Author Archives: Steve Mays
The Emperor’s New Mind
“According to quantum mechanics, any two electrons must necessarily be completely identical. […] This is not merely to say that there is now way of telling the particles apart: the statement is considerably stronger than that. If an electron in a person’s brain were to be exchanged with an electron in a brick, then the state of the system would be exactly the same state as it was before, not merely indistinguishable from it! […] What distinguishes the person from his house is the pattern of how his constituents are arranged, not the individuality of the constituents themselves.”
—The Emperor’s New Mind by Roger Penrose
Apple Card
Handrails
When we built our home in 1986 we decided we did not want railings on the stairs. We liked the clean, open lines of the stairs and figured we were smart enough to avoid falling off. The upstairs is mostly my domain and I go up and down many times every day.
I recently decided it was time for some handrails. Just something to hold on to when going up and down. I reached out (once again) to artist/machinist Andy Cain and he came through.
These will look even better when painted.
Lost gas cap found
This is one of those “I left my phone/coffee/purse/baby on top of my car and drove 10 miles without it falling off” stories.
Couple of months back I forgot to put the gas cap back after filling up the pickup and drove home.
When I discovered it was missing I went back to the convenience store but if anyone found it they hadn’t turned it in. So I purchased a “universal” cap because there was no way to replace the original which had been on the truck since 1977.
Yesterday my neighbor flagged me down and held up a gas cap asking, “Is this yours?” He had been raking gravel from his yard back into the road and discovered my gas cap. It somehow remained balanced on the bed of the truck for five miles of turns and hills and only our steep, bumpy gravel road shook it off.
Powerful forces at work here, friends. I’ll come up with some sort of chain to insure this doesn’t happen again. Minty Fresh is once again perfect.
UPDATE: I replaced earlier image with the one above.