(For Butterflydust, who just loves science nerds like me.)

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and I just know you would love hers

Kisses Haley

There are plenty of science and math nerds around, whether professionally or just for fun. Doesn't everyone read biographies of Ramanujan, Richard Feynman and Nicola Tesla and such for amusement? (For the record, I am midway between Ramanujan's monasticism and Feynman's freewheeling ways.)

No? You don't all sit around in the evenings reading those books? Maybe THAT is what I was doing wrong.

My current interest is string theory. I have lots of theories about string. In this case, I'm referring to the kind that holds tiny pieces of fabric in place for an infinitessimal amount of time before I remove them.

I love both particle and astro physics - I keep up with these topics somewhat religiously. My idea of a meditative centering exercise is to work through a lengthy proof in symbolic logic or calculus. Very relaxing. Very orderly. I'm down with that. Nerd? I don't know - but the ladies don't seem to think so....

Stop it, I'm swooning.

and I was the inpiration for the study...

it's the number of seconds it takes me to get from my office to my home in normal Friday afternoon LA traffic - YUCK!

1. Wuthering who in the eighteenth century, looked past the prejudice of the establishment and went to a witch hidden in a forest to see what plants she was giving to a young woman with a fatal heart condition thus prolonging her life. He found Foxglove which later became digitalis leaf.  

2. Ignaz Semmelweiss,who in the nineteenth century decided that the high rate of death among women delivering babies was due to the fact that physicians were going from the dissection room--with its cadavers-- to the delivery rooms.  He decided the physicians carried the Angel of Death with them.  He insisted physicians wash their hands and change into clean clothes before touching pregnant women. Their death rates fell; he was laughed out of Vienna, but courageously persisted.  His courage eventually saved many lives.

(OK, I still do.)

Does that count?

You aren't playing with the silly string alone are you?

-- Modified on 9/28/2008 9:09:01 AM

this goes beyond a science nerd... this is in the relm of you need a hobby.... oh, you have one.... hummm.....   jeese.... I provide a dissertation on the P&R board, on both the thermal output from burning ethanol - (complete with references to the energy involved in breaking the C-C bond) as compared to octane... and provide the direct scientific references to those opposed to global warming... and a discussion concerning that... and all I get is pounded by Jack0 and his minions... while you post some dude... from MSNBC (of all places) who reports on a prime number?????  

and all the ladies swoon!  Man - that is just some messed up stuff...

ME??  I would prefer something come from the individual private computers to search for extraterrestrial life... ya know SETI at Home!  Now that is just sexy hot stuff!

maybe the smartest sinces Einstein... another hero of mine is Babs McClintock.... by all accounts about 40 years ahead of her time with her concept of "jumping genes"  she was indeed cool.... she never was "confused by the data" and always believed the experimental results she had - even though others would tell her she made a mistake....  Ahh! what a babe....

Course for pure "shock value" there is always Bill Shockley the co-recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1956, along with Bardeen and Brattain for invention of the "Transistor".  But for my money I would go with Bardeen - as he won the Noble prize TWICE IN THE SAME FIELD - rare that!

BizzaroSuperdude,

A lot of folks totally avoid the P&R board.

As for SETI at home, I'm more interested in helping people, so I ended up in a distributed protein folding project.

If I want to find aliens, I'll just look in the P&R board. Some of the folks are out there.

BSE etc, is kinda old.  What I found interesging is that a researcher at Fox Chase has actually identified a functional natural use of alternative protein folding schemes... has to do with biofilms and the available nutrients within the microbe environs.... but hey, that was commercially not quite where we wanted to be... Personally I thought it hot stuff...

why just the other day, I was talking with my 14 year old son about how tertiary structure - affects quaternary structure - and all is governed by primary... but then again... what do i Know...??

Tesla was the 'Einstein' of the 19th century. So smart. So many inventions. So screwed over by business (i.e. Westinghouse) and governments. Finally recognized by the SCOTUS for inventing 'radio'.

From what I know about the semiconductor industry beginnings (Fairchild, TI, National Semi) Shockley was a dickhead when it came to interacting with people.

What's up with this recent Einstein bashing?

inferior... couse I wonder what Neil DeGrasse Tyson would say to that...?? hummm...  This is yet another reason I strongly question the no - bell prize... in anything... it took them too long to recognize McClintock's very insightful work - and that hampered acceptance of her concepts - so sad.  But same is true for the failure of the committee to recognize the contribution of Roseland Franklin to Watson and Crick's pronouncement of DNA as the carrier of the genetic code...  Shitheads...  Without her data, they would have been makin stuff up.

as far as Tesla is concerned... you are indeed correct - for as an immigrant he was indeed taken advantage of...

As far as Einstein bashing goes... I don't think it is bashing so much as how people worked in a far more honest time... they laid out their mistakes as well as their triumphs... today?  Science is BIG BUSINESS - look at the Federal Grant program to universities... and you think your tuition is paying the majority of the cost of runnin the U's.... get real... it is more about getting grants - than anything else - not truth - and certainly not honesty.

does it bother anyone besides me that the large hadron collider wouldnt work......my frig doesnt work....my auto doesnt work....but my super collider...that worries me !!!!!

Can I roll around in a big cuddly pile of the mathematicians who discovered it?  Please?

It can't create a black hole that will suck us all into eternity...

We all kinda dismiss this type of speculation by lay scientists... BUT I 'member about 4 years ago when I was teaching a bunch of 4th graders about nanotechnology... and one kid asked about nano-tech inventions being harmful...  the teacher cautioned "little johnny" about asking silly questions.... My response - there is no such thing as a stupid question.... and I attempted to calm his fears....

Imagine my chagrin to learn that nanotubes have a similar structural form to the type of asbestos that causes Mesothelioma... and the reports that pulmonary exposure to cabon nanotubes has indeed been linked to mesotheioma like conditions....

so.... my guess is still out on the supercolider... my ONE consolation... the you're-a-peeings will go first if there is a problem...