I made a math joke

Oh, God, what's become of me.

An email exchange between me and one of the contracting staff:

Me:  Remind [project manager] that typing in the names of the folks up the chain [into the form I'm processing before he sends it to me] makes me think that they’re already seen / approved the [form] which will bite me one day.  And then I’ll be looking for revenge.

Contracts Administrator:  Yes, I’ll remind [project manager] (again) not to fill in names.   I think he is trying to be helpful, sigh.

Me:  Yeah.  Tell him that he’s being (helpful). 

My Civic Duty

By the time I reached the Age of Majority in Maryland I was a tax payer, with a vehicle registered with the MVA, and registered to vote.  In Maryland, one is (or was, at the time I first became eligible) eligible* to serve on a jury once every three years.  Montgomery County is (or was, I should check this**) a one-day or one trial jurisdiction, unless one is chosen for Grand Jury service, which is three months, once a week, usually on Thursdays.  

So my history of being called for jury duty looks like this:

In my 20s:  

-  I got a summons for Jury Duty, showed up at the court house, and found that the only possible trial for that day had just settled, so we were released.  Time spent doing my civic duty:  about 15 minutes.

-  Three years later I got a summons for Jury Duty, showed up at the court house with a bad cold, a box of Kleenex, and cough medicine.  Dozed in a chair until we were released around noon.  Time spent being on site and willing to do my civic duty:  3-ish hours.

-  Three years later I got a summons for July Duty, showed up at the court house, and was part of a group chosen to be interviewed for selection.  It was a robbery case and I had had my purse snatched a few years previously, so I was dismissed. 

In my 30s:

-  Three years later?  No summons.  

And none ever since.

Frankly, I was beginning to wonder what they thought was wrong with me.  I'm pleasant, I know how to dress for a grown up occasion, what?  

So, even though I figured that I would get a bureaucratic run-around, I called the Jury Office for Montgomery County.***  Phone was promptly picked up by an actual person who was delighted to help me.

She looked me up.  And just like Gopher in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, I wasn't in the book.  It seems that Montgomery County thought that I had moved out of their jurisdiction.  I said that, no, I've lived here a long time.****  

And so the nice lady put me back in the system and mailed me an invitation to complete a Juror Questionnaire (Do you live here?  Are you a criminal?  Can you read this questionnaire?  Are you old and possibly demented?).  I've completed the questionnaire and now and waiting to once again join the folks who are entitled to decide the fates of others.  I won't get to stand up and yell  "You're out of order!You're out of order! The whole trial is out of order! They're out of order!"*****

In fact, I won't get to say anything in the courtroom, probably.  But as a big fan of our civil liberties and the documents on which they are based that speak so highly of the right to a trial by a jury of one's peers, I am happy to be given the chance to be one of those peers.

Truly.  The joke is that one's fate is decided by 12 people too dumb to get out of jury duty, but is that really what we want?  

I'll be checking my mail!



*This is one of those times where I agree with the bureaucratic language.  Serving on a jury truly is a privilege and one is "eligible" to receive privileges.  

** I checked. All of these are still the case.  

*** David's reaction when I told him that I outed myself to the Jury Office:  "You *called* the Jury ....  Huh..."

**** So it wasn't me, it was them.

***** Come on.  Al Pacino in And Justice for All, of course.

Useful skills

Me:  So Malinda was telling us that she had to go online to figure out how to tie a noose.*  And I told her that I figured that out one night when I was backstage with some rope and some free time.

David:  Huh.  Well.  I guess I'll sleep better tonight knowing that you don't have any rope in this room.

Me:  Oh, that's okay.  I can use always use the tie to your bathrobe.  Or the drawstring from my pajama bottoms.

David:  .....

*For the gifts from the cast to the director and staff of The Pillowman at Silver Spring Stage.  They gave each of us an adorable stuff hedgehog with a noose around its neck.

How to make my brain bigger

I took a class in finance via Coursera a few months ago.  Why?  Because I thought that learning something about what my boss knows very well and deals with all the time would help me do my job a little better.  And because learning stuff for free on the internet?  Totes awesome!

My class was taught by Gautam Kaul of the University of Michigan.  Yep, I was an "enrolled" student at the University of Michigan for a semester!  And (ahem) Princeton for my world history class.

Here's the course description:  This course is primarily devoted to the fundamental principles of valuation. We will learn and apply the concepts of time value of money and risk to understand the major determinants of value creation. We will use both theory and real world examples to demonstrate how to value any asset. 

I loved that class.  And worked my butt off.  I found myself repeatedly saying something I do not actually ever remember saying while I going to University of Maryland on my father's dime: I'd really love to, but I can't -- I have homework to do.  I skipped fun stuff to do finance problems sets (and later to write history papers); I chose watching videos of Professor Kaul and his electronic whiteboard over watching sit-coms or reading; and I pounded ideas about present value and future value into my head*.

It was really fun (no, really, it was) and it made my brain a little bigger.  There's still lots of room for brain expansion so I'm going to take some more courses.

