Accessories For Your Left Brain

Teaching Outfit One

2012-02-07T09:45:00.000-05:00

Because I'm too lazy to do any fashion self-portraiture, and because I'm already in my PJs, here's a Polyvore collection of what I wore today. This is an outfit I probably wear once a week, at least. (I packed pretty light coming over to Korea, so I repeat my outfits a lot.)

Teaching Outfit One by kokoba

What's the same:

The cut and color of the gaucho trousers.
The color of the sneakers.
The shape of the cardigan.
The shape of the watch face and the mechanics of the cuff.
The t-shirt is the same shade of yellow.

What's different:

My glasses aren't sunglasses, of course, but Polyvore doesn't seem to understand the sheer cuteness of regular glasses so there you have it. They're also greener in the frames.
The cardigan I have is far more drab green than bright forest green.
My trousers are ankle-length. They also have an elastic waistband, without buttons or fasteners.
My shoes aren't Pumas.
My bolo tie is a piece of unakite my boss' husband set for me, but again—difficult to find bolo ties on Polyvore! The color family is close, though.
Instead of the adorable peanut butter and jelly hug graphic, my t-shirt (a discount find at BangBang, a large Korean clothing chain) has a brown print of a camera and some random Engrishee text.

I think I might make this kind of post a regular deal. What people wear is interesting, right? I think it is, at least. Also I like the challenge of trying to match items on Polyvore to the items in my wardrobe.

What did you wear today?

Music Monday: Tears at the Birthday Party

2012-02-06T10:25:00.000-05:00

Not exactly the most cheery of birthday songs—but have some Elvis Costello! Today is Jan's birthday (the ripe old age of 31!) and Elvis Costello is one of his favorite singers.

Also, have this Etsy treasury, full of geeky birthday boy goodies:

'Geeky Birthday Boy' by Kokoba

ilovedesignlon... $30.00	westernmountai... $30.00	FunWithNeedles $25.00
MagnoliasCaboo... $20.00	dogartstudio $24.50	LIttleAtoms $18.00
slowcrowjow $95.00	8BitGate $20.00	JordanAction $25.00
LagoonVintage $55.00	CrazyDogTshirt... $16.99	xCubicle $20.00
FrogFurStudio $24.00	yumeleona23 $5.00	flyingbirdbota... $7.00
Eternalelfcrea... $40.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Science Saturday: Chemistry Cat

2012-02-04T08:31:00.000-05:00

Here, have an oldie but a goodie: Chemistry Cat.

I found more Internet crack.

2012-02-02T11:33:00.000-05:00

Someone linked me to Polyvore, which is all of the fun of making fashion collages without the mess of scissors and glue and paper scraps. Between this and Pinterest, my life is ruined. Like on Pinterest, I'm Kokoba. You can follow me there! Here's my first creation:

Stepping Out on St. Patrick's Day by kokoba featuring sparkle jewelry

Are you on Polyvore? What's your favorite collection you've made so far?

Music Monday

2012-01-30T12:22:00.003-05:00

I finished "The Thirty Day Music Meme" last week, but I still like music, so you still get some! Here's what I was rocking out to today:

Science Saturday: Britain's Greatest Codebreaker

2012-01-28T10:58:00.000-05:00

Another selection from DocumentaryHeaven, this time about Alan Turing. In my first three semesters at college, I read his "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" paper three times, for three different classes. What struck me each time was not only the originality of his thought, but the clarity of his writing; it made enough of an impact on me that I went on to write my philosophy undergraduate thesis on the ethics of artificial intelligence, all the way at the opposite end of my academic career. It's unsurprising, then, that I knew a lot about his legacy before I watched, though not a lot about his personal life: a genius who contributed to the Allied war effort who was years later persecuted for his homosexuality and, as a result, took his own life. Honestly I kind of wish I hadn't watched this, because it's just so tremendously depressing and heartbreaking to learn everything I didn't know about him.

