Dozenal Day

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Come to find out, at no point in Lilly’s schooling has anyone taught her about alternate numeral systems. You know, binary numerals, to cite the best known example, or Base 12 or any of the other bases. She’d never heard of it.

How did that happen? I remember learning about bases in the sixth grade. A number of students did presentations about various bases. Rick Reynolds, rest his soul, did Base 12 by coloring his face green and tying a pencil to each hand to be a 12-fingered Martian who counted from 0 to 9 and then t and e. I’m not making that up.

So I introduced the concept to her. For everyday living, it’s useless knowledge, which is often the sweetest kind.

Naturally, I had to look further into this other base business, especially Base 12, here in the age of the Internet, and it wasn’t long before I learned the term dozenal to refer to Base 12, and that there’s such a thing as the Dozenal Society of Great Britain and the Dozenal Society of America, which have a web site with a dozenal clock, among other things.  Man, I’m glad to be living in a world with eccentrics like this on the loose.

The web site says: “The Dozenal Society of Great Britain (founded 1959) and the Dozenal Society of America (founded 1944) are separate organisations with a common aim: to draw attention to the advantages of the Dozen (or twelve-based) system for numeration and measurement. We consider that the decimal system is inadequate and of limited competence in many aspects of numeration. Decimals handicap the teaching of arithmetic and so inhibit understanding of the physical world and the decimal system is unable to express in simple terms the common proportions by which we order our practical and economic activities”

I don’t know if this bloke is a member of the British society, but he knows about their arguments. Not-too-vehement arguments, but arguments all the same.

At the Movies With Lincoln

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Lilly didn’t want to go to the movies by herself on Saturday. Her mother and younger sister were going to one picture she didn’t want to see, and I was going to another, and we each offered to take her to our respective multiplexes to see something else of her choosing. Hastily texted friends couldn’t make it, so she stayed home.

Maybe it’s a function of being a 15-year-old girl. I don’t ever remember being reluctant to park myself alone in a movie theater. If I’d never gone to the movies by myself, particularly in my early 20s, there’s a lot of worthwhile ones I might never have seen. One of my early experiences along those lines was seeing a revival of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Broadway Theatre in Alamo Heights when I was younger than her — too young to really appreciate it, but I was wowed by the spaceships. Of course, going alone would defeat the purpose at some movies, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I went to see Lincoln. Been meaning to for a while. Aside from a few quibbles, such as (especially) the business about the soldiers reciting the Gettysburg Address and the stretcher that had Mrs. Lincoln and her black servant attending the debate in the House regarding the 13th Amendment, along with some lesser odd details, it’s rousing good historical fiction, about as good as you’re going to get in a movie.

Crystal Pepsi Girl

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Twenty years ago for the 92/93 New Year’s, Yuriko and I were in Boston. We spent some of New Year’s Eve downtown, including a short visit to the Massachusetts State House. Out in front of the building, PepsiCo was busy marketing a new drink, Crystal Pepsi.

Even then, the detachable pop-top was a thing of the past, but the costume wouldn’t have worked without it. I returned to Japan shortly afterward and thought little about Crystal Pepsi. Years later I learned that it was a famed new-product flop.

Reading about that flop now, I found an interview with Yum! Brands CEO David Novak in Fast Company in 2007. He’s credited with creating Crystal Pepsi, and when asked about the flop, his money quote is: “People were saying we should stop and address some issues along the way, and they were right. It would have been nice if I’d made sure the product tasted good.”

The Mad Little Boot

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I, Claudius, that remarkable combination of comedy and horror, is worth watching (again) for many reasons, but few better than seeing John Hurt do Caligula. Such as in this scene, which only goes to show there’s no profit in reasoning with a lunatic who also happens to hold absolute power.

It’s all a fine production all the way through, but once Caligula is offed, the story loses a bit of its spark. A bit of its insane spark, that is.

Vain Bibble Babble

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Back on a work schedule. Full schedule, that is, because work didn’t quite stop, even between Christmas and New Year’s Day. Yuriko’s back at work, too, even though her employer is Japanese and were this Japan, the New Year’s holiday would last through the third.

The Christmas tree still lingers, but oddly enough the dry tree-removal schedule this year has the tree out on the curb on the morning of January 7, so the last day of the tree being up coincides with Twelfth Night. Not that I’m particular about that, but Epiphany does seem like a good time to clear away the last of Christmas.

I saw the following on a sign at a grocery store today: Miss Your Twinkies? It was advertising a house-brand cream-filled sponge cake. Judging by the box, at least, they looked very much like the product of the defunct Hostess. But I decided I didn’t miss Twinkies all that much. And besides, they won’t be gone all that long.

Here We Go Again

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The New Year came in here with the noise of minor fireworks set off in the neighborhood. Technically illegal in Illinois, but it’s a ban than no one cares about twice a year. I insisted that we turn down the TV so we could hear actual noisemaking, rather than the televised noisemaking, at least for a few minutes.

