June 2004 Archives

On Tuesday the high was 67° F in Portland, OR and 80° F in Fairbanks, AK.

48 winners of Nobel Prizes in sciences drafted and signed a letter condemning the Bush administration's environmental policies and of putting its preconceived ideology ahead of scientific research and facts when dealing with certain issues. It expressed hope and confidence that John Kerry could return to the level of greater respect for science that generally characterized previous administrations from both parties.

This week I met the first person I've known who didn't think that Bush's Mars fantasy wasn't utterly absurd.

I've decided that I greatly dislike the anti-Bush canvasers. They don't seem to understand that I can't vote.

After running electrolysis of light water and sulfuric acid, and light water and nitric acid for a culmulative of 11 hours, it seems that the sulfuric acid is much better of an electrolyte than the nitric. We're not actually doing any "cold fusion" yet, just testing electrolytes with our catalyst (coconut charcoal). Our cumulative weight loss for the nitric acid cell was well over twice as high as for the sulfuric one, indicating that there were higher pressures in it. This suggests that the recombination catalyst reacts more readily with sulfuric acid. Since sulfuric acid is so reactive, this is an expected result. Although the data is inconclusive, there is some grounds to hypothesize that the lifespan of the recombination catalyst is higher with the nitric acid. Of course, this would make sense, as there are fewer reactions with it. Tomorrow we're going to run electrolysis using the same electrolytes (we're switching the cells that they're in though) but with alumina catalyst that we've tried to reclaim from use in previous experiments by heating to 1600 F.

I made a bunch of data entries today and decided that I really don't like Excel very much. It wouldn't allow me to calculate a logarithmic line of fit for my temperature values which were clearly logarithmic; it only allowed polynomial and exponential. For my voltage values it wouldn't let me calculate an exponential line of fit. What nonsense. Also, my fellow intern Andy broke a brand new printer toner cartridge today. Luckily it still fit in place and seemed to work fine. It was slightly humorous.

Today my cold fusion research began, and it was a thoroughly interesting day. We built two simple electrolytic cells for an experiment comparing the effectiveness of sulfuric acid, which we are currently using, and nitric acid. In previous experiments mass has been lost, presumably to evaporation through our seals. Mass loss has been improved with the use of a new custom machined design for the cell, but we're trying to reduce it further by testing new electrolytes (I don't fully understand the correlation here yet, but I've got a slew of questions to ask tomorrow).

The electrolytic cells that we're using are extremely simple. We welded a bunch of spare platinum wire (yes, that's platinum) into four electrodes, then encased each wire in heat shinkable tubing. Two electrodes were placed into each cell, being threaded through a plastic basket and top. The plastic basket was filled with some kind of charcoal catalyst about which I haven't had a chance to ask. The cells were then filled with 90 mL of deionized water, and 10 mL of sulfuric acid was deposited in the control cell, and 10 mL of nitric acid in the experimental cell. In order to attempt and improve excess heat we put the electrodes on separate sides of the cell to increase resistance thereby increasing heat. We're going to run our test tomorrow.

The graduate student Abhay did a test today with some cells he built attempting to improve excess heat using lasers, but there seemed to be very little difference. Last year's interns, Dr. Dash, and Abhay reported evidence of palladium transmutation into silver at the ICCF 10 at MIT. There's some weird stuff that can be observed. It's going to be fun.

Man, I thought summer was supposed to be easy. I have way too much work to do. I need to file a bunch of financial statements and records, a few inches of school papers, clean out about 6 notebooks and binders, work some more through implicit differentiation, and learn a little physics. My internment starts tomorrow, and my class starts the next day.

"But if girls would just wise up and let themselves act like adolescent boys for the three hours they’re taking the test, the gender gap might disappear."

--A critique of the SAT examining how to eliminate the gender gap on the test. Males score an average of 40 points better than females on it, but get slightly worse grades on average in high school math and english classes.

My opinion: The SAT emphasizes speed rather than knowledge. School emphasizes conformance and recitation rather than knowledge.

"CAUTION: Nonremovable label."

--Warning on label on a printer.

