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| Saturday, November 10th, 2007 | | 6:12 am |
It's been a while... As with my last post, I am again in an airport (this time in Tampa). First of all, thanks to everyone who sent me birthday wishes. It is appreciated. So here's an update: I'm doing my thesis defense on the 7th of December. I have to do a lot of writing between now and then. After that, I will have a PhD. Then in March, I'll be starting a postdoc at Harvard. Between mid-December and March, my plans are somewhat unclear. However, my tentative idea is to come to MN for the holidays, then I'm going to a conference in Basel at the beginning of January (maybe I'll stop somewhere else in Europe as long as I'm over there). Then back to Santa Barbara for a bit. Then I'll drive to MN and hang out there for about a month, and then drive out to Boston. I'll also be in town for Thanksgiving, tues.-sat. | | Friday, July 20th, 2007 | | 3:33 pm |
I left my hotel in Genoa today at 6pm, and successfully made it to the Milan airport by 10:30pm. I had intended to do some sightseeing in Milan before coming to the airport, but I was sufficiently confused about the transportation situation that I didn't want to risk missing the last bus to the airport. Anyway, I think the last bus would have only been an hour and half later anyway. Now I am sitting in the airport until my flight at 6:15 am. Fortunately, I was (obviously) able to connect to the internet. I have found a seat within range of an outlet, and set up my suitcase as a convenient desk on which to place my laptop. I will now kill time for the next 5 and a half hours or so. I think I will try not to sleep so I can sleep on the plane. I am flying to amsterdam, then minneapolis. Then on sunday I am leaving town for a few days with my parents, and I think I will be back on wednesday. Then I'll be in town until the following monday or so. The train I took from Genoa was Trenitalia Intercity #666 "Fausto Coppi". Apparently, Fausto Coppi is a famous Italian cyclist. I can't imagine the '666' and the 'Fausto' together is an accident... Googling has revealed (if I am understanding this correctly) that Fausto competed in 666 races in his career... | | Saturday, July 7th, 2007 | | 7:34 am |
update
Got back from Hawaii last week. My pictures are on flickr. Now I'm off to Europe (Switzerland, France?, Italy). I'll be in MN in a couple weeks - hopefully seeing many of you then. Proof that I shouldn't have to get up so early: I made some coffee first thing this morning (my one-cup coffee maker brews directly into a mug with a lid). I'm drinking the coffee while packing the last things and thinking, "This is possibly the worst coffee I've ever had." Then I realized that I had forgotten to add the coffee beans. | | Monday, May 21st, 2007 | | 11:54 pm |
still more music
Here's my latest composition: The Leningrad Strut. Also, for those in MN, I'm coming into town Wednesday night, and leaving the following Tuesday. I'll be attending various events related to my cousin's wedding, but other than that, I'm up for some hanging out. | | Friday, May 18th, 2007 | | 11:56 pm |
I had a thought tonight.
The topic of the original Matrix movie came up tonight, in reference to how good the first one was, and how bad the sequels were. I realized that the eager anticipation of sequels to such a movie is the same basic drive that draws people to religion. It's the promise of answers. The message of many religions is, "You have doubt? Uncertainty? Looking for meaning in life? Searching for hope? We have the answers!" And it provides answers, albeit made up ones, and to my mind, unsatisfying ones. This is the same thing that happened in the Matrix sequels. The first one left you with all these intriguing questions, which the sequels then answered. Unsatisfactorily. The thing to realize, is that all these unanswered questions were what made the first movie so cool. You don't actually want to know the answers - it ruins the mystery. I think it's the same thing with nature. The mystery is what makes it cool. The close study of nature (i.e. science) only highlights the mysteries, and by carefully mapping out what is known, only reveals the far vaster territory that is unknown. Maybe it's not the same for other people, but for me, the experience of transcendence is standing at the edge of the ocean in the middle of the night and staring into the unknown. | | Thursday, May 17th, 2007 | | 1:06 pm |
Here's an idea.
