Resonant Constellation

I have two things to talk about today which are not connected other than the fact that that they can be found on the same website. The first was under the headline: “Mirrors Tested as Global Warming Block.” As soon as I heard this, I knew that Roger Angel had to be involved. I knew this because he has talked about this very subject several times before and nobody else is awesome enough to actually try it. This summer, I worked just down the hall from Dr. Angel’s office and I must say, it was a thrill to work so close to such a big name in my field. Of course, he had no idea who I was and we never spoke (our interaction consisted of passing in the hallway), but it was still cool.

The other story is simply a photoessay of a volcanic eruption in Chile in May of last year. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen this before now, it is clearly something you’d want to publish right away. There was also an electrical storm going on at the time, which makes the photos truly epic. Volcanoes and lightning; trust me, it’s awesome.

Today I downloaded Apple’s Safari 4.0 public beta, alleged to be the fastest browser in existence. Having used the previous version of the browser for quite a while, I was ready for an upgrade. What I got, however, was far and away better than I was expecting. I might describe Safari 3 as a slightly modified Firefox clone. This isn’t bad-I like the functionality of Firefox and use it as my supplementary, back-up browser when Safari doesn’t have the correct functionality (example: FireFTP). Safari 4, however, has that peculiar Apple flavor that seems to come in all of their products and includes several very nice touches that I truly appreciate.

The first, and most noticeable, is that this browser is actually much faster than the previous iteration, consistently loading non-cached pages in less time than I’m used to. There’s also the addition of top-of-browser tabs and variable tab sizes (the active tab is larger than inactive ones), as well as a general re-arrangement of the buttons on the navigation bar that just feels more intuitive to me.

The other additions all involve the trademark Apple navigation system, cover flow. This allows you to search through your history and bookmarks with images of the web page above, and a new cover flow-like page called “top sites.” This page takes all of the top sites you visit and displays them in pictorial format in a matrix. When the site changes since you last viewed it, it displays a star in the upper-right corner. So far, I’ve found this very useful.

I’m not as much of an Apple fanboy as some are: I generally like their products, but am often annoyed by their seeming idiocy (see the recent massive bugs found in system updates). Safari 4.0, however, is a solid effort and worth the time if you’re sick of your current browser.

I love the internet, it brings me entertainment in all forms, lets me maintain contact with friends far away, allows me to get news from around the world in a matter of seconds, and sometimes, just sometimes, it brings me links like this.

That’s right, the United States government is giving away a stealth ship.

Now, I have long dreamt of flying to Boston, commandeering the USS Constitution, and sailing to Somalia to combat pirates in the most awesome way possible (I have a whole crew lined up for this, including a pilot, a weapons officer, and an engineer), but I always discussed that as a joke. Now I can get a stealth ship FOR FREE. This changes everything.

The Sea Shadow (which I will have to rename to something suitable like The Millennium Falcon or Battlestar Oceanica or somesuch) is about 170 feet long (about 50 meters) holds a crew of twelve, and is capable of a top speed of 28 knots. It has special coatings, sharp angles, and the whole basic “Stealth Fighter” treatment to make it invisible to radar and sonar.

Okay, so it may not have been designed for combat, so what? I’m a creative guy, and I have a lot of creative friends (at least 11…) we will find a way. The upside of this all: it is a perfect secret lair from which a mad scientist might…RULE THE WORLD!

There are some wrinkles, however. I’d probably have to buy fuel which I’d assume is incredibly expensive. This could wreak havoc with my future instrument purchase budget and ability to discover new and exciting beers. The ship also comes with some sort of a deep sea mining barge used to house it which is effectively useless. Also, I currently live in Arizona and unless the San Andreas has a major earthquake, Arizona is not nearly close enough to the ocean to make regular trips in the stealth boat feasible. Ah, well. I can dream, can’t I?

