I Was Never Very Good With Numbers

In fact, a lot of what, to you, might be simple mathematics, is to me a baffling confusement.
Maybe there's a numeric equivalent to dyslexia, in which case, I definitely have it.
My father, amongst his other skills, such as putting up sloping bookshelves, and hitting the lawnmower with a big hammer, had a black-belt in accountancy.
He delighted in explaining to me the difficult bits of my maths homework, in an absolutely different way to which my teachers expected me to do it. So even if I'd understood his explanation, I'd have lost marks and been treated with glowering suspicion for getting the right answer the wrong way.
The maths problems I liked involved real world problems... at what point would the two trains meet if....
Or the man digging holes whilst the other bloke was shovelling sand back in...
Or the Parrot with 3 pounds, six shillings and ninepence who wants to buy an off-peak return rail ticket from Cleckheaton to Grimsby, via Kirkwall in the Orkneys, but first has to pay off the compound interest on his ill fated investment in cuttlefish futures.
(Our school textbooks were old and surreal).
In one of those strange twists of fate, I somehow became a teacher, and was somehow qualified to teach mathematics amongst other things.
I learned more maths by teaching it and trying to stay a couple of pages ahead of my charges than I ever did as a pupil. One of the things I enjoyed discovering was that different nations use different methods to do everyday calculations. As also did people here in past times, -the elizabethans had some cunning trickery with grid squares.
So I was delighted to stumble upon this:-

Match it For Pratchett!

The headline is not mine. It was coined by Cory Doctorow, of BoingBoing. -he picked up on another blog, (Ceci N'est Pas Une Blog), and reported with that headline.
(Stop Press: Pat Cadigan, author of Ceci.. says it was a person named Steve Glover who coined the phrase. No further information.)
It caught my eye, I hope it catches yours. BoingBoing is huge, Gritinthegears is a speck of dust but maybe.... just maybe... my blogging visitors might pick up and re-use that title, and spread this idea.

Terry Pratchett, he of Discworld fame, prolific writer, creative soul, persistent advocate for orangutans, announced that he was giving a million dollars, or five hundred thousand pounds to The Alzheimers Research Trust . He recently announced he had been diagnosed with Alzheimers disease, and had been stunned to find out how little official funding is given to this illness, compared with, say, cancer, or heart disease.
Pat Cadigan of Ceci N'est.... said "Hearing that, it occurred to me that if half a million of us all donated a pound to Alzheimer's research, we could match his donation and make it an even million.
So whaddaya say, guys? It's a pound. That's about 2 bucks US dollars, give or take a couple of (US) pennies. You can spare that much. Go here and make your donation. Tell them it's in honour of Terry Pratchett."

I'm not myself an avid reader of Discworld novels, I confess. The first one I read was "Truckers", and I loved it, but for some reason I never really could be bothered with the discworld series.
But every time I've seen Terry Pratchett interviewed, or read articles, or seen him in a documentary, meeting Orangutans in the forests of Borneo, I've warmed to him as a person.
All of us, however, know people who have lost family members to Alzheimers disease, and have seen people struggling with loss of their own minds.

Maybe I'll write more about that one day.
We can't fix everything. We can't fight everything. But here's a little something, and it's easy. Why not give a pound.. or two Dollars, to aid Alzheimers research.
Here's the link again: Here. Tell them its to "Match it for Pratchett".
The link I gave is in the U.K., but you could just give to a research trust in your home country if you preferred. And feel free to link, or blog using the same title.

STOP PRESS! There's now an official site!
http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/
created and administered by Chris Tregenza.

Here's an extract of the latest figures.

"Summary of Accounts as of 19/3/2008 at 15:10"

Donations via MatchItForPratchett.org: $3382

T-Shirt sales (Completed and Pending): $590

Costs (Paypal Charges): $-150.22

Total Raised via MatchItForPratchett.org: $3821.78

Posted by Chris Tregenza at 03:23 PM "

Doing well! Please visit there and show your support...
Don't forget to BUY THE T-SHIRT!!!!

Stormy England in March

Sennen, Cornwall.
The south-westerly pointed toe of Britain, in the gales of early march, 2008.

Nellie The Elephant :- The Toy Dolls

The Zombeatles.... Braaaaains

Couldn't resist this one......

Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes :Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo

Earthquake at 00:56 a.m. Did the Earth Move for You?

Breaking news....
Here I am at the forefront of a news story...
My house just shook... Wobbled, Rattled.. Hummed...
Low frequency sound, vibration, and a very strange feeling...
Unease, foreboding, maybe this is what spooks animals in these circumstances.

Timed at about 00:56 a.m. Duration about twenty seconds.

It took a while of searching seismographs online... yes, there are some.. The British Geological Survey's site was too busy.
But
It seems there was a quake measuring approx 5.2 on the Richter scale, about 40 miles west-south-west of here.
Much of England had a brief wobble along with it.
Ho hum. Nothing seems to have fallen down.
Move along, nothing to see here folks...................

Oh. And Reuters are reporting no major injuries or damage reported- at half an hour after the event.
They're probably right, but. I suspect they're a bit quick in publishing, because if there were major chaos going on, I think it might take longer than that to check and say everything is fine.
Back to bed then.
Good Night All.

Data from USGS http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/

Magnitude	4.7
Date-Time	Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 00:56:45 UTC Wednesday, February 27, 2008 at 12:56:45 AM at epicenter Time of Earthquake in other Time Zones
Location	53.321°N, 0.314°W
Depth	10 km (6.2 miles) set by location program
Region	ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
Distances	50 km (30 miles) S of Kingston upon Hull, England, UK 70 km (45 miles) NE of Nottingham, England, UK 80 km (50 miles) E of Sheffield, England, UK 205 km (125 miles) N of LONDON, United Kingdom
Location Uncertainty	horizontal +/- 6.8 km (4.2 miles); depth fixed by location program
Parameters	NST= 50, Nph= 50, Dmin=291.4 km, Rmss=1.02 sec, Gp= 54°, M-type=body magnitude (Mb), Version=7
Source	USGS NEIC (WDCS-D)
Event ID	us20

British Geological Survey Seismology Report later in the day gives magnitude as 5.2 richter.
PRESS RELEASE
27 February 2008
England hit by Earthquake
The British Geological Survey (BGS) recorded an earthquake with a magnitude of 5.2 (ML) on the Richter scale near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire at 00:56 GMT. The BGS has been inundated with calls from the public, media and emergency services throughout England.
Summary:
DATE : 27 February 2008
ORIGIN TIME : 00:56 GMT
LAT/LONG : 53.39° North / 0.35° West
GRID REF : 509.9 kmE / 389.0 kmN
DEPTH : 10 km
MAGNITUDE : 5.2 Richter Scale (ML)
LOCALITY : Market Rasen, Lincolnshire

Like Trains of Cars on Tracks of Plush -Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!