The Friedmann equation and the expanding universe

Alexander Friedmann of Russia is credited with developing a dynamic equation for the expanding universe in the 1920s. At the same time Einstein, Willem de Sitter of the Netherlands, and Georges Lemaitre of Belgium were also working on equations to model the universe. Friedmann developed his version as a relativistic equation in the framework of general relativity, but the description used here, and (in our theoretical model presented below) applied to the written universe will be limited to a simplified, non-relativistic version based on Newton’s laws.

Convenient forms of Friedmann’s equation with which to examine the expansion time and temperature for a big bang model of the actual universe…

Two recent stories (here and here) from a fellow writing colleague on Medium got me thinking about the question of why exactly it is we care so much about what other’s think about us. In the first piece she described how she could accept and even like authentic jerk versus an inauthentic just about anything writing “Because it requires courage and not giving a shit about what others think or placing so much value on others’ opinions about them.” I responded by mentioning how difficult it is to actually do this, to actually not care about what others thinks about oneself, without being (at least perceived as) a complete asshole about it. …

Author’s note: To protect the privacy of all persons involved, certain key facts have been altered. None of the alterations materially impact the story and any related to the medical facts of the case have been vetted for accuracy in the primary and secondary medical literature.

Among medical professionals gynecologists and urologists are without a doubt the undisputed champions of embarrassing problems that are difficult to talk about, and many times, even more difficult to treat. Historically gynecologists have been the go to resource for women while urologists mostly see men. …

A writing colleague on the site recently published a piece in which she commented on her “lack of sense of humor”. This statement stuck in my head, and for the past few days I have been ruminating on the question trying to determine if such a thing is actually possible. To start let’s just rule out the unusual cases, the medical oddities, brain injuries, etc. No doubt there are certain disease states or brain injury patterns which can result in the total or almost total erasure of the ability find anything funny. Truly that would be a sad fate, and my heart goes out to any such persons that may be alive out there. I intend to restrict my question to the mentally stable, mentally healthy, or at least as mentally stable and healthy as it is possible for anyone to be in these times we live in. The question is for a person of sound mind and body is it possible to lack a sense of humor? I believe the answer is no, it is not possible, and in the following discussion I will attempt to show why this is the case through the method of logical analysis. …

It’s that time of year again when employees all over the world go through the often times painful process of goal setting for the following year. I have written skeptically about employee goal setting in the past but recently reviewed the peer reviewed literature on the topic and wanted to revisit the topic in light of what I learned. If anything I am more skeptical than before about the purported positive impacts of goal setting on employee and business performance. The literature that does exist, and there is a ton of it, is absolutely 90%+ pro goal setting but all of the “studies” are so rife with methodological flaws and inherent/built in biases that their “findings” aren’t worth much more than the paper they are printed on. It is times like these that I am thankful to be an actual scientist, doing actual science, because the so called “scientific” literature on business theory especially as it relates to goal setting is garbage. They do their best to “science” it up with talk of hypotheses tested and lots of statistical analysis of “data” but in the end the “data” are mostly surveys of peoples “feelings” and how those feelings impacted such and such business performance metric. …

As I approach the 4 year mark of my residency here I am very close to hitting 2000 “stories” published. I put stories in quotation because, while my total published content is approaching 2000, the breakdown is skewed not quite 2:1 in favor of responses over articles (1272 responses vs. 692 “published” stories). I put published in quotation marks because all of those 1272 responses were also published, but not in the form of stories which is what the “published” number is referring too. As someone who traffics heavily in the responses (or comments as everybody else besides Medium calls them), and puts a ton of time and thought into them I was always bothered by this dichotomy. Writing is writing is my view, what’s really the difference? Many of my responses were and still are my most popular pieces and generate big traffic (for me) that presumably would translate to revenue. However, when the partner program began Medium for unknown reasons made the choice to exclude responses from the revenue generation scheme. I have tried many times to “monetize” these most popular responses by creating stories out of them, inserting links, etc., but not once that I recall has the associated story done as well as the original response. With the inception of the partner program I slowed my response rate somewhat, but still continued writing them at a fairly regular pace. Each time I did though I worried that perhaps I was “wasting” my time and would be better off trying to pen an original story instead. …

Capital crashers cripple congress, cause carnage, countless catastrophes

Cops cant contain criminals

Conservatives continue calling crooks citizens, celebrate cataclysm

Can’t contain crooked cowards circumventing constitution

Conservative callers continue clapping

Clapping…