I have a peculiar disease that afflicts musicians, especially mandolin players. This is a kind of wasting disease, but instead of afflicting my body, it afflicts my wallet. Those of you who play the mando may have heard of this disease (and likely have it yourselves). I am, of course, referring to M.A.S., or Mandolin Acquisition Syndrome. In layman’s terms this means that mandolin players are never quite satisfied with the instrument they have, often lusting after other makes, models, designs, etcetera. Symptoms may include inordinate amounts of time spent perusing the internet to find another mando to gawk at, asking to play any instrument that comes into your sight, just to see if it plays better than yours, and ultimately a large collection of instruments usually known as “the herd.” As you may have guessed, this is expensive. The worst part: there is no cure.

There are effective treatments, however. Of course, getting a new mandolin staves off the effects for a while, though this length of time varies from person to person (I’ve seen guys get brand new mandos and start looking again right away. This is clearly the fatal stage of the disease).

I bought my most recent mando back in the summer of 2007 from Bill Bussmann in a complicated four-way trade that made my head spin. The fallout was that I got Old Wave #83, an A-model from 1995. The guy who traded it in got #412 or somesuch, an F style that I played when I was last down at Bill’s place. Let me just say this: I got the better end of the deal.

The weird part of this whole thing is that since I got OW #83, I haven’t wanted another mandolin. Oh, sure, I still have a wishlist for when I win the lottery and I’ve always coveted my friend Dave’s Nugget (but who wouldn’t?), but I haven’t had a serious desire to purchase another mandolin for quite some time.

“So what’s the problem?” you ask, “M.A.S. hasn’t shown up in a long time, you’re practically cured!” If only it were that simple.

You see, M.A.S. never goes away. Sometimes it is temporarily sated, sometimes it morphs into another form. In my case, it morphed into G.A.S. (not what you’re thinking), Guitar Acquisition Syndrome. This is precisely why, this past November, I purchased a Taylor 214-CE. Now, I’ve only ever owned two mandolins (and one mandola), so this is a rather quick transition. One would normally expect me to stick on guitars for a little while now.

This is where the bad news comes in.

Whilst surfing my usual mandolin-related websites, I discovered that “Zouk-Fest,” a New Mexico based festival for Bouzouki, Mandolin, Guitar, and other random instruments, had moved its summer festival from its usual Santa Fe residence to the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque. Since I’m from Albuquerque, I was very intrigued. Upon further inspection, I found out that this festival will be an “Irish Mandolin Weekend.” As a mandolin player who plays predominantly Irish traditional music, I often feel in the minority of mandolinists (and rightfully so, most play bluegrass), so a festival perfectly aligned with my interests, and in my hometown no less, is an opportunity not to be missed.

It was then I saw the instrument raffle. There’s 100 tickets, $30 each, and they enter you in a contest to win a beautiful Herb Taylor Bouzouki. I have long toyed with the idea of buying a cheap Zouk to try it out for myself, and I’ve played a few over the years, but this opportunity sent me over the edge. I now have full blown Bouzouki Acquisition Syndrome (B.A.S.). Oh my poor wallet.

Let’s hope I win the raffle.

First read this article at the end of the link (follow it down the intertubes): The Perfect Pancake?

I found this article on my favorite humorous news aggregator, FARK.com under the headline “100 – [10L - 7F + C(k - C) + T(m - T)]/(S – E) = OM NOM NOM.” The formula (for those of you too lazy to read the article) represents a scoring system (out of 100) for making the perfect pancake. This is an admirable goal, however the mathematician who concocted this formula (and pancakes) is in egregious error. Of course this just goes to show that mathematicians should stay out of experimentation and let those of us who actually know what we’re doing handle it. Here’s the formula again:

Those of you who are not used to looking at mathematical equations (or in my case reading them more than you read actual english) may be intimidated, but rest assured that this is a very easy to understand equation. The variables (letters) mean the following:

L is the number of lumps in the batter
F is the “Flipping score”
C is the consistency of the batter
k is the “ideal” consistency of the batter
T is the temperature of the pan
m is the “ideal” temperature of the pan
S is the length of time the batter stands before cooking
E is the length of time the pancake sits before being consumed

Then we can see what each of the terms mean here. Overall, since the score is out of 100 and you’re subtracting everything from 100, you want the combination of all the variables to be as close to zero as possible. It now becomes an optimization problem: how do we make things zero? This is easiest to do by looking at each of the terms individually and this is where the formula starts to break down.

