by tape_measure on 2/26/21, 5:19 AM with 3 comments
by aaron695 on 2/26/21, 11:24 AM
Andy Odell’s name is synonymous with non-radial oscillations in stars and protoplanets. While a grad student at the University of Wisconsin, he noticed the sorry state of the nation’s railroad system. Decades of neglect had left Wisconsin crisscrossed with abandoned train tracks. With a scruffy red beard, scruffy blue jeans, and scruffy black sneakers, Andy set out to capitalize on this situation.
Working late nights in the astronomy department’s workshop, he liberated an eight-foot sheet of plywood, four rubber wagon-wheels, a couple of four-and-a-half-foot axles, and a lawn-mower engine.
Andy built a go-cart for railroad tracks.
“You gotta make the tires out of rubber,” Andy explains. “Otherwise, they’ll conduct electricity and you’ll set off the lights along the way.”
Grinning like fools, Andy and his companion coasted into town around eleven on a Saturday night. Doing ten miles an hour, they got most of the way through town, past streets named Lucy, Minerva, Harriet, Ann, Alice, and Louisa. It was someplace around the last three streets that they looked up to notice a police car ambling alongside.
Silicon snake oil : second thoughts on the information highway by Stoll, Clifford https://archive.org/details/siliconsnakeoils0000stol_c3s4/pa...
by legerdemain on 2/26/21, 6:34 AM
by bluepoint on 2/26/21, 9:07 AM