I do SO know where she's coming from! And for this mathematician (by inclination if not training) would you explain the difference between race and ethnicity, please?

Dave,

What a great watch. Fortunately, my birthday is coming up and I sent the link to my wife, Shelly. I'm sure she share's your daughter's views, as I share yours.

As a motivational gift, I sometimes send an exquisite little Sterling Engine, made by the American Sterling Engine Company, but mysteriously most easily purchased in England. The inventor was disturbed by his parishioners being blown up by classical steam engines in the mine, so he put his enlightenment mind to work and made an engine that runs on differences in temperature and does not contain a boiler.

http://www.stirlingengine.com/ecommerce/product.tcl?product_id=78/

Friction made it impractical then, but they are now to power the largest solar plant in the US.

Even more interesting, a guy in my neighborhood (with dual degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering) just invented a solid state electrical cell that converts temperature differences into electricity. He quit NASA and JPL after he invented the super soaker squirt gun, over $1 billion worth have been sold. He used his royalties to set us his own lab in a loft in Atlanta. Still obsessed with squirt guns, he meets weekly with his staff for a shoot out with the latest prototypes. I must meet him.

It feels great to live in an Enlightenment.

LOL. Dave, I would have said the very same thing, and with a roll of the eyes too.

Incidentally, I was just salivating over a Jorg Gray JG6500 chronograph myself, so I can't say too much eh.

I hope I'll get to have a look at this interesting timepiece.

33 years ago, while a student at Lancaster, I bought what was then a new-fangled state-of-the-art LED diode watch (cost me £50). To see the time and date in glowing red digits (very pretty in the dark), one had to press a little button on the side. I vividly remember showing off this purchase to various friends. One Dave Snowden commented witheringly: 'ah, but you have to use two hands to see the time! What if you want to sneak a look at the time while shaking hands with someone? You'd be stumped' (or words to that effect). Well, Dave, I guess it's OK to change one's mind over something like this in 33 years. But you can at least use this anecdote to tell your daughter that your admiration for technical gadgetry might not be entirely gender-inflected! Cheers. Chris

2:37? I *think* I get it.

I am fascinated by the subject of your conversation with your daughter, though! This is a topic that interests me deeply... perhaps because I am a white African, a classification which does not occur anywhere on the forms we have to fill in about these matters. As for my kids, with one European parent and one African parent, both white... let's not even *go* there!

You should really introduce your daughter to Mark Oehlert, this is one of his hot buttons, too.