Science: Solstice Eclipse

One of my goals has been to see a total solar eclipse.  I have observed a partial solar eclipse before, although it's not quite as dramatic.  The light does turn kind of murky and you can see the partial crescent of the sun using a pinhole (or in the flickering of light filtering through leaves), but there's not the dramatic blackening of the sun.

On the other hand, in comparison lunar eclipses are almost like a dime a dozen since the Earth's shadow is so much larger.  You don't get the complete disappearance of the moon, but you do get the arguably more terrifying event of the moon turning blood red (the moon turns red due to the scattering of light around the Earth's atmosphere---think of it as if all of the sunsets and sunrises around the edges of the Earth are focused on the moon).  I can only wonder at how frightening solar and lunar eclipses would have appeared to people thousands of years ago.

In any case, there will be another lunar eclipse coming up.  The eclipse should be viewable across all of North America, starting at 1:33 am EST with totality at 2:41 am EST.  For all the armchair astrologers out there, this lunar eclipse will actually happen on the the winter solstice on December 21.  This is a pretty rare event and the last time this happened was in the year 1638.  I'm sure this has all sorts of wacky portentous omens, but the practical effect is that it's so cold and late outside that I probably won't venture out to see it myself, although this could make for a spectacular image over fresh fallen snow.  Oh well (we don't even have any snow here yet anyway).

For those waiting for a total solar eclipse, you might have to travel around the world.  NASA has a list of total solar eclipse events coming up.  For North America, it looks like 2017 might be the next best bet.  Maybe I should start booking my tickets now...

Photography: Autumn Falls

This was the first week that we had truly frigid temperatures on the East Coast (sorry Midwesterners, but we were still living in the 50s as of last week!)  It hasn't snowed yet, but the temps have dipped below freezing and there's a bite to the wind now.  After seeing all of the snow hitting the rest of the country, I suppose it's only a matter of time before it's our turn.

Still, despite the relatively late start to winter here, it's been a pretty wet, mild autumn (see previous post regarding our leaking roof).  As a result, the window for viewing fall foliage was pretty short---there was literally only one week where the leaves were ablaze in color.  Both the wetness and the mild temperatures worked against a colorful display.  Cold temperatures are required to stop the production of chlorophyll in the leaves, which is the chemical which makes the leaves appear green (chlorophyll appears green since it has evolved to maximize absorption of red and blue light).  Dry weather decreases the concentration of sugar in the leaves, which accelerates the formation of anthocyanins, which are bright red (think of bright red maple leaves).  Some leaves will also have carotene, which colors the leaves yellow, and leaves with both will appear bright orange.

One of the things that I missed the most when I lived in California was the lack of seasons, particularly autumn, so this year was particularly sad.  Still, we were able to head out one weekend to catch a fleeting glimpse of fall's colors.

Home Alone

We are now living in our first real home, the first place that we aren't just renting but actually have a vested interest in.  That's not to say that we haven't rented some pretty nice apartments in the past---our place in Irvine was as slick as anything you would expect in Orange County.  But the flip side of owning a home is that suddenly you care a lot more about maintaining it, keeping it clean, and making sure everything stays as good as new.

At least those things that you can control.  This year we found a pretty bad water leak coming from our ceiling.  It started off as a small water stain but now it's gotten so large that it's trickling down the wall, the paint has started to peel, and drops of water fall from the ceiling.  The trick is that we're part of a condo community, which is kind of like a halfway house between renting and owning.  It's as if you're still stuck at the kiddie table.  The plus side is that the community association is responsible for the building exterior so we didn't need to repair it ourselves.  The downside is that if the community association is bad, there's not much that you can do.  Even worse is that they're not responsible for damage to the interior.  It took us forever to get the property manager out to even look at the damage (and only after we threatened to call a lawyer).  And then they claimed to fix  the roof several times before, but we never really knew exactly what they did since we were always away at work.  The only way to check if they actually did their job was to wait until another big rainstorm hit and see if it still leaked.  Which is exactly what happened last week---after claiming that they had fixed the roof several months ago, we heard the tell-tale drip wake us up.

Well, today they finally sent a contractor out who finally may have found the source of the damage.  I had to stay home alone to make sure that they actually did something---and they actually did tear off the roof and repair the leak from the outside.  Still, we'll have to wait until it rains again before we're sure, which may not be until spring...

Interestingly, our place is only about 5 or 6 years old and we've already had this problem.  Some of our neighbors have also had serious problems.  The thing is, the buildings look nice, but I guess you never know what's behind the walls.  It's all superficial.  I guess that's a life lesson right there.  But I wonder, are they just not building things the way they used to?  We live in an area that has many houses that are over a century old.  It's easy to say that those classic houses were built better with better materials and with better work---you know, back when men were men and had hair on their chest and houses had roofs that didn't leak, not like now when everyone just goes for the cheapest shortcut.  But is that just rose colored glasses romanticizing the past?  Maybe all of the terrible quality houses have already fallen over by now.  These are things to keep in mind if we ever move to a new house...

Raveled Travels

This week was kind of a turning point for me and my wife.  This was her last week at her current job before she starts her new position at a new company next week.  Before this week, we had lived together for over five years.  During that time, we were pretty lucky.  We first met while attending the same grad school.  After we graduated, we were both able to find postdoctoral positions at the same school as well.  And finally, when we went looking for jobs, we were both hired by the same company at the same site.  We were incredibly lucky in that the two body problem was never really a problem for us.  Despite criss-crossing the country all that time, we were able to live and commute together for over five years.

This was the first week where we started to have separate commutes and the first week that I had to drive to work alone.

