Happy Holidays!

I hope everybody is having an enjoyable and happy holiday season.

There Is No Hell

I recently heard a This American Life broadcast about Carlton Pearson, who was officially branded a heretic by the Pentecostal leadership because he started preaching that there is no Hell (although he is now an ordained mainline Protestant minister). Preaching the idea of no Hell is, of course, heresy because it's clearly stated in the Bible. His reasoning is that the world is full of people who are either suffering immensely or living peaceful, generous, and holy lives who will never hear about Christianity, and therefore will never have a choice to become Christians. This means God explicitly allows people to be born knowing that they will go straight to Hell when they die with no possibility of redemption. Not very nice to think about, huh. But these are the things that Christians must agree to when they become "believers". Same with homosexuality being a sin. Or tattoos. The Bible clearly states it, so Christians must believe it, and trying to be more socially acceptable is really just going against fundamental Christian ideas, however progressive it might sound. This is also one of the reasons I became an atheist. Since I really can't pick and choose what parts of Christianity I agree with, I have to give it up.

By the way, following up on my previous post today, this stuff counts as evidence for morality and ethics derived apart from the Judeo-Christian tradition that would naturally arise in an atheism-based system of morality. To Carlton Pearson I might suggest that if there is no Hell and everybody goes to Heaven, is it even necessary to believe in God? Can't we just be good people?

Aimee Mann Christmas Special

You'd think somebody who writes primarily depressing songs to hate Christmas, but Aimee Mann loves it. This is the third year she's put on a live Christmas special, and this year I decided to go. It was really fun and more like a variety show than just a concert. They had a spoof on A Christmas Carol. Paul F. Thompkins did some stand up (and his debut CD is hilarious too). Grant-Lee Phillips did a hilarious impression of Willie Nelson singing Voices Carry (he even had Nelson's characteristic delayed singing down perfect). Nellie McKay was funny and sang a few very good songs. Kirsten thinks she has a good voice. I disagree, but I think she's a very entertaining jazzy performer and wouldn't mind seeing her solo act. The whole evening gave me the same feeling as watching White Christmas. It was alot of fun.

Morality Without God

I don't think alot of people watch the Terminator show on FOX, but on the last episode they introduced an interesting dilemma--How do you teach a robot to value human life? In the show, of course, they use the existence of God to justify morality and ethics. If God created life in his image, then it must be valuable, with all the ethical ramifications of that. However, how would an atheist approach the problem? It's a common fallacy that Christians assume that morality and ethics cannot cannot arise in an athiest worldview. On the contrary, considering what we know about how humans and their brains operate, athiests can easily create a contemporary moral system. Humans are social creatures, and society relies on give-and-take, which leads to a "Golden Rule". However, this is based on human-human interactions. We know our value and can understand the value of others. We could even apply this reasoning to animals or aliens because we are all carbon-based life forms (and we hope the aliens agree so they won't destroy us with their superior technology). But robots and AI are completely different entities. How do we convince them that human life is special without positing the existence of God?

Import Complete!

It's taken me about 3 months, but I've finally finished importing all my EndNote references into Zotero. All 333 of them. Whenever I had some free time I would go through the imported references and add DOI numbers and PDFs, mainly by going to the journal website and re-downloading all the info with one click (much easier than typing in missing information) and then deleting the original database entry.

The Truth is Out There

Kirsten and I began a trip down memory lane this weekend by starting to watch the first season of The X-Files. I was really into the show in high school, and I remember watching the first four episodes. Unfortunately, I don't think I can give an unbiased opinion about them. I still think the show is great from the get-go.

In other news, the pottery sale/holiday party went really well, although only one person asked for one of my hot toddies.

More Human than Humanities

Occasionally I will listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. It's an interesting show, but I can only take so much of his way of speaking and tone of voice. Anyway, in the last show he interviewed Victor Davis Hanson about Classical studies in the U.S. Hanson believes that study of the Classics of Greek and Roman literature are essential, and that the decrease in the emphasis of Classical Studies is leading to an unhappy and uneducated populous. He recently wrote a blog post about it where discusses the negative ramifications of the modern menu-based system of liberal undergraduate education and the rise of christian universities. Based on his interview and his writing, he has a few reasons for thinking this way:

1. Mandatory Classical Studies created a common curriculum for all students. It meant an emphasis on learning language and fixed systems for knowledge building and art.

2. Classical Studies emphasizes inductive reasoning over deductive reasoning, meaning "let's look at particulars and create a worldview around them" or "If something happens over and over, it will always happen again." Deductive reasoning, on the other hand, generally begins with a general premise and arrives at conclusions, like our modern scientific method.

3. Classical Studies emphasizes the limitations of humans in the face of Nature and Fate.

4. Classical Studies are always relevant because basic human characteristics never change.

Now I disagree with Hanson's premise, because "Western" culture was basically reset after the Middle Ages and is currently being rewritten in the Information Age. Here are my rebuttals:

4*. Human nature is constant, so the Classics will always be relevant, but are not always applicable. We always have to interpret Classical ideas or debates through a modern filter in order to apply them to current ideas and debates. This adds effort and error to the applicability of Classics to the modern.

3*.We understand how Nature and the universe works so much better than the Greeks and Romans that it makes a large portion of Classical Studies irrelevant. At this point we're trying to get our heads around how we are indirectly destroying our own home planet, not the other way around. We understand a large amount of cause and effect, and can effectively avoid disasters.

2*. I agree that critical thinking skills are abysmal in the U.S. But the argument that inductive reasoning is more important or more valid than deductive reasoning is ridiculous. They are simply forms of logic--tools, not ethics--and they lead to different types of knowledge. We use both every day, whether we realize it or not. And different areas of study have their own tools that are useful, so why regulate a single way of reasoning?

1*. If you really want a common curriculum to tie all educated citizens together, why does it have to be the Classics? You could just as easily select a varied curriculum that are more applicable to modern situations. And why emphasize learning dead languages? Why not learn Spanish to understand the subtleties of Jorge Luis Borges, or French to understand the intricacies of Barthes? These are both languages that are extremely useful today.

I'm a fan of the modern liberal education, where the student gets to choose their core classes. Yes, they typically go for the easy A, no-brainer courses like "Rocks for Jocks" and "Math for Trees" and the ubiquitous "Human Sexuality". But remember that one of the largest fallacies of the ancient philosophers was the idea that there could be one holistic system of knowledge that works for everybody. Well, everybody is different. The population is a bell curve. There are different types of learning and not everybody responds to them in the same way. What works for some will most certainly not work for another. This is why we need a choice so that those truly interested in their education and future can excell to their highest potential.

I will say, though, that I like how Victor Davis Hanson hates poststructuralism:

If Marx receded from economics departments, his spirit reemerged among our intelligentsia in the novel guises of post-structuralism, new historicism, multiculturalism, and all the other dogmas whose fundamental tenet was that white male capitalists had systematically oppressed women, minorities, and Third World people in countless insidious ways. The font of that collective oppression, both at home and abroad, was the rich, corporate, Republican, and white United States.

There was victim status for everybody, from gender, race, and class at home to colonialism, imperialism, and hegemony abroad. Anyone could play in these “area studies” that cobbled together the barrio, the West Bank, and the “freedom fighter” into some sloppy global union of the oppressed—a far hipper enterprise than rehashing Das Kapital or listening to a six-hour harangue from Fidel.

Unfortunately this quote came from a screed explaining how our liberal education system ultimately led to 9/11 and how President Bush's policies are reversing that trend.

Zotero Style

A little while back I mentioned an open source reference software called Zotero. As I said before, the gathering and storing of references works perfectly, but that's only half of what a good reference manager does. The second is facilitating citations and bibliographies during writing. Right now, I'm working in earnest on my next journal article and I'm using the Zotero plugin for Word. It seems to be working well, except that there is no defined reference style for the particular journal I am writing for: Earth and Planetary Science Letters. So of course I took the opportunity to learn Citation Style Language and create my own style file. It was much more difficult than I expected, but I finally got it formatting my citations and bibliography the way they should. So if anybody wants my CSL file, shoot me an email.

