Neoteny is the greatest state of mind (Part 2: Star Trek - Into Darkness)

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First of all, I randomly ran into one of my friends whom I haven't talked to in many months. This was out of pure serendipity. I was looking for the medical school library, which was really hard to find as there were no signs I could locate... and I somehow wandered into a genetics lab building, peeked into one of the doors, and saw my friend M furiously scribbling. So I did the logical thing and pushed the (unlocked) door and knocked at the same time. And she was like OMG hellooooo!

So we chatted about life and lamented about work. Not that anything was going particularly badly, just the nature of research. I mentioned that I wanted to see the newest Star Trek movie. M expressed the same sentiment and that she would ping me about it later. Eventually I remembered that I needed to go to the medical library which she directed me to and it happened to be right downstairs. Oops.

That same Saturday at approximately 9:10pm, M emailed me about going to a late showing of Star Trek at 11:35pm. I already showered and was about to make dinner. I quickly whipped up a random pasta stew and slurped it down and met up with her and and her boyfriend K who was driving a new manual car. The amount of (sober) spontaneity was unprecedented. (I did not realize I would top myself a day later.)

We got bubble teas. M and K sneaked in theirs in M's bag. I got the warm barley tea and it wasn't sealed completely, so I left it in the car but that's okay. Maybe I should have specified completely no sugar instead of half. Anyway... Fast forward past the drone of previews. I was getting sleepy.

I was really looking forward to Chris Pine and Zachary Quinto's reprise as Kirk and Spock. And especially anticipating Benedict Cumberbatch's portrayal of the mysterious villain John Harrison. He nailed it! I totally enjoyed all three characters' chemistry with one another, as I interpret Harrison to represent a dark and impulsive side of Kirk, which the cool and rational Spock is an antithesis of. The action scenes are quite exciting, but I particularly dig the nuanced performance Cumberbatch brings in his dramatic deliveries.

Scotty is a timely (comic) relief at all the right times. The hot blonde of a weapons specialist with a physics Ph.D. is an ambivalent but admirable attempt at bucking stereotypes. I would have liked to see more of Sulu, but Cumberbatch stole the show :-P

Kudos to the CG artists and set designers as well. I liked the futuristic skyline of San Francisco - where the Star Fleet is based! I assume people would have learned to control earthquakes by that point :-P

The next day I ran into another friend in my lab building and he didn't like the movie and called BC's character "freakazoid". I think he doesn't like the "excessive pandering" to "fangirls". Perhaps he can stick to watching hip-hop music videos.

Dr. Chu goes to Washington...

... and ends up hungover, waking up next to a solar panel. In a clever combination of the politician's non-denial denial of the affair and his characteristic dry wit while more or less staying true to what he believes in:

“I just want everyone to know that my decision not to serve a second term as Energy Secretary has absolutely nothing to do with the allegations made in this week’s edition of the Onion. While I’m not going to confirm or deny the charges specifically, I will say that clean, renewable solar power is a growing source of US jobs and is becoming more and more affordable, so it’s no surprise that lots of Americans are falling in love with solar.”

His wife purportedly expressed skepticism: "Is that really you? You don't have hair on your chest."

In a sense, Prof. Steve Chu's stint in Washington D.C. does indeed feel like the Frank Capra's movie Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. He even showed an excerpt of it (2m16s until about 2m37s). The naïve and nerdy physicist who's an ardent advocate for renewable energy and had to be forced to talk about the oil and gas industries as SoE.

He talked about many many examples of how a technology was initially derided and dismissed even by subject experts until it found an agent of dissemination who made it economically feasible and popular. And then it becomes as obvious to anyone. Like James Watt to the steam engine and Henry Ford to the automobile. A log-log-linear learning curve, if you will.

"[Refrigerator size] is not plateauing because of the size of the American appetite. It's plateauing because of the size of the kitchen door."

He clearly enjoyed his time at Bell Labs. Of the "flat structure where everyone argued about ideas but respected one another as people." I wish I could always find such places to do my work in... If there are more articulate scientists with social conscience, perhaps the Earth would not be totally destroyed after all...

"We Do Not Inherit the Earth from Our Ancestors; We Borrow It from Our Children."

At the end of the talk, he quoted Apollo 8 astronauts and showed the entirety of Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot.

