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Welcome to Arts and Ideas in the Air, under the sky, by the fire, and around
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Baltimore, your daily podcast briefing of all the goings ons, ins, and rounds of Arts
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and Ideas Sudbury School. So today was Monday, first day of the week, it's a
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short week, four-day week, and we'll have Friday off. This is our spring break week,
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which school meeting canceled, but a number of people had plans, so we are
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out of less attendance for that. And we also had a parent test positive for
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COVID, and so some people in that kind of group are also staying home, and so we
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only had like 20 people here today. It was a very quiet day, it was a very
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beautiful day, absolutely great weather, perfect spring day. We had our Monday
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announcements, where it was announced about meetings for Nail Corporation,
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where it's all about making beautiful nails, and Virtual Reality Corporation
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revealing their Oculus Rift. And yeah, I made some announcements for hopefully
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looking for school meeting clerk, or JC clerk, or staff relations clerk to take
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feedback from students. This is a hard year to get students to really step up. I
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get it, but I really wish I could find some people who do that. But with only 20
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people here, there isn't even that much going on. But anyway, so yeah, I think
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people were hanging out today, some activity. Phil dug up the old concrete
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of the tetherpole base, because I separated it from the dirt, and he's
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gonna try to re-concrete plant it sometime this week. That's fun. Right now
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we have a green dude, our green safety dude, tied up to the base of an
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umbrella with caution tape, and a big sign saying do not move. So hopefully no
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one will trip over that hole. I think that's kind of the big thing. So we did
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have one student who came in from being online to being in person, and a new
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student actually joined our school. So that was exciting. Yeah, we keep, we do
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keep adding people, even though there's some people here temporarily. But
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hopefully in a week or two we'll be, you know, back on the progress. COVID numbers
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around here are still going up. I'm not sure why, but hopefully that'll stop soon.
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I don't know. I guess we'll have to see what's going on. But just a reminder
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that assembly decided to no longer have an automatic shutdown of in-person
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based on the numbers. We're still monitoring them, and assembly can always
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revisit that if need be. But assembly decided that families can make their own
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decisions, and staff being fully vaccinated, their risk has been greatly
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reduced. So that's good. All right, it's Millions Monday, and the moon is up, so I
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was going to talk about that. So a lot of people seem to think that the moon is
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only up at night, obviously, because that's the time when its presence makes
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itself felt. But, you know, the moon travels throughout its period at
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different times of the day. Specifically, it gets later each day. Now, how much
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later? Well, glad you asked. So after, so the period of a moon is about 30 days.
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That's what a month is. Not, not accidentally there. It's, you know, I can
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well imagine that when you have nothing else to go by, a moon going through its
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different phases is a pretty darn good calendar marker. You know, right now I'm
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looking at it, and it's, you know, it rises during the day and sets at night, and
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that tells me one part of the phase, and I can see that it's about half, and, you
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know, so I can actually mark the different days. So one period of a moon
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being a month makes a lot of sense from that perspective, if I had a need to
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track time like that. So, given that it is 30 days, how much later does the moon
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rise, or does it rise earlier? Well, so, basically, what you have is, you've got
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30 days, and, you know, you've got a 24-hour period, and then so after, you
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know, this is an assumption that basically after the full period it's
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gonna rise at the same time. I mean, it does that, but the period isn't exactly 30
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days, but whatever. We're just gonna go with that because that makes it easier.
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It's about 30 days. So that means you've got to fit a 24-hour period of risings
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into 30 days. So basically means I want to divide the 24 hours by 30. Okay, now
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24 over 30, that's a fraction. I could reduce it, but let's not do that right
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now. Instead think, well, it's going to be in minutes because it's going to be 30 is
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bigger than 24, so it's a fraction of an hour, so why don't we talk in minutes?
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All right, now how do I convert from hours to minutes? Well, 60 minutes in an
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hour, so I have 60 minutes for each hour, so I'm going to multiply 24 and 60, right?
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Now I'm not going to do that multiplication. That sounds a little bit
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on the complicated side. I've got 24 times 60, I'm dividing by 30, and now I've
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gotten something easy. 60 over 30 is just 2 because 30 plus 30 is 60, right? So 24
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times 2 is 48. This is going to be in minutes, so 48 minutes. Approximately
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every 48 minutes. I mean, every day the moon is rising 48 minutes later, more or
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less. And, you know, by going through that you can figure out what it actually
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should be. Now, when I was younger, about 30, maybe 32, I think it was 32, I had a
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bet with someone, and I said, "Ah, I bet there's been a full moon on my
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birthday at some point in my life." I was very big into the moon, and, well, that
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person took the bet, and uncharacteristically I actually lost
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that bet. However, I kind of won a bigger bet because that very year I had a full
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moon on my birthday. I didn't know that it was coming up, but it was, and
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because I made that bet I found out that it was, and that was a very special year,
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because that's the year I got married to my wife, and the full moon was present.
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I was there for a kind of, not actual first date, but kind of date event, and then
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there was our actual first date, and then our engagement, and then our marriage, all
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one full moon right after another. So that was pretty awesome. It's glorious.
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And then that year was my wife's birthday, had a full moon on her birthday,
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and on my birthday, and our, we had a second wedding, so we kind of had a
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private wedding first, and then we had a big public wedding, and that was also on
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a full moon. Full moons everywhere. That's great. I even traveled to Hawaii just to
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be able to see the full moon on my birthday, and that didn't go so well,
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because apparently it likes to be cloudy in Hawaii at night. Oh well. Anyway, so what
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is the probability of having a full moon on your birthday? What is that? Well,
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basically, I mean, this is the reason why I took that bet. You can think of, you
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know, it's not random what day the full moon is on. I mean, you can compute it out
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for millennia, but it's, you can roughly think of it as kind of this random event.
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I mean, you can think of my birth as a random event, if you will, and so you can
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just say, well, you've got a 1 in 30 chance of it being on my birthday of any,
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you know, given year, and so, you know, the probability of it kind of, so you kind
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of, um, yeah, so the probability of it being on my birthday in a given year is
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1 in 30. So then the probability of my not having, of having a full moon at some
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point on my birthday is 1 minus the probability of my not having a full moon
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on any of my birthdays, and so it's, you know, for each year it's 29 over 30
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probability of not having a full moon on my birthday, and so we multiply those
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together repeatedly, and then you do 1 minus that, and then you get a
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probability, and, well, I'll just say that I was unlucky that with that bit.
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Nevertheless, there you go, another little fun fact is a blue moon is something
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that's a full moon that happens twice in a month, so basically that's, uh, happens
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on the first and the 31st of the month. That's what happens, and so when we, you
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know, how often does that happen? Well, um, again, it's sort of like this 30 days
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kind of thing, roughly, um, so, you know, like it needs to be on the first of a
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month for 31 days, and so more or less 30 some months to go, so it's roughly like
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every three years, give or take a few months. So that's, uh, that's the story of
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the blue moon, and, I don't know, I guess that's just some of my musings on the moon
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stuff, but basically my main message is, hey, the moon is up in the sky right now,
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right today, at this very moment, take a look, it's beautiful, it's beautiful, it's
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a beautiful blue sky, a little white half shape up there, it'll be a full moon
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in a week, that's what that's kind of telling us, and, I don't know, I think the
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moon, the moon, the moon, the moon is just this beautiful, beautiful, um, object to
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stare at, that's, it's a really great gift that we all can just, like, look at this
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moon, it's a beautiful, wonderful moon. Alright, I've levered on enough, thanks
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for listening, and I will see you when I see you.
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