David Custis Kimball - blog
You: Why Dave; why now?
Me: Well, I've two talented kids; the younger mentioned my stopping with the lectures. Then enthusiastically asked, 'Dad, can I help you set up a blog?' Moments later, Me: 'OK, that's a great idea, thinkin' they might just read it someday.
me ---> 'Gaarr of Blog' <---
Goto oft comments on Art, Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC), CommoNonsense, Dance, Dark Matter, Design, Etc., Environment, Eventspace, Fable, Food, Frogsense, Hazard Mitigation, Hegel, History, Horsense, Human Affairs, Humor, Law+Lawless, Mathematics, Medicine, Music, Nerd Stuff, Parenting, Physics, Psychophysics, Real Estate, Sailing, Science, Science Fiction, Swimming, Technology, Theology, UncommonSense, and Waldo, alphabetically.
Just use 'Search' for the topic of choice or Waldo, perhaps.
Matters of Import & Timely Expertise
repressing gossip and hate-speech.
An Unmapped Ponderocity:
To say: '"He is a man of truth," is to say nothing; to say: "He is a man of of," is to state an elementary truth of logic.'
Winston Davids, 1969 - Trinity College Valedictorian - 1970; known endeavor: actuarial contributions to The Donald; since has contacted me and sadly is quite ill. Ask prayers for recovery; thanks for his brilliance and music.
Mark Twain (via mythrils)
History, Humor, Horsense, Technology, Law+Lawlessness
If we look at it, often great new things, like Apple computers, Edison’s light bulb (not his DC current system and conspiracy with GE), Lear Jet and automobile radio, bifocals and the Franklin stove get out because there was a direction and relentless pursuit of pride and self-agrandizement, and the American way, eventually to be sued for Anti-trust as an excuse for politicians to ‘shake ‘em down’. Apple’s there now…
Science, Environment, Frogsense, Humor
If there are a million life forms in a teaspoon of sea water, and 354 million cubic miles of sea water, how many life forms is that? Oh my g-d, where’s Planned Parenthood? ‘There is just too much Fornication Under Constent of the King -ing out there’ is the proper response, be responsible. ‘Abstain I tell you; control your worm and bait that hook.’ He was shouting at the sea and his captain…
Or relax and let the Big Guy take care of it, you know Neptune, Little Mermaid’s Dad.
Physics, Horsense, Frogsense
If you go to the point where ‘this length can be confirmed’ at around 10-16th, then why not propose “Poop donuts’ at 10-35th such as the quarks, etc. and really what for?
Reading the D. L. Hotson essay on ‘Dirac’s Equation and the Sea of Negative Energy’ which is making some sense. I provided the Part 2, but just replace the 2 with a 1 to start your reading… I suggest all to read; appreciate any comments.
Very well done, from the Planck length to whole (known) of Universe (Click to enjoy it).
Source: The Scale of the Universe - Interactive, Astronomy Picture of the Day.
Flash Animation Credit & Copyright: Cary & Michael Huang.
Physics, Psychophysics, Chemistry
Here we have a very active solution of liquid Pb. Many of the outer shell electrons will have accepted extra energy, but the pure numbers of electrons in all the orbits spend most of their energy separating themselves and enlarging the volume of the Pb and lowering it’s density. Luckily for the hand, Pb is hydrophobic, or repels the electrons of water, and perhaps uses the energy to begin to evaporate (phase change) the water to a vapor, and hence ‘cool’ the hand, or specifically the layers of H2O on the hand. Notice he doesn’t leave the hand in there too long. I count 4 seconds, but this is slow motion; so it’s probably 2 seconds or less.
I added Psychophysics to this because the Micro Tubule (MT) has water inside and outside and the inside collapses and the water pressure increases to push one way or the other into the vesicle near the synapse to force the release of the contents. Now the magic of water is legion; does the collapse progress down or up the MT. Depending on the attractive polarity to the outside, you would think it could go either way. Meanwhile the axon and dendrites are doing their ‘thang’. Perhaps like the super highways keeping the various parts supplied with nutrients and charges to keep alive and and all decisions the MTs made (like a phone call, fax or email, text, or tweet).
Adam Savage dipping his fingers into a pot of molten lead. Immediately prior to submerging his fingers in the lead, he wet them with water, which will form a thin protective layer of water vapor on contact with the lead, which was heated to 850 degrees Fahrenheit. This is known as the Leidenfrost effect.
Design, Environment
Thanks for glimpse of Spring in Finland, best to Vuokko and family for keeping our family, sans Skittles and me, this past summer. The beauty of water in its 3 phases in one space.
Spring Stream, Finland Photograph by Kyle Ueckerman.
About:
I took this photo at the edge of a small stream in Lehtimaki, Finland. The ice is beginning to melt, revealing the water beneath.
