Out of a Rut

Every day a new topic for discussion.  Yesterday I listened to a CBC interview with a person who explores a new topic in-depth every month.  They interviewed Ronnie Hoffman who every month pulls a hand-written goal from his box and challenges himself to explore something new - really new.   What about this?  On his list are things like Conlanging, write on blank paper instead of lined paper, learn to appreciate coffee, read as much travel literature in a month, and so on.   So what is the first item - conlanging? It is the creation of constructed languages such as Esperanto, Lojban, or Klingon.  A conlanger is someone who creates or constructs languages.  You can go to their website here - conlang.org.  You can go to their annual conference. What about celebrate every national independence day that occurs this month?  This was noteworthy yesterday.  January 26th has been in the news - it is Australia's national day.  There's a protest movement in Australia over 'Australia Day'.   That's because it is the celebration of the landing of the first English ship in 1788.  For the indigenous people, that marks the date of the invasion of their land.  Protest marches have been growing over the years and aren't likely to stop until there's a change. There's no indication of the government moving forward to reconcile this gap in the short-term. Ronnie's approach to his monthly list is to do these things every day. He goes 'all in'.  He is reading all of the editions of Anne of Green Gables.   I checked and there are a lot of editions, so it will take the entire month.  The first edition sold at auction in 2009 for $37,500.  There's one in stock now, listed for $22,000, from a rare books website.  I expect that he isn't planning to acquire the editions as well. Ronnie's list is available to download HERE.  Perhaps we should try flag designing - that's on his list. And here are two pictures today from the Minneapolis Convention that could challenge one to build a scale model railroad.