An Underwhelming Food Blog

Alles Gute hat ein Ende

2010-08-03T21:18:00.000-05:00

This marvelously-witty-satire-turned-food-blog project was a team effort. Unfortunately said team is no more. Hence said project is no more as well.

Safe journey, space fans, wherever you are.

Pictures of sexy cupcake pies and dogs and crêpes

2010-01-29T21:19:00.000-06:00

We made these cupcakes except we adapted them to fit the ingredients at hand -- Kahlua and coffee liquor instead of bourbon, and hazelnuts instead of walnuts. The pie crust Leah made from scratch! We ended up with a spare cake. How awesome is that?!

Here is what goes in the cupcake pies. Those are chopped hazelnuts with mini semi-sweet chocolate chips.

The cake batter was a vanilla cake mix, but we added coffee liquor (we only had enough Kahlua for the ganache) instead of the Kentucky bourbon the recipe called for. What's better than hazelnuts and coffee flavor??

We used a bag with the corner cut off to pipe the ganache onto the cupcake-pies.

There wasn't enough room in the cupcakes for all of the cake batter, so we used the extra to make a small cake:

We also made crêpes with salami, provolone, tomatoes, onions, and a little bit of oregano and basil. This was Leah's first time making crêpes and only the first one fell apart!

We didn't eat the dogs.

And yes, Leah does in fact own a pet gargoyle.

Macaroni, and the best roast beef I've ever tasted

2010-01-16T21:24:00.004-06:00

Come back with me to 4 Jan 2010 for a moment. What were you doing that day? I remember exactly what I was doing: eating some fan-freaking-tastic macaroni:

Now jump forward to 15 Jan 2010 (yesterday). What were you doing then? I was gorging myself on the most mind-bendingly delicious roast beef I've ever eaten, courtesy of your friend and mine, Leah Morabito:

We made Outback Steakhouse-esque green beans again, and this time with half the brown sugar. Delicious! Still not quite OS caliber, but pretty darned close.

A new direction!

2010-01-10T19:29:00.007-06:00

Since I don't have anything terribly interesting to contribute in terms of witty and original social commentary anymore, I decided to take this incredibly popular blog in a new direction: food! Pretty much all I do anymore is make food (with Leah) and study physics (also with Leah). And sleep occasionally. So here are some interesting things we've made recently. Yesterday was a lamb flank from Central Market, which Leah marinated with olive oil, minced garlic, coarse ground pepper and I think an Italian seasoning. We also had orzo with lemon juice and some lemon zest (too much, perhaps), and also my feeble attempt at Outback Steakhouse-style green beans. (Next time I will use probably half the amount of brown sugar that recipe calls for.)

And since I don't have a vegetable steamer, we built one that sort of looks like a spaceship:

First semester of graduate school is done!

2009-12-24T19:38:00.002-06:00

Tons of work, but definitely worth it! I'm taking the electromagnetism and astronomy qualifying exams in January. If I pass them both then there are only two left, and then I can focus on research for the next 5 years! Huzzah!

A message from Lewis Black

2009-09-29T08:56:00.001-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy67kwA6Xm4

First graduate exam

2009-09-27T11:53:00.002-05:00

Friday was my first exam in graduate school. As Dr. Kantowski handed out the exams he said, "I hope you'll agree that this exam is fairly easy, but just long." Everybody groaned, because that same statement has prefaced all too many physics exams in our respective pasts which promptly proceeded to eat our respective lunches. But this time he was actually right: it was not hard, but much too long for the amount of time we had. I'm feeling pretty good about it right now. There are only 11 of us in this class so hopefully he'll have them graded by Tuesday.

I'm definitely in the physics department

2009-08-13T17:29:00.012-05:00

As I've started studying more complicated physics, I've met along the way so many physicists who understood more than I ever thought possible. So much, in fact, that they had forgotten just how dumb the rest of us still are. I vowed I would never, ever become that way. No matter how much I studied physics I would always remember what it was like not to know anything about the subject, so I would never respond to a future student's question with my advisor's favorite phrase, "Oh, that's trivial." (And of course his explanation following that ominous response is ever-faithfully NON-trivial.)

Today in my office, as the five graduate students in there were studying for our qualifying exams next week, I suddenly realized that I was already a good way up that ivory tower I so dreaded ascending. Two specific examples jump out at me. First, we have started using LOTS of slang for things that at one time seemed far too nuanced to merit such language. Second, I noticed that we complete one another's sentences in ways that must seem completely nonsensical to the non-physics student. A conversation this afternoon perfectly embodied both of those:

Tom: "Hey, when you do the potential of the grounded cube thing, do you end up with an infinite series?"
Me: "No, because they give you V on that last side so you can do the integral. So you can do the orthogonal thing and get a real number... Oh wait, no, sorry, you still get the series but if you know V you still get all the coefficients. Otherwise you're stuck with the integral."
Tom: "Yeah, ok."

We had this exchange sitting about ten feet apart, without writing anything down or pointing at anything on a chalkboard. The contexts of these problems have become so familiar that our brains automatically set the stage, complete with props, so it's perfectly acceptable to resort to using words like "thing" repeatedly and with regard to different abstractions --- Thing #1 was the conducting cube, but #2 was the orthogonality property --- with no loss of clarity.

China spouse market!

2009-05-26T19:53:00.004-05:00

Maybe I should consider this...

Volunteers soldiers are amazing.

2009-05-19T15:54:00.006-05:00

Don't stories like this leave you awestruck? What really got me was the 18-year-old kid. He was 10 on Sept. 11, 2001. That would be... 4th grade. I was 14, a freshman in high school. And as I sat in my gym class and the proctor came to our class and read the note that said two hijacked planes had crashed into the World Trade Center towers and two more were still in the air, that was the first time in my life that I actually feared for my life. (I had been in high school for all of two weeks. That was a pretty overwhelming welcoming present.) And the very last thing in the world I wanted to do was to join the Marines and go fight the guys who felt justified flying commercial jetliners into skyscrapers. And here is this kid, 10 years old, deciding right then that that was what he was going to do.

I'm not patriotic by any stretch of the imagination, but there is something about a person who volunteers for military service that absolutely blows my mind. Not in an are-you-kidding-me way, but in a that's-not-a-natural-thing-for-human-beings-to-do-and-it's-amazing kind of way.

I learned something about pee today.

2009-05-18T21:39:00.003-05:00

If you eat a ton of asparagus, when you pee it out the smell will almost knock you off your feet. Good gravy. It doesn't even really smell like asparagus pee. It smells like death. As my good friend Chris put it, "It's worse than rank beer shits."

Today was my last day to be a college tutor.

2009-05-17T20:24:00.004-05:00

I hate college more than just about anything, but there are some things to which I have become very attached. Tutoring physics is one of them. Today the class I tutor - or rather, the ones in the class who actually come to tutoring on a semi-regular basis - all signed a card for me and gave me a Starbucks gift card. It was then that I realized just how much fun I've actually had there. And part of me worries that tutoring/teaching in the future won't be the same because in the future there will be an age or professional gap between me and my tutorees, either as graduate student vs. undergraduates, or teacher vs. students. When there's nothing to distinguish me from anybody else, the atmosphere becomes very relaxed and comfortable, and people don't feel stupid asking questions. It is my sincerest hope that in the future I will be able to foster an environment at least somewhat reminiscent of what we've had here.

