What do you care what other people think?

This is an excellent question.  (Feynman, by the way.  If you've never heard of him, look him up.  He's a brilliant physicist, witty and engaging speaker, and rather creepy as a person).  The strange thing is that when it comes to thinking about it, I really don't care what others think of me.  But my behavior is completely different.  I care a lot what others think of me, even complete strangers. 

It doesn't make rational sense, but I seem to have a fear that someone's impression will affect their behavior toward me.  Of course it will, but it's not the end of the world to have people know that you are less than perfect.  It's only the truth.  How can it feel so damaging?

On the flip side, making a fool of yourself can often be rewarding.  It requires guts, to be sure, to head out to an activity alone, hoping against all hope that other people will see and join you.  I know that feeling all too well.  It's a combination of humiliation, from playing a multi-person game alone and the inability to draw more people, and pride, in playing a game I love enough to make a fool of myself. 

Also, without caring what other people think, complements have no meaning.  A complement from a close friend means a lot.  And when it's something as broad as "I like the way you live your life," well, I can't help but care.  I'm glad to have friends who know me well enough and whose opinions I care about enough that that kind of a complement totally makes my day.  So thanks. 

Tablet Pens

I couldn't come up with a good topic today, so I asked some friends.  After rejecting 'Haircuts' for being too boring, I suppose I surprised even myself by accepting 'Tablet Pens' as a topic.  But hey, a topic is a topic.  Is a topic.  So here goes nothing:
Tablet pens, along with the ability to flip a screen flat, are the distinguishing feature of tablets.
There are three camps with regards to tablets: 'they're a pain and a waste of money,' 'they're worth their weight in gold,' and 'why are you guys making such a scene about it?'  I personally fall between the latter two.  I very much appreciate being able to write notes, since often math and science notes cannot be adequately typed.  But on the other hand, my computer is often rather intermittent, refusing to acknowledge the existence of the tablet function.  At those times, the tablet functionality seems like a waste of valuable resources.  So I'm torn. 
But when it comes to the tablet pen (excluding the tablet itself)...wow.  I love the ability to write on my screen, and I'm always forced to smile when I turn it over, almost by reflex, to 'erase' a stroke or two, and it actually erases!  Plus the pen is fun to fiddle with, whether just twirling it in my hand or shooting it out of the compartment on the side of my computer. 

For today, I'm grateful for modern technology and the ways it enlivens my life. 

Stars

Stars have fascinated humans since they were able to look up.  Those pinpricks of light have been emblems of the universe's mysteries.  Philosophers and scientists spent several millenia simply finding a way to describe their motion in the heavens, and are still working on explaining their behaviors. 
But really, the explanation doesn't take away any of the awe I feel as I look above me, and see the same stars and constellations as humans across the ages.  The motions across the heavens are so consistent and reliable.  I love the opportunity to go outside on a moonless night, as far from light pollution as I can manage, and lay on my back to admire the stars.  Over the course of an hour, I can see the motion about the pole star, and watch the rising and setting of some of my favorite constellations. 
Apart from the sheer awe-inspiring aspect of stars, it's also really cool to consider the fact that we're seeing things that happened millions or even billions of years ago.  As fast as light travels, the vast emptiness of space wins out, and it takes eons for us to see stars. 
They are awe-inspiring and wonderous.

I'm glad of clear, dark nights and the beautiful twinkling of stars. 

Cold

It's not even winter yet, and it's already cold.  That kind of cold that seeps into you slowly and takes a hold of you, numbing you to everything else.  Just being outside for a few scant minutes, it feels like my nose is about to fall off.  It's not exactly pleasant.  I've heard that if you fall asleep in the cold, you will never wake up. That sounds reasonable enough.  After all, while sleeping, the heart rate slows, breathing calms, and you cool down.  Combine that with the cold outside, and you have a recipe for disaster. 
I have a distinctly love-hate relationship with the cold.  I hate the way it hurts as a breeze blows on my face, the way that it makes any injury smart in the chill air.  But I also love the excuse to stay inside, to curl up in my blankets and go into a temporary hibernation.  I also find snow beautiful, though we haven't gotten any yet.  The gentle and silent fall of snowflakes is a glorious thing to behold. 
Plus, snowmen are always nice to make, and snowball fights are a consistent source of amusement in the winter months. 
So it's not all bad.