The good: This is a nice, long, juicy selection (a full hour), and extensive research was involved. There's loads of interviews with people who knew or worked with Turing, as well as medical, biographical, and computer science experts. It switches between present-day interviews, archival footage, and dramatic reenactments quite seamlessly.

The bad: Another BBC documentary that likes to crank up the dramatic music and the pathos. Is that the trend now? I've seen it in so many of the BBC's documentaries online, I'm just beginning to assume that it's par-for-the-course documentary-making anymore. Also, I wish they had made it longer and included more of the substance of his thoughts and writings. At one point they present a formula he developed to generate the patterns on animals' coats, and rather than explain how it works or even what each variable represents, they just leave it floating up there on screen while people talk about how genius it is.

One interesting fact: Spoiler alert, somewhat. As I mentioned before, Turing eventually killed himself as a result of his conviction of Gross Indecency and subsequent chemical castration. That much I knew beforehand. What I never knew about the charges and the conviction was that the police were first made aware of his homosexuality because he went to them after his apartment had been burgled by a young man he had taken home a few weeks prior. Turing contacted the police and explained what had happened, including the part about the apartment being cased by the young man he had slept with. In his utter naivete, Turing assumed the police would do what most of us consider the right thing and deal with the theft (which was not much, but included some objects of sentimental value to Turing). Instead, they cracked down on his sexuality like a vice squad. The rest is history.

Would recommend?: Very strongly, Turing was a genius who deserved more credit than he ever got in his day, and almost all of our modern technology is due to his insights. The video quality on this one is excellent as well: one uploaded clip instead of a schizophrenic playlist. It's just not a good one to watch when you're already depressed, is all.

What I'm reading:

2012-01-25T12:31:00.001-05:00

It's slow going at first, as Dr. Sacks goes into detail about the condition Encephalitis lethargica. At least it was slow going for me, being that I'm not as well-versed in neurology as other sciences. In a nutshell, Encephalitis lethargica leaves the victim trapped in a frozen statue of a body, able to think and perceive but unable to easily control their own bodies. There was an outbreak of it in the early years of the 20th century, and then for whatever reason, it more or less subsided.

Beyond the first chapter it's much easier going, as Dr. Sacks recounts his experience with a vast number of patients in the late '60s and early '70s. By this point, many of his patients had been "stuck" (so to speak) for forty or fifty years. Upon the administration of the drug L-DOPA, many of these patients suddenly and almost violently "woke up," and Awakenings is a collection of the stories of these, well, awakenings. I'm going to have to watch the movie once I finish.

What are you reading?

Science Saturday: On the Road With Scientists at CERN

2012-01-21T21:25:00.000-05:00

CERN, the European center for nuclear research, is home to the much-lauded (if also much misunderstood) Large Hadron Collider. This short piece from the BBC takes a quick look at what it is scientists do there all day.

The good: It's quite interesting to see how large and busy CERN is. It's also thankfully free of the melodrama from previous BBC documentaries.

The bad: It's only about twenty-five minutes long, so it's a rather cursory and shallow look at the CERN.

One interesting fact: The LHC generates enormous amounts of data, something like four million events every second. Computers eventually whittle that down to one hundred events per second for the scientists to analyze.

Would recommend? Sure!

Pinterest Post!

2012-01-19T21:39:00.003-05:00

I signed up for ~~internet crack~~ Pinterest and it's ruined my life. (If you're signed up too, follow me! I'm Kokoba!)

Case in point, I started writing this entry about twenty minutes ago. I headed over to Pinterest to find an example of cool stuff I've found, only to get sucked into repinning things. And now it's twenty minutes later.

For example, here's a relevant meme:

A BABY HIPPO BABY HIPPO BABY HIPPO~:

Source: tumblr.com via Katherine on Pinterest

Awesome boots:

Source: tumblr.com via Katherine on Pinterest

And this beautiful image of The Pillars of Creation, gas clouds in the Eagle Nebula:

Source: google.ca via Katherine on Pinterest

Are you on Pinterest? What have you found?