IEX CSYV LIEVX SYX GEIWEV!

I finished reading The Code Book last night. That book actually got me excited and interested in cryptology again. A little known fact about me: When I was in elementary school, I would solve cryptograms with pencil and paper for fun. They used to always have a few in this magazine I subscribed to. Anyway, Simon Singh's book actually cleared up a lot of confusion I used to have about cryptology. I now understand how the German Enigma machine works, and I have a better understanding of quantum computers. For example, I used to think a quantum bit (qubit) was simply a bit that could hold one of three values (-1,0,1) instead of two (0,1), and the benefit arises from doing computations using less CPU memory. However, a qubit is actually a bit that can hold two values simultaneously (0 and 1), meaning computations can be completed on two different numbers at the same time. Properly designed, a quantum computer can do a calculation on hundreds of numbers at the exact same time instead of one at a time. This makes cracking modern codes trivial.

Anyways, the author has a bunch of little tools (frequency analysis, etc.) on his website for cracking simple codes. He even has a bunch of stuff for deciphering Vigenere ciphers. However, I think this page or this page are better for cracking Vigenere ciphers.

P.S. The title to this post is encrypted using a very old cipher and is related to my age (modulo 26, of course!).

Check Your Engine

It seems like my "check engine" light has been illuminated in my dash for, like, ever. At least two years. I've got an OBD-II code reader, and it was only an electrical valve, so it wasn't a huge problem, and I think it even increased my gas mileage slightly. Now after all this time it is gone, and it only cost me a $120 part and $500 in labor. But now my gauges seem lonely without that comforting red glow of the check engine light. Some day they will be able to move on.

Who Killed Amanda Palmer?

Kirsten and I went to the Amanda Palmer show last night, and it was amazing. The 930 Club was double billed that night, so it was an early show, and because we took our time at our pre-show binge at Ben's, we actually missed the two opening acts, but we arrived right when Amanda started playing. It was an amazing show. I had wanted to see a Dresden Dolls show for a while, and this exceeded my expectations. She played some of her new songs and some Dresden Dolls songs. It was basically her and her keyboard and occasionally a violin player. Her dad, who apparently lives in Chevy Chase also came out to sing for a couple songs, including a Leonard Cohen cover (I don't know Leonard Cohen, so I couldn't tell you what song it was, but it was beautiful). Throughout the show there were interpretive performances by an Australian dance troupe. During one song they went into the middle of the crowd and performed an amazing lyrical piece (and this will be the one time I'm glad I watched So You Think You Can Dance so that I could appreciate just how brilliant and talented they are). They were also hilarious during Coin-Operated Boy. Then the show ended with a dance party!

The bottom line is that this concert goes in my top 10 easily. I had such a good time. If you can, I strongly recommend going to see her during this tour. The only downside is that because the venue was double booked, and she ran long, she had to end up cutting some songs.

Bats

This shirt makes me smile.

Breaking the Deal

Earlier this month, the Onion A.V. Club ran a blog post about pop-culture deal-breakers...that is, what music/movies/books/etc. would cause you to immediately break up with your significant other. I love reading through the comments of these kind of posts because it gives me a feel for what the masses like and think. Well, maybe just the internet-saavy hipster douchebags. Anyway, it seems like the majority say that not liking Prince is a deal-breaker. I don't really like Prince, but I can still appreciate him and I'll listen if somebody else wishes to. I thought his recent Super Bowl performance was pretty good. A lot of people also mentioned The Simpsons because that show represents a certain sense of humor that people identify with. I can't think of a single person in my generation that can't at least appreciate the Simpsons on some level.

Anyway, I'm not really a deal-breaker kind of guy, but I've been thinking about this off and on, and I've come up with two.

1. Reading horoscopes. Period.
2. Dave Matthews Band

I know people who like both of these, but I would have a very difficult time dating somebody who likes them. Even reading horoscopes "for fun" gives some credence to that bullshit, and if you truly don't believe in them, they are boring as hell and a waste of time. As for DMB, aside from the utterly crappy music, lyrics, and singing, their fans are mostly annoying as well. I think my idea of hell is the first 10 seconds of Ants Marching on repeat. Apologies to my old office-mate Joe, who, aside from liking DMB, is a really cool guy.

Black Holes

So I finally finished Black Holes and Time Warps the other day. I've had it for a very long time--it was one of the first books I got as part of the 5-for-$1 deal when signing up for the book of the month club way back in high school (once I began earning disposable income). I almost got rid of it with a bunch of other books when moving out to Virginia, but I decided to actually read it first before I try to sell it back. It wasn't really worth the wait.

One of my biggest peeves with the popular science non-fiction genre is how dumbed down everything is. And all the books about relativity and cosmology use the same old analogies that break down when you're talking about actual real-world situations. Kip Thorne's book is different in that he tries to explain the nitty gritty details about Einstein's equations, relativity, and black holes, and he uses the actual analogies that physicists use when talking to each other, not the dumbed down analogies. However, Thorne still utilizes my second peeve: the lack of equations. For people like me, sometimes a simple equation makes a concept crystal clear. About halfway through the book, Thorne runs out of straightforward explanations and analogies and is forced to start making blanket claims about black holes, and at that point I start asking "why?". How does topology prove every black hole has a singularity? How can a spinning black hole create a "naked singularity" (a black hole that is not "black")? Reading Thorne's labored descriptions of how black holes must only "grow larger" or how they "radiate" make me wish he could include a few straightforward equations to show why this is so. The whole chapter about gravitational waves without a single equation made me cringe. Some equations are found in the footnotes, and it's funny to read a page and a half of explanation and then to read a two sentence footnote with an equation that makes everything finally clear.

There are three things I liked about the book. First, it finally convinced me that black holes are real and not simply a mathematical toy that physicists like to play with. Well, the recent Nova episode helped, where they actually observed stars getting flung around a blank spot in the center of our galaxy. Secondly, the book placed everything in a historical context. It could almost be considered a history of science book because it credits everybody for their individual contributions to the field. It also shows how the field built upon the ideas of previous researchers. That was pretty interesting, and I finally was able to hook some names with ideas, and to also learn new names which I'm noticing all the time now (e.g. Jansky Fellowship for radio astronomy). And third, Thorne makes it explicit (albeit later in the book) that the hyperspace dimension in which spacetime is bent by mass is NOT real, but only a mathematical construct. I really hate it (especially in quantum mechanics) when authors take equations and interpret them literally when that is not their purpose. Thorne even takes the time to explain that in certain situations, physicists use a spacetime-warping model for some situations and a "flat" spacetime-compressing model for other situations, just as how we treat subatomic particles as particles or waves as the situation requires. I applaud him for that.

So bottome line, I would say the first ~300 pages or so (up to chapter 8) of the book are a pretty good thorough popular science introduction to relativity and black holes. I wouldn't necessarily say it's an exciting read (chapter seven was kind of boring, even though it had a lot of cool concepts in it), but it explains black holes pretty well. There are two nagging questions I still have. First, I would like a better explanation of how the black holes grow and shrink (can black holes disappear if nothing is added to them?). Second, the book does a pretty good job explaining why only stars of sufficient mass can become black holes (smaller stars become neutron stars for white dwarfs) but I keep hearing things about tiny black holes, especially the kind that can be created once the LHC is finally operational. So how can a black hole exist below the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volkoff limit?

Slightly off topic, I am still waiting for that popular science book that is geared for people with a good algebra background. Most books are either way too dumbed down (with no equations) for actual textbooks (= dry and boring with too many equations and not enough explanation). Maybe something with normal text for the layman and side boxes full of equations for the scientist. Actually Shadows of the Mind by Roger Penrose did a really good job of that. But then Penrose starts talking about M-branes and I get lost again. Maybe I should try reading that book again, or maybe his most recent monstrosity.

What a Fruit!

I think the Asian Pear has surpassed the strawberry as my favorite fruit.

