Author Archives: gmcdavid

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About gmcdavid

Retired IT professional with a wide range of interests. Married. Three sons, two with autistic-spectrum disorders and the third being transgender with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. From Chicago but now living in the Twin Cities metro, Minnesota. Episcopalian. Carleton College (BA 1972, physics) and Stanford University (MS 1974, Applied Physics; MS 1976 Statistics).

Ayn Rand in old age

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From Monastic Musings:

I was surprised to read about Ayn Rand’s old age at Gruntled Center. In the face of the cost of treatments for lung cancer, she signed up for Social Security and Medicare using her legal name, Ann O’Connor.

This would not bother me in the least, had she written or said anything to retract her condemnation of those programs. But – in spite of her many tirades against hypocrisy – she quietly accepted government funding while continuing to condemn both the programs and the people who accepted the funding.

US university settles religious discrimination case

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At Physics World:

A settlement has been reached in a case brought against the University of Kentucky by astrophysicist Martin Gaskell over his claim that the university illegally denied him a staff position on the basis of his evangelical Christian faith. The settlement now requires the university to pay $125,000 to Gaskell and his lawyers, who claimed that the decision meant Gaskell lost income and caused him “emotional distress”. The university admits no wrongdoing in the case, which was due to go to trial on 8 February. Meanwhile, Gaskell has taken a job at Chile’s University of Valparaiso, which he will start in March.

Following up on the Gaskell affair.

“Lady Betty”

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From Hangwomen.

It is reputed that in 1780 a middle aged woman from Co. Kerry called Elizabeth Dolan or McDermott was sentenced to death at Roscommon for the murder of her son. The town’s normal hangman did not turn up for the execution of Elizabeth and her 24 fellow condemned prisoners who were members of the “White Boys” so Elizabeth is reputed to have said to the sheriff “Spare me, yer Honour, spare me and I’ll hang them all.” As in law he would have had to have performed the task himself if no one else could be found, the sheriff agreed. Elizabeth executed her fellow criminals and was appointed Roscommon’s hang-woman and given a room of her own in the goal. She is thought to have operated there from about 1780 until her death in 1807. Her own death sentence was commuted in 1802.

Via Beachcombing’s Bizarre History.