The Beauty of Correspondence

I got a reminder from Debra Eckerling via twitter about how much fun it is to correspond via mail and what a valuable way it is to network:

Here’s your #Networking #GoaloftheDay #Write a #letter. On paper. With pen. And mail it!#goalchat @MangoPublishing pic.twitter.com/2GV2CTn0Ga
— Debra Eckerling ⭐ Event Outcome Optimization (@TheDEBMethod) June 10, 2022

Think back to the last time you checked your mail. There were probably a few fliers from a chain grocery store, an inocuous white evenelope labeled 'Important!' offering you a new car warranty, and maybe a bill from the place you forgot to switch over to e-billing. Right? If you're like me, that's what your mail has been like for the last 30 days or so in a row.

Now, imagine you look at your stack of mail, and your handwritten name pops out at you from the front of an envelope. You check the postmark, (more on that below), and it's from a place you've never been, or maybe it's from in town, both equally mysterious in today's age of correspondence. You open up the envelope to find a few sentences dashed off by one of your acquaintances. Maybe they're telling you about where they traveled this week, maybe they're letting you know about some small victory in their life that you're peripherally attached to. Maybe they just mention they were thinking of you.

Now, imagine how that might make you feel. Take your time. Do you feel suprised? Maybe a little bit important? Happy? Interested in the person that dashed off the missive?

And finally, imagine if you could do something as small as writing a letter that could inspire those kinds of feelings in your buddies.

Writing someone is a simple thing to do, and thanks to email and social media, it's an increasingly unique and impactful experience for the recipient of the letter, and that's pretty cool, I think. To get started, just pick up a few supplies. Keep an eye out for postcards in your local shops. For that matter, watch for fliers being handed out on the sidewalk that you could dash a note on the back of. Walk to your local post office to pick up some stamps, (can you tell I live in a city with post offices everywhere?) Or, have supplies delivered to your house by the post office using http://usps.com They even have prestamped envelopes and postcards in case you're looking to make things really easy.

In my experience, I do better if I don't picture myself sitting down to catch up with a friend. Sometimes that's fun, but do I really have the time? Not usually. Instead, picture yourself like Oscar Wilde who madly dashed off two sentence missives, shoved them into tiny envelopes, affixed a stamp, and then threw them out his upstairs window onto the sidewalk below, confident that someone would find the letter and drop it into the nearest postbox. (OK, unless you live on a busy street don't throw your letters out the window, and if the envelope's too small, you'll need a butterfly stamp (see the picture) for nonmachinable surcharge mail.) The big idea here though, is just dash off a few thoughts to your buddy! It won't take you long, and it'll be a pretty cool thing for them.

In addition to your traditional friends and acquaintances, think about writing to people at local buisinesses you frequent. I do this when the gang are out and about traveling and haven't been around to visit our favorite places, like our pizza hangout over on Hyde St. It's a lot of fun getting to reconnect over our letter when we get back.

Postmarks and homeschooling and unschooling

So not dipping into a 'learning moment' here, so let's call it strewing instead. I have a lot of fun checking out the postmarks on letters I receive to see where they came from. Based on the number of times I had to assure my dad that we were camping in Baker, NV not 'Vegas (where our postcards wound up getting postmarked), I apparently picked up this habit from him. I've shown the gang how to read postmarks, and so far, they're not having it. I really enjoy it for me though. And! Rather than waiting for random postmarks to turn up in your (or your friends') life, you can make the magic happen by sending mail to commemorative event post stations where it will be forwarded with the event's fancy postmark ala

To find the postmarks that are currently available and how to get them checkout the latest USPS bulletin.

some of this month's new postmarks

The Valentine's Day Magnetic Monopole

There's an assymetry to the form of the two Maxwell's equations shown in picture 1. While the divergence of the electric field is proportional to the electric charge density at a given point, the divergence of the magnetic field is equal to zero. This is typically explained in the following way. While we know that electrons, the fundamental electric charge carriers exist, evidence seems to indicate that magnetic monopoles, the particles that would carry magnetic 'charge', either don't exist, or, the energies required to create them are so high that they are exceedingly rare. That doesn't stop us from looking for them though! Keeping with the theme of Fairbank[1] and his academic progeny over the semester break, today's post is about the discovery of a magnetic monopole candidate event by one of the Fairbank's graduate students, Blas Cabrera[2]. Cabrera was utilizing a loop type of magnetic monopole detector. Its operation is in...

Cool Math Tricks: Deriving the Divergence, (Del or Nabla) into New (Cylindrical) Coordinate Systems

Now available as a Kindle ebook for 99 cents ! Get a spiffy ebook, and fund more physics The following is a pretty lengthy procedure, but converting the divergence, (nabla, del) operator between coordinate systems comes up pretty often. While there are tables for converting between common coordinate systems , there seem to be fewer explanations of the procedure for deriving the conversion, so here goes! What do we actually want? To convert the Cartesian nabla to the nabla for another coordinate system, say… cylindrical coordinates. What we’ll need: 1. The Cartesian Nabla: 2. A set of equations relating the Cartesian coordinates to cylindrical coordinates: 3. A set of equations relating the Cartesian basis vectors to the basis vectors of the new coordinate system: How to do it: Use the chain rule for differentiation to convert the derivatives with respect to the Cartesian variables to derivatives with respect to the cylindrical variables. The chain ...

More Cowbell! Record Production using Google Forms and Charts

First, the what : This article shows how to embed a new Google Form into any web page. To demonstrate ths, a chart and form that allow blog readers to control the recording levels of each instrument in Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" is used. HTML code from the Google version of the form included on this page is shown and the parts that need to be modified are highlighted. Next, the why : Google recently released an e-mail form feature that allows users of Google Documents to create an e-mail a form that automatically places each user's input into an associated spreadsheet. As it turns out, with a little bit of work, the forms that are created by Google Docs can be embedded into any web page. Now, The Goods: Click on the instrument you want turned up, click the submit button and then refresh the page. Through the magic of Google Forms as soon as you click on submit and refresh this web page, the data chart will update immediately. Turn up the:...

Copasetic Flow

Search This Blog