Saturday, December 20, 2008

Age


  • Signs I'm getting old:

    • As the Community College Dean points out, "I lost the ability to do circular rides without bad side effects somewhere around thirty," though for me it occurred later.
    • I'm usually the last to get cold, and slippers were just for getting the paper in the morning. Now, on cold days, I look for slippers to keep my feet warm.
    • There are more, but I can't remember (a sign unto itself!).

  • Quantum, in modern, common usage, tries to sound like science and therefore should bare some resemblance to its usage by physicists. With that said, it should therefore connote a discrete quantity. But more than that because otherwise you could just use the word discrete. So what it really should connote is a quantity of something that would normally be thought continuous, and therefore it has to be a terribly small, discrete quantity. In that sense, most common usage is just plain wrong. Of course, I still used the term nuke to cook something in a microwave oven (which is far from nuclear both in size/wavelength and the fact that we're not bombarding the food with any nucleons!).
  • Have you heard who won Survivor: Gabon? What skills would the oldest Survivor winner have to possess to win? Oh, I don't know, maybe just intimate knowledge of physics, that's all.

No comments: