#170 How to Stand an Egg

I didn't think I'd be able to write another entry until Tuesday evening, because I was going to be away Monday and Tuesday morning visiting my daughter.  But there's snow coming - starting Monday evening we're supposed to get 1-2 inches per hour all night, to about 12 inches, then more snow flurries through Tuesday (and Wednesday, and Thursday, ad infinitum). The worst snow will be to the north of Albany (we're south).  That's according to the TV weatherman.

The same channel's weather site (personalized to my actual address!) says 6 inches over Monday night, mixed with sleet (I guess that's where the other six inches went?)

So I listened to Jay's weather radio (WXL37, US Weather Service) - a last resort because it hurts my ears.  They've changed their reporting format since the last time I listened.  They used to say the towns or counties, then the forecast, then more towns or counties, and their forecast.  But tonight, there was a woman's voice (different), and she gave forecast after forecast without specifying what area it was for.  Somebody's getting 3-8 inches, somebody else is getting 8-12 inches, and a third somebody's getting 8-14 inches.  But I have no idea who. She did say two significant things:  the worst snow will be to the south (!) and east of Albany, and the storm could track further to the east or west than they expect.

My conclusion is that nobody knows for sure what's going to happen.  I can't come home to a foot of snow in the driveway.  So, I delay Daughter-visit again.

=====================================

The West Wing was on in the wee hours last evening.  As the show began, CJ was trying to convince everyone that you can stand an egg on end "at the exact moment of" the vernal equinox, "but not the autumnal equinox".  Some people tried, and couldn't.  CJ insisted she had seen it done.  Others argued that it couldn't be done ever, and besides, even if it could, there's no difference between the vernal and autumnal equinoxes.  At the end of the show, at exactly midnight (Duh?) CJ did stand an egg, but of course there was nobody else there to see it.

There was so much misinformation in that show it was painful.

According to Snopes, eggs will stand on their ends any day of the year.  Technically, I suppose that might be true.  The Snopes article says that eggs are associated with fertility and birth, and that's why they are associated with the vernal equinox (and by extension, to Easter).  Also true, but confusing.  I'm under the impression that wild (migrating) birds don't lay eggs that early or late - anywhere.  Seems like awakening insects should deserve that honor.  Snopes says that standing eggs on the equinox symbolizes the restoration of balance to the Earth.  Now that makes real (intuitive) sense.

I have been standing eggs for more than 25 years.  I have tried at all times of the year.  I can always balance them a few days before, during, and after both equinoxes.  I have never been able to get one to stand more than a very few seconds, if at all, at any other time of the year.

There was a large group of us in Washington DC who stood eggs every spring.  We would stand eggs at home, starting like two weeks before the equinox, and then on the Saturday nearest the equinox we all went to one guy's house, where we stood eggs on every flat surface all over his house.  After a few days or a week or two, the eggs would fall.  It's interesting that every one of the eggs (that didn't get bumped prematurely) fell within a few hours of each other, all over DC, Montgomery county, and Northern Virginia.   Once they fell, neither they nor fresh eggs would stand again, until the next equinox.

So my experience, and that of the egg-standing group, doesn't jive with the Snopes theory.

We could not stand eggs until some point up to around 10 days or a week before the equinox.  Then suddenly, it became easy, and all the eggs went up and stayed up, all pretty close to the same time.  Standing eggs stayed up, and it became easier and easier to stand more as the equinox approached.  Then it all reversed, and all eggs would fall, one after another, all down within a day or two, and it became increasingly more difficult to get them to stand again, until no one could keep one up for more than a few seconds.

I had three eggs (in three different rooms) that stood for more than four weeks one year.

The amount of time before and after the equinox that the eggs would stand varied from year to year.  The vernal equinox is always easier, with a longer spread of time, than the autumnal.  In my experience, the autumnal averages only about three days on either side.

So, quote Snopes, quote science, quote anyone you want.  I'll have trouble listening because I know what my experience is.  If you've never done it before,  you can perform your own experiment, and see what you, yourself think (as opposed to what someone tells you.)

