Yes, this is my obligatory wow-what-a-silly-date post. I am fond of mathematics, though, so it can’t be resisted. The date 11/11/11 rolls around only once every 100 years so I fully expect that I won’t blog about it again. Given that nobody could have anticipated blogging, or the technology behind it, on the last 11/11/11, I won’t even attempt to guess how humanity will communicate on the next 11/11/11. (Consider, for instance, that television is less than 100 years old, transistors are a little over 50 years old, and microprocessors are just under 40 years old.) read more

Since I try to keep track of such things, I should mention for the record that Boulder got its first snow of the season on the 25th of October, and more on the 2nd of November. The second storm dumped about eight inches across the city, and I think the first storm brought even more. Luckily, our power was not interrupted, but there were a number of outages in the area. Lots of trees were badly damaged by the first snowfall. We had a long and mild autumn so most trees had not dropped their leaves or even changed color much. Here’s a photo of a cottonwood that got knocked down not far from here: read more