Just finished a house and the owner was really cool. But he believes that Leibniz invented calculus and of course I’m a Newton guy.
Sure Leibniz gave us the standard notation of integration and derivation, but Newton had cooler hair.
It was like trying to get an unger guy to admit ettore is better. It just is…
But I made my hourly even while chatting with the owner. Apparently he was a medical doctor but has and still maintains his membership to IEEE. Pretty cool dude.
I don’t usually get to discuss how electrons can sometimes seem to go backwards in time with customers.
And apparently his interest in chemistry was pretty close to mine: what can I get to explode…
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I don’t know much about calculus, but I’m a “Newtonian” guy, too.
I prefer Newtonian telescopes.
They are reflectors that use a mirror at the bottom, directing light to a secondary mirror at the top,
which aims it to my eyepiece at the side.
So you look down, to look up- if that makes sense.
Refractors use lenses, and you look straight into them, and directly at the sky.
Long and skinny…
What trips me out about Newton and guys like him (Pascal, LaPlace, Leibniz, et al) is that they were wicked smart to look at the universe and basically say “I bet I can map that with math…”
Pascal invented a calculator for his dad at 19 - yeah, 450 years ago. My great achievement at 19 was installing a subwoofer in the back of my toyota to try and pick up chicks.
I’ve met a few of those sorts of guys and I’m just like “derp”. I took a seminar by Howard Johnson who basically wrote The Book on digital design and I learned more in that one week than I did all 4ish years of college. I talked to one guy who had a board shop and he was having a problem with one of his designs and called “Howie” and was told that he usually charges 10,000 per hour, but if he wanted to come by at lunch he’d give him a free hour. So he packed up his crew and went down there and learned more in that hour than his 20 years in the biz. Those guys are spooky.
But yeah, my customer was like “Umm, so if you don’t mind me asking, how did you end up cleaning windows?” They always tip toe around it. I just laughed and said that it feeds my ocd, AND I don’t have to write documentation on how I cleaned your windows. It makes me happy. Getting to talk about quantum mechanics is just a bonus.
However, my eye did start twitching when I saw his “Advanced Engineering Mathematics” book on his shelf. Man, I hated that class.
We were great at installing subs and chasing women because we didn’t HAVE to invent the calculator.
We fed off of what came before us.
Each generation will become lazier/less incentivized than the previous.
it’s just natural progression.
Good or bad? I don’t know…
I had one of my guys honestly think he was “philosophizing” the other day.
Came to the conclusion that since “I” is one letter and that “You” should just be “U.”
I asked what about “Your” and “You’re?”
– no answer.
The 19 years olds right now might change the world someday.
But they still can’t write in cursive.
Honestly, learn your way around the sky.
Not in detail, but learn where you are in respect to the way things move around you.
Simplest ,most helpful thing is to find the North Star and realize that things rotate around it.
The North Star is the top of “The spinning top” and we are about 1/3 the way down the side of that top.
“Cheap scopes” are cheap because of the parts, not so much the scope itself.
meaning, some nice eye piece upgrades can turn your scope into a good one.
Find the planets, they are the most impressive.
I can see the rings on Saturn and the bands on Jupiter with a 4 1/2 inch starter scope.
Don’t expect to see large explosive colors, our eye’s basically see little dots and black and white.
the fun is the explanation behind the dot.
Back to planets… I swear to god, the first time you see the rings of Saturn, you will think it’s fake.
It’s less impressive than you think it would be… but to know that’s out there “right now” really throws you for a loop.
– you will think someone put something there to mess with you.
One of the coolest first experiences in my life, actually.
Yeah it’s a deep rabbit hole… I’m about to start climbing in. From my reading up on things I like the mead 12 inch light bridge but I’m still open to doing more research on the subject of scopes. Got more book work to do… Once I get one a bunch of guys will be glad because I’ll be out there instead of in here… Thanks for the tipskies…
Oh man this thread is great! really bringing out the nerds. Although instead of giant celestial objects I studied the opposite, microscopic ones. A degree in Biology will do that to you. Bacteria, yeast genomes, DNA sequencing…
I’ve never been blessed to look through a great telescope and see the details of planets, but I’ve seen some pretty cool stuff. It doesn’t sound like much, but it feels great to have E. Coli grow a certain color in a petri dish simply because you injected the culture with a strand of RNA that you sequenced yourself. lol
Curtis
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The micro and macro cosms are epic. I think as humans we live at the edge of the event horizon. We live right between the two… T
his skin is the go between
Yeah, I got mad respect for engineers that could put a man on the moon using a sliderule. Much less respect for someone who googles how to do everything.
But at the same time, I’m interested in what a 19 year old kid could do today that no-one’s ever thought of. Social media doesn’t count in my book. Creating mass marketable super capacitors - that’s the ticket. Something that will change the way we’ve always done things.
Then I think, would pascal have invented the calculator if he was checking his facebook wall a million times a day?
Good or bad? I don’t know…
I had one of my guys honestly think he was “philosophizing” the other day.
Came to the conclusion that since “I” is one letter and that “You” should just be “U.”
I asked what about “Your” and “You’re?”
– no answer.
The 19 years olds right now might change the world someday.
But they still can’t write in cursive.
Just try not to think about the “everybody gets a participation trophy” child designing your flight management system on that commercial airline you’re flying on…
I scored four boomin ass speakers off a job for 25 bucks. Two sansui 80’s rockers and two technics… These things can rock my neighbors house 200 yards away.
That’s what I’m talking about. You don’t need so much a hi fi expert as a blacksmith. Those suckers will last forever. I sort of regret selling my vegas, but sheesh they took up a lot of room. They were great in college, but no so much no more.