You will need an egg, relatively fresh, raw, with a smooth shell - no big bumps of calcium.  I've noticed eggs seem to be getting rounder - try to find eggs with a definite "pointy" end.  You can make it a little easier on yourself if you let it stand on its wider end in the carton for a day.

You will need a smooth flat level surface, that is not subject to vibration or strong drafts.  I've found that the kitchen counter or a fireplace mantel is best because they are attached to the wall.  If the surface is textured, a cutting board or book will help.  Tables tend to shake too much (the egg will stand, but not for long).

You will need practice, so start about five days before the equinox.  The vernal equinox is March 20 this year, so start about March 15th.

Rest your forearms on the surface, and stand the egg, wide end down, holding it at its center with your thumbs and pointer fingers, the four points of contact equally spaced around the egg.

Make tiny adjustments, until the pressure (weight of the egg) is equal on all four fingers.  When the weight of the egg is equal on all four sides, gently pull your fingers away.  You must remove your fingers all at the same time - one finger still touching the egg when the other three have been removed will unbalance it.  This is what you are actually practicing - developing that feeling of equality in all four fingers, and removing them all at the same time.

Don't get discouraged at the first five, or fifteen, or fifty unsuccessful tries.  It will get easier and easier the more you try, the more you train your fingers, and especially as the equinox gets closer.

Once you have an egg standing, lay something around it so if it falls it won't roll to the floor and make a mess.  A bit of wet and pinched paper towel makes a nice moat.

You can prove to yourself that it can be done.

Once you have a lot of experience, it gets really easy.  Very close to the magic dayI can just set the egg down with one hand, on almost any kind of surface.

Now, after the egg falls, reset it every day.  Does it get more and more difficult?  Can you refute Snopes?

#169 Ten Unusual Things I’ve Done That You Probably Didn’t Know About

There are two challenges going around AOL Journals that I find interesting. One is to list ten things you have done that you think very few others might have done (the originator says you’d be surprised how many other people have done it too), and the second is to list things "you don’t know about me". I’ve decided to combine them. So:

Ten Unusual Things I’ve Done That You Probably Didn’t Know About

1. I spent a week at a retreat with Trudy Bell (editor for Scientific American magazine(1971-78), founding senior editor for Omni magazine (1978-79), a senior editor for IEEE Spectrum magazine (1983-97)), Isadore Adler (worked in extraterrestrial Geosciences, utilizing remote imaging from satellites, played a major role in the Mariner, Viking, and Voyager missions, consultant on the VLA project), and Isaac Asimov (who doesn’t already know Isaac? BTW - science fiction is a minor part of his CV.), and about 20 other people.  We worked on a project for the feds, between fun activities.  Isaac autographed a book for me, “To the top banana with the great pear.”  The book is packed away in the basement at the moment, so I can’t check whether he spelled it “pear” or “pair”, but the meaning was unmistakable.  That was my Dolly Parton phase, before Mae West moved in.
2. I am trained as a Masters & Johnson-method sexual surrogate.  Before you get all excited, a) the training was in impotence, in which it is important to stress that there is no pressure, which means that one does NOT “do it”, b) it was 30 years ago, c) it was in Missouri, where it was illegal for a “surrogate” to be anyone other than the wife or fiancée of the subject**, so if a man had a "problem", the wife got the training and d) after all that training, I never got beyond session 2 of the treatment because my subject kept falling asleep. 
3. The term “nibble” for half a byte was coined expressly for me in 1968 by my classmates in The Company’s basic programming school.  A bit is one tick, a byte is eight bits, but it’s always written with a space between the first four and the second four bits, which confused me into thinking a byte was four bits.  The intermediate term “nibble” made it clear for me.
4. I’ve seen EFVs (UFOs to the rest of you), as you learned in a prior entry.
5. I’ve read some original unexpurgated Project Blue Book files, also in a prior entry.
6. I had a Company VP stand in my office and shout at me because I refused to sign a particular letter.  When I still refused to sign, all my projects were taken away and I was stuck in a backwater while they searched for a reason to fire me.  Six months later, I won a significant monetary award for having refused to sign the letter, and was promoted to technical assistant to a third-line manager.
7. I was offered a “mistress contract”.  I’ll do a whole entry on that sometime.
8. Sony owes me a few million dollars.  I’ll do a whole entry on that sometime, too.
9. I do believe that there is a lot more to reality than we can sense.  I hate to mention ESP and precognition, because weirdoes have spoiled the terms, and others have an idea in their head that doesn’t match the definition in my head.  However, my parents reported that as a child I could count fingers held behind my head with 100% accuracy, on several occasions I have had repeating dreams that later came true in minute detail, and ... some other stuff I won’t go into.  No, it doesn’t happen on command, and it doesn’t happen if I think about it.  Too much of a concentration on the real seems to block it.  It happens spontaneously.
10. I can stand a raw egg on end.  Lots of people have seen me do it, and they are mostly convinced there’s a trick, but there isn’t.  Anybody can do it.  Details in the next entry.