Two members of the audience asked him questions along the line of "how do you encourage scientists/ students/ student-scientists to be involved in policy? Any advice?" I don't remember what he said exactly, but it had the gist of Dory the blue tang's "just keep swimming just keep swimming just keep swimming swimming swimming"

Mwahaha sorry about the earworm. And if anyone can comment on the feasibility of fusion as an energy source, it would be the veteran laser guru.

Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet

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I almost couldn't get tickets for this Berlin Philharmonic Wind Quintet concert... The tickets sell out frustratingly early. All the retirees in the area buying up season tickets months in advance!

It was amusing to see the only gal in the group (may or may not be the youngest?) holding the biggest stick (i.e. bassoon). Their program was refreshing, spring-like, and most of all whimsical. Only musicians of their caliber can pull this off! I had a lot of fun visualizing dramatic scenarios during the pieces...

W. A. Mozart (1756-1791), Fantasy in F Minor for a Mechanical Organ, KV 608 (Arr. by Michael Hasel): Mozart being the timeless classic he is, I had no salient mental imagery other than the abstract notion of spring and joy. This seemed to be their warm-up piece, as I felt they were tweaking some intonation along the way. I know this because once the air inside the instrument gets cold, it takes a few minutes to warm it up and get the pitches right again! Mmm wave physics.

Kalevi Aho (b.1949), Kvintetto (2006): Wild safaris with cave spelunking, scuba diving, jungle trekking, and desert traversing. Along the way, the travelers encountered a pair of elephants lumbering in heat, a mixed chorus of howler monkeys and macaws, a near-death experience of almost crashing into a cliff in a propeller plane, and an explosive symphony of color-shifting corals, tropical fishes, and octopi. The last movement starts with the flute, oboe, and clarinet playing offstage, and then they come back. And then the French and bassoon leave and play offstage until the end. Curious stage effect.

Jacques Ibert (1890-1962), Trois Piecès Brèves (1930): A lovely garden in the height of spring with serene fountains, butterflies dancing among the flowers, birds chirping amidst the arboreal foliage, and squirrels darting around the branches and tree trunks in their vibrant acrobatics.

Darius Milhaud (1892-1974), La cheminée du roi René (1939): Young Franciscan monks hiking in an ancient and pristine forest, seeking enlightenment. Magical spirits visit them every once in a while to commune with the monks and make fun of how little they know about the wisdom of the forest.

Jean Françaix (1912-1997), Quintet No. 1 (1948): The Marauders (may or may not include Lily Evans) pulling a Ferris Bueller by ditching their Hogwarts classes for a day, solemnly swearing they're up to no good. They must be constantly looking out for people who might recognize them, but that doesn't stop them from going to a bar and drinking a bit more than they can handle. James and Lily (or Sirius and Remus or some combination thereof) danced around in awkward and silly moves, before Remus reminds everyone they must head back pronto or they would really be in trouble. The next day, while passing time during a boring class hungover, they're planning their next adventure.

The quintet did an encore of a folk song medley that included "Oh Susana" and "Yankee Doodle" among other tunes I couldn't immediately recall :-P I wonder if they have an encore book of folk tune arrangements from every country they've performed in?

I wanted to ask them if any of them can circular breathe, but sneaking backstage seemed to be tricky. Too bad!

Double, double, toil and trouble;

... Fire burn, and pseudopotentials bubble. That about sums up my research these days.

Fiddling with the mysterious inner workings of how to best represent atomic orbitals so they appear to behave just like in experimental observations...

It's like the simmering of a secret sauce where each ingredient must be mixed in the right amount and added at the right time. Otherwise dramatic explosions break out in the form of error messages like "Jacobian has collapsed", "5s is unbound", "x1 must be monotonically increasing", or "failed to bracket eigenvalues". 

Now I know why Snape the potion master is perennially frustrated. At least my research group appreciated the Shakespeare reference and the clip-art of a bubbly cauldron.

Biz school profs' (canine) personas

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I've been amusing myself lately by associating my recent profs with characteristic dogs, in some cases anthropomorphic ones.

P.C.R. - (a slightly loopy) German Shepherd. Claims to be serious and pedagogical, but secretly is not that serious and has a dark sense of humor. (He called me by different wrong names TWICE).