My house is full of WTF.

2009-05-13T21:28:00.004-05:00

My housemate makes our house the only place on this planet in which one could open the freezer door and find this:

Did you see? Look a little closer:

Apparently those Walmart receipts spoil pretty quickly if you don't freeze them. *Sigh.*

How to [Lose] a [Social] Life

2009-05-08T17:11:00.005-05:00

The Fray has a song called How to Save a Life. I am learning how to destroy one. A social life, anyway. This is how you do it:

What I learned about graduate school today

2009-04-13T14:59:00.004-05:00

Okay, I'm not actually in graduate school yet, but I'm still learning lots about it. For example, today I learned there is almost nothing which will torpedo one's chances at getting into graduate school faster than a sub-par subject GRE test score. At one particular school to which I applied, a summer research internship AND a letter of recommendation from a sitting faculty member still only got me wait-listed. Sheesh.

Small victories

2009-04-06T16:32:00.002-05:00

You've probably noticed that recently Google added an auto-complete feature to its search boxes. When you start typing and then pause for a second, a list appears below the box which contains "suggestions" for your search. I assume Google keeps track of all the phrases people search for, and adds them to the list if they receive some number of searches. Anyway, I consider it a small victory when I search for something for which Google has no auto-complete suggestions. Sometimes I try to "beat" the search box. I type something obscure, pause, wait with bated breath, and usually fist-pump if Google can't come up with anything.

Not even a REAL rejection letter, University of Illinois? :-(

2009-03-25T17:59:00.001-05:00

You had to do it by e-mail, huh. Is postage that expensive??

Thought for the day.

2009-03-18T23:37:00.004-05:00

This courtesy of Megan McArdle over at The Atlantic. Regarding the dubious executive compensation over at AIG:

I'm not angry and bitter; I'm about as mad as I am at the prospect of people who bought homes they can't really afford getting a bailout while I continue renting--which is to say, not very. Life is rather too short to spend it getting angry at remote strangers.

The "self"-checkout at Dillons is very misleading.

2009-03-18T14:02:00.004-05:00

During my last several treks to Dillons, I bought lots of fresh (unpackaged) produce, none of which had barcodes. I don't even know how to check out barcode-less produce at the self-checkout station thing, so I got in a regular checkout line (with a human cashier). But as soon as I got in line, a cashier standing a few feet behind all of the registers said, "Sir, if you'd like I can help you check out at the self-checkout." So she took my stuff and punched in a whole bunch of numbers (with blinding speed) for the produce I had, and that was that.

The point of this story is that I don't think Dillons should be allowed to have those big signs above the self-checkout machines that say "self-checkout," because that's not what they are anymore. I don't remember this phenomenon during our myriad trips to Dillons when I was younger, so this must be a recent development.

University of Oklahoma, you're pretty cool :-D

2009-03-06T16:34:00.001-06:00

I got in! With a fellowship to boot! Now I just kinda (really) hope everybody else says no so I don't have to make a tough decision :-P

"Common Sense" quote of the day

2009-03-06T07:19:00.005-06:00

Tom Paine is the most quotable man who ever lived, with the possible exception of Jack Handey. Whether you believe what Mr. Paine said or not, it's really hard to argue with him.

Government, like, dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistably obeyed, man would need no other law-giver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least.

Hilarious things that people do.

2009-03-01T14:41:00.006-06:00

And I don't mean that in a derisive or patronizing way at all. People are so funny.

Exhibit A: During my first semester of college, I asked a girl in my honors English class to go to a play with me. A date, in theory. She said yes, but asked me if she could bring her roommate. In my mind I said, "Absolutely not." But in my mouth I said, "Sure, that's cool." The play was really good (it was Steel Magnolias), but the whole experience was a little bit awkward because I ended up sitting next to the girl's roommate (who, incidentally, is a very neat person as well) instead of next to the girl herself. So that was my inaugural foray into the world of college dating. Awesome.

Fast forward to today. One of my housemates spent the last week at the Oklahoma Scholar-Leadership Enrichment Program (OSLEP). The girl I asked out was also there. When my housemate came back today he said, "Oh yeah, [this girl] wanted me to tell you that she's really sorry about freshman year, because she didn't know if it was a date or not, and she's felt bad about it ever since."

... I thought I was the only person in the world who felt really guilty about completely inconsequential things like that. But apparently not! So that made me laugh a lot.

This is how all academic advisors should respond to their students' despair.

2009-02-27T19:11:00.002-06:00

Me: "So I got rejected from the University of Chicago."
Dr. Chen: (dismissive hand-waving gesture) "That's ok."

I've recently fallen hopelessly in love with Ignacy Jan Paderewski's Piano Concerto in A minor. The second movement, especially. It is *gorgeous.* I can't even count how many times I've listened to the majestic grandioso section of the 2nd movement. Sometimes I wonder what Piers Lane looked like as he played that part. Probably like a king.

Well, it's been fun, University of Chicago :-(

2009-02-26T19:59:00.005-06:00

No dice for me. The first letter I got back being a rejection letter does sting a bit. Oh well. Four more chances!

Thomas Paine was the greatest American writer in history.

2009-02-22T14:57:00.002-06:00

He has no equal. Not even close. I'm writing a paper about him for my Western Civilization class, and the most difficult part about writing about Thomas Paine is that I can't decide which parts *NOT* to quote. Virtually every sentence from every book he ever published is rich with vigor and purpose and force, and I'm afraid if I don't just flip a coin for every sentence of his that I read, it will become a 500 page paper.

More thesis-ing

2009-02-21T08:35:00.003-06:00

I'm on page 53 of my honors thesis. It's funny - I wrote about 40 pages of it last summer because last summer I thought, "This crap is really complicated. If I don't spell it all out right now while I'm actually doing it, I'm going to forget it completely." That was one of the best decisions I've ever made. So now I'm putting the finishing touches on it (13 pages of finishing touches, apparently), and then I'm done with this sucker. And not a moment too soon! I started writing it last July, which makes this Month #8. I sent a chapter of it to Dr. Chen, who said it was "okay." I was thrilled. That's the highest praise I think I've ever gotten from him about anything!

I want to be Polish.

2009-02-13T06:45:00.005-06:00

A list of great Poles:

Artur Rubinstein
Fryderyk Chopin
Moritz Moszkowski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski

Yup. I'm moving to Poland. And I'm going to get a tattoo on my back that says "nie dam sie," which is Polish for "never give up." It was also Mr. Rubinstein's motto.

I'm still waiting to hear back from graduate schools. I try to look as nonchalant as humanly possible as I anxiously check my mail three times a day, but I don't know how successful my efforts are. Yesterday my physics professor asked me, in his awesomely Chinese way, "Ok, I throw you big rock. What if you get into Chicago and Florida? Where will you go?" Heck if I know.

My new favorite piano concerto

2009-01-29T11:37:00.003-06:00

For a long time it was Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in A minor. As of yesterday, the throne has been usurped. Behold Moritz Moszkowski's Piano Concerto in E Major. Mesmerizing beyond compare.