You've Come A Long Way, Baby

2012-01-17T22:33:00.000-05:00

But you've still got a long way to go.

Case in point: Slashdot runs a story on gender disparity in OSS/FLOSSy projects. Yay: Insightful comments as to why that may be the way it is. Nay: There's still too much sexist bullpizzle getting modded up as "Insightful" among all the actual insight.

Music Monday

2012-01-16T10:31:00.002-05:00

Day 30 - Your favorite song at this time last year.

It was probably this, as best as I can remember.

Science Saturday: Polio Vaccine

2012-01-14T10:45:00.000-05:00

From NPR: India Marks A Year Free of Polio

And this year was made possible entirely because of the polio vaccine. High five, polio vaccine. You rule.

Yet there's this weird trend among a certain group of parents to not vaccinate their children (though, this is the MMR vaccine—Mumps, Measles, and Rubella—and not polio) because of the false belief that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Except, of course, it doesn't. The idea was based on a critically flawed study by a British scientist who later came under heavy fire for it (ten of his co-authors repudiated it); ultimately the study was redacted by The Lancet, the journal that originally published the piece. Oh, and it was fraudulent through and through.

Yet Jenny McCarthy still carries on her crusade against science.

Beyond autism, there's this backwards notion that gets perpetuated (I'm not sure by whom) that vaccines are somehow just plain dangerous. I had a discussion with a coworker once about H1N1—swine flu—and whether or not we would get flu vaccinations. I opted out, simply because I didn't feel like going to the hospital and dealing with an alien medical process in a foreign language. I figured I was young and healthy enough to suffer through if I caught it, anyway. One of my coworkers also decided against getting vaccinated, but because he didn't trust vaccines.

"What does not kill me, makes me stronger."

"But that's exactly what a vaccination is, only it just makes you stronger without getting you really sick first."

He nonetheless persisted in his opinion, so I shrugged and let it drop. But—what about the children he'll (probably) have? Will he take the safer route and get them properly vaccinated? How many other people around the world harbor this idea that vaccinations are somehow more dangerous than the diseases they're designed to prevent? Apparently enough people in the US buy into this horse pucky that we've had the largest measles outbreak in fifteen years.

Plus, opting out of vaccinations isn't just a question of your health. It's a question of the health of those around you. Children and the elderly have notoriously fragile immune systems, not to mention those with medical conditions that lead to depressed immune systems. The more people come down with an illness, the more likely someone who can't resist it as well will also come down with it. And if it's an illness that's by and large preventable by vaccination, then certainly there's a certain level of moral obligation involved when it comes to getting vaccinated.

Now that India has more or less eradicated new cases of polio, there's only a few countries left where it's still considered endemic. I'd like to think that within my lifetime, polio could be completely eradicated, same as we did with smallpox. But it's going to be a longer time getting there if people keep buying into this "vaccines are dangerous and cause autism!" hysteria.

Music Monday

2012-01-09T11:09:00.000-05:00

Day 29 - A song from your childhood

I spent a lot of my childhood listening to the oldies station. I have a particularly fond memory of singing this in the car, age ten, with my mom on the way to (Bible) summer camp and then upon getting out of the car: "Uh, Katherine, don't sing this at camp, okay?"

"Well, duh."

Science Saturday: Meme

2012-01-07T09:50:00.000-05:00

Here, enjoy the Scumbag Privilege-Denying rAtheist meme generator. They're hit and miss (as all memes are) but they get the point across. Here's one of my favorites:

(Not Really) Resolutions

2012-01-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! This year is the year of the Dragon. The Water Dragon.

I'm never one for New Year resolutions, normally. Jokes about their futility have become a cliche at this point, so there are better investments to make. Instead, for the past nearly-three years I've participated in the "101 in 1001" project: accomplishing a list of 101 tasks in 1001 days. My 1001 days will be up on my birthday this year; I won't have finished all of the 101 by then, but there are a few I could reasonably achieve.