Introduction to Finance taught me the following:

1.  The world runs on algebra;****

2.  Finance is algebra with dollar signs;

3.  Finance includes statistics;

4.  Statistics for finance is algebra with dollar signs in Greek.

Oh, and ...

5.  Net present value.

All the rest was commentary.


* To wit:  money now is always better than money later; compounding is the strongest force in the universe after duct tape**; and how to calculate payments versus total cost.***  

**Okay, I actually already knew that one.

***Which means that I will never be at the mercy of a salesman's calculations about what something will cost me.  I can figure it out on my own!!

****As a collateral benefit, I now understand Algebra better than when I was actually taking it in high school.  Sort of the way that taking French greatly improved my knowledge of English grammar.

Lucky Wil, Lucky Leta

Wil Wheaton captures pretty much exactly how I feel when I get to work on a good show which happens to me more often than is truly fair.  

I would get out of my car and nearly run in the door for rehearsals for August: Osage County this past spring and I am counting down the hours minutes until I can get back in "the room" for Farragut North.

"And I know I keep saying it, but I’ll say it again: this is awesome. I get to work with people I love making a show that I’m proud of ..."

Not green

I once mentioned that as far as I could tell, red is the only color that doesn't have a pastel partner.  One hears people talk about "pale blue" or "soft yellow" or such, but I've never heard anyone talk about "pastel red" because "pastel red" has it's own identity:  pink.

Sure, in some ways that's more a quirk of language, rather than spectrum, but I dunno.  When you make red darker it looks blacker.  When you make pink look darker, it looks ... bluer.

I was, of course, mocked for this and generally kept down by The Man.  And as I'm neither a lighting designer nor a painter,* I don't have the background to make a better argument, so I let it drop.

But ...

But ...

Thanks to Alice, Facebook, and NPR, this little tidbit has fallen into my lap.

I'm probably still wrong, but somehow I feel --- less wrong.

There is no blue food.  There is no pink light.

*Because colors in light and colors in pigment are two separate things.  The former is additive color and the later is subtractive color.**


**A fact I'll be able to retain until just after I post this, of course.

I like to look

Tess Vigeland* hosts my favorite radio show about personal finance** and over the past couple of years if there is one thing that she has said more than once it's that during volatile times like these we should just throw the investment statements in a drawer, unopened.  "Don't look!"

(Hmmm.  Maybe there should be more exclamation marks in that because Tess always sounds very emphatic when giving this particular piece of advice.)

I respect Tess immensely and enjoy her reporting but I have to say:  I like to look.

In fact, I look every week.  On Monday morning, as a matter of fact.  I've kept a series of Excel spreadsheets (one per year) for the past ten years.  The data?  The balance of my 401(k).  The purpose?  I do better with feedback.  When watching my weight, I get on the scale.  When I was digging my way out of debt, I paid lots of attention to my bank balance and those debts with my lists and graphs and calculations***.  If I could figure out how to as quickly and easily quantify how many lines of dialogue I know versus how many I need to know, I'd do that, too.  And probably learn the darn lines faster.****

I know that sometimes the news will be good and sometimes it will be ... less good ... but locking in losses when the numbers are down remains a poor idea.  So I look.  And I chart.  And I leave my 401(k) alone.  Every few years I rebalance but not during a volatile period.  And I look.  And I chart. And I make jokes about which brand of cat food Pekoe and I will be sharing during my golden years.

Oddly enough, I started doing this charting three months before 9/11 so if you look to the left you can see the  10 percent drop in my balance after that awful day.  It was a scary drop at the time but the balance recovered in a few weeks and compared to 2008 it can't even be seen.  From May of '08 to March of '09 I lost 40 percent of the then current balance.  Right now I'm down 8 percent from just before the whole Debt Deal mess.  But the numbers on the right are still higher than the numbers on the left. Up and down, up and down, but generally up.  Looking has taught me to take the long view.  I'm saving for the future, not for this morning's balance.

As I like to say, if I look out of the window during the winter and see that it is snowing, I don't throw away my summer clothes.  So I look.  And I graph.

I like to look.


*It's pronounced Vigg-land even though it looks like Vie-gland.  Sort of like it's pronounced Lee-tah even though it looks like Lett-uh.  Those who can pronounce us can't spell us and vice versa ...


** Okay, there's not a large sample, I realize.  Not the point. The show is awesome, as is Tess.


*** And lines and circles and a few paragraphs on the back.  


**** When a friend was in labor and said that she wanted to go to the midwife's office to find out how dilated she was because she "needed to know the numbers" it made perfect sense to me.  Of course, if it hadn't made perfect sense to us, then her husband, mother, and I might have recognized this for the class transition phase thinking it actually was.  S'okay.  We got to the hospital with several minutes to spare. What?

How to support engineering

David and I were headed out to dinner last Friday and as we were walking to the Thai place that we like, I noticed a bunch of people with some kind of big display set up on Ellsworth Drive. And because I am inexorably pulled toward bunches of people with big displays* as Pekoe is inexorably pulled towards people wearing colors that have a high contrast to orange cat hair, I veered in toward the people to see what was what.

