The man in the moon looked into my window and found me alone and blue

At long last, I'm again published! Well, I'm self-published. Sort of. What happened in reality is I finally got around to collecting a bunch of pictures into a photo album and buying them online. I know that the civilized world has been getting used to the idea of getting photos printed up in their own book for like five years now, but I never tried it before and what with my problems getting anything started it was absolutely unnerving that late one Sunday night I could shuffle through my virtual pages one more time, then click on ``Buy Book'' and sit through a really rather reasonable upload to get several dozen pictures turned into books that will make lovely presents for Christmas 2007 for some of my relatives. I haven't seen them since before December, so this is all just fine.

I wanted to get two books, as I had two relatives to give them to, so while I bought the books nearly simultaneously they were shipped by separate Federal Express packages, the better to waste precious natural resources in the handling and shipping stages. Plus, I could now watch them racing their way here. They both started in Chaksa, Minnesota with package detail transmitted to Federal Express; and both were picked up in Shakopee, Minnesota, at the same minute. But one was logged in at the Federal Express location at 5:46 pm, and the other at 5:49 pm, and from that moment on they lived slightly different lives: one arrived in the processing facility in Saint Paul at 9:39; the other at 9:36. The second departed Saint Paul for Keasby, New Jersey at 11:50 pm; the other had to wait for 5:17 am the next day.

Yet they were logged in at Keasby a mere two minutes apart, yet they again reached Hightstown, New Jersey on different days -- the second at 10:19 pm, the first at 3:03 am. They were a minute apart in getting on the vehicle for delivery -- 4:36 am and 4:37 am -- but they both were left on the doorstep at 1:46 pm. From this I must conclude that there is no time-invariant Hamiltonian describing the transit of packages through the Federal Express system and therefore it does not have any analogue in an energy-conserving physical system. Trust me, the physics majors know what I'm talking about.

Trivia: William Ferrel and Charles-Eugène Delaunay showed tidal friction between the Earth and Moon dissipates approximately 4,000 billion Watts. Source: Splitting the Second: The Story of Atomic Time, Tony Jones.

Currently Reading: Brave Men, Ernie Pyle.