Author: Frank

Imagine this hypothetical, you and I make plans to play tennis.  Initially, we meet at your home and we travel to a tennis court.  I have a bag slung over my shoulder and carry a tennis racquet in my hand.  We get along well but haven’t seen each other for months.  As we walk towards the tennis courts and pass many people, I reach back with my racquet smack someone squarely on the face and continue walking as if nothing occurred.  This stuns you.  You are shocked; you know me to be a reasonable person.  This is not anything you can comprehend.  I still have the racquet in my hand, so you’re reluctant to say anything.  We continue walking.

As we make our way to the courts, we pass many more people.  However, you’re still in stunned by the event that transpired.  As your mind is racing and contemplating what you should do, I again reach back and this time I strike someone squarely on the knee.  They collapse on the ground and cower in fear.  You are still in shock and continue to walk but put more distance between us.  This continues.

Continue reading “Establishing hate crime by probability” →

This is an embarrassing story, but I’ll tell it for two reasons.  First, one of my aspirations when writing this blog is to be honest, even if that doesn’t necessarily paint me in a good light.  Second, it illustrates a subtle point that many of us don’t think about much but is important to mention.

Few years ago, I wandered down to the cafeteria to get lunch like most afternoons.  Our cafeteria is in a cluster of four buildings, serves hundreds of people, and has many different stations.  I came down right around noon, so it was busy.  As I stood in one line to get my food, my mind wandered, and I people watched.  I took note of a young woman several feet in front of me on the next station; she was facing away.  She was sharply dressed and had long flowing hair.  For a brief moment, I thought to myself, “She’s cute.  I wonder what she looks like.”

Continue reading “Is this chrysoprase or seafoam?” →

This is probably not a great surprise to many of you, but I thoroughly enjoy watching MythBusters.  In many ways, it is a test engineer’s dream.  You start with a premise, in our case the myth, and then you go through different means to try to either prove or disprove that myth.  One of my favorite episodes is the one where they blow up a cement truck with a shocking, at least to me, outcome; I heard it’s one of the most popular clips.

The element that I find equally appealing about watching the show is the meticulous way by which they describe each scenario and what kinds of approaches they have to each problem.  Some inevitably fail, as you might expect.  Every great once in a while, they encounter an unexpected condition for which they did not account.  The vast majority of the time, their approaches are meticulously well thought out.

Continue reading “The sheer joy of blowing things up” →

Many mornings we have strawberries for breakfast.  I wash them for both of us and slice them.  One morning I came upon a moldy strawberry.  This, in and of itself, is not that uncommon.  Naturally, I try to minimize the instances of  this happening to our strawberries because I hate to be wasteful.  I blame myself; this should not have happened.  That is, I either picked ones that were moldy (or close to it) or waited too long to eat them.  I curse and toss it in the compostable bin.

Continue reading “What if there’s more to mold?” →

I started watching The Walking Dead a number of years ago.  Without giving away too much of the plot, it is a television series about the zombie apocalypse; it’s certainly an interesting genre.  I got emotionally vested in the characters, so I continued to watch.  Being an engineer, I elect to selectively forget and give artistic license to how zombies continue to move even if they don’t necessarily fuel up, as in consume ‘food’, though I still have the ‘conservation of energy’ voice screaming in my head.

Apart from that, another element that tickles my fancy is the engineering logistics to surviving.  This part of it is not unique to the zombie apocalypse, but also applies to apocalypse in general.  You’ll often see elements of this if you were to watch doomsday prepper shows.  I have a friend who has aptly labeled TWD as ‘misery porn’.

Continue reading “Safety and the zombie apocalypse” →

This is a puzzle that I first heard in high school; it was during a summer program in the mid 1980’s.  It goes like this:

A man drives in a car with his son; they tragically get into a car accident. The father dies at the scene; the son, badly injured, is taken into the local hospital by the ambulance.

At the hospital, the doctor examines the patient and says, “I can’t operate on this boy; he’s my son.”

Now, explain how this is possible.  I’ll allow you to ponder on that one for a few minutes. Continue reading “To be or not to be American” →

As I sat in my high school Anatomy & Physiology class, I distinctly remember our teacher, Mrs. Nesselroth telling us that it was the absence of brain waves that is the definitive threshold to death.  That is the point of no return.

We bombarded her with questions of ‘heart stopping’ and the like, but there have been instances of coming back from those.  The one definitive line is the absence of brain waves.  It’s now literally decades later and I still remember that lesson.

Did I mention that in high school I entertained the idea of becoming a doctor?

Continue reading “Life as we know it” →

I remember first hearing the story of The Tortoise and the Hare when I was a young child.  I think I heard it in English so it would’ve been when I was around ten.  I was in a bilingual classroom, and there were kids from first to fifth grade, so I had to tolerate many activities aimed for younger kids.

I remember the tale pretty distinctly.  I imagine that different people may interpret it differently, and that’s their right; there are many discussions about the interpretation of this story.  For me, it served as a cautionary tale.  It speaks to what happens when you have such great potential, but you’re lackadaisical about your ability and squander it.

Continue reading “The cautionary tale of ‘The Tortoise and the Hare’” →

I have been told many times that my memory is exceptional.  I’m not saying this to brag; it’s just what I’ve been told.  I’ve described it in the past as a figurative landfill of information, but that gives the impression that it’s all useless.

Lately I’ve come up with a better analogy.  My memory is much like a vast collection of Lego bricks.  Individually, each piece may not necessarily form a particular shape that is immediately coherent, but given enough of them and arranged in the right ways, it starts to show detail and convey and idea.

Continue reading “What are our rules about driving?” →

Being multi-cultural and generally left-brained, there are some ideas that crystalize in my mind that may never cross most people’s minds.  Humans are social animals and there are standards by which we conduct ourselves; if we didn’t what we think of as civilized society would collapse.  “Thou shalt not kill” is generally one that we accept.  Naturally, there are others.  For the purposes of this discussion, I’m referring to the rules here in the United States, I don’t pretend to know the nuances in other countries.

Continue reading “I Do. Repeat.” →