What it was was the Blair Robot Project***.  My alma mater sponsors Team 449 in the FIRST Robotics Competition and I won't bother to retype all of the "about us" text, but Blair competes prett' near every year and does pretty well prett' near every year. 

I admired the robotics, explained why I couldn't have any of the baked goods they were selling, stuffed a buck in the till, took a picture or two, and asked for some literature. I also gave my business card to the one of the adult mentors and suggested that she e-mail me and ask for a donation. I figured that if I got an e-mail, then they actually wanted the money.  I got the e-mail!

My company is chock full of engineers, so I figured that I could convince my Boss that supporting this kind of thing could help to grow our future employees.  And, not to put too fine a point on it, a whole bunch of the Blair Robot Team are ... female.  Women are underrepresented in science and engineering.  Sort of like wheat products are underrepresented on my shopping list.

Had he been hard to convince, I had a good paragraph from their hand-out at the ready:  "FIRST encourages high-quality work, emphasizes the value of others, and respects individuals.  FIRST and FRC are not just about building better robots or better engineers - they're about about building better individuals and better communities." Alas, I didn't have to quote this high falutin' rhetoric because my Boss agreed right away that our company should make a donation.  The check request awaits his signature. 

So if you wish to support science and engineering, or future women engineers, or cool robot stuff, check out their website:  Blair Robot Project or this one For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST).  If you want to make things super easy on yourself send a check to Montgomery Blair High School, 51 University Blvd E, Silver Spring, MD 20910 (put "Robotics Team" in the memo line). 

And if you want to see why I want to work with these folks after they graduate from college, check out the Quotes page.  Three of my favorites:

"The drive chain is loose? Not my problem. Here, have a wrench. It might not be the right size." Eric Van Albert, in a rather blunt blog post


"Robotics is really preparing us for jobs at NASA. Look. We're past deadline overweight, overbudget, and our [project] doesn't even work!" Ben Shaya


"The harvester almost harvests, the shooter almost shoots, the robot almost drives, and the code almost compiles!"Ben Shaya, in describing the progress made on the robot


*What do I veer away from?  Well-meaning volunteers (or poorly paid staffers) with clipboards who ostensibly wish to "educate"** me about their issue but are really fundraising.  I don't give money to people on the street. 


**In the Leta dictionary (i.e., what I've noticed that people really really seem to mean) "educate" means "hector others into seeing things your way." 


***I think that's the first time that I didn't accidentally type "Blair Robert Project." 

She opened the door. I walked through it.

My friend Patty asked on Facebook:

What proportion of your electricity usage do you think comes from nuclear power? (I was surprised when I saw the figures.)

And I said:

I actually know this one: Annually, about 26%, compared to about 20% for the US. (Ours comes from the Calvert Cliffs facility.) We also use a lot of coal (50% compared to the US 51%). Nuclear power is kinda scary every few decades. Coal ruins our environment every day. Maryland's hydropower component is about 3%. If we lived in Idaho, almost all of our power would come from hydro.

And then I added:

Japan is 11% nuclear and 46% oil, most of which is imported.

And it was actually on my mind because as we all worry about and pray for the people of Japan and the horrors they are experiencing I was wondering how much of their power comes from nuclear and how they would replace it were the plants to be permanently closed for some reason.

And here's the answer from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Analysis of Japan:

Japan has few domestic energy resources and is only 16 percent energy self-sufficient. Japan is the third largest oil consumer in the world behind the United States and China and the third-largest net importer of crude oil. It is the world's largest importer of both liquefied natural gas (LNG) and coal. In light of the country's lack of sufficient domestic hydrocarbon resources, Japanese energy companies have actively pursued participation in upstream oil and natural gas projects overseas and provide engineering, construction, financial, and project management services for energy projects around the world. Japan is one of the major exporters of energy-sector capital equipment and has a strong energy research and development program that is supported by the government, which pursues energy efficiency measures domestically in order to increase the country's energy security and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

On Friday, March 11, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Sendai, Japan, triggering a large tsunami. The earthquake and ensuing damage resulted in a shutdown of 6,800 MW of electric generating capacity at four nuclear power stations that have a total capacity of 12,000 MW (some plants previously offline for maintenance). Other energy infrastructure such as electrical grid, refineries, and gas and oil-fired power plants were also affected by the earthquake. Japan likely will require additional natural gas and oil to provide electricity, however power demand may be dampened at least in the short term as a result of the destruction of homes and businesses. According to some industry estimates, fuel oil and natural gas consumption could increase by up to 238,000 bbl/d and 1.2 Bcf/d*, respectively, depending on the combination of fuel substitution.

Total primary energy consumption in Japan is over 22 quadrillion British thermal units. Oil is the most consumed energy resource in Japan, although its share of total energy consumption has declined from about 80 percent in the 1970s to 46 percent in 2009. Coal continues to account for a significant share of total energy consumption, although natural gas and nuclear power are increasingly important sources. Japan is the third largest consumer of nuclear power in the world, after the United States and France. Hydroelectric power and renewable energy account for a relatively small percentage of total energy consumption in the country.

