Tuesday, March 10, 2009

How Old is Old

I thought this was interesting:

Our solar system is believed to be 4.6 billion years old. The solar system has existed for approximately the last third of cosmic history. A scale model may be built to help comprehend these numbers. If the history of the universe were represented by a 3,000 page book (for comparison, Webster's Unabridged New International Dictionary, Second Edition, holds a total of 3,208 pages) then the entire history of the solar system would be represented by the last 920 pages.

Those 920 pages include the formation of the sun and planets, the dawn and rise of life, the great geological ages, and the entire history of the human race:

- The last 60 pages represent time from the Devonian epoch to the present.

 -At 30 pages from the end, the Age of Dinosaurs comes into full swing.

 - And at 13 pages from the end, the Age of Dinosaurs concludes and the Age of Mammals begins.

 - At 100 words from the end of the book, the Great Ice Age begins.

 - Written human history began less than 10,000 years ago and would occupy no more than the last 1/500th of the last page of the 3,000 page book.

 If an average of 500 words per page is assumed then the entire book would contain 1,500,000 (1.5 million) words. Each word would represent 10,000 years of cosmic history. The last word of the last page would represent all of recorded human history.

Long Days

Still very, VERY worried about unemployment.  The song 'It's The End of the World As We Know It' comes to mind often.  

I'm learning a lot about internet conferencing.  Following are new words I've learned:

Backchannel
Blended Conference
Analog and Digital Events
Schools Without Walls
The Emily Project
Pre-conferencing
Tribes
Podcamp or barcamp
Webwalks
Unconference
Twitter
Skype
Tags
Push vs Pull Presentations
Chunking
Chipmonking
BLM Symdrome (Be Like Me)
Pecha Kucha
WIKI's backronym is 'What I Know Is'
Blogroll
EduDigg

Wow - seems like a new language - which I guess it is.  Again, 'It's The End of the World as We Know It'!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009








The Third Daughter of the Second Daughter of the First Daughter:  Sophia Thompson (my niece)
It was a fine, fine cabin.  Circa 2000
The Girls!!!!  Keyla, Boo, Purdy
BooBoo (aka Jessie)
Saginaw Bag, Michigan - probably 1980s,

Monday, January 12, 2009



Rachel and I went to Jacksonville to see her Mom and Gar this past weekend.  Rachel Senior has her hands full taking care of Gar - she does a wonderful job as you can see...  Pat and I wish them all the best as they struggle with this difficult recovery.

Need I say more!
Kathy at work...
This is a christmas present I gave to Dawn - it is a solid metal, sculpted hand.  In my infinite wisdom  I wasn't paying attention to weight - it is too heavy to mail... hmmmm....  so it's mine now!!! :-)
Blue Ridge... Let's go!