The easiest thing to see is that the denominator of the fraction should be as large as possible. The larger the number you divide by, the smaller the result. That means that should be really big. You can do this two ways, make small and/or make big.
Sounds easy enough, right?

But what does it mean physically? Well, since S is the time the batter sits, and we want to make it arbitrarily large according to the formula, we should just let our batter sit out for years and our pancakes will be delicious. Also, since E is the time we let the finished pancakes sit after done and this should be minimized, the formula suggests that we should shove our faces straight into the sizzling pan without taking it off the burner for extreme heavenly pancake delight. Beginning to see the problems here?

Next, let’s look at the numerator. You’ll notice two similar terms: and . These terms should be as small as possible to make the numerator smaller. They also both represent an optimization of consistency and temperature, however, the tricky part in this is the so-called “ideal” parameters. These are completely arbitrary values, known to many as “Fudge factors” (tangent thought: chocolate chip pancakes=good idea) and really carry no experimental weight unless you actually assign a number to them. An interesting experiment would be to isolate the other variables and simply test one or the other and see what kind of relation the awesomeness of pancakes has to these variables. Sadly, this did not happen.

The other two variables are also fudge factors. Maybe somebody likes more lumps than somebody else and the so-called flipping score is not scientific at all. Rather it is a binary value: did you flip the pancakes correctly? YES, NO. Tsk, tsk.

I also would add some terms, for example: bubbles. Do you like your pancakes to have random air pockets in them (they form as you cook)? Or do you smash your pancakes down and tap the pan to develop wonderfully homogenous, purely awesome, irresistible airless pancakes? How many times should you hit the pancake? How hard? Clearly, this calls for experimentation. If you see me on the side of the road selling hundreds of pancakes, you’ll know why.

It’s thoughts like these that keep me out of normal company.

I recently stumbled across a list entitled “The Top 10 Mad Scientists.” Being a general fan of science and a wanting to rule the world myself some day, I decided to check it out to see if they actually got it right. Here’s the link: Top 10 Mad Scientists

They didn’t.
In fact they failed miserably.

Let’s look over their rather faulty list:
#10: Johann Konrad Dippel:
Lived in Frankenstien’s Castle, obsessed with elixirs of immortality. More of a mad Alchemist. Still, people say he experimented on human cadavers, so he’s got some cred there.

#9: Wernher von Braun:
Father of modern rocketry, designed Hitler’s V2s and the American Saturn V (the rocket that took us to the moon). Not all that mad, just very smart and obsessed with large explosions.

#8: Robert Oppenheimer:
“I am become death, destroyer of worlds.” Pretty good mad scientist quote. Still, while Oppie may have been the head of the Manhattan project, he was rather reserved about it and later regretted his involvement. Admirable morals, but not a mad scientist.

#7: Freeman Dyson:
Came up with Dyson spheres, believes that extraterrestrials may exist. Not mad science, just good ideas.

#6: Richard P. Feynman:
One of my scientific role models, Feynman was an incredibly brilliant man with a knack for finding adventure. Still, his science wasn’t really mad (unless you count his studies in women and ants…). Awesome guy, though.

#5: Jack Parsons:
Invented rocket fuel, founded JPL, had no formal science education. Blew himself up in a lab accident. Getting closer to a mad scientist.

#4: James Lovelock
Never heard of him. One of the hallmarks of a successful mad scientist is that the whole world knows who they are (or were). Apparently, though, he’s an modern environmental scientist who predicts a “gloomy” future. Not mad science, just realistic.

