Entrenched in Academia

Paradigm Shift

2009-09-16T20:17:00.002-04:00

Today marks the end of a full two weeks in my new home: Columbus, Ohio. I have to say first that I was a little, well, suspicious of moving. I've lived all of my life (save for a handful of 3-12 month forays to other states/countries) in St. Augustine, a town as small as it is tiny. I love St. Augustine: its people, the lay of its land, and its back-of-my-hand familiarity. Simply, if you will, the cut of its jib.
So, although I have a great desire to see the rest of the world, it was with a little trepidation that I packed my things, closed for the last time my front door in St. Augustine and opened for the first time my front door in Columbus. I don't mean to imply that I've been permanently uprooted; I still have a family and many friends in St. Augustine. Well, as near as I can tell after this, the first of many fortnights, my new home is a good one.
Mandy and I love our apartment, and it already feels comfortable and lived in. It's a two-bedroom, and Mandy has taken the second bedroom as her office/lounge/bohemian-think-tank (I have an office shared amongst other grad students on campus). We have our own laundry room, for which my mother was able to procure a very affordable washer and dryer. Doing laundry without leaving the house is a luxury I haven't had since 2002. The bathroom is spacious, but the kitchen is cramped. Our apartment complex is right on the Olentangy river (pronounced tan-jee, not like 'tangy'), the smallish waterway that bisects Columbus. A bike/jogging trail runs right behind the complex, which, if traveled in a southerly fashion, takes me right to the OSU campus in about two miles.
We live in Clintonville, which is an older neighborhood just north of the University district. Our place is just off of High street, the main drag that runs right up and down down town.
Mandy and I are desperately (and successfully) trying to shift to a paradigm of productivity. Neither of us have ever been morning people, but for the past week (even on weekends) we've gotten up at six thirty and gone to bed as close to eleven as our meager internet addictions will let us. I'm exercising and studying every day; I'm staying on top of the dishes and the laundry; I'm even white-boarding my daily to-do lists, and subsequently erasing them, one at a time upon completion, with a satisfying swish. All fear or uneasiness that grad school will be too difficult or that I won't be smart enough to excel has vanished in the wake of my new found determination.
The days here are still summery, replete with sunshine and warmth and reminiscences of Florida. But one can tell, while walking about at dawn or dusk, that Fall is at hand, and that soon leaves will be brown, coats will be donned, and that breath will be steamy.

2009-03-29T15:53:00.003-04:00

Wow, I keep leaving for months at a time. I know this isn't good for our blogger<->fanboy relationship, so I'll try to post with more regularity in the future.

Life is generally good. I've been accepted to The Ohio State University for grad school in the fall. I visited the campus a few weeks ago; it's pretty nice. I'll probably go there, since it's the only place I've been accepted to yet. I've still got two applications out (Penn State and U Minnesota), but I'm not holding my breath.

The wedding plans are nearing completion. We're tragically behind on sending out the invitations (any day now) but that's one of the last things we need to worry about.

I have a month of school left before I graduate. An actual Bachelor's degree has been this hazy, pie-in-the-sky goal for so long. Now that it's close enough to see (when I squint) it's kind of strange, almost as if not having my degree is one of my last vestiges of childhood, and when I walk across the stage I will emerge, on the other side, an adult. It gives me the willies.

Six Word Stories

2008-12-03T08:37:00.004-05:00

There's an anecdote about Hemingway that he bet his colleagues that he could write a complete story in only six words. His story: "For sale: Baby shoes, Never worn." He won the bet. Now I can't stop writing them myself. Here are some of the best I've come up with since last night:

"Sun exploded. Explain later. Love, mom."

"Shh!" said Jeffrey to the Tyrannosaur.

"Six word story? Can't be done."

Bleeding, he cried "Mercy!" What trickery!

"Happily, I die!" And he did.

This last one is a collaboration between me and my colleague, Andrew. We decided six was too many and wrote a. . . wait for it. . . five word story.

Hemingway: Succinct. I, more so.

Got any good ones? Comment them!

2008-11-04T06:34:00.003-05:00

At the beginning of my favorite love story, the protagonist looks in his journal and realizes that he hasn't written an entry in almost two years. He is awestruck by the amount of time that has passed by without his realization. It's been just over two months since I've last written here, and while that's not nearly as dramatic as a two year silence, I'm not quite able to figure out what happened to all the little days between then and now. [Note: it strikes me as weird that "then" can refer to both the future and the past. "That was then, this is now." and "I'll see you then." are both correct. We really should have two different words for this sort of thing.]