The List

Clean out my music collection. This means listening to everything—everything—and deleting whatever I don't listen to or like anymore. The music library I have now is ten years old, surviving numerous life crises, laptops, and whatever else. Not only have I accumulated a fair amount, I've also grown rather sentimentally attached to it all. For nostalgia purposes as well as logistics purposes, it's going to be a tough slog. Really, though, it needs to be done. I have ninety-four top level folders to sort through, all told. Tonight I finished one of them. Every stop counts, right?
Organize the music collection (after I clean it out). Since my music library is a relic from high school, a rather nonsensical filing system has been fossilized in there. It's like something out of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
Watch seventeen documentaries to get me to my goal of thirty-three (or, one documentary a month for 1001 days).
Watch seventeen foreign movies—same goal as the documentaries.
Read seventeen non-fiction books—again, the same goal.
Complete the Couch to 5K program. Just because.

Looking at it all written out like this, it seems pretty ambitious—more ambitious than anything I'd normally undertake at the beginning of the year!—but it also seems entirely doable.

I have a (private) account at the Day Zero Project to keep track of this and all of my other goals. Come June, this list will be finished and I'll make a fresh account and share it here, so we can all follow each other! It's been really fun, overall, and even if I didn't accomplish everything on the list, it did a lot not only to give me a sense of purpose, but also to serve as a surprisingly insightful snapshot of my mindset 1001 days ago.

Join me, won't you?

Music Monday: Happy Birthday, Dad!

2012-01-02T09:28:00.000-05:00

The best birthday song ever, first of all:

And second of all, a treasury:

'Song For My Father' by Kokoba

RetroRoadsideP... $30.00	ScatterbrainTi... $30.00	edithandevelyn $34.50	BettyTurbo $4.00
msmichiganroux $12.00	mediagraffitis... $50.00	rudysroundup $32.00	RichNeeleyDesi... $54.00
trimblecrafts $9.99	hairbrainedsch... $15.00	IrateLobsterAr... $12.00	clocksbyscott $64.00
HighNotesVinta... $4.00	oneredhen $24.00	CreativeEtchin... $8.00	pomella $15.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Science Saturday: The Radioactive Boy Scout

2011-12-31T11:44:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a break from documentaries for this installment of Science Saturday. Take a look, it's in a book!

The Radioactive Boy Scout started as a simple article for Harper's, but Silverstein decided to flesh it out into an entire book. In the early 90s, David Hahn (the Boy Scout in question) attempted to build a nuclear reactor in his shed. He managed to get pretty far, too. Police stopped him in an unrelated inquiry into some tire thefts, and found a whole box of radioactive material in the trunk of his car. Eventually this led them to the much larger cache of radioactive material in David's backyard science lab—so radioactive, in fact, that the EPA declared it a superfund site and carted everything off to a nuclear waste containment center.

The good: The Radioactive Boy Scout is an incredibly quick and easy read. Silverstein goes into both the human interest aspect and the science aspect.

The bad: The anti-nuclear editorializing gets kind of old. Nuclear energy isn't as dangerous or as awful as some people make it out to be.

One interesting fact: After its initial discovery (and before people knew that radiation was bad for you), people used radium for all kinds of novelty things, mostly glow-in-the-dark clock and watch faces. It was even marketed as a snake oil type cure-all pill for years.

Would recommend? Sure, from the library or a friend. It's sort of a "once and it's done" type of read. Still interesting, nonetheless.

Music Monday

2011-12-26T01:57:00.000-05:00

A pause from the thirty day meme to post my favorite Christmas songs (all of which don't get a lot of play over here in South Korea):

The Kinks, "Father Christmas"

John Lennon, "Happy Xmas, War is Over"

(Not the original music video, since that one's kind of NSFW with gory war images and all. You can watch in public at ease.)

The Jackson 5, "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"

(The only version of this song I actually enjoy, because it's funky enough that I can ignore the creepy/emotionally abusive lyrics, though there's no small amount of irony in the fact that it comes from one of the most exploited child stars of all time.)