#3: Nikolai Tesla:
Another one of my personal heroes, Tesla is probably the only real mad scientist on this list. He built a friggin’ death ray. End of story. Tesla is the #1 mad scientist in my opinion.

#2: Leonardo da Vinci:
Very creative, very intelligent man. The definition of a “renaissance man” in that he was skilled at pretty much everything he set his mind to. Designed an airplane, experimented with physics, painted. None of this is all that mad.

#1: Albert Einstein:
*Sigh*
Einstein was the most brilliant person since Newton. He quite literally revolutionized all of science in a single year (1905). A truly brilliant theorist, but he simply wasn’t mad, even if he had crazy hair.

I hope you can see why I am peeved. Not only did they pick non-mad scientists, they passed up several other actual mad scientists. For example: Newton, Archimedes, Edison (he really was crazy…like total whacko nut job crazy), Kepler (he wanted to ride demons to the moon), Harry Harlow (a real sick puppy, trust me), Sidney Gottlieb (catchphrase: “Let’s Poison Everyone”), Giovanni Aldini (really wanted to be Dr. Frankenstein), Illya Ivanovich Ivanov (direct quote from an article about him: “Ivanov was also an insane old kook, ordered by Stalin to create a super race of slave ape-man hybrids who would serve the Communistic Russia in taking over the free world.” Yeah.), Josef Mengele (not even going there), Jose Delgado (mind control, for reals), Sergei Bryukhonenko (ZOMBIE DOGS) . Look, I could go on for freaking ever with more real mad scientists, my point is that they chose…poorly. Somebody should tell the general public that “Smart does not equal Crazy.”

Today I read an article about the new ISS module being sent up by NASA. So far, it is called “Node 3.” Not too inspiring, huh? Especially since it looks really cool (view pictures here: Help NASA name Node 3! ). So NASA decided to hold a public contest for people to vote on the name. Here are the suggested entries:
Earthrise
Legacy
Venture
Serenity
True geeks will spring to one IMMEDIATELY: Serenity. Perhaps the inside of the so-called “Cupola” looks kind of like 10-Forward from the Enterprise, but I must say, having an actual spacecraft “Serenity” outranks the Enterprise reference (there’s already an Enterprise, after all). This is suitably cool enough that I encourage everybody reading this to follow my link and vote for Serenity (which the site says is currently winning 83% to 7%, 6%, and 5%. This adds up to 101%. At least they’re not screwing up meters and feet anymore…)

Today I was bored beyond all belief-my optics teacher decided that today would be a great day to repeat everything he’s been saying for the last few weeks. I had been listening to the album Lateralus by Tool and I remembered that the title track features a chorus wherein the syllables of each line form the first few numbers of the Fibonacci sequence. Observe:

Black, (1)
Then, (1)
White are, (2)
All I see, (3)
In my infancy, (5)
Red and yellow then came to be, (8)
Reaching out to me, (5)
Lets me see. (3)
There is, (2)
So, (1)
Much, (1)
More and, (2)
Beckons me, (3)
To look through to these, (5)
Infinite possibilities, (8)
As below so above and beyond I imagine, (13)
Drawn outside the lines of reason, (8)
Push the envelope, (5)
Watch it bend, (3)

Pretty neat, huh? There’s lots of interesting mathematical things in that song, but the Fibonacci sequence thing is the coolest. So in my bored state I decided to set out to compute the Fibonacci sequence as far as I could go. It begins easily enough, but with the addition of each new digit the computations become a bit harder. I got to the 113th term before I stopped (this lasted well beyond the end of class, extending into the astrophysics colloquium I always attend). Now, I’m sure there’s mistakes in there somewhere, by the end I was adding 24 digit numbers, and you can’t do that too long without introducing error. Still, I’m relatively proud of it and I was vastly intrigued by the patterns that emerge. The first few numbers appear all over the place (as soon as you get two 1s in a row, you’re pretty much bound to get the sequence). Perhaps I shall continue in a more structured way later. Aside from that, it was a wonderfully diverting way to pass the time and I quite enjoyed doing the math, even though it was simple.

