A Place Where You Can Rant About Your Current Special Interest!

[Au Naturel]

Wow. All these interests!

Mine sounds really odd in comparison. I like doing things naked. Hiking and backpacking, modeling for art classes, public demonstrations, theater, nudist clubs. I'm very active in it.

But trilobites are really cool!

 

[Aspychata]

This post brought home for me that the majority of us are into interests, and not cultivating people as an interest which is very NT.

NT's are frustrated with my ability to be content by myself and not them. I loved having my collection of computers when married. I also have installed some electrical fan/light units.

The story about someone being considered mentally challenged was a eye opener, this story has replayed here several times at this forum. I noticed somethings that were difficult for me i my younger years are now no longer an issue such as typing. Maybe l just had poor motor skills as a young person.

 

[Ken]

Anyway, now I have all this useless information, seeing as I'm in the city, and don't see myself leaving any time soon.

I don't see any of that as "useless information". I call it wisdom. It expands you knowledge of how things work. The physics of all that applies to all segments of life, even city life. The materials may be different, but the physics are always the same. I think you are a better person for having that wisdom.

 

[Ken]

...one of my younger brothers, lived for electronics, now spends his time on financial stuff trained as a electronics technologist, lost interest when circuits could be simulated on computer...

You don't have to use a simulator. I never did because they are very unreliable. I have had other engineers claim that one of my designs would not work and they know that because they ran it on their simulator. They were very surprised when I built the circuit on a breadboard and demonstrated it working perfectly. After several instances like that they started losing faith in computer simulators.

 

[Suzette]

The story about someone being considered mentally challenged was a eye opener, this story has replayed here several times at this forum. I noticed somethings that were difficult for me i my younger years are now no longer an issue such as typing. Maybe l just had poor motor skills as a young person.

I was listening to an interview with Temple Grandin yesterday. In part She talked about
how driving was multi tasking and one needs to practice the mechanical part of driving until it is automatic before tackling busy roads. That way your brain has compartmentalized one action from the other so you can concentrate on watching the other drivers. I think typing is like that too. You have to be so practiced at putting your fingers on the right keys that you can concentrate on the words you are typing.

My experience with this is that I did not drive until I was 32 (a life time of observing others drive) and I failed my highschool typing course. I could nit understand why I was so slow when others got it right away. It makes sense now! I still type best when the words are in my head and I am not copying others words.

 

[Ronald Zeeman]

My brother like you was completely obsessed with electronic circuits when younger he worked at repairing and maintaining electronic equipment for an OEM Company, saved them millions with some of his innovations, place closed he retired.

 

[James45]

A several decades-long interest has been the interactions between plants and the world around them. I have had a 200 gallon plant aquarium with gourami fish,...no filter,...balanced. I have had collections of exotic aroids, desert plants, and currently, orchids,...of course, studying the physiology of each type of plant in order to gain further understanding of my world. I am currently learning about the difference between "dirt" and this living environment we call "soil", how bacteria and fungi are critical to growing healthy plants, how the mycelial network is not only a "carbon sink", but allows for sharing of nutrients and communication between plants. I am learning how NOT tilling up the earth before planting preserves the mycelial network, keeps carbon from escaping into the atmosphere, and significantly improves the production yields of the food-producing plants we cultivate. The vast majority of the power for my home and my two electric cars come from this huge fusion reactor called the sun,...I just collect it and store it with solar panels and a battery.

I guess one could say, I am constantly gaining respect for nature, my place in it, learning better ways to interact with it. I am looking for ways to simplify my life by looking to nature and trying my best to understand how it works.

I have to thank my grandfather for introducing me to "old-school" organic gardening when I was a child. He fed a family of 9 from his garden,...nothing went to waste. He was a first-generation immigrant child from Finland, where farming in the North in poor, rocky soils was a difficult thing,...and had to learn from generations before him how to do things as efficiently as possible. There is a life lesson in that. It's just been a slow progression in my life to get back to those old ways.

"I am constantly gaining respect for nature, my place in it, learning better ways to interact with it. I am looking for ways to simplify my life by looking to nature and trying my best to understand how it works." -
I think that is brilliant, exactly how I feel. I love the fact what you observe occuring in nature is the truth and you can take it as a truth, whereas with people you just don't what they might mean, etc. My brain can rest looking at nature and doesn't need to interpret anything, and nature is always available to you.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

"I am constantly gaining respect for nature, my place in it, learning better ways to interact with it. I am looking for ways to simplify my life by looking to nature and trying my best to understand how it works." -
I think that is brilliant, exactly how I feel. I love the fact what you observe occuring in nature is the truth and you can take it as a truth, whereas with people you just don't what they might mean, etc. My brain can rest looking at nature and doesn't need to interpret anything, and nature is always available to you.

This is really sweet.

 

[ForestGumpett]

I love the book called The Bible. I read it all the time, we read it as a family and talk about it and the things it says. This has become a habit in our family and we like to do it daily. This makes us much happier so we are glad we started reading this book.

I like to bake and love to purchase Polish Pottery, it’s just beautiful. I still love to read my book The Bible the most though, it’s the best!

