Morning Thoughts

Found this in an old file, and now I foist if off on you without apology.

Morning thoughts 5/19/2003

Spent an hour in bed thinking…thinking. About everything under the sun… and beyond. Time, Money, Society, Mankind, creation, and more.

Started with money. They are talking about eliminating the penny, the hundredth part of a dollar. Which is fine, but doesn’t go far enough. Eliminate the nickel, the quarter too. Maybe the half, for who sees a half dollar anymore. Prices would be stated with one decimal place, not two. “That book costs $ 21.9.”(Not $ 21.99) For that matter, change the custom of reducing prices by one cent to make the dollar amount seem lower. Make it “That book costs $ 22.” That is only one penny different, but is 100% easier to type and remember.

Include the sales tax in the cost. That is the way the merchant pays it anyway… on his total sales, not on the pennies he collects from each person.

And, as long we are revolutionizing, revolutionize the way we keep time, too. Who can add and subtract time in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. My suggestion is a Ten hour day, with 100 minutes per hour and one hundred seconds per minute. Much easier. The time is 9.97. No am or pm.

And ONE time zone, world wide. And the prime meridian is New York, not London. London was once the center of the business world.. But no longer. New York is. AND start the new day at dawn, not in the middle of the night. Dawn: 0. Go to work at .30. Work till 3.

Then I asked myself: why do we old folks get together three times a week to listen to someone call out random numbers? I am referring to Bingo. Is it for the prizes: nickel candy? No, we could all afford more candy than we could eat. One lady turns her prize candy back in at the end of the evening to be won again the next time. It is the socializing. And yet, there is little conversation or chatter.

We just like to gather We gather to eat, at meals we don’t enjoy. Likewise, we gather to listen to random numbers called. How curious. Isn’t there something more interesting we could do while we are gathered?

Some of us used to gather to play cards. But that is a form of random number sorting, too. We shuffle the cards to randomize them, and then deal them out, and then resort them in different fashions, according to the name of the game.

On the computer I have a card sorting game called Racko. Each person is trying to sort his cards faster than his opponents. Each draws a card in turn and tries to place it in numerical order. Sounds exceedingly dull when described in this manner, but it is an interesting game, requiring some numeric skill and logic. I play it by the hour.

But Bingo?

Then my mind wandered to the nature of life. What is it? And how is it different than mere existence. How is a rock or tree different than a person.

And then my mind wandered to sexes. Why two? Flowers have two sexes, but require a third element to procreate: the bee. So, flowers have a third sex. Why not four, or even more steps. Some gastropods have one sex. They procreate without partners. Amoebas and viruses just split. Why not people.

My mind raced on and on this morning.