It's been a little weird.  I think that we had gotten so used to each other since we had spent so much time together---we lived and worked together so we literally saw each other nearly constantly.  It's strange to spend so much time with the same person and suddenly find yourself alone.  One the one hand, it's a lonely feeling when you're left by yourself.  On the other hand, it's a rare time where you can spend getting lost in your thoughts.  Listening to others is an art, but in this modern age of distractions I think that listening to yourself has become a lost art.  Plus, I think that this will be good for our relationship---I think we were spending so much time together that we were in danger of getting too familiar and bored with each other.  This adds a little bit of the unknown that we've been lacking.

The other benefit is that now I can play the music I want to on the ride home...

ADD

Speaking of the crazies out on Black Friday, over the weekend we did go out to the local Japanese supermarket for some sushi and ramen.  Now there's something about Asian drivers that seems to go out of control at places like Asian grocery stores, Asian restaurants, etc.  Basically, if you get too many Asian drivers in close proximity to each other, you're asking for trouble.  I call it ADD or Asian Driving Disorder.

One symptom of ADD is that the parking spaces and streets near Asian areas is are jam packed at all times of the day.  This makes drivers throw all the usual rules of the road out the window---you don't get anywhere by being polite.  Instead, cars race through the parking lots trying to grab the first space they see, cutting off people, swerving in front of pedestrians, and generally it becomes a survival of the fittest competition.  I wonder if the most of these people learned to drive in the free for all streets of Asia before coming to the US, where these repressed instincts flare up due to the high concentration of fellow Asian people.  Without fail, every time we go to the local Asian Food Market, we almost die.  This time, we ended up almost getting hit by a couple of cars just walking to the door and we saw two cars back into each other since neither driver was paying any attention.  This was true in California and it's true in New Jersey and New York as well.

Anyway, it doesn't look like the problem is likely to go away.  There was a recent Wall Street Journal artcle that cited statistics that Asian Americans in New Jersey had a lifespan of 91.8 years compared to 79.7 years for all other residents and even higher than the 87.3 years for Asian Americans living in the rest of the country.  I guess it must be something in the water.  The article does suggest that the situation may be autocatalytic---that as more Asian Americans get together, more and more join them.  It looks like the driving craziness won't stop.

Black Friday

I don't think we've ever really gone out during the shopping madness of Black Friday.  I usually need my beauty sleep, so there's very little that will get me to wake up that early in the morning, especially potentially getting trampled to death at a WalMart.  I'm a little skeptical at how good the deals really are, as I suspect that some places will artificially raise their prices just so they can mark down a higher percent sale.  Plus, no matter how good a deal is, an even better deal is not spending anything at all (but if you must get something, then get it online shipped to your destination from the comfort of your home).

However, we did decide to venture out into the madness this year.  Mostly because we've been thinking about getting some new shelves and to clean up our loft.  So we ended up going to Ikea (sorry, we're still in poor grad student mode so we default to Ikea and not to any "real" furniture store).  It actually turned out to be the best time to go---there was virtually no one else there!  I don't think I've ever seen an Ikea this empty before.  I guess they didn't have any official Black Friday sale so everyone else was probably elsewhere trampling each other (we actually did a drive-by of the outlet mall next door and literally every single space in the parking lot was full with more buses disgorging people.  That's when we decided just to go home.

Sadly, we did have to go out and buy some batteries for our failing smoke detector.  For the last couple of nights, it's decided 3 am was the best time to let us know that it needed a new battery.  So we had to venture into a Best Buy on the way home.  It was crazy---there was police tape outside (presumably to control the lines that morning) and inside was a madhouse of people and piles of inventory randomly blocking various aisles.  Luckily, we managed to get our batteries and get out of there.

(And no, that didn't fix the smoke alarm, it looks like it's expired and we have to buy a new one...)

The New Fear of Flying

There's been a lot of uproar over the new TSA security measures now in place at airports across the country.  Your choice is now between a full body scan that essentially gives you an electronic strip search or a more intensive enhanced patdown search, where not even children are spared from being groped and touched in places that would have the inspector arrested anywhere else.  We haven't had to travel yet, so I'm morbidly curious how this will play out when we do during Christmas break.  Yesterday was supposed to be the big protest day where travelers would opt out of the full body scanners and go for the patdown.  However, it sounds like it was mostly much ado about nothing and it doesn't look like there was much of an impact.

Some thoughts:

*  Did they really have to make you hold your hands up like a common criminal when being scanned?  Really?  

*  Michael Chertoff, using his position as former Homeland Security Secretary to strongly advocate for the body scanners, has a consulting company which includes as a client Rapiscan Systems, the company producing the scanners.  How is this not an immense conflict of interest?

*  I don't understand why pilots had to go through all of this (they've since stopped scanning them).  If they wanted to hijack or crash the plane or crash, they could, well, just use the controls...

*  If a terrorist wanted to create havoc, there are now much easier targets than an airport, especially now that the cockpits are locked and informed passengers would never let a hijacker take control of a plane.

*  How do we tell our kids that it's not right for anyone to touch you in those special places unless they have a uniform on?

*  I wouldn't have as big of an issue with this if the the body scanners actually worked (at least if their purpose is to catch terrorists).  Whether it's stories like the TSA missing 12 inch razor blades on Adam Savage or actual terrorists already demonstrating that they've learned to smuggle bombs in various bodily cavities, there are easy ways to get past the them if you wanted to.

*  This is why I think that statistics (along with financial planning) needs to be a mandated class for everyone.  By any statistical measure, whether you are looking at total number of deaths, normalizing for number of deaths per traveler or number of deaths per mile traveled, driving is orders of magnitude more lethal than flying.  So why isn't there even a fraction of the resources going into stopping drunk driving?  How about any of the other leading causes of death (which include tobacco, diet, alcohol, and firearms)?  Even worse, it appears that the amount of radiation dosed by the bodily scanners, although small, will actually result in more deaths than from the terrorist activities it's supposed to prevent.  This is not a good trade off.

