This, That, and The Other, or A Cornucopia Of Delights

1. THIS

While driving around town from store to store the other day, I heard a number on the car radio that I hadn't heard in a very long time. It took me back to the 1960s and my early involvement with the computer world. I'm not referring to a musical number, I'm referring to a literal number. Someone reporting on how the New York Stock Exchange was doing said that the Dow Jones Industrial Average had risen over 300 points to -- wait for it -- 32,768.

Why would I remember that particular number and why would it take me back to the early days of computing? I will tell tou why.

It equals 32K in computer-speak!

Let me explain for the uninitiated. In our physical world, K is an abbreviation for the Greek prefix kilo- and means 1,000 (as in a 10K race, 10 kilometers, 10,000 meters) but the world of computers deals internally with ones and zeroes only, 1 and 0, to indicate yes/no or off/on for each bit of information. This kind of arithmetic is called binary (base 2) because it has only two possibilities, 0 or 1. There is no 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, or 9 as in the decimal (base 10) system. In the computer world, the letter K does not mean 10 raised to the third power, it means 2 raised to the tenth power, which is 1,024 -- here's proof: 2 × 2 (or 2 squared) is 4; 2 × 2 × 2 (or 2 cubed) is 8; and so on, and the number doubles with each successive power, 16 (4th power); 32 (5th power); 64 (6th power); 128 (7th power); 256 (8th power); 512 (9th power); and voila!, 2 to the 10th power turns out to be 1,024 or 1K for short.

If you keep doing this, you find that 2K is 2,048 and 4K is 4,096 and if you keep going until you reach 2 to the 15th power you will reach 32,768 or 32K!

It seemed like old home week there for a second the other day while listening to the stock market report on the car radio!

To enlighten or confuse you further, in our physical world 1,000 × 1,000 equals 1,000,000 (one million, often abbreviated as 1M). In computer-speak, 1K × 1K is also 1M, which is an abbreviation of the Greek mega -- so far so good -- but 1M means 1,048,576 because it is 1,024 (1K, or 2 raised to the 10th power) × 1,024 (1K, or 2 raised to the 10th power). It is not 10 raised to the fourth power as in decimal, it is 2 raised to the 20th power. It is plain to see that the larger the number, the more it diverges from what our decimal-based minds may think. If we are not careful, a moon shot could miss the moon altogether.

Before we leave THIS, let me throw in two more pieces of information. After K (thousand) and M (million) come G (giga-, billion) and T (tera-, trillion). And if you go in the opposite direction, getting smaller instead of bigger, the prefixes are different: Take the unit of time called a second, for example. One-thousandth of a second is called a millisecond, one-millionth is called a microsecond, one-billionth is called a nanosecond, and one trillionth is called a picosecond. I will ignore for now the fact that billion in the U.S. is milliard in the U.K., and trillion in the U.S. is billion in the U.K.

Now that we are all completely confused, including me, let's move on to THAT.

2. THAT

Here is the latest crop of "nobody could answer but me" answers from Jeopardy! along with some of the clues:

Who is George Bernard Shaw? (the playwright who wrote Man And Superman)
What is the Bay of Fundy?
Who is Lord Snowden? (the husband of Princess Margaret)
What is the Colorado River?
What is bias?
What is the Newport Jazz Festival?
Who is Ralph Waldo Emerson?
What is 52? (the number of years between the two years the "city of angels" hosted the Olympics)

I thought that the last one, which was a Final Jeopardy category, was particularly obscure. Coming up with the answer was a three-step process. Step One was easy, knowing that Los Angeles is called the "city of angels". Step Two was harder, knowing that the Olympic Games were held in Los Angeles in 1932 and 1984. Whether you think Step Three was easy or hard depends on how well you can do subtraction in your head. Step Three, and it is essential, is the ability to subtract the first year from the second quickly without benefit of pencil and paper and coming up with the right answer, 52, in a few seconds while music is playing to mark the passage of time, and being careful to phrase it in the form of a question.

I don't want to leave the wrong impression. I am not a know-it-all, far from it. There are lots of categories on the show about which I know absolutely nothing, but I do enjoy playing Jeopardy!.

