Shorespirit's Journal: Ianuary

NewYearsEve. the sky under cleared somewhere between Nebraska and the Rockies as I chatted with the blonde woman next to me about teaching high school chemistry, evidently something she does. then down in the phantasm of Los Angeles, where hypersound amplified the desert hyperlight. back!

and it had rained - there were flowers - and the pre-Rose parade air smelled unusually fresh, as if millions of engines haven't breathed it. children snuggled in thermal sleeping bags, portable TVs played, OU students brought out the beer. and sometime around midnight cheering brought in 2003. those waiting for the procession stayed; I took leave to dream 2003 dreams.

in a different universe, there'll be a palindromic date this year. which greedy Roman emperor to blame for butchering February?

back in everyday. our library's moving all their books around for supposedly more efficient shelving. meanwhile, bumping into unexpected volumes. I found a French study of cleanliness since the Middle Ages - turns out people didn't avoid taking baths circa 1600 just because they were too lazy to heat water, but because they believed that soaking in water opens up their skin so that toxins seep in. each to their own; nothing as minor as the threat of plague would deter *me* from taking baths.

looking to buy stocks for my IRA suggested a small math puzzle. if I'm interested in a stock, I want to buy it when it's as cheap as possible, so the question's always whether to buy now or wait in the hope that the price will fall. suppose I know the price of a stock changes each day to a random value within a certain trading range, but I don't know in advance what that range is. I want to buy the stock within, say, a given month. what strategy should I use to maximize my chances of buying near the bottom of the range? does the answer change if prices are not completely random from day to day but are correlated with the previous day's prices, as actual prices are?