This is an tumultuous time for me. The future, which has loomed out of sight and around corners for so long, is rushing up at me. In a month, I'll have applied to graduate school. In four months, I'll be accepted or rejected. In six, I'll be married. In nine, I'll be living in another state. I have very little idea what my life will be like a year from now, save that I will be with the woman that I love, which is exactly the reassurance that turns my anxiety into excitement.

Strangely, I'm already beginning to miss St. Augustine. I love my crummy little apartment. I love the unevenly cobbled brick streets. I love not being able to go anywhere without running into three people I know. But. . . all things change. I think I've had (almost) all the adventures I'm bound to have in a sleepy little town like St. Augustine.

I get political

2008-09-30T07:21:00.006-04:00

A Modest Rebuttal
My Take on Ann Coulter’s: They Gave Your Mortgage to a Less Qualified Minority

Ann Coulter is good for me. She inspires me to be a better man. Every time I read one of her articles, I understand the importance of a rational, balanced perspective. Every time I see her on television (or more frequently, youtube), I am taught humility. Every time I hear her speak, I learn patience. Today, Ann Coulter taught me about the economy.

I just read an article [humanevents.com] that Ms. Coulter wrote about our ongoing economic crisis. In it, she blames the Clinton administration for all of the financial trouble our country is in. I don’t know much about politics or the economy, but that didn’t sit right with me. Didn’t Clinton leave office with the country in surplus? I was confused.

As I read more, the usual Coulter questions started popping into my mind. What are her sources? Where are the hyperlinks to supplementary material? Is the issue really as simple (and as one-sided) as she makes it out to be? Am I to take her at her word? Faced with a dearth of corroborating details, I did what I usually do. I went to Wikipedia.

I did not, however, use Wikipedia as it is normally used: the one-stop information shop. I used it as it is intended to be used: a well-cited, community-generated gateway to credible information on the internet. The following is the result of what I learned. I make no claims at uncovering any ground-breaking knowledge or even illuminating any new points of view. I simply went to Wikipedia’s page on the Subprime mortgage crisis and followed the citations to their original sources.

The thing that surprised me the most was that Ms. Coulter asserts that the only cause of the current crisis was legislation imposed by the Clinton administration almost a decade ago. She doesn’t explicitly state this, but the implication is pretty clear from the article. This was the first thing I researched, and I found a few causes that Ms. Coulter accidentally missed.

Excessive Housing Speculation [cnn.com]: In 2006, the total number of home sales dropped 4.1%. But investment home sales (homes bought to be later ‘flipped’ for a profit) dropped roughly 6%. The chief economist of the National Association of Realtors, David Lereah, said in April 2007: "Speculators left the market in 2006, which caused investment sales to fall much faster than the primary market." That is, the rich people trying to profit financially from the real estate market dumped more plots of land than the poor people that were unable to pay for their homes.. Of course, the rich investors sold their homes fairly while the poor people defaulted. But millions of investment homes were sold at a loss, which was not good for the market.

Securitization [msnbc.msn.com]: This allows unscrupulous mortgage brokers (or companies) to write high-risk mortgages and pass the risk on to third-party investors, primarily Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. “[Alan] Greenspan acknowledged that a number of people should not have been taking out those mortgages, but that the current crisis was due ‘not the subprime problem itself, but to the securitization of subprime.’" Unfortunately, Greenspan doesn’t back up his statement in this article with any data, so you’ll have to make up your own mind about this one.

SEC self-regulation [nytimes.com]: SEC Chairman Cox (a Republican, by the way) “acknowledged on Friday that failures in a voluntary supervision program for Wall Street’s largest investment banks had contributed to the global financial crisis, and he abruptly shut the program down.” Of course, the article doesn’t qualify the word ‘contributed’. Did the self-regulation contribute a little? A lot? You’ll have to read the article and decide for yourself.

From President Bush's own address [whitehouse.gov] a few days ago: "For more than a decade, a massive amount of money flowed into the United States from investors abroad . . .[t]his large influx of money to U.S. banks and financial institutions -- along with low interest rates -- made it easier for Americans to get credit.” The President makes a general claim about Americans. He doesn’t say it was easier for minorities to get credit, or for poor people to get credit. He doesn’t mention pressure from the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development [hud.com], or outdated, fiscally irresponsible policies from the previous administration.