*  What are we so scared of?  Why don't we just realize that terrorism is such a small risk that we stop being so afraid of it?  Whatever happened to being the Home of the Brave?  Surely continuing to live our lives is the best victory against terrorists.

Sadly, it looks like most people will just go through the body scanners without complaint because it's easy or "it's the law".  Despite how comfortable or easy it is, it's still a strip search.  Still, I suppose it's easier to just do as you're told.  To be fair, if given the choice this Christmas, I'll likely submit as well...sigh...

Pizza Stone

Although we've started making bread in our dutch oven, I still yearned for a bread stone since it would be more versatile method of baking.  The problem is that they're usually ridiculously over-priced and we haven't been able to find any quarry stones at the local hardware stones to use.  However, we luckily stumbled upon a pizza stone at Wegmans for only fifteen bucks, so we finally took the bait.

For its inaugural run, we decided to make pizza.  We've never made truly home-made pizza before so we were pretty excited.  I found an easy pizza dough recipe.  We whipped up a quick sauce from scratch and cut up some toppings (my wife prefers supreme pizza, so we prepared some italian sausage, pepperoni, red onions, mushrooms, and cheese).  After letting the dough rise twice, we started rolling it out which ended up being a little harder than I expected.  I think the dough was a little too wet  to handle and it was hard to stretch the dough out and get it as thin as we wanted.  We spread the sauce on and put the toppings on (under the cheese, which I like) and it looked good to go.

At first everything looked good...

Unfortunately, I guess we didn't think the process all the way through.  We didn't have an easy way to transfer the pizza onto the hot pizza stone in the oven.  The dough was too sticky and flexible to pick up easily and we didn't have a large paddle.  The results were pretty ugly.  We eventually had to fold it over to get it onto a large cutting board and then toss and unroll it back onto the pizza stone (maybe we should have just settled for a calzone).  We baked it for about 20 minutes at 450 degrees Fahrenheit but even that was a little too long and the pizza came out over cooked.  Despite all that, it turned out okay.  The crust ended up being a little too thick and chewy, but the bottom was definitely crispy from the pizza stone.  I think the next time we'll definitely aim for a thinner crust and maybe more healthy toppings... 

The final product, not too shabby...

Year End Curve

It's that time of year again---year end reviews at work.  Towards the end of each year, we get our performance evaluated to determine our potential raise and year end bonus, although for some reason we actually don't get our year end bonus until the April of the following year.  Of course, there is a corporate buzz word for the affair---they call it "calibration".

This is the first real job that I've had since finishing school so I'm not sure how other companies do this or if they even have a a similar year end review.  The part that I'm really not enthusiastic about is that the "calibration" is curved.  everyone in your level is divided into pre-determined percentile buckets such as "top 10%" or "bottom 10%".  The issue that I find disturbing is that a bell curve distribution is forced so that there is always someone in the top or bottom bucket.  It's something that I've found disturbing even during college when professors would curve their classes like this.  I have no problem with a gaussian bell curve when there's a large enough sample size, but in a small class or group of employees I think the model fails.  What if everyone in your department performs equally well this year?  Why does someone have to get punished?  This tends to make everything even more competitive since everyone is fighting for the elite top percentile.

Of course, this doesn't even start to take into account the different managers politicking to promote their own.

Or how to distinguish if you work hard but you're unlucky and your project fails for other reasons.

Or the fact that, in theory, all of the bottom 10 percenters have been let go during the many layoffs this year.

Although I'm not a big fan of this, I suppose that there does need to be some mechanism to recognize and reward the better employees.  The problem is that "average performance" is determined by comparing everyone to each other, which results in a moving average of sorts.  I would much rather there be an absolute measure, for example if your performance was gauged by particular objectives set out at the beginning of the year.  If everyone meets their objectives then everyone performs well, just like if everyone gets 90% on their exam they should all get A's.

Kinecting

I haven't really been keeping up with computer or video game technology, which is a little surprising since I used to be an avid gamer.  However, my tastes have strongly turned towards analog (board) games recently and I have dropped out of the most recent generation of console games.  I do have a Wii, but that was more for casual gaming and we haven't even turned it on for several months.

Anyway, this weekend we went up to Connecticut to visit my cousin's family.  It turns out that they had one of the new-fangled Kinect systems for the Xbox 360 so we tried it out.  I have to admit that I was pretty impressed---it's some slick technology.  I hadn't really heard anything about it beforehand, so it was basically new to me.  Unlike the Wii, the Kinect does not use any motion sensitive controllers that you have to attach to various parts of your body.  Instead, a sensor bar projects an array of infrared light at you which is then captured and mapped using a 3d detector.  Essentially, it's a full body motion detector, no controller needed.

This leads to some pretty neat effects.  For example, you just have to wave to push and pull different menus across the screen---very Minority Report-esque.   We tried out the Adventures game that places you as an explorer in various mini -ames.  The most fun one was an on-rails obstacle course where you're essentially on a moving platform having to jump or duck around obstacles while grabbing at coins.  We also tried the Dance Central game which was surprisingly fun.  It's the next iteration of the Dance Dance Revolution genre, except now the game tracks your entire movement against the set choreography.  The games were also surprisingly exhausting---it's a pretty good workout and you burn quite a bit of calories, certainly more than the Wii.  In fact, the next day we were sore all over.