The analysis contains lots more information, including the good news that Japan has been decreasing their oil consumption due to government emphasis on conservation and efficiency.  Perhaps we should consider doing the same.**


* Barrels per day and Billion cubic feet per day. A barrel is 42 gallons. A cubic foot is still what they told you it was in grade school.

** Want to know lots of cool stuff about our energy sources and uses? Our very own Department of Energy knows all and tells lots.  Especially about renewable energy resources.

The Official AN/SPS-30 Cigarette Lighter

This post from Silver Spring: Then and Again is another one of those areas where elements of my personal history come together.

I live in Silver Spring (or at least moved here as a child) because APL was here. The Navy assigned Dad to APL, possibly as a Tech Rep, so my parents bought a house a couple of miles away. We expected to be here for two to three years. Naturally, I therefore ended up doing all but a few months of my schooling in Montgomery County schools.*  (I'm not sure but I think if I asked Daddy why the Navy assigned him there, he would say that it was to put him in proximity to Crisfields for lunch every day.)

So I grew up in Silver Spring, Daddy worked at APL, and the third leg of this triangle is, of course, that the company I work for now does radar here in Silver Spring, blocks from the old APL site.

Looking at the plaque, I can even understand most of what it says because quite a few of our contracts say much the same thing.  The numbering system for contracts hasn't changed, probably since 1781.

Not that I smoke, but if one of those were to show up at yard sale, I think I'd buy it in a hurry.


*I started kindergarten in at Quidnessett Elementary School in North Kingston, Rhode Island and we moved to Silver Spring in November of that year.  The year that I was 14, I spent six months living with Daddy in Belgium and attended the base school from March to June. Other than those brief lacunae, teachers at Parkside Elementary, Eastern Junior High, and Montgomery Blair High School had the daily struggle of getting me to stop daydreaming or surreptitiously reading.

Lots of Information

I read a book review in the New York Times that I am assuming that David has already read. And I'm kinda assuming that he'll buy the book.*  And after he does, I'd like to borrow it.

Because how can one not want to read a book where the reviewer and the author write, thus, about Ada Lovelace:

Some [colorful digressions] are included just for the sake of introducing the great eccentrics whose seemingly marginal inventions would prove to be prophetic. Like Richard Holmes’s “Age of Wonder” this book invests scientists with big, eccentric personalities. Augusta Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron, may have been spectacularly arrogant about what she called “my immense reasoning faculties,” claiming that her brain was “something more than merely mortal." But her contribution to the writing of algorithms can, in the right geeky circles, be mentioned in the same breath as her father’s contribution to poetry.

And if David doesn't, I'll buy it and he can borrow mine.


* "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" by James Gleik

USA Science & Engineering Festival

I've been asked to play Rachel Carson* at this festival, so I'm pretty excited about it.  Here (slightly edited by me) is the "please come to our festival and bring a future Dr. Sheldon Cooper with you" e-mail that I received today from the organizer via the director who recruited me.

*Actually, I was offered my choice of Rachel Carson; Sally Ride; or Rosalind Franklin. I look more like Dr. Ride than I do Ms. Carson, but, c'mon, Rachel Carson lived in Silver Spring.  It was a foregone conclusion that I would pick Carson.  And it gives me a more pressing reason to read Silent Spring and The Edge of the Sea than "Oh.  I should read those."  

Ever wanted to talk with a Nobel Laureate? Did you know red wine goes well with steak, but also has anti-aging properties? Want to uncover the mysteries of baseball's knuckleball? These and other intriguing questions are answered at the Inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival, the biggest celebration of science the World has ever seen!

Inspired by international science festivals that draw crowds in the hundreds of thousands, the goal is to increase our nation's awareness of science and inspire our nation's youth to consider science-related careers, while uniting our country and showcasing the amazing science and innovation taking place throughout the United States. The Festival descends on Washington, D.C. with events throughout the city for everyone, from the smallest child to the most established scientist; promising to be the ultimate multi-cultural, multi-generational, multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the United States.

Check out a video of the San Diego Science Festival (SM) at http://www.scivee.tv/node/12528

(SM) -- San Diego Science Festival is a registered California Service Mark of Science Spark

USA Science & Engineering Festival | c/o ScienceSpark | PO Box 2141 | Olivenhain | CA | 92024

So why have a Science Festival? Society gets what it celebrates! As a culture, we celebrate movie stars, rock stars and athletes and we generate a lot of them, but we don't celebrate science and engineering.

The Festival is analogous to an art, music or literary Festival but it is focused on Science and Engineering and accomplishes its mission via hands-on demonstrations, fun demos, and presentations including art, music, comedy, film and theater.

The Festival kicks off in just three weeks, offering over 150 FREE events for the public - all geared toward sparking an interest in Science.  Over 750 companies, universities, research labs, federal agencies, professional societies, community groups and science outreach organizations will participate.

You can find out all the details at:  http://www.usasciencefestival.org

The grand finale will be a two day EXPO on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.  (and surrounding venues) on October 23-24, 2010--- over 1,500 fun, hands-on interactive activities and 75 stage shows for all ages. There will be stuff for the mildly curious to the science professional. You can learn about fun topics like the science of the magic of Harry Potter, the mathematics of jump roping, the physics of superheroes, the chemistry of Thanksgiving Dinner, the engineering of baseball bats and balls, the science behind special effects in movies, trends in Global Warming, renewable energy sources of the future .... (This is a completely non-profit, non-commercial, fun and educational initiative.)

You can operate state-of-the-art robots,  laugh with science comedians, be mesmerized by science magicians and mathemagicians, converse with astronauts, Nobel Laureates, science celebrities like Bill Nye the Science Guy and even scientists of the past, fly a fighter jet simulator, enter a virtual reality environment, be a CSI agent, make a virus out of marshmallows and toothpicks, try your hand at using a surgical robot, discover methods of measuring global warming, learn how to transform your car so it can run off a cuisinart etc.

And --- while having fun --- you can leave with information about science scholarships, internships, mentorship programs, jobs and much more.

Many, many thanks and best regards,

Larry Bock

Executive Director

USA Science & Engineering Festival

Clearly, I have been abducted by aliens

Or eaten by bears. Or something.

I saw 4 plays in March. 4. I normally see about 10 plays each month.

Yeah, last March I saw 5 plays, but I was in a show that opened on the 20th, so those last two weekends didn't lend themselves to me seeing other plays. We also had rehearsals most Friday nights and every Sunday.

I was so surprised at that 4 that I looked back over the past year.* Between March 2009 and February 2010, I saw 121 plays:

February 2010 - 8

January - 8

December 2009 - 6

November - 16

October - 9

September - 9

August - 12

July - 9

June - 13

May - 13

April - 13

March 5

*Yes. I keep track of what plays I see. Of course I do.

Veris me facies

"Leta - that's a pretty name. What does it mean?"

"It's Latin for 'joyful'."

And my face is pretty joyful that spring is here.

Veris Leta Facies

from the Carmina Burana by Carl Orff

Veris leta facies
mundo propinatur,
hiemalis acies
victa iam fugatur,
in vestitu vario
Flora principatur,
nemorum dulcisono
que cantu celebratur.

Flore fusus gremio
Phebus novo more
risum dat, hac vario
iam stipate flore.
Zephyrus nectareo
spirans in odore.
Certatim pro bravio
curramus in amore.

Cytharizat cantico
dulcis Philomena,
flore rident vario
prata iam serena,
salit cetus avium
silve per amena,
chorus promit virgin
iam gaudia millena.

The joyful face of spring

turns to the world,

sharp winter

now flees, vanquished;

bedecked in various colours

Flora reigns,

the harmony of the woods

praises her in song.

Ah!

Lying in Flora's lap

Phoebus once more

smiles, now covered

in multi-coloured flowers,

Zephyr breathes nectar-

scented breezes.

Let us rush to compete

for love's prize.

Ah!

In harp-like tones sings

the sweet nightingale,

with many flowers

the joyous meadows are laughing,

a flock of birds rises up

through the pleasant forests,

the chorus of maidens

already promises a thousand joys.

Ah!

Boy, that's handy

I bought an iPod Touch from one of my co-workers and being just a little too cheap to buy expensive apps for it, I have only acquired the free ones. As it turns out, one of them has come in very handy lately. I recommend it highly.

It's called Flashlight and it makes the screen a very bright white (or blue or red or green or black* or any custom color). During The Laramie Project there are long stretches when I am sitting quietly, Stage Left, on the lip of the stage. So if anyone is missing from rehearsal, I read in their parts because ... well, I because I love read parts. So I sit there with the script on my lap and as we are at that point in the process where it goes randomly dark while lighting is being tested or adjusted or set, I keep the iPod Touch with me and use Flashlight to read in the missing lines. It's also helpful when someone needs a little assist on the escape stairs. Definitely handy. I'm glad I have it.

And it's also nice that I have Freecell. Which casts a light, too. I'm just sayin' ...


*I have no idea about the black, but I admit that I am intrigued by the idea of a black flashlight.

Camping ... in Pennsylvania

A couple of years ago, when I was working on Taking Leave, I would have dinner after rehearsals with a friend. We'd chat about this and that and I don't really remember how much of my Markland experience peppered my conversation but apparently enough because one day he said something along the lines of "This camping you mentioned: did it happen ... in Pennsylvania?"

Why, yes. Yes, it did. I used to go to the Pennsic Wars every August and be all medieval surrounded by hundreds of other people being all medieval, too. There was very little that was modern as far as the eye could eye could see. Well, except for the coolers.* And the sunglasses. And the paperback science fiction.

Every Pennsic had its own character but certain things seemed to be a given: There would be at least one torrential rainstorm during the week which would teach excellent lessons about the inadvisability of having one's blankets touching the edge of one's canvas tent and about how efficient a process "wicking" can really be; at least one person would get what everyone else called the Plague but more literal me called a flux,** although thankfully not a bloody flux; and at least one someone would hook-up with one someone else with said hook-up turning out to rather regretable and a fruitful source of mockery in the future.