I'm sitting at home waiting for FedEx to deliver my new camera (I have to sign for it). They came by much earlier yesterday, so I thought they'd have been here by now. So why not use GPS to track the delivery trucks so you can track your package all the way to your door? It would be awesome to watch the little icon moving along a map, getting closer and closer... | | Tuesday, May 15th, 2007 | | 11:25 pm |
I may have found my calling
I was thinking and reading about religion today (as I often do). Among other things, I watched this recent debate between Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton. It was surprising how much ground Sharpton was willing to essentially concede (he wouldn't defend any specific religious dogma, such as the bible - he only argued for a personal belief in god). It was also remarkable (but not surprising) how much of an ass Hitchens is. Anyway, rather than trying to abolish religion or impugn atheism, I think it's more useful to think about what can be done on a practical level to encourage people to be reasonable. I was reading somewhere a suggestion that what we need is to rewrite the various scriptures for the modern age. So I was thinking that sounded like a good idea - not to get rid of religion, or make up new religions, but just tweak what we've already got. Emphasize certain parts, de-emphasize other parts... That's what a lot of people are basically doing anyway - taking the dogma of whatever religion they belong to and squeezing it to fit their own version of the cosmos. But that results in this weird double-think, where on the one hand people have to toe the party line in public, but in private they might subscribe to more reasonable views. So what can I do to promote this idea of redefining an existing religion? "Well," I thought, "It really makes more sense to tweak Christianity than Judaism since it's a lot more popular, and the Christian bible already has a lot more about social justice and so forth..." But then, since I'm not a Christian (and not about to convert!) what can I do from the outside? How could it be possible for a single Jew to step in, in a time of religious upheaval, and shape the future of world religion? Then it hit me, call it an epiphany, I could be the next Jesus! This has all been done before, 2000 years ago. All I need are followers to do my dirty work. Are you in? This is going to be big. | | Monday, April 30th, 2007 | | 7:31 am |
more music
Here is my latest musical endeavor: Meditation and Tango for viola and piano. I sprang for some fancier music notation software (Finale Allegro), and I am fairly pleased with it. The playback is pretty good compared to midi stuff I've heard, but obviously lacking compared to a real performance. | | Saturday, April 28th, 2007 | | 3:58 am |
murderers
I was just wondering: what fraction of the U.S. population is made up of murderers. one in a million? one in a thousand? According to the statistics, around 17000 murders are committed in the U.S. every year. Given a population of 300 million, a life expectancy of 77 years, and assuming each murderer kills one person, that comes to: 1:230. That seems too high to me. (Admittedly, some murderers have undoubtedly killed more than one person). But still, this means that if you take a random person, they are more likely to have committed murder than to share your birthday. | | Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 | | 12:33 am |
Once again, the native americans exploit the white man.
In 1626, the Dutch purchased the island of Manhattan from its native residents for $24 worth of glass beads, or so the story goes. Who got the better deal? According to Wikipedia, the present value of all the real estate in New York City (not just Manhattan) is around $800 billion. Now, take those glass beads, properly invested with an annual return of 10%, less a couple of % for inflation, compound it over 380 years, and today you're sitting on around $120 trillion worth of beads. Edit: By the way, that's a lot of beads. At www.artbeads.com a glass bead goes for around $0.003. That comes to around 40 quadrillion beads. | | Saturday, April 21st, 2007 | | 3:07 am |
insectus contrapticus
I finally got my hands on the video of me riding the insect car we built last summer. | | Friday, March 23rd, 2007 | | 10:28 pm |
Music
So I've been messing around with composing midi stuff. Here is my first effort: Two-part tune in D Major. I can't tell if it's any good since I've been staring at it too much already. Any criticism or suggestions (for a better title perhaps?) would be appreciated. | | Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 | | 11:49 pm |
Book reviews
Here are some reviews of books I've read recently. ( reviews )By the way, Cyril Connolly (previously only known to me from the song "Eric the Half a Bee") came up in "Atonement", which reminded me of the following: Compare and contrast these two extracts: "In Aristotle being as an object of knowledge is to on, but the essence is to ti en einai, what being was, but in the sense of that which being stably is (which was later translated as quod quid erat esse). Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that to be is also a verb, which expresses not only the act of being something (and hence we say that a cat is feline) but also the activity (and hence we say that it's good to be in sound health, or to be on vacation), to the point that often (when one is said to be glad to be in the world) it is used as a synonym for to exist, even though the equation leaves room for a great many reservations, because originally ex-istere meant 'to leave-from,' 'to manifest oneself,' and therefore 'to come into being.' " - Umberto Eco "Half a bee, philosophically, must, ipso facto, half not be. But half the bee has got to be vis a vis, its entity. D'you see? But can a bee be said to be or not to be an entire bee when half the bee is not a bee due to some ancient injury?" -Monty Python Which is why I'm glad I haven't read more philosophy. | | 1:26 am |
I'm flattered!