However, there are some downsides to the system.  We tried the Sports game, but most of the games were hit or miss.  This is mostly because the Kinect system just doesn't seem to have a very high resolution or precision.  It was hard to have fine control your ball when bowling, for example.  The technology is a pretty big step forward, but I think that at this point it's a technology waiting for a great game.  It works well with games requiring exaggerated bodily movements like dancing or jumping obstacles, but it doesn't seem to work that well with games requiring fine control (although to be fair, I think you can train the Kinect to recognize you in more detail, but we didn't do that).  This is one area where the Wii does better, although it's one area where the Wii has inexplicably not taken advantage of.  The Wii technology can result it some highly accurate pointing and this has translated to some amazing shooter games like Resident Evil 4.  In fact, I refuse to play most console shooter games since I'm a dyed in the wool mouse/keyboard man from my old Quake days, but the Wii is one exception although sadly there just haven't been that many games taking advantage of it.

Still, I think this is an example of how when they put their minds to it, Microsoft can really turn out some slick technology and push the market.  It's just a shame that they don't do it more often.

Time Zone

One of the downsides of coming back from Daylight Savings time is that it gets dark so early now.  I guess we've essentially traded an hour of evening light for an hour of morning light.  In practice, this means that the sun wakes me up early in the morning, I got to work, and it's pitch black by the time I get home.  In retrospect, I'd rather have the extra hour of light in the evening.  This got me to thinking that all of this is pretty arbitrary.  We didn't really gain an hour last weekend, we just shifted around all of our socially responsible agendas.  It's almost as if we switched time zones, although in this case the jet lag is entirely self-induced and not due to the curvature of the earth.  

So which time zone is the best?  Having lived in three time zones, I have to say that the Central Time Zone beats all the others.  This is governed pretty much by arbitrary social agendas---in this case the television schedule is much better in the Midwest.  Now, I actually don't watch too much tv, but I do try to catch the evening news.  It's much easier to watch the nightly news at 10 pm rather than 11 pm, especially if you have to wake up to go to your 8-5 job.  Everything in the Eastern and Pacific Time Zones just happens one hour later.  Prime time starts at 8 pm rather than 7 pm, and don't get me started on being forced to watch live sports early in the morning in California.  I guess I'm just old and I need my sleep.

All in Time

This is one of my favorite days of the year, right up there with Christmas, Thanksgiving, and definitely better than my birthday---it's the day we ditch Daylight Savings time and gain back our free hour, the only day of the year with 25 hours.  Sorry Arizona, you will never taste such sweetness.

I'm actually a little surprised that this day hasn't been seized and made more commercialized.  Where are all of the one hour sales?  Or the gifts that you have to buy everyone to celebrate their newly found hour?  Maybe it's just a matter of time (pun intended).

Anyway, we spent the extra time today just relaxing and doing some baking.  We had some leftover apples from when we had gone out apple picking, so we ended up making an apple cinnamon walnut bread (kind of like a banana bread) and apple strudel muffins.  They're fresh out of the oven and the whole house now has that warm, cozy, spiced smell.  It's much better than potpourri, significantly cheaper, even edible (although I suppose that remains to be seen...)

 Apple Strudel Muffins

Apple Cinnamon Walnut Bread

Casting Lots

Yesterday was Election Day and luckily I managed to make it to our polling place---for some reason, someone scheduled a big global business meeting for the past two days.  Anyway, I ended up voting for the challenger who was a former science teacher.  Sadly, science lost to the incumbent.  And apparently, not just in New Jersey.

One of the stats that I found sadly interesting was that only about 25% of the people in our district went out to vote.  I guess this wasn't a Presidential election, but this was one of the more publicized elections (although New Jersey didn't have any of the key races).  I guess the sadder thing is that that 25% figure is probably pretty high compared to rest of the country...

Food: Bread Baking

I've always been interested in making homemade bread---I tend to be a "starch" kind of guy, as I need some type of carbohydrates in my meals, which tends to be rice the majority of times, but pasta, bread, and potatoes are pretty good too.  Luckily I still have a high metabolism, so I'm still pretty scrawny.

However, baking bread is kind of intimidating.  Baking in general is kind of a mysterious art.  It's the one type of cooking where you really can't deviate from the recipe at all.  I've used my mom's bread machine before, and while it works, it makes typical "bread machine" bread.  At work, we had an instrument consultant stop by who recommended The Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart.  It's a pretty good book going over the history of bread and filled with lots of recipes, but it makes baking sound even more intimidating.  You need a dense baking stone to maintain a high temperature.  You need to keep a pan of water in the oven and mist the walls in the beginning to make sure you get good caramelization and browning of the crust.  There are different flours and different yeasts.  This sounded like a lot more work than I thought.  We tried looking for baking stones, but they tended to be pretty expensive.  We even tried looking for rough cut quarry stones from local hardware stores as a replacement (they're only a couple of bucks rather than a hundred), but they were all out.

When my friends Luke and Jenny visited, they let me know of this easy bread recipe from Mark Bittman at the New York Times.  There's even a Youtube video demonstrating the procedure.  Apparently it's so easy that even "a 4-year-old could master it".  All you need is flour, salt, instant yeast, and water.  You also let the bread do a slow fermentation and rise over 18 hours.  The real trick here is that you bake the bread in a cast iron dutch oven---the cast iron helps retain the heat so you don't need a separate baking stone.  Plus, you leave the pot covered for part of the baking time---as a result, the water from the dough is trapped and creates a high humidity environment that helps form the crust.  It's pretty ingenious.  Is there anything cast iron can't do?

So we gave the recipe a spin.  It's very strange.  The dough is very wet and almost slimy and it's not like any other dough that I've made before.  But since you slow ferment it, you don't need to do any kneading.  And it works.  After about a day, you pretty much just throw the dough ball into a preheated cast iron pot and bake it.  Afterwards, you just pop out a classic loaf of bread.  The crust is crackly and has a nice, golden brown color.  The interior is nice and soft.  It's almost like a loaf of artisan bread.  And it really is easy enough that a four-year-old could do it.  We made an oyster chowder to go with it and dipped the bread in...mmm...delicious...