I haven't been to a Pennsic in years, so imagine of my delight when I found this post on Medieval News.***

Ahhh, good times.


* We used coolers for our food because food poisoning is no fun no matter what century you are currently inhabiting. And it's even less fun when you are a modern person sleeping in a tent and sharing a port-a-potty.

** See the reason for the use of achronistic coolers, supra.

***I should note, however, that even though the "Voice of America" video says that the winner of the Pennsic War receives the title to Pittsburgh, them of us what were there, know that it's the loser who takes possession. See? Even those strangers on Wikipedia agree with that.

Not the conversation she planned to have

On Memorial Day I was attending a cook-out in Falls Church just up the street from the town's Memorial Day Fair. I wandered around the Fair, mainly looking for the friend who was handing out show fliers for All My Sons, figuring that I could give her a hand. I couldn't find Tina, but I was individually intercepted by several members of an environmental group*, who were working the fair in order to fundraise and educate.

They had been well trained and thus got right and my path with a cheery hello and a some kind of "Do you know about [Organization]"-type question. I blew each off with something like "No, but I'm looking for a friend. Maybe later."

Never did find Tina, but I figured that the young environmental volunteers deserved their turn so I went back to the last of the interceptors and we started to talk.

"I didn't find my friend, but you wanted to tell me about [Organization]."

"Yes! We ---" and she actually got a few words into her pitch before I stopped her.

"Actually, I have one question." Pause "What is [Organization]'s position on hydropower?"**

And then we had the big pause as truth battled with telling me what she deduced that I wanted to hear.

She told me slowly and carefully that she, personally, did not have a position on hydropower and wasn't positive what [Organization]'s position was but she did not think that they support it.

We looked at the binder she was carrying which showed pretty pictures of wind farms and solar and no pictures of Eagle buffets.

So instead of her telling me how important it is to save the environment and couldn't I make a contribution today (no, not based on looking at a binder at a fair), she got to hear my Benefits of Hydropower speech.

(Summary: Hydro is clean and renewable. No form of energy is without cost or limitation: wind farms can often have the same effect on birds that Captain Sullenberger's Flight 1549 had on that flock near the Hudson and they can be very noisy, disrupting wildlife reproductive habits; solar works well in areas with lots of sunshine, so Forks, Washington wouldn't get much use from it; geothermal is expensive to build and maintain; nuclear power plants are hideously expensive to build and I'm still not sure about the waste issue; etc ... Hydro has its costs and limitations as well, obviously, but it should be part of the energy mix.)

I told her that I'm in favor of any clean/renewable source of energy, including nuclear power. "Basically, I am in favor of prett' near any energy source that doesn't involve scrapping the tops off of mountains." She liked that sentence. Most people I've said to do, but then I don't have a lot of close friends in the coal industry.

She also seemed to agree with my assessment that "clean coal" - like compassionate conservatism*** and, oh, kindly spouse abuse, tries to twist-tie an otherwise not only unrelated, but actually opposite, attribute onto something unpopular.

Just for good measure I threw in my fun fact about electric cars: They are only as clean as the electricity that powers them, so great if you live in Idaho which is largely hydro-powered and terrible if you live in West Virgina, also known as the Mountaintop Removal State.

I believe I also mentioned that the word "hydropower" has not - to my knowledge - appeared in Time magazine in any context in the past several years, unless they are covering China. Environment + China = bad.

I'm not suggesting damming free-running waterways, just perhaps adding a hydro component to the 90% of Americans dams that don't yet have it. And keeping hydro as part of the menu of alternative energies.

So we left it that I would check [Organization]'s website - and I would if I had been smart enough to write down their name - and she would consider bringing up the concept of hydro with the people who send her out to be lectured by random passers by at Memorial Day Fairs.

I'm glad we had this little talk.

And, for the record, here is Maryland's energy mix for 2007****:

Coal 23,509,862
Petroleum 3,571,272
Hydroelectric Conventional 2,298,910
Natural Gas 1,522,443
Nuclear 1,251,416
Other Gases 488,197
Other Biomass 371,074
Wood and Wood Derived Fuels 149,118

Total 33,162,292

Maryland’s coal-fired power plants typically supply more than one-half of the electricity generation within the State. Nuclear power typically supplies more than one-fourth of generation, and petroleum- and natural gas-fired plants supply much of the remainder. Although Maryland produces a small amount of coal in the West, most of the State’s coal-fired power plants burn coal shipped from West Virginia. The State’s only nuclear plant, the dual-unit Calvert Cliffs facility, supplies all of Maryland’s nuclear power. The Conowingo hydroelectric plant on the Susquehanna River, one of Maryland's largest generation facilities, provides almost all of the State’s hydroelectricity. Approximately one-third of Maryland households use electricity as their main source of energy for home heating.

Coal includes anthracite, bituminous coal, subbituminous coal, lignite, waste coal, and synthetic coal.

Other includes non-biogenic municipal solid waste, batteries, chemicals, hydrogen, pitch, purchased steam, sulfur, tire-derived fuels, and miscellaneous technologies.

