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Sunday, May 31, 2015

51 Stars

Last night, a terrible thought struck me. "If Puerto Rico becomes a state, how will we adjust the stars in the US flag so that there is symmetry in their placement?" I know, I know--it's the same kind of thing *everybody* thinks about. I grabbed a legal pad that I keep on my desk, and here is what I came up with. Keep in mind that 51 is a difficult number to deal with. Currently, the stars are arranged in alternating rows of 5 and 6 stars (or columns of 4 and 5 stars) to add up to 50. Here is what I came up with: If you line them up *diagonally* rather than horizontally or vertically, starting in the bottom left corner and ending in the upper right corner, you can do it with seven lines (or "rows"), each with the following numbers of stars: 4, 6, 9, 13, 9, 6, 4. The row of 13 of course would reach from the upper left corner to the bottom right corner. It's not perfect, since the row lengths do not increase consistently, but the increase of the *increase* is at least consistent; we increase by 2, then 3, then 4, then decrease by 4, then 3, then 2.
A Google image search revealed that others have already thought through this problem with better results.

Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Resolutions from Today (and technically I mean yesterday since it is 2:36 AM)

1. No more dark chocolate. Unlike tea, which I tend to drink at more responsible hours, I make terrible mistakes eating dark chocolate in the evening, and find myself restless and awake late into the night (and the following morning).

2. No more soy. Because soy is bad for you, and I have an autoimmune disease. Actually, the only source of soy that I am currently aware of in my diet is the dark chocolate I eat, which includes soy lecithin.

3. The $5,000 kickstarter campaign for my album is worth a try, even though the odds are stacked against me. But what is most important is that, one way or another, I finish this album.

4. Narrowing the subject matter of the album to 1961-1968 may be a good idea. That's the main storyline that compelled me from the beginning, and most of the album's best material is focused on that period. This also makes a more normal-length album (instead of a 2-disc) more appropriate than it would have been if I'd covered all of 1953-1974.

5. Don't spend any money. You don't need that thing. You definitely don't need it.