Calculating the Distance to California

Calculating the Distance to California

ByHeather

Something like 90% of the nations fruit and vegetables are grown in California’s Central Valley. Here is a simple calculator to determine how far you are from this fertile land:

  1. Buy a 1/2 pint of raspberries from your local supermarket
  2. Count how many raspberries are moldy
  3. Multiply the number of moldy raspberries by 250. This is your distance in miles from California.

For example, I am in Northern Michigan this week. I counted at least 9 moldy raspberries in the pack. 9 x 250 = 2,500. This is the approximate distance from my location to California’s Central Valley.

Q.E.D.

To Be Is To Do . . . Be Do Be Do

ByHeather
To be is to do — Socrates
To do is to be — Jean Paul Sartre
Do be do be do — Frank Sinatra

I posted this quote for the sole reason that it always makes me smile. But as I looked at the list of names, and their sequence, I realized that, in a simplistic way, these simple words also reflect our evolution of philosophy and thought. Socrates lived more than 2,400 years ago and his influence on thought is legendary. Jean Paul Sartre was a prominent French philosopher at the peak of the twentieth century. Frank Sinatra was born only ten years after Sartre but has come to embody a later generation.

Madness

ByHeather

We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.

— Goethe

Goethe lived from 1749 to 1832. In the two centuries since his death I am please to report that the planet has made great strides in mental health. At the dawn of the 21st century we have managed to confine the majority of our disordered minds to the executive suites and the board rooms of our largest corporations. A small consolation to the millions of us who must work in these corporations but progress nonetheless.