J.M.L. - the Tramp in Lady and the Tramp. Whimsical, laid-back, yet perceptive and shrewd. Reminds me of Robin Williams' characters.

J.D.S. - the Terrier in Lady and the Tramp. Energetic, snappy, yappy, inclined to provocative and dramatic flairs.

J.P. - a cross between a beagle and a Dachshund...? He's ex-military, has engineering degrees, and lots of hands-on mechanical design experience. Hard to place him so far.

Looking forward to adding more descriptions. I might have to expand my set to more animals later on...

Bakemonogatari - 2 of ??

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[[My previous blog entry about this anime]] 

This series has such high re-watch value for me... because it encourages endless pondering and rumination about nuances and intentions and the like. It's interesting to entertain the connection between the seemingly random scene insertions and the plot elements, e.g. the characters' dialogues, actions, and thoughts.

The insertions are often highly geometric constructs of street scenes, i.e. residential areas inside a city. Examples include generic apartment windows, playground swings, light rail tracks, power line towers, etc.


I feel like these inserts help set the mood and stimulate the viewers' train of thoughts in various Brownian directions... just as the black and red screens that flash for only a fraction of a second and read "Black (or Red) scene: animation number 'none'"... I have not yet figured out what they mean...

Actually, I think it could be either (1) animators got lazy (2) they're trolling the audience (3) simulating the old flickering film reels (4) black scenes for -_- or @_@ or =_= or ._. moments, and red scenes for O_O or intense bloody moments...

[Bones and Inception references] A dream...

... that was a blend of real and fictional people, complete with a soundtrack of lush strings. I swear I had heard the melody before but I can't place it. So frustrating...

In the dream, I'm an undercover agent trying to catch the perpetrator who kidnaps unsuspecting standardized test takers into an "alternate matrix" and then runs experiments on them. In religious terms, the "alternate matrix" is like... purgatory? Or the bridge between the physical world and the world of the dead, or something like that.

And... I'm working with Brennan and Booth on this case. (I think this is a sign that I watch too much Bones... and Mulder and Scully might have been a better fit for this :-P) They have already rounded up the accomplices outside the luxurious private school building/ castle/ mansion. Now I have to catch the main perp in the act.

However, he can teleport and switch rooms at will, and there is simultaneous testing going on in different rooms... so I remember dashing up and down the spiral stairs that are covered with elegant and ancient-looking carpets and sided with mahogany handles. What a stupid way to catch a teleporter, I know...

All the while I am running around, I keep hearing an ensemble of orchestral strings playing a melody with a overlay of (1) the Happy Birthday song progression Franz Schubert's Symphony No. 8, Mvmt 1 (as I remembered hearing from Minority Report) and (2) Non Je Ne Regrette Rien (from Inception). I recall some students are taking solfege tests on the second floor, but they don't notice me when I poke my head in.

I myself have been taking a strange mix of GREs and SATII... marking an obscene number of Scantron ovals... the horror! I have to ask to leave the testing room to go to the restroom, but I put the proctor in a trance while attempting to catch the perp.

Long story short... I did not catch the perp in my dream because the soundtrack got louder and I felt some strange abdominal cramping and woke up just as I saw Booth frantically signalling me from outside the building...

Seriously... is this like fanfic fodder or what...

FontForge looks like the answer to my restlessness... [NOT]

- - -
Thanks to Fzz's link to a kerning game... that inspired this sudden concentrated exploration into typography :-P Tried my hands at the game and didn't do too badly I suppose.

Although the actual task of designing a font is rather involved!

I tried to install FontForge via Cygwin at first, then found it to be hopelessly and needlessly complicated. And then I realized, doh, I have Ubuntu. And then the installation was just one line -

    sudo apt-get install fontforge python-fontforge 

Admittedly, this is the first time I truly felt that my multi-OS machine has finally found its purpose... to be multi-OS... after the fiasco of trying to install Jacapo in Ubuntu (which is a lot more complicated than a single sudo command)

Maybe I can fiddle with the notion of my own usefulness for awhile. FontForge looks sufficiently complex to sustain my play for at least a few months.