My next question was more difficult. George Bush has almost completed two terms in office. How is it that he didn’t know about the “embarrassing” lending policies left to him by his predecessor? And why, if he did know, and they are such obviously poor policies, has he done nothing about them? Why is this such a surprise to everybody?

Now, let’s be fair. I know that President Bush is not solely responsible for the economic prosperity or scarcity of the whole country. I’m speaking in the general terms that Ms. Coulter uses: I’m speaking of Bush’s administration as a whole, the same way she lumps Clinton and all the Democrats together.

Here’s an excerpt from a New York Times article published, interestingly enough, nine years ago today:

“In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

'From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. 'If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.’''

It seems Peter Wallison, whoever that is, understood the potential risks way back in the nineties. What about something more current? Here’s an excerpt from a report [ssrn.com, abstract only] submitted in August to the Social Science Research Network:

We find that the quality of loans deteriorated for six consecutive years before the crisis and that securitizers were, to some extent, aware of it. We provide evidence that the rise and fall of the subprime mortgage market follows a classic lending boom-bust scenario, in which unsustainable growth leads to the collapse of the market. Problems could have been detected long before the crisis, but they were masked by high house price appreciation between 2003 and 2005.

I really can’t understand Ms. Coulter’s steadfast maintenance of the position that this, the current economic crisis, is Clinton’s (and his band of Democrats’) fault. People understood back when Clinton was leaving office the risks that these policies carried (Peter Wallison couldn’t have been the only one, could he?). Loans deteriorating for six consecutive years? Securitizers aware of it? Classic boom-bust?

The risks were not difficult to foresee for those who knew economics and who were paying attention. Coulter writes about the "embarrassment" of Clinton’s subprime lending policies. Well, we've had eight years to change them; why didn't we? The answer is that it hasn't been an embarrassment for eight years. We've had a real-estate boom for the majority of that time. It's only been an embarrassment since the bubble burst in 2006. The problem isn't that Clinton put into motion the policies that caused the boom, it's that George Bush didn't throttle them back before the bust. Indeed, Bush alludes to this himself in his address to the American people a few days ago [referenced above]:

“Our 21st century global economy remains regulated largely by outdated 20th century laws.“

Bush was speaking about financial regulation in general, not sub-prime mortgages. But his words hit the mark.

I wanted to understand this a little more. I wanted to know how this problem progressed from 1992 (when Ms. Coulter references her LA Times article) to present day. I found a lot of information in this article [washingtonpost.com] from earlier this year. It outlines some of the specific interactions between the HUD and Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac. The following two paragraphs are a synthesis of information from that article and the Peter Wallison article referenced above. I’m only going to cover the main points. You can read the details for yourself.

In 1992, the HUD became responsible for monitoring Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac and setting new goals for them every four years or so. In 1999 the HUD “proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.” That’s a six percent increase over three years, from the value . I don’t know about you, but when I first read the Coulter article, I felt there was a pretty strong implication that the infamous embarrassing Clinton legislation introduced a heftier hike than that. But when there’s no attempt at providing context, implications are all you have to go on. There’s more.

Between 2001 and 2004 “Freddie and Fannie's purchases of subprime-backed securities had risen tenfold.” That year, 2004, under a Republican president and a Republican congress (ahem, Ms. Coulter), the HUD “ratcheted up the main affordable-housing goal over the next four years, from 50 percent to 56 percent.” This is the same percentage by which the Democrats raised the bar in the nineties.

How can Ms. Coulter claim that this crisis is due to the Democrats, when the Republicans played the exact same game just a few years later? Indeed, one could argue that the Republican’s actions were more detrimental, as they came in later, and the bubble is more likely to burst the bigger it gets.

Maybe my arguments are not persuasive. Maybe, after digesting what I’ve said, you still feel Clinton and his Merry Men are to blame. That’s fine. But I hope you will agree that the story is decisively not as simple as Ann Coulter makes it out to be.

I am not trying to change your mind. I am not a political activist. I am not an economist. I am not a journalist. My intention with this modest rebuttal is simply to supply a contrast to Ann’s method of journalism. To show that a rational argument does not need the window-dressing of an impassioned voice. That a good idea can be explained, not indoctrinated. That being right doesn’t mean being angry.