 

[Nervous Rex]

My current special interest is Moroccan Trilobites. Two and a half years ago I went on a trip through the Anti-Atlas with a bunch of geologists or educated amateurs. There I met a young preparator starting in the business. My goal is to get at least one genus of trilobite from each family from the Ordovician and Devonian. So I have been purchasing from him and gifted a microabrasion tool so he could do even better work. Once complete, a local college will get the collection.

My latest acquisition, a Quadrops flexulosa.View attachment 69441

Those are some rockin' trilobites. In fact, they're more rockin' than any others I've seen.

I guess that's why they're called Moroccan Trilobites?

 

[Gerald Wilgus]

I was listening to an interview with Temple Grandin yesterday. In part She talked about
how driving was multi tasking and one needs to practice the mechanical part of driving until it is automatic before tackling busy roads. That way your brain has compartmentalized one action from the other so you can concentrate on watching the other drivers. I think typing is like that too. You have to be so practiced at putting your fingers on the right keys that you can concentrate on the words you are typing.

My experience with this is that I did not drive until I was 32 (a life time of observing others drive) and I failed my highschool typing course. I could nit understand why I was so slow when others got it right away. It makes sense now! I still type best when the words are in my head and I am not copying others words.

Many skills are that way. I've put my 10,000 hours paddling canoes and kayaks and especially in whitewater, actions must be near reflexive when one is concentrating on reading the water and adjusting one's line through a drop. In hitting an eddy in a rapid, I can't think how I need to do a duffek to pivot and drive my boat in deep, I just think of where I want to be, adjust my angle, momentum, and lean, and my body does the rest.

 

[Suzette]

Many skills are that way. I've put my 10,000 hours paddling canoes and kayaks and especially in whitewater, actions must be near reflexive when one is concentrating on reading the water and adjusting one's line through a drop. In hitting an eddy in a rapid, I can't think how I need to do a duffek to pivot and drive my boat in deep, I just think of where I want to be, adjust my angle, momentum, and lean, and my body does the rest.

This is true when steering the boat when sailing too. Especially if the water is rough. I steer by feel through the waves but my mind is on what the wind is doing to the sails.

 

[Tom]

I like ants.

Did you know? The collective brain mass of an average ant colony roughly equals that of a human being.

 

[Nervous Rex]

I like ants.

Did you know? The collective brain mass of an average ant colony roughly equals that of a human being.

I compulsively fact check things when they're amazing but bordering on unbelievable.

I googled "number of ants per colony" and got: 100,00 to 500,000.

I googled "Ant Brain Size" and got this:
"Experts estimate that an ant brain contains about 250,000 brain cells. That number pales in comparison to the human brain, which is believed to contain over 86 billion neurons."

Okay. 86 billion neurons in a human brain, divided by 250,000 in an ant = 344,000 - right in the 100,000 - 500,000 ants range.

And it's @Tom's Trivia for the win! That's pretty cool. Thanks for that.

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Those are some rockin' trilobites. In fact, they're more rockin' than any others I've seen.

I guess that's why they're called Moroccan Trilobites?

Have you seen his pic of how big they got? I always thought they were little bugs, but he has a pic (i think) that shows them to be the size of a man.

 

[Nervous Rex]

By the way, I love that you titled this thread “Your Current Special Interest”.

Mine change and I have no control over when they change. I have a math project 90% finished, and I’ve tried to force myself to be interested in finishing it, but I can’t. I just have to wait.

 

[Gift2humanity]

Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,
Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats.

Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,
Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,
Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,
Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats,Cats.

PS Cats.

 

[Nervous Rex]

When I go to bed at night, I pick a math problem to think about. It gives me something to focus on that quiets all the other noise in my head, so I can go to sleep.

I’ve been studying set theory as it relates to various types of infinity (from this article I read)

I remembered from my discrete mathematics class that:
1) You can prove that two infinite sets are the same size by defining a bijection – a two-way function that converts each element in one set to one unique element in the other set. i.e. every element in one set must convert to an element in the other set and two elements in one set cannot both convert to the same element in the other set. This conversion must go both ways.

2) The size of the set of integers, whole numbers in (-∞, ∞) is aleph-null. The size of the set of all real numbers (including rational and irrational numbers) is aleph-one. Both are infinite, but aleph-one is larger than aleph-null (See Cantor’s proof, referenced in the article above).

So, messing around with bijections in the real number set, I was able to prove that there are aleph-one real numbers between any two real numbers. In other words, there are just as many real numbers in the range (13.2, 157.8)* as there are in the range (-∞, ∞). (*or any two other numbers you choose). I won't post the proof here and bore you (any more than usual), but it's available upon request.

This is probably already well-known in mathematical circles, but I was happy to discover this on my own.

What am I going to do with this? Absolutely nothing! I'll just treasure this little discovery until I find another problem to work on.

 

[Suzette]

@Gift2humanity , I know a lady lives with 7 cats on a catamaran.

There was an old lady who sailed the seven seas
With seven felines at their ease
(Anybody want to finish that?)

 

[Yeshuasdaughter]

Space Weather! I am so very obsessed with the sun and how it affects the earth's magnetic field. Coronal holes, CME's, Sunspots, Geomagnetic storms, even radio lasers from Jupiter (yes that is a thing)! I like tracking solar wind and finding out when it will hit earth's magnetic field. And I like studying what a large scale solar event does to worldwide weather patterns, and communication. There are other neat phenomena like sprites and noctilucent clouds as well that fascinate me.