Behind The Bailout

All this recent shit with the market is really affecting my libertarian values about the economy and markets. It's been gradually shifting over the years, but the last nail has been pounded into the coffin of "markets regulate themselves". I first really learned about Adam Smith and the "invisible hand" in my high school AP European History class, and at the time I really did believe that, if left alone, markets would establish a fair and stable system, although I didn't believe that anything (like God) actively regulated it. I think now we have a good case study disproving that idea. However, I still don't necessarily disapprove of deregulation (try untangling those negatives!). What I want is an "open" economy, not in terms of free international trade, but in terms of complete disclosure (which is a loose form of regulation, I guess). Every day in the news I hear that banks aren't lending any money, and today I found out why. On the long drive up to the synchrotron, I listened to the podcast of this week's This American Life, which I really strongly advise everybody to take a listen because it does a pretty decent job of explaining what went wrong and why we need a bailout. Basically the problem is with the credit default swap market. A CDS is when I have a bond from, say, Lehman Brothers, which is basically a loan to the company, or my investment into the company. I don't like that Lehman Brothers is making risky investments into subprime mortgages, and I want to make sure I don't lose all my money if they tank, so I go to a bank or a hedge fund or some other wall street company and make a contract to pay 2% of the bond value every year and in return, if something happens to Lehman Brothers, I get my initial investment. So I'm paying $2k a year to make sure I can at least walk away with my initial $100k. Most wall street entities do this, and I see no problem with it. But I don't even have to have made an initial investment with Lehman Brothers! I can just go to AIG and pay them $2k a year for a CDS in the hopes that Lehman Brothers will tank and then I'll get $100k. Let's say 100 people all decide to do this. AIG is now raking in the dough, $200k a year, and the chances of Lehman Brothers failing is small. But Lehman Brothers did fail, and now they have to pay out $10 million, which is why the government had to bail them out. The CDS market is completely deregulated. There is no requirement to actually hold the bond you are buying the CDS for, and the estimate I heard today is that the value of the CDS market is ten times the total real value of the bonds in the contracts. When people hear this they want to regulate in two ways:

1. In order to buy a CDS, you must hold the bond in question. In other words, a CDS is solely an insurance policy and not a bet that a company will fail.
2. In order to sell a CDS, you must be able to pay the full amount in case of default. In other words, AIG has to stop selling CDSs when they run out of capital to pay out for them.

I don't think we need to go regulate CDSs in this way. Instead:

3. Buying and selling of CDSs will occur in an established market with full disclosure

You see, in the above example, when Lehman Brothers files for bankruptcy, all the CDSs have to be payed, and AIG goes under. End of story. This does not affect the economy as a whole, except for AIG customers. But there is a CDS network. All those people who bought a 2% Lehman Brothers CDS from AIG realize that simply paying $2k a year on a bet is not a smart investment, so they've resold their CDS to somebody else for 2.5% or 3% (as Lehman Brothers gets shakier and more likely to fail). So those people pay $2k to AIG, but get $3k from somebody else. If Lehman Brothers fails, they owe the third party $1ook, but they will get that from AIG. But this third party has sold the CDS to a fourth party, and so on. There is this giant chain or network of CDS buying and selling. And if AIG fails because they have to pay out so much, AIG can't pay the $100k, and nobody gets paid. Also, other people have bought and sold CDSs against AIG, so the failure of AIG would cause another massive payout. Remember, the total value of CDSs sold is 10 times the total real value of the bonds involved, so this would cause a systemic failure of wall street.

Here's why I think solution #3 is the best solution. Because the CDS market is undisclosed, nobody knows what companies or fund managers are buying and selling. Nobody knows how much CDSs AIG has sold, meaning nobody knows how much AIG is fucked if Lehman Brothers goes down. If they knew, they wouldn't buy another CDS from AIG (although they probably would buy a CDS against AIG). Also, we have no idea how interconnected the CDS network is. But if the CDS market was fully disclosed and public, then investors would have a much better idea which CDS investments are better than others.

This takes us back to Adam Smith. Markets will "self regulate" only when both the buyer and seller have equal knowledge. Let's say I want to buy a mineral from a dealer at a gem and mineral show. As a geologist, I know how rare certain minerals are, and both the dealer and I know how much the specimen is worth, and we bargain until we reach a fair price. If I don't know anything about geology or mineralogy, the dealer may exaggerate how rare this particular mineral is, and I may overpay. If the dealer is just a hippie into crystals and that kind of bullshit, I may be able to talk down the value of the mineral (or recognize it as something else altogether, which has happened to me). So supply and demand are not the only factors that determine price. Information and knowledge are very important. Let the American people and investors know how much potential debt a company is getting themselves into and how interconnected they are to others, and this will have a big effect on the market.

So that's the justification for the AIG bailout. Soon the CDS market will be regulated to some degree. However, what about the big $700 billion bailout just passed in Congress? That's more directly related to the housing crisis to keep more mortgage companies (and mortgage-backed securities companies) from going under, although it is affected somewhat by the CDS crunch and the commercial paper freeze. I'm still not sure what my feelings are on this one. On the one hand, I think it's stupid for the government to buy mortgages and mortgage backed securities to take them off the books because we will have a hard time selling them off later (and there's a chance the American taxpayers can get really screwed on this deal). On the other hand, the bailout bill allows the Secretary of the Treasury to invest in banks instead of buying securities, taking partial ownership like the bailout of AIG. I like this idea better, but I'm wary of the government getting too involved in business, and there's potential for the loss of a lot of taxpayer money that way.

OK so I know this post was long, but the bottom line for me is that I'm fine with wall street making their money by clever schemes, risky ventures, and confusing investments, but all that trading information should be public because it can apparently affect everything else. Open markets and open government, that's what I say.

Also, I want to mention that market "self regulation" cannot occur if bailouts are allowed. The current CDS situation is being "self regulated" out of existence because it is untenable, but the bailouts will allow it to continue, therefore we are obligated to regulate it.

OK, that's enough!

Zotero

In my line of work, good reference management is essential. In grad school I had an elaborate system of manila file folders organized by subject, in which I had copies and printouts of every paper I might need to cite. Needless to say that system became cumbersome quickly, especially once I started to work in multiple fields of research.

At NRL EndNote was available to me, so I spent quite a bit of time entering all my references into a database. It was then I realized how useful reference software could be. Not only were my references all searchable now, I was able to automatically cite references and create a bibliography automatically in Word (using a plugin). These are the two criteria upon which to judge good reference software: 1) ease of database management (adding references, searching references, organizing references, etc.) and 2) ease of use in Word (citing references, building bibliographies, editing reference styles, etc.). EndNote is actually pretty great at #2. I recently submitted a paper to Science, and after changing style settings in the EndNote Software, I only had to make one edit to my bibliography list (instead of having to make a bunch of edits for almost every reference, which is the biggest complaint I hear about reference software). But EndNote leaves a bit to be desired in #1. It looks and acts clunky. I do a lot of searching for references online, and it's not always straightforward to import into EndNote. I'm always having to manually enter the DOI and manually save a PDF copy of each paper. Also, EndNote costs money, and I would like to take my reference database with me when I leave NRL, so I've been looking for cheap alternatives.

Enter Zotero. It's a firefox plugin developed at George Mason University, and it accomplishes #1 almost perfectly. When I find a paper I want to add online, all I have to do is click an icon and it downloads all the information (including DOI) and in most cases also a copy of the PDF. I'm already searching for references in my browser, so it makes perfect sense to manage my references right there in my browser. Zotero does organization and search much better than EndNote. It allows for tags as well as directories, so you can organize everything the way you want to. And Zotero allows you to search text in PDFs! Unfortunately Zotero is not as great with #2. It has a buggy Word plugin, and their citation style settings have errors in them that can't be edited. Also, EndNote did not export DOI numbers or all the PDFs I had downloaded, so I basically have to go through the entire database in Zotero and manually save in the PDFs. However, it turns out it's much quicker just to look up the paper again online and import it directly into Zotero than to edit the existing entry.

I'm toying with the idea of using Zotero for reference management, and then when I write I'll export to EndNote so I can use the great EndNote plugin in Word, but that sounds like way to much work for what it's worth.