Music, Mathematics, Psychophysics
For 2 players: forward and reverse in linear mode is the same as clockwise and counterclockwise on a circular mobius mode is the same as an inside player and outside player in a clockwise and counterclockwise band mode. Forward and reverse are isometric to inside and outside. Something to think about and this will be thought by someone.
Design, Physics, Horsense
The dagger rudders are unsafe, and could be broken off; a short skeg/keel stabilizers added would improve stability and vibration in heavy, turbulent seas…safety… Also the bow under and just above water should be bulbous or like a scow, stretched out for maximum hull speed, pointed bows are only good for cutting through waves, not sea… you want to spread the sea, cut the wave. A bulbous (shallow parabolic) keel with some horizontal lifts might also improve hull speed and compensate for the safer rudders as well as the long keel keeping center of gravity as low as possible. Not much fun to flip these like a catamaran, but the attempt at speed like a scow hull is neat, but the bow ruins it.
Just a thought… and thinking about going to sea with something modeled after a glass cube store is rather ‘stupid’ , but the fish will enjoy it soon enough. (I’m channeling my grandmother’s brother, Henry V. Spurr; he designed WWII ships for the Navy, I think the Essex Class, also his 50’ sloop in NYC, had no engine and the bow design was as mentioned.. should get a pix, but it’s in VA. We sailed on the ‘Whisper’ in summers around Edgartown. He designed sails, and loved to pass Stevens on his yawl, and smiled when yelled at, ‘Harry, you got a motor in that boat?’ Years before, in early retirement, he was winning the local cup for the 3rd year, but got a heart attack. He slowed down a bit, but kept driving his 1949 Mercury, faded gray: he liked the wind design. I think he’d like my Prius, ‘Scout’; love to but a mast and small genoa on her, raked back like this Feadship’s stacks might be a good idea. See I can be constructive.
Sometimes it’s important to go with your gut and I do like a lot of the innovation of the stern and aft hull design… might want to watch the weather …really carefully.)
D.L. Hotson ” -
BEC, Physics, Psychophysics, Humor, Chemistry, Mathematics, History
Dirac’s Equation and the Sea of Negative Energy part 2. No, this fella is not a famous physicist, and in part 1, he tells how he was kicked out of his PhD pursuits for asking the wrong questions. Don’t crap on the Standard Model, with all it’s particles, quarks and gluons… all of which don’t seem to have any mass, and there’s no equations for how they behave.. but , but , butt….etc. until ‘BEC excrement’.
Now that’s not to say we should all feel bad, after all, ‘One man’s treasure is another’s trash’, and every new year one usually celebrates with excrement … of yeast …. ethanol from the Grande Region of Champagne.
Paul A. M. Dirac was known as the ‘physicist’s physicist’, yet they trashed his equation for the pursuit of what… yes… those hugely expensive ‘Atom Smashers’, the CERN being the ultimate. And they are searching for those particles, aforementioned. But, smashing particles and expecting to find something ‘whole’, isn’t that kind of silly, or fantastic. Think of ‘Herbie’ and the demolition derby, or any demolition derby, where you hear people in the audience crying…when a Chevy Suburban and a Volkswagon Bug collide…’Wow, doesn’t that look like a Yugo?’ not
Or that Ferrari and Lambourgini on top of each other - ‘Whoopee, mom can I buy that Aston Martin they just made?’
So this maverick, doesn’t believe those fantasies either. And all this talk about ‘creating a ‘black hole’ that would eat the Earth’, that too was a fantasy, constructed to get the ‘reality’ of just smashing shit accepted in the press, so the Billion$ of waste could be perfumed into the Brothels of Academia Physics, or without mixing methaphores, Lavatories of Academia Physics.
And now my meeting the very meek and shy Paul A. M. Dirac at Trinity College that Spring day in 1969, at his lecture about how ‘AB does not equal BA’ which he showed electrons had caused, and he was worried that all the new particles would make mathematics a sham. Obviously, now he was ‘meekly’ showing how absurd all these particles are. And his answer to me, ‘Show it mathematically.’ stands.
Perhaps it is up to the Psychophysicists to show, with the DNA’s triple and double bond logic, the collapsing Micro Tubules, that we don’t need more than the 4 particles that Dirac proposed. That maybe, a photon is the union of an electron and positron… having been stabilized and masses canceling into energy and a point source expanding and refracting and reflecting and focusing because it is freely independent in space…. or something more poetic like that…
I can’t wait for Sheldon on ‘Big Bang Theory’ to weigh in. Yeah, and Leslie Winkle can go back to that bigot Roseanne Barr for comedy.
Damn, the big Guy sure does write a great script, Nicht Wahr? (not the negative balancing the English.)
