Attach to a headband. Tell people it's an early Google Glass prototype.

Juggling. Used to do it all the time 25-30 years ago. Went semi-pro even. Circus. Could go 5 minutes with 5 balls and throw in a bunch of tricks. Records: 80 throws with 6 balls, 21 throws with 7. Now I juggle about 3 times a year, only when I'm asked to do something in a local show, or occasionally a math of juggling talk.

Today my main hobbies are guitar and puzzle making. Bit of poetry and writing.

Just commenting on mk's post about the painting he's making for me and this walks by the window:

Seen deer, mice and weasels walk by, but never a fox and never one this big.

Guess I should share this, too. This is from Friday, three Orca whales swimming by the window:

We get harbor porpoises fairly often, but Orcas only a few times every summer. Usually it's these three. Seems like a strange number to always be seen together. Very small pod, I guess.

UPDATE: my fiancé just told me of this video from the same day, taken by a group of teenagers on a boat that followed the orcas for two hours. Turns out there's four of them, probably a mom and dad and two kids. Check out the footage here

You're the best around, nothing's ever gonna keep you down!

Are you looking for a fast buck or a long-term investment? If you want to be a trader and flip the coins to make some quick cash it's a pretty dicey time for that and play at your own risk. If you want to invest and hang on to it for a year or two then it's a good time to buy. kleinbl00 has some great advice -- especially his point that anyone giving advice should be sure to include: invest knowing the price could go to zero. When I buy I always expect the price to drop right away and it doesn't bother me when it does.

Here's some advice I posted on cryptocompare last week:

You can be a trader or a holder. Trading is very stressful. When the price is going up you don’t want to sell because you’re sure this is “the big one.” When the price is going down you don’t want to buy because you’re sure it’s going to go even lower. You miss the top point. You miss the bottom point. You feel like you’re wrong about everything. You can make money on it (and we hope you do!), but it’s pretty damn stressful.

Want less stress and less risk? Commit to medium- to long-term holding — you’re probably going to do well and won’t need to be worried when the price jumps like crazy like it has been.

Here’s my advice for my fellow holders:

1. Pick the price you want to cash out at and decide on a reasonable and slightly pessimistic time frame that you think it will take to happen. Maybe $1000/eth is your goal and you figure it will happen at the end of 2018. Great! Whatever happens between now and doesn’t really matter.

2. Don't feel like you've "lost money" every time the price drops. It’s a powerful psychological effect you need to be aware of and fight against. You don’t lose money unless you cash out at less than you bought for. If you bought for 100 and later watch it drop from 400 to 200, you have haven’t lost 200/eth, you’re 100/eth ahead. Yeah, you could have sold at the top, but you didn’t. That’s ok, stop kicking yourself. Just wait. And if eth is worth less now than when you bought it, realize that the quick buck you hoped you would make will just take a little longer. Eventually you will see rewards on your investment, and the rewards will almost certainly be at much higher percentages than you find elsewhere.

3. Ether will surprise you, good and bad, but it’s still on track. When ether jumped from 10 to 50 earlier this year suddenly it was “game on” and there was a lot of talk that it would go to $550 by the end of the year. That seems very reasonable, still. And we can expect to be surprised again and again.

4. There’s lots of talk about ICOs cashing out, draining the buyers and sending the price down. That may be, but then that means that there’s a lot of talent that are now very motivated to go out and make many many fine products that will use ethereum. Within a year we’ll be seeing user-friendly ether browsers and dapps with exciting functionality, all of them running on ethereum and using ether. When that happens, your ether is going to be worth a whole lot. Think of the price drops now as paying in advance for to be able to realize the ethereum dream. And then not only will you reap the financial rewards, but the world will have some great tools.

5. Obsessed with the ups and downs and wishing you were taking advantage of them? Try a little day trading with a small percentage of your ether. If you play around with 2% and lose a quarter of that in bad trades you’ve only lost 1/2%. And if you guess right it’s fun to earn a free dinner or a free vacation (depending on how many ether you’ve got). But keep a chunk of ether reserved for your target price and don’t touch it.

6. Enjoy the ride! As a holder you can laugh when you the price drops and you say “I just lost $X today!” You can also laugh when your friends say “The price is all the way up to $Y, why aren’t you selling?” Nope. Let it ride, relax, and enjoy being part of this experience.

My unpopular opinions:

It is a good thing that some species go extinct.

Genetically modified foods are generally a good thing.

I am less moved by the argument that the Fearless Girl is an advertisement as I am by the argument that this artwork changes the meaning of another. The statue is great, the positioning is amazing, the two pieces work together so powerfully to deliver an important message. But that's also the problem. It's would be the same if another artist added to the bull statue so that someone was riding it. The two pieces together are now essentially one work of art.