Today I have learned another lesson from Ann Coulter. Ann has taught me about the economy. . . and something else. Another lesson that she reinforces every time I read one of her articles, or see her on television, or hear her speak.

Thank you, Ann.

Sorry ladies. . .

2008-08-04T14:04:00.002-04:00

Mandy and I are getting married. I asked her on Saturday and, despite her normally good judgement, she said yes. We don't have any official plans laid out yet, except that it will happen sometime before we move away from Florida, which is one year (minus a few days) from now.

Resurrection

2008-07-23T10:14:00.003-04:00

I heard they kick you out of the Blogoshpere after four months without posting. Whew, just made it.

Let's see. I haven't had any summer vacation yet. I'm taking a full semester's worth of credits during the summer. I have three weeks of no class before the Fall semester. But I'll probably come in anyway. I haven't been working on my research project as much as I should be (I should be working on it all time, I haven't worked on it at all), so I'll come in to do that. Also, my academic cohort Andrew and I have finally begun studying in earnest for the Physics Graduate Record Examination, the single most important thing for my application to grad school. Sure, grades and research experience are more important than the GRE, but those are spread over years of work. The GRE is one three hour test, and if I fail it, I pretty much fail at life. Not that it's a pass/fail sort of thing; you get a score and that's that. But let's be real here, bombing = failing.

I'm still high on Batman. I don't think I have anything particularly original to say. It was awesome. RIP HL.

In case you couldn't tell, I've pretty much stopped my regular crane folding. I realized that I've got better things on which I should be spending fifteen minutes every day. Like the GRE. I'll still maintain the count, and I'll get to 1000 eventually. I'm just not going to try to get it done before the end of the year.

I've been taking a philosophy class. It's actually pretty enlightening. I feel I can organize my thoughts better now; I can make ethical decisions more logically and with a more balanced perspective. I've come to form opinions on how I believe people should think. And somehow, that's become a dirty idea: "Don't tell me how to think, you fucking fascist!", and all that. People yell "1984!" and run away. I'm not trying to say there's one way that people should live their lives or that everyone should like the same things or vote for the same people or drive the same car. But that there are certain habits of mind (a phrase introduced to me by one of my texts) that enrich your life, and some that don't. Making life decisions based on YouTube comments is wrong. Plain and simple. There's no "You live your way, I'll live mine." here. That's a practice, a habit of mind, that will lead you to a shitty life. (Of course, this assumes that YouTube comments will always be retarded and inane. So, I'm pretty much on solid ground here.) I don't claim to know what the right habits of mind are, but I believe they are out there somewhere, and that every correct, life enriching decision I make brings me closer to them.

That is all for now.