We've already made it again.  This recipe is only for a typical white bread, so now we're interested in looking at other variations.  Now that we know you can use a dutch oven, it might be worth looking at that bread book again...

NYC Visit

Last week my old friend Luke and Jenny came up to visit.  As Jersey is...well...Jersey, we made our way to New York City several times.  It wasn't really the best weather to go out sightseeing and we ended up walking around in the cold and rain.  Still, I think we all had fun and it was good to get out of the house.

The first night had tickets to the Broadway show American Idiot.  It was a little strange to see Green Day songs being performed with kicks and dances on stage.  Plus, I mostly remember Green Day from Dookie, so I haven't really listened to their later, more serious stuff.  I would have guessed there would have been other rock operas to adapt to Broadway first (hmm, how about Pink Floyd?).  Anyway, it was pretty good.  It did feel like it was trying to be the new Rent, i.e. the new hip rock and roll Broadway show about disaffected youth.  The director made a decision to cut out most of the dialog and let the songs carry the show, which I'm not sure was the best idea.  The result is a plot that is a little harder to follow and more free-form, and while that may have been the intent, it made it a little harder to connect the characters on a personal level.  Especially when their lives started falling apart.  Instead, it was 90 minutes of being blasted with teenage angst.  With rock music.  And choreographed dance scenes.  Which isn't bad, per se, but I think it was a missed opportunity.

We also got tickets earlier in the day to do one of those tourist-y water cruises around the city.  It's a little cheesy, but it's still a pretty cool way to see the different parts of the city.  The boat goes around Manhattan and then closes in on Liberty Island before returning.  The weather was bad and it gave the city almost an oppressive feel with the clouds hunkering down over the skyline.

Random: Whitrolled

This amazingly incredible and incredibly amazing news has been making the Internet rounds: the Meg Whitman campaign, running for governor of California, has been trying to look tech savvy and using Twitter (she was the former CEO of Ebay after all).  Her campaign tried to tweet a link to an online endorsement from the San Diego Sheriff's Association, but instead made a typo...

... and instead linked to a Youtube video featuring a middle-aged cross dressing man in a pink tutu rocking out on a bass guitar to some J-pop.  He even has a fan set up to blow his hair around.  And if that's not enough, at one point he even flashes some panties and throws them on a bed.



While I wonder if this was deliberate to stir up publicity, I just don't think Whitman's core demographic would embrace a creepy cross-dressing Asian guy (although maybe he thinks Jerry Brown is soft on crime too).  I don't usually follow Twitter, this just made my day.  I could watch this every day to feel better. 

Food: It's Back!

I thought I should mention that the McDonald's close to our house had a sign advertising that "The McRib is Back!"  We had to check it out and see if the rumors were true.  Indeed they were---the McRib does exist!  Mmmm...it was everything it's cracked up to be...

Food: The Return of the King

Like a shooting star, the McRib is coming back for a rare national appearance in November!  After years of unsubstantiated sightings, it's like finally finding the real chupacabra, only more delicious (but maybe just as scary).  I guess we won't be needing the McRib Locator for a while.

The McRib mystery meat is pretty versatile...I remember seeing the same meat patty in a McDonalds in Hong Kong, although this time they slathered it with a hot black pepper sauce.  Mmmmm....

Simpsons Sweatshop

The Simpsons has been nearly unwatchable for over a decade, but from time to time they do pull out something sharp and relevant (on the other hand, I suppose it's easy to be critical after you've made your millions).  Here's the intro from this week's episode:

Edit:  It looks like Fox took down the Youtube link, but you can see the episode here on Hulu (at least you only need to watch the intro):

Chinese Peace

On Friday, the most relevant Nobel Prize (at least to the public) was awarded---the Peace Prize.  Each year, the Peace Prize tends to overshadow the rest of the laureates, typically since the scientific and literature prizes are carved from highly specialized niches while the Peace Prize winners tend to be in the public eye.   The scientific prizes are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and tend to be well-vetted and rigorously selected.  On the other hand, the Peace Prize is awarded by a separate group, the Norwegian Nobel Committee.  Interestingly, this group is made up of only five people.  Moreover, since "Peace" is such a nebulous concept, with such a small group the selection tends to have specific political statements.  As a result, controversy over the Peace Prize selection tends to overshadow the other, more rigorously awarded Prizes---I've sadly heard many comments on how people don't trust any of the Nobel Prizes after last year's award to Barack Obama (arguably more of an anti-Bush rather than a pro-Obama award)

In any case, the Peace Prize this year was awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese dissident jailed for his activism for human rights in China.  It's a pretty safe and uncontroversial selection, although not surprisingly China has called the award an obscenity.  In fact, in many of the state-run Chinese newspapers there was virtually no mention of the news.  However, even more interestingly, when my wife asked her mainland Chinese coworkers about the news, Chinese people who had immigrated to the US for work, surprisingly they either had no comment or called the award "ridiculous".  Ridiculous.  Earlier this year when Google had their standoff against China over censorship, those same coworkers railed against Google for not obeying the law.

My wife and I both have family in Hong Kong and over the years it has become clear that there is a enormous cultural difference between Chinese people from mainland China and those from Hong Kong (or Taiwan).  There are obvious language differences---people in Hong Kong speak Cantonese rather than the official Mandarin dialect and they are essentially different languages.  Moreover, Hong Kong was controlled by the United Kingdom and was allowed to develop a freewheeling capitalist economy closer to the United States than to China.  Even since China reacquired Hong Kong in 1997, under global pressure it was kept as a "Special Administrative Region" and effectively allowed autonomy (one wonders why Tibet was not given this treatment).  In any case, Hong Kong Chinese tend to be more free spirited and entrepreneurial---chances are, most of the Chinese restaurants you've eaten at in the US were started by immigrants from Hong Kong.