========================

** Missouri considered a paid surrogate to be a prostitute.  The state stipulated that the "surrogate" had to be the spouse or fiancée of the patient (and therapy was to be undertaken at home), which of course made him or her no longer technically a surrogate.  In fact, since there were already likely to be heavy issues between the two, it also rendered the therapies pretty much doomed.  But one couldn't be sure of that until one tried.

#168 Suicidal Governments Revisited

Back in entry #149, I mentioned the danger posed by fanatical suicidal governments.  One could think I was referring to one or two particular Persian Gulf countries.  

I wasn't.  I need to clear that up.

I was thinking mainly of theocracies, any and all.

Theocracies in general tend to be more willing to sacrifice people to a belief than democracies, or autocracies.  Democracies and autocracies (and almost any other form of government) are more interested in their own perpetuation than in ideas or principles.  They'll talk ideas, ideals, principles, but in the end self preservation rules - and that's good for the rest of us.

People and governments that are ruled by ideals above self preservation are scary.  They will sacrifice everything, themselves and us too, for an idea.

The US has been moving along the line closer and closer to a theocracy.  

Religion has been used in a cynical way to get votes, and it worked, and I'm afraid it will expand beyond control.

So it wasn't one or two countries that worry me - it's the trend.  If it leads to a repeat of the Crusades (in which, incidentally, religion was cynically used by poor countries to sack rich countries), that could be .... serious. 

#167 EFVs

I think I saw some extraterrestrial flying vehicles (EFVs) once. (I don't like to call them Unidentified Flying Objects.  I had a little brown bird nesting under the deck that I couldn't identify.  It flew.  That's a UFO.)

When I lived on the Sage base, on the mountain, I spent a lot of time in the woods and field, or riding my bicycle on the highway.  I didn't have a watch, so I kept track of the time by the commercial airliners passing overhead.  There were certain flights in certain directions at certain times of the day.  So when I was outside, I was very conscious of the sky.

One morning I was alone at the rifle range behind the base, and caught the glint of sunlight on metal in the sky.  There were three airplanes passing directly overhead, in a tight triangle.  It couldn't be commercial flights, of course, not together in formation, so I figured they were probably Air Force.  We got a lot of USAF flyovers -sometimes guys from the base getting their flight time in - sometimes just because.

I immediately realized there was something odd about these planes.  They were exceptionally long for their widths - like darning needles.  Second, they were going VERY fast - from directly overhead to over the horizon in less than 10 seconds.  Third, they were VERY high.  With my index finger at arm's length, they were the width of my finger.  So, if I underestimated their height, if I put them low enough that their speed made sense, then they were impossibly tiny.  If I assumed a reasonable size, then they were impossibly high.  If they were that high, they were impossibly fast.  I braced for the sonic boom, and it never came.  There was no sound at all from them.  No trails, either.

I still had the clearance for the towers, so I went to the Sage tower and asked the airmen on duty, how fast were those planes going?  They didn't know what I was taking about.  The radar had not picked up any airplanes. 

That night at dinner I mentioned it to my father.  (He was the base commander.)  He got thoughtful, and as soon as he was finished eating, he went back up to his office - something he never did - and didn't come back before my bedtime.  Somehow, I knew not to bring it up again the next day. 