New York City

Kirsten and I took the bus up to NYC this morning. It was actually nice and clean...and had free wireless. After we arrived at our hotel (Thank you, AMNH!) we headed out to East Villiage and, of course, the Giant Robot store. The lone employee there was in the process of taking down the Deth P. Sun installation. Another female customer and I had to ask her to unpack some of the artwork to browse. Two smaller pieces popped out to me, so I splurged. Kirsten says my purchase is "more fulfilling than an Xbox", which gives you an indication of how much I spent. But it does feel good to own artwork and to support artists that I enjoy.

Kirsten's friend Maria met up with us and we had a yummy meal at Dumpling Man one block over. Highly recommended.

Podcast Crazy!

I'm warning you ahead of time that this will be a rambling post...

So for a while now I haven't understood the deal with podcasts, even though I hear about them all the time. I mean, I understand that it's cool for people to be able to broadcast their opinions and whatnot over the internet, but I never understood why anybody else would choose to listen to it. I've never had much patience for talking heads and "irreverent" opinions, although apparently that is a selling point these days.

I've also never been an "NPR person". I've known plenty of people who do listen to NPR, but droning announcers mostly put me to sleep. Also, I think much of what is considered "humorous" on NPR is very far from it. Kirsten is an NPR person, so I've had an opportunity to listen to a lot of it in the mornings, and there is one show that I do find myself intrigued by...This American Life. I've been thinking about what makes This American Life compelling, and I wonder if it is the stories rather than news or opinions.

So that got me thinking again about podcasts. Maybe I would enjoy a podcast or two if it was a narrative tale rather than some internet blowhard. This American Life offers a podcast of its episodes (just the most recent--past episodes require payment). The New Yorker publishes short stories and offers a podcast of readings of olders stories. There's also a number of online short fiction podcasts for various genres (1 2 3 4). I've been testing out these sources this week, but haven't come to any conclusions yet regarding my enjoyment of them.

Of course, listening to podcasts requires appropriate software to aggregate and manage them. It doesn't help that I use three different computers regularly with three different operating systems (Ubuntu, Windows XP, and Windows Vista). Most people use iTunes for managing podcasts, but that's not a solution for me since I have a linux computer and I only have it installed (begrudgingly) on my XP laptop. Besides, iTunes doesn't even recognize my mp3 player when I plug it in! It also turns out that since iTunes is apparently so great, no one is working on developing podcasting software! This causes a problem because there aren't any software solutions that work reliably on Vista (they all were developed when XP was the current Windows operating system) and Vista doesn't have any native podcasting software. Juice works reasonably well on Vista using compatability mode, but it's not perfect. As for linux, gPodder does everything one could want, and is quite user friendly.

But there is an inherant problem with these solutions. I would have to pick one single computer on which to manage podcasts. However, just the other day I found an interesting option: myPodder. This is a piece of software that sits on your mp3 player and runs when you plug it into your computer (only if it installs as a USB drive like mine does). Then you use the computer's internet connection to download podcasts directly to the player without having to manage them on the computer. I installed the version that has Windows, Linux, and Mac executables, so I can use it on all of my computers and even Kirsten's if need be. I think it's the right solution for what I want to do. You can manage poscast feeds directly with the myPodder software or on the PodcastReady website, which is an added convenience.

My Morning Jacket

Last night Eulynn, Jerrywill, and I went to see My Morning Jacket at DAR Constitution Hall. It was a great larger-sized venue, and a great show. I've heard that MMJ puts on a great live show, and now I've seen it. Actually, the concert itself was only "pretty great" until the encore, which was long and totally rocked. I think they saved their best songs for last.

Progress

Several weeks ago, Kirsten showed me this great Obama poster she liked, and I like it too. Today, on a whim, I decided to look up the artist, Scott Hansen. His blog is well worth the look. There's also an interesting discussion of making the Obama poster. I really like his graphic style, and I'm particularly in love with some of his posters and shirts (on American Apparel no less!).

FFT

I just figured out a cool trick in Photoshop. Often my X-ray images from the synchtrotron at NSLS have periodic noise in them, which shows up as fringes. These are annoying and can make the images look bad. After some web searching, I came across this page which uses a fast Fourier transform to remove periodic fringes. It seems to work well. The top image is the original, and the bottom is after filtering three distinct sets of fringes. As you can see, the features of interest are largely untouched and actually appear sharper in the filtered image.

The Window of Our Discontent

For a long time (several months) the driver's side window on my car hasn't worked. It's a pain in the ass because I have to show my badge every day at work to get onsite, so I have to open the car door (although it is a good deterrent from using fast food drive through!). However, it turns out having an inoperable window is grounds for a safety inspection failure. Yesterday I finally cracked open my door panel and discovered what was wrong. The power windows have three components: the switch, the motor that actually moves the glass window, and an amplifier in between. It turns out the plug into the amplifier is a bit loose and so it loses contact. But if I press the plug into the amplifier, the window works perfectly and consistently. I'm going to try putting on some zip ties about the plug and amplifier to keep it plugged in and see if I can pass inspection that way.

When I took my car into the dealership, they told me it was a bad motor. I believed them, and I ended up ordering a replacement from a junkyard in Kentucky for about $80. Now I don't need it. I should have checked it out myself. When the window stopped working, it didn't "whir" down like a failing motor. It just either worked or didn't. That's why I originally thought it was a broken switch (but the switch looked perfectly fine when I checked it out a few days ago).

Goodbye to You

Is it true that the only cover of the excellent Scandal's song Goodbye to You is by the Aussie teen pop star twins The Veronicas? Come on, we can do better than that, can't we?

Hard Times

I think I've been having a bit of a rough week this week. Things seem to be going wrong more often. First the headphone jack on my work laptop completely quit working, so I'm working without music until I get my USB sound card in the mail. Now my PC at home won't start up, so I'm currently without access to my music collection. My car needs an inspection (expired at the end of last month) and today the guards at work wouldn't let me drive in the gate. And I've been generally tired and worn out the past couple days. The weekend should be good. Hopefully I can recalibrate and take care of things that need fixing.

False Colour

I've spent the better part of the day figuring out how to create a false color RGB image out of three grayscale images in Photoshop. One thing I can do easily with my synchrotron data is generate elemental image "maps", but each one is a single grayscale image. The ultimate goal is to take those image maps and combine them into a nice publishable false color image, but I've never taken the time to figure it out until today. With some help from the internet, I found out that Photoshop not only lets you edit images in terms of "layers" but also individual color "channels" (it's a separate tab). So you can just paste the grayscale images into different color channels (one for red, one for blue, and one for green) instead of different layers, and voila!...instant RGB image. I spent some time playing around with levels and curves and filters and blending and transparency until I found a method that seems to work consistently well. In the image above red is carbon, green is calcium, and blue is iron.

Aimee Mann

Wow, it has been a while since I blogged something. I guess I've been preoccupied with other things. Anyway, Kirsten and I went to see Aimee Mann perform at the 930 Club Saturday night. Now if you've been paying attention, you might be wondering to yourself, "Well Brad, didn't you just go to an Aimee Mann concert?" And you would be correct, but that was in a festival setting, and this was a headliner concert. Kirsten kept telling me not to expect very much but it was a much different experience. She played a lot of the same songs, mostly from her new album, but there were several additional songs (and some missing songs too! She didn't play the Elton John cover or "You're With Stupid Now") that I didn't get to hear live in Vancouver.

Meanwhile, since everybody in my group is at the M&M meeting in Albuquerque, I'm in charge of the TEM this week. This means that if something goes wrong or is somebody has a problem or complaint, I'm the point of contact. Fortunately, nobody is signed up this week!

Goldschmidt Etcetera

I've been at the Goldschmidt conference all week, which has been different from other conferences I've been to...in a good way. My talk was this afternoon, and I'm pretty happy with how it went, and I think it got a good response from the audience.

