I was born under a waning gibbous moon, Pop was at a Phillies game

I was born 22,303 days ago under a waning gibbous moon. Pop was at a Phillies game, watching the Phillies beat the Pirates 2 to 1. Mercury and Uranus were in Taurus, Venus was in Gemini, Mars was in Leo, Jupiter was in Sagittarius, Saturn was in Cancer and Neptune was in Virgo. The Dow Jones Industrial Average stood at 190. The Dow has done pretty well since the world was graced with my presence.

Mom always said that Pop was at a Phillies game when I was born, which means I was born in the morning of May 28th since the Phillies played the Pittsburgh Pirates at home on the evening of May 27th. If Pop wasn't available to take her to the hospital she had to have gone there on the 27th. Pop would have been home to take Mom to the hospital on the 28th, because the Phillies were away that day playing the New York Giants.

Here's a great website where you can put in your birth date and find out what phase of the moon you were born under. If you put in "planets" and then your birth date it will tell you what signs of the zodiac they were in on that date. Same thing if you put in "Dow Jones Average" and then your birthdate.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

The website will also do all sorts of math stuff. For instance, if you put in "x cubed + y cubed = 17" it will solve the equation for x and y, graph it, and tell you the implicit derivatives, which you may vaguely remember from near the end of the year in algebra class if you weren't daydreaming. More usefully, it will tell you the probability of drawing a full house in a five card poker hand is 1 chance in 693. Or it will tell you that the probability of drawing specifically three jacks and two aces in a five card poker hand is 1 in 108,900, although I can't imagine why you would want to know that.

Talk about neat! It will also translate Roman Numerals into regular numbers, for those pesky situations when you see a long string of Roman Numerals engraved on the cornerstone of a building and can't remember your M's and D's and X's. Additionally, if you should ever be in a position to supply the cornerstone for a building the website will translate the date into Babylonian or Mayan notation so you can carve the date in a way that will really make people nuts.

http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2021+to+Babylonian

And, talk about something that was invented too late. If you're like me you can remember Mom and Aunt Mary getting into a who's who discussion about relatives. One of them would say something like "She's your second cousin. She's Sia Gigette's sister's granddaughter," and you would be totally clueless. This site will draw you a picture of how you're related to someone if you put in things like "grandfather's sister's second cousin."

http://www17.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=grandmother%27s+brother%27s+second+cousin

Update: Alex called today to wish me a happy father's day, probably because Christina reminded him to do so, since he called on Friday evening and talked to me and Linda. Today he reported that yesterday's Tea Party up in Worcester had some interesting speeches but was a bit of a disappointment because it only drew a crowd of a couple of hundred people.

I find it amazing that there should be two hundred people in the most liberal state in the union, a state nicknamed Taxachussetts, who care about the fact that the federal government is on a spending spree that would make ten thousand drunken sailors blush. George Bush was a big disappointment in the government spending and waste department, just like his father; but Barack Obama is throwing around cash in a way not seen since the last time a ten ship carrier battle group of the Seventh Fleet pulled into Subic Bay after 65 days at sea.