Savatage/Trans-Siberian Orchestra, "Christmas Eve (Sarajevo 12-24)"

What are your favorite Christmas/wintertime holiday songs?

Science Saturday: Do We Really Need the Moon?

2011-12-24T08:30:00.000-05:00

The answer is yes, of course, but there's a whole myriad of reasons why. Do We Really Need the Moon? investigates a whole slew of them and comes to a conclusion: life on Earth would not be possible without the Moon.

Unfortunately this is the rare instance on DocumentaryHeaven where people don't seem to have their act together; the first clip in the playlist (about the phenomenon known as a "super moon") is unrelated to the rest of the piece and seems to be spliced in there from another show entirely.

Taking off my science nerd hat and putting on my sociology nerd hat, it's nice to see this BBC documentary narrated by a woman of color, Dr. Maggie Aderin-Pocock, who would be cool and inspiring even if she weren't talking about the moon. (How many women of color in the sciences can you name? Yeah, thought so.) She seems to be Britain's version of Neil deGrasse Tyson, which is to say: a total rockstar for science. A teacher tried to dissuade her from becoming an astronaut, but Aderin-Pocock basically told her to sod off and promptly got her A-levels in math, physics, chemistry, and biology. While being dyslexic.

When she's not hosting documentaries about space, running her own company, or encouraging boys and girls of every race and class to pursue the sciences, Aderin-Pocock works on rockstar things like missile defense systems, landmine detectors, and telescopes.

The good: Dr. Aderin-Pocock is an engaging and charismatic host, and again the BBC ensures the footage is of high, professional quality. She also takes interesting little tangents (like the myth[?] about crazies coming out on the full moon) that are just as interesting as the hard science stuff.

The bad: Like The Core, Do We Really Need the Moon? sometimes leans a little too heavy on the melodrama. Perhaps this is a trademark of the BBC's approach to science in general?

One interesting fact: The moon influences the Earth's orbit and keeps it from wobbling and tilting like crazy. It's possible that without the Moon, the Earth would rotate on its side, like Uranus!

Would recommend? Yes! Though, if possible, purchase it from the BBC or torrent the entire thing, as the version on DocumentaryHeaven.com cuts out the first part (and the end of the second clip and the beginning of the third clip overlaps quite a bit as well).

Did you watch it? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!

Music Monday

2011-12-19T10:03:00.001-05:00

Day 28 - A song that makes you feel guilty

Any song in Russian immediately makes me feel guilty for not applying myself harder to my Russian classes in college.

Science Saturday: The Core

2011-12-17T22:10:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, I set a goal for myself to watch one documentary and read one non-fiction book a month. I've slacked off once in a while, but the net result has been that I've seen a lot of neat documentaries I wouldn't have seen otherwise! All of the ones I'm going to mention here are available—for free!—on DocumentaryHeaven.com. So you, too, can watch at your leisure!

First up: The Core

Just what is inside our planet? Not to be confused with the shitty Hollywood movie, this is a slick BBC documentary that slices off the crust and takes us as close as we can get to the Earth's molten center.

The good: Always very interesting and engaging. I mean, I think the molten core of the Earth is already super interesting, but I think they did a good job of making it accessible and entertaining for people who don't think so. Plus sometimes there are explosions!

The bad: There's a bit too much in terms of attempting to create "dramatic tension" or whatever: an over-acted sense of urgency in the narrator's voice, melodramatic music, and so forth. It got kind of cheesy.

One interesting fact: At the molten core of the Earth is an inner nickel-iron solid core. Due to the intense heat and pressure at the center of the planet, this nickel-iron solid is most likely in the shape of HUGE crystals multiple kilometers in size!

Would recommend? Yes!