I just deleted several paragraphs of text, so here's the summation. I'm enjoying teaching myself calculus. It's all fairly rudimentary differentiation, but I'm about 60% of the way through the material of the course I'm taking this summer. In a few weeks I'll be able to move on to integration and hopefully cover most/all of the Calc AB curriculum and prepare myself to be bored doing lovely review in BC next year. I still need to pick up Dan's book, which I have on hold at the library, and I need to pick up an AP study guide. It's amazing how much the College Board has finagled its way into the minds, lives, and curricula of so many entities. It's sad too.

That's mostly it. I've been reading a little about cold fusion. There are some great introductions to CF with a range of technical data at www.lenr-canr.org. It's the website of the project at which I'll be working. In any case, there are some really, really strange aspects to cold fusion of which I was previously unaware. There are all sorts of inexplicable transmutation products that can be produced, and many other weird claims. 'Twill be absorbing indeed.

Thanks to Helen there are more improvements to viewing under IE, despite the browser's generally poor functionality. There are still a few kinks that I'm working on fixing, but things should be working acceptably if a few aesthetic flaws remain. I'm calling this revision 3.0 RC1. There may be one more release candidate to iron out any currently unknown bugs. Notify me of any bugs you find. The last major known problem is that the search template needs to be changed. As always, feel free to syndicate this site.

This site is still in its beta phase, but the miserable amount of work that went into many minute aspects of the design has paid off. The archives are in full working order after a fairly large redesign. The main page is functioning fully. The sidebar has been cleaned up significantly. The discussion forum has been eliminated. After a few minor aesthetic tweaks, the 3.0 release will be ready.

Also, please, please, please, view this site in Mozilla, one of its derivatives (I use Mozilla Firefox; see links for more info), or Safari. Internet Explorer butchers it horribly. You'll be thankful you switched anyway, because IE is one of the worst browser of which I know. Additionally, don't forget that you can syndicate this site (also in side panel). I created an RSS feed to this handy dandy news aggregator (SharpReader) and it works great. However, if you're using Mozilla, I recommend using NewsMonster for an RSS aggregator because it renders using Mozilla instead of IE. DO NOT try using NewsMonster with Firefox because it will force you to reinstall the browser.

Let me know of any bugs you run into.

That's right. It's happened already. In less than 2 hours we have created the next "massive revision" to this site. That is called "extreme development."

Feast yer eyes upon this here greatest creation in the olde worlde. It's official. The first beta release of my 3.0 blog is now here. I'm thinking of keeping title and here's my justification. I'm going to buy a domain for this blog, and I would like to have something for which I can purchase a .com. adamsblog.com is already taken. I want a more... descriptive and creative name for this blog. Adams Blog is just so... dry. I could do something like blogofadam.com because that's not taken, but that's even drier. So I got thinking. What one word describes this blog nearly perfectly. Hmm... "Aha!" said I. "That word is 'superfluous'." But here are the problems with titling my blog "Superfluous:" 1) superfluous.com, .org, and .net are already taken, and 2) It's simply not superfluous enough to describe the superfluity of this blog. I think you would agree. So I thought some more. What is more superfluous than "superfluous." "Aha," said I. "Superfluous in another language is certainly more superfluous than 'superfluous'." I thought about the Latin root, but it just wasn't odd or superfluous enough. So I looked at Spanish which was kind of boring and the same, but then German came along. "Überfluss." That is perfect. There has never been a more superfluous word. Tell me your thoughts. uberfluss.com is not taken. Unfortunately, dieresises (?) aren't allowed in domain names, but that's okay seeing as none of my known readers speak German.

There's no denying it. This site looks horrible in Internet Explorer. That's not my fault, it's Microsoft's. So if you want to see what this blog really looks like, use any Mozilla derivative or Safari. Besides, they're way better anyway. So in reality, I'm actually doing you a favor by providing you with incentive to switch to the better browser. Either that, or I'm providing you with the much needed incentive to stop reading this site.

ME!! That's right. I finally figured out how to center the content of this site at a fixed width. That only took a few hours of random mucking. But I can now say that I have a vague understanding of how some CSS works. It's weird but useful stuff. Anyway, now that I've passed this threshold, my blog redesign can continue. Changes await!

Go see what I'll be doing this summer at: www.lenr-canr.org

"DOORS OPEN AUTOMATICLLY"

--Sign on a bus that someone pointed out to me a while ago.