Ix-nay the Arry-bay Ouglas-day

2009-01-16T09:59:00.003-06:00

So I didn't actually go see Barry Douglas. I would have had to go by myself, and live music just isn't the same when you go by yourself. It's kind of like going to a movie theatre by yourself. There's no reason you can't enjoy the film, except that you have nobody to enjoy it with. With whom to enjoy it. To with enjoy whom it. Something like that. Anyway, I find some modicum of solace in the fact that I don't care much for Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1. Actually I don't care for the No. 2 either, but I do like it more than the No. 1.

In other news, I think the Educational Testing Service sucks. When I took the GRE tests (the general test and the physics subject test) back in early November, I sent my scores to the five graduate schools I'm applying to. Somehow, they only managed to send it to two of them. Two others never got them (I had to fax them the copies of my scores the ETS sent to me personally), and I still haven't checked on the fifth. Lame.

In more exciting news, tomorrow I get to go see Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue with the WSO! Woohoo!

Afternoon with Barry Douglas

2009-01-08T21:33:00.002-06:00

Ok it's not as personal an encounter as the title suggests. I'm going to a Master Class (as a spectator, of course) at OKCU featuring Barry Douglas, who will be performing Strauss's Burleske and Liszt's Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major with the OKC Phil on Saturday. I saw Barry Douglas about... 12 years ago, rehearsing something with the Wichita Symphony Orchestra. This will be a blast from the past!

Energy, etc.

2008-07-17T16:54:00.005-05:00

I'm doing my part as a brainwashed minion to shamelessly promote this website. I don't care whatsoever about climate change because I don't think human intervention has anything to do with it, but Al Gore made a good point in his speech today:

In my search for genuinely effective answers to the climate crisis, I have held a series of "solutions summits" with engineers, scientists, and CEOs. In those discussions, one thing has become abundantly clear: when you connect the dots, it turns out that the real solutions to the climate crisis are the very same measures needed to renew our economy and escape the trap of ever-rising energy prices. Moreover, they are also the very same solutions we need to guarantee our national security without having to go to war in the Persian Gulf.

And hey, if it makes the climate crisis doom-criers happy, that's just icing on the cake!

So here's the plug: http://www.wecansolveit.org. Go there and do... something. Ride the bus tomorrow. Turn off your A/C when you leave. It'll save you money and save the world too. How many opportunities do you have in your life to be altruistic through selfishness? :-)

I would like to know who these "several senators" are.

2008-07-12T17:07:00.009-05:00

Uh... OK.

Here's my favorite part:

In Congress, several senators have proposed that Iraq should start paying for some of the military's fuel costs because of its large oil reserves.

Translation:

We're going to invade you, cripple your infrastructure, then make you foot the bill. Capice?

RIP, Tony Snow

2008-07-12T12:10:00.003-05:00

Cancer = :-(

Let's punish the FAMILIES of terrorists. That'll show 'em.

2008-07-10T17:45:00.001-05:00

Oh, Israel...

What do you think this crowd is doing?

2008-07-05T16:30:00.003-05:00

So what do YOU think they're doing? Trying to get tickets to a Hannah Montana concert? Waiting for those sweet Black Friday deals at Best Buy?

Close.

This is a picture of South Koreans protesting in Seoul after the government decided to lift the ban on importing US beef. "Who cares?" you may ask. While it is true I am indeed not Korean, I do have a profound appreciation for their ability to gather in large numbers. For example, where do you think is the largest stadium in the world? You guessed it - Pyongyang. Seriously, it takes a rock concert to get that many people in one place here in the US. All Korea has to do is make one change to their foreign policy, and BAM. Out come the masses.

I took a bunch of pictures of Ben Hill Griffin Stadium here at UF, and I was proud of standing on the field of what I thought must surely be one of the largest stadiums (stadia?) in the country... that is, until I saw that stupid May Day stadium in Pyongyang, which is nearly twice as large. Thanks a lot, Korea.

Bugs like my ears, and more soaring

2008-07-02T17:19:00.002-05:00

Every time I leave the physics building, wherever I go a cloud of gnats buzzes around my ears. I don't feel them anywhere else on my head - only my ears. I probably look pretty strange to passers-by, grabbing and rubbing and scratching my ears as frantically as I do. It's not easy to look natural trying to swat a tenacious cloud of bugs away from my head, I've found.

And just when I thought the soaring may have taken a hiatus...

Viva España!

2008-06-29T15:46:00.002-05:00

Germany 0-1 Spain

This guy is selling his entire life on eBay.

2008-06-23T21:40:00.002-05:00

Seriously. My favorite part is that his friends "were willing to be introduced to the highest bidder." Those are some deep, meaningful friendships he has right there. I'm seething with jealousy.

More soaring

2008-06-23T18:21:00.003-05:00

And thanks to Mum for finding this one:

Aaaaand... still soaring

2008-06-21T22:27:00.002-05:00

Trying to ignore people passing you on the sidewalk is pretty dumb.

2008-06-19T19:42:00.005-05:00

Here is an exercise in futility if I've ever seen one. I'm walking on a sidewalk, and there's a person coming towards me on the same sidewalk. For some reason, I decide, "Nah, I'd rather not acknowledge that I see them." So I desperately try to feign ignorance - I stare at the ground, or I suddenly become supremely captivated by that cloud formation, or I get the urge to look - no, stare - at my watch, even though I know exactly what time it is. My favorite though, is when I just stare straight ahead as they pass. That gives the impression that, if the person passing me said hello, I would suddenly turn and look at him, completely startled, and say, "Oh! I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there." Right.

Heaven forbid we bump into each other once in a while.

Riccardo Chailly and Martha Argerich: young and old

2008-06-18T21:50:00.002-05:00

How cool is this?!

Young: Sergei Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3
Old: Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto

Still soaring...

2008-06-18T19:37:00.002-05:00

More (moar?) on soar

2008-06-17T21:12:00.005-05:00

I found this on NPR.org this morning. I rest my case:

P.S. To those news agencies guilty of using such hackneyed language, here is a list of alternatives, courtesy of my industrious mum, courtesy of Thesaurus.com. You're welcome:

aggrandize, amplify, augment, boost, build, build up, burgeon, enlarge, escalate, expand, extend, grow, magnify, mount, multiply, proliferate, rise, run up, snowball, swell, upsurge, wax

The soaring popularity of the verb "soar"

2008-06-16T18:29:00.003-05:00

I don't recall a single instance in the last... six months or so in which I read an article or heard a newscaster report on the price of gasoline or oil or food without seeing or hearing the word "soar." It seems the only thing they are able to do is soar. They can't skyrocket or rise or grow. Only soar. I wish that, just once, somebody would use a different verb in that context.

A conflict of [televised] interest

2008-06-15T08:58:00.005-05:00

So last night I was watching one of my favorite movies, Ocean's Eleven, on TV. Whatever channel it was one had one of those "series" in which they play various movies under that series name that may or may not have some loosely connected theme with one another. This one was called the "Make a Difference" series or something like that. Anyway, at the commercial break the announcer said, "This 'Make a Difference' series presentation of Ocean's Eleven is brought to you by UNICEF."

