Conversation While Brushing My Teeth

Brush, brush...

Angie: Hey, Sarah, did you know that our birthday falls on Arbor Day this year?

Sarah: Our birthday's on April 29th?

Angie: Um, yea! Where the hell have you been for the past...21 years? Um, oh, Arbor Day! Haha, I thought you said "Our birthday's on April 29th?"! Hehe, so yea, Arbor Day's on April 29th.

Sarah: Huh? Right, then...

Brush, brush...

Arbor Day is sort of a weird holiday because it has a set date at the federal level, the last Friday in April, but it differs state by state. For example, Washington's Arbor Day falls on the second Wednesday in April. Whatever. Plant a tree, folks. They make our planet Earth pretty.

Paper Clip From Word

I found this hilarious clip from Quinn's facebook profile:

http://www.holylemon.com/PaperClip.html

Oh my Herman, I laughed my socks off...which wasn't too difficult since I'm barefoot. And my feet are freezing. Sarah, can we shut the window? Dammit, she's being menopausal again.

Water

WATER by Philip Larkin

If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.

Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;

My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,

And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.

The Long Dinner

Einstein had the right idea with the whole relativity business. Sarah, Jess, Jin and I just had a five hour long curry dinner. That's the same number of hours I worked at the library, and yet, one seemed so much shorter than the other. I actually intentionally fell asleep at work for a bit, until someone dropped a book into the bookdrop and woke the hell out of me. Non, my boss was not there, which is why I love working on the weekends. Last week, Laurine and I took turns taking really refreshing naps on the couch. Sweetness.

I'm listening to Sarah talking to J (brother) on the phone, and it reminds me of something we talked about during the dinner, how Sarah and James and I were really weird as kids because we would call each other S, J and A, and we would joke around and say things like, "Hey A, can you S the D?" instead of "Hey Angie, can you shut the door?" The laziness starts early, people, BE WARNED.

5023, 5024, 5025,...

I just spent the past two hours amusing myself with the lines on my hand and the hairs on my arm and banging my head against an imaginary wall over and over and over...

Herman, I really hate this bullshit that's called "criminology". How people can actually do this for a living without feeling like they've thrown away their life and sold their soul to a worthless devil is beyond me.

Archimedes' Randomly Timed Book Recommendations, No. 1

I just got this notice about a colloquium coming up tomorrow about this soon-to-be published book, called "The Lost Millennium" and it sounds very interesting. It is too bad I can't attend because of that blasted Criminology lecture, but...read on:

"It is universally believed to be the 21st century, but according to a group of scientists led by Anatoli Fomenko, a distinguished mathematician and fellow of the Russian Academy of Sciences, we are wrong by about a thousand years. Like Isaac Newton in the 1720s, Fomenko claims that the traditional dates are incorrect, and ancient and medieval history must be rewritten. Is he right? Can he prove that for more than four centuries historians have followed a false track? What are his arguments and how do experts respond?

The “Lost Millennium,” a book to be published by Knopf Canada in January 2006, describes how key ancient events, like the Peloponnesian War and the founding of Rome, have been dated and presents the criticism that has been raised against the accepted historical view of humankind. This objective and accessible account analyses the pros and cons and explains why the debate is ongoing.

It’s author, Florin Diacu, is a professor of mathematics and the former director of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences at the University of Victoria."

I wonder, does it really matter whether the Peloponnesian War began in 431 B.C. or 569 A.D.? Either way, it began a hell of a long time ago, so why does it matter if we are a thousand years off in everything? A thousand years in the face of eternity is just a blink of an eye to the Universe. Are we suddenly going to not go to school and walk on our hands and go to town on Iraq just because it is the year 3005? Oh wait...Anyhoo, it is interesting nonetheless.

Tuesday's Secret

April 19:

The day the American Revolutionary War commenced.

The day of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The day my parents got married.

Tuesday:

"Death: I haven't lost at checkers since time began.

Yakko: When was that?

Death: I think it was a Tuesday. Very few people know that."

~ The Animaniacs

A New Line of Cologne

The guy typing away next to me smells like church. Each time I get a whiff of it, this image of a crowd of salt-and-pepper-haired Korean grandmas and grandpas milling around outside of the sanctuary pops into my head.

Will Zzz For $$$

Yawn. Streeeetch. Blink-blink. Gaze around.
Hm.
I just woke up in the math library.
I just got paid to sleep.
How sweet it is.

The Eighth Deadly Sin

Angie: Ew, are you boiling green stuff?