I occurred to me a second ago that I had not completed a brief post to wrap up the year and its final bits. Wednesday was an acceptable conclusion to a year of school that didn't really surpass the average in many respects. During my math final, the chef in our class, Joel, brought in these fabuluous salmon and onion crepe things and a dessert concoction of chocolate, chocolate mousse, and raspberry sauce. Apparently he bargained some deal to add points to his grade in exchange for cooking for the class. I don't even want to talk about the test. It was the most idiotic thing I've ever done because she didn't teach us any of the material from the chapter. Then there was the english final which was also kind of dumb, and most people, myself included, didn't try terribly hard on it. It was a comparative analysis of two pretty bad books.

So now I need to sum up the year in a single dose of brilliant verbal elixer. Ahah, ha, ha. This year was kind of boring for the most part. Teachers tended to be worse. I developed a particular knack for creating extravagant plans of academic suicide, and ways of giving more and more money to the college board.

Nevetheless, this summer is going to be full of great mental euphoria, characterized by a complete rejection of all inferior forms of intellect. Ha! I'll leave on that slightly disjointed note.

There is no question that I need to start a club or society next year. For about a year now I have been awaiting the day that the sun dawns to shed its beautifying light over the Esperanto Society. New circumstances may have come to pass however.

I was having a delightful conversation with Ian Rocker this morning. I walked around with him as he notified some people about the German Club's dinner at Gustav's by Washington Square. Soon our conversation moved from German Club to Ian's very own child: the Norwegian Club. Apparently membership is stable at around 5 or 6 people. This led me to mention my forays into Old English. As a side note, his best friend Charles Runckle is now learning Flemish in college at Dartmouth. Flemish is closely related to Old English, but is not an extinct language, so it's pretty cool. Anyway, Ian brought up the idea of starting an Old English Society.

The idea appeals to me very much, but I am hesitant for a number of reasons. The first is that I know very little, and it's not nearly as easy as Esperanto. I wouldn't have to really be proficient by the time I started the club because the goal would be to learn it collectively, but I would need stronger background knowledge in order to be able to seriously lead the group for a few weeks. If I worked this summer, I could pretty easily achieve this. Since it's a dead language, speaking it wouldn't be important except for any die-hard Anglo-Saxonites. We'd just read Beowulf, Chaucer, and random bits of poetry.

The other obvious problem is the issue of interest. Ian thinks that an Old English society would attract more people than even his Norwegian Club because there would be both language and literature enthusiasts interested. The other option would be to start the Ancient Language Society, dedicated to the study of dead languages. I fear that such a club would too easily lose focus.

So here is my question to you. What do you think that the membership would reach in an Old English Society, an Ancient Language Society, and an Esperanto Society? The desirable membership would be between 8 and 10 dedicated people. It wouldn't be good to have unenthusiatic half-hearted members. Which would you recommend starting? Even if none of these plans pan out, at least there will be Ian's Classical Music Club next year.

"Who have battled have with bloody hands
Through evil times in barren lands,
To whom the voice of guns
Speaks and no longer stuns..."

-G. B. Smith, on the "lost generation"

"This sort of thing--the building up of a poetic language out of words and forms archaic and dialectical or used in special senses--may be regrettable or disliked. There is nonetheless a case for it: the development of a form of language familiar in meaning and yet freed from trivial associations, and filled with the memory of good and evil, is an achievement, and its possessors are richer than those who have no such tradition."

--JRR Tolkien, defending the use of archaic language

In thinking of the title for this entry a question presented itself to me. Why do people read blogs? As I ponder this question... several explanations pop to mind. Actually two to be precise.

The first is perhaps the most obvious and probably the least accurate, but it may have a worthwhile kernel of merit. I reckon that for some the reading of other people's lives (through a blog, for instance) provides a percieved escape from their own lives. This escape could be desirable for any number of reasons. There is nothing to say that this tendency should be markedly different for someone who is trying to escape life all together than for someone who is merely procrastinating from a nagging task. This follows the classic explanation for the current proliferation of that despicable genre of television called "reality TV."

The other explanation I find more interesting, although its merit is questionable. Perhaps our lives in the current modernity have become dangerously devoid of human interaction. At first glance this seems absurd given the superfluity of communications options, but consider what all of our current modes of communication have in common. They maximize the amount of information transmitted while minimizing the need for actual real interaction with other people. In essence, the primary goal of advances in communication to create individual self-sufficiency with as little interpersonal interaction as possible. Thus, this blog is a means by which people can interact with my thoughts and "me" while not really interacting with me at all. As far as I can tell, that is the main goal of the modern life: being able to absorb information while being as isolated as possible.

