June 2006 Archives

I started my internship at PSU this week. We are continuing our studies of cold fusion, pretty much where I left off two years ago. There are subtle variations to the theme of electrolysis, but none have been too drastic. While I enjoy the work, the experience is much less exciting for the second time, for nothing is new!

Today I did quite a bit of work with the scanning electron microscope (SEM) and x-ray spectrometer. I must say that the SEM we are using is probably from the early 1970s, and is one of the more humorous contraptions I have seen. It fills an entire room and has a gigantic control board filled with knobs, radio switches, and square plastic buttons that light up like those on the original Star Trek. It breaks down an average of probably 3 to 4 times in a full day of usage. Just today, Wushou had to refill the liquid nitrogen in the x-ray detector, realign the filament, fiddle with connectors beneath the control board, tape the cap of a button back on, and figure out why the chamber was not evacuating properly--it turns out that a gear was stuck in what I believe is the rotory pump. Needless to say, it was cause for celebration when it was working. But there was another interesting development. On a palladium electrode that had undergone 100 hours of electrolysis, certain isolated regions on the surface were found to contain silver in concentrations (relative to palladium) of as much as 90%. This is more evidence for transmutation. No such regions were found before the electrolysis, and there is no silver used in any stage of the production or testing process.

When I was sick and tired of broken SEMs and x-ray detectors, and my skin had started to turn a pasty hue from being stuck in dark basement rooms, I decided to go out and buy a lunch from the Chaat House. I tried desperately to find Suwasti, Jonathan's favorite Thai food cart, but I had to resign my self to negotiating with the Indian guy wearing the turban, who runs the Chaat House, for their famous and ever-changing 5-course lunch special. At five glorious dollars, it is enough to feed me for about a day. Today's fare seemed a bit lighter than normal, having no paneer or ghee, so I was able to consume most of it in the plywood hut constructed for their customers. I always go there with Jonathan, so I never just sit to watch and listen to the people who drop by to eat; normally we're the ones being watched and listened to. There were the usual businesspeople, buying lunches for themselves and all their friends, and an obligatory hippie type with long uncut hair, which was wavy and dull yellow from being poorly maintained. It was nothing out of the ordinary. About five minutes later a group of people walked into the plywood hut. They were all caucasian, but they wore short turbans of various colors. From the bits of conversation that my ears caught, they were either students or employees in some kind of meditational massage institution. The most dominant conversationalist was talking about some kind of teacher who made his left side tingly during meditation without touching him, but then he gave him a massage, or something like that. It was highly unusual. They ordered some chaat, a couple of lunch specials, and some mango lasses. When they were ordering, the man in the turban inside wiped his forehead and said, "Your head get hot in this thing, doesn't it?" The tandoori over probably made the interior of the cart unbearably hot, even in the pleasant breezy warmth outside. He asked the leader of the turban-wearing massage gang, "Do people ever give you hard time for wearing this thing?"

The turban-massager man replied in the negative.

"The other day, I see someone, and he was like, 'Go back to your country.' I was like, 'Hey man, which country?'"

My watch indicated that I needed to start the ten-block journey back to my basement office in Science Building 1. I folded the naan back into the aluminum foil and snatched up one last garbanzo bean, then left the hut to get back to work.

There have been more abysmal blunders in human history: the Bay of Pigs invasion, Hitler's invasion of Russia, my own personal forays into cooking Thai cuisine... but still, my sister's garage sale enterprise, into which I was unfortunately drafted, ranks high on the list. I initially didn't want to be dragged into it, but she pressured me into it. I tried to get out of it on numerous occasions, but whenever I attempted, my sister inevitably just told me more things to do and became mad when I was uncooperative. So, I was uncooperative, and she was mad, but somehow I still ended up wasting a profound amount of time on this project.

From the outset, the decision to have a garage sale was exceedingly irrational. Consider the following: I will conservatively estimate that the overall preparation for this event involved a total of 20 man-hours. Bear in mind that the true total amount of time may have been substantially higher because of my sister's insistence that I be present in many situations that simply don't require two people. For example, manning the sale while it was in progress only required one person, but she insisted that I be present. Next, note that the overall amount of revenue to be gained was highly uncertain. We really had no idea what to expect; any guess was pure conjecture. I reckoned that this entire endeavor would net about $50 if we were lucky, and I consequently thought the entire thing was absurd. So the kicker is: aren't 20 man-hours better spent doing something(s) that is/are enjoyable and/or has/have a nontrivial and known payoff? Also consider that anything that we didn't sell, is going to be given to Goodwill. This means that by selling the goods in a garage sale we were not only incurring a risk, but we were charging people money for what would otherwise be free. So, our inefficient allocation of time was tantamount to taking money from other people by forcing them to pay for otherwise free goods! (Within reason, of course. If there wasn't anything better to do with our time, then we actually were being efficient, but that was a big "if" at the time, and we failed.)

In the face of these grave questions and all odds, my dearest sister boldly marched into the garage armed, with stickers and sharpies and junk, to rid us of spring cleaning's baggage. Or at least that was the idea. It hasn't really happened yet. Yours truly, being the lowly, pandering imbecile that he is, gave in after a conversation that went something like this:

E: "Hey, do you want to help me do a garage sale next weekend?"