I watched about 20 minutes — the circa 11 p.m. CST minutes — of the Ghost of Dick Clark Rockin’ from the Beyond New Year’s Eve Special, or whatever they call it now. The presence on the show of dimwit Jenny McCarthy, who’s a hazard to public health, was off-putting.

Got up late this morning. I had work to do prepare to file stories for tomorrow, but I tried to go slow. The day was sunny but very cold. At one point I went out driving with Lilly so she could drive along some more low-traffic streets. I watched a couple of episodes of I, Claudius on my computer, which I haven’t seen in 20 years or so; it’s not just for PBS anymore, and boy is it still excellent TV. We had a fine New Year’s dinner after dark. All in all, it was a good way to start a year.

From Two Thousand to Twenty

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The New Year holiday, as it’s done in Japan, means cleaning up the day before (today), eating certain things, and hanging out at home (tomorrow). That and visiting the temple or shrine of one’s choice. Japanese religious establishments are a little thin on the ground here in the northeast suburbs, but we’ll do all the other things.

The last day of 2012 will be notable for Lilly as the day she took a test at the Illinois DMV and got her learner’s permit. That was in the morning. In the afternoon, I let her drive the older of our cars – with me in the passenger’s side, as specified by the permit — around her high school’s parking lot, and then for a short drive on some lightly trafficked neighborhood streets. She seemed to take to it.

Now is also the time when the year goes from “Two Thousand” to “Twenty.” Mostly. The change will be complete by 2020, but it’s well on its way.

Tidbinbilla

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Christmas Eve 1991

A summer’s day. I bought sun block today. Along with Pete, his brother, and his brother’s enormously pregnant wife, we went to the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station southwest of Canberra to take a look at the big dishes and the small museum, which emphasizes Australian, Japanese and European efforts to explore space.

Had a “Jupiter Dog” at the Moon Rock Café. You’d think there would be a Great Red Spot on it somehow, but it mainly featured onions and diced tomatoes (maybe one of those tomatoes counts as the spot). Returned to town the way we had come, winding through hilly bush and flatter farmland. Sometimes emu and kangaroos bounded across the road ahead of us.

Postscript 2012: The formal name of the place is the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, and it still functions as one of three stations operated by NASA to keep track of far, far away spacecraft, with the other two in California and Spain. “This strategic placement permits constant observation of spacecraft as the Earth rotates, and helps make the Deep Space Network the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world,” notes NASA.

Space: 2012 (and an Oddity from 2006)

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Well worth a look: NBC News, the Year in Pictures. Space edition, which includes the likes of Felix Baumgartner before one of his epic, insane jumps from the edge of space, the aurora australis as seen from orbit, an ethereal enhanced-color image of Saturn, nebulae, views of the Earth and more.

“One of the strangest satellites in the history of the space age is about to go into orbit,” noted a NASA press release. “Launch date: Feb. 3rd. [2006] That’s when astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) will hurl an empty spacesuit overboard.

“The spacesuit is the satellite — ‘SuitSat’ for short.

” ‘SuitSat is a Russian brainstorm,’ explains Frank Bauer of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. ‘Some of our Russian partners in the ISS program, mainly a group led by Sergey Samburov, had an idea: Maybe we can turn old spacesuits into useful satellites.’ SuitSat is a first test of that idea.”

I understand that SuitSat broadcast its position for a couple of orbits and eventually burned up upon entering the atmosphere. The rest of the release is here.

Christmas Morning ’12

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Christmas morning isn’t quite the land rush it used to be, but the girls still want to open their presents as they always have. Ann had some trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve, but that was because she’d slept late that morning, rather than excess excitement for Christmas morning (though there was strong anticipation).

Gift cards, clothes, a little money, toys for Ann, a lot of sweets—it was all in the mix.

This year on Christmas and on the Sunday before, I managed to catch a few hours of a radio show devoted to Christmas music oddities hosted by two guys called Johnny & Andy on WDCB, the public radio station at the College of DuPage. I’d heard them years ago, maybe even these shows, since this year’s seemed to be rebroadcasts from earlier years.

So I got to hear “Solar System Simon, Santa’s Supersonic Son,” by one Francis Smith, which I haven’t heard in years. I’d forgotten how bluegrass-like it was. I’m also happy to report that when you Google that title, mid-2000s BTST entries turn up. Space Age Santa songs seemed to form a short-lived, and little remembered, subgenre of Christmas songs ca mid-1950s. Johnny & Andy even played a song of that exact name by I-forget-who-and-am-too-lazy-to-look-up (that guy records a lot of songs).

Other Christmas recordings played by Johnny & Andy included elf songs, Cajin-themed holiday tunes, Christmas polkas, and songs that tried to capitalize on the monster success of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” all in vain. One involved putting a light on Dasher’s tail, another had two reindeer named Percival and Chauncy becoming Donder and Blitzen, and one parody included the line, “Rudolph is lazy, tired, and has been fired.”

Even Gene Autry recorded other reindeer-themed songs, such as “32 Feet – 8 Little Tails,” and “Nine Little Reindeer,” which aren’t exactly forgotten, but hardly the hit Rudolph was. Then again, Autry recorded a lot of Christmas songs.