I am glad for warm soup on cold nights, filling my stomach and warming me to the core.

Waves

The ocean is a beautiful thing.  It pounds at the coast perpetually, creating an ever-changing boundary.  At sea, a boat rides up and down on the waves, bobbing along with the rhythm of nature.  The cool thing is that waves come in all shapes and sizes.  Mostly sizes.  From ripples to tides, waves are incredibly diverse. 
It's an excellent demonstration of the limitations of instruments.  If you're in a boat bobbing around on the ocean, you don't 'feel' the ripples in the water around you.  Those barely hit the boat at all.  In the same way, you don't notice the tides as you sit in your boat, the massive sloshing of the world's oceans from one coast to the other.  All that you notice are the waves of just the right size to affect your boat. 
Anyhow, back to the ocean.  It can be incredibly terrifying.  It's an enormous stretch of the unknown.  Even now, we actually know more about the surface of Venus than we do about the bottom of the ocean.  We are constantly revealing new species and even entire ecosystems.  And yet at the same time, the oceans have been traveled for millenia.  They're a strange mix of the known and the unknown.  The oceans are fantastically powerful, and certainly deadly.  And I suppose that's why they appeal so much to me. 

Sorry for this kind of stub of a post.  I've been swamped with to-do's recently. 

I'm thankful for the consistent changing of the ocean and the hope and inspiration it offers me. 

Thanksgiving

I have many things to be thankful for.  Too often, I feel that I ignore these things and focus on the problems in my life.  Complaining has a way of uniting people for a common cause that mutual thanks so rarely does.  Someday (inspired by xkcd), I'd like to participate in or lead a contentedness rally.  I'd love to see people spending time thinking about their good fortune rather than mulling over and bemoaning their problems.
The funny thing is that the previous paragraph complained about complaining.  And now I'm complaining about complaining about complaining...
In any case, for today, I'd like to spend a bit of time considering the things in life that I am thankful for.
First off, my family.  They're an amazing group of people, intelligent, reasonable, and kind.  I like to spend time with them, playing games, discussing politics, or just sitting in the same room doing our separate things.  I'm incredibly grateful to have such an unbelievably awesome family.
My friends, too, are amazing.  I don't think I could ask for a more engaging, enthusiastic, and exciting group of peers.  I always love to spend time with them, and their insights into everything from science to religion are always intriguing.  Their friendship in what can often be a stressful world is like a beacon to me.  They give me the strength to go on living the way I do.
I am also grateful for some more mundane things, like the food I always have on my table.  I am glad to be well enough off to be able to eat good, nutritious food three times a day, when there are people around the globe who struggle just to get a bite to eat. 
I am also thankful for the physical ability to do as I wish with myself.  This freedom is refreshing and much appreciated. 
I'm glad, too, that I live in a nation of intellectual freedom, and have the freedom and the ability to express my views.  It's great that I can discuss controversial topics without fear for my own well-being, and I like to think that I am reasonable in using this freedom.
Lastly, I am grateful for my ability and the ability of those around me to see the best in things.  The world can be a frightening place at times, and it sometimes takes a new opinion to see the beauty around me.

So thank you.  To my friends, family, and acquaintances, thank you very much for allowing me to be a part of your life.  I hope that you've gotten as much out of our relationship as I have.  To complete strangers, thank you for taking the time to read the ramblings of one more person in a strange world.  I hope that you will take the time to thank someone in your life who has made a difference to you.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Puzzles

