Several of the bloggers I read respond to this prompt every week. I enjoy reading their responses. but haven’t hitherto taken part. But each week, as I read the questions, I can’t help but think how would I answer?

This week I’ve noticed that nobody really came close to writing the same answers as I would have, so I resolved to write my own answers.

First, I think I have tracked the source of the questions down to Melanie over at Sparks from a Combustible Mind. Hi, Melanie. You’ve given me a great idea for a new name for my own blog, although the word compostible probably suits me better! I think I got the source right – if not, perhaps somebody could comment and correct me?

The questions:

Pancakes, waffles or French Toast as your breakfast favorite?

Actually, none of those. I’ll interpret the question instead as What do you like for breakfast? The answer to that one is quite straightforward. Probably five or six days a week, I eat porridge. That’s a good food, if you’re diabetic – just oats, water, milk and a few sultanas for a twist!

Treats are either croissants or pains chocolats. Anything bread is generally a bad idea for diabetics, that’s why they’re a treat.

I used to like either a bacon or a sausage sandwich for breakfast. Just in terms of diabetes, sausage or bacon are not bad foods (meat is mostly protein), but the sandwich (i.e. carb) part of the breakfast made it quite bad. But about 9 months ago I cut something like 90% of meat from my diet, so both of these are consigned to the past.

Do you think a person’s name influences the person they become?

Absolutely. Try going for a job as John Smith. Now try going for that same job as Milton Sibikwe, and tell me how you get on. You think that’s not going to rub off on your personality?

Would things get better or worse if humans focused on what was going well rather than what’s going wrong?

Concertrate on what is wrong. For the good stuff, fine, it can look after itself, but the bad stuff is what we have to fix.

Is math(s) something that humans created or something we discovered? Is looking at reality mathematically an accurate representation of how things work?

Imagine you never learned Math. Now, go outside with a tape measure. Find a wheel. Measure its circumference, measure its diameter. Now, calculate the ratio between the two.

Now go find another wheel. Totally unrelated. Make the same measurements. The ratio between your two numbers is the same as last time. Always was, since way before even wheels were invented!

Math is out there, like it or not. All we did was discover it.

And yes, math can give very good predictions if we use it to model things. But the saying garbage in/garbage out holds true. You’ve got to get the model right in the first place, and then you’ll get reliable results.

Think about the last time you saw an eclipse. You knew it was coming, didn’t you? Why was that?

GRATITUDE

What are you grateful for right now?   I realize it’s difficult to be very positive right now, unless one is being positive that things are pretty awful.   Let’s spread the joy in gratitude!! 

I’m grateful for my wife – she provides me with somebody to talk to (at!) while I am otherwise indoors.

I’m grateful for the cats – I’m grateful that every morning when I wake up, Reuben [one of the cats] is snuggled in hard next to me, enjoying his own night’s sleep. It sounds very affectionate but in fact it is mercenary – he is waiting for me to wake up so I can go fix his breakfast!