Then, after the session, I went out to the Vancouver Folk Music Festival at nearby Jericho Beach Park. It is a really nice outdoor venue, and the weather was of course beautiful like it has been here all week. Now you might be wondering why I would take time to go to a folk music festival, but it just so happens that Aimee Mann was playing tonight. She played a great set, mostly songs from her new album, but also a few older songs, including a couple of my absolute favorites, "Today's the Day" from Lost in Space (which used to be my cell phone alarm clock when I'm on travel--now it's "Skin of the Night" by M83) and "How am I Different" from Bachelor No. 2. The headliner for the night was Ozomatli, which I had heard of before but never really listened to, and who are now going on my list of bands who sound crappy on CD but awesome live. They really got the crowd standing up and dancing (except for the hippies, who will dance to anything). Speaking of hippies, there were tons! Old yuppie hippies too. Vancouver used to be the hippie capitol of Canada (true!) and I guess many stuck around. But I guess hippies like to hang out at folk music festivals. This was also the first festival where there were trash nazis making people separate plastics, trash, and compost!

Between Aimee Mann and Ozomatli, there was a little feature showcase with one of the performers from later this weekend named T. Nile, and she was fucking brilliant! Great singing, harmonies, original songwriting, and banjo! It was basically an acoustic set, and I wonder if her songs sound much different with a backing band. I'm pretty sure I'll buy her new CD when it comes out.

Garibaldi Lake

Here's a panorama of the lake. I think that might be the remains of a dying glacier in the center. The two Canadians in the foreground kept complaining about their lack of catching any trout, even after the park ranger came around and told them they were using the wrong lures.

Great White North

I slept in really late on Saturday, since I was out until 2am, so I got a late start up to the mountains. My goal was to hike up to Garibaldi Lake, which I did, but I really pushed it. The trail up to it was 9km and rises almost 1km, meaning it was pretty fucking steep the entire way, and I was trying to keep my Brad pace. There was a bit of snow on the ground, but the temperature was 30 degrees (Celsius)! It was also the first time I've been to an actual glacial lake. The water was clear and blue like everybody says, thanks to finely ground silt, or glacial flour. When I filled up my water bottle for the hike back down, I couldn't see anything floating around in it, unlike every other lake water I've sampled. I started up just after 3pm and made it back to the car just after 8pm, including a nice long snack and rest.


On the other side of the gorge is something called The Barrier. It is a giant lava flow that cooled up against the giant glacier that used to be here. Now the glacier is gone and there's this huge unstable cliff of volcanic rock. There were continual small landslides as I was hiking.

Vancougar

After I reclaimed my lost bag from the airport, I had the afternoon left to fill, and the sun doesn't set here until after 9pm! It was too late to do any driving excursions like I had planned, so I decided to get a little tourism in. I rushed through the aquarium (because it closed an hour after I got in) and saw the baby beluga whale swimming with its mom (it was born just last month!). I think they used to have a killer whale too, but I think public protest forced them to release it. The aquarium isn't huge, but the few exhibits they do have they do pretty well, like the frog exhibit and the BC coast exhibit.

Then, only because I had a free admission ticket, I checked out the Capilano suspension bridge. There's really nothing there except the bridge itself, but there's a whole bunch of other crap to try to add value. They even had singing minstrels in olde tyme garb. Not worth the price of admission.

By then it was around 8:30, so I headed to the west side to see the Vancougar show. The venue was pretty cool, and the opening bands were interesting. The first played instrumental surf/rockabilly jams. The second played loud annoying punk. The third sounded a lot like the Hives to me, but I guess they are a Vancouver staple and fan favorite for many years. Then Vancougar came on and played a really fun show. Everybody seemed to be enjoying themselves, and a couple people even tried to crowd surf! I got to chat a bit with the band afterwards, they they are nice people. Maybe they'll come to DC one of these days.

"Delayed" Luggage

...because if you call it "lost", that would be a bad thing.

So I guess my bag decided it didn't want to go to Vancouver, and it hopped back on a plane to DC. When it arrived there, the authorities captured it and sent it back to Minneapolis (I assume under armed guard). I hear it will soon be on its way to Vancouver and be here midday, but we'll see. Luggage can be pretty coercive when they put their mind to it.

As for me, that means I can't take my drive up to Whistler this morning, but I might try to squeeze something in this afternoon. Or today might just be a random sightseeing day, since Budget gave me a bunch of free admission tickets to various museums with my rental car.

Welcome to Vancouver

...Hope you like being a dirty hippie!

So I'm here in Vancouver (British Columbia, not Washington) for the Goldschmidt Conference, but Northwest left one of my bags back in Minneapolis, so while I have my dress shirts, sweaters, and jacket, I don't have a clean change of clothes. The bag was supposed to come on the next flight and was supposed to land tonight around 11pm, but it was delayed an hour. So right now I'm waiting for a phone call telling me they have my bag and I can pick it up. Otherwise, I'm going to be hiking around Garibaldi in the same clothes I've been wearing for almost three days (did I mention I didn't go to sleep last night because I had to be up so early to make it to the airport today? Yeah, so I feel like a zombie too).

All that aside, Vancouver is an awesome city. The weather is great and the mountains and trees are beautiful. I checked through the local entertainment paper for interesting concerts or events this weekend and discovered one of the most awesome band names: Vancougar! They've got a show tomorrow night at some burlesque-themed club, which sounds kinda cool, so I might go to that. Also, Wolf Parade is playing this weekend here, but the show is sold out, which is OK I guess since I don't like them that much.

Air France

This music makes me smile. Reminds me of the Avalanches.

Caprese!

Although my cilantro plants have all but died, my basil is growing like gangbusters. Kirsten had a bunch of tomatoes left over from this weekend, so we picked up some local delicious mozzarella from Whole Foods and I threw together (with slight supervision by Kirsten) a fresh caprese salad . It was really good. I'm having some more with my lunch today.

The Fourth

Kirsten's friend Maria came down from New York City and we all went to Baltimore for the 4th of July. Actually, not quite Baltimore but Catonsville, which is a strange place because it has that small town community feel even though it is a suburb of Baltimore. The 4th is a big deal there. There's a big parade and a big fireworks display down at the high school. Then there was a large neighborhood party on the street where Kirsten grew up. All the neighbors were hanging out, eating, and listening to a live bluegrass band.

So that was Friday. On Saturday the three of us went into Baltimore proper to check out the Visionary Art Museum. Being an outsider art museum, they had a bunch of kitschy stuff, which doesn't appeal to me, but also a lot of cool inspiring art as well. One of the most compelling was a series of Post Secret cards about religion. Some were about Christians who hide their doubts; a few were about atheists who are afraid they might believe in god; and many were about duties and obligations brought on by organized religion. Then we had a late lunch on Federal Hill overlooking the harbor area. There were three distinct wedding parties taking pictures while we were there! After that we went back to Kirsten's parents house, packed up, and headed back to DC.

Then was an hour in hell (for me). Maria wanted to go out to her old neighborhood in DC, called Adams Morgan. I had heard about it a few times--how it was the clubbing area of DC and full of drunken partygoers. When we got there, it didn't even seem like DC anymore. It was like spring break or something. Girls in their hoochie dresses and guys with their popped-collar polo shirts milling around like ants. Maria and Kirsten said this was only about 1/3 as bad as normal! I was just completely uncomfortable. We ate at this place called the Diner, which was really good, and then we went to Kirsten and Maria's favorite dive bar, Dan's. It was completely packed with loud drunken revelers, and I was so glad when they decided to leave. Apparently, Dan's had recently been written up as DC's best dive bar in the Washingtonian or something, so the atmosphere had changed from what they remembered. Plus, I think they would go there right after work instead of at 11pm at night. So Maria was supposed to meet a friend at another Adams Morgan club, so we went there, and as we were walking it started to pour. We waited a bit under a McDonalds awning for it to die down, but we finally made it. This club was better--less crowded although still loud. By then I needed a stiff drink, so I got myself a couple vodka tonics and everybody had a round of shots. After that I was having fun. Kirsten and I didn't get to sleep that night until 4am.

Sunday was a day of rest and recovery. Of course we all started pretty late. I drove everybody out to Virginia for pancakes about a half hour before the place closed, and then we went to my house and played some Guitar Hero. By then the day was pretty much over, and I think everyone was equally exhausted from the busy weekend.

John's Rest

I had one of the most relaxing weekends with Kirsten at one of the PATC cabins. We mostly sat around, talked, and played games (Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Fluxx) and just enjoyed the trees and seclusion. It was a really nice time.