Mainland Chinese, in my experience, generally tend to be more focused on hierarchy and status stretching from millenna under imperial rule.  Don't rock the boat.  Do what you're told.  The sad thing is, I think the reason that human rights and freedom won't come soon in China is because most people in China just don't care.  Don't question the government.  Put the State before you---what's good for the State is good for you.  Criticizing the government over human rights only criticizes the people of China.  Even mainland Chinese immigrants in the United States, taking advantage of a free capitalist economy and arguably vastly more successful then the majority of Chinese back home, don't care.  In fact, my wife's department is headed by a hierarchy of mainland Chinese women (dubbed the Purse Gang) who run the shop as a tightly as a politburo.

Of course, this is a slightly exaggerated viewpoint and there are exceptions like Liu Xiaobo and the Dalai Lama, but I fear that change will be slow.  Is China ready for freedom?  Beyond that, sadly I think that the motivation for the Western world to encourage change is stuck in a symbiotic addiction to cheap goods provided by cheap labor in China, cheap labor predicated upon the same human rights abuse that we're protesting...

Science: Nobel Results

It looks like this was a pretty good year for chemistry, at least with respect to Nobel Prizes.  Long overdue, the 2010 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was given to Heck, Negishi, and Suzuki for palladium-catalyzed cross coupling reaction for work that was developed in the 1970s.  Specifically, they developed the chemical reactions appropriately but rather obviously named Heck reaction, Negishi coupling, and Suzuki coupling (chemists tend to be narcissists---one of the great honors of synthetic chemistry is to have a chemical reaction named after you).  Sadly for Lisa Simpson, her guess was in the right area of chemistry but the wrong name---Sonogashira and Kumada are other early pioneers in the field, but the impact of their research has been less felt and the Nobel rule of three left them out.

What's exciting is that this year the Prize was actually given to research in chemistry itself rather than being bumped by something in physics or biology.  It's personally exciting to me since my graduate and post-doctoral research was in a similar field, focusing on developing new catalysts for chemical reactions.  It's been a good string of wins catalysis---it seems like every 5 years or so, the Nobel Prize is given to an advancement in some area of catalysis.  Knowles, Noyori, and Sharpless won the 2001 Prize for asymmetric catalysis and Chauvin, Schrock and Grubbs won the 2005 Prize for olefin metathesis.

Why this is so cool is that chemistry is essentially the science of molecules and synthetic chemistry is the science of making molecules.  Making molecules can be pretty hard, but catalysts can make our lives much easier.  Catalysts are small amounts of a specific molecule that can direct and transform other molecules into new ones.  The kicker is that the catalyst can run this reaction thousands if not millions of times, so you only need a small amount of a catalyst to generate a large amount of your product.  Generally, the most powerful catalysts tend to be molecules containing precious metals like palladium, rhodium, or ruthenium (for example, this is why you have rhodium in your catalytic converters---the rhodium can capture and transform the emissions from your exhaust).  For this year's Prize, palladium is the catalyst used to connect carbon-carbon bonds together to form more complicated structures.  The reactions developed by Heck, Negishi, and Suzuki generally follow the same mechanism with slightly different starting reagents.  What's incredible about these reactions is that they're extremely robust---they're clean reactions that make few unwanted side-products and you can run these reactions to make products on the ton-scale, which has been used to make molecules from complex pharmaceuticals to materials and even polymers.

Sadly, while this is pretty exciting news for chemists everywhere, there's been barely a mention in the mainstream press.  I guess it is a pretty esoteric topic to effectively communicate to non-chemists.   Metathesis, which won in 2005, at least had a catchy dance movie in the press release that all the prime time news shows played.  Still, this is a Nobel that's long been expected and well-deserved.

In another coup for chemistry, arguably the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of graphene would have been suitable for the chemistry prize as well.  Graphene is essentially a single molecular layer of graphite, one of the allotropes of carbon (the others being diamond and fullerenes/buckeyballs).  It's similar to an extended chain of fused benzenes---and just like benzene, there are pairs of electrons in high energy p orbitals (unlike diamond, where the electrons are in more stable orbitals resulting in a very stable structure).  Since the rings are fused together, the electrons are delocalized and can flow, resulting in some interesting electrical and thermal conductivity properties.  What's exciting is that this could potentially play a role in developing new materials and replacing older metal-based conductors.  Fun fact:  if you take a sheet of graphene and roll it up, you get a carbon nanotube, which also have very interesting new material properties since you can now think about directing electrical current in a specific direction on the nano-scale.

Science: Nobel Madness

It's Nobel season this week, the biggest popularity contest for scientists everywhere (although sadly there is no swimsuit competition).  And just like other popularity contests, the selection criteria are opaque and seem to be at the whim of the judging body.  There are many arcane rules that surrounding the Prize---for example, the Prize cannot be awarded to the deceased, which can bias the Prize away from research where one of the leading scientists has passed away.  Another strange rule is that each Prize can only be split between a maximum of three winners, which can reduce adult scientists to name calling if they're left out.  The most recent case of this was the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry awarded for the discovery of green fluorescent protein (GFP).  Three scientists were awarded the Prize, but the actual person who discovered the gene for the protein was left out and now drives a bus (although maybe not in that order).  However, probably the most egregious consequence of those rules was the exclusion of Rosalind Franklin, the woman who solved the crystal structure of DNA.  The Nobel Prize for the discovery of DNA was awarded in 1962 to Crick, Watson, and Wilkins, who failed to acknowledge her work in any meaningful way.

Sadly, out of all of the prizes, Chemistry is kind of like the leftover bucket.  Often, since there is no prize in Biology, it tends to spill over and displace more suitable Chemistry winners.  Other times, research in Physics will creep into the Chemistry Prize as well.  As a result, each year chemists worldwide hope for a prize in "real" chemistry.  Similarly, there is no Nobel Prize in mathematics, although this can sometimes be shoehorned into the Prize in Economics (itself a relatively recent addition). 