I got an email today that said I should take a survey. I’ve got plenty of better things to do, so I decided to take the survey. I discovered to my chagrin that it was a painfully obtuse survey about ‘leadership,’ which is one of those overused buzzwords like ‘diversity,’ which has lost all of its meaning and has become completely trite. For example, they asked two functionally identical questions about “what leadership means to you” right next to each other. I answered: “Leadership means management, administration, and organization. You just asked this question, I think you need better leadership.” I answered the questions honestly though, and I think my disdain for the idiocy displayed shone through, but just to be sure I left an additional comment on the end:

Please enter any additional comments you may have after taking this survey.
Based on my answers you may think me a bit of an egoist and rather ornery. I assure you, this is an entirely correct assessment. I do not feel this way without reason-empirical experience has made me what I am. I came to college as an optimist and the sheer stunning stupidity I find myself surrounded with daily has turned me into a bit of a pessimist. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still a personal optimist. I can and will succeed in my chosen field of study, of that I have no doubt. However, I find it hard to believe that the people with whom I regularly interact outside of my peer group (my peers are scientists-astronomers and physicists) are capable of much more than breathing, reproducing, and the drinking of massive quantities of bad beer. Yes I do realize that these are a sample of the smarter half of the bell curve. This is precisely why I am so pessimistic.
You see, I don’t feel I belong to any group; city, state, country, religion, species, etcetera. When taken as a whole, groups of people are intensely stupid and rather disappointing, even people who may be individually wonderful. I marked myself as a political moderate because that is neither liberal nor conservative. The truth is that I have my own ideas about how the world works and I dislike the thought of being squeezed into somebody else’s paradigm. So I live my life in a bemused sort of detachment, watching (as a great man once put it) a once promising species circle the drain ever faster without even noticing where it is, much less where it’s going.
So I hope you understand my responses a little better now. I feel that this popular buzzword “leadership” is really just another symptom of an increasingly vapid society more concerned with talking about things and giving themselves a pat on the back for it than actually doing anything.

Cheers.

As you can tell, I had a hell of a lot of fun, this is why I always take the surveys. Try it, being honest is sometimes very entertaining.

This is one of those few beers that I get to drink out of my trappist glass, so even before I poured it I was excited. What drew me to this particular beer out of the (probably) hundreds of other nearby at my local beer store was the fact that it is brewed with rasins. Well, this was so novel I HAD to try it, even if I had no idea how that would taste.

The bottle is quite large and is corked instead of the usual metal crimped caps that beer has. It took a little work to get the cork out, but when I did, the scent clarified the experience immediately: RASINS! They are omnipresent in this beer as a strident forward note. Because of this, this is a rather sweet beer; some may consider it a dessert beer. The rest of the beer certainly follows this impression, but before we get to taste, let’s consider the looks:

Lost Abbey Judgment Day in my Chimay Trappist Glass. Not quite sacrilege...

The beer pours very dark with very little head (this might be bad pouring on my part, but I’ve been getting pretty good as of late, so this is getting less likely). The nose, while dominated by rasins, is also accented by other dark fruits and hops.

This beer is almost shockingly fruity. In the first sip, I tasted pear, strawberry, and a hint of plum. As the beer warmed a bit, I began to taste caramel malts and just the barest suggestion of melon. Overall, it is very creamy and at just the right amount of carbonation to take advantage of this.

So, if you’re in the mood for a very sweet, fruity beer, give Judgment day a whirl. Just be careful, at 11% ABV it has a hidden kick!

Score:
Aroma:7/10
Appearance:4/5
Flavor:8/10
Palate:4/5
Overall:15/20

Final Score:3.8/5.0