I love the new artwork, but I would be pissed off too if I were Di Modica.

One of these people is me. Another is a fellow Hubskier. Can you guess who?

Here's my notes from last year b_b:

Thursday, July 10, 2014 Fasting Last month I decided to do a 3-day fast. But there has been one reason after another why I couldn't start fasting. Dinner with my boss. An important presentation that would fall on day 3 of fasting. Breakfast party at work. And on and on.

Now I've got a little vacation time, and of course vacation is for eating good food! And I've been eating lots of good food and maybe a little too much good food. So this morning I realized my schedule for the next few days is perfect for a 3-day fast. No big plans. I just wish I had decided yesterday that I would start fasting today, then I would have eaten a much healthier dinner. Instead I had very little dinner: corn chips and cheese dip and a couple of glasses of wine.

It's hard to find data on what is allowable to drink during this kind of fast. The goal is to kick the body into an immune system regeneration mode. This happens with 3 days of complete fasting, or 5 days of restricted calorie fasting (750/day). Some folks say coffee is ok, a little oil is good, boullion is ok, some folks say vegetable or berry juices are ok but not apple or orange, some folks say only water, some folks say only steam-distilled water (which they claim actually sucks out impurities from your system (cough-cough-bs).

There's a lot of folklore out there. The scientists who ran the studies on mice and humans show that a 3-day fast does indeed stimulate new stem-cell production and kills damage immune cells, results they ascertain through blood tests. So that's real. All the other stuff is mostly people talking. It's again the question of how much should you believe folk wisdom. There is truth in folk wisdom, but without science it's impossible to tell what is real, what ideas were formed through superstition (or correlation if you will), and what is wishful thinking.

And the problem is, the scientists aren't putting out claims about what you can and cannot eat to trigger the bodies starvation response that produces stem cells.

It seems to me that it is best to just drink water. No nutrition at all. However, if the response can be triggered after 5 days of restricted caloric intake, it seems to reason that a small amount of nutrients is allowable. Some plans allow coffee and encourage oil and say minerals are ok.

So I'm going to allow myself water, tea, coffee (which contains oil), and a cup of boullion a day (which contains salt and fat and 15 calories). I do like salt.

15 hours in and I'm not so hungry.

Friday, July 11, 2014 26 hours Today I rode a bike a couple of miles, played pickleball for a couple of hours, and ate nothing but a sprinkle of salt. Resolve was tested when on the way to the movies we stopped at a restaurant ... and the restaurant was a buffalo wings joint. My favorite. Onion rings. And deep fried pickles.

Still, it wasn't as bad as I thought. I've not been hungry today although a little tummy rumbling. So far, so good.

Friday, July 11, 2014 37 hours Slept great, woke with headache. Not hungry.

Saturday, July 12, 2014 46 hours So far today I've had 4 cups of coffee, a cup of green tea, many glasses of water, and few pinches of salt. The salt really makes my mouth happy.

I'm surprised at my good energy today. In the morning I did stretching and pushups and lots of writing with very good clarity. Then I played 2 games of pickle ball and went to the range to shoot clay pigeons. On the way back I began thinking of food. How delicious it tastes. And while I'm not physically hungry, mmmm food sure does taste delicious. Maybe this is hunger? I often don't feel hunger. Sometimes when I'm on my own I will forget to eat, and only realize that I need food because I get cold. So maybe it's no surprise that I have't been that hungry.

The family is cooking out right now and they've just finished preparing food. I'm going to excuse myself and not watch them eat dinner this time around.

Saturday, July 12, 2014 63 hours You have a lot of extra time when you're a nothingtarian like me. We spend a lot of each day in pursuit of eating. Yesterday as we drove past the Meijers at 3:00 I wondered if we needed to stop to get anything for dinner. My mind automatically ran down a sequence of events to follow - buying meat, coming home, summoning help, gathering utensils, setting up the kitchen and the grill, preparing vegetables, grilling and cooking and whatnot, dinner, cleanup, and then freetime. About 3 hours of food rituals.

But I would not be eating. What would I do with all this time? Dinner was already planned. The sausages on the grill smelled good. I enjoyed their smell and put a little salt on my tongue. They looked good. But they could wait. I excused myself from the meal last night and no one seemed to mind. I did miss the ritual and the company, though.

So much empty time without eating! If I were a supervillian, I would not eat. I would use all the extra time planning how to take over the world.

Going to sleep last night felt awesome, like I could skip ahead 8 or 9 hours in the program. But I felt different when I woke up this morning. A little dizzy, a little buzzing in my bones.

My stomach hurt for a few minutes at one point, but I still wasn't hungry. To test myself, I cooked up bacon and pancakes for the kids. Oh, that bacon looked and smelled so good. And those pancakes fluffed up. And the kids were scarfing them down with butter and maple syrup and orange juice. But it was okay. I cleaned up while they ate. You have a lot of extra time when you're a nothingtarian, didn't you know?

