Family Matters

I love talking to my Dad sometimes. He has these moods where he is a very calm, well thought-out human with a neat outlook on life and he appreciates a lot of the minutiae that existence offers, and I think that he imparted a strong sense of that in me when I was young. Definitely thankful.

Two days ago I was forced, painfully, to remember an old adage my grandfather (Papaw) has often said: "You must be smarter than the machinery you intend to operate." I was using the high-powered stapler at the Cyclotron -- the one that's capable of stapling a sheaf 100 pages thick -- when it decided to jam up. Oh me, oh my, clever engineer boy to the rescue. So I started fiddling around with the ejector and I had one finger still under it, and I guess I loosened up whatever was jamming it with the surprise result that all the pent up, frustrated forces had now jammed a huge staple straight into the side of my index finger and right out the other side. My friend standing next to me at the copier just looked at it and asked, "Are you fucking serious?" It looked so damn bizarre, but I pulled the staple out and I guess it's okay now. I'll see you guys in a week or so with lockjaw.

The Turing (2,3) machine is universal. That's pretty neat, but it also still blows my mind. Also, did you know that a topological 2-sphere is evertible? (You can turn it inside out). The same doesn't hold true for a 1-sphere (topological circle). Watch this video:

Turning a Sphere Inside Out

:)