‘Yeast Excrement at my castle’ (King Fred The Great)
‘Ga’ (Voltaire)
Paul A. M. Dirac grew up in a castle in Southern France, a nobleman, studied engineering in England and then turned to Physics. ’Off with his head’ (Lewis Carroll via the Queen)
Worker injured during sex gets compensation payout | News.com.au
Humor, Human Affairs, Law+Lawless, Horsense
This presents whole new perspective on life within government in the bowels of another socialist state with new rights for those ‘downunder.’
Looking down the road, I’m reminded not to look back: ‘It’s not my asphalt, pillar of salt, or hell.’
Would a resulting pregnancy also be eligible for benefits, emotional trauma of betrayal by this ‘friend’ abandoning me, etc.??? Mercy until they all fall down, with pockets full of posey.
The Origin of Icosahedral Symmetry in Viruses | Virus Research Group
Environment, Design, Medicine, Chemistry, Biology, Science
Bucky Fuller when asked how he came to invent the ‘dome’, he responded ‘Have you ever looked at an orange?’ The point is that nature loves the sphere.
Why? Well the sphere has the maximum volume per surface area. Why is that important? Many reasons: it can protect its volume best; it can move in any direction with same speed; having no sharp edges, it can move thru tight spaces without puncturing or worse getting trapped.
So the virus is such a difficult thing to conquer because it has all these advantages because of its geometry. Certainly, the bias against domes as living structures are unfounded, so I wanted to point out all those great things that are spherical that we love: citrus, balls, eyes, atoms, and Earth.
Buckyballs, micro soccer balls, have been proposed as a radioactive medicine delivery system, so radiation is released, but not the material (yeah, but keeping it out of the sewer system is a bummer). And that also applies to viruses in sewage… just sayin’.
The Cure for Drug Abuse? Changing People’s Memories
Psychophysics, History, Medicine, Science, Art
Or Redemption Using Psychophysics, Microtubules and 2nd Chance at Synaptic Vesicles
Remember the long paper about the Quantum Mechanics, Superstrings, and Micro Tubules… about 68 pages, well it referenced the physical establishment of a memory depends on not one, but a second stimulus that consolidates and might be slightly different, but because of the ‘attractor’ principle, it aligns with the original.
Well, this therapy, certainly lasts longer than a second, yet wait, a movie is a progression of sub-minute images and if they are not repeated but briefly shown, this is enough to activate the ‘channel’, the MT, without summoning all the juices of the grand neurons and forming those connections to auditory, tactile, smell, and visual ecstasis of the drug experience.
I think we need to be informed on what is possible as we listen and are subjected to what others want us to believe. Perhaps an alarm which goes off when something is repeated and reexplained… you all know that salesman rant, smiling and browbeating with the same sound, visually pleasing and helping, showing how positive decisions are made by going to his boss for advice…. traps to our memory, attaching his will to our world…
It’s the political season, now. ’Clockwork Orange’ didn’t work, and neither does ‘everything is wonderful with me’. Make sure you maintain your life and principles.
I was always thinking that ‘Clockwork Orange’ and Stanley Kubrick made the mistake of not conditioning the positive as well as the negative. Now I realize, happily, it’s better than I feared, just a glimpse of the bad, the destruction, and then reestablish the health in humanity with love and understanding. I saw ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, and I think it was the movie that destroyed the husband and wife actors, and was a degenerate movie. Kubrick made only the ‘2001 A Space Odyssey’ which is really worth seeing. We haven’t achieved what was supposed to be even now in 2012, but someday we may understand, not only are we not alone, but the collective attractor will bring us closer together, and help us even if we really screw up.
Stay focused on Science, and unless they can prove otherwise, kindness will always trump cruelty, although we need to understand both, but just not the dominance of cruelty and destruction.
Psychophysics, Science, Humor
Thanks to MRI we can see some views of MT. That’s what I’m talking about. Or did Phyllis Diller just walk in front of the camera?
Images produced with Diffusion spectrum magnetic resonance imaging (DSI) a new tool developed by Van J Wedeen. Here’s an interview, and here’s a slide show.
(via freshphotons)
Physics, History
Is this the result of plasticity of world minds reflected in diminishing size, but increased density of actualizing images of greater speed, but of inverse power?
30 Million Years Counting Synapses One Per Second
Psychophysics, Science, Medicine, Physics, Chemistry, Environment, Humor
I haven’t been so impressed with a psychophysics paper since Dr. Robert Correll’s work on Medial Temporal Lobe learning deficits, and we knew nothing of Micro Tubules (MT) back then, or discussed Freud vs. James.
The spelling however is poorly controlled. In 1995, I think they had spell checkers, but apparently that wasn’t necessary. So to be picky about small stuff stops hier.
Poking around, there are a lot of references to great science in the field, where specialization in science keeps the neuroscientist or psychophysicist (more impressive) either in the dark, or overwhelmed. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by this article, then get defensive because of the bad spelling and reject it all… not a good idea as on page 17: ‘Furthermore, a very useful set of phenomenological rules has been put forward by Hebb [26], the Hebb rules, concerning the underlying mechanism of brain plasticity. According to Hebb, a synapse between neuron 1 and neuron 2 would be strengthened whenever the firing of neuron 1 is followed by the firing of neuron 2, and weakened whenever it is not. A rather suggestive mechanism that sets the ground for the emergence of some form of learning! It seems that brain plasticity is not just an incidental complication, it is a fundamental property of the activity of the brain.’
All this excites me and makes me want to be a Phenomenological Physicist (say that 3 times) and reminds me of when my dad would really like something he would say ‘Bilateral’. And when he didn’t approve of how you were cooperating, he’s say ‘Don’t you get the pitch?’ I began thinking that that involves a ‘Pitcher’ throwing a ball (a signal down an axon) to a ‘Batter’, who either connects or doesn’t. If he does, there’s great excitement; if not…another pitch and that one everyone forgets happened (except the scorekeeper). Not to get caught up in baseball analogies as they really are to me very boring, but more to the point of remembering the work of my dad, a Pediatric Neurologist who studied with Dr. Buchanan at U. of Chicago, and thought to be the 1st recognized specialist.
Dad clung more to Dr. Arnold Gesell of Yale, his professor there whose developmental markers have influenced teaching as well or more than medicine. Why should a child draw a circle and a cross before a square and why does it take almost a 5 year old to draw a triangle? These markers seem regardless of ‘intelligence’. There might be some link with ‘plasticity’ and ‘capacity’ … aka spark.
A family friend, graduated from Stanford in Neuroscience shared with me that the ‘brain is episodic’ which fits well with the ‘fire together, wire together’ aphorism of FAU’s Complex Science school.
A diversion to an example of ‘plasticity’ as reflected in the real world. Yep, dad brought home, or rather had delivered 4 -16x8 foot walls that were torn down somewhere… a big truck pulled up and unloaded them near where they were erected, a peaked sloping roof put over them. There was some foundation put underneath them as well. It was pretty ugly. I was in second grade and had been displaced from my best friend, Chipper Bell and betrothed Leslie Fuller (she had worn a hula skirt to the halloween party; that clinched it).
Back to the barn; soon dad found a small shed, and he placed that about 10 feet away from the other structure, filled in middle and yep, another not so sturdy roof was put on top. I think it snowed a lot that winter, because dad was getting worried about the arching downward of the roofs overhead of those horses boarding and then even his sons who along with him would ‘muck out’ the stalls everyday, removing the wet and poops, and then weekly taking it all out and replacing the straw. (kinda like making your bed and changing sheets weekly… or like me, because I didn’t pee or poop in bed, I really believed vacuuming was all that was necessary… and mom sent me a set of black towels in college … just to say ‘howdy’.)
So back to the barn, well over the winter dad drew up a little plan (and mind you he trembled because that was a kind of engineering which he had been programmed never to participate in by his ‘engineeringphobic’ mother. A superstructure was built with a grand 4/12 pitched roof and was about 36 x30 feet with a hayloft in the ‘attic’ and in the front a overhang which was open to the hayloft for ventilation. There was a perfect place to groom the horses and sit on a straw bale and tell a few yarns… Plasticity really can be applied to and from the real world.
Dad also said ‘Freud is a fraud’, and as for Dr. Spock, who was 2 years ahead of him at Yale Med., you never mentioned him. Spock was also studied psychiatry, and dad thought he didn’t want to solve any problems early… let them fester, so both pediatrics and psychiatry would thrive. Everybody was supposed to ‘do what they wanted’, why bother with breastfeeding or playpens… well there was contaminated infant formula and electric sockets and stairs to fall down… that’s why emergency rooms and hospitals are there …. wheee. Like the proprietor pigs of the straw and wood houses, plasticity was the design triumph.. not a means by which you perfected design.
I can’t say enough about MT. MT is just that too, becoming empty.. and the collapse pushes the synaptic vesicles full or signals the replenishment, but they are tiny and really need a lot of research to see how they connect and filter, and do what they do. Observing that the left brain controls the right side of the body is usually the case, except for a student I once had, a gifted poet excentric, Tim T., whose hiaku ‘I hate weenie wursts, I hate their strong porky taste, They are horrible’ has been passed down in my family. I’m wondering how distance affects artistry; is it when plasticity is easier, that new combinations can occur, but we are protected from too much change by the distance, or does the distance provide more spark, capacity to change… and therefore only large, obvious things change; small things are overlooked in the episodic chain we as Phenomenological Physicists call Leben (life in english), but backwards spells Nebel (fog in english). In english to Live is to be able to change as we view the expanse of possibilities and backwards, just changing the short events becomes eviL.
There’s lots more here.
Humor, Theology
No, not in the eye of the bee holder?
The beard of bees!