New York Trip

2008-03-23T23:56:00.004-04:00

Mandy and I just got back from New York. We spent the last week there on spring break. I think it's the first spring break where I've actually done something interesting. I will attempt to give a brief post-itinerary of the trip.
We flew into JFK last Saturday afternoon. Claire and AJ picked us up. Then they dropped Mandy somewhere in Brooklyn. A lot of her god-family was in town for some sort of ceremony and she stayed with them that night. I went to AJ's house in Long Island. We chilled out there for a few hours, and then went to Gabby's place in Queens. We all took the train to the lower east side and bar hopped for a little while. We took a cab back to her place around two in the morning. Then we stayed up until about four, playing Circle of Death and drunkenly singing Billy Joel songs.
The next day Mandy and I went into the city to see some sights. We walked around downtown for a while. Saw Rockefeller Center, Times Square, that sort of thing. Mandy gave me a lesson in NY geography from the top of the Empire State building. Then we met her friend Ashley for dinner. Some Moroccan place in the city. It was good. Ashley is almost exactly like Mandy. They look like the could be sisters. Their vocal mannerisms are extremely similar. It was strange. We spent the night at Ashley's place in Brooklyn.
Monday we met Ross at the St. Patrick's Day parade. We got there kind of late, so we caught the ass end of the parade. We only watched for about twenty minutes. It went like this: Bagpipes (Awesome!). . . High School Band (Meh). . . Bagpipes (Sweet!). . . Social Club (Uh?). . . Bagpipes (Again?). . . Random Irish people (Clap?). . . High School Band (Time to leave). That night we went out with Ross and his girlfriend Rachael to a few bars in Greenpoint Brooklyn, where Ross lives.
Tuesday we went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was nice. On par with other museums that I've been to, the Prado, the Louvre. The have a small Egyptian temple in there. That's pretty cool, I guess. I saw my first real life Dali painting. I've never been that crazy about Dali. He's alright and all, but the fact that everybody else gets their panties in a bunch of what a fucking brilliant painter he is kind of turns me off. They had a pretty respectable collection of Greek and Roman sculpture, which I dig. And they also had a lot of medieval weapons and armor, which I also dig. But you knew that already. That night we stayed with Mandy's friends, Katelan and Christine, in Mandy's old apartment in Astoria, Queens.
The next day we went to the Natural History Museum. This was more up my alley. In the dinosaur exhibit they had little stands where you could touch some of the fossils. I have now actually touched a fossilized ankylosaurus backplate that is. . . wait for it. . . 140 million years old! 140 fucking million years! That's pretty awesome. Eat that, creationists!
Thursday Mandy and I slept in, and then went into the city and walked around Central Park. We went uptown to Columbia University, one of the places where I'm considering going to grad school. It's a nice campus. The physics building is a little run down, but they have a physics building. At UNF, we have one hallway in the engineering building. After that I went to Ross' place and Mandy went to do some witchy stuff with her old pagan friends, Katelan and Christine being among them. Ross and I barhopped in the lower east side for the rest of the night.
Friday we were supposed to go to the Bronx Zoo. But I woke up hungover, vomited, and went back to sleep. So Mandy went around Brooklyn with Katelan while I slept. I awoke with newfound vigor around one in the afternoon. Mandy and I made plans to meet at Canal St., which is in Soho. I caught a train downtown and got out at the NYU stop. New York University is another school where I'm thinking about applying. The campus was less centralized, and more interspersed with buildings not affiliated with the university. It was also locked down tight. Whereas I was able to slink around Columbia without challenge, everywhere in NYU required a student ID to get in. So fuck it.
I met the girls and we had lunch somewhere downtown. We then went back to Ross' place. We watched No Country for Old Men, which is excellent. Then Ross and I went out in Greenpoint again. We ended up at this super cool bar called t.b.d. Around four in the morning, while Ross and I were sharing a cigarette outside we heard the crash and bang of a car wreck. We ran two blocks and found a silver sedan in the middle of an intersection, and a green minivan up on the sidewalk, both totaled. The minivan had a middle-aged Latino woman and her two kids, one a little girl of about four. The sedan had some early twenties white guy, pretty obviously drunk. From what we could tell, the sedan was going too fast and T-boned the minivan as it was crossing the intersection. The cops were called, and Ross and I stayed until they arrived to make sure that everything was alright. Then we went back to bar (well after last call) and had another round. We ended up getting back to his place at about five thirty.
Yesterday we woke up late and had brunch with Ross and Rachael. We had to wait an hour to get seated, but the food was excellent and we all gorged ourselves. We went back to Ross' house and took a nap. Then to JFK, and had a completely uneventful airport/flight/airport experience. We got home around midnight last night.
There, wasn't that interesting?

When Heroes Die

2008-03-05T17:41:00.002-05:00

Gary Gygax died yesterday. Apparently his health had been failing for a while. I'm not even sure what an abdominal aortic aneurysm is, let alone why his was inoperable. I guess there are worse deaths. It's better than being eaten alive by a troll, or torn limb from limb by a grey render. It would be melodramatic to say that D&D changed my life, as such statements generally imply some sort of gross metamorphosis. But it definitely influenced my life. I'm a geek by nature, and D&D was one of the first, and one of the greatest geeky exploits that I took up. So Gary Gygax has had a small but important part in shaping the person I turned out to be. For better or worse.

So Gary, thanks. I don't know where it is that you're going, but I hope it's filled with big-breasted elven women, coffers full of gold, and all the XP you want.

Scottish Highland Games

2008-02-23T19:57:00.009-05:00

Mandy and I went to the Scottish Highland Games at the Clay County Fairground today. This was the second year we've gone. It was pretty cool. There was the requisite caber tossing, the giant turkey legs, the petting zoo.

Here's a video of me throwing an axe into a stump. As you can see from the video, I'm pretty awesome.

Here are some other (non axe throwing) pictures.
One of me in in the kilt, one of Mandy in a Campbell tartan sash, and the obligatory couples photo.