Sarah: Yes, they're called "artichokes", Ann. Wanna try some?

Angie: No thanks.

Sarah: You don't even wanna try it?

Angie: No way, it smells like vegetable.

Sarah: It is a vegetable, Ann.

Angie: Okay, I'll try some...*choke**gag**cough* Water!

Sarah: Dear Lord...

Angie: Are those radishes in your salad?

Sarah: No, I wouldn't go that far!

Angie: Sarah, eating artichokes is pretty much selling your soul.

Sarah: Rolls eyes to the back of her head and continues to eat her non-radish salad.

They were apples by the way, not radishes.

Joke Hat

What do computer scientists call "I invented the internet?"

An Al-gore-ism!

What do you call an infinitely small amount of pepsi?

A Pepsi-lon!

Aaaaahahahahaha!-

Am I the only one who laughs at her own jokes? Oh well-

Aaaaaahahahahaha!

And good night.

Sarah 'n Ann

Enfin! All the financial aid papers are off my back, nearly. I just have to turn them in. Next in line: Penn-in-Tours papers. They never end, people. Adulthood is about filling out an endless stack of papers. How boring, eh? Well, I gotta say, it was nice that Sarah had done hers before me because I could copy most of her answers. Thanks Sarah! *Wave*

Sarah tends to be one step ahead of me all the time. For instance, she was the first to wear her hair down and care a little more about fashion. It took me a while longer to get out of my sweats and into that girly stuff. She was the first to get a purse. I...come to think of it, I still don't have one. Hm. Anyhoo, it's dialogue time!

C-store cashier: Y'all twins?

Sarah 'n Ann: Yeah.

C-store cashier: Oh my god. Hey Maureen, they all twins! And they got three heads and eyes growing out of their stomach!

Maureen: Really? This whole time, I thought it was one person!

C-store cashier: I know, so did I!

That's what she said last time we came in together!

Oops, I Lied

Okay, there were supposed to be five benefits of chocolate, but I don't feel like making up a fifth one, so we'll just have to conveniently change the title to: "The Four Benefits of Chocolate." 

Excerpt:

"Chocolate is a cure against obesity. The feedback mechanism that our body operates with imposes a fundamental limit to the amount of chocolate the body can break down at any given moment. Thus, the excess chocolate that is eaten simply passes through the GI tract without being broken down into its fat and sugar components. This is a very good bit of news for the 60% of Americans who are overweight."

I love a class where it doesn't matter what the hell you say as long as it's written in good French.

My Sista, the Gangsta

I know Sarah's gonna read this tomorrow, but lemme just say, she just talked in her sleep AGAIN, and I quote:

"Homie don't play that game."

Aaaaahahahaha! Just what is this "game" that she ain't playing? I'm gonna have to ask her tomorrow morning. Back to my French compo: "The Five Benefits of Chocolate."

Immortal Light

"This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel,
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats high mountain down.
~ The Hobbit

Archimedes: Hey, you Great Old Fart, it's been too long! Where've you been?

Old Fart: I went looking for a good story to tell my good friend, Archimedes.

Archimedes: Really? You must have searched around the whole world, hoo. And for a story? I forgot what a bum you were! A bum who collects stories because he has too much time on his hands. Let me guess: You majored in folklore in college, right? I've always wondered what a person could do with a folklore degree, hoo.

Old Fart: And I see, you've still got your funny owl accent. So you'll hear me out then? Good. Let me tell you a story about time. Even you know, Archimedes, that as time goes on, we grow older. No one is immune to the decaying effect of time. But light is a different story. Light, or photons, stay young forever. Light never ages. The light that you see coming from the billions of stars in the night sky is the same light that originated from the Big Bang.

To understand why this is, we can think of driving in some open space. If we drive in a straight line at 100 mph, we will reach the end in a certain amount of time. But if we drive 30 degrees northwest 100 mph, it will take longer to reach the end because we have to divide up the speed between two directions so that the car is going x mph west and (100 - x) mph north. In the first case, all 100 mph are given to "north". In the second case, we have to divide up the 100 mph between "north" and "west". If car were to fly, we would have to distribute the 100 mph among "north", "west" and, er, "height". In other words, we are distributing the speed among the three spatial coordinates of length, width and height.

