Tanabata edition

7 July 2024

Tanabata is a Japanese festival that usually takes place on the seventh day of the seventh month. It is an originally Chinese folk tale about a princess and a goat herd who are stars only allowed to meet up once a year. Nowadays, it seems to be mostly about wishing for good things to come true by writing them on pieces of paper and tying them to bamboo. Have you ever participated?

Monday

The only statistics I deal with these days are my Wordle results. It is interesting to see how it seems to be normally distributed in a bell curve, as they usually assume when learning about statistics. Back in grad school, I remember trying to figure out which of the various statistical tests I needed to apply in order to say anything scientific. When I lived in Japan, they seemed more concerned that your data were strong enough that you could draw conclusions just by looking at the results. Anyway, if I don’t include failures, my mean comes to 3.91 with a standard deviation of 0.92.

Tuesday

I must have a lot of time on my hands to be doing another comic about a game that I play, which is also part of the NY Times collection. I do them first thing in the morning, which I rationalize as a good way to warm up my brain, similar to the stretching I do with my aging body. In Connections, you have to look for something from among sixteen words that four words have in common. I did not see this connection until after I had failed and then I thought it was amusing that it was on Canada Day. Sometimes when I fail, I accept that I never would have guessed it and other times, I wonder how I missed it.

Wednesday

I should probably find out what species of ant they are. They small black ants. Not carpenter ants anyhow. At first we’d noticed an occasional one by the door. Then they appeared on the counter. My spouse mopped the floor with detergent and peppermint oil but they are still appearing from somewhere. I can understand why people in the Middle Ages believed in spontaneous generation.

Thursday

The guy was still there when I returned and did not say anything. I did not say anything either, wishfully thinking that he had refrained from giving me a ticket since I had just come to the car, but of course that did not happen. I have a parking app on my phone and it would only have cost a buck or so, but I thought I would be able to get away with it. I knew someone who never paid for parking and figured that paying tickets were less than how much she would otherwise pay in parking. I don’t drive that often, so I don’t think the math worked out in my case.

Friday

This book by Gary Barwin won the Stephen Leacock medal for humour. I think listening to the audiobook helped me understand all the Yiddish, which might have been distracting if I were reading it. I don’t know how much of the content was based on history and how much was for the sake of hysteria. Whenever I hear of the Spanish Inquisition, I think of Monty Python.

Saturday

I know the author of this novel just a little. Leanne Toshiko Simpson helped form an online writing group for Japanese Canadians called Mata Ashita, which means something like, “see you again tomorrow.” She seems to be a force of nature to me, but reading this novel helped me appreciate how people are not always as they seem. I also found the novel interesting because one of the characters is Japanese Canadian, but that is not the main issue in the story.

Sunday

Last year, I developed a presentation about the Tanabata star festival for the HR MacMillan Space Centre and the Powell Street Festival, presented by Japanese dark matter physicist Miho Wakai. This picture looked cooler when projected in the dome because they were able to combine images of stars with the river between them. Here’s to your wishes coming true.

So that was my week. I hope you had a good one with a better one to come.