1000 Origami Cranes

2008-02-10T13:00:00.002-05:00

The Japanese have this thing about folding 1000 paper cranes. Apparently, it pleases the Gods and they will grant you a wish. Or something. My own bootleg brand of spirituality tells me intuitively that it's more about learning patience and dedication. Anyway, the idea of doing it has always appealed to me, so I've decided to start. And because I'm not a fan of open-ended goals, I've decided to complete 1000 cranes by the end of 2008. There are 325 days left in the year, and I've got 996 left to do (I've done four so far), so that's 3.065 cranes to fold a day. I'm not very good at sticking to a daily routine (I think that's part of what you are supposed to learn from this exercise) so I'm sure it's going to be more like folding 10 or 20 one day, and then forgetting about it for a week.
There are lots of origami sites on the web, but the best one I've found so far is www.origami-club.com. It's design looks like it's straight out of a 1997 geocities site, but it's got animated instructions for most of the designs (including the all important crane).
There's also athousandpapercranes.com, a site that's sponsoring a collaborative effort at making 1000 cranes. You mail him a crane and a dollar. When he gets 1000, he gives the money to charity. So I think one of my cranes will go to him.
I've added a Crane Count up at the top right. It should help keep me on track. Feel free to spam me with 'Get your ass in gear' comments if the cranes/day field gets above 5 or so.

You can all exhale

2008-02-06T07:38:00.002-05:00

I don't have to write the mega report/poster/oral presentation on pulsed NMR. I get to do mine on superconducting lead instead, which will rock. I just wanted to post this early in the morning so you guys wouldn't be worried all day.

Pulsed NMR

2008-02-05T01:58:00.001-05:00

If you scribby-scroll down a few entries you'll see a reference to the cursed 'Pulsed NMR' physics lab. It's basically the legendary lab that everybody hates. Well, I just finished the lab report, and I pretty much got my ass handed to me. My partner and I spent a total of fifteen hours grappling with the TeachSpin PS1-A PNMR spectrometer and managed to squeeze out two pieces of data. Yes, two. Not two sets of data, or two interesting conclusions. Two worthless, inconsequential, quantities that describe the intrinsic spin of protons in a certain compound.
How do you write a formal lab report on two pieces of data? Not very well, is the answer. My partner (my poor partner) was tasked with writing the Experimental Methods and Results section. It sucked. Not her fault. Like I told her: garbage in, garbage out. I wrote the Introduction (which was slipshod) and the Conclusion (which didn't fucking say anything!).
I have fought with the beast, and I have come crawling back to my village, bloodied and scarred, lucky to have been spared. I have been humbled.
Now here's the thing: one of the two of us will have to take this shitty experience and use it to develop a substantially longer and more detailed report, a poster (for crissakes), and a 15 minute power point presentation. It's already determined which poor soul that will be, but we don't find out until tomorrow. I would much prefer doing all that for the other lab I did, the one on the superconducting properties of a lead alloy. I was actually enthusiastic about that (I know, who wouldn't be). I could totally rock that presentation.
Oh well, we'll see.

Death to Griefers

2008-01-24T11:57:00.001-05:00

It's always fascinating to me when I discover a new internet subculture that I knew nothing about. I just read this article in Wired. It's about griefers: userz that are set on ruining everyone else's net experience. They are the corpse-campers, the gankers, the forum trolls. They are the cyber-bullies that everyone hates.
I think the greatest thing about these guys is what they represent. They are the low-level, free floating scum of the internet. We have here a lowest-common-denominator, generic, bad-guy motivated simply by the desire to do bad. So why am I so excited?
Trust me, I know how this works. The ninja turtles didn't come out of the sewer until the Foot Clan started 'the silent crimewave'. Zordon didn't assemble the power rangers until the Putty Patrol started showing up and running amok. So don't be scared. The fact that there are a mass of low level peons running around is simply a precursor to a team of superpowered cyber heroes.

Late Night Musings on a Probabilistic Universe.

2008-01-15T22:59:00.001-05:00

I spent about 2 hours tonight solving the Buffoon's Needle. I won't hold you in suspense: the answer is 2/pi. I've never been a fan of statistics and probability, but it is interesting that you can approximate pi with nothing but a needle, two lines, and some patience (if you didn't get that last bit, follow the above link. If you still don't get it, ask me). Quantum mechanics teaches us that everything is probabilistic. The only reason anything (like the temperature in the room, or the color of your hair) seems certain at all is because it represents an average taken over an incredible amount of values. Looking at things that way, a Buffoon using a needle to approximate pi to greater and greater precision isn't that much different from anything we do. Ever.