...UNICEF? Seriously? A movie about robbing casinos is sponsored by an organization which feeds starving children? ...Ok.

Particle physics is the lamest field of physics ever.

2008-05-13T11:46:00.003-05:00

I personally believe it is also the primary contributing factor to the stigma that scientists (but especially physicists) are unapproachable and that the subjects they study are hopelessly confusing for any outsider. In Physics for Poets Robert March writes:

To emphasize the uniqueness of these [sub-atomic] particles, [Murray] Gell-Mann chose the fanciful name quarks. This peculiar choice of terminology proved to be fateful. Following Gell-Mann's lead, particle theorists have tended to play a game of "one-upmanship" with terminology, resulting in a lexicon of "cute" names that tend to baffle (and sometimes outrage) nonspecialists. This practice has often proved a barrier to wider understanding, however much fun it may provide for insiders. Thus one of the more confusing and annoying tasks you will face in the rest of this chapter will be to wade through a lot of verbiage that is far from self-explanatory.

Smiling at pictures of me smiling

2008-05-12T18:59:00.002-05:00

Whenever I look at a picture of myself smiling (a rare occasion, mind you), I always smile back. Not only that, I smile the exact same smile I smiled in the picture. I think I've done this all my life, and to be honest I have no idea why I noticed I do it at all, because it is a completely subconscious response. I don't even know how my brain rationalizes it. Am I critiquing myself? Does it genuinely make me happy? I'm really drawing a blank here. I wonder if other people do this too.

Weird bathrooms, jumping the [punchline], farting vents, and a really funny looking guy

2008-05-10T20:45:00.008-05:00

So I've been studying physics since about 8:45 this morning. Time to take a break, I think.

For supper I went to a barbecue restaurant right next to the Delta Cafe. I thought the sign just said "Buddies BBQ" but the "B" actually doubles as a "3" so the full name is "3 Buddies BBQ." I've been driving past that restaurant at least once a week for almost three years now, but only today did I realize what the sign actually said. And the only reason I came to that realization at all was because somebody else was talking about it in the car.

Anyway, I've been on this I'm-going-to-drink-80-gallons-of-water-per-day stint for the past few weeks. (I suppose I take pride in my colorless pee.) I went to the restroom before I left, and was a bit taken aback by what I saw.

Take a closer look at the positions of the sink and the urinal. There was a gap of about one foot between them. With no divider. And not only that, they were at the same height. Holy cow. What if somebody mistook one for the other? It wouldn't be difficult to do. Anyway, I was thoroughly grossed out by that, and I washed my hands again when I got home.

I've also realized something that I think is kind of a jerk-ish thing to do, but which I find myself doing embarrassingly often: jumping the gun at the punchline of a joke. You know what I'm talking about: somebody retells a joke or a funny story he's heard on the internet or from one of your mutual friends or from a comedian, and you know exactly how the joke goes and you really like it, so after the guy spends five solid minutes building the story up, you jump in enthusiastically and steal the punchline, and everybody laughs at you instead of at the other guy.

I do this all the time. I think I even did it today. Somebody was telling the classic Jim Gaffigan joke: "Fruit, good; cake, great; fruitcake, nasty crap." And what did I do? I waited: "... yeah... yeah... nasty crap! Ha ha ha!" It's never out of malice, but it still makes me kind of a jerk. So, dearest readers, don't steal punchlines. Yes, they're funny, but if you didn't tell the story, give the real storyteller his moment in the spotlight.

The sound our vent makes when the air conditioner or the heater turns on sounds exactly like a fart. Exactly. Not a high-pitched trumpet, but a deep, full-bodied tuba. The temperature fluctuates like crazy in our apartment because none of the things that should be sealed are sealed, so the AC turns on about every 30 minutes and heralds itself with a majestic frrrrrrrrump.

And last of all. I went to Sun's website for some reason or another, and I was greeted with this image:

Gah, this made me laugh. Doesn't he look funny? I'm sure he's a whole lot smarter than I am, and I'm not trying to be mean, I just think it's absolutely hysterical.

There's nothing as sweet as the sound of swift justice.

2008-04-07T14:58:00.000-05:00

Swift justice indeed...

Brahms Cello Sonata No. 1 (part 2)

2008-03-24T21:15:00.003-05:00

So I finally played the first few pages of this fabulous cello sonata with Laura today. Holy. Cow. It's going to take a lot of practice before we play it very well, but even with the ~45 minute session we had tonight we made MAJOR progress. Man oh man, it sounded so cool. The timing is a little bit difficult in places, but we got synchronized amazingly fast. The time absolutely *flew* by. I'm really, really glad I found somebody with whom to play.

Well, I feel better.

2008-03-24T18:29:00.002-05:00

Brahms Cello Sonata No. 1, Op. 38

2008-03-08T14:54:00.002-06:00

I've never really played anything but solo piano music. I'm even trying to learn Schumann's piano concerto as a solo piece. I don't have any particular affinity for playing solo music - on the contrary, I think playing with others would be magnitudes more enjoyable - but as the piano is more of a hobby than a focus for me right now, and I play only relatively sparingly, and I am not exceptionally talented, it is difficult to collaborate with other musicians.

Then last night, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I decided to ask my cellist friend Laura if she wanted to learn to play one of the myriad cello/piano compositions in existence. She jumped at the chance, and suggested Johannes Brahms's Cello Sonata No. 1 in E minor, for which she had copies of both the piano and cello parts. I started practicing it not five minutes after she gave it to me, and I absolutely adore it. We're both terribly excited to start playing it together. It is rather difficult, however, so I've started doing lots of finger exercises to improve my speed and dexterity (I've actually found that the 3rd movement of Schumann's piano concerto serves this purpose wonderfully, along with being a marvelous piece of music in its own right).

Gah! I'm so excited. The cello and the piano are my two favorite instruments of all time, and putting them together is just about the neatest thing ever.

Cluster#$&! to Geneva

2008-03-06T15:03:00.008-06:00

(Please don't sue me, Daily Show folks :-( I use the phrase with complete reverence.)

So I applied to a bazillion physics internships for this summer, and, just like two years ago, the first reply I received (last time from Texas Tech, this time from U. Florida) just happened to be the only offer I got. Today I got a response back from CERN, but I didn't make the cut there. Apparently there were 160 students applying for 14 positions (see the title of this post). So tomorrow it looks like I'll be signing on at Florida! I was hoping to work for a German experimental astrophysicist there named Guido Mueller (you read that right) but that didn't work out. I'll be doing theoretical solid state physics instead. Oh well, an internship is an internship, as far as I'm concerned. Dr. Chen said there's no money in astrophysics anyway, so if I want to make a nice living he suggested that I rob banks instead.

I'm almost convinced.

Arthur is my new friend.

2008-02-16T13:07:00.003-06:00

And a faithful companion, he is:

A particularly overwhelming sentence from my Modern Physics textbook

2008-02-03T22:09:00.000-06:00

I was grinding along quite nicely this evening until I met this behemoth:

The (2l+1)-fold degeneracy of the rotational state with angular momentum lħ makes the thermal equilibrium population proportional to (2l + 1)exp[-l(l+1)ħ^2/2IkT].