So, you're thinking - SSTs!  Yep, right shape, height, speed.  But  nope.  The year was 1960 or 61.  The first discussions about the SST were in the summer of 1961.  The first flight of an experimental miniature SST was in 1964, in France.  And even if it were a fold in time, and those were SSTs I was watching, SSTs never fly in a close formation.

Satellite?  Echo was the only satellite that could be seen with the naked eye.  It went up in 1960, but I had seen it a few times, and this wasn't it. 

Falling pieces of satellite?  There wasn't anything up there big enough, and since satellites were so new, one falling would have been all over the news.  Plus, my father would have been aware of it.

So.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

======================================

A kind of corollary to this story:

In 1964 into '65 my father was "stationed" in the hospital at Wright Patterson AFB while they tried to figure out what was wrong with his heart.  He was allowed to leave the hospital on weekends,  so he came home occasionally.  I was in college then, and sometimes I was also home on the same weekends.  He was going crazy with nothing to do while the doctors were watching him and waiting for a heart attack, so Wright Patterson gave him something to do.

He worked on Project Bluebook.

He brought files home with him.  He'd leave them on the diningroom table, "Top Secret" stamped across the covers and on every page.

Could you resist?  I couldn't.  I learned enough about the Air Force "investigations" that I take everything they say with a grain of salt.  When they say that an incident was proven to be such-and-such, what they really mean is that they found some possible explanation, therefore that must be the explanation.

That's their story, and they're sticking to it.

#166 Mine, Mine, Mine! Go Away!

I have been quietly following several journals, and one by one, they've been disappearing - they go private, or the owner just stops writing.  Those who have given reasons usually cite the nasties, the crazies (in two cases, ex-spouses using multiple screennames), people who won't allow the writers their opinions, their lives (real or imagined), in short, the trolls. 

Several other journalers have stated angrily, or sadly, that "this is MY journal!  I'll do what I want with it!" in response to commenters who have set out to "expose" them, to tell them they are bad or stupid or liars.  That bugs me.  Why are some people so nasty?  So bitter?  Who takes joy in throwing rocks?  Why does it matter to them anyway?

I have solved part of the problem by not allowing comments, thus denying the crazies a billboard.   They will get no publicity here.

I also want to make it clear that all opinions express herein are MY opinions.  Only opinions - not necessarily statements of fact.  Keep in mind that they are opinions of the moment.  I might change them tomorrow.  In fact, it may not be my real opinion at the time I write  - I may be just "trying it on for size".  I am not now the same person I was five years ago, and I am not now the same person I will be in five years.  So relax.

If you don't like anything you read here, if you get nasty, if you "argue at" me - well, I have this obstinate aspect.  You'll only make me dig in my heels.   However - remember - alternate views respectfully offered for my consideration are appreciated, and will be considered.

If you don't like that, well, go away.

(P.S.  Yes, the previous entry is true AND a bad pun, both.)

#165 Poor little thing

The snowthrower seems to have a tummy-ache.  I'm hoping it will make it to the end of the season.  It runs ok when it's actually pulling itself and throwing snow, but when it idles, when it's supposed to say roooommmooooommmmmoooommm..., it's actually saying ahroom ahroom ahroom fart ahroom ahroom ahroom fart....

I gave it good gas, but it sounds like it's got bad gas.

#164 Stupid Mensans!

In the previous entry, I mentioned that Mensans can be pretty stupid.  My first introduction to Mensa was pretty stupid.  It should have been a clue.

I signed up to take the entrance exam in the late '70s because of an article in Readers' Digest. (Mensa got their largest burst of membership applications from that article, and the snootier folks are still embarrassed by that fact.)  The test was given on a Sunday, in a huge Washington DC high school.

When I entered the building, there was a sign on a tripod: "Mensa Testing in Typing Room".  No arrow, no room number.  Many corridors branching off the center corridor.  No people visible.  Silence.

First I looked at the bulletin board by the office.  There should be at least a floor plan somewhere showing exits and fire plans, right?  Nope.  So I wandered.  Put your left hand on the wall, and walk.  That's how you handle a maze.  Eventually I'd have to find the room, or a person.