So I Got a Little Head for my Birthday (Pics included)

2008-01-12T14:07:00.001-05:00

So my birthday isn't until Monday, but Mandy gave me an early birthday present: Me! Can you tell which one is the real John Campbell?

Also, it's official: The Future is Here!

Back in School

2008-01-09T16:45:00.002-05:00

School, that institution that defines me, has started for another session. It should be a fun one. I'm taking:

Electronics for Scientists: Basically, if you're an electrical engineer you take Circuit Analyis I and II, other engineers just take Circuit Analysis I, and everyone else takes Makin Sirkuts 4 Dumeez, aka, this class. It's monkey work, but might prove useful at some point. If I'm ever going to be even a little bit cyborg, I guess I should know my way around a circuit board.

Advanced Physics Lab: This class doesn't concentrate on any specific field of physics, but is designed to hone your abilities as an experimentalist. We have to do a total of six experiments, and each one has its own particular twist. For instance, the one that everybody is afraid of is the 'Pulsed NMR' (nuclear magnetic resonance) lab. Its 'twist' is that the equipment necessary to do the lab has almost no documentation or instructions, and the instructor sabotages it by crossing wires and disconnecting dials before you use it. In short: awesome.

Astrophysics: I'm looking forward to this a lot. Cosmology, stellar evolution (stellar intelligent design advocates be damned), exoplanetary atmospheres, etc. What's not to like?

Quantum Mechanics: This class could go one of two ways. If the professor teaches it right, it should be the hardest class I take as an undergrad. If not, I won't get anything out of it besides an A. I hope he brings the pain.

So this semester should be more challenging (but way more fun) than the last. Hopefully, I can keep up my winning streak.

John Merrill Campbell

2008-01-01T20:59:00.001-05:00

John Campbell passed away on Tuesday, January 1st, 2008, while saving two children from certain death on a runaway horse carriage in downtown St. Augustine.

John was born in Paris, France, in 1983. At age 2, His parents moved to St. Augustine, Florida, where he lived for the rest of his life. At age 11, John won third prize in the Scripps National Spelling Bee. John, usually a highly competitive perfectionist, simply explained "You try spelling autochthonous after four margaritas and a keg stand." He graduated magna cumma laude from St. Augustine High School in 2001. Over the next few years John worked odd jobs as a cook, musician, mortician, alligator wrangler, smoke jumper, medical trial participant, and vaudeville comedian. Then, after inventing Velcro, became the first man to circumnavigate the globe in a hanglider.

John is survived by his girlfriend Amanda, his pet pterodactyl, his legion of fanatical followers, his arch nemesis Dr. Preposterous, his 97 illegitimate sons, and Patrick Stuart.

Memorial contributions can be made to the John Campbell Cure for Cancer foundation.

Services will be held on Friday, January 4th, at churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and ashrams around the world. John's body will then be loaded onto a Saturn-V rocket and propelled into the center of our meager sun, that it may burn forever.

Free at Last

2007-12-14T15:23:00.001-05:00

Finals are over. Thank god. I did. . . alright. Probably better than most, but still not as good as I could do. If I could work about 10% more efficiently, I'd be a rock star. Well, I am kind of a rock star, but I'd be a rock god. At least in the small pond that is UNF. Now I have three weeks to myself. I'm going to try to finish my Electricity and Magnetism and Modern Physics textbooks, as in both classes there were a few chapters that we didn't get to.

Mandy got her license Tuesday. First try. The man that administered her road test said she was the best he had ever tested. I'll go ahead and take a little of that credit, thank you very much. It does feel pretty good though, to see her driving places all by herself and know that I'm a little bit responsible for that. I feel like I've, I don't know. . . made a positive impact on her life. Oh, sure, I've brought her happiness and sexual satisfaction, but this one is tangible. If we break up she can never shout: "I faked getting my driver's license!"

For those of you who are pirates, I just installed PeerGuardian2. It's designed to block a lot of unwanted traffic, with the main purpose to be keeping the RIAA off your back. I only got it today, so I can't offer an opinion as yet, but it at least seems to be working.

I saw The Golden Compass Sunday. It was great. It's getting poor reviews because they've taken out a lot of the religious symbology and they don't show any blood.

