3 August 25

Today we are celebrating Evelyn's birthday (yesterday). She asked me to wear these pink and purple shiny stripes and diamonds, and she also asked us to have a plate of cheesecakes (in six flavors) for dessert. My own birthday is tomorrow, so we decorated the cheesecake plate with the appropriate numerical candles -- I am TWELVE TIMES Evelyn's age!

20 June 25

Grandson Joel chose pink and purple stripes and diamonds to celebrate his birthday!

4 April 22

The news is out! My newest granddaughter, Dana Rose Alicia Kleppinger, was born yesterday evening. She joins four siblings at Jonathan and Courtney's home! Her father agreed that this pink-and-purple-stripes-and-diamonds tie would be perfect to celebrate today.

23 September 20

 Today's story about my tie strains the limits of rationality and imagination, but that's "par for the course" when it comes to quantum mechanics. Experimental physicist Clifford Shull (1915-2001) was born on this day. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1994 for his research into neutron scattering and neutron diffraction -- basically, how neutrons interact with atoms and with other subatomic particles, where tracking their motion and energies reveals details about events near the limit for existence of ultimately-tiny things. I think the shimmering pink and purple highlights on this tie -- which you can observe best when you see the tie in person -- capture something about our interests in knowing about "what's going on" at levels of dynamic interaction that escape our everyday static observations. And it's a beautiful tie.

 

2 January 19

By wearing this tie today, I am renewing a tradition from 2011 and 2012 for the "first working day of the new year." Jonathan and Courtney gave me this tie for New Year's Day 2011, and today is also their ninth anniversary!

9 October 17

Wearing a shimmery pink and purple tie to help celebrate a bunch of birthdays today: chemist Hermann Emil Fischer (1852-1919), physicist Max von Laue (1879-1960), evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson (1890-1944), Yankees first baseman/outfielder Joe Pepitone (1940-), songwriter John Lennon (1940-1980), and actor Tony Shalhoub (1953-). Fischer won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1902, and Laue won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1914. McPherson founded the Foursquare Church, and her mysterious disappearance for several weeks in 1926 made international news. Pepitone hit 219 home runs, was on several All-Star teams, and recently made news with his claims to have hidden his drugs in the ivy at Wrigley Field. John Lennon wrote and sang some nice songs with George, Paul and Ringo. I know Tony Shalhoub best as TV's "defective detective" Adrian Monk.

20 September 16

This is a day to celebrate events of many stripes and intersections:

• 451 Roman General Flavius Aetius defeats Attila the Hun at The Battle of the Catalaunian Plainsat.
• 1519 Spanish expedition led by Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan sets off on the 1st successful circumnavigation of the globe.
• 1833 Charles Darwin rides horse to Buenos Aires.
• 1859 George Simpson patents electric range.
• 1891 The first gasoline-powered car debuts in Springfield, Massachusetts.
• 1926 Bugs Moran attempts to assassinate Al Capone in a drive-by shooting but fails.
• 1954 1st FORTRAN computer program run.
• 1962 Governor Ross Barnett refuses to admit James Meredith (a black man) to University of Mississippi.
• 1969 The Archies' "Sugar Sugar" hits #1.
• 1973 Billie Jean King beats Bobby Riggs in battle-of-sexes tennis match.
• 1992 Philadelphia Phillies' Mickey Moradini makes an unassisted triple play.
• 2015 Pope Francis meets Fidel Castro in Havana, on the 1st day of his tour of Cuba.

30 July 15

For Father-in-Law's Day, I'm wearing the favorite colors of my wonderful sons' wonderful wives, pink for Courtney and purple for Amanda! (The tie has both wonderful colors -- click to my blog to see the detail.)

19 November 14

For International Men's Day, I'm proving my masculinity by wearing my nice pink/purple tie on a bold purple shirt.

10 July 13

Mallie Jayden Elizabeth Kleppinger was born yesterday! Jonathan and Courtney are the proud and very happy parents. They gave me this tie for New Year's Day 2011, so it's entirely appropriate for this grand baby's first full day "out in the real world."

3 January 12

Since it's happened two years in a row, I guess it's now traditional for me to wear this special tie for the first work day in a new year! Yay for pink (and purple).

27 September 11

GK: "I want to wear this tie, and I'll connect it somehow to the anniversary of the publication of Einstein's equation E = mc² [in 1905]."
BK: "I can see that! The shimmering of that tie pictures the equivalence of mass and energy very nicely!"

My 60-gram tie represents 5.4 x 10¹⁶ Joules of energy, which is slightly more than the explosive power of 10 megatons of TNT.

03 January 11

First day for work in 2011. Yesterday, Courtney (and Jonathan) gave me a "New Year's Tie," explaining that this pink and purple standout was appropriate for my first New Year with two daughters. Amanda has seen it and approves!