I could sure use some sun. I don’t care for the rainy, dreary, gray days we have this time of year. I guess it does make me feel a lot better about the beautiful sunny days of spring and summer, but I could do with fewer blah days to highlight the bright days.


Ben has been telling me about his Scholastic Bowl events and the questions they study for. I don’t say much to him because I don’t want to dampen his enthusiasm, but I find most of the topics and questions to be rather inane. A lot of it seems to be scholarly trivia rather than knowledge of any value. Lots of dates and names of dubious historical note. Lots of formulas and equations that I don’t think even scholars have much need to use. When was the last time you figured up anything to do with Newtons or Ergs?

A newton is the amount of force required to accelerate a mass of 1 kilogram by 1 metre per second². Oh yea —— I knew that. Now where do you find a square second?

The erg is a small unit, equal to a force of 1 dyne exerted for a distance of 1 centimeter. In the CGS base units, it is equal to 1 gram-square centimeter per second² (g·cm²/s²). It is thus equal to 1 × 10^-7 joules or 0.1 microjoule (µJ) in SI units. It is approximately the amount of energy that a mosquito uses to take flight. Ahhhh —— mosquito —— I know about them! (use your best Homer Simpson impression) Is that the amount of energy when they are empty or when they are big, red and full of blood?