Thanks James for your last name-that-movie post.  Here's mine, good luck...   more »

My kid Lynnea is having real trouble in second grade with reading and writing. They don't really teach read and writing the way they did when I was a kid. For example when I was a kid we had a rule that went "Vowel-Consonant-Silent E makes the vowel long." It worked most of the time, and really helped me a lot when I was reading as a kid...   more »

It's the palindromic primes which only use digits 1 and 0! There are 49 of them below 10^20-1 and probably an infinite number above 10^20-1. Here's the first 49...   more »

Can't sleep through the night with all this coughing.  If anything this stupid cold that I've had for at least 2 weeks now is getting worse, not better!  This sucks!  I'm behind in my work, behind in my chores, and I feel like crap.  My poor wife has it too, and I'm afraid my daughter may be starting to show signs.

I was factoring some large numbers this weekend, and I noticed a few primes that had very similar forms: 9901, 99990001, 999999000001, and 9999999900000001. Essentially, these primes are the values produced by the formula (10^y - 1) x (10^y) + 1 for the following values of y: 2, 4, 6, and 8...   more »

By now any of my 3 regular readers would happily warn tell you that I am obsessed with extremely interested in numbers.  As an amateur hobbyist my knowledge of number theory is very limited, but that doesn't stop me from playing with numbers and figuring things out.  Here's one of the numeric excursions I've devoted some idle time to over the Thanksgiving Holiday...   more »

I recently added a new photo album with minor moments from the life of my car, Vanessa.  Feel free to check out Vanessa Tidbits.

Just a morning wish to all my friends, family, and whoever to have a safe and happy Thanksgiving day today. Yes I know Thanksgiving has a checkered past, but it's important to recognize the things you are grateful for every now and then...   more »

Welcome to Part 2 of Unbecoming Levity's Name That Movie double feature! (Part 1 here.) Here's the second classic film, so classic in fact, it's in black and white...   more »

Thanks James for your last name-that-movie post. Grab your popcorn, because this week Unbecoming Levity is offering a double feature!  Why?  Well, it could be in honor of Thanksgiving, or it could be to quickly get past #13 for those trischadecaphobes out there, or it could be because I'm an insecure competitive male and basically I want to be caught up to James.  Why ask why?   You may find these films difficult, because they are old, but both of them are well known classic pictures.  Anyway, here's the first film, and stay tuned for the second...   more »

Reading that title you're probably saying something along the lines of WTF?  I'm not kidding.  Here's the article from ABCNews.com: Exploding Cell Phones a Growing Problem.

...Safety officials have received 83 reports of cell phones exploding or catching fire in the past two years, usually because of bad batteries or chargers...

So in my spare moments over the last couple weeks, I've been playing HALO 2 on xbox live. If you're not familiar with xbox live, basically it is an extension of the xbox multiplayer experience into the realm of the internet. With an xbox live subscription, broadband high speed internet service, and a network cable between your router and your xbox you can play multiplayer games with any group of players (up to 16 at a time) out of the thousands scattered across the internet. It can be very fun, and most of the time it is. But there are always people out there who ruin experiences for everyone else, and the realm of video games (and really anything that does not exclude immature/insecure males) is no exception...   more »

Found this when I went out to the car this morning...