Duh.

Plungers, exact change, and my big mouth

2008-01-30T16:26:00.000-06:00

I haven't clogged a toilet in several months. That's quite an achievement for me. Sadly, today was just not my day. So I went to WalMart on my lunch break to go buy a plunger because I didn't have one in my apartment. Of course the bathroom cleaning supplies are in the very back corner of this monolithic grocery store, and as soon as I picked it up I suddenly became painfully self-conscious of my image - a kid who went all the way to WalMart, all the way to the back corner, to buy nothing but a plunger. Not a plunger and, oh yeah, some peanut butter while I'm at it; not a plunger and, oh yeah, some deodorant or some blank CDs. Nope. Just a plunger. I may as well have worn a T-shirt that said,

YEP, IT WAS A BIG ONE

So I did my little walk of shame to the counter, and to my amazement the cashier didn't make any remarks or even smirk. Kudos to you, Madam Cashier. I know I certainly would have succumbed to the temptation had I been in her position.

Later on I went to the mail room at school to buy some postage, and, for the first time in probably several months, I paid with exact change. It was the most amazing feeling ever. I didn't use a credit card or a $20 that would have yielded me a wallet full of one-dollar bills and half a pound of pocket change; heck no I didn't. I used exact change, and I was so proud of myself. To the wind with credit cards! They can't give you that kind of satisfaction.

When I was a freshman here, I took a class called Old Testament History and Literature. The lecturer, who shall remain nameless and whom I will henceforth call Dr. X, would often ask questions of our class during his lectures and would not move on until at least one person responded; usually nobody would respond and he would simply call on somebody. Most people were wrong about, well, most things, but he was nice enough to at least make an effort to tie their bogus answers into the real answer, or, at the very least, make it seem not as completely retarded as it actually was. The one time he called on me, however, I allowed me no such mercy. I don't remember what the question was, nor what my answer was, but do clearly recall thinking in my mind as I said it, "What a load of crap I'm spewing right now. Oh well." When I finished speaking, I sat there quite sheepishly, but instead of trying to make me feel better, he looked at me for a few seconds and said, "...mmm... no." And he moved on. Needless to say, I felt pretty stupid.

Two years later, Dr. X now teaches my Biblical Ethics class. (By the way, I'm just now starting to get over the embarrassment of that harrowing incident from Old Testament class.) Today we discussed the idea that some of the Bible was historically conditioned; that is, the teachings in a most literal sense simply do not apply the same way to us as they did to their original audience long ago. Dr. X asked us if we thought ANY part of the Bible was NOT historically conditioned. Apparently I didn't learn my lesson the first time because I'm a big fat stupidface, so I piped up and said, "One could make the case that the Ten Commandments have withstood the wear and tear of the passage of time. They seem to me as relevant today as they did then." Without missing a BEAT Dr. X shot back, "Hm. Well, Brian, do you still keep Sabbath, then?" I sat there for a few seconds in silence while the rest of the class started snickering, and finally I threw my hands up and said, "... touché." I don't know how many shades of red I must have turned, but Dr. X certainly did not make things better for me by referring to my comment several times in during the remaining class time. To his credit, he was very respectful about it, but it really didn't take the sting away of being shot down so fast. Remind me next time not to spar with a theologian.

I don't understand anything related to economics

2008-01-24T18:02:00.000-06:00

And believe me, I've tried. I do my best to be an informed citizen, but none of this stuff registers at all in my brain. Do you know what economics-speak reminds me of? Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!"

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
So rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
He went galumphing back.

"And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Please don't mistake this reference as indicative of any disdain I bear towards this poem - on the contrary, it is quite possibly my favorite of all. I instead mean to imply that the lexicon of economics makes about as much sense to me as that of Jabberwocky. And I take them equally seriously. So what does a recession mean to me? Hell if I know. It sounds like a bad thing, though, kind of like a receding hair line; the most insight I can glean from all this stuff about a recession is that the price of Honey Bunches of Oats is probably going to go up even more, and that is a tragedy if ever there was one.

Poor Bill Stickers...

2007-12-23T14:39:00.000-06:00

Why hello, Winter, I don't believe we've met.

2007-12-11T10:36:00.001-06:00

Pictures!

Rachmaninov had big hands

2007-12-10T23:20:00.001-06:00

If my nightmares had a soundtrack, it would be Rachmaninov's Prelude in C-sharp minor

2007-12-07T23:58:00.000-06:00

If you value your sanity, do NOT fall asleep listening to this.

If my dreams had a soundtrack, it would be Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 3

2007-12-07T11:03:00.000-06:00

Greater joy have few men than this

2007-11-15T09:24:00.001-06:00

This is one of my favorite YouTube videos of all time. I found it this morning. Can you even imagine how much fun Leif must have had doing that? I sure can't.

Honestly, I find Leif's interpretation of most romantic pieces to be absolutely atrocious (cf. Grieg's piano concerto part 1, part 2 and part 3, and, if you can find it, Debussy's Clair de Lune... if you can't find it, trust me - it's bad). Classical suits him far better, in my opinion. He has a knack for playing Mozart, such as his piano concerto #18 (above) and #17 as well.

Franz Liszt was probably a (demi)god

2007-11-12T10:15:00.001-06:00

Here's a fun exercise: go listen to Edvard Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor. Don't worry, I'll wait.

Done? Ok. Now read the next sentence very carefully, and make sure you have a defibrillator on hand:

Franz Liszt SIGHTREAD Grieg's concerto PERFECTLY.

If you haven't heard this concerto before, I'll show you the first part. Just recite it out loud and it'll make sense. Promise.

badabadabadabadabadabadabadabadaBUM!...bum bum bum... bum bum bum - bum bum bum - bum bum bum - bum bum bum... bum.. bum.. bummmm..

baboodabahbaobhaubhabhabhabahbhaabaahhh... ... bum... BUM BUM... ... bum... BUM BUM...

I think I'm going to buy another Moleskine notebook

2007-11-08T10:44:00.000-06:00

1. They're amazing and addicting.

2. My Fine Arts prof proffers so many potent quotables every single day of lecture that my planner (where I write them down) has no more room for me to write down the things I actually have to accomplish for that day. A few gems from today:

"Some of you are looking at me like this, and I'm not even kidding: *gaping face* Wake up. This is about sex."

"It's awful. It's terrible. It's wonderful."

"Apparently at the beginning of the semester I smoked some crack."

Runaway mathematics

2007-11-06T14:06:00.000-06:00

Most fields within the physics realm use mathematics to explain phenomena that can be observed. It's as if reality is "one step ahead" of mathematics, in that in most cases an event is observed, then explained. The astute reader may point out that Newton's F = ma cannot be derived and thus flies in the face of everything I just said, but that is beside the point, and it totally destroys my argument. Therefore, to said reader I say, "Shut up."