[Edit] I impulsively upgraded my Ubuntu from 10.04 to 11.10 and now FontForge doesn't work anymore. Blerg! At least "Oneiric Ocelot" sounds cool. I wanted the next release to be called "Pensive Pelican" or "Pouncing Panther" or... "Peeing Poodle", which Fzz said was better than "Pooping Poodle" because it could be shortened to "PeePoo". The developers should make that an April Fool's joke or something...

WARNING: Conference trolls, mess with me and you die. :-)

- - -

(2:15:22 PM) Me: I have found that conference poster trolls are @$$holes
(2:15:30 PM) Me: At some point I will screw with them
(2:15:53 PM) Me: But I'm too much of a rookie right now
(2:20:09 PM) Friend: It's not a big deal when you're presenting a poster
(2:20:18 PM) Friend: Just wait until you give a talk and the trolls attack
(2:20:31 PM) Me: hmm
(2:20:41 PM) Me: I have not encountered that at that symposium
(2:20:44 PM) Friend: Chances are it's something personal in any case
(2:21:04 PM) Me: however, the moderator did introduce one speaker as "beauty and power in the same package"
(2:21:19 PM) Friend: People challenging your work have a competing work, or more likely they're competing for a share of the same funding pie.
(2:21:24 PM) Me: because the audience was 2/3 white males over 40
(2:21:39 PM) Me: and the speaker was a youngish Chinese woman
(2:21:51 PM) Me: I see... competitors
(2:21:57 PM) Friend: Haha what is this the 19th century?
(2:22:03 PM) Me: yes
(2:22:05 PM) Me: totally
(2:22:09 PM) Friend: At least physicists don't have the balls to make a comment like that.
(2:22:32 PM) Me: Although if the competitors don't have valid point, everyone else can see that it's playground squabble
(2:23:48 PM) Friend: I don't get it was the moderator really old?
(2:24:07 PM) Friend: I just can't imagine that happening at any conference I go to, it'd be really awkward
(2:24:30 PM) Me: He was kinda old
(2:24:35 PM) Me: Not *that* old
(2:24:38 PM) Me: 50 ish
(2:24:56 PM) Me: I wonder how many times the speaker got comments like these
(2:25:10 PM) Me: prolly a few times
(2:30:18 PM) Friend: Still doesn't seem very appropriate in a professional setting.
(2:30:24 PM) Friend: Even if it's a real small conference.
(2:30:35 PM) Friend: Unless the speaker was the moderator's wife or something like that
(2:30:44 PM) Me: oh hahahahahha
(2:30:58 PM) Me: That has not been confirmed or denied... :P
(2:31:04 PM) Friend: Well who knows.
(2:31:13 PM) Me: indeed
(2:31:16 PM) Friend: I keep hearing conferences are good places to hook up
(2:31:26 PM) Me: Even for old ass people?
(2:31:32 PM) Me: ... especially
(2:31:35 PM) Me: for old ass people
(2:32:09 PM) Friend: You have a point
(2:32:21 PM) Friend: I'm 29 and I'm already starting to lose interest
(2:33:24 PM) Me: les sighs
(2:36:08 PM) Friend: I can't imagine what I'd be like when I'm 50
(2:36:26 PM) Me: I can't either
(2:36:28 PM) Me: scary thought
(2:36:34 PM) Me: banish banish
(2:42:20 PM) Friend: tiger mom :-P
(2:43:26 PM) Me: Me?? ZOMG
(2:43:40 PM) Me: I sure hope not