I've never been much of a person for puzzles.  I'll pick something up, fiddle with it for a bit, and give up far too quickly for my own liking.  But for whatever reason, today, I was totally in the mood for puzzles.  I've installed a whole package of brain teasers, logical puzzles, and so on, and spent a few hours today playing with just the first 10 or so.
My conclusion is that what I need to do is fiddle for a while, find a bit of a pattern, and then, much like a computer, break the large problem into similar, but simpler, small puzzles.  Take a sliding puzzle.  Many people have seen them.  You start with, say, a 3-by-3 array of squares, which together form a picture.  It's missing one square, so you can slide the remaining 8 around, randomizing it quite effectively.  Now, how do you put it back together?  (*spoiler alert!*)
I figured out that what you do is put together two edges, and then are left with a simple 2-by-2 square.  Likewise, with a 4-by-4, I can put together two edges, leaving me with a 3-by-3, which I know how to solve. By doing this, I can (given an infinite amount of time, which I don't have) solve any n-by-m slider puzzle.
And no, I'm not going to tell you how I put edges together.  That would spoil the fun. :P
I also had some fun with 'Map,' coloring a group of regions using only four colors, Black Box, an amazing logic game I can't adequately describe, and Bridges, in which you connect dots using a prescribed number of bridges.  Lots of fun.

I'm sorry if this entire post felt a bit like bragging.  I'm just kind of excited about now being able to complete a few different types of puzzles, something I'd never before had the patience to do.  

Today, I'm thankful for puzzles, which can suddenly get me to focus on a problem until I solve it.

Learning

When I was young, I viewed learning as a permanent process.  You started off not knowing something, learned it, and then knew it.  It was nice.  An irreversible process that was automatically worth the time you put into it.  I never studied for tests.  After all, if I knew the material like I was supposed to, the test wouldn't be any problem at all.  Studying almost felt like cheating.  It was a pleasant, if erroneous, view of learning. 
Now, I realize that learning is far more of a process than a stage.  If I learn something, I learn it temporarily.  I can guarantee it will be faster to learn the next time, and the next time, and the next time.  If I use a tidbit often enough, I'll eventually come to use it readily, like simple addition or multiplication.  And if I don't use it for a while, I will have to relearn the subject before I can build on it again.
And in order to stay up-to-date in any scientific, teaching, or engineering field, people have to continually learn new things and use what they know, or else their knowledge will stagnate, slowly festering into vague recollections of ideas once known. 
On the one hand, this is a saddening revelation.  The idea that nothing that I learn can I simply know forever is a humbling one.  But on the other hand, it also promises a lifetime of learning ahead of me, a prospect I'm certainly looking forward to. 
There are few things as thrilling as a brief epiphany, that moment in which previously unrelated ideas click into place, completing a section of that puzzle of learning I have been painstakingly building over the course of weeks, months, or even years.  And pressing the boundaries of that puzzle, asking about those pieces right on the fringe, can be an incredible experience.  The process of finding the right question to ask, finding the right place and time to ask it, and finally finding a new piece of the puzzle to snap into place, is a revealing, engaging, and exciting one.  I hope I never tire of it. 

Today, I am thankful for family members and reading good books while curled up in a cozy chair. 

What a day

Today was a very strange day.  I slept in much later than I had intended, though I clearly needed the sleep.  The morning was beautiful: crisp, clear, damp from the night's rain.  What a glorious day it looked like it would be.  I had quite a bit of free time in the morning, and read some Harry Potter 7.  Very enjoyable.  Then, the work I had left over caught up with me. Everything piled on at once.  I was completely overwhelmed.  And somehow it kept accumulating over the course of the day.  I hardly had time to breathe. 
The funny thing is that under normal circumstances, I would have had a terrible day.  Far too busy for my liking ordinarily. But for whatever reason, I've been cheerful all day.  I'm certainly not complaining.  Just pondering a strange occurrence. 
Perhaps the weather had something to do with it. It was rather dreary and rainy all day, and sometimes, for whatever reason, rain cheers me up.  The pounding of rain on the roof of the building lifts my spirits.  At times, the roar of the rain exceeded the rumble of thunder.  At such times, all I wanted to do was to run to the nearest window and admire the splash and splatter of raindrops on the glass, passing the time in quiet admiration of the power of nature. 
All in all, a good day.  

For today, I'm grateful for those who will keep going no matter what may happen to them, right up to the very end.  Thank you.

Correction

A friend has pointed out an error in my last post.  The inverse square law of gravitation only applies in reasonable circumstances.  In other worlds, general relativity messes up the rest of physics.  :P  Still, it's pretty neat.  Just stay away from black holes. 
I'll post later.