it wasn't initially wasn't measured correctly, but I think that possibility would have been raised already and accounted for.
No, it seems that it's gradually losing weight. Minuscule amounts, the weight of a thumbprint, year after year.
Which, as it's so far unexplained, begs some speculation....
Perhaps it's not the mass of the Kilogram that's changing, but the attraction of the mass to the earth (gravity)?
Is it just the Kilogram that's changing, or are all things on earth and throughout the universe losing mass? Is it accelerating? Could it be the expansion of the universe is somehow manifest in the expansion of all things, the weakening of the bonds of matter and hence the universe?
It's a small thing, a small loss, but it raises some possibly big questions.
Further reading: USA TODAY, Science Daily, Wiki on the Kilogram
Anticlimactic
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 1961
I can see the postwoman on her rounds and she's stopping at my house.
I try not to get excited, don't want to greet her at the door, instead I count to 60 after hearing the slamming of the mailbox and go outside - it's a delivery notice. There's a parcel at the nearest postal outlet, which, checking google maps, isn't very near at all. Not at all. And so I have to wait until Wednesday and plot a route northwards to try and find it.
But there's a parcel here...
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