(3:16:41 PM) Me: I shall try to get some exercise now I suppose
(3:16:58 PM) Friend: You should lift weights and get really buff, wouldn't that be cool?
(3:17:04 PM) Me: I am already hahaha
(3:17:15 PM) Friend: I mean arnold buff
(3:17:17 PM) Me: I lift weights when I watch TV
(3:17:19 PM) Me: oh lol
(3:17:23 PM) Me: I thought he used roids
(3:17:29 PM) Friend: That's also an option
(3:17:34 PM) Me: no roids for me.
(3:17:38 PM) Friend: You lift weights while watching tv?
(3:17:41 PM) Me: yes
(3:17:57 PM) Friend: Like you benchpress 400 lbs?
(3:18:04 PM) Me: I wish hahaha
(3:18:11 PM) Friend: That would rule
(3:18:14 PM) Me: it would
(3:18:21 PM) Me: and then I would be afraid of no one
(3:18:36 PM) Me: the conference trolls I can take out in 3 seconds
(3:18:39 PM) Friend: Then you would get some good introductions at conferences
(3:18:47 PM) Me: Hell yeah
(3:19:13 PM) Me: alright time to run up and down stairs.......
(3:19:14 PM) Friend: You should start wearing a sword and a full suit of armor to conferences
(3:19:19 PM) Me: HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA
(3:19:30 PM) Friend: The trolls won't mess with you.
(3:19:34 PM) Me: Totally awesome
(3:19:56 PM) Me: Mayhaps I shall try that sometimes
(3:20:04 PM) Friend: I just learned the other day the main character in metroid is a girl
(3:20:10 PM) Me: :P
(3:20:20 PM) Friend: Perhaps a suit like that.
(3:22:03 PM) Me: booyah
(3:23:01 PM) Friend: http://kometani.deviantart.com/art/Assault-Armor-Girl-60670980
(3:23:09 PM) Friend: Yes, this will do
(3:23:13 PM) Me: hohoh
(3:23:19 PM) Friend: But a bigger gun
(3:23:24 PM) Me: pffft
(3:23:42 PM) Friend: You prefer the sword?
(3:23:50 PM) Me: yes
(3:24:11 PM) Me: I like to have slim and deadly weaponry
(3:24:28 PM) Me: mmmmmmmm
(3:24:35 PM) Me: okay aerobic workout time
(3:24:52 PM) Me: stairs on mid-rises
(3:25:00 PM) Friend: http://www.3dtotal.com/pages/interviews/guillaume_menuel/images/large_images/image_01_armor_girl_s.php
(3:25:16 PM) Me: hahaa
(3:25:22 PM) Friend: Surprisingly most images of girls with swords are also very skimpily dressed
(3:25:28 PM) Me: no one is ever messing with her
(3:25:29 PM) Me: lol
(3:25:31 PM) Friend: Not really appropriate for conference
(3:25:37 PM) Me: indeed

Cultural jabs in non-American films

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I think "foreign films" sounds decidedly American-centric. It's interesting to observe the cultural nuances from non-Hollywood films. And of course, non-Hollywood almost means non-American...


[Translated] quotes from Mýrin, a.k.a. Jar City, an Icelandic film:

"Ever been to Stockholm? Terrible place!"

"Is that what they teach you in America? Stop being a pussy."

I have a hard time telling whether that's a friendly poke and shout-out, or the writer/director has some beef with Stockholm or Swedes in general, or many Icelanders have similar beef to pick. But the way the police chief makes fun of the rookie on his team who has (studied?) in America at some point... indicates some nationalist pride perhaps.


Quotes from Eagle vs. Shark, a New Zealand film:

 "I sell these to the Muslims..." (character holds up a candle of twin towers) "and these to the Yanks." (same character holds up a candle of Bin Laden)

"Where do you want to go?"
"Home, I want to go home."
"Ah, home's horrible. You must want to go somewhere else."
"Mmm, dunno. Australia?"
"Nah, not there. My ex-wife lives there."
"What, is she alive?"
"Who cares about her, she's a lesbian."

Okay, the candle example I find rather insensitive actually. But perhaps because I have been conditioned by the distinctively American inhibitory sense of political-correctness. Like not all Muslims are militant, etc. In any event, it's not nice to joke about any incidence of mass murder, IMHO. The lesbian joke, while also not very politically correct, is funny like South Park funny.

And I don't know if the New Zealanders still feel superior to the Australians because back in the 19th Century, many British elites settled in New Zealand while many British convicts got sent to Australia. Perhaps the older generations still do?


Maybe it will take an external event of cataclysmic scale in order for all Earthlings to realize that... we are all Earthlings.

Silly word finder on Facebook...

- - -

It should read "Uncover your subconscious thoughts at this particular moment" or something like that.

Mine were "fool", "broke", and "funny". At least 2 out of 3 right on the dot, I must say...