Still, it's also starting to seem like except for the Peace Prize, Nobel Prizes are something that only scientists care about---the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded today for the invention of in vitro fertilization and the news is buried in most online news sites (although I wonder if this is due to general disinterest in science or residual controversy over "test tube babies"---on the other hand, CNN.com doesn't even have a section devoted to Science).  However, it's the one week where nerds can act like jocks and fill out their own "Nobel Madness" prediction brackets---who will win this year?  I wonder if even Vegas gets in on the action.  Surprisingly, even The Simpsons got in on this.  I used to be a huge Simpsons fan, but the show has definitely gone downhill and has been virtually unwatchable for nearly a decade.  Still, I happened to catch an episode this season which Lisa and the rest of the nerds showcased their Nobel predictions---and surprisingly, the predictions are actual known chemists with relatively reasonable chances.  It looks like the writers on the Simpsons have actually done their homework instead of just using a throwaway gag.

Season 22, Episode 1: Simpsons Nobel Predictions

Zare and Moerner did work on single molecule laser spectroscopy, Feringa has done work in many different fields but is probably most famous for his molecular machine work, and Sonogashira is one of the big founders palladium-catalyzed cross coupling.   If it was up to me, I would pick Sonogashira, Suzuki, and Heck for cross coupling as I'm partial to synthetic chemistry (methods to make new molecules), although this is a case where the rules are biased against it---Stille, one of the big cross coupling pioneers, passed away in 1989.

Blackout

We got hit with remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole last week up here in the Northeast (in a case of science meeting the obvious, by the time we experienced it, Tropical Storm Nicole was no longer considered Tropical).  It rained pretty heavily for most of week.  Luckily our area was relatively fine although there were some areas close by that suffered from flash flooding.  Although this weekend was beautiful, it looks like it's going to be another wet week.

At one point during the storm, just as we were settling in to cook dinner, the power flickered and then went out.  It's kind of surreal how much ambient noise modern nature surrounds us with.  There was no television or music.  The hum of the air purifier, the random computer fans, and even the refrigerator were silenced.  The only thing left was a slight ringing of the ears---sometimes the loudest thing can be the lack of noise.  The house was completely dark with only trace ambient light filtering in through the windows.  The power to the entire neighborhood was out.  We could see the tell-tale frantic movement of flashlights from some of the other units in our complex while others revealed the steady calm of candlelight.  Some remained dark. 

The rain had calmed so we took the opportunity to go outside.  It was dark and calm outside and surprisingly quiet---we were alone as everyone else stayed huddled indoors.  All of the lights were out and only moonlight diffused by the clouds lit the way.  The air was clean from the fresh rain.  It ended up being a long, peaceful walk and we could just leave all the modern distractions behind.  By the time we came back, the power flickered back on to welcome us to a warm and cozy home.

Literally?

I tend to not be a grammar Nazi.  I'm an optimist, so I tend to attribute all the there/their/they're, your/you're, and to/too/two to innocent mistakes (I also don't think that spelling necessarily correlates with intelligence as long as the message is understood).

However, there's a recent Dodge Grand Caravan commercial that drives me crazy every time I hear it.  I don't quite understand it, but it's like fingernails to the chalkboard to me.  Partly, I think it's the slightly pretentious, arrogant Dexter voice.  He lists all of the amazing features of the minivan and then he smugly intones, "and oh yeah, it literally gave birth to all other minivans".  Really?  It literally gave birth to them?  As in every other minivan just slipped out the back?  Sorry Dodge, but you've literally lost me as a customer.

I guess "literally" is the new "figuratively".   As Hobbes wisely said:  Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.

Speaking of grammar, The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks is incredible.  It's one of the "best" "blogs" out "there"...

Wait Wait...

Sadly, while we were away last week we missed the chance to get tickets to see Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! live at Carnegie Hall.  Wait Wait is a weekly news quiz show on NPR and it's highly recommended---it's worth listening to the show or subscribing to the podcast.  Although it sounds pretty dry, at least to us, it's sharper and more hilarious than The Daily Show (although they both approach the issue of making news entertaining differently).  Hopefully they'll be back here soon.

Niagara Trip IV

We also timed our trip to Niagara Falls to see the fireworks display---for most of the year, each weekend there is a fireworks display over the Falls at night (schedule here).  Despite being shot off from the Canadian side, the fireworks appear over the American Falls (we had mistakenly thought they would be over the Canadian Horseshoe Falls, so we had the camera all set up in the wrong direction).   It was actually a pretty good fireworks show and they turn out pretty spectacular over the illuminated Falls.

Overall, what was nice with the whole trip was that it was a good time to travel.  It was past tourist season so there were few crowds---there was no wait for the boat tour or the butterfly garden and even the crowd watching the fireworks wasn't that large (so we were able to move the camera and still get some decent pictures).  The weather was slightly cool at night, but was perfectly fine and sunny and not to hot during the day.  I can only imagine how crazy the place is during the summer.  I'm now starting to see why it would be better to take your summer vacation during the fall instead (and just pull your kids out of school for a week, they'll manage).

Niagara Trip III

One of the cliche things to do at Niagara Falls is to take the Maid of the Mist boat tour, which takes you pretty close to the Falls.  This is another case where there's something to the cliche---as a testament, when you get to Niagara Falls you receive coupon books for all of the cheap and cheesy tourist attractions desperate for attention (e.g., the Skywheel is a bust) except for the boat tour.  Still, a ride on the Maid of the Mist boat is not too expensive so it's definitely worth doing if you're there.  We were warned that you would get pretty wet even with the free ponchos, so we ended up sitting on the bottom deck of the boat where we were mostly shielded from the water.  Despite that, we still got pretty wet when we got close to the falls and I only dared to use a cheap small camera to snap some pictures.  We were lucky that the sun broke out right when we got onto the boat, which provided for some dazzling rainbows.