Quantum mechanics starts with an underivable equation (my beloved Schrödinger equation), as does classical physics, but many of the mathematical predictions that can be made from it make no intuitive sense whatsoever. For example, what do you think happens when you throw a ball at a solid wall? It bounces back. What do you think would happen if you threw that ball at that wall a billion times? It would bounce back a billion times. Makes sense, right? Wrong. Quantum mechanics says that the wave function of the ball will still propagate through the wall, albeit in a much diminished form. In other words, QM says that each time you throw that ball at that wall, there is a chance it will fly straight through it. It's not because the ball will break through the wall so much as it will simply go through it as if it were not even there. I've read crap like this in books that describe some of the qualitative results of quantum mechanics, but now I've proved it mathematically, and it's making my brain hurt.

I'm just not used to being such a captive to pure mathematics. In general physics it was relatively easy to ballpark the outcome of an event because often times I've witnessed such an event myself. If you put two magnets close together, they tug on each other a whole lot harder than they do when they're far apart. Duh. So when I do physics problems involving magnets moving toward or away from one another, I can look at my answer and ask myself, "Does this make sense?"

With QM I can't do that anymore. When a problem asks me, "What happens when a particle encounters this barrier?" I'm tempted to say, "It bounces back," but then I remember I'm studying QM and I revise my answer slightly to, "I have no freaking clue." I just have to do the math, and even if it looks like the stupidest answer on the face of the earth, I have no benchmark by which to judge it. I can't say, "That doesn't make sense," because none of QM makes sense. Even though Erwin Schrödinger created that equation, he himself had no idea what it actually described. It wasn't even he who figured out what the wave function meant - Max Born did.

I'm not frustrated by QM, I'm just too fascinated by it to be productive with it.

The Schrödinger equation makes my head asplode

2007-11-05T11:23:00.000-06:00

This is a pseudo-Quote of the Day, taken from my lovely physics textbook:

A property of these wave functions that we shall state without proof is that

Quotes of the day

2007-10-29T18:42:00.000-05:00

"Peter Paul Rubens, spelled R-U-B-E-N-S. If you spell it R-E-U-B-E-N-S, you get the guy who played Peewee Hermann. You guys know who Peewee Hermann is, right? Oh my gosh. Okay, one day we'll have a Peewee Hermann Day... I'm kidding. We will NOT have a Peewee Hermann Day."
- Dr. Kristen Todd

"h is very small: that's ok. If h=1 then you in trouble. You have hard time grabbing your food."
- Dr. Albert Chen

The theory of everything

2007-10-26T16:05:00.000-05:00

I've been working on the Schrödinger equation a whole bunch in Modern Physics in the past few days. It's amazing. And even more amazing is that no physicist in the last 70 years or so, including Einstein himself, has been able to figure out how to make this:

equal this:

String theory, quantum loop gravity, all that stuff is ultimately designed to make Einstein's general relativity (the top equation) work with quantum mechanics, as dictated by Schrödinger's wonderfully nebulous equation (the bottom one).

"I heard Al Qaeda causes night to fall."

2007-10-26T14:27:00.001-05:00

I could listen to Keith Olbermann all day long.

Ernest Rutherford wrote equations with way too many variables

2007-10-20T15:03:00.000-05:00

Case in point:

It's the little things that make life go 'round

2007-10-10T10:57:00.000-05:00

So on Monday in inorganic lab we were running vacuum filtration on a ferrocene sample we synthesized. Unbeknownst to us, somebody put a whole bunch of soap in the aspirator's water tank, so about a minute after we turned on the aspirator pump, the whole thing started foaming over all over the table. We laughed for a solid minute. I think that was the last thing any of us expected to see.

Math according to Microsoft

2007-09-26T19:45:00.001-05:00

Um... 'k.

Where's Mandela?

2007-09-22T13:44:00.000-05:00

I think he was trying to use one of those newfangled "metaphors," but it just didn't come out quite right.

A delightful diagram from my inorganic chemistry textbook

2007-09-20T17:00:00.000-05:00

Adieu maestro

2007-09-07T13:24:00.000-05:00

Riposi in pace.

12 Oct. 1935 - 6 Sept. 2007

3:10 to Yuma

2007-09-03T00:23:00.000-05:00

Absolutely spectacular. Westerns bore me to death, but I hardly even noticed the two hours that passed. The more I think about it, the more I realize just how awesome it was. I just can't say enough good things about this film. Go see it.

Like, whatever

2007-08-28T18:17:00.001-05:00

Thanks, Mum:

The solution to the impending energy "crisis" lies deep.

2007-08-17T23:40:00.000-05:00

Several thousand feet deep, actually.

I should clarify something first: the energy crisis about which your resident harbinger of doom prophesies will never come, hence the quotation marks in the title. I know this because I'm not a moron. Every few weeks I see articles on websites like PhysOrg.com heralding vast improvements and breakthroughs in alternative energy research.

For example, the first photovoltaic cells (converting sunlight directly to electricity), developed in the 1880s, were about 1% efficient; in comparison, the newest solar cells are capable of 40% efficiency and higher. Another example is a recent breakthrough in fuel cell technology, allowing scientists to extract pure hydrogen from liquid water using an aluminum-gallium alloy as a catalyst. In essence this means liquid water may replace liquid hydrogen as a fuel source.

Anyway.

Companies like Exxon Mobil, posting $12 billion QUARTERLY profits, and Royal Dutch Shell, raking in an average of $3 million per HOUR, will not soon loosen their grip on the trillions of dollars still to be made in the billions of barrels of oil sitting underground, and they will do everything in their power to retard or preclude entirely the emergence of viable, alternative sources of energy. This is probably why most people, especially here in the United States, don't hear much about developments in these venues outside of highly specialized news outlets like PhysOrg.com.

Having said all of this, I now return to my admittedly vague allusion beginning this article. In my opinion, the answer to all of our energy problems is not solar, wind, nuclear, or even my beloved fuel cells, but rather the least publicized of all the alternative energy sources - geothermal. MIT recently published a massive report concerning the prospects of geothermal energy; I'm only a few pages into it, but I hardly expect anybody else to read it in its entirety as I plan to do, so I'll highlight a few interesting points contained within this e-Tome:

The concept of geothermal energy harvesting is very simple. Superheated water located several thousand feet below the earth's surface is used to drive steam turbines, generating electricity. The steam cools and condenses after it passes through the turbines, and it is collected and piped back to its source in the earth, where it is naturally reheated and sent through the cycle again and again.
Geothermal power plants have virtually no environmental footprint
Based on rough estimates, the amount of geothermal energy available in the UNITED STATES ALONE could supply all of humanity's annual energy needs for the next 30,000 years
We already have the technology available to dig tunnels deep enough to reach geothermal hot spots, each of which would cost somewhere between $10 and $15 million (compared to the $3 billion it costs to build a nuclear power plant, plus the $500 million to decommission it at the end of its life)

I also learned on the History Channel yesterday that a geothermal plant supplies power for about 20,000 households in Reno, NV. Pretty cool. I didn't think the U.S. had any commercial geothermal plants at all.

As for mobile power (i.e. cars), they'll all be running on rechargeable batteries soon enough, so we'll be indirectly powering them with electricity anyway.

So yeah. Geothermal will solve all of our problems. We don't need the sun, wind or uranium-235, and we sure as heck don't need oil. Even if one of these energy sources proves to be completely unfeasible financially, there are so many other options to choose from that we'll hardly feel any setback at all. We are certainly selfish, greedy, and collectively stupid creatures by nature, but we're also incredibly adaptive, and that, friends, is why I have no worries about the future.