On comedic personas

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The guys - Alec Baldwin, Jim Carrey, Zach Galifianakis, Robin Williams
The gals - Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Betty White

I think these comedians represent a good part of the humor style spectrum, ranging from goofy to witty spiced with some crass, with their own idiosyncratic inflections. The guys tend to be either suave (witty) or slapstick (goofy), or both (Robin Williams seems to do both pretty well). The gals are mostly clever (witty) and sometimes goofy, but in a different way than the guys. Somehow it's more acceptable for guys to flaunt themselves than for gals... hmm.

Granted, their style has a lot to do with their native personalities. Whereas Baldwin fits nicely in a boardroom or 007-type scene, I cannot picture him in a tutu (i.e. Carrey's Black Swan parody) or entertaining pre-schoolers (i.e. Galifianakis). Williams is more of a chameleon in this sense because he acts out the "fool" archetype much of the time but also being serious simultaneously, i.e. Mrs. Doubtfire, Patch Adams, etc.

The gals tend to stay true to how they are in real life, I think. We have a self-deprecating geek, an in-your-face no-nonsense go-getter, and a mild-yet-snarky grandma. Their gigs mostly center on these character types and it's difficult to imagine them playing something else. Fey's style is somewhat similar to Galifianakis' in that they often make fun of themselves. I find this rather endearing (probably many people too). This is in part due to my cultural upbringing, but I must say it's the safest strategy in this contemporary atmosphere that is super-charged with political-correctness.

Tangentially related... the Comedian from Watchmen is not funny "hahaha", but funny "I'm gonna make your life a joke". See how this archetype works better in a guy?

http://cynicritics.com/2011/03/21/zacksnyder/

Classy sample of spam from a mailing list

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"I am desperately searching for eager victims - postdocs or PhD students - mine or other supervisors' - to make my workhorses and to plunder ideas from. I am a dirty Hun who seethes from jealousy out of every pore. I cannot do research myself because I'm narrow-minded, rigid-brained, and petty. Therefore, I have to recruit desperate scientists from anywhere in the world and then manage (harangue) them into submission. 

The smarter you are relative to me, the more I will hate you. If you complain, you will be threatened by my gang of goons - faculty and administration are all allied with me in order to achieve our clan's goal of world domination which has eluded us for the last century or so. The reward for taking up this Faustian bargain with me is good renumeration - but if you start to complain or expose the secret of my incompetence to others, especially outsiders, then you will be let go as we cannot tolerate traitors within our ranks. ALL credit for your work will go to me and my gang of inbred dullards, not to you. 

We are ruthless gangsters who recruit legitimate scientists from all over the world to do our work because we cannot do any of it ourselves - due to severe brain rigidity brought about by centuries of inbreeding the traits of blind obedience, robotization, and general dullness. The techniques which we employ to keep these victims productive is nagging, threats and psychological abuse, facilitated by the university's administration. Eventually, the victims give up all credit for their research to us. I have no conscience since I am a psychopath. I am entitled to success because supremacy is my birthright."

What unspeakables happened to Douglas Coupland...

... that compelled him to write with such a giant psychedelic squirming teratoma of disdain for contemporary society? (Okay, I empathize)

He's a master of spinning absurdist scenarios into a coherent and dark lore of what is dysfunctional in the modern world. His metaphors are almost, dare I say, Picasso-like? I think that's the most refreshing aspect of his writing. It speaks to my stretched-over-the-elastic-limit pseudo-intellectual ethos. I can read his books when I'm anywhere from 30% to 80% awake, preferably in a shroud of disillusionment.


I read Player One, Generation A, and JPod (reverse chronological order of when he published them) In all three books, the story would center around a quintet or sextet of characters thrust into an epic adventure against their will. Despite seemingly very different from one another (different walks of life, different parts of the world, different upbringings), they are united first by their bizarre circumstances and gradually come to the realization that they are more alike than they have thought. That they are all equally screwed over, but somehow things work out. More or less.


There's a stronger autobiographical presence in JPod than in Player One or Generation A in that there is one main narrator and more of the characters are connected to him than others. Later in JPod, however, the narrator's work life and home life become unwittingly stirred into a peanut butter and wasabi mix. Perhaps Coupland has felt like that at some point in his life. I can only speculate...

There's also a lot of stream-of-consciousness in JPod which many other readers have found distracting, not to mention random typographical feats like the word "ramen" in size-7 (?) Helvetica repeated for one whole page, or the first ~50,000 digits of pi, or random Chinese characters. I personally loved the "ramen" page. Hit rather close to home.

