Dec 17, 2007

David Bradley Abbreviated

Posted in Science at 11:30 am by David Bradley

I wrote a rather vainglorious post on my Significant Figures site last week – entitled David Bradley: Killer, Lover, Player Puller, it was basically an excuse to do a bit of personal branding but also highlighted the fact that there are so many other David Bradleys out there, including dozens of professors, photographers, a porn star, actors and tractors, and worst of all at least one lawyer.

One of my virtual friends on StumbleUpon, spostareduro, picked up on this article saying it was a great idea for branding. In an email chat though she asked “Do you know how nifty it is to have initials that stand for Data Base.” Obviously, I was aware of this…it was part of the underlying psychology of morphing Elemental Discoveries into Sciencebase when I registered this website’s domain in 1999. However, it got me thinking about what else my initials (I’ve no middle name so, they’re plain old DB) stood for, so here’s a brief list.

• Data Base – as already mentioned, a database is usually thought of as a structured file containing information accessible with a computer, whether or not I or Sciencebase fit into that definition I couldn’t possibly say.
• dB – decibels – a useful logarithmic unit for power in acoustics, physics, and electronics. An increase of 10 dB represents a ten times increase in power. Normal conversation bubbles along at 60 dB for instance, a rock concert, at 120 dB, is 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 times louder, which might just explain why so many aging rock stars suffer hearing loss.
• db (pronounced dee-bee) – is, according to the Urban Dictionary, the ultimate power word, used for expressing absolutely any emotion at all. Of course, in its inimitable style, the Urban Dictionary also has a whole slew of more offensive definitions, which I am not citing here as a matter of principle.
• In chemistry, my native tongue, DB is both 4-(2,4-dichlorophenoxy)butanoic acid di-n-butyramide.
• Classiest automotive abbreviation has to be Daimler Benz, unless you add a digit and mention the Aston Martin DB9, obviously, maybe when Sciencebase has a few more dB income I could start saving for one.

  

• Sticking with the classy Germans, there is also Deutsche Bahn, the German railway company.
• And by sheer coincidence, or maybe not the next DB is also German – www.db.com – Deutsche Bank, obviously.
• Then there’s DoonesBury, okay, that’s just a D not a DB, but cartoon archives often use “db” to denote the Doonesbury folder. The classic situational scientist episode is a must for anyone struggling with ID and climate change skeptics.
• Db – dubnium, very heavy element.
• If you really want more DB’s than you could shake a stick at…check out the wiki entry for DB

UPDATE: Been messing around with name again and have created a page called David Bradley Actor just for fun.