Canto IL

Interesting news from the CDC. Here's the link for the survey, which is fascinating. I love statistics. I think if this whole physics thing doesn't work out, I'll dive into statistics for sports or population surveys and such. It's a lot of fun to see what's really going on in the world. The numbers don't lie.

My first week back, and I'm already behind. I've just been spending the last few days reading and trying to learn some stuff to talk about with The Advisor. I must impress him with all my vast knowledge... I spent the whole day today listening to music (Summer days + Allman Brothers = Awesome) and cleaning the house. Laundry, dishes, vacuuming, bathroom, etc... I think I'll take the rest of the night off and watch The Big Lebowski or something else I can just be lazy with.

I've had an idea that I've been kicking around for a while and I submit it to the masses as to whether or not I should do it. Are you ready?

Blogging The Simpsons.

Basically, I would go back through and watch every episode and deliver some commentary and thoughts after each one. I've got seasons 1-9 so far, and 10 is coming out this August. So it would go at least that far. What do people think? Would that make for an interesting read?

Canto XLVIII

So I'm finally on my way home. I'm currently on the bus from Boulder to the airport, and I'll finish this on the flight home. But it won't get posted until tomorrow. It's like writing a letter to myself in the future! Hmm... What to write about? Not that much news either in my world or the world in general. I'm going out tomorrow to pick up the new White Stripes album (Icky Thump) and will probably listen to it at least twice before the end of the day. Maybe that's something to write about, a review. I'm excited either way, and we're going to see them when they're in town in July. I'm also trying to figure out what other CDs to get. I'm going to limit myself to less than 5. Unless something really good catches my eye. Steph's birthday is coming up this monday. I guess we'll go out for some nice food. She got a raise at work earlier this week, so congratulations to her!

And here's the rest of the story. First, a few things to complain about. Whatever number reason this is to hate the dorms: someone puked in our sink sometime Wednesday night/Thursday morning. I thought we had all grown past this. To the people who thought that a tiny baby would be a good idea to bring on an overnight flight: Go to Hell. You deserve it. I'll have to check my copy of the Inferno, but I'm pretty sure your going straight to Hell. The baby screamed, and I am not exaggerating, the entire flight. At full volume. In the seat directly behind me. By the end of the flight, the baby was coughing and horse after all that screaming. But continued to scream anyway. I don't blame the baby, but the parents who thought that it would shut up for the flight, they can go Hell. Where they will be forever tormented by all screaming unbaptized babies.

But I finally made it home. Lazy weekend followed. Went to the local shopping outlet for some groceries, picked up my CDs (I managed to talk Steph out of getting the Labyrinth soundtrack), and we rented Anchorman, which was pretty funny, Will Ferrell is always good for a laugh. Also, for Steph's birthday dinner we finally went out to this Greek restaurant near our house we've been meaning to try. Delicious and cheap! Next time someone visits, we'll have to go there. Hope you like lamb! (It's delicious!) She also got her birthday present, which is a Nikon D40 DSLR. And has been having fun playing with it since. She also finally submitted her first story for publication last night! She's going to keep working on it, and wants to submit it to 20 places in the next month. She's been working really hard lately and doing a bunch of things at home (like gardening, writing, photography, cleaning up, making dinners...), so I know she's planning on asking some of you to read over her story, so help her out a little bit.

Last night we had to do some BBQ because it was so nice out. The New England evenings in the summer really are quite nice. The days, being 85+ degrees and 70+ humidity, I could do without. But the nights are just great. So if you visit in the summer, we'll have to do BBQ. Also, I've moved into my new office. Steph came by and took some pictures with her new camera, but I think I'll wait a little bit and settle in before posting some pics. It's pretty sweet, though. I just need some bookshelf space for my books. Right now there are 6 stacks of physics & math books, all waist high, next to my desk. We're suppose to get a new bookcase in sometime soon.

Also, I think just about everyone saw this. I'm not saying anything. Just that I was an elder child.

