You want to do WHAT at your wedding?
14 years ago
24 March 2008
08 March 2008
Brahms Cello Sonata No. 1, Op. 38
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.
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.
06 March 2008
Cluster#$&! to Geneva
(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.
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.
16 February 2008
03 February 2008
A particularly overwhelming sentence from my Modern Physics textbook
I was grinding along quite nicely this evening until I met this behemoth:
Duh.
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.
30 January 2008
Plungers, exact change, and my big mouth
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.
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.
24 January 2008
I don't understand anything related to economics
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:
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.
'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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)