Gun Control

So the Supreme Court made a decision regarding the 2nd Amendment this week, and I thought I'd make a quick comment about it. The 2nd Amendment is a unintentionally vague, and it's not quite clear if the right to "bear arms" is a collective right for militias or a personal right for individuals. In other words, can groups, clubs, and organizations own guns, or does each person have the Constitutional right to own a gun. The details of the Supreme Court case involve the gun ban in DC designed to cut down on the horrible crime, however, the decision basically states that gun ownership is an individual right. Meaning basically that no city or state can ban gun ownership.

As for me, I believe that American freedom necessitates the right of the individual to be stupid, so I think that many things (as much as I may or may not like them) should be legal but controlled (tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, prostitution, etc.) and this includes guns. So in that sense I agree with the Supreme Court decision. But I think that since guns can be extremely dangerous in the wrong hands, they should be much, much more difficult to obtain. Gun ownership should require examination and licensure, like driving. I'm also thinking of the hobbyist community (and I'm not talking strictly hunters here). People should be able to purchase and own vintage and antique guns, build and create their own guns, and etch or engrave or cosmetically alter guns, and generally be able to generate an income based on these activities.

Now you may be thinking, "Brad, you're a pretty liberal guy...why are you pro-gun?" Well, more than being liberal, I would consider myself libertarian in the sense that personal freedom and choice are very important as long as it doesn't fuck with anybody else (directly). Also, unfortunately, I think a lot of anti-gun people are unreasonably afraid of guns. I've had several conversations over the years with people who can't even consider themselves firing a gun at a target. Yet I was raised responsibly with rifles and shotguns in the house. I've owned a rifle, took a gun training course, took a gun safety course, practiced shooting at a firing range, shot clay pigeons. I've even made my own shotgun shells using the setup my dad used to have in the garage. I've never hunted or shot a gun at a living thing, though (although I have been shot in the stomach with a BB gun, but that's a story for another day). So the bottom line is that I'm comfortable around guns and know how to use them properly. And I get the impression that some of the anti-gun people are not so comfortable and make their opinions based on that feeling.

Now the downside of my stance is that it allows Americans to be extremely stupid and dangerous. Especially in DC, which has been known as the murder capital of the US, and because of the sniper incident a few years back. This is why I support strict controls on gun ownership, but I can't consciously support a flat-out gun ban. I know this is a sticky issue for some people, especially those that have experienced gun violence in their life somehow. It's hard to argue this point with somebody who has lost a loved one.

Cool Science Shirts

Amorphia Apparel - really worth checking out, and they offer American Apparel versions as well.

I Synchrotron, Therefore I Am

I don't know why, but I think it's funny to use "synchrotron" as a verb.

Anyway, I'm up at the NSLS again, in the middle of bumblefuck Long Island, and I've had an eventful first day of beamtime. Everything was going great until someone on some other old beamline fucked up their vacuum system, which brought the hole synchrotron to a crashing halt. Then, we had a major thunderstorm in the afternoon and evening, which really shut everything down. Basically the synchrotron was down until 4am, but even then the particular beamline I was using was completely fucked up (valves and detectors shut themselves down ), so I had to wait until the morning for the beamline tech to come in and reset everything anyway. I only stayed up until midnight, and when I saw that things were still FUBAR, I decided to just go to sleep. This morning so far things are working well, and I think we can get through a bunch of samples quickly. And there are no more thunderstorms on the weather report, so at least that's one less disaster to worry about!

Songs that I Hate Myself for Liking #24

Katy Perry - I Kissed A Girl.

That song happens to have a really catchy beat and crunchy guitars (my weakness), and Katy Perry has that powerful female voice that I like. But what really interests me about her is she is a "double PK" (both her parents are pastors) and was even heading for a promising gospel career, when she heard a Queen album and "left the flock", so to speak. Now I do think she's a little extreme on the rebellious side right now (judging by her lyrics), but that kind of story warms my heart. I always felt a little sorry for PKs, because they were even a little outcast by the rest of us non-PK kids. They were supposed to be examples of what good little Christians were supposed to be like, so they always had extra rules and restrictions put on them, which made them slightly less fun to hang out with.

By the way, 24 is just a random number, but if I thought about it, I bet I could come up with 23 other songs that I'm embarrassed to admit that I like.

M83

Last night I went on a whim to the M83 show at the Black Cat, and I'm glad I did because it was amazing. I'm a sucker for fuzzy guitars and synths, and M83 has it in spades with an 80's vibe. They released a really good album this year, and they even played several songs from their last album, Before the Dawn Heals Us (not counting the 2007 ambient album), which was very cool. They also had this cool clear plexiglass box with a bunch of dials and blue LEDs that was used to create alot of the electronica sounds (or maybe to pipe instruments through, I have no idea how it works, but it was cool). There were a lot of people there, but I don't think many of them were really getting into it. I mean, some of their songs are very danceable, but not many people were moving around (damn hipster douchebags!). Anyway, I think that was their last concert in the states, and I'm glad I got the chance to see them (and for only $15 too!).

White Rabbits

Will and I went to see White Rabbits at the Black Cat last night. The two opening bands were good but forgettable, but White Rabbits were great. They put a lot of energy into their show, and their songs have a fast tempo, so there were quite a few people moving around. They had two (and at times three!) drummers. They're worth checking out.

Before the show, I met up with Kirsten at Bar Pilar just up the street. It's a nice but not too cozy little tapas place, but the food was great. I highly recommend the mushrooms and leeks dish.

The Crystal Skull

I saw the new Indiana Jones movie, and I did not like it. While watching it, I kept thinking to myself, "really?...REALLY!?!"

Regina Spektor is Jewish?

I guess so because she was the headliner for the kickoff concert for the DC Jewish Music Festival this weekend. It was free, so Kirsten and I decided to check it out. I think Regina Spektor gave a pretty good performance, despite the fact that she forgot some of the lyrics to On the Radio (she was a little embarrassed and asked the audience for help!). I hadn't heard a lot of her songs except the radio hits, but they're all kinda quirky and fun, and it was cool when she started banging on a chair with a drumstick while she was playing the piano and singing. And then she had this guy come out and they did a really cool beatbox version of Hotel Song.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

I just finished watching a great movie called Sympathy for Lady Vengeance. It's a Korean film by Chan-Wook Park. I'd seen Oldboy a few months back, and enjoyed the plot but hated the style of the movie. But for Lady Vengeance, I guess I was ready for the surreal elements of the film, although I do think they were less over-the-top and more integral than in Oldboy. But the thing that hooked me came about an 1:15 in when the plot takes a U-turn and becomes completely intense. I mean, the entire movie kinda punches you in the gut, but at that point my jaw dropped for almost ten minutes as I was trying to process what was happening. Highly recommended.

Draft Numero Uno

I am super pumped right now! I finished the first draft of my Apex paper this afternoon and I just sent it off to my Ph.D. advisor to review. This is the beginning of the end, and for me the hard part is over. I really hope Science goes for it, because it would be so awesome to get my Ph.D. work published in Science. I hope it's still cutting edge, since I did defend over 17 months ago! But I am making a bold claim about early life on Earth, so maybe they'll like it. I would really like to see this article published sometime this year.

I really want to celebrate. Maybe I'll go home a bit early and have a beer. Goodness knows I have a fridge full of them now!

New TV

Since the movers took away the old TV yesterday morning, I went to Best Buy after work to buy a new one. I had gone window shopping a few weeks back, and the Toshiba HDTVs looked the best to my untrained eyes. When I went back yesterday, they had one on sale, so I bought it. It was only a little bit more expensive than when I bought the last one. Plus, Best Buy is having some tax-free event this weekend, so I didn't have to pay any sales tax! Maybe this is some kind of DC-area thing, because I never remember not having to pay sales tax back in AZ. So it was a great time for me to buy a TV. The screen looks good, and it has no dead pixels, and the sound quality of the speakers ain't that bad either. And the TV remote has a screen size button, so it's really easy to switch between normal 4:3 and widescreen viewing modes.

