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).

Despite my management’s best efforts….

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My blood pressure is still OK. I had an apheresis (platelet donation) appointment this afternoon at the Red Cross, and as part of the procedure they checked my BP: 112/76.

It was a particularly good experience. We in colgaffneyis are all worried about our friend M, who has been in the hospital for a week and will be going to the Mayo Clinic tomorrow. And there is nothing we can do to help her. At least this way I could help somebody.

Not that I did anything heroic in the process. They stuck the needle in my arm, and I just dozed off for two hours while they extracted the platelets.

Freudian Slip?

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This afternoon I got an all-hands e-mail from one of the managers here. She was announcing a new hire, about whom we read

I am pleased to announce that M has accepted a Project Manager position within the Development PMO [Project Management Office]. M comes to …[us] with expensive Project Management experience.

A few minutes later came another e-mail from the same manager, which said

Everyone goofs, and my goof was very visible. I meant to say that M has extensive experience. Thank you to those who pointed out my mistake.

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Blast from the Past

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Blast of Giant Atom Created Our Universe, from the December, 1932 issue of Popular Science. From the (2007) introduction:

This is a pretty amazing article. It’s a concise summary of the big bang theory published only 3 years after Edwin Hubble made his famous observations about the redshifts of distant galaxies. Yet it’s pretty much identical to one you’d see today. Only a few details like the size of the initial “atom” and the age of the universe seem off. Keep in mind it took another 35 years or so before the scientific community came to accept that the big bang really happened.

Found via a post at Cosmic Variance, which emphasizes the work of Father Georges-Henri Lemaître, and concludes

Lemaître passed away in 1966, a year after Penzias and Wilson detected the microwave radiation leftover from the Primeval Atom.

I.e, Lemaître lived long enough to see his work confirmed by observation.

Fighting words!

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Found on the OldTools Mailing List.

Apparently a few years ago, the Louisville Baseball Bat Museum had a billboard up outside of town advertising that they had “More Old Bats Than A Knitting Convention.” The local knitters’ group had quite a tizzy over it.

Somebody else promptly commented

And If your SWMBO is a major-league knitter, then you’ll understand why

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Since my SWMBO* is also a “major-league knitter”, I understand quite well.

*If necessary, you can look it up at the OldTools faq :-)>

The Dangers of Scientific Terminology

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From Cosmic Variance

The spheroidal distribution of stars in the centers of rotating disk galaxies is called the “bulge”. Now, introduce a bunch of bored and horny 19 year olds into the mix, and you have a dangerous cocktail. One of my colleagues lost complete control of a 250 person lecture class when she had two male students hold up pictures of different galaxies, while she expounded on how “This guy over here has a small bulge, but the bulge of this guy is quite prominent.” The titters started as she forged ahead unknowing, until the entire class collapsed in hysterics. At that point, you just have to put down your laser pointer, send the class home, and head for the bar. Learning is over.

This reminded me of how my classes in quantum mechanics taught me about the mathematics of bras.