On the first point, if they sold out a little to get their major motion picture made, I'll forgive them that. The plot is still interesting and engaging without the god stuff in there. On the second point, it's like Mortal Kombat on the SNES: there may not be any blood, but there's still a lot of action and a lot of fighting. Watching the armored bears fighting is worth the price of admission alone (and let's not forget Sam Elliot). On top of everything else, the movie looks spectacular. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, it's set in a kind of alternate 1800's style England. It's a little magic and a little steampunk. And they've done a great job capturing that feel on the screen. So go see it.

Weekly Media Review

2007-11-22T09:38:00.001-05:00

Jesus Camp

Another score from Netflix. It's an 87 minute documentary about "Kids on Fire", a three week summer prayer camp for evangelicals. You get to see people speaking in tongues (formally: glossolalia), learn about demonic possession, and other craziness. The film paints a pretty loony picture of these people, but as Mark was quick to point out, distilling a three week camp to an 90 minute movie leaves a lot of room for creative editing. You have to wonder: did they edit out these people acting perfectly normal most of the time, or did they edit out more crazy? I'm not qualified to judge, but it's still well worth the watch. CJ, this means you.

The Golden Compass

I'm psyched this movie is being made. I think it will nestle comfortably between Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia in the public's recent hard-on for movies based on kids' fantasy books. The books, by the way, were awesome. And this movie will be awesome: Sam Elliott, Ian Mckellen, and (not as exciting) Nicole Kidman. Put on the dork hats and pack a lunch, because come December 7th we're going on a field trip to fantasy!

Handsome Devil

2007-11-15T15:11:00.001-05:00

This is the first picture you get when you do a Google image search for 'John Campbell'. He was some Supreme Court Justice before the civil war. Is that a manly tuft of neck-hair protruding from his shirt, or what?

Rapers of the Lost Ark

2007-11-14T14:05:00.001-05:00

I guess seeing Raiders recently made more of an impact than I thought. I had a dream last night that the ark had come to St. Augustine, and was (of course) in the hands of some ne'er-do-well that was going to use it for his evil schemes.
So AJ and I planned to steal it (which we probably would have done anyway). After one or two thwarted attempts, the Evil Guy started chasing me through a crowd. I decided to enlist the help of the crowd members in my escape, and my plan was to yell "Rape, rape!" until they grabbed the no good faux-rapist and let me get away. Dream logic told me that my cries would be more well received if I roared them like a dinosaur instead of screaming them like a woman. So I began: "RRrraaa. . .!" At this point, I woke Mandy up with my dino-roar, which startled her and caused her to flail about and yell, in turn waking me up, both of us very confused.

Getaway successful.

Childhood experiences I was cheated out of: Vol I

2007-11-11T12:37:00.001-05:00

Friday night I finally participated in an event that I have yearned for since before I was born: I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen. The St. Augustine Amphitheatre has been renovated and they've added a movie screen. They show free movies on Friday nights. It was awesome: having my seat rumble when planes and trucks blew up, hearing a theater full of people cheer when Indy does something great, seeing little kids watch the movie for the first time (popping their Indy cherry on the big screen, the lucky little bastards!). I will have to lobby to get the other two shown.
At school Dr. Gay (the department chair, not some porn psuedonymn) asked me to be part of the student advisory comittee for the College of Arts and Sciences for UNF. See it breaks down like this: UNF is divided into many different colleges. The College of Arts and Sciences is divided into different departments, one of them being the Department of Chemistry and Physics, to which I belong. I guess each college meets with students from its many departments each semester to make sure, I don't know, that everyone is having a good time or something. I don't really care, I generally just look out for myself at school. I've never been into this frat/sorority/leadership club/campus politics bullshit. But it will probably look good on my app for grad school, so I said yes.
I'm trying to BitTorrent some NCIS, but as we have no tubes at the house I'm here at the Casa Monica cafe trying to beg some bandwidth. My ancient Orinoco B-Card isn't the best for downloading large collections of media, and I still have about another 3 hours for the first two episodes of season 5 to finish. It takes me back to the old days, waiting all night for me 2-3 meg pirated game to download from a local BBS. Of course, the nostalgia only takes you so far.
Other than that, I've got a lot of studying to do this weekend. I get Monday off of school, which just means that instead of going to school and doing work I'll stay home and do work, but in my pajamas.