But then, consider two facts:
(1) There exists a fourth coordinate, time.
(2) The maximum speed that anything can move is c, the speed of light (300,000 m/s)

Let's make humans the base case. Humans walk really really slow, and even the fastest man in the world is not very fast at all compared to the speed of light. So most of our c is given to time. Cars can travel a little faster than humans, so a little more of c is given to the spatial coordinates and a little less to time. But still, the difference is miniscule and insignificant compared to the speed of light. Let's suppose that we are traveling in a rocket that can travel at a significant fraction of the speed of light. Then finally, we see a noticeable decrease in the amount of c given to time. The person in the rocket is aging more slowly, or traveling more slowly through time. If the rocket were going at 99% of the speed of light, then since it is traveling so fast through space, it is moving extremely slowly through time.

What if we were sitting on a beam of light? Now we are traveling through space at exactly the speed of light, and so we are not traveling through time at all! This is exactly why light, or photons, never age. Light is as old as time and as young as a newborn baby.

How about it, Archie, old boy? Didn't I tell you the Universe was a crazy old man?

Archimedes: Hoo! Didn't I tell you never to call me that? What have I ever done to you? And yes, that was a good story. Thanks, you Old Fart.

The End.

Well, I Thought It Was Funny...

Dialogue:

Angie: Oh, I get it!

Pierre: Get what?

Angie: For the longest time, I had no idea what my TA was talking about, "towers" of fields. But I finally got around to reading the section, and I finally understand what he was babel-ling about!

I gotta say, there is nothing more peculiar than telling a math joke to a bunch of chemist friends. It's a tough job, rather like being the President of the US of A :0)

Between the Books

How sad it is when one's idea of a study break consists of washing the dishes? Look! See how spotless they are? See how foamy the soap gets? That's so sad.

Speaking of Glue

I wonder if Elmer's glue is still around...really loved that stuff when I was a kid. Of course, this was before rubber cement became all the rage, just because we could make realistic-looking boogers out of it. Nooo we did not get high off of rubber cement. God. That was what scented markers were for. Mmm, watermelon high...

The Trouble With Being a Twin

The following dialogue takes place at least once a week between Sarah and me:

"Sarah: Hey Ann, I saw one of your friends today.

Angie: Oh really, did he think you were me?

Sarah: Yeah.

Angie: Did you tell him you weren't me?

Sarah: No, we were just passing each other, so I just said "hi".

Angie: Did you ask his name?

Sarah: No.

Angie: What does he look like?

Sarah: Uh...Brown hair.

Angie: O-kaaaay...light or dark?

Sarah: Dark...I think...medium brown.

Angie: Curly or straight? Long or short?

Sarah: Kinda wavy, but pretty straight. Not really long or really short.

Angie: Uh-kaay, that narrows the possibilities down about 40%. Make that 25% since nearly half of Penn is Jewish.

Sarah: Well, he was white. And tall.

Angie: Mmm-kay, since you don't know him, he's probably in one of my math classes. Or my french class. Or...shit, I give up."

So after this happened for the 47th time today, we decided that from now on, if we see a non-mutual friend, then we will ask him (or her) his name, so that we can avoid these pointless guessing games. Speaking of which, I heard the following mini-conversation on Locust Walk today:

"Person 1: You know, what I was thinking yesterday?

Person 2: What?

Person 1: I was thinking that life without alcohol would be like a broken pencil.

Person 2: How so?

Person 1: Totally pointless.

The Hazards of Watching Mary Poppins as a Naive Kid

I wonder if kids ever try to fly off the roof of their house with an umbrella after watching Mary Poppins. I was going to google this, but what would I type into the search box? "Mary Poppins, stupid kids, fly?" I dunno...

Terry Shiavo

My instinctive opinion on the Terri Schiavo case is that they should let her off the hook. Yea, I meant that pretty literally. The woman is so far gone from life, with only her brain stem still functioning. By definition, she is still "alive", but she is about as alive as a carrot. She can feel and think just about as much as a carrot can. There is no chance of her ever recovering. I feel that for her loved ones, it should be equally painful to keep her "alive" with tubes as it should be to let her go. I think it is wrong to condemn her husband for wanting to let her go, although that is certainly not the sole reason for their condemning him. However, even if it were true that the husband caused her condition (which is speculative, as far as I know), she should not be kept "alive" out of revenge or spite. It has also been ruled that Terri's intention would have been to choose death over an irreversibly vegetative state. Terri would not have consented to "the medical indignities and bodily invasions that have defined her condition." The fact of the matter is, Terri Schiavo lives in a vegetative state with no hope of recovery. When one's daughter is so far gone from life, is it not somehow more cruel to keep her clinging to so-called "life" in such a state?

