| Let's start again |
[Jul. 10th, 2009|10:29 am] |
Did you know I have a LiveJournal? Well, I do! I started it in high school under the title Adventures of a Field Biologist, and updated it pretty regularly. During college, I started posting less and less often; by my junior year, I had basically fallen off the face of the internet.
No more! Now that I've graduated, I want to keep in touch with all the lovely people I won't be able to hang out with anymore, so I brought this journal back! It's got a new title, a new look, and hopefully a new tendency to be written in complete sentences rather than links to magazine articles. My plan is to update at least once every week or two, and keep doing that for as long as I can. (Realistically: until I'm buried up to my eyeballs in PSI problem sets.)
So, here's something that happened to me this week. I saw Contact for the first time, and... I liked it! It's one of the rare movies that I enjoyed more than the book it's based on. This may not be a coincidence, because the novel Contact actually started out as a screenplay! You can read all about the movie's convoluted history on Wikipedia. Looking at all the crap various people tried to shove into the script, it seems like a miracle that the movie came out as well as it did!
The novel Contact is rather overstuffed; I think the movie is a lot cleaner and simpler. The time constraints of a feature film make the plot feel rushed in places, but the effect isn't too uncomfortable, and it probably helps keep the momentum up for people who aren't fascinated by discussions about the hyperfine structure of hydrogen. Also, I love the way John Hurt played Hadden... delightfully creepy!
Overall, Contact is a little campy and a lot of fun. I would so see it again. |
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| You know you're a geek when... |
[May. 19th, 2008|12:05 am] |
... you type "relaxation methods" into Google and expect to find pages about differential equations. |
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| Ohhhhhhhh noeeeeeeees! |
[Feb. 23rd, 2008|02:07 pm] |
I am super bummed that I will, for reasons that should be apparent to anyone who has spent any sort of time around me, be unable to celebrate Talk Like a Physicist Day this March. But my misfortune is your gain, because I've decided to put together a short phrasebook to help you start honing your own physics language skills! Contributions from those of you who read this journal in your time off from searching for exoplanets will, of course, be obligatory.
( Phynglish phrases ) |
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| What the hell? |
[Feb. 23rd, 2008|01:53 pm] |
Obama may face grilling on patriotism
WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama's refusal to wear an American flag lapel pin along with a photo of him not putting his hand over his heart during the National Anthem led conservatives on Internet and in the media to question his patriotism. I mean, I don't put my hand over my heart during the national anthem either, but there are much more important reasons that I should not be the president of the United States! |
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| Mythbusters physics spectacular! |
[Jan. 31st, 2008|12:59 am] |
Mythbusters isn't what it used to be, but today I was pleasantly surprised to see an episode dominated by physics-y myths!
Adam and Jamie spent most of the show trying to find out whether an airplane would be able to take off from a giant treadmill. Anyone who's taken intro mechanics should already know how this one went down: the mass of a plane's wheels and the friction of its axles are so small compared to the mass of the plane and the thrust of the engine that the plane is effectively isolated from the runway. A plane on a treadmill will, as the Mythbusters confirmed, accelerate just as easily as a plane on a fixed runway. Terrifyingly, the pilot who helped Adam and Jamie run a full-scale test didn't realize this! It's certainly possible to fly a plane without a formal understanding of physics, but I'd like to think a pilot's intuition would be more trustworthy...
The Grant-Kari-Tory segment of the show involved exposing insects to insane doses of gamma radiation at PNNL. I was a bit geeked when I realized that the cobalt-60 source they were using was just like the one I used in advanced lab last Tuesday! Except that mine was a bit smaller, and didn't enter the room by remote control on a tiny elevator in an eight-foot shaft surrounded by solid lead. |
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| Hello universe |
[Oct. 7th, 2007|09:23 am] |
| [ | music |
| | laika and the cosmonauts - lands end | ] |
Looking back on the history of space exploration, it's sometimes hard to see anything more than a bunch of starry-eyed eggheads being manipulated by cynical politicians. But behind all the posturing and paranoia, I think there really was a sense of adventure—a yearning, no matter how twisted, for the stars.
