What's NEXT?

If we are on the freeway and I say "Take the next exit."
Which one would you take? The first one you come to?
The second one you come to? I think you would probably
take the first possible exit, right?

But if, on the freeway, you ask "Should I take this exit?"
and I reply with "No, take the next exit."
I'd bet you'd take the second exit.

So which one is really the "Next Exit"?
Is it the very next one we come to or the one after that?

Did putting the word "very" in front of "next" in that last
sentence, clarify the "next" and mean the first one we come
to as opposed to the second one?

And further more:
When is next Friday?

On Friday, it's pretty obvious that "next Friday" would be
a week later.

On Thursday, it could be argued that "next Friday" is in 8
days, even though the next Friday to come along is actually
the following day.

On Saturday, is "next Friday" in 6 days or 13 days?
I'd guess you'd mean the one in 6 days.

Until next time...

Daylight Saving Time

Yeah, everyone who's seen "National Treasure" knows that
Benjamin Franklin first conceived of the idea, but other
than that and "spring forward; fall back" who really
knows why we do this every year?

As opposed to discussing all of the reasoning behind it,
I am just here to do some pondering and maybe a little
griping

First things first: The original term is "Daylight Saving
Time", NOT: "Daylight Savings Time". It is meant to be a
change in time that will save daylight. Of course, NO
daylight is actually being saved. The daylight is simply
being shifted to a different time of the day.

Now an interesting note is that Arizona does NOT observe
DST (I'm not sure if 'observe' is the correct word there
but it sound good to me). Perhaps even more interesting
is that the Navaho Tribe in Arizona DOES observe DTS
on their reservation. And even more interesting to some
folks; there is a smaller reservation that is completely
surrounded by the Navaho reservation and that smaller
tribe does NOT observe DST.

When I was in high school/college, I did yardwork for a
nice old lady in Salem, Oregon. It facinated me that she
never changed her clocks. She was always on standard
time. Everytime I finished working, she would ask me
when I started, then she would have to look at her clock
and adjust it to the actual time (DST) to figure out how
long I had worked. She was just set in her ways and I
can't say that I blame her.

Although I like getting an 'extra' hour of daylight in the
evening, I also like to get up early on weekends and do
some yardwork, but I have to wait for the sun to come up.

Hypotheticals:

- Say I was up late on a nice fall night about the time
the clocks are going to be changed. If I go to Denny's
and order some sort of Slam, can I eat it before I order
it? (Order at 1:55am, eat it at 1:20am).

- If I get a speeding ticket at 1:30am in one town, then
go to another nearby town and get another speeding ticket
at 1:30am, do I have an alibi?

- If one twin is born at 1:50am, then another is born 15
minutes later at 1:05am, which one is older?

My 10 cents worth

OK, so I realize that many of you did not get my last post because you are used to the decimal numbering system. Let me explain briefly how the binary system (which is the basic building blocks for computers and everything else digital) works. In binary, there are only two digits (0 and 1), no other digits are allowed as opposed to the decimal system, which uses 10 digits (0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9).
Here is a short chart showing a decimal value followed by it's binary equivalent:

Decimal => Binary
0 => 0
1 => 1
2 => 10
3 => 11
4 => 100
5 => 101
etc => etc

So, "10" represents TEN in decimal but in binary it represents TWO.

Therefore, my last post, when read by someone who thinks in binary would say this:
"There are TWO kinds of people in the World, those who think in binary and those who don't"

If you read it thinking in decimal, which you most likely did, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

So my last post, which I actually find quite humorous (but I may be the only one), doesn't translate well for most of the known World.

And there you have it.

Todays thought (but hopefully not the only one)

~~~~~~
There are 10 kinds of people in the World.
Those who think in binary and those who don't.
~~~~~~

Dream On

Dreams are a very interesting concept. In a recent comment, Shannon posed this question: if you have a dream, and there is a person or place in your dream that you've never seen, does that place or person exist?

Over the years, my wife has asked, or at least wondered aloud, the same basic question a few of times.

Well, I am always up for giving my opinion on anything of a vague nature; so here we go.

First of all, I ask that you clear you mind for a moment. Picture yourself on a mountaintop with a gentle breaze blowing. In the meadow just below, there is a young fawn frollicking about. Seriously, stop reading for a minute and picture the scene.

OK, now that we are all warm and fuzzy inside, let's continue.
If you played along, let me ask you a couple questions.
1) Was the place you imagined a real place?
2) Was the deer you imagined a real deer?

I'd say that our mind can construe pretty much whatever we want it to, real or not. If you know of a mountaintop that over looks a meadow, you very possibly thought of that. Otherwise, you impovised. You know what a mountaintop looks like and you know what a meadow looks like, so you created your own imaginary place.

You know what a deer looks like because you have seen one in person or in a picture or video, so you can imagine one. In this case you are probably picturing, to the best of your recollection, a "real" deer.

I think the same holds true for people. Even before any of us are of grade school age, we have seen thousands and thousands of people. When we dream, we can either recall (subconsciously) that grocery clerk from 1985 or maybe someone you walked past in the airport somewhere along the way.

Now if I would have told you to think of a deer hobbling about on a broken leg, you could have, but unless you have actually seen a deer with a broken leg before, your mind is improvising again.

In this same way, I believe your mind can "adjust" or even combine these stored images. For instance you should be able to picture in your mind what I would look like with a beard, even though none of you have never seen me with one. It's not a real beard and everyone will have their own interpretation, but your mind can create it.

So, in summary, I say that no, not all of the people in our dreams are necessarily real, but I think our mind has created the images from a real person or persons somewhere in your past, be it recent or distant.

Also, we definitely dream of some real places, but we can also make up what ever surroundings we want or 'need' for our dream.

There you have it, another worthless opinion :)