About a month ago, I passed the road skills test for my Commercial Drivers License (CDL) class A, with tank truck endorsement and no restrictions. At last, I became Great Driver Mitch.
No doubt many of you have been wondering how I came up with that expression for my current profession. Well, once upon a time, in a land far, far away... (OK, it was Japan, but that's a land far from where I am) I think there was a manga (comic) called "Onizuka." I'm having trouble verifying this, but I hear that main character Onizuka Eikichi (family name first) was a member of a biker gang, and had all sorts of wild and crazy adventures.
Whether there was such an ancestral series, or not, there was definitely a manga, and also anime entitled "Great Teacher Onizuka." It seems that Onizuka decided that-- in order to meet girls-- he would become an O-sensei, or 'great teacher.' Dubbing himself Great Teacher Onizuka, or "GTO" (yes, he says the letters of the English abbreviation, despite speaking in Japanese), he goes on to have all sorts of wild and crazy adventures, helping out people along the way (though they usually resist at first). Highly recommended.
At one point early on in the anime, Onizuka believes that he will never get a job as a teacher, and so he becomes a long-haul truck driver. As you may have guessed, he then dubs himself "GDO" (Great Driver Onizuka). Equally naturally, this only lasts until there is a glimmer of hope that he can be a teacher again.
You know-- I've been calling myself Great Driver Mitch for a while now, and I just realized a parallel with Onizuka Eikichi for the first time. I, too, want to be a teacher. True, I don't intend to use that position to meet women, and I want to be a college professor instead of a high school teacher, but still-- the need to share knowledge... it fills me. It is neat. (Bonus points for identifying the source of that quote.)
Popular Science is the only magazine that I subscribe to these days. Conveniently, it has a web site with a generous amount of content.
When I receive a new issue, I eagerly read a good portion of it over the first couple of days, and will often find an in-depth article to be worthy of considerable scrutiny. After I've read most of it, though, the magazine goes on the pile-- though they are often dragged out to revisit some interesting tidbit.
A couple of months ago, I picked up the then-current May issue after a couple of weeks of ignoring it, and began to read an article which had escaped my notice the first time around. The article contended that online auction venue ebay is "the most potent force" in do-it-yourself science. A logical claim, as the author explains how otherwise expensive and/or hard to acquire scientific equipment and chemicals can be had with a little digging on ebay. Specific examples of items and suppliers are given.
A woman in England who supplies me with samples of hafnium, for example: One day I get an e-mail saying she's found a great lump of it lying around the house. The next day I get another saying she's misplaced that one but while searching for it has come across another, even bigger lump. What a fabulous house that must be!
By that point, I was quite certain that I liked the way this person thinks. The wonder of scientific pursuits is captivating to me. Additionally, hafnium has always been one of my favorite elements-- it seemed to be largely unknown and underappreciated, despite possessing interesting and useful properties. What's this, you ask? Finding an underdog among the chemical elements? Well, yes. I finally realized on August 16th or 17th of last year that I have a misplaced sense of egalitarianism.
Anyway, I finally got around to checking who had written such entusiastic words, and it was Theodore Gray, builder of the Periodic Table Table. Ah. That certainly explained the kid-in-a-candy-store attitude toward elements. I then discovered that he has a regular column in Popular Science, entitled "Gray Matter." And to think I had read a few of the previous monthly columns without realizing who had written them... That particular month, it was about using arc melting technology (based on the common arc welder) to melt tungsten, which famously has the highest melting point of any metal. ...and is, of course, therefore one of my very favorite elements.