Some may argue against this point by stating that communications are reaching such a state in which communications technology can replicate the fine aspects of human communication. Take for instance the telephone. It is a major improvement over the written word because it can communicate vocal inflection as delivered by the individual. As such, it comes closer to reproducing compeletely every aspect in which we communication. I believe, however, that this total replication of human communications will not occur until such things as holographic replicators come into existance. With this technology, I can appear to be with you in a certain area. Theoretically, this could transmit even the communications of body language. Even with such technology, there can be no substitute for real live communication where I know that you're real, and I can go do things with the thing I know to be the "real" you.

As it is, spoken language is a harsh enough barrier to communication.

Blogs are wonderful because one need not conform to structure or focused method of persuasion as one would in an essay. To do so would be "unblogly."

On the sinus front, it appears that I am a good candidate for endoscopic surgery. The fluid in my left maxillary sinus seems to not have drained much. The procedure would enlarge the sinus passage so that the cavity could drain properly. It is possible that there could be somekind of obstruction. During the same procedure, my deviated septum could be corrected as well. The surgery is barely invasive at all, with few side effects, most of which are rare to extremely rare. It can be done under sedation and a local anethetic.

More interesting than that, however, is that I'm signed up for calculus, and I just bought my textbook. Dear god there are some cool things. The book goes through single variable, differential equations, some multivariable, and vector calculus. I guess the course only covers derivatives, but the extra material in the book means that I can teach myself integration as well. And if I have some extra time, differential equations seem very appetizing.

In more other news of obscure quasi-academic banter, I'm really having a fabulous time teaching myself a little bit of Old English. The language really is quite cool. Since I'm taking Spanish, I have a decent knowledge of some of the grammatical features of the modern italic languages. I was interested to learn some of the features of Germanic languages, since English is very different from the main Germanic stock. Old English on the other hand is part of the Ingvaeonic group which also contains Frisian and Dutch. It has many more classic Germanic features. Coincidentally, I'm also reading a book about JRR Tolkien. It turns out that Tolkien spent much of his life obsessed with Norse, Finnish, and Old English mythology, which was largely overshadowed and obscured by classical Greco-Roman mythology. It piqued my interest a little because I haven't read much mythology other than The Odyssey and because Germanic mythology had such a huge impact on Tolkien's myths.

In any case, the verb system of Old English is really quite fascinating. There are two classes of verbs: strong and weak. Weak verbs conjugate according to three very similar classes of suffixes. It's really hard to know what class a verb fits in because all infinitives have the suffix -an, and it ends up being a little chaotic. There are seven classes of strong verbs which all apply a similar system of suffixes as the weak verbs but also contain up to three different vowel shifts to the stem in regular places. The strong verbs are categorized by their vowel shift. Hence, when we conjugate drīfan "to drive," we get: ic drīfe, þū drīfst, etc. with the stem drīf- in the present. In the preterite we get, ic drāf; þū drife; hē, hēō, hit drāf; with drif- being the stem for the rest of the preterite. Therefore, for drīfan, a Class I strong verb, the overall vowel shift is ī → ā → i → i. Interestingly there are only two tenses, two participles, and four moods in the language, the infinitive and imperative of which are tenseless. It's all a great break from the absurd inflections of Latin and the romance languages, especially considering that most of the plural endings are the same.

Here is my schedule for the next year, with known/speculated teachers in parenthases:

0 - Leadership (Lovelin)
1 - AP Physics (Zaraza)
2 - AP Ecology (Zaraza)
3 - AP Calculus 1-2
4 - AP Politics and Government/Economics (Marchese)
5 - Spanish 5-6
6 - English 5-6 H (Boly)

... which will be changed to:

0 - Leadership (Lovelin)
1 - AP Physics (Zaraza)
2 - AP Ecology (Zaraza)
3 - AP Politics and Government/Economics (Marchese)
4 - AP Calculus 3-4 (Culpepper)
5 - Spanish 5-6
6 - English 5-6 H (Boly)

I believe that I have heard this kind of behavior termed "social sluttiness." It's so vulgar really, but it gets the point across.

