Ancient Spookiness 👻

Ancient Spookiness 👻

In Greece, near Athens, there was an old house that always seemed emp­ty. The renters would always move out ear­ly, claim­ing it was haunt­ed. This house was infa­mous for its dark past; neigh­bors even claimed it was spooky. They said they could hear the clank­ing of chains echo­ing through the halls at night. Even brave young influ­encers would vis­it and

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The History of Tribology

The History of Tribology

In 1966, one fas­ci­nat­ing word was pre­sent­ed in a paper in Europe, chang­ing the study of fric­tion and engi­neer­ing. Ah, 1966! What a won­der­ful year! It was the year of the ATM patent, the first year of Med­ic­aid, the year I was born, The Bea­t­les album “Rub­ber Soul” was num­ber one for six weeks, NASA’s Luna 9 became the first

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Euphemia Haynes, Her Math, and Her Fight for Equality

Euphemia Haynes, Her Math, and Her Fight for Equality

A bril­liant math­e­mati­cian once wrote, “For a per­son of intel­li­gence is well equipped to solve the prob­lems of life… we must have some defined aim in life and be able to fill com­pe­tent­ly that posi­tion in which we may find our­selves… let each defeat be a source of a new endeav­or and each vic­to­ry the strength­en­ing of our spir­it of

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Falling Leaves and Helicopters

Falling Leaves and Helicopters

Every now and then, I hear heli­copters over­head. And I joke, liv­ing in Los Ange­les, that heli­copters and sirens are the songs of my peo­ple. I like the sound. It makes me feel safe. Close to my house, there is a hos­pi­tal with a heli­pad. And every now and then, I hear a heli­copter fly­ing into my neigh­bor­hood, get­ting closer

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Abstract Algebra, Swimming and Rummikub

Abstract Algebra, Swimming and Rummikub

My last post was about the life of Évariste Galois and his con­tri­bu­tions to abstract alge­bra. Between that pod­cast and my recent addic­tion to Rum­mikub, this thought process then led me, or dis­tract­ed me, to think­ing about num­ber sets and groups. These math­e­mati­cians have writ­ten about groups, then about swim­ming, and the cur­rent Olympic tri­als for swim­ming, which then con­ve­nient­ly led me back to abstract alge­bra, which was the top­ic of my last post on Evariste Galois. My brain went full circle!

The History of Calculators

The History of Calculators

The year was 1983 and I was tak­ing the Scholas­tic Apti­tude Test, the SAT! It was spring­time in Den­ver, Col­orado, which meant it was snow­ing, as it usu­al­ly does until about June. I was prob­a­bly dressed in sweat­pants and leg warm­ers because, you know, the 80s. I remem­ber look­ing for­ward to the SAT test because I had been study­ing hard

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