1st annual Kneecap Day

This wednesday marks the first annual Kneecap Day! One-year anniversary of me dislocating my patella, and thenceforth irrevocably altering the course of my life (I would suppose). I like the idea of making up personal holidays, so I suppose I am going to try commemmorating it somehow. Amusingly enough, blowing up my knee seems like something I'm well-known for somehow. A few months ago I ran across this blog post on the unofficial dartmouth physics-astro blog. Not to mention the worldwide circulation of this photo, adroitly snapped by Jenn as I returned home from the ER hopped up on goofballs, and, for some reason I don't understand, sent to absolutely everyone by my father. My working theory is that he was proud that I was enough of a jock (at least temporarily) to injure myself badly enough to need crutches. The best part was visiting my grandmother at x-mas and seeing it on her fridge!



(I love how my clutzy countenance is bigger than the Virgin Mary. Take that lady!)

In any case, I am especially wondering this: what is the correct observance of a orthopedic injury? I was thinking--hit of morphine and then crumpling over for no good reason--just like last year.

iae-aaaayyy!!

i have just learned that this is the symbol of the international atomic energy commission. it is the coolest flag i have ever seen, and, i suspect, the one that physicists will use when they take over the world.

vacuuming nightmare

in quantum field theory, in the process of making calculations, there often arise situations where you can only deal with the energy difference between two states, and you ignore what an "abosolute" energy would be. in the context of understanding the Lagrangian you are working on, this doesn't cause any difficulties, but overall that supposedly meaningless absolute energy eventually becomes offset, so to speak, by the accumulation of these energy differences. it turns out that you can actually find out what all these offsets are and add them up to see the individual energy terms of every particle interaction. most of these are are "vacuum energy" terms which come into consideration only in certain situations, such as the cosmological constant problem as a potential source of missing energy (though it's too small).

well, a physicist with a sense of humor went through the trouble of finding this abomination, and making it into a pdf. in fact, he even proposes an exam question based on it!

exercise 1.1.1.1.1a: given locality, causality, lorentz invariance, and known physical data since 1860, show that the lagrangian describing all observed physical processes (sans gravity) can be written:

brilliant! i think i've woken up in a cold sweat with visions of this page in front of me. i especially like the "known physical data since 1860" part. not to mention the part about excluding gravity--since that would just be too much to ask!

link to nightmarish equation

he that flings dirt at another dirtieth himself the most

looking through the many dusty and forgotten volumes scattered throughout my home i happened across this neglected text: applied soil physics, picked up as a joke from a table of free books once. it brought two questions to light -- questions that had been gnawing at me for years.

1. not that i condone it, but is there anyone lower on the physics totem pole than soil physicists? is there someone looking up at them with scorn, saying "curse those haughty bastards!"

2. do they really need the 'applied' in the title? are there numerous books on theoretical soil physics, and if so, can i read one?

i just noticed that anyone attempting to load this page with internet explorer will get a messed up appearance. the cool rotating header and quotes won't work. i am conflicted: on the one hand i don't want the page to look bad, on the other, i want to punish people for using such a lousy browser. on the other other hand, isn't not being able to fully enjoy my website punishment enough?

mondays

evidentally, in addition to the "motivator" there are many other productivity-enhancing tools. what a boon for my mediocre photography skills!

motivation

via the motivator. isn't the internet wonderful?

cam-bridge

two findings without any pretense of importance or profundity.


the city is full of "squares" such as this one named after obscure people from the community. i am glad that "fluffy" opted to include his nickname for perpetuity.




in case you can't read this it says "-2:00." i guess this means you can get a parking ticket for just thinking about parking here.

it's one or the other

i spotted this bumper sticker while driving recently:



though i was able to locate it online, i still haven't been able to determine whether or not its satire...and that tells you prettymuch everything you need to know.

since i can't figure out whether this is pro- or anti- bush i consider it exempt from the fish, heal thyself "no politics" rule...thereby allowing me to make the following prediction (?):

if the one year katrina anniversary stuff begins to look harshly upon the decider there'll be some sort of vague terror alert. no green t-shirts on planes or something. just a hunch.

house un-american coffee activities

whenever i go to starbucks, rare though those occasions are, i order my beverage in the proper english convention, and with emphasis. "i will have a medium 'frappuccino.'" we have to put an end to this tall=small bullshit. you come to our country, you speak our language.

amateur lexicography

much has been said about the paucity of women in science. the first step in fixing it is, obviously, to popularize the term "astrophysicistina."

problem solved. now if only i could harness my girlfriend's word-crafting skills and use them toward my own ends...

now pitching for boston...

ayla the helper monkey threw out the first pitch at fenway on wednesday. this is him with manny declarmen (this photo might be even better). i've had enough of the primates we've got in the rotation and bullpen--mr. francona, the time is right for a monkey pitcher. he can't be worse than jason johnson.

death from above

ordinarily, i wouldn't bother to comment on an apod photo, but today's is just too good: an attempt to depict cosmic rays gone horribly awry.