In belated celebration of Sputnik's 50th anniversary, take a listen to Laika and the Cosmonauts, my first-ever favorite band. I don't know exactly how old I was when my parents checked Instruments of Terror out of the Birmingham public library for listening in the car in New Jersey, but here's a bit of context: the other CD they brought, Snoopy's Classiks album, was my first introduction to the Beatles.
Or, if you're really old-school, check out Jane Murphy's classic Journey Into Space, courtesy of Kimbo Educational. Adventures in the Solar System: Planetron and Me also comes highly recommended. |
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| Minor technical difficulties |
[Sep. 5th, 2007|09:34 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | monade - wash and dance | ] |
Someone (hint: her name starts with a K) has convinced me to switch from math 217 (linear algebra) to math 513 (death by linear algebra). This change brings with it a few minor difficulties, such as having class on Monday from 10am to 5pm straight. The obvious fix is to drop advanced lab, which I'd been thinking about doing anyway, but that would bring me down to 13 credits—nothing short of a moral failure. If I drop the lab, my transcript will suffer; if I take the lab, my education will suffer. Oh, to be free of such binds... |
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| And now, a word from our sponsors |
[Sep. 3rd, 2007|01:15 pm] |
If you haven't yet caught an episode of Mad Men, I highly recommend that you do! It is easily one of the most interesting shows on TV right now, especially if you're the kind of person who uses the word "sociosexual" more than once a week. Liane Hansen interviewed the series creator, Matt Weiner, on Weekend Edition this Sunday, and it really explained a lot. Weiner's black interpretation of human sexuality, combined with a sort of dark nostalgia for the 1960s, is definitely what makes this show tick, and it makes for some excellent television.
"So they've got a quasi-communist state... where the women have guns... and it's full of Jews. But not completely full—there are Arabs there, too." (Mad Men, ep. 6) |
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| Uh oh |
[Sep. 1st, 2007|03:47 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | alarmed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | toni basil - hey mickey | ] |
I ran into that cashier from Shaman Drum the other day. The really attractive one. And then I woke up the next day thinking, You know what I really need? Another copy of Grayson, by Lynne Cox!
I don't know what's wrong with me, but I think Shaman Drum is going to be making a lot of money off it... |
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| Monster food |
[Aug. 31st, 2007|11:22 am] |
| [ | music |
| | cake - short skirt, long jacket | ] |
Hey... I'm back in A2! My first act as returning resident was to walk down to the grocery store and purchase the largest carrot in the world. It is two inches thick, and poses a serious threat to my masculinity. I also unwittingly brought home the Onion of Death, which had me bawling like a baby the moment I cut into it.
"So," you ask, "you have finally returned from your fourteen-week silence to talk to us about... vegetables?" Well, yeah. One has to start somewhere, after all. But have no doubt: this is just the first post of a glorious Livejournal renaissance that will include photographs, recipes, anecdotes, music, and brilliant, world-class literature.
In the meantime, enjoy some YouTube videos. |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 19th, 2007|03:01 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | food | ] |
| [ | music |
| | dave matthews band - warehouse | ] |
My apartment is freezing. How can this be? Outside, it's a balmy 70°. Inside, contrary to several laws of thermodynamics, I'm shivering in a sweatshirt. I don't know how to explain this phenomenon, but I do know what to do about it. ( Soup! )
p.s. This morning I went to the farmers' market with pals and it was awesome. I got a black peppermint plant that will hopefully not immediately die. |
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| Forgetful |
[May. 17th, 2007|01:58 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | wistful | ] |
| [ | music |
| | the aislers set - mission bells | ] |
So Elizabeth and I were wandering around Ann Arbor, and we eventually ended up hanging out with Rooster in the childrens' section of Borders, reading picture books. That reminded me of a beautifully illustrated book that I used to love, but can't remember the name of. Maybe one of you could help me?
