December 18, 2025 | Page 6 | Andy Arthur.org

I still think teaching base 10 math in school is is one of the most idiotic things they do. So few things in the physical world are based around base 10 except for human fingers and toes. Nothing in the real world grows in powers of ten but lots of things double.

If children learned base 2 math and the sixteen hexadecimal digits they would be so much smarter and could learn math so much quicker at a younger age. Plus they would have a much better way of understanding the physical world and relative values of things.

Binary, base 2 math is so simple… It’s just shifting digits…

0b10 * 0b10 = 0b100
0b10 * 0b100 = 0b1000
0b10 * 0b1000 = 0b10000
0b10 * 0b10000 = 0b100000
0b10 * 0b100000 = 0b1000000

No times tables to learn though for compactness you might want to write your results in hex, so 0x4, 0x8, 0x10, 0x20, 0x30. To write hex you have to know the sixteen digits but they are easy to convert from binary – they’re groups of four digits with a shift / carry for the overflow – But that’s optional to use hex.

It is an amazing day for riding to work for winter, though I think I’ll skip the bike trail as I don’t love the pounding that the rail trail riding involves. Corning’s Hill is fine.

I know I should be driving in with for so few days left in Big Red’s life 🛻 but I’ll wait until tomorrow for the rain and use that an excuse to buy groceries for the coming week. Got to use that brand new windshield wiper I installed yesterday. And then I got to think about what I can get to stock up my pantry before the year comes to a conclusion over the weekend, and run any necessary chores that require the truck this weekend.

The plan is after winter to get a new or used truck, get a cap and move all my equipment over the new truck. And then UP Michigan in early summer. There is a lot to look forward to even if I am so heartbroken about the situation with Red even though I knew this day would come. I’ve been giving it a lot of though. I mean I’ve known this day would come but I was hoping to have a bit more freedom to decide on my own schedule. It will be good to give up driving for a while, spend more time in city and riding my mountain bike in countryside. Don’t get me wrong, I like being in the woods, smoking pot and burning shit, but I can do the plastics recycling thing for a while this winter. It’s kind of fucking cold at the Horse Camp in the middle of winter.,

Didn’t do much reading yesterday, 📖 truth is I spent much of the afternoon on a memory trip of all the travels with Red, riding my mountain bike 🚲 and singing along with Ian and Sylvia. Years are gambled, and gone like summer wages. And you keep rolling along, until you get to Vancouver. It was fun riding out along Creble Road yesterday, with it’s tangy smell of manure and plastics plant, seeing Meads cows, 🐮 and spending a few hours just wandering mostly aloene at Five Rivers.

But alas it’s back to work today, time to shower and head to Assembly’s World Data Headquarters, where the IOI Codes are generated and the addresses are corrected an label jobs are exported next to old city garbage dump, past the sewage treatment plants, freeway interchange and oil trains. That cold will feel good on the face as I ride in. Time to shower and move forward, as few days remain in the year. Probably be cold with the wind riding back downtown, but whatever. I like the exercise. And it beats walking laps in the Plaza.