A: "No, absolutely not."

E: "What? Oh come on, it will be fun."

A: "No, I won't do it. Don't ask me again."

E: "Please? Why not?"

A: "Argh. Fine, but only if you give me... 35%" [This figure involved careful calculation]

E: "What? No. Okay, fine. 10%"

A: "30%?"

E: "20%?"

A: "25%?"

E: "Oh, okay, fine."

I was in for a somewhat rude surprise when I discovered that I was basically relegated to be my sister's minion, so I have been quite disagreeable during the past few days. I tried to get out of the whole thing by forfeiting my share of the money, but she just continued telling me to do things and getting mad at me for doing them incorrectly or being in the profoundly disgruntled state that I was. Erin likes to do this incredibly obnoxious thing where she makes me keep her company for long periods of time, forcing me to essentially sit around and do nothing. Occasionally she talks to me, but often that doesn't even happen. This happened for about five hours today during the sale...

And what a sale it was. The punchline of this whole tract, which you have undoubtedly been wondering, and which I have danced around to no end is: how much did we make?! Ahem. The true economic profit is surely negative, so we don't need to discuss that. The "revenue" amount to a whopping $20, although I am suspicious that Erin rounded that figure up. Our big sale of the day was when Caleb, our neighbor who is just entering kindergarten this fall, purchased a Care Bear mug (it was the "Cheer Bear" actually) for $2. He was really excited to use it at lunch today. I felt really bad selling it to him actually. $2 seemed a bit steep for a little, old glass mug. But I suppose this garage sale was inflation adjusted. We're just teaching him a lesson in free market economics! He has to learn how to swim in the deep end with the sharks of the economic waters some day!

As for me, while sitting around at this incessant sale I started practicing card-counting strategies in Blackjack. There's a casino nearby in Washington where people who are 18 and older can gamble. My birthday present to myself this year is going to be going there and winning some money. It's going to require some serious training this summer, including role-playing simulation, and perhaps recruiting some co-conspirators, but I see it as a fun hobby. Actually, it's kind of like the stock market in many ways, only a bit more daring and maybe a little more consistent. It has all the same statistical and random aspects as financial markets, with a sort of covert flare. When I tried to have a conversation with my sister about card counting, it wasn't long before she declared two things: that despite the fact that you break no rules when you do it, it's against the rules and illegal because gambling is meant to only be done "by chance"; and [sternly]that she didn't want to hear another word about card counting. I closed my eyes and cringed, and then went back to flipping down cards on my lap, in the shade of the eaves over our driveway, surrounded by summer's warm, dry breeze.

I spent the past week redefining my concept of humidity. Thankfully it was fun too.

You may have noticed my significant lack of meaningful posts lately. One might even guess that summer is finally ripping me from my phrontistery and its tasks. Of course, one would be wrong, but still it must be perplexing for the reader. The truth is that I have been floundering in my own sour soup of half-cooked and rotten ideas, trying to prepare some kind of glorious post that summarizes or puts a finishing touch on the high school years. Even my attempts at explaining why it is impossible have been failures. So I won't try anymore, because it doesn't work.

I did have an interesting experience today, though. I went back to Wilson to drop off some forms that need to be sent to U Chicago. Walking through the rear doors, I felt the definite sensation of no longer belonging there. I didn't know anyone (which was very strange, since I thought that I knew a sizable portion of the population there) and no one said hello on my way through. Anyway, I never really felt any emotion on account of finishing school, except a slight bit of relief at the end, but this reinforced my sense that the end came just at the right time.

The post-school lethargy is wearing off, too. I'm finally coming to my senses and cracking down to work. I've made considerable progress studying for the Physics 14300 placement exam at U Chicago; I found a place in India from where I can buy the textbook for the 14100 course at less than one eighth of the list price, so I can get my mechanics up to snuff; and, I had the incredible good fortune to be offered a paid internship by the professor at PSU, under whom I worked two summers ago. It is all shaping out very nicely. So, I had better go buckle down and do some more problems out of Vibrations and Waves!

"These are the Phenomena of Springs and springy bodies, which as they have not hitherto been by any that I know reduced to Rules, so have all attempts for the explications of the reason of their power, and of springiness in general, been insufficient."

"It is very evident that the Rule or Law of Nature in every springing body is, that the force or power thereof to restore it self to its natural position is always proportionate to the Distance or space it is removed therefrom, whether it be by rarefaction, or separation of its parts the one from the other, or by a Condensation, or crowding of those parts nearer together. Nor is it observable in these bodies only, but in all other springy bodies whatsoever, whether Metal, Wood, Stone, baked Earths, Hair, Horns, Silk, Bones, Sinews, Glass, and the like. Respect being had to the particular figures of the bodies bended, and to the advantageous or disadvantageous ways of bending them."

--Robert Hooke, De Potentia Restitutiva, 1678--Now you know why even Newton thought he was an idiot...

I hear that he is a brilliant man, but I think he may be an even more brilliant teacher. I just needed to say that.