I just got tagged by Samanatha Stacia to tell ten things about myself, and tag three other people. Well the ten things are fine, but have you any idea how many people that kind of tripling every day would involve?

Just for the heck of it (and because it’s a good example of what a regular doubling (or tripling, in this case) can do, I calculated how many bloggers would be affected if each one tagged actually tagged three others, and if those tagged posted their blogs the next day. Ready? Here’s what it does:

day number
1 1
2 3
3 9
4 27
5 81
6 243
7 729
8 2,187
9 6,561
10 19,683
11 59,049
12 177,147
13 531,441
14 1,594,323
15 4,782,969
16 14,348,907
17 43,046,721
18 129,140,163
19 387,420,489
20 1,162,261,467
21 3,486,784,401
22 10,460,353,203
23 31,381,059,609
24 94,143,178,827
25 282,429,536,481
26 847,288,609,443
27 2,541,865,828,329
28 7,625,597,484,987
29 22,876,792,454,961
30 68,630,377,364,883
31 205,891,132,094,649

That’s over 200 trillion people in the first month! (The population of the Earth is only about 7 billion, which would be exceeded by day 22.)

Obviously many people who are tagged do not respond, people rather quickly start getting tagged twice (or more) and the whole thing breaks apart from its own weight. So I’ll play the game as a blog-publicizing exercise, but anyone I tag should not respond if they’ve already been tagged once. Regard it as advertizing for your blog.

1. I started talking before I could walk. (And I still like birthday cake.) I still also talk better than I walk.

2. I’ve loved horses ever since I can remember. (My parents claimed they had to pry me off the pony, which belonged to an itinerant photographer.

3. While still in grade school, I discovered my father’s subscription to Astounding Science Fiction, and later, his back issues to the late 30’s and read them all.

4. I’ve been telling myself stories (mostly about horses to start with) in third person past tense since grade school.

5. My first attempt at publication was in high school or thereabouts. I sent a werewolf story to John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding. He wrote back saying it was too much a fantasy story for Astounding, but I could write. (The story has since been totally rewritten at novelette length and I’m thinking of e-publishing it on Amazon.)

6. I took a poetry writing class at Harvard, even though my major was physics. (Unfortunately — or perhaps fortunately? I’ve lost those poems.)

7. I bred and showed Shetland Sheepdogs for over 25 years, and my first dog, Derry, became the first dog of any breed from north of the Alaska Range to earn an AKC tracking title. (He was also the canine telepath who inspired the pocket herders, a breed of dog that is important in my unpublished trilogy.)

8. At one time I developed and programmed scientific models in FORTRAN on punched cards, and later learned to make web pages with HTML and Netscape 1.

Dot

9. Although none of my Shelties after Derry had much herding instinct, I had three Shetland sheep and competed in herding trials with my Border Collie, Dot.

10. At one time, some 20 years ago, I was lead writer for The Alaska Science Forum, a weekly popular science column that went to media outlets all over Alaska.

And to my surprise, I find myself 70 years old.

My picks (the three latest in the WordPress group on SheWrites because quite a few I read already have been tagged) are:

Colleen Crinion

Pat Nance

Costa Jill