Which brings us to...

3. THE OTHER

To wrap up this fascinating post (I can hear you gagging out there in blogland), I thought we would take a look at some similes in Christian hymns. A simile, you may remember, is a comparison using the word "like" or "as". There are good ones and there are bad ones, and by "good" and "bad" I mean are they effective or not effective?

The first one is a good one, "Like A River Glorious" by Frances Ridley Havergal in 1876:

Like a river glorious is God’s perfect peace,
Over all victorious, in its bright increase;
Perfect, yet it floweth fuller every day,
Perfect, yet it groweth deeper all the way.

Refrain:
Stayed upon Jehovah, hearts are fully blest
Finding, as He promised, perfect peace and rest.

The verse is a simile likening God's peace to a river and the imagery is consistent. The refrain drops the river image and paraphrases Isaiah 26:3 instead, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee" (KJV).

Our second example, "As The Deer", was written by Martin Nystrom in 1984 and is based on the first verse of Psalm 42:

As the deer panteth for the water
So my soul longeth after Thee
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship Thee

You alone are my strength, my shield
To You alone may my spirit yield
You alone are my heart's desire
And I long to worship Thee

The simile is self-explanatory. Again, the imagery is consistent and effective. The song works.

In our third and last example, the imagery may be consistent but to my way of thinking it is not at all effective. If it was one of your granny's favorite gospel songs, I am sorry. Before we get to the song itself, here's part of what our favorite online encyclopedia says about it:

"In 1890, Charles Davis Tillman set to music a hymn by Baptist preacher M.E. Abbey, "Life's Railway to Heaven." (Abbey had drawn from an earlier poem, "The Faithful Engineer," by William Shakespeare Hays.

"Also known by its first line "Life is like a mountain railroad", the song has been recorded by Boxcar Willie, the Carter Family, the Chuck Wagon Gang, Mother Freddie J. Bell on YouTube, The Oak Ridge Boys, Tennessee Ernie Ford, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, Brad Paisley, Russ Taff, the Amazing Rhythm Aces, and many others. Tillman's tune is in 3/4 time, but a 4/4 version became widespread after Patsy Cline recorded it that way in 1959 as a solo; Willie Nelson later dubbed his voice into that version to form a duet. On January 14, 2012, Brad Paisley performed a 4/4 rendition as guest on Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion radio program.

"Members of the Western Writers of America chose the song as one of the Top 100 Western songs of all time."

Even after such a build-up, "Life Is Like A Mountain Railroad" just doesn't work for me. Here it is:

Life is like a mountain railroad
With an engineer that's brave
We must make this run successful
From the cradle to the grave

Heed the curves and watch the tunnels
Never falter, never fail
Keep your hands upon the throttle
And your eye upon the rail

Blessed Saviour there to guide us
Till we reach that blissful shore
And the angels there to join us
In God's grace forevermore

As you roll across the trestle
Spanning Jordan's swelling tide
You will reach the Union Depot
Into which your train will ride

There you'll meet the superintendent
God the father, God the son
With a happy joyous greeting
Weary pilgrim, welcome home

Blessed Saviour there to guide us
Till we reach that blissful shore
And the angels there to join us
In God's grace forevermore

There are many Christian songs that liken death to crossing the Jordan River, but the idea of doing it in a train being pulled by a locomotive across a railroad trestle and pulling into the Union Station and being greeted by the superintendent (God the father, God the son, but no mention of God the Holy Spirit, and the last time I checked, Christianity is definitely Trinitarian) sets my teeth on edge.

Also, would that life were that simple, just remembering to keep one's hands upon the throttle and one's eye upon the rail. But let me tell you something, Gertrude, it definitely isn't.

I know this post has been extra long, and I hope you have not pulled all your hair out by the roots as you navigated your way through it. I will try to be shorter next time. I trust, as I said in the title, that it has been a cornucopia of delights.

Please try to refrain from throwing rotten tomatoes at your computer screen.

I am interested, however, in anything herein you may wish to talk about in the comments section.