David Nightingale

David Nightingale: 50 Shades of Grey

David Nightingale — Thu, 02 May 2013 20:03:23 +0000

The 500 pp book “50 Shades of Grey”, by E.L.James – a pseudonym for the 50 yr old writer Erika Mitchell[ref.2] (who lives in London with her husband and two sons) -- has been variously slanged by critics. Despite these criticisms the book and its 2 sequels have been selling (last year) like wildfire, with the majority of the readers being women. So somehow, worldwide, there is a deep need.

David Nightingale: Flight 447 (found)

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:12:29 +0000

They've released [ref.1] the final report for the disappearance of Flight 447, a 200 ton Airbus which disappeared in June 2009 on its way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. About 4 hours into the flight, somewhere over the Atlantic, in night-time stormy weather, contact with the airliner was completely lost.

David Nightingale: Tom Lehrer (4/9/1928 - )

Thu, 28 Mar 2013 17:13:02 +0000

There've been musicians like astronomer Herschel, and there've been chemists like Borodin – but all my life a favorite mathematician has been Tom Lehrer, whose songs began to come out when he was a graduate student in the '50s.

David Nightingale: College Degrees

David Nightingale — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 17:56:48 +0000

How important is a college degree? It's an age-old question, and it's related to unequal pay, useful work in a society, and many other factors.

David Nightingale: Asteroid DA14

David Nightingale — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 18:20:38 +0000

The asteroid “DA14”, which will hurtle past us sometime after lunch today, was discovered by Spanish observers last year.

Our highest satellites, used for GPS, are just over 22,000 miles up, and DA14 will pass underneath that level – coming about 17,000 miles from us. Fortunately, NASA assures us we are safe.

David Nightingale - Oliver Heaviside (1850-1925)

David Nightingale — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 15:06:05 +0000

Oliver Heaviside received not much more than a middle school education, leaving school at 16 -- yet became one of the most famous mathematical physicists of his time [ref.1.].

David Nightingale - Felix Baumgartner's Jump

Fri, 02 Nov 2012 18:44:16 +0000

Anyone who's jumped off a haystack or played on a trampoline, knows the pleasurable feeling of weightlessness, wherein there are, for a fleeting moment, no more sagging body parts.

Felix Baumgartner, a 43-year old Austrian military parachutist, intentionally jumped from a capsule 24 miles up, on Oct 14, thus certainly knowing weightlessness for a decent amount of time. And what a fascinating lot of physics the man who fell from space experienced!

David Nightingale: Dominique Francois Jean Arago (1786 - 1853)

David Nightingale — Thu, 27 Sep 2012 19:34:21 +0000

And who was the 25^th President of France?

Well, I guess this is information for TV's “Jeopardy”, but it was the physicist Dominique Francois Jean Arago, born 50 years after the birth of another statesman/scientist – Ben Franklin.[Ref.1].

Some may remember from high school a demonstration called “Arago's disk”, wherein a copper or aluminum disc is spun underneath an ordinary compass, and the compass needle begins to swing round also. This is just one of the many experiments Arago did.

Listener Comment Line - Week of September 17, 2012

Fri, 21 Sep 2012 20:06:25 +0000

You had a lot to say on the WAMC listener comment line this week on everything from Joe Donohue's interview with Jesse Ventura, Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney's '47 %' remarks, and several of our WAMC commentators. Segments of these comments ran Friday Sept. 21 on Midday Magazine and Northeast Report.

David Nightingale: 2 Hospitals

David Nightingale — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 16:40:02 +0000

In the 19^th century, Joseph Henry, first director of the Smithsonian, refused any salary increases, saying that public servants were there to serve, rather than to enrich themselves.

Now, there are two hospitals in Kingston NY – the Benedictine Hospital, a Catholic hospital (founded on its present site in 1906), and the non-sectarian Kingston hospital (founded in 1894), institutions in which, over the years, my family and I have had sundry procedures, such as appendix, hernias, and so on.