Generalismo

Did you know the average surface temperature of the earth is around 60 degrees fahreheit? (15 celsius)

The circumference of the earth is about 24,900 miles around. That’s about 131,472,000 feet and would take you 88.66 days (2,128 hours) to run if you kept up the pace (11.7 mph) of the 2007 Boston Marathon winner!
And of course, you’d need to be able to walk on water too, as you’d have to cover some of the water that covers about 70% of the surface area of the earth.

Speaking of water, there are an estimated 326 million cubic miles of water in the rivers, atmosphere, oceans, groundwater, and other places on earth. Each cubic mile of water is an astonishing 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) gallons of water, making the total amount of water 326,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons. While I was looking for the info on how many zeros this figure would contain I found this table of zeros to number names (the above figure is 326 quintillion). Why not check the table and find the highest number you know and then learn the next highest one? It’s not worth it to me to memorize the whole table up to a centillion (303 zeros), but it can’t be too hard to just memorize one more.

Posted by Bonnie under math, outdoors, running, statistics, world

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I’ve got a variety of different notebooks around. Some have my math problems from 5th grade, others have journals, and still others music I’ve written, and notes from lectures.

My grandfather, who is a scholar and taught at colleges for many years, has always told me I ought to keep a notebook. In it, he said, you ought to write down observations and in particular prayers. Opening yourself up to write things down can make you look at what’s going on in your head from another perspective.

Leonardo da Vinci, according to his bio at Molecular Expressions, “kept huge notebooks of his fantastic designs, sketches and ideas.” After reading Michael Gelb’s How To Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, which encourages the practice of keeping a notebook, I decided it was time to open up my notebooking to a broader spectrum of writing. The page I have pictured above is part of a short list I’ve jotted down to blog about here at Generalismo. A random sampling of my notebook includes

1. How many eggs I need to serve eggs benedict to 11 people - includes ratio of eggs to butter for hollandaise sauce
2. A reminder to not focus every response I make on me, ask more questions of people
3. How to say “Hello” in Russian - which sounds to me like Preeviet so I wrote it down like that
4. My new bicep building plan
5. A question I want to find the answer to - why do some electrical appliances (like computer speakers) take a minute to die down completely when you push the off button?

I am currently using a small notebook. I find it’s easier to find things because you can make one thought on one page and not worry about wasting a whole large notebook page. You can also save the back of a page to return to and make related statements, or the answer to your question.

In your notebook you can write down whatever information you like but here are some suggestions to get you started.

1. Longterm goals
2. An idea you have - inventions, improvements, concepts, etc
3. Any observation you find important. This might be that the buds have come out on the trees, or that today was the coldest day in your locale in 100 years, or that you started your vitamin regimen.
4. Thoughts that keep you up at night - write them down and you don’t have to worry about forgetting them
5. A question about how something works, or why a particular phenomenon occurs
6. A word you need to look up in the dictionary
7. Books you’ve read recently, with author’s name and short review

You can also make particular notebooks for particular things - say, to track the progress and results of your consistent practice of an instrument, or to keep records of local weather. When I was running (and even now), this was a very useful thing to have. I would record whatever seemed pertinent (weather, how I felt), the data from my GPS (average speed, distance), and while I was traveling, what state I was in. Some places I returned to and I could look in my notebook and see what observations I made about the trail last time, and how fast or slow I ran it.

Posted by Bonnie under exercise, goals, organizing, running

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