A Curious Statistical Anomaly

Charlton Heston died. I got to thinking about him as the obituaries were rolling out in the news. I think have to thank him for spurring me to read. I remember seeing The Ten Commandments at the drive in. My mother and her friend and all us kids would go. We get in our pjs and have brown paper bags full of popcorn and cups for sodas (we had the big bottles not individual cans or bottles so cups were required). I remember not falling asleep. As the oldest child in our family, I lived in fear of those plagues of Eqypt for a long time.

After The Ten Commandments, I went on a reading binge of all the biblical novels I could find. I think I probably read just about anything by Thomas B. Costain that I could find either at home or on the library shelves. There were other authors and other books. When I hit on The Eqyptian, I side-tracked into a lot of books on Egypt, the pyramids, the legends and the Pharaohs.

Later after watching Ben Hur, I began reading all I could find about Romans, the Legions, the famous and infamous of the period. My grandfather had a copy of Quo Vadis. He always encouraged me to read and when he saw that I actually got through it, he let me borrow other books from his shelves. I remember he had a set of Shakespeare, sort of small with red covers. I read through a lot of those and he talked to me about them and the plays and the history that went into them. (It was through him and his copies of Shakespeare’s works that allowed me to continue to love the work of the Bard after high school and college English classes did their best to kill all interest in the stories.

So, while Charlton Heston is not directly related to my life long love of reading, the movies he acted in played a big part in getting me to open books. That in turn, opening the covers of other books, led me to find explore new worlds, times, eras, lives, and alternate realities. So, I thank him — for his part in my own life history. While I can not laud him for his later political stances, I can not forget the part he played in opening up my mind with movies and the printed word.

Last night was the 1st Friday WSFA meeting in Virginia. It was the usual business meeting followed by some socializing. Charles Stross was in DC and came to the meeting. His book, Halting State, is a 2008 Hugo Nominee. If you enjoy hard science, science fiction take a minute to read the review on the link and get the book and read it.

Today, it was back to Virginia for a meeting of the Capclave 2008 committee. This year’s guests of honor are James Morrow and Michael Dirda. Last year’s convention was a lot of fun as well as informative. This year’s convention is shaping up to be just as good. We’re working on putting together a great schedule of program items as well as some workshops (check last years program, we’ll probably have similar ones this year — but keep an eye on the official website). If you have never been to a local science fiction convention and you live in the Washington, DC area consider joining us for Capclave 2008.

Then it was time to run all our weekend errands in what was left of the day. Why is it that during the week, you think well we can do x, y, z, a, b, …. w this weekend. Then the weekend comes and all the stuff you can’t do because of work has to be done as well as any other plans that require two people to do and before you know it, it’s midnight on Saturday and you only have one more day of the weekend left and 40 billion things to do.

I seem to remember that when I was young there was talk of having a 4 or even a 3 day work week by the year 2000. Here we are in 2008 and most Americans are working 50 hour weeks with less vacation time than ever before as employers cut back on benefits. And to top it all off, weekends become the time to do all the things that should have been done during the week, but work wouldn’t allow time to do — food shopping, housework, laundry, household chores. I work at home and I still can’t keep up — maybe it’s a leak in my hours. I’m sure time is slipping away when I don’t look. Just last week it was January and today it’s April… I think Einstein and I need to have a talk about this relativity thing.

Finally, took a picture of my April coffee cup. I’m back to a big cup. This one holds about 14 oz. My March cup was smaller about 6 oz. which meant making far more frequent trips to the coffee pot. So, I decided to find another big cup. Of course, I’d cut down from a pot of coffee a day to about 1/2 a pot. Everyone keeps telling me how bad coffee is for one — stresses the system, makes you nervous, on and on and on…. I’m sure you’ve all hear the drill.

However, today I also came across a news article on BBC News and a similar article in Science Daily about a new study that shows that caffeine can offer some protection to the brain by helping reduce the permeability of the blood brain barrier. A quote from the article by Dr Jonathan Geiger of the University of North Dakota:

Caffeine is a safe and readily available drug and its ability to stabilize the blood brain barrier means it could have an important part to play in therapies against neurological disorders.

Seems to indicate that maybe drinking a moderate amount of coffee each day is a good thing. Of course in this study they gave one cup of coffee per day to rabbits. So how this will effectively apply to people is another nest of rabbits. I’ll hope my half a pot or about 2 1/2 large cups per day is not out of the question for protecting me from neurological disorders (especially the big scary one — Alzheimer’s).

Well, it’s a new month. I do have an April cup but haven’t had a chance to take a picture. In fact the past week has been a whirlwind of business. Last night around 1AM so maybe I should say this morning, the new April issues of SFRevu and Gumshoe Review went live. TechRevu also turned into a monthly ezine and went live with new reviews and articles.

Today, I took a break. Taking a break means I washed the kitchen floor, cleaned the stove, scrubbed out toilets, and swept all the floors, watered the plants, and read a book. I hope to post the review here soon since it’s not mystery, science fiction, fantasy (well, maybe…no…not really). It’s a Pride and Prejudice from Darcy’s point of view. I won’t give the title of which one right now.

So the weather is warming up, April is here and maybe, just maybe, spring is on its way for real and we won’t have 70 degree days followed by 30 degree days and back and inbetween degree days, until we don’t know what season we’re in.

[Hyperion here.  I’ve seen the forecast for the next couple of days.  50’s tomorrow, 40’s the day after.  I don’t think I’m going to tell Gayle though.  She looks so full of hope at the coming of spring.  I’ll just let her believe for a while longer.]