Other Biomass includes biogenic municipal solid waste, landfill gas, sludge waste, agricultural byproducts, other biomass solids, other biomass liquids, and other biomass gases (including digester gases and methane).

Other Gases includes blast furnace gas, propane gas, and other manufactured and waste gases derived from fossil fuels.

Petroleum includes distillate fuel oil (all diesel and No. 1, No. 2, and No. 4 fuel oils), residual fuel oil (No. 5 and No. 6 fuel oils and bunker C fuel oil), jet fuel, kerosene, petroleum coke, and waste oil.

Wood and Wood Derived Fuels includes paper pellets, railroad ties, utility poles, wood chips, bark, red liquor, sludge wood, spent sulfite liquor, and black liquor, with other wood waste solids and wood-based liquids.

*And if I remember the name of the group, I'll update this post with it.
**Disclosure statement: I worked for two years for the National Hydropower Association.
***Which is not to say that conservatives are not compassionate. Most of the conservatives I know are kind and generous people. But when the brand has Dick Cheney, Anne Coulter, and Rush Limbaugh as the front people, "compassion" will have to be attached by way of staple-gun.
****Source: The Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy.

Not quite a Turing Test

According to GenderAnalyzer, "We think http://letahall.blogspot.com is written by a man (81%)." Not sure why, since it is pretty largely agreed that I'm a rather girly girl.

They are (it is) more confident about David, having 84% certainty that A Honey of Anklet is written by a man.

To make it more interesting, ofaust.co tells me that I write most like Jules Verne (88%) and control subject David writes a little like Edgar Allen Poe (16%).

The Typeanalyzer's results are just as unlikely, but it has really cool scientific-looking "brain activity" charts. The "brain activity" charts are humorous for at least two reasons: 1) the word "rhythm" is misspelled; and 2) the implication that I have consistent brain activity, which is only true if scanning Facebook for cool new Flair and Stickerz counts as brain activity.

Leta:
ISTP - The Mechanics
The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

David (okay, this one is a little more plausible):
ENTJ - The Executives
The direct and assertive type. They are especially attuned to the big picture and how to get things done. They are talented strategic planners, but might come off as insensitive to others needs and appear arrogant. They like to be where the action is and like making bold and sweeping changes in complex situations.

The Executives are happy when their work let them learn and improve themselves and how things work around them. Not beeing very shy about expressing their ideas and often very outgoing they often make excellent public speakers.



Still, somehow, after all this research I feel more self-aware. Thanks, Internet!


via Hjalti, who is a man, no matter what the internet says.

Operetta Geeks for Obama!

So there I am reading my (as usual) somewhat outdated copy of Time magazine and what should I find in the October 6, 2008 issue? Why, this picture taken in Nobleville, Indiana.

Now, if we ignore the subject of the photo and concentrate on the young lady smiling at her, the alert reader will notice that the young lady's t-shirt has a picture of a (wait for it...) pirate on it and that the particularly alert reader can make out the last syllable of the name of a certain Cornish port made famous in a certain piece of 19th century musical theater.

Frankly, I am a little surprised that Obama's crack campaign staff didn't notice this as well and make a more serious effort to lock in the operetta vote. Sprinking G&S quotes into his speeches, for instance, would have gone a long way in that direction.

This, for instance, springs to mind:

When all night long a chap remains
On sentry-go, to chase monotony
He exercises of his brains,
That is, assuming that he's got any.
Though never nurtured in the lap
Of luxury, yet I admonish you,
I am an intellectual chap,
And think of things that would astonish you.
I often think it's comical--Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive--Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Fal, lal, la!

When in that House M.P.'s divide,
If they've a brain and cerebellum, too,
They've got to leave that brain outside,
And vote just as their leaders tell 'em to.
But then the prospect of a lot
Of dull M. P.'s in close proximity,
All thinking for themselves, is what
No man can face with equanimity.
Then let's rejoice with loud Fal la--Fal la la!
That Nature always does contrive--Fal lal la!
That every boy and every gal
That's born into the world alive
Is either a little Liberal
Or else a little Conservative!
Fal lal la!

Field Trip!

Or "The Humanities Major Infiltrates a Really Cool Government Facility" ...

Every now and then working with engineers pays off. For instance, the other day I got this in my e-mail:

Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2008 7:02 PM
Subject: You are invited by the IEEE/AESS and IEEE/ GRSS to Tour NASA on 9/16/08

Next Meeting: Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 at 10am

Topic: “NASA Technical Tour, Integration and Testing Facilities & Hubble Cleanroom ”

Presenter: NASA, sponsored by the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing and Aerospace Electronics and Systems Societies

Location: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

About the Tour: See how NASA builds, tests, and prepares for satellite missions.

Cost: Free

Naturally, I wrote back and asked to be included because how often does an English/Humanities Major get to tour science geekery on this level? I billed myself (to my bosses anyway) as the "corporate representative" to the tour and e-mailed the following to my friend Tim who is an astrophysicist at Goddard: "By the way, I'll be at Goddard for the IEEE tour on September 16th. No points for guessing who will be the only non-engineer there." and we made a date for lunch.

