I adopted
the convention of ending my messages with the two ascii symbols "j'".
I simply saw it as an abreviation (silly, humorous, and unnecesary)
of my first name. My first name is spelled "Jay" in English ("Gxej"
in Esperanto,
"Che" in Spanish).
But immediately it acquired a second meaning. A friend pointed out
(incorrectly?) that in the computer language Forth, ' is "the address
of" operator. So j' is (double entendre intended) the address of
Jay.
Some years later, during an especially bleak and depressed period of
my life, I discovered the
Extropians. The extropians I met showed me, in direct technical
terms I could understand, good reasons to be optomistic about the
future. The future of our planet, our race (african probably, but
perhaps asian or some mix there of), and even of our individual
selves. Pretty heady stuff for a seriously depressed individual.
About that time I also had some experiences which convinced me that
happyness was indeed a state of mind I could experience. I
vowed that I would become more and more happy as time went on.
One of the originators of the Extropian Memeset, Max More, wasn't
given that name by his parents (and the state). He later chose to
change his name to Max More. On the Exptropian discussion list he
mentioned this, and others mentioned their new/extropian names. I
decided that the perfect name for me would be one to reflect my new
outlook on life, and my new attitudes about the future. I had
already been called Jay Prime, on account of my email signature.
When I put it together with "Positive" I liked the many meanings it
had, so I adopted Jay Prime Positive.
I should mention that I concider the name fairly silly. I don't
mind. I like silly things such as Monty Python (q.v., please by all
means v.).
Meaning
Pick your favorite, or feel free to suggest others.
- Jay is the first name I was given, so it represents me. Prime is
the symbol representing the derivitave with respect to time.
Positive claims that the derivitive is always positive. In simpleer
words that means that the fuction represented by Jay is increasing
with respect to time. That is certainly one of my goals -- to
constantly increase my abilities.
- The symbol j is used, by electrical engineers, to represent the
square root of -1. Often called the imaginary unit. Thus you could
say my imagination is constantly increasing.
- Since I sign my email j', some folks came to call me "Jay Prime".
In that reading, Jay Prime Positive means that Jay Prime, me, is a
positive kind of person. That has been one of my goals for a long
time, and many who have met me would say that I have achieved that
goal.
- Notice the lengths of the words in the name? They are 3, 5, and
8 leters long. Those are the fourth, fifth, and sixth numbers from
the Fibonacci sequence. It is a sequence of numbers which grows
quite quickly. It is also a sequence which explicitly builds on its
previous members. It is usualy defined as F(t)= F(t-1) + F(t-2), or
in english Fibonacci number t is the sum of the two previous
Fibonacci numbers. And it is understood that the first two numbers
are 1 and 1 respectively. Thus I often sign "O I am Jay Prime
Positive jpp@makrv.com ..."
jpp@markv.com (Jay Prime Positive)
This information is available on the web at http://www.markv.com/jpp/whyjpp.html.