( Search and rescue ) |
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| Illegal numbers |
[May. 11th, 2007|12:41 am] |
901-325-6278
887-989-4576
510-188-6590
140-170-4640
Separately, these are four ordinary ten-digit numbers, such as you might use to call your friends on the telephone. Together, however, they are almost a powerful copyright-breaking technology whose distribution is prohibited under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act of 1998. Specifically, when placed end-to-end, they form a number very similar to one used to encrypt many DVD and Blu-ray discs, preventing them from being played on unapproved machines. The encryption key in question leaked onto the internet several months ago, but didn't cause much of a stir until AACS LA -- the maker of the key -- started sending out letters, demanding that anyone hosting the key take it down. The internet, of course, begged to differ, rocketing the offending number to overnight celebrity.
It turns out that in the movie industry, illegal numbers are nothing new. Several years ago, a mathematician named Phil Carmody discovered an enormous prime number that just so happened to be the compressed source code of a blatantly illegal DVD-reading program. At the time it was discovered, this number was one of the largest known primes, making it an object of considerable mathematical interest. According to the DMCA, however, it can technically never be published! (That hasn't, of course, stopped anybody.)
Why do people get so enthusiastic about publishing illegal numbers? The AACS LA does, after all, have a perfectly valid reason for not wanting its encryption keys to be common knowledge; countless commentators have pointed out that if it were your Social Security number being published, you might be equally upset. Deep down, though, it's hard to take such a comparison seriously. Passing on a leaked DVD encryption key just doesn't feel like it's doing anyone much harm... and inside every law-abiding citizen, there's a little bomb-tossing anarchist who thinks it would be jolly good fun. |
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| College is so gay |
[May. 9th, 2007|09:01 pm] |
How do academia and corporopolis compare in their treatment of LGBT employees? The AstroDyke weighs in. Along the way, she mentions a striking fact: the most profitable companies and the most prestigious universities are the most likely to provide equal health benefits for domestic partners and spouses. Why should that be? Maybe well-known companies and institutions make attractive targets for activists, encouraging them to change their policies. Maybe domestic partner benefits attract prospective employees, giving employers a wider talent pool to choose from. Maybe the qualities that make people successful managers are also qualities that foster non-discrimination. Maybe there are even direct productivity benefits associated with workplace diversity, as some studies claim to show.
Thoughts? |
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| (no subject) |
[May. 1st, 2007|02:30 pm] |
| [ | Tags | | | food | ] |
| [ | mood |
| | "sunshine, walk on by..." | ] |
| [ | music |
| | OOIOO - mountain book | ] |
Have you ever noticed that peanut butter is sticky? I mean, annoyingly sticky. It's way too thick for dipping, and if you want to spread it on something soft, like a banana, forget it! Based on Amy Sherman's perfect peanut sauce, I've whipped up a simple peanut butter remix with a milder flavor and a softer texture than ordinary peanut butter.
( Peanut Butter Dipping Sauce ) |
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| I'm gonna go hide now |
[Mar. 1st, 2007|11:24 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | terrified | ] |
| [ | music |
| | mocca - what if | ] |
Okay... it has come to my attention that bees are SERIOUSLY SCARY SHIT.
Exhibit A: Honeybees, whose stingers have their own autonomous neural and muscular systems. When a honeybee rips off her rear end in your skin, the disembodied stinger keeps on squirming for up to ten minutes, pumping venom and using serrated barbs to work its way deeper and deeper into your flesh.
Exhibit B: Killer bees, the feral descendants of twenty-six genetically engineered super-bees that escaped from a South American lab in 1957. You wish I were joking.
Exhibit C: American domesticated bees, which are suddenly and inexplicably vanishing. They go out to look for nectar and they don't come back. Is anyone else worried about this? Bees are smart... maybe they know something we don't. Something about why it's a bad idea to use so many pesticides that local insects are no longer alive enough to pollinate your crops. |
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