Canto XLVII

So there's really not all that much new going on right now. I'm here at TASI getting my learn on. The lectures seem to be stepping up this week, and I've really been enjoying them. Although by the last afternoon lecture today, I could just feel my brain starting to tap out, I think I was asleep for maybe 10 minutes, and when I woke up, I was totally lost. I'll have to go through the notes tonight. But there was one rather great comment from Nima Arkani-Hamed. Much of his discussion revolves around the anthropic principle, which is basically saying that various constants of nature are "tuned" just right to support life. This has gained a lot of ground in the theoretical physics community (although remains highly controversial) due to two outstanding unsolved problems in physics right now: the Higgs mass (for those who keep up on such things, yes we still expect to find the Higgs at the LHC, this has to do with it's coupling to matter) and the Cosmological Constant/Dark Energy (the recently observed fact that our universe is just beginning to accelerate). Basically, the idea is that there is a huge multi-verse of many different universes with many different values of these various constants of nature, and we just happen to live in one of the universes that can support life. There are certain features and drawbacks to this, but before you dismiss it completely remember that the Earth you are sitting on is an anthropic argument. We didn't just happen to live on a planet that supports life, we could only live on a planet that supports life. Anyway, his lecture included a lot of examples of interesting "accidents" about out universe and situations that may seem to be "tuned". But one was particularly funny. The size of our moon is just such that it can block out our sun. In fact, it works to about one part in 10^3 or 10^4. That's an amazing amount of "tuning", even worse odds than the Blazers winning the Lottery! But he called this a case of mis-anthropic tuning, thinking about all the virgins who were sacrificed to "bring back the sun" or some other such nonsense. It got a good laugh. Well, they say it's not funny if you have to explain the joke, but maybe you learned something along the way.

I'm looking forward to being back in Boston. My parents are heading off across the pond tomorrow to visit my brother in London, and also visit Paris and some other parts of France. Two weeks of European vacation. I'm a little envious, Steph and I tried to see if we could work it in this year, but no luck. We'll make it there sometime. We've both been separately, but not together. Someday.

Canto XLVI

So as you may be able to tell, I've updated my blog! Well, adjusted some of the colo(u)ring (for those of the British persuasion) and updated the links and such. Not too exciting, but it's 90-something degrees out, which makes being lazy very easy. Right now sitting in front of a fan with my laptop in front of me, watching the Sox ticker (Bonds homered, but Sox are still up in the 8th). My web-surfing is slowing down after 2 hours, so I decided to go through the email, then hit up the blog. And since I don't have much to post about, decided to make up my own news. Like fixing up this blog. Oh sure, I could do some research, but the fan keeps blowing the papers around, and if you think I'm moving away from that you're nuts. I saw Pirates III yesterday. Disappointing. If you only saw the first one, stay there. If you saw the second one, like I did, hoping that it would continue the antics of the original, well, you know how that turned out. Basically I was just hoping for some sort of closure for the series since I'd already sunk (if you'll forgive the pun) 5+ hours into the series. So now I'm down almost 8 hours to Jerry Bruckheimer, with very little closure. Lame.

Happy Father's Day everybody!

Canto XLV

Well, I'm not one to usually do this, but this caught my eye while browsing the Oregonian earlier today. "Security setup records teen sexually abusing barn horse" really says it all, but I think the most telling line is "very concise, deliberate, well-thought-out plan." Concise?

Today, after a lovely morning lecture on open string field theory, we went out on a pub crawl in Boulder. Well, more of a Micro-Brewery crawl. We started just after lunch, and by the end were pretty much wasted. But good times all around. Sobering up now that I have a big bottle of water and took a shower. We hit up: Avery Brewing, Redstone Meadery (2nd time for me, if you recall), Boulder Brewing, and Twisted Pine Brewing. I've got to say though that nothing really blew my mind. I think the hoppy-revolution has hit Boulder pretty hard, and that's not really what I'm looking for in a beer. Even the porter at Avery was basically an extra-dark hoppy ale. I really enjoyed the light meads during the hot summer day. We walked about 7 or 8 miles today on sidewalks to get everywhere, and it was hot. The mead was the most refreshing. Weirdest beer of the day was the Chile Beer at Twisted Pine. It really did taste like there were little chiles in the beer. Long story short: if you like the hoppier-style ales, like IPAs and such, then this would have been for you. If you're like me, though, sometimes you just want a good Porter or Stout, and they can be so hard to find.