Finally, I would be going somewhere besides my office where my badge (or as I call it, my geek tag) would be considered fashion-wear.

The tour invitation got such a good response that the organizers had to break it up and do it over three days, so I got moved to September 17th. My goal was to not stand out as the Humanities Major in the room, so this morning I got up all bright and lark-like and selected an outfit from the non-Jane Austen end of my wardrobe spectrum: Black slacks, black v-neck shirt, maroon sweater, and flats. Good for walking around in, not likely to interfere with eqiupment that might cost multiples of my annual salary.

We started the tour in the Visitor's Center and proceeded to the theater where they have the Science on a Sphere (SOS) display. According to the brochure, SOS is not revolting breakfast fare but "a suspended 6-foot diameter sphere that displays 3D animated data of the planets, moons, and our earth. The GSFC production crew has also made the first movie to be seen on the SOS called 'Footprints'." Very, very cool. We got to see - among other things - weather patterns from over the past couple of months (think Gustav and Hanna and Ike*) up to that morning. When the guy behind me misinterpreted the data and said we were looking at "today" before we were I was the one who quietly corrected, "no, that's August." "Oh, so it is." He is a scientist. My cover remained intact.

After the SOS we boarded a couple of shuttles and were taken into GSFC proper and into Building 7/10 & 29.

Ahem:

The Building 7/10 Spacecraft Test and Integration Facility contains cleanrooms for spacecraft integration and special chambers for environmental test of spacecraft. Nine thermal-vacuum chambers, four large vibration platforms("shakers"), and an acoustic test chamber capable of 150 decibels are located in this facility. There is also a full-scale model of the Hubble Space Telescope.

The Building 29 Spacecraft Systems Development and Integration Facility is a 7990 m² facility that contains one of the largest cleanrooms in the world. The High Bay Cleanroom is a 1,161 square metres (12,500 sq ft), class 1,000 (M4.5), horizontal flow cleanroom measuring 30.5 x 38 x 27 meters (100'x125'x89'). Its five 250 horsepower fans are capable of moving 25,388 m³/min (900,000 ft³/min). It has been designed to support the integration and testing of flight hardware and has the capacity to accommodate two full-sized shuttle payloads simultaneously and plays a major role in preparations for the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Missions.

(Thanks, Wikipedia.)

Specifically, the Cleanroom is the largest known Cleanroom in the world. Its 9 stories high, so pretty much everything connected to it just looks freakin' big. I am convinced that I passed a drawer on the tour labeled "Big A$$ Wrenches." (The drawer for sockets, alas, was merely labled "Sockets.") Sort of sums up the experience, right there.

There is a smell common to government facilities. It's not a bad smell, but it is very specific. It's kind of a mix of plastic, metal, and recycled air, with maybe just a soupçon of ozone. I've smelled it when Dad took me on Navy ships and I've smelled it a few other places and it's there at Goddard. Maybe it's the smell of our tax dollars working very hard for us.**

Anyway, we were also taken to see the vibration platforms, the thermal test chambers, and ... the acoustic test chamber. The rule at GSFC is that if there is something that can be tested before an object is shot into space to roam the galaxies at 172kph, they test it. Hence, the acoustic test chamber. Picture loud. Picture the speakers that your most annoying neighbor ever owned. Now picture that speaker being, oh, 10 - 12 feet across. That huge freakin' speaker was quite a few feet overhead and we could only see the back of it and the several feet of business end that was resting on a platform overhead. We walked into the room that leads to the acoustic test chamber, our guide pointed up to the speaker and the group reaction was pretty much "Whoa!" I still tend to think "Whoa!" as I remember it.

Our guide told us that nearby staffers usually find a reason to be out of the building when things are being acoustically tested.

The last stop on our trip was the cyclatron, which a) is huge and b) can spin things up to a rate of 6g. Yep. Six times the gravity of the earth. Humans tend to pass out at 3g. Oddly enough, our guide wouldn't let us ride the cyclatron, but did point out the big mark on the wall from the last time that someone started the device without being 100% positive that everything was completely secured. We all agreed that a good goal was to not be the last signature on the checklist for that event.

As I was leaving the building it began to occur to me that those payloads must find space very restful after all the testing they go through in Greenbelt.

After our tour, I met my college friend Tim for lunch and although I'm sure that the other people enjoyed the tour very much, they didn't get to have lunch with Tim afterwards, so I can only pity them. Tim, who is both wicked smart and a nearly professional story-teller, is a very entertaining lunch companion. With my theater schedule and his two daughters starting their teenage years, we don't see each other nearly often enough.

Goddard hosted "LaunchFest" this past weekend and from what our guide told us, they had a good enough response that they'll do it again, possibly next year. If you get the chance, go. Maybe they'll let you ride the cyclatron...


*No, no, not "Gustav and Walter and Franz." Be serious.

**It is not, as Apocalypse Now teaches us, the smell of victory, as that has a strong napalm aroma.