Why a moon of Jupiter is brighter than the planet Neptune.
Size, distance, and reflection in the outer Solar System
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Author Archives: gmcdavid
To live forever …..
Forwarded from my mother:
A man met a fairy who said she would grant him one wish.
“I want to live forever,” he said.
“Sorry,” said the fairy, “I’m not allowed to grant wishes like that!”
“Fine,” he said, “then I want to die after Congress votes for term limits and wants Social Security for their retirement program.”
“You crafty bastard,” said the fairy.
A great collection of stories
The First Heroes
The First Heroes: New Tales of the Bronze Age. The stories are a mix of Historical Fiction, SF, Fantasy, and one of Altenate History. Fantasy comes from the myths of the era being incorporated in several of the stories. The Greek world is well represented, but China, Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Egypt, Northern Europe and even Peru appear. Continue reading
Monday Night Irish Class, September 12, 2011
Irish Class, September 12, 2011
Rang Gaeilge, 12ú lá Mí Mheán Fómhair 2011
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Fadas: áéíóúÁÉÍÓÚ
Clann Tartan in Hudson
On Saturday, Sept. 10, mia_mcdavid and I were part of colgaffneyis camp at the Scottish Heritage Festival of the First Presbyterian Church in Hudson, Wisconsin. As with Fort William, we traveled lightly. Continue reading
Eggbeater drill
I found an old hand drill at a garage sale recently. The mechanism was stiff, there was some
rust, and much of the paint was gone:
Significant Figures
Measurement and Uncertainty Smackdown. With America being ruled by the Innumerati of all political persuasions anything that helps simple quantitative reasoning is worthwhile.
The basics of this I learned in High School Chemistry (Thank you, Mr. Wheeler) and my first two years at Carleton. Of course, back then (1967-70),
….there is no reason that students in introductory courses couldn’t do the monte
carlo method.
was not quite so obvious.
Blast from the past
I was cleaning out a closet this afternoon and came across the center pages of the program for Minicon 12, which I attended back in 1977. At 2:30 PM, on Saturday, April 9, there was this event:
Debate: “Resolved: Science Fiction Should Get Out of the Classroom and Back into the Gutter Where It Belongs” with Lester del Rey and Ivor Rogers
I must have been there, but I do not remember anything about it. It is an old issue and not to be taken too seriously,
Firefox on Ubuntu
Generally I am quite happy with Ubuntu Linux, but there are some annoyances. One is that the official Ubuntu repositories are not keeping up with the major releases from Mozilla (why?). I was running Firefox 3.6.20 on this box using Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) while Mozilla is now at Firefox 6.0. Fortunately the fix is very simple:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firefox
So I am now running 6.0. Since I have added the repository I should now be able to stay current without any special effort.
Monday Night Irish Class, August 22, 2011
Irish Class, August 22, 2011
From Hilbert Space to Dilbert Space, and beyond 