Anyway, I think tomorrow is going to be my day of rest & maybe get some work done in the afternoon. Right now, it's 10:30 at night, time to brush my teeth and go to bed. I've been posting so much this week because I'm bored without Stephanie. I miss home. And it's not just the nice bed, my own bathroom/shower, meals when I want them, the TV, or the sex. It's all of those things put together. Especially the last one. Maybe I am still drunk... Have a good night everybody!

Canto XLIV

So here's just a quick scattering of stuff while I wait for the cafeteria line to die down a bit so I can get some crappy lunch. I read the Silmarillion. Not a good book. And the worst part was the ending with the Deus-Ex-Machina conclusion. Does anyone ever appreciate this? Roughly the idea of the book is that the good gods beat down the bad god every so often. Yee-freaking-haw. Went for a long hike during the afternoon talk. The speaker was terrible, so I don't really feel bad about missing it. Well, I do feel slightly bad since I was looking forward to the topic he was "discussing", but incoherent mumbling into the blackboard while writing illegibly doesn't really do much for me. He gave some references for what he was going to cover, which is basically an invitation to not take notes. The only other speaker of note so far is basically one of the hugest nerds I have ever seen in a physics setting. And keep in mind this is in a room with 60 theoretical physics graduate students and another half dozen professors. That's how nerdy he was. Normally after a lecture we spend the time talking about whatever interesting points the speaker made, but this time we basically spent it trying to gauge how much lunch money he's lost over the course of his life, how many wedgies and/or swirlies received, etc. 'Now see here gentlemen, I gave you the requisite sum, there's really no need for this...' I don't want to go into further details, for fear of having my young physics career over before it really began, but there were many riffs on this nerd-theme. Feel free to come up with some of your own.

Canto XLIII

Well, school-wise, there's not much to say. Actually, there was one really interesting set of lectures (the ones by David Kutasov) on constructing Supersymmetric Quantum Chromodynamics (SQCD for short - physicists love acronyms) from an intersecting brane scenario in string theory. But I've promised this to be a more personal blog to keep those not so near me up-to-date on the comings and goings of my life and not a geek-driven physics blog. Also I don't think I could keep that up. Anything really cool will probably pop into the New York Times Science section eventually.

For the weekend I met up with Steph again. She had been up visiting her Aunts in Fort Collins, but came down to pick me up. I guess they went to the Celestial Seasonings tea factory and took the tour, and had a great time. The mint room was something else! She picked me up, and we visited a Meadery here in Boulder before heading back up to Fort Collins to stay with her Aunt. (I have discovered that whenever I type Fort Collins, I first type 'Collings' then have to go back and fix it. -ing is just too common of a suffix.) We watched Happy Feet, the animated penguin film, that night. Very cute, but I think I liked March of the Penguins better. Penguins are just sooo cute, animation doesn't really make them much cuter. Almost makes me want to do B-physics... But not really.

The next day we went for a run in the morning and saw a coyote up close and personal. He saw us and ran the other direction, occasionally looking behind him to make sure we weren't following him. But I guarantee that if I had had to fight him off, it would have been a 500-lb Siberian Wolf that escaped from the local talk show. (She gets upset at loud noises. Loud? That's the secret word for the day!) Ahh, season 4, greatest of them all. Anyway, after that adventure, we hit up the local microbrews. Fort Collins is well known for two major breweries, New Belgium and Budweiser. But we took the breweries less traveled and hit up: Fort Collins brewery (damn it! did it again!), Odell Brewery and Coopersmith's Pub & Brewery. All of them were quite good, some of the lagers in particular were nice and tasty. We then had dinner with Steph's Aunts & their dogs. Very cute and funny dogs, but constantly working for something from the table. She flew out this morning and is back in Boston, while I have to ride out the next 2 weeks worth of lectures all by my lonesome. There look to be some good talks, though, so hopefully it goes quickly. Of course, I'll keep everyone apprised of the situation.