I had put up some pictures of my new facial hair coloration on flickr, and I noticed that one of the pictures has been marked as a favorite by this guy, BeardFan. According to his profile, "I hire men to grow their beards/goatees/mustaches and take photos of the growth. Send me a message if your interested." Among the flickr groups that he belongs to are: Sexy Bearded Men, Male Anal Views, Curved Cocks, and many more! | | Friday, March 16th, 2007 | | 12:19 am |
So a kid was murdered about two blocks from my apartment yesterday afternoon. The schools had a half-day yesterday for teacher workshops, so all the kids were out and about. Apparently there are two latino "gangs" in Santa Barbara, the west-side and the east-side. This refers to the east and west sides of State Street, which is the main drag in SB lined with upscale stores, restaurants, and nightclubs. From what I've heard, the two gangs met up on State Street, started making gang signs at each other, which led to a brawl over "turf" whatever that means, and ended with a 15-year-old being stabbed and dying in the bushes in front of Saks 5th Avenue. The prime suspect is 14 years old. From a news report: "A makeshift memorial for the 15-year-old victim was set up next to Saks Fifth Avenue where he died. It was removed by security staff at that department store." Undoubtedly, it was putting a damper on sales. | | Thursday, March 15th, 2007 | | 1:55 am |
What's that smell?
It smells so frickin' good in my apartment right now. I've got the window open, and I think it's this one tree down the block that's flowering right now that's doing it. When you walk by the tree the smell is almost overpowering. (As Marc and Sadie know, when they were here these other trees were flowering that actually smelled kind of bad. But now it's a different tree and it is awesome.) By the way, I encourage all men* to grow a beard and dye it in some kind of pattern. Mark my words - this will be a hot new trend in about ten years, *sorry ladies. Unless you undertake some radical hormone regimen, you cannot grow a beard. Men win again! | | Tuesday, March 13th, 2007 | | 1:50 am |
| | Sunday, March 11th, 2007 | | 12:29 am |
what is up with the axis of evil?
So I've noticed previously the titillating names of weapons favored by the two remaining members of the "Axis of Evil" (Iran and North Korea). North Korea has its Taepodong missile. As in, "Kim Jong Il's Taepodong tends to explode prematurely." Iran has its "explosively formed penetrators" that it is supposedly sending to Iraq. I won't make a joke about it since people are dying from them as we speak, but c'mon - penetrators. And now, I just found out the name of the predecessor of the Taepodong missile. I am not making this up - Nodong. | | Friday, March 9th, 2007 | | 1:09 am |
currently in Denver for the american physical society march meeting... So far it's been a good meeting - I've seen some interesting talks, gone on a few brewery tours, and tonight, I got punched in the throat! Fortunately, these kids who accosted me were apparently not carrying knives or anything. After a few minutes of me staring at them, speechless, while they ranted at me about "the cops allowing the catholics to take over the country" or something, they got bored and claimed to have spotted some "pussy" down the street, so one of them punched me in the throat and they left. It turned out to be a pretty weak effort on his part, so it just impaired my breathing for a minute or so. I can laugh about it now, because I'm not dead. | | Friday, March 2nd, 2007 | | 6:46 pm |
So I'm reading this article in Slate this afternoon, and I'm thinking "I think I've seen that guy commenting on Livejournal or something." Sure enough, here he is: ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=91.7) auros. I like how the picture in the article is the same as his user icon. |
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