[John Dracon]

Never thought this birding website would have such a gathering of pedants! (subject understood) The difference between a synthetic language (Latin) and an analytic language (English) explains why one is dead and the other alive.

John

[brocknroller]

Originally Posted by ceasar

My son took 4 years of Latin and 2 years of Spanish in High School and won the Language award and got a silver medal in a state Latin competition his senior year. He took a year of German in college and wanted to take more but couldn't fit it into his schedule. He was a Physics major. He has a teaching fellowship in Physics now and is well on the way to his PhD.

His research interests are: Metamaterials, Tetrahertz Time-Domain Spectroscopy and Ultrafast Optics. I think that stuff is written in English! It has something to do with the optical and electromagnetic responses of metamaterials.

It's all greek to me!

Bob

I originally planned to major in Astrophysics at college, but after struggling to get a "C" in pre-Calculus, I switched my major to Metaphysics. I was thrown out of NYU for cheating on my Metaphysics final, because the teacher caught me looking into the soul of the student sitting next to me.

Your son is a true Renaissance Man. Don't find much of that anymore in these days of specialties and subspecialties. His Latin background would have been more useful if he had majored in Biology since species are named in Latin such as Homo technologicus.

If he's interested in Ultrafast Optics, he should study Steiner porros, I think that's why they are so fraught with aberrations.

If he could discover ways to correct aberrations in "ultrafast" optics, perhaps they could be applied to fast optics, and we could have our cake an eat it too by having compact bins but without the usual tradeoffs, and then Henry wouldn't have to carry around those heavy 8x56 FLs all day long.

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[ceasar]

Originally Posted by brocknroller

I originally planned to major in Astrophysics at college, but after struggling to get a "C" in pre-Calculus, I switched my major to Metaphysics. I was thrown out of NYU for cheating on my Metaphysics final, because the teacher caught me looking into the soul of the student sitting next to me.

Your son is a true Renaissance Man. Don't find much of that anymore in these days of specialties and subspecialties. His Latin background would have been more useful if he had majored in Biology since species are named in Latin such as Homo technologicus.

If he's interested in Ultrafast Optics, he should study Steiner porros, I think that's why they are so fraught with aberrations.

If he could discover ways to correct aberrations in "ultrafast" optics, perhaps they could be applied to fast optics, and we could have our cake an eat it too by having compact bins but without the usual tradeoffs, and then Henry wouldn't have to carry around those heavy 8x56 FLs all day long.

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I will pass your good words on to him. He will enjoy your joke about cheating on the Metaphysics final!

As near as I understand it, from what he tells me, ultrafast optics are used soley in laser research.

Bob

[normjackson]

Originally Posted by ceasar

He will enjoy your joke about cheating on the Metaphysics final!
Bob

Get him some more Woody Allen. Remember enjoying "Getting Even" at college.

[brocknroller]

Originally Posted by normjackson

Get him some more Woody Allen. Remember enjoying "Getting Even" at college.

As Norm implied, that was Woody's joke, I just tweaked it.

I don't know if I ever mentioned that I met Woody Allen and played air hockey with him. He was filming a scene from "Broadway Danny Rose" in the $1.5 million recreation center at the company I worked for as communications supervisor in NJ at the time. I was asked to cover the event. Woody's publicist made me swear that I would not reveal anything about the plot of the movie. Woody thought it jinxes the movie if word gets out in advance.

We had to wait an extra hour for him to arrive, because he was downtown in Manhattan, and he's phobic about going through the tunnels so they had to fight traffic and go up town to the GW Bridge. Our company's main office was located closer to the tunnels.

The scene in the movie is where Woody, who plays a talent manager, is trying to get one of his talents, a lounge singer named Nick Apollo, into shape.

Amazingly, a few months later, I took a car trip to the company's Meriden, CT office with the safety dept. manager. He who smoked anise-flavored cigars all the way up there, I had to stick my head out the window. Ugh. Cigarman and I went for a drink in the lounge of the hotel where we were staying overnight, and lo and behold, who's playing in the lounge? Nick Apollo. He really was a lounge singer. I thought he was an actor playing a lounge singer. Clever Woody.

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[jaymoynihan]

Originally Posted by brocknroller

I was thrown out of NYU for cheating on my Metaphysics final, because the teacher caught me looking into the soul of the student sitting next to me.

Ah, another Woody Allen fan. That one is from his stand up days.