The Diego Rivera Conundrum

Some long and restless nights, I lie awake and think about the Mother of All Questions (MoAQ): "What made all those girls flock to Diego Rivera, who looked like a giant toad in paint-splattered overalls?" Eventually, I convince myself that it was his artistic genius that made him such a ladies' man, and this makes me feel a lot better about humanity because it shows that no matter how superficial we are, looks ain't everything. Only then can I sleep happily and in peace.

The Dangers of Hooded Sweatshirts

One of the scariest things in life is when you put on a hooded sweather backwards, so that the hood ends up smothering your face, and it is dark, and everything feels twisted up and suffocating. One could call that a mild case of claustrophobia.

Math is taking over my life. Fourier, Laplace, Dirichlet, Cauchy, Euler...all dead, yet all still lurking in the recesses of my dreams. Bastards. Genius, yes. But more bastard than genius.

Ducks and Geometry

I am so mesmerized by the current ad. A line of cute little yellow ducks swimming past my very eyes and disappearing...where do they go? Ha! Where does it go?! Where does it go?! Reminds me of that movie with Jack Black and Ben Stiller..."Envy". Thanks to that movie, when I encounter the word, "vaporize" in my textbooks, my mind says, "vapoorize".

And I think I can answer my own question. See, the banner may appear to be flat, and so you wonder, where did they get so many ducks to participate in this advertisement? But the banner is actually circular; it only appears to be flat from our limited point of view. And so we are actually seeing the same finite number of ducks over and over again. And since the banner is circular, the ducks are not actually going anywhere.

Eh? EH?

What a bucket of crazy.

Relativity and Really Old Men

Saturday, January 08, 2005
It is a well-enough known fact that an object which travels at a significant fraction of the speed of light experiences time dilation, meaning, its clock slows down. It is a well-enough known point of confusion that in Biblical times and in Tolkien's universe, Noah, Abraham and Gandalf had seen hundreds and hundreds of summers...hundreds more than the average man. By coupling science, fantasy and the Word of God, I arrived at a brilliant hypothesis during my flight to Philadelphia, which resolves this age-old point of confusion in but a few sentences. You see, back in those days, things (people included) simply moved faster than they do today. Much, much faster. In fact, things traveled at a significant fraction of the speed of light, and in effect, experienced time dilation. And so, depending on their individual speed, Noah, Abraham and Gandalf's life expectancies increased by the corresponding factor. It is extraordinary that Einstein's theory of special relativity is able to provide a logical explanation for the abnormally ripe old ages of certain men of auld lang syne. It is also a well-enough known fact that sleep eludes me, thanks to the change of time zones.

A Bit of Home

Oh, the rain. With a hint of lime. Mmm...

It must be the weirdest life, being a Pope. I mean, there are plenty of little kids who tell their parents that they want to be an actress or a doctor or even President someday. But can you imagine if your kid told you one day that he wanted to become the Pope? That would totally freak me out.

Le Bonheur

Sigh. I would never make a good Buddhist.

Nothing makes me happier than to curl up with a good book and a pint of Ben & Jerry's Mint Chocolate Cookie ice cream, or to listen to Natalie Merchant's "My Skin", and be moved by it, or to watch 12 episodes of Alias in a row with my fellow Alias fanatics, and then watch the sun rise over the Philadelphia skyline. FYI, I have done that last thing on my list this past summer. It was unbelievable. There comes a point when you've watched so much Alias, that you start having nightly dreams of stealing shit and kicking ass and snogging Vaughn. And now, a commercial break:

"Happiness: Brought to you by worldly pleasures."

This thing called "Nirvana"? Ain't happening.

Studying

Yesterday, Jean and I "studied" together. Well, we really did start out with our Artins out and open to chapter 13.7, function fields, but then, Jean spotted my pet mole, which I had made out of my favorite old childhood pillowcase in honor of Mole Day, way back in sophomore year chemistry class. That was the end of our studying for the night.

Monsieur La paute is blue with rainbows and hearts and has dark, friendly eyes. Oh yes, and he only has 2 legs. Somehow, when I was sewing him up, I forgot to make his hindlegs 3-D. Sorry there, Avogadro. I have also neglected to name my mole, so I'm just trying out different names. Now that I think about it, I rather like the name, Avogadro.

Anyway, Jean LOVES playing with stuffed animals. We spent a long while playing with Avogadro and Muffy, my beheaded dog, and if anyone had been there, all they would have heard for the next hour or so would have been:

"Oh, look, it's a pencil case!"

"Now it's a duck!"

"Look, haha, it really looks like a phone!"

"Huh? That's no ph- oh, I see it!"

Luckily, no one was there.