A Bit of My History

Some decades ago the Army gathered an elite band of scientists and mathematicians in the mountains of the southwestern desert to work on crucial problems of national defense, and I was a cog in that machine.

Oops, I was having a Brian Williams moment there - let me rephrase that slightly.

Some decades ago, the Army gathered a ragtag band of soldiers determined to be unfit for combat by reason of degrees in math, physics, or engineering in those mountains of the southwestern desert to work on stuff some of which might turn out to be useful. No, this wasn't Los Alamos - those guys really were geniuses - but the program that enrolled us had originated at Los Alamos. We were the S&Es, the Science and Engineering assistants, draftee enlisted men whose role was to work with the civil servants manning various Army laboratories.

Our roles were diverse and often vague, ranging from programming and systems development to lining ditches with rocks - the general's wife thought they looked ugly - of course the rocks all washed away in the first rainstorm. My initial job was listening to the lifestory of a civilian engineer who recounted it daily - until a kindly Captain with a PhD in Chemistry took pity on me and gave me some mathematical calculations that nobody else was willing (or maybe able) to do.

At least, I thought, it beat the hell out of slogging through the jungles of southeast Asia and getting shot.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more