MARCH 2009 MARCH 27, 2009    TOO SLOW, TOO FAST, TOO SLOW For lunch, I often visit one of several “family” restaurants in the area.  If possible, I avoid the crowds by timing my visit for the middle of the afternoon.  I’m in no hurry.  However, I do seem to be out of sync with restaurant rituals. When I arrive and ask for a table for one, the hostess is flummoxed.  There are many empty booths and tables available, but where can she put me?  Sometimes she has to call in her co-workers for a consultation.  They puzzle over the seating chart, trying to determine which section should be burdened with my presence.  How many servers are still on duty?  Whose turn is it next?  Finally, a decision is reached, and a notation is made on the chart. But the hostess still isn’t ready to seat me.  First she has to pick up a menu from a stack on her podium.  Then she grabs another menu or two for the monthly specials or beverages or desserts.  Then she obtains a placemat.  Then she picks up a knife, a fork, and a spoon, although not separately; fortunately, they have already been packaged with a napkin wrapped around them.  If I were a few decades younger, she might also pick up a couple of crayons so I could color the placemat.  Only after she’s collected all this gear is she ready to lead me to my table. Wouldn’t it be more efficient if each menu had pockets in its cover, to accommodate the secondary menus and the placemat and maybe even the silverware?  If the whole kit had already been assembled in advance, the hostess would only need to grab one object per guest, not half a dozen. When we arrive at the table, I’m asked for my beverage order even before I have a chance to sit down.  “Can I bring you some coffee, or maybe an iced tea?”  Now this might be appreciated by the customer who desperately needs a cup of coffee right away.  But I’m not in a hurry, and there might be some unusual beverage listed on one of those menus that I might like to try.  It’s not as though I’m going to agonize over the choice of the best wine to complement my entrée, but I’d prefer not be rushed. If I do make a quick decision about the beverage, the waitress brings it a minute later and asks if I’m ready to order.  I’ve only begun to page through the menu, so I ask for extra time.  Fine, she says, I’ll be back.  In another couple of minutes I’ve made my selection. But she doesn’t come back. Another five minutes elapse.  By then, I’ve forgotten what my selection was. In summary, the restaurant staff is too slow in figuring out where to put me, too fast in asking for my order, and too slow in taking it.  These inconveniences are intolerable!!  Can’t something be done??   MARCH 22, 2009    RED AND CYAN ARE OUT Remember those cardboard 3D glasses with the different-colored lenses?  This spring, they've got a new pair of hues:  Amber and Blue.  My article by that name explains what's going on. I also use the new method to show you a few stereoscopic pictures, photographed between 1862 and 1984.   MARCH 21, 2009    MAGIC 93 As the National Hockey League regular season nears the finish line, I’m reminded of the conventional wisdom that a team has to earn about 92 to 94 points in order to make the playoffs.  Is that number correct?  It's time for a little research. The NHL’s team scoring rules were last amended in 2005 with the introduction of the shootout to eliminate ties.  The winning team earns two points in the standings; a team that loses in overtime or by shootout, one point. At the end of the season, the top eight teams in the Eastern Conference and the top eight in the Western Conference qualify for the playoffs.  So if P9 represents the number of points earned by the ninth-place team in your conference, your goal is to earn more than P9 points. Since the rule change, six of these races have been completed:  three regular seasons in each of the two conferences.  The average P9 has been 91.3, distributed like this: Season Conference P9 - - - - - - - - - - 2005-06 Eastern 90 2005-06 Western 92 2006-07 Eastern 91 2006-07 Western 95 2007-08 Eastern 92 2007-08 Western 88 The conventional wisdom appears to be correct.  In five conference races out of six, 93 points would have been enough to qualify for the playoffs. APRIL 14 UPDATE The 2009 regular season having been completed, we have two more P9 numbers to add to the above chart:  89 and 93. In the Western Conference, only 90 points were required to make the playoffs, and eighth-place Anaheim with 91 made it in over Minnesota (the P9 team with 89).  In the Eastern Conference, 94 points would have been needed, except that Montreal made it in with 93 by tying Florida (the P9 team with 93) and winning the tiebreaker.   MARCH 19, 2009    TIMELESS TABLEWARE On March 12, 1974, as I was moving into my first apartment, my mother gave me a 20-piece set of  Corelle dishes — porcelain-like but microwave-safe, made from laminated glass. Today, 35 years later, these plates and bowls and cups are still in use.  As you can see, they’re still in perfect condition.  None has broken, chipped, faded, or aged in any way.  They’re as good as new. If Corning continues making such excellent products that never need to be replaced, how long can that company stay in business?   MARCH 13, 2009    AT THE EPOCH, I WAS 22 YEARS OLD The things I learn from being curious! The paper edition of TV Guide has been downgraded to the point that it’s inadequate for planning my television viewing.  For more than 50 years I'd relied on this reference, but reluctantly last year I had to turn to the magazine’s on-line listings.  However, they still don't list all of my cable channels, and some of the channel numbers are wrong, so I recently switched to the more accurate Zap2it. I noticed when I requested a Zap2it schedule grid starting at 7 pm tomorrow night, the Internet address shown on my web browser ended in “fromTimeInMillis=1237071600000.”  When I requested a grid that started an hour later, the long number changed to 1237075200000. Does “TimeInMillis” perhaps mean “time in milliseconds”?  Simple subtraction shows the latter number to be 3600000 greater than the former.  One hour does in fact equal 3,600,000 milliseconds (1000 milliseconds in a second, multiplied by 60 seconds in a minute, multiplied by 60 minutes in an hour).  Aha, I thought, I’ve broken the code. But time in milliseconds since when?  What was the starting point, when TimeInMillis would have been zero?  Perhaps the most recent New Year’s Day? I divided TimeInMillis = 1237075200000 by 3600000 to obtain TimeInHours = 343632, then divided that by 24 to obtain TimeInDays = 14318.  Fourteen thousand days is considerably more than a year.  Dividing it by 365¼ gives us 39 years and 73 days, approximately.  Subtracting that from the current date brings us back to January 1, 1970, which was apparently the arbitrary starting point for the Zap2it schedule makers. Some further research reveals that it wasn’t their idea.  Computer programmers of the 1970s chose midnight on January 1, 1970, as the basis for something called Unix time or POSIX time.  They called that zero moment “the epoch” and counted upward from there by milliseconds.  The resulting 13-digit numbers may look awkward, but the arithmetic is easier with them than with our usual non-decimal combination of years, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Four weeks ago tonight, according to Wikipedia, Unix time reached 1234567890000.  Nerds did not let the occasion pass unnoticed.  “Parties and other celebrations were held around the world, among various technical subcultures, to celebrate 1234567890 day.” What time is it now?  This web page will tell you.   MARCH 9, 2009    JUST TELL HER IT'S THE SACRED SEAL My new classmates and I wore freshman beanies when we walked across campus to serenade the women's dorms.  I wrote about it the next morning, and my account made it onto this website, where an Alabama student found it nearly 44 years later.  The rest of the story is in my new poetic article Sing, Sing a Song.  Be sure to click on the link at the end.   MARCH 3, 2009    WHO KNEW? A professional hockey team gets better results without its star player!  Good baseball pitchers still work as fast as they did 50 years ago!  The data to back up these surprising conclusions are in a new article called Hypothesis Disproved.   MARCH 1, 2009    THE BUSES ARE COMING! During the Eisenhower administration, this towering vehicle might have been the first to bring me a demonstration of stereophonic sound.  But it was television that first brought me a demonstration of nuclear fission. My sketchy recollections are in a new article called Atomic Ping-Pong.

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