John Gibson is a giant turd sandwich.

2007-08-15T23:09:00.001-05:00

I am sure people have said worse things than John Gibson did in the clip linked below, but until I hear them, he will officially remain the smelliest turd sandwich on the planet.

The original Daily Show clip aired 20 Sept. 2001
John Gibson's response (scroll down a bit to hear the audio clip)
Keith Olbermann's response to John Gibson

Stephen King's take on Mrs. Rowling's little tale

2007-08-11T22:33:00.000-05:00

A fascinating read. I wish I understood books the way he does.

Among the greatest things Jon Stewart has ever said

2007-08-11T16:33:00.000-05:00

Here's the thing, Mr. President: people that use the phrase "in other words" think you don't understand what they're saying. We understand what you're saying; the look on our face isn't confusion... it's disbelief. In other words, we understand - we just don't &!$#ing get it.

At least your next-door neighbor hasn't been dead for 103 years

2007-08-06T15:18:00.000-05:00

Our biotech grad student got an e-mail from one of her friends who just started graduate school at UNT in Denton. He moved into an apartment this weekend and discovered that his backyard is, in fact, a graveyard.

Poker face test #2

2007-08-05T16:22:00.000-05:00

More Tom and Ray hilarity.

Kurdish politicians don't act like children

2007-08-04T18:11:00.000-05:00

I was reading a few minutes ago on the BBC that a whole bunch of Kurds were elected into the Turkish parliament for the first time in almost 20 years. I came across this quote from a newly elected Kurdish MP:

In our strategy we still have lots of criticisms of the rules because they are completely undemocratic rules, but anyway until we change them we will follow them.

Wow. I certainly don't hear things like that very often.

On J.S. Bach's French Suites (BWV 812-817), and Norwegian commandos

2007-08-03T15:33:00.000-05:00

So as I'm slowly, slowly learning how to play Robert Schumann's behemoth of a piano concerto, I decided to tackle a few side projects that would not make me feel like a total failure. I was listening to Glenn Gould play J.S. Bach's French Suites when I suddenly realized that some of them actually aren't too difficult to play. Once again, imslp.org came to the rescue, and I found sheet music for every one of them. I started with Menuet I and II of Suite No. 1 since they're fairly slowly paced, and I can already play them fairly decently.

It wasn't until I started playing them myself that I realized just how mesmerizing these suites actually are. I think it's because Bach wrote nearly all of them in such a way that the melody of the song shifts quickly and seamlessly back and forth between the left and right hands. Maybe there's more to it than that, but that's the extent of my analytical ability.

Also, I was reading in Making of the Atomic Bomb a few days ago that the real reason the Nazis during World War II failed to develop an atomic bomb before the Allies was not because the Allies were quicker, but rather because of a handful of Norwegian commandos who twice sabotaged Nazi efforts to obtain deuterium with which to build their bomb.

The first time I think was in 1939, when the Nazis first commandeered a dam in Sweden that produced small amounts of deuterium as a by-product. They didn't think to guard it very well, and a single commando snuck in and destroyed the tanks containing several gallons of heavy water with some very small explosives (the few guards who were present didn't even hear it). That set the Nazis back several months.

The second instance was in 1943. The dam was reinforced with many more guards, precluding the possibility of a second such intrusion. Instead, another Norwegian commando waited for the Nazis to load the tanks of deuterium onto a boat to ship acrosss some body of water (can't remember which one). He snuck onto the boat, planted a few charges in the hull, snuck out and detonated them, which punched large holes in the bottom of the boat, sinking it. After that incident the Nazis permanently abandoned their efforts to develop an atomic bomb.

So the moral of the story is, the next time you see a Norwegian commando, thank him that you're not speaking German.

God bless America... and especially Oklahoma

2007-08-02T17:26:00.000-05:00

This is why I am so proud go to school in Oklahoma.

Tom and Ray Magliozzi have the most contagious laughs in the history of laughing

2007-07-31T22:58:00.000-05:00

Here's a way to test your poker face. Listen to this clip and try to make it all the way through without smiling. I've listened to it probably 10 times and I still can't do it.

An enemy for which even the Taliban are no match

2007-07-30T18:53:00.000-05:00

I was reading today that 23 South Koreans were kidnapped by the Taliban while travelling in Afghanistan. The first hostage they killed was the pastor of a church, but - get this - his family, even though his body was returned to them, refuses to hold a funeral or even a memorial service for him until the Taliban release the other 22 hostages.

I am convinced this degree of altruism and love simply is not possible for humankind alone to achieve. Even in the face of imminent torture and murder of their own father, brother, husband or son, these people simply cannot be broken. It leaves me utterly awestruck.

My pianobrain, and "Phone-A-Friend"

2007-07-26T10:43:00.001-05:00

I spend hours every day learning how to play Robert Schumann's Piano Concerto in A Minor. It's terribly addicting. I can't play it as well as Artur Rubinstein, mind you, but even being able to play small segments of the concerto as well as he does makes buying this piano completely worth it. The same goes for Schumann's Träumerei. As short as it is (just one page), it is deceptively difficult to play the way he meant it to be played, as I quickly learned. Still, I am determined to learn both pieces (though I'm sure mastery of the latter will far precede that of the former).

I should also note a new tactic upon which I stumbled during my early struggles with this concerto. There are certain portions that seem almost absurd - one hand spanning several octaves in the same measure playing nothing but sixteenth-notes, for example. I realized, however, that if I train my eyes to pinpoint the target keys just before my hand reaches them, the accuracy of my fingers increases logarithmically. I know this sounds petty, but it's something I rarely do with simpler pieces; my eyes tend to wander and focus on several groups of keys at a time rather than on one specific key. With this new technique, my eyes are quite literally playing the entire concerto one step ahead of my fingers.

In other news, this morning Ralph (our technician), Swetha (our biotechnology grad student) and I were in the lab, and Jeff walked in and said, "I have a favor to ask of you three. I know somebody who is appearing on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and I'm one of the candidates for his Phone-A-Friend lifeline. So if the phone rings today anytime between 11 am and 7 pm, make sure I'm the one who answers it."

That, I must admit, was not even in the same league of favors I expected him to ask of us. How bizarre.

I agree with Donald Trump? Wait, what?

2007-07-25T22:02:00.000-05:00

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I agree with Donald Trump. I feel all weird now.

My PI worked for two (2) Nobel laureates

2007-07-24T09:39:00.001-05:00

I already knew Jeff got his Ph.D. at MIT, but what I didn't know is that both of his mentors were Nobel laureates: H. Robert Horvitz and Eric F. Wieschaus. Wow. I had seen publications with Jeff and Dr. Wieschaus's names on them, but I never knew who that guy was. Now I do, and now I am fearful.