American Falls

 American Falls

 Horseshoe Falls

 Horseshoe Falls

 Horseshoe Falls

Niagara Trip II

As I mentioned before, Niagara Falls is probably one of the few touristy spots that deserves tourists.  The Falls themselves are incredible and you can walk right up to the edge to see them.  And not just see them, but you can also hear and even feel the rush of the water washing over.  It can be humbling to experience the power of the Falls and just let it wash over you (literally in some places).

Note, it's worth noting that Niagara Falls is split into an American side as well as the Canadian side with the Horseshoe Falls.  The Horseshoe Falls are larger and higher, but as a result the amount of water going over causes a giant plume of spray that can obscure the view.  Both Falls face the Canadian side, so it's the significantly better place to stay (the American side is pretty shady with run-down motels...)  Sadly, you now need a passport just to get into Canada---I remember when you could just flash a driver's license, but at least you don't have to worry about currency exchange as most places take American dollars since the exchange rate is nearly equal.

American and Bridal Veil Falls

Horseshoe Falls

 Niagara Falls Panorama

American and Bridal Veil Falls at Night

American and Bridal Veil Falls at Night

Moonlight Over Horseshoe Falls

Niagara Trip I

My mother-in-law came to visit from Hong Kong last week so we finally took a vacation.  It had been a long summer so it felt good to get away from everything---get away from the house, get away from work, get away from Jersey.  We drove up to Niagara Falls for a couple of days.  I had visited Niagara Falls before, but that was years ago and so I wasn't sure what to expect.  I guessed it would be super touristy and outrageously expensive.  And part of it was---there were the usual souvenir shops, wax museums, and chain restaurants.  But Niagara is probably one of the places where there is something behind the cliche. 

The Falls themselves are impressive.  But besides the Falls, there are also other attractions worth visiting, such as the Butterfly Conservatory.  It's only a short drive from the Falls, but it's worth the effort.  It's essentially a large greenhouse that holds hundreds of different species of butterflies.  The butterflies are freely roaming throughout the Conservatory---once you enter, they can flutter all around you.  I don't think I've ever been so close to so many butterflies at the same time.  We ended up just sitting there for a while and letting them land on us.  It was a pretty peaceful moment and we could have sat there for hours and forget about the world.

 

Seasons Fleetings

And just like that, summer is over.  Just a week after 90 degree weather, the temperatures have dipped to the 50s and never really recovered.  The air is no longer as wet and humid.  Patches of pale yellow are popping up in trees around the neighborhood. 

Autumn is my favorite season, mostly because there's a vibrancy in the air, especially after the long, lazy days of summer.  The air is brisk and invigorating and the skies are clear and vivid.  But I think there's more to it than just that---there's a sense of urgency.  Autumn feels like Nature's last spectacular gasp before the long, cold death of winter.  Leaves explode in color not seen since spring flowers.  Vegetables and fruits are ripened and ready for planting or harvest.  Birds fill the air with arrow-like purpose.  It's a season of action.  It's when Nature fights back against the certainty of Time.  It's how I hope my autumn feels like.

The other reason that summer seems over is that just last week, just the first week of September, we saw Halloween displays in stores already.  Really?  Two months before schedule?  I'm not even sure if the candy would still be good by then (i.e., likely eaten).  I'm pretty sure that any pumpkins you carve won't last for two months, although they will certainly be scarier.  Whatever costume you get for the current fad will likely be passe by Halloween. 

On the other hand, this is a signal that it's only a matter of time before the best season arrives---the season of 24-hour Christmas radio!  Yeah!  Every year this season starts earlier and earlier, and so I get to sneak into lab and change the radio station to spread the holiday joy each year earlier and earlier.  However, I think they're starting to get on to me, as the radio is always changed back when I leave the lab...

It's spooky how time creeps up on you...

Moments Defined

Some thoughts after spending this week in New York City.

Where were you on 9/11?  For me, I was just starting my first year of graduate school in California.  Due to the time zone lag, I remember waking up and seeing the confusion over what had happened hours earlier.  No one knew what was going on or whether it was some kind of accident.  Classes were still on schedule, so I headed off to campus.  This was before the days of widespread mobile networking and I didn't even have a laptop at the time.  Many of us didn't know what was going on.  However, as the day went on, each class became progressively emptier and emptier as people went home transfixed to watch the news.  I remember sitting quietly with a German post-doc just shaking our heads as the news broke that the towers fell.

Every generation has a defining moment.  The 1940's had V-day and victory in World War II.  The 1960's had the moon landing and the literally other-worldly achievements of science and technology.  The 1980's had the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of communism.  And the 2000's had 9/11. 

This is the first generation that is being defined by defeat rather than triumph.  Where is our great accomplishment?  Where is our great response?  It's as if our forefathers couldn't get over Pearl Harbor.  I think it's important to never forget the tragic losses of the day, but at some point we need to use that as inspiration to rebuild ourselves stronger than before.  It's as if we're compulsively fixated on this moment of vulnerability---it's like a wakeup call but we're still dazed and not quite awake.  It's a testament that after 9 years, we're still squabbling over what to do and haven't even been able to rebuild anything over Ground Zero (although to be honest, I think they should keep the site empty and leave the Tribute in Light as a permanent memorial).  We're mired in a war that's already over twice as long as World War II with no end in sight.  We don't know what to do, so we what we're told.

By letting 9/11 define us, we are being defined by fear and terror.  We need to rise to the occasion, rise above fear, and rise to what freedom demands of us.  It used be said that our generation needed a war to wake us up.  Well, we have our war and it looks like we're still snoozing...