Some weird booklist with a bunch of crappy books on it:
Rules:
*bold those you've read
*italicise started-but-never-finished
*add three of your own
*post to your livejournal

Well, I must say that I have some reservations about the entire Rose Festival Queen nonsense that goes on every year, but the person from Wilson won just a few minutes ago. I think we've won every other year for the past 6 or so years, so this continues the pattern. And of course, congratulations to Tara Beatty who will never read this, because indeed, she did deserve to win. And somehow Dom was the escort person?? How did this come about? I guess they just realized that there are no moderately competant senior males in either student body or class office. Then they probably moved on to next year's male student body officers. That leaves president and vice-president. Mauhan is president, and I dare say, not very articulate or charismatic. That leaves Dom as next year's student body vice-president. I scoff at him. Actually, I burst out laughing when I saw him on TV, no offense.

"War multiplies the stupidity by 3 and its power by itself: so one's precious days are ruled by (3x)² when x = normal human crassitude."

--J.R.R. Tolkien, reflecting on his experience in war.

I had a horribly long day. I went to the park for a few minutes after school with Jon and Leeor, then my lesson, and finally to this really stupid placement test at PCC. Unbeknownst to me I have to take all 3 placement tests—reading, writing, and math. Because of my confusion, I only was able to take 2 today. I got 1 out of 25 wrong on the “college algebra” test, and all 36 correct on the writing section. It was the “most easiest” thing I’ve ever done. Needless to say, I placed into calculus I as planned. In order to take Mth 251, one has to be either concurrently enrolled in, or place into Wr 121. In order to place into Wr 121 I have to take both the reading and writing placement tests: all in order to take a math class! What balderdash! At least I don’t have to pay to take them. And then there’s all this other weird paperwork, these appointments I have to make, and permission letters I must obtain from my counselor, all because I’m under 16. It’s slightly annoying.

I went to the beach this weekend. It mostly rained, but I persevered and had some fun. I read my new favorite play. Sartre's No Exit. It's pretty brilliant. If you haven't read it, you really should. "Hell is other people." How could it be more accurate? Just google the following: sartre "no exit". There are a number of hits with the script online. It doesn't take more than an hour to read, so there's no excuse for not doing so, unless you've seen it or read it already.

I also started a really interesting biography/literary criticism of JRR Tolkien called Tolkien and the Great War. It's a biography which also discusses the impact of WWI on Tolkien's mythology. Tolkien was incredibly smart and essentially went through a secondary education which almost solely taught classical languages and literature. He competed in King Edward's School's annual debate entirely in Latin, as well as debates in Greek. Talk about a waste of time, but still pretty amazing. He became obsessed with Old English, Old Norse, Finnish, and the various mythologies associated with each culture; hence, there are a strong Germanic and North European elements in his literature. I was muddling around with some Old English and Old Norse, and apparently there are 7 classes of strong verbs and 4 classes of weak ones in each language. That's utterly absurd! Strong verbs are "strong" because they break the standard morphological rules: the equivalent of a stem-changing verb of the Romance languages. That's a lot of deviation from the norm, and probably doesn't include radically irregular verbs like "to be," "to go," etc. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that Old English is far superior to Modern English. Although, from my knowledge, modern Norwegian is a fairly simple and regular language. I'll have to check out some of the Norse mythology. It sounds like an interesting contrast to more "classical" Greek and Roman mythology fromt the book I'm reading. It apparently has much darker elements, undoubtedly a reflection of the colder North European climate, denser forests, and otherwise less hospitable environment.

Speaking of inhospitable, I made my first error in our series of qualitative analysis labs! I had a perfect streak right through my first double solution. I messed up one of the four ions, and Mr. Wilson wouldn't tell me which one because he felt that he had given me to much explanation clarifying his faulty procedural instructions. I figured that it was the ion I had formerly suspected to be carbonate. I realized that I had to use an uncentrifuged solution because carbonate was added in the centrifuging process, thus giving me a false positive in my test for carbonate. When I tested the uncentrifuged solution for carbonate, I did not notice bubbling but some kind of gas seemed to have evolved (counterintuitive). I still have to run some tests to check my other negative ion, chlorine. Both the positive ions are surely correct. Strontium is pretty obvious with a flame test, and seeing as I probably burnt some nose hairs performing the crude test for ammonium (wafting and smelling it; somehow that sounds very scientific...), I reckon that it's in there. Since I'm done with all of my math for the week, I figure I can skip it to work on the labs. Our very french substitute was perfectly fine with my doing so today.