I think I would enjoy getting into tennis, if the sport weren't dominated by cyborgs. I was really rooting for Federer today, if only to give him the calendar Grand Slam chance. They always show the career record of Rafa vs. Federer, but it's really skewed since they've met 12 times, 7 of them have been on clay, Nadal's strength. I thought Hard Court was suppose to be the dominant (most common) surface in tennis? They're even (2-2) on hard court, and the only time they've met on Federer's dominant surface (grass) he's 1-0. It's kind of ridiculous how dominant Federer has been, though, and at least it shows that the overall tennis cyborg can be beaten by the clay-court cyborg.

Canto XLII

Well, the week certainly has gone by. First some updates about TASI, the theory summer school I'm now attending. The talks have been a lot of fun, and talking about them afterwards with the other students very rewarding. I'm learning bunches. Of course, the more I learn, the more I find that I don't know much. Frankly, I feel like the only reason to come to these schools is if you already know everything, and just want a place to show that off. Maybe this is just playing into my fears that I'm the dumb one. I'm not sure who said it, but the quote goes something like "If you look around the table and don't see the sucker, then you're it." I don't see any suckers here...

In other news, Steph arrived for the weekend to celebrate our anniversary. She came in Saturday morning, we rented a car, and after a brief stop in Boulder, went straight up to Rocky Mountain National Park (RMNP). The first day, we just drove around the main road up to the pass, and did the basic motor-tourism Americans love so much. Saw a bunch of elk, a coyote, two bighorn sheep (very briefly, they ran across the road and straight up into the hills) and some smaller things as well. The scenery is quite nice. We were staying in a cheap hotel in Estes Park, the local tourism town. The next day (Sunday) we drove to the far side of the park and worked our way back across. We also did some nice hikes, both long and short as we went along. Among the interesting things we saw was a coyote hunting some field mice (not bopping them on the head). It looked exactly like our dog when she would chase down balls and other things. The coyote would jump in with both paws out, and nip at it with his mouth. Of course, he was actually eating them, but you could see where our dog got that from. The other cool thing we saw was a moose. When Steph and I moved cross-country, we visited many parks and did many hikes in supposed moose-country at supposed moose-time, but never managed to find one. But now we finally did. They're very cool, a nice lope to their stride and very casual. Next time we need to find a big bull moose, as this one didn't have the requisite antlers for the full moose experience. Monday morning we also went out for some hikes and finished up sightseeing in the west part of the park that we hadn't got to the day before. Here's a picture of me at the nicest place we hiked to, Calypso Cascades, in the Southeast corner of the park.

And here's part 32 of Stephanie's continuing series of me throwing rocks from places. I don't know what it is about rocks, but I love to throw them. You can also notice the hair growth, two weeks after the shaving.


Monday was, of course, our 2nd anniversary. Like I said, we had gone hiking that morning, and then returned to Boulder to a lovely little B&B we found online. Very granola if you know what I mean. But we enjoyed it immensely. We went out to dinner at Sushi Zanmai, which was also wonderful, then walked around town & campus a little bit and had ice cream at Glacier. I'm only providing these links so that if you find yourself in Boulder, you can retrace our steps. Or enjoy them on your own. Sadly, that was only for one night, and now I'm back in the dorms while Steph visits some of her family that live up in Fort Collins. I already miss the bed. It was a pillow wonderland.

Anyway, that's about all. A whole bunch of us from the dorm went down to the local coffee shop to "get some work done" because they have wireless. And now, everyone is actually getting work done, while I surf the web and blog. It's very depressing. Maybe I just need to get motivated. I wonder if I'll ever feel like I'm not the dumb one...