Perhaps these are meant to be subliminal bombardment of modern culture? Or the author got lazy? In any event, I found this somewhat amusing. The digits of pi though is rather overdone and a waste of ink. ~200 digits would be adequate. :-P

I might give his earlier books a read, although I have gotten a pretty good idea what to expect. He seems to alternate between rambling stream-of-consciousness (JPod) and intricate story weaving (Player One) and somewhere in between (Generation A). I can empathize too, even though the longest (fan)fiction I've ever written is barely 6,000 words. Or was it less than that? Oh well. So I understand that everyone has more inspired days than others. I'm still a fan.

(Unsubmitted) questions to Tina Fey on "Ask Tina"

- - -
(1) As a writer (i.e. content generator), where do you find inspirations, or how do you get inspired? Especially during down times like an epic writer's block?

(2) (Not a question) I totally dig the shout-out to grad students in your 30 Rock episode with the adoption agent.






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Once upon a random research meeting

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I opened the door to the small conference room.

Jokester Grad Student: Speaking of women.

[Chuckles from the group]

Me: Huh? What's going on... Can you recap please?

Jokester: We were talking about how there aren't enough women at Cal Tech.

Me: Oh really. [Facetiously] Like 10%?

[More chuckles]

Male REU Student: 10% [ROFL]

Jokester: More like 28%... I mean, how was it for you?

Me: So the overall is half and half. But some majors are 25%, 15%, and others are like 80%. You can probably guess which ones...

Postdoc: Women's studies?

Jokester: Biology?

Me: Yeah.

Jokester: It's those fuzzy mice.

Me: [Raised eyebrows] And killing them.

[Loud laughter from the group]

Jokester: What does this say about women?!

Me: [Deadpan] Don't mess with them.

[More laughter]

Female REU Student: Well-played.

Me: Har har har.






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Flesch-Kincaid readability test HACK

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I recently enabled this option inside MS Word's spelling and grammar check. It's an amusing metric that measures the approximately minimal reading comprehension ability needed to understand a certain passage of text.

So my entry about Copenhagen the play has an index of about 11, which means that an average 11th grader (high school junior) should be able to understand it. This somewhat abstruse entry from Fractal Ontology has an index of about 19. That probably requires one of those liberal arts college education hmm (and a real Ph.D., i.e. in philosophy while at it)

I think one example where this test wouldn't be accurate might be something like "The dog barks arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf-arf and the cat goes meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow-meow." This has a score of 38 according to this calculator. Which would mean that one needs to complete 38 years of schooling to understand that, oops. Perhaps a heuristic that breaks up hyphenated words might be helpful here.






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Existential meetings in space and time

- - -
me: how're things?

friend: Hi,
Things are.
I'm trying to write a paper.

me: Things are indeed

friend: How are things there?
Are-ing, too?

me: yes
just realized I have a 9am meeting
which I thought was at 10
oy.

friend: That's sad.
Even if people are well up and out by 9:00, nothing should be scheduled until 10:00 or later.
The French seem to abide by that.
Still, if you are working then, you don't have to schedule meetings then.

me: the nanofab people seem to be... early
actually, they start early and often end late
It's a "fab user" meeting

friend: A user meeting?!?!

me: If I schedule something, it's almost always 1pm or 2pm or 3pm.

friend: Those should not happen at least until 3:00.
Exactly.
There's just something about building invisible things that makes one immune to time.

me: yes
astrophysicists
mathematicians
philosophers

friend: Yes.
I suspect that if you get used to not being able to perceive three spatial dimensions, then you also become numb to the fourth dimension.

me: ahahaha






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Exodus from the sensory-deprived suburbia (videos)

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An interesting kinetic sculpture (Double Excentric Gyratory) near the UN Plaza. It moves with the wind.

Panoramic view from the Yerba Buena Garden.

A bunch of random students dressed up in random costumes with a hodgepodge of marching band and orchestra instruments.

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Mythologically abstruse acronyms

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Came across this fun little widget. I seriously guessed on 6 of those. Good times...

Molecular Biology Jargon or Minor Thundercats Character?

90% (9 out of 10 Questions Correct)

Facebook quizzes, quiz apps & blog quizzes by

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