Today was a "people day"

2007-07-23T20:03:00.000-05:00

I didn't get much done at work today. I spent a good long while during the afternoon discussing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows with the scholar Ms. Sarah Fettke, who pointed out a great many subtleties in this last book I would never otherwise have noticed. I wrote Bravo, Mrs. Rowling (pt. 2) this morning when I got to work, and I wrote a few e-mails too. I also got to chat a bit with Tammy, the Ph.D. student who just finished her rotation in our lab a couple weeks ago. When I got home from work I played Super Smash Brothers Melee with my roommate Cody for a while.

It was a people day, and it was long coming. Even I need one every once in a while.

P.S. If you would like to witness the phoenix-esque transition occurring within the blues world, feast your ears upon this:

P.P.S. I haven't quite figured out why I'm postscripting this. It's not even a letter. Oh well.

Bravo, Mrs. Rowling (pt. 2)

2007-07-23T09:11:00.000-05:00

I spent the rest of last night trying to figure out why the Harry Potter books are so devilishly addicting. I think it really boils down to one thing: imagination. Mrs. Rowling can spark the reader's imagination like no author I know.

I don't know exactly how she does this, but without a doubt the most significant factor I personally have noticed is all the names. Whether characters (Neville Longbottom), institutions (Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare, or SPEW), spells ("Expelliarmus!"), items (Marauder's Map), towns (Hogsmeade), buildings (The Leaky Cauldron), or anything else, Mrs. Rowling brings Harry Potter's world to life with names I'll never forget.

There are certainly other tactics the author employs to suck the reader in, but it's really hard for me to describe them. I've found that, when I pick up the book, it takes only about three lines for me to become completely and hopelessly immersed in the story. It's as if there's a movie playing in my mind, and all I have to do is sit back and watch. My imagination goes wild, and it seems as though instead of the words on the page forming the images in my head, the images are themselves so vivid and detailed that my brain is actually interpreting them as words that appear on the page. There are times I'm convinced there is no way this story could be fiction; surely the author must be able to see inside my head and she is simply transcribing the events. This is also why I will never watch the Harry Potter films: no amount of CGI or acting talent will ever be able to produce a graphic recreation of this epic that is not utterly eclipsed by that which has been crafted in my brain. Anything the cinema folks manage to create, even if it's the best film ever made, will be inexorably disappointing.

In any case, I applaud Mrs. Rowling, not only for creating such an unforgettable, truly epic tale, but also for something even more important: for reminding kids, teenagers, and adults alike of the raw power of the human imagination.

Bravo, Mrs. Rowling (pt. 1)

2007-07-22T20:38:00.000-05:00

So I just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Absolutely unbelievable. I have to go to work now, so I'll write more (no spoilers, mind you) later tonight or tomorrow.

The best package ever, and that obnoxious Fifth Amendment

2007-07-19T14:34:00.000-05:00

So my Piano Concerto in A Minor (Opus 54) by Robert Schumann came in the mail today. Schwing! It is glorious. The pages are weathered a bit and it feels very... seasoned. So nice. I love it already. Even though I can only play about the first four measures, it's still the best thing ever.

I've been trying to keep this blog free of politics, but some things simply must not go unnoticed. This past Tuesday, for example, the President issued this executive order, which says:

...[A]ll property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to,
(i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and
(ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

CliffsNotes: The Secretary of the Treasury can now seize your property if he feels you threaten the stabilization of Iraq.

With that in mind, here is the last bit from the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution:

...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

So let's see, the NSA's President-authorized warrantless wiretapping program is illegal under the 1972 court ruling of United States v. United States District Court, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 suspends habeas corpus even though we are not experiencing rebellion or invasion (the only concessions the Constitution allows), and now this executive order utterly usurps our Fifth Amendment right. This President sidesteps any laws he wants to, always for the sake of "protecting" us from the "terrorist threat." Right.

The absolution of fat people playing tennis

2007-07-19T08:53:00.000-05:00

Last night, probably for the first time, I witnessed a group of really fat (borderline obese) people playing tennis. It went pretty much the way I expected. Nobody bothered a return attempt on balls that were more than about two paces away from wherever they were standing. I don't quite understand why they chose to play tennis, of all sports - it is one of the more merciless sports when it comes to fitness, along with soccer. In any case, I would normally be characteristically critical of them and say things like, "Stop stuffing your face, then we'll talk tennis," but the obese guy who was playing made a comment along the way that inflated my respect for him logarithmically:

Girl 1: "Eww, Brian [not me] did you spit over here?"
Brian: "Only once."
Girl 2: "What, is there spit all over the court?"
Girl 1: "No, just one big one."
Brian: "That's what she said."

Brian, wherever you are, I applaud you. All of you.

Tennis is not for macho men, and MIT's OpenCourseWare

2007-07-18T19:56:00.000-05:00

Or perhaps I should say, "Macho men are not for tennis."

I see this all the time, and, just like farts and Chuck Norris jokes, it will never ever stop being funny. Last night Matt and I were playing tennis on the courts at the TTU campus, and a trio of really manly-looking men strutted onto the court next to us. One was talking on his phone, another one brought his dog (what the hell?), and the third was wearing a cutoff tee and looking extra manly. After a few minutes of awkwardly hitting a few balls against the wall, they decided to pit Chatty Cathy and Rin Tin Tin against He-Man.

It was at this time that I realized there are few things in life more satisfying than playing a sport several orders of magnitude better than the guys next to you who look like they could benchpress you and your partner together with one hand. Matt and I both were playing exceptionally well that evening, pounding the ball up and down the court like we were Roger and Rafa, while the trio next fumbled nearly every stroke and cranked balls over the fence like Albert Pujols. Hey guys, did you get the memo? The baseball field is down the road.

In completely unrelated news, MIT has started a program called OpenCourseWare in which they digitize lecture notes, blackboard notes/drawings, homework assignments and solutions, syllabi, and other stuff for almost every course in every department. The best part is, as the name implies, it's free to the public. Very cool! The reason I know about this is because I visit the MIT website almost every day. I'm going to do my darnedest to get into graduate school in physics there.

An apparently ambiguous two-way stop

2007-07-16T12:48:00.000-05:00

The TTUHSC parking connects to the Texas Tech parkway at a two-way stop, even though it is a T-shaped intersection. The parking lot street forms the base of the T and the parkway forms the arms. One direction of traffic on the parkway does not have a stoplight (the right arm), so people turning left from the parkway into the parking lot always have the right of way. Since this is can be a rather precarious intersection, there are several brightly colored signs facing the opposite direction of traffic on the parkway (the people who have to wait for the left-turn-ers) that have flags around them and they say

ONCOMING TRAFFIC DOES NOT STOP

I never knew there were so many different ways to interpret this. Just today I was coming back from lunch, and I was going the direction that doesn't have to stop. There are two lanes of traffic that go the opposite direction on the parkway (the direction that does have to stop), and the car in the left lane had stopped and was waiting for me to turn left, but the guy in the right lane started inching into the intersection before I got there. By the time I got to the intersection and was ready to turn left, he had almost completely blocked me from turning left. The best part is, he saw me coming, and I expected him to just finish pulling through, but instead he just stopped. I had to veer left and then snake around the intersection just to avoid hitting him.

I used to think Kansas drivers were the worst, and then I moved to Oklahoma and I thought Oklahoma drivers were the worst, but man oh man, I think Texas drivers take the cake.