So now I just have the problem of dealing with viewing a low quality video source on a high quality screen. It's like looking at all your digital photographs at 2X zoom. You can see some pixelation and blurring, especially in animated shows like the Simpsons. And because the cable all goes through the TiVo, it makes no sense to get HD service, since they would just be reduced to standard definition by the TiVo anyway. I bumped up the recording quality on the TiVo, and that made the picture a little better. I also turned on MPEG smoothing on the new TV, since the TiVo uses MPEG compression for its video encoding and playback. That also made a difference.

But the best part was when I booted up my PC. The new TV has a standard VGA input, and the screen looks outstanding. Even with Ubuntu I can use the maximum PC resolution of the TV (1366 x 768). I can actually read icon text now, and the desktop is huge!

Unfortunately, the Playstation 2 looks like crap now, and nothing really can be done about that.

Writing

I just wrote a kick ass (IMHO) paragraph for my Science paper summarizing Fischer-Tropsch-type synthesis, it's potential application to Apex microfossils, and why my data suggests it's not applicable. For those keeping score, that's about 10 pages of dissertation into 1/2 of a page. And I think it turned out pretty readable too. Actually, the only reason I'm posting this is because I'm surprised how well it turned out...and how "strong" it turned out, since I'm basically arguing that the obvious answer doesn't apply. I guess we'll see how the reviewers tear it apart, though!

Now I need to write a summary/conclusion paragraph, but I need to take a break and step back for a little bit to think about what I really need to put down in it.

Getting Paid to Stay in Bed

I think I've found the perfect job for a lazy person, or people who play World of Warcraft all day. Actually, it sounds like something that could fuck you up for the rest of your life.

Vegan Onion Dip

Because a few people were interested, here's the recipe for a quick and dirty vegan onion dip that I worked out:

12 oz. tub Tofutti vegan sour cream
1 1/2 tblsp parsley (either dried or fresh)
2 tblsp chopped green onion chives or 1 1/2 tblsp chopped fresh chives
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp curry powder
1/8 tsp paprika
1/4 cup dried onion flakes

mix everything in a small bowl and chill to let the dried herbs and onion become soft.

Busy Weekend

I've been doing a lot this weekend. First on Thursday I went to the Lord of the Rings performance at Wolftrap with Kirsten. The orchestra, choir, and soloists were all really good. But since it's a three hour movie, that was a very late night. So Friday I didn't do anything but watch some Wire and go to bed early. Then last night I had a bunch of friends over to the house for a Guitar Hero party. I think people had a lot of fun, plus I got to chat with some friends that I don't see that often. But, as with any party, I stayed up late and drank too much beer, so today is a very lazy day.

Helio Sequence

Eulynn and I went to the Helio Sequence show at the Black Cat last night. They put on a pretty good show, but it was super loud because the drummer was fucking insane (in a good way)! It was basically just two guys (one on drums and one on guitar) and a laptop for backup. The crowd was really into it, even though they're pretty much a no-name band, so they came out for an encore and played an incredible cover of the Beatles' Tomorrow Never Knows. The opening band was Pattern is Movement, who played this crazy math rock. Not really my kind of music, but they really put a lot of intensity into their performance and they interacted well with the crowd. That drummer was even crazier! Plus they played a cool cover of Radiohead's Everything in It's Right Place with everybody clapping along.

Writer's Unblock

Wow! It looks like I wrote 3/4 of a page today on my Apex paper. Looks like I'm on a roll. I hope I can keep this momentum going. I've got about another page to go before I'm done with this rough draft.

Yesterday was one of those dreary lazy days when you just want to stay in bed all day. I ran a few errands and cleaned house a bit. Actually I spent a lot of time talking on the phone with various people, which is a bit rare for me.

Bunny Buddy

Since it was warm and sunny for the first weekend in a while, I took the opportunity to mow the lawns. I noticed I had a bunny buddy chomping away in the backyard. He just kept eating away as I was mowing until I got closer to his end of the yard. Then he just scurried to the other side! He was pretty big too.

Also, I'm also having an awesome time lately with a certain someone. That's all I'll say about that for now.

New Figures

I've been working on my paper summarizing my dissertation over the last couple of weeks. It's slow going, but it's getting done. I created new figures for the paper, and I thought I'd post one (top) compared with the equivalent figure in my dissertation (bottom). Science doesn't like a lot of annotation in their figures, so I explain in the caption that diamonds represent Apex chert and circles represent Gunflint chert. When I would show the bottom version of this figure to people, I would always get questions about what the boxes and error bars represent, and I hope that just showing the actual data will make things a bit clearer. What do you guys think?

Moving Day

Kelly and her brother just left not to long ago to drive back to Arizona. I wish her the best. I really do. We're still friends. But the really difficult part of all of this is that Gunner went with them. I miss him already. I don't know what I'm going to do now that I don't have him waking me up in the morning with his big floppy mouth in my face, without his morning and afternoon walks, without him excitedly greeting me when I get home from work. He is such an important part of my life right now. I'm so proud of how well behaved he is and how loving he is to other people and dogs. He just wants to meet and play with everybody! I know he'll be fine in AZ where there's plenty of other people and dogs. I love him so much. Check out his blog and you'll know what I mean.

Friday

Let me just state for the record that Friday night was fucking awesome!

Jobby Job Jobs

I had a phone interview for an electron microscopist position in Houston today. I was fine until they started asking the HR questions at the end. How am I supposed to explain my work ethic? What does teamwork mean to me? That's when I got nervous.

Roller Derby

I got a bunch of DC friends together to go to the roller derby championships today. It was alot of fun. The girls were very competitive, but not nearly as rough as the AZ derby chicks.

I also went to the farmers market again this morning. Even though pears are everywhere in the supermarkets, there was almost no fruit to be found at the farmers market except for some strawberries. But there was alot of plants and flowers. Since I'm tired of buying basil and cilantro at the store and having it go bad, I decided to try planting my own. I'm not a gardener in the least, but we'll see how it turns out!

Oh deer!

When Gunner and I got home from our morning walk, there were about six or seven big deer in the neighbor's backyard. Gunner went nuts!

Robots Hate Us

I didn't realize that we recently avoided a Judgement Day-like scenario in Iraq. Never ever give a robot a gun again!

10 Years Back

Just for fun, after I put together my "Best of 2007" playlist, I started looking at my music from 1997 to see what I was listening to ten years ago. That was the year I graduated high school and started college. Because of that, it was also the year I first started to become pretentious about music (but that should become more apparent in 1998). In '97 my musical tasted were still pretty steeped in grunge and alternative. 1997 also saw two of my favorite albums: Radiohead's OK Computer and Foo Fighter's The Color and the Shape. OK Computer may even be one of the greatest albums of all time, and is certainly one of the most important. Here's the playlist...

Best of 1997
1. Beck - Deadweight
2. Spiritualized - Ladies and Gentlemen We are Floating in Space
3. Bjork - All is Full of Love
4. Radiohead - Paranoid Android
5. Live - Lakini's Juice
6. Deftones - My Own Summer
7. Foo Fighters - My Hero
8. Everclear - Father of Mine
9. Modest Mouse - Trailer Trash
10. Headboard - The End is Near
11. Grandaddy - A.M. 180
12. Space - Female of the Species
13. Shania Twain - You're Still the One
14. Radiohead - Exit Music (for a Film)
15. Foo Fighters - New Way Home
16. The Jerky Boys - Testing for Jeopardy

A side note to Beth--I'm sorry, but I couldn't help it! It's a good song!

Via Audio

I had a great time at the Black Cat last night. Via Audio (pic) opened for Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. If you've seen my "Best of 2007" playlist, you'll know that a Via Audio song was on there, and they put on a pretty good show too. They were up on stage jumping around and being goofy and just all around having fun, which was cool to see. I watched about half of Boris Yeltsin's show, and headed out to the bar area to talk with the Via Audio band members. They were really cool and very friendly. I guess they're all friends from some performing arts college in Boston, and now they're trying to make a living from playing music. Actually, the drummer is a bit of a secret nerd, so we talked a bit about cosmology and string theory and meteorites (he brought it up... seriously!). I also met a guy who works as a Russian analyst at the CIA. He didn't know anything about the bands...he just saw something about Boris Yeltsin in the paper and decided to check it out! Then I talked for a while with this girl studying Applied Economics at Johns Hopkins, and she assured me that the US is not going into a depression (and it's not even strictly in a recession yet). By the time I was ready to go home, it was already 30 minutes past the last metro train, so I had to hail a cab (first time I ever had to do that!) back to Falls Church. I guess I have to remember to drive, even though parking's a bitch, whenever I go to a weekday show in the city.