When I finished the first corridor and got back to the doors, there were two more people scratching their heads at the sign.

While we were talking, two men rounded a far corner (they looked like coach-types) and walked toward us.  We asked them where the typing room was, and they thought a bit, discussed it, and finally assured us that the typing room was in the basement.  "The basement?"  "Yeah, stairs are over there."  So the three of us went to the basement.  We searched the basement.  Nobody anywhere.  Some labs, but no typing room.

Back upstairs, we found two more people at the sign.  They had already checked the corridor I had checked, and one to the right.  The five of us fussed a bit - "Anybody see a room with typewriters in it?"  "Nope."  "Trails of crumbs anywhere?"  In an attempt at humor, I said "Gee.  Maybe this is the test."  They all stared at me, like there was a possibility it was true.

We decided to split up and each take another corridor.  By now it was already 20 minutes past the scheduled test time.

A few minutes later, four of us regrouped in the center corridor, having found at least two rooms with typewriters, but no people and no notes on the doors.  We waited, but the fifth guy, who had taken the farthest corridor, didn't show.

And didn't show.

Silence.

Lightbulb!

Either the corridor the fifth guy went down has a black hole at the end, or it has the typing room and he's a sniveling #$%^ !!

Sure enough, he had found the room, and had completely forgotten about us.  Didn't even mention us to the test proctor.  (And over the years, I have found non-think to be widespread among Mensans in general.  It's worse in England.  Ask me about the 50th Anniversary gathering in London.  I demanded my money back from that one!)

In typical Mensa fashion, it wasn't "the" typing room.  The proctor had decided the typewriters in the first room were in the way (duh...), so he had moved, also typically leaving no forwarding address.  The people who had "found" the right room were there only because they had arrived and joined him while he was in the office getting the room assignment and keys.

They were already 1/2 hour into the first 1 hour segment (there were several parts to the test), so we refused to start late.  We went outside until that part was over, then made the proctor stay late to give us the first part.

What on earth was the proctor thinking?  He had a list.  He knew he was missing at least five people.  Didn't he wonder why?  Was he thinking?

===================================

Ok.  I twisted my arm.  I'll tell you about London.

There are many examples of Mensa non-think from the London gathering - I'll give you one:

There were few organized activities in the hotel, the program was almost all prepaid separately-priced field trips around London by chartered bus.  The return to the hotel from one trip and departure for the next were scheduled about 1/2 hour apart.  Each trip had a trip leader who checked off names and distributed entrance tickets as you got on the bus(es).

Jay and I had signed up for a trip to a science museum, followed by a trip to the zoo.

The trip leader had difficulty pulling people out of the museum**, so our bus was 25 minutes late getting back to the hotel.  No problem - we'd pull in behind the zoo-bound buses with 5 minutes to spare, right?

We forgot this was Mensa.  The zoo buses had left early, because, and I quote the programs director, "as of five minutes to departure, only like 20 [of the probably 250] expected people had shown up - so they left."  (Insert drum riff here.)  "So they left"?  "So they left"?   Nobody wondered where the missing people were?  Duh?

There were some very angry people left standing on the curb.  Were our tickets left at the Mensa hospitality desk?  No - the trip leader took them with him.

Most people wandered off to get drunk.  Jay and I took public transportation to the zoo.

Were our tickets left at the entrance booth?  No.  The trip leader still had them, and he was (insert drum riff here) inside the zoo.

The usual Mensa non-think.

=============================

I see it all the time locally - when the organizer of a restaurant dinner arrives 15 minutes before the scheduled time, finds the restaurant closed and a few other people in the parking lot, so they all depart for a different restaurant, without waiting for anyone else to show up, and without leaving a note on the restaurant door.

Or when the organizer of an event to occur an hour's drive away sends an email canceling the event to everyone who had said they would attend - 1/2 hour before the scheduled event time.

Or when the organizer says it's not necessary to tell him you'll be there - just show up - and a new member arrives at the public place, and there's no way for a new member to identify the Mensa group/table.

Toldja I notice patterns....

=========

**"Leading Mensans is like herding cats." - Mensa Boutique T-shirt.