A few cranes have returned to the pond near our house. I’ll post pictures of them when I get a good one. In the meantime, here’s a picture from Mattias Adolffson.
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Happy Mother's Day!
Speaking of famous women, a common lament in the science community is that the question “who is your favorite female scientist?” is usually answered with “Marie Curie”. Was that your response? I have a different one. Among my favorite female scientists is a computer science instructor I had at MSU named Helen Spence. She was programming computers in the 1940’s, and teaching Physics and Computer Science at MSU starting in the 1950’s. She retired shortly after the second of two classes I took from her – the first was CPS311, where we learned two languages: C, and a Motorola chip’s assembly language. The second class was a continuation of that class, in which we dived into the details of the PDP-11 machine language.
Her ability to plainly explain the topics, and her no-nonsense approach to exercises and exams, made her one of my favorite instructors/professors of my college years.
Mrs. Spence passed away last year.
On this site, there are sound files that capture a series of interviews with her. . I haven’t been able to get to all of them yet, but I like the MSU project that produced these recordings.
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A Jacquard loom at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, MI.
Speaking of female scientists (and engineers), I’m reading a biography of Ada Lovelace, a friend and collaborator of Charles Babbage, who invented (but wasn’t able to build) a computer that was run by perforated cards, which we would now refer to as “punch cards”. It was based on the input cards that drove the Jacquard Loom.
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Spring Happenings
Now that spring and summer have both arrived, basically at the same time, the boys’ activities have moved outside. M is back playing with the Ultimate Frisbee team (he did play some cold games, though), and K is playing outdoor tennis, after having been inside all winter. K tried out a few different new racquets at his last practice – as kids get older, they sometimes need to get a new racquet that’s heavier and helps them produce more power. K’s current racquet is very light, and won’t work well for most older teens or adults.
Since I’m now one of the people in charge of making sure the Science Olympiad runs like a clock, I have been occupied with formatting schedules, drawing maps, and staying in close contact with the others who are responsible for other parts of the tournament. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it. May 30 is the big day.
Links
You might find this site useful: if you want to make a poster out of an image or document you’ve created, you upload it to their website. You tell it how wide you want it to be, and it creates a PDF file that contains pages you print at home. Then you tape them all together and you have a poster. h
You probably knew there were some WWII Japanese subs that actually carried airplanes with them, and the planes could be launched into the air from the sub itself.
Christmas is only 7 months away. Maybe you should buy me one of these lockpicking practice sets now, just in case.
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Happy Mother’s Day! And safe travels to Mom and Mary! Take lots of pictures!
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