A New Wire Fan

It took 9 episodes of season 1, but I'm now fully vested in the Wire. I can't wait to see what happens next. It started out as an interesting police procedural, but now they took it to the next level, and I care about what happens to the characters. Plus it's set in Baltimore, which is only about an hour away from me. Unfortunately, there are five seasons of this stuff, so I'll be watching it for a while.

New Music

I don't know what it is, but lately I've been really grooving out to Beirut at work. It seems to put me in the right mood to be productive. The funny thing is I thought I hated them when their album first came out.

Jobs

I actually applied for a job today. One of the companies that contracts to Johnson Space Center is looking for a TEM guy. Then I wrote up a statement of research and teaching for a faculty position at UCLA. I'll probably send that off tomorrow morning. I've been procrastinating about it for a while, but everybody says you need to start sending out applications as soon as you start your postdoc. But now I don't have to travel until mid-summer, so I have some time to write a bit.

Rainy Day

I was planning to take Gunner to Shenandoah today, since it has been so warm this weekend. However, the weather had a different idea. It's been pouring like crazy today, which pleases Gunner to no end, since now he can play in the mud and track it all over the house.

Luckily I mowed the lawn yesterday instead of today. If you've seen my yard, you know how big a job that is. Add to that trying to start a lawn mower for the first time in over six months. But now it doesn't look like an overgrown jungle out back.

Back in Town

I'm back now from AbSciCon. It was actually a good meeting this time, as opposed to past AbSciCons I've been to. I got to meet a few new people, including Abby Allwood, who's skyrocketed in the Early Life community. She gave one of the keynote talks at the conference. If you read any of her papers, the quality of her work is quite impressive. However, she seems to lack a bit of charisma (at least from my interaction with her) compared with most field geologists. I think she takes herself and her work a bit too seriously, like myself if I don't watch out (Beth knows what I'm talking about!).

I was staying near the San Jose airport, right by the light rail, so it was easy for me to go to downtown San Jose. I went down there for dinner a few nights. I found a cool vegan restaurant, and I also had some sushi at Smile Sushi. I actually sat up at the bar, so I got to see my sushi being made and chat with the chef a bit. And I also figured out I don't like uni (sea urchin). It's kind of like a pink cream puff, and it starts to melt after a while. It tasted good, but I just didn't like the texture.

I'm in San Jose now for the Astrobiology Science Conference. I'm staying at the Radisson Plaza, but even though it's a nice hotel, they stuck me on the 5th floor, which is currently being remodeled, where I can see drywall and unpainted moldings. Probably because I'm using the federal rate, which is less than the standard room rate. My room is nice, though. Well, I better finish working on my talk for tomorrow!

Parental Visit

My mom came up to visit this weekend. Since it was such a nice day today, I took her to see all the major monuments (Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson, etc.) on the mall. It was cool to see all the cherry blossoms as we were walking around the tidal basin. Then we came home and I made some baked tilapia with garlic, cilantro, tomatoes, and lemon. You just wrap it all in tin foil and bake for 25 minutes. Real easy for a guy like me.

As readers of Kelly's blog already know, we've decided to break up. It was a mutual decision, and there are no bad feelings between us. Unfortunately, that means Kelly will be moving back to Arizona soon.

Best of 2007 Playlist

I made the list and checked it twice. I went through the playlist one last time when I got back from Long Island, and I think it's ready for prime time. So here it is:

Disk 1
1. Nakatomi Plaza - Retro is Really in this Year (Demo Version)
2. Rivers Cuomo - Blast Off!
3. White Rabbits - The Plot
4. Against Me! - Borne on the FM Waves of the Heart
5. The White Stripes - Catch Hell Blues
6. Fang Island - The Landing
7. Dr. Dog - Ain't it Strange
8. Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation
9. The Colour - Devil's Got a Holda Me
10. A Dilemma - Alla vet Allting
11. The Furze - Stolen Cars
12. Monkey Swallows the Universe - Elizabeth & Mary
13. The Deadly Syndrome - This Old Home
14. Brandi Carlile - Downpour (Live Acoustic Version)
15. Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova - When Your Mind's Made Up
16. Okkervil River - Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe
17. Iron & Wine - Boy with a Coin
18. Laura - Every Light
19. House of Fools - Live and Learn

Disk 2
1. Fujiya & Miyagi - Ankle Injuries
2. MGMT - Kids
3. The Bird and the Bee - Polite Dance Song
4. Daedelus - Fair Weather Friends
5. The Pierces - Three Wishes
6. Liam Finn - Second Chance
7. Via Audio - Presents
8. Sara Bareilles - Bottle it Up
9. Sarah Blasko - Queen of Apology
10. Tegan and Sara - Dark Come Soon
11. Ingrid Michaelson - Die Alone
12. Barcelona - Stars
13. Straylight Run - The Words We Say
14. Daft Punk - One More Time / Aerodynamic (Live Version)
15. Amerie - Gotta Work
16. Rihanna - Umbrella
17. Alaska in Winter - Lovely Lovely Love
18. Radiohead - Videotape

My Stomach Hates Me

I'm already sick of fast food. That's all there is around here at the NSLS. And it's shitty fast food too. I mean, it's the same old places--Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy's, etc.--but the crappiest versions of them I've ever tasted. I'm serious. I used to think that at least with a fast food chain, you know what you're gonna get, but that myth was busted as soon as I started coming out to Long Island. I have no idea what it is about this place.

Yesterday I found out that the Creative Zen now has a 32GB version. For a while now I've been thinking about upgrading to a new mp3 player, but one that can hold my entire music library. I still like having my iAudio for walking the dog and things like that, but I want more listening choices when I'm out of town. Since my music library is currently 19GB, that means I need something 30GB or more. That means my options were limited to hard drive based players like the iPod or Zune. But the problem with hard drive based players is that they're slow (gaps between songs), they use up more power, and if you drop them they can skip or even break because they have moving parts. I prefer the solid state players that use flash memory with no moving parts and low power consumption. But up until now, they've only come in small sizes, commonly 2, 4, or 8 GB. A few offered 16GB, and now the Zen has one with 32GB. I really like the size (credit card sized), screen, and user interface, and now that linux has good MTP support, I can use it to transfer songs from my music library on my Ubuntu PC. The only problem is price. I'm not paying $300. Maybe I'll wait a year. I think I'd be willing to pay $200 for something like that, and it's only a matter of time before it hits that price point. Besides, my next big purchase is probably going to be a wii... if I can find one, that is.

Synch Away!

I'm back out at NSLS for the rest of the week. I'll probably be posting some crazy ramblings from lack of sleep by Friday, so if I do, you can safely ignore them.

Last night I had a nice dinner with Tim and Deanne last night out in Port Jefferson. We wanted to go to a Spanish tapas restaurant, but it was closed, so we went to a nearby Italian place instead. They're both new hires in the geology department at SUNY Stonybrook. I never really hung out with them at ASU, since they were planetary people and had their own building on the other side of campus, except for randomly seeing them at concerts. But it was good to catch up with what they're doing. I'm always interested in how people I know are getting jobs since I have to start worrying about that now. The big decision for me right now if figuring out if I want to go full-fledged into academia or stick with a pure research position. For the former, you get to keep a high profile in the academic community, but you have to deal with all the academic bullshit like committees and writing grants, and you have to split your time between teaching and research. For the latter, you really go under the radar, the jobs can be somewhat repetetive, but you get to focus on doing science (unless you're stuck with a sample prep job). Also, you generally make more money in a research position vs. academia. I haven't really decided what I want to do yet.