I can continue to feel a strangeness, and I know that something is happening inside of me. My body is shifting into a mode where my immune system kills off any weak cells, including those damaged from chemo. At the same time, new stem cells are growing which will build a new immune system in its place.

Fabulous!

Saturday, July 12, 2014 69 hours Went to the movies. The kids had popcorn. With extra butter.

I'm getting hungry now, I wonder if it's because I know I will eat in a couple of hours. I wonder if I knew I wouldn't be eating until tomorrow if I would feel hungry. I don't think I would.

I'm feeling good. I haven't pushed myself physically today, but I have plenty of energy. Think I'll go do some pushups.

Sunday, July 13, 2014 72 hours Dinner tonight was tasty. I have read folks recommending things like start eating slowly after fasting – just a small amount of yogurt to get your stomach used to food again! I didn't really believe that, I ate like normal, ate a little more than usual in fact, two helpings of chicken and mashed potatoes, coleslaw, broccoli, fruit, milk and a pile of honey-roasted peanuts.

The fast is over, and it was easy.

Sunday, July 13, 2014 3-day fast, the morning after

Immune system reboot is underway!

Wasn't sure what to expect this morning. My intestines would be filling up with food during the night... would it be strange? It wasn't. I feel great this morning, not hungry but a little bit sore from all the physical activity I've had the past few days.

It's nice to know that if I ever need to go without food for, say, a week, that I can do it with little difficulty and still have energy (to gather and hunt for example). Certainly my stone-age ancestors went for long periods without food.

Sunday, July 13, 2014 The next afternoon I ate a full breakfast. Could have kept on eating and eating, but I stopped when I was full. I had little rumbling in my belly around lunch time -- my body wants food now! For lunch I ate nuts and milk and yogurt and coffee, and all is right in the world.

--

I thought maybe I had posted this to hubski last year but I couldn't find it. There's a bit more in one of my blogs here if you want more about the aftermath. I think it did my a lot of good and I'm eager to do it again. I had planned to do it every six months, but I'm closing in on the 1-year mark and out of excuses!

I bought a viking camp 6 months ago and have been converting it to a math creativity center. We'll be opening in 2 months and there is still too much to do! I've just finished putting up the trim in the big banquet hall. It was a dark viking-y room with stone and rough wood and runes carved everywhere. Now it is light and bright and ready for artwork.

I'm eager to begin on the doors. There's 3 in the room. One of them is almost exactly the silver ratio -- you've heard of the golden ratio? It's the first in a family of interesting ratios. I'll write a post about if anyone's interested. With a golden rectangle you can cut off a square and the part that's left is another golden rectangle, so you can keep cutting infinitely. With a silver rectangle, you can cut off 2 squares and be left with a silver rectangle. The ratio is 1:(sqrt(2) + 1). Amazingly, one door is very nearly in the bronze ratio (you can cut off 3 squares). And the third is close to the the golden ratio + 1.

So I want to use these ratios in designs on all of the doors. Here's some sketches:

The first is golden ratio + 1, the second is the silver ratio, and the third is the bronze ratio (which I don't have a really good idea for yet). I was really happy with the arrangement of squares and half-circles on the silver ratio door – and then afterwards found that someone else of course has already discovered this design.

So that's what I'm up to this week!

Breakthroughs are happening all the time in mathematics. Actually the Abel prize is usually not given for a breakthrough that happened this year, but for a lifetime of breakthroughs. Here's some info on this year's winners (two this year which is unusual). One of them is John Nash -- he was the subject of the movie "A Beautiful Mind". He didn't get the prize for the movie though.

John F. Nash, Jr. and Louis Nirenberg share the Abel Prize

The Norwegian Academy of Sciences and Letters has decided to award the Abel Prize for 2015 to the American mathematicians John F. Nash, Jr. and Louis Nirenberg “for striking and seminal contributions to the theory of nonlinear partial differential equations and its applications to geometric analysis.” The President of the Academy, Kirsti Strøm Bull, announced the new laureates today 25 March. They will receive the Abel Prize from His Majesty King Harald at a ceremony in Oslo on 19 May. John F. Nash, Jr., aged 86, spent his career at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Louis Nirenberg, aged 90, worked at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Even though they did not formally collaborate on any papers, they influenced each other greatly during the 1950s. The results of their work are felt more strongly today than ever before.

Mathematical giants

Nash and Nirenberg are two mathematical giants of the twentieth century. They are being recognized for their contributions to the field of partial differential equations (PDEs), which are equations involving rates of change that originally arose to describe physical phenomena but, as they showed, are also helpful in analyzing abstract geometrical objects. The Abel committee writes: “Their breakthroughs have developed into versatile and robust techniques that have become essential tools for the study of nonlinear partial differential equations. Their impact can be felt in all branches of the theory.” In the 1950s Nash proved important theorems about PDEs, which are considered by his peers to be his deepest work. Outside mathematics, however, Nash is best known for a paper he wrote about game theory, the mathematics of decision-making, which ultimately won him the 1994 Nobel Prize for economics, and which features strongly in the 2001 film about him, A Beautiful Mind.

Long career

Nirenberg, who was born in Canada, has had one of the longest and most feted careers in mathematics, having produced important results right up until his 70s. Unlike Nash, who wrote papers alone, Nirenberg preferred to work in collaboration with others, with more than 90 per cent of his papers written jointly. Many results in the world of elliptic PDEs are named after him and his collaborators, such as the Gagliardo–Nirenberg inequalities, the John–Nirenberg inequality and the Kohn–Nirenberg theory of pseudo-differential operators. “Far from being confined to the solutions of the problems for which they were devised, the results proven by Nash and Nirenberg have become very useful tools and have found tremendous applications in further contexts,” the Abel committee says.

Many awards

Both men have received many distinguished awards. As well as winning the prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel, Nash has won the John von Neumann Theory Prize (1978) and the American Mathematical Society’s Steele Prize for a Seminal Contribution to Research (1999). Nirenberg has won the American Mathematical Society’s Bôcher Memorial Prize (1959) the inaugural Crafoord Prize awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (1982), the Steele Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the American Mathematical Society (1994) and the first Chern Medal for lifetime achievement from the International Mathematical Union and the Chern Medal Foundation (2010).

Wow, hadn't heard. I don't have a digital radio in my car. I suppose we all will in two years. Norway is kind of like Apple. They decide something and then do it, and everyone has no choice but to follow along. It can be maddening, but it's kind of admirable as well. There is a strong national will. Change comes decisively, through legislation, and folks may complain but they go with it. Result is that the country get steadily better.

I reckon a lot of folks will complain when the have to buy new car radios. But then everyone will have better radio stations. I wonder if small stations will continue to operate. Probably, but it is a small country so I would expect these stations to die off quickly.

I wonder what will be done with the open airspace.

Wow! Great interview and great angle to make people care. Snowden came off as a very sympathetic character - also something people need to see, especially as you see in the random street interviews several people saying things like "Snowden... I think he sold military secrets that put our soldiers at risk."

I like your newsletters and think you're doing a top job! I didn't notice a difference in quality. If there were a difference, does that mean it's you, or just not as interesting posts this week?

In any case, keep up the good work! I appreciate all you do for this community, insomiasexx!

I LOVE your evidence! Reminds me of the South Park where the doctor on TV is saying that the Institute of Health has decided that rather than eating through your mouth it's healthier to put food up your butt. The doctor explains: "We're basing this on... absolutely nothing."

I don't see it being useful unless you are personally moderated a great deal. It would probably bug if a small number of people chose to ignore me and I didn't know why. Was it bad content or a bad comment? What did I say or do to annoy someone? Without knowing that, it would just make for ill feelings without having any way to think about my wrongs.

Back in my juggling hey-day, I was practicing with my gang one day and a guy stopped back and said he hadn't juggled for years. Could he try? Of course. After a few tries he had a good run with 7 balls. I couldn't believe that someone would get good enough to juggle 7 balls and then not juggle for a couple of years. The time and commitment 7 balls requires is immense. I didn't believe someone could get that good and then just stop. I thought he must be joking.

I made a living juggling for a while. I got good. Not 7-balls good, but I had 60 throws with 6 balls and a four- or five-minute run with 5 balls. I thought juggling would be my life.

Now at 46 with several other careers under my belt, I juggle only once or twice a year. I've certainly gone 2 or 3 years without juggling.

Why did Anthony Gatto go into the construction business? Because there is more to life than doing one thing. There are other things to be interested in and take joy in. And if you think becoming a concrete specialist is nothing very interesting, then you probably haven't lived enough yet.

I get it. Good for you Anthony. Keep looking forward.

I came here 1235 days ago because it was something my friend Mark made, and Mark is one of those inspired polymaths who makes good stuff.

Yes it has. As a young redblooded man, I'd regard every woman as a potential mate with thoughts appropriate to that goal. Now that I have teen daughters, I view young women very different. Especially if the young women are sexy-looking, it raises my hackles and rather than triggering a "mate with her" response, it triggers a "protect her" response. I immediately regard any young males in the vicinity with suspicion, as I know what areas of their brains are lighting up.

I think I won. I got 1865.85. It was also with a height of -7663, if I'm reading the stats correctly. I wasn't watching when it happened. I think a car fell though the track somewhere and just kept going and going...

Wow, I'm surprised how much I hate this!