Etsy Finds: chainofbeing

2011-12-16T08:26:00.001-05:00

When Etsy rolled out the whole "circles" feature, there was a huge uproar. I don't get why, as without it I would have never found this AWESOME necklace. I love it. I love it so much that I might go and buy it RIGHT THIS SECOND. It's everything I love and try to accomplish in my own jewelry: geekery, subtlety, and style.

MiniVerse Solar System Necklace by chainofbeing

But wait! There's more! She also has variations on the planets and their moons! I have always had a soft (red) spot for Jupiter. It's a hangover from my pet hobby of astrology (science nerd that I am, I also am fascinated by ancient esoteric symbol systems), where Jupiter is the planet of good luck, fortune, expansion, and all-around good times. Some people theorize that Jupiter also does a lot to protect our little spaceship Earth by diverting incoming asteroids via its massive gravitational pull (when, you know, the two planets are even remotely close to each other, anyway).

Moons of Jupiter by chainofbeing

I cannot get over what a cool idea this is. Can. Not. Christmas present to myself? I think so!

Music Monday

2011-12-11T10:05:00.001-05:00

Day 27—A song you wish you could play.

Music Monday

2011-11-28T10:40:00.001-05:00

Day 26 - A song that you can play on an instrument

I have yet to find a version on YouTube that I really like, but this one's pretty good. Like every piano player, I think my interpretation is the superior one, but until I get around to recording myself for YouTube, this will have to do.

Music Monday

2011-11-20T22:49:00.001-05:00

Day 25 - A song that makes you laugh

I am a snob about my musical comedy. I don't really care for Flight of the Conchords or Jonathan Coulton like everyone in my demographic seems to. Two of the better contemporary musical comedy groups today (aside from Weird Al) both hail from Australia, and since I can't pick one, today is a two-fer.

Dark Side (Tim Minchin)

What Would Jesus Do? (Axis of Awesome)

Design Doldrums

2011-11-19T12:16:00.001-05:00

Having nothing better to do on a Saturday night, I gave the blog a bit of a sprucing up. It's much lighter now, and I'm happier with it, though it will go through some tweaking before I can really call it "done." At some point I will have to either do some graphic work (or get the Boy to do some graphic work) and get a nice, proper header up there instead of plain text in a green box. Among other things.

I have been notoriously and shamefully quiet on here, except to share music. Apologies, internet! I am in the thick of National Novel Writing Month and thus have few braincells to spare. Once I finish, I hope to be back to a regular posting schedule.

In the mean time, there are some great posts at What. No mints? Sasha put together for her science week. I meant to contribute (really I did! I was even going to go on about helictites, the coolest speleothem EVER) but got sucked into my novel project instead. Be on the lookout for an upcoming Science Saturday post on the topic!

Music Monday

2011-11-14T08:23:00.001-05:00

Day 24 - A song that moves youIf I ever change my mind about weddings (that is, take them seriously) then I might have to change my previous answer to this one.

Music Monday

2011-11-07T11:40:00.000-05:00

Day 23 - A song that you want to play at your wedding

My desire to get married waxes and wanes pretty much at random. Weddings, such as they are, seem to exist for the sole purpose of gushing over how beautiful the bride is. Even the cute quirky hipster weddings your friends have, about a thousand people will tell the woman (or women, if they're cute quirky hipster lesbians) how beautiful they look. As if what women should want more than anything else is to be beautiful.

On the other hand, a giant party with all of my friends sounds awesome. If I do get married, I'll probably skip the "getting married" part and just hold a wedding reception instead. And the first dance with the boy will be this, because it's Swedish and campy and yet also kind of appropriate.

Music Monday

2011-10-31T21:46:00.000-04:00

Day 22 - A song you listen to when you're sad.

I don't often feel sad, but when I do, there's no better tonic than Janis.

Halloween!

2011-10-29T10:55:00.000-04:00

Remember that time I dressed like Athena for Halloween? Well, I did it again. And this time I have picture proof of my endeavor!

The owl (whose name is Owloysious) was a big hit with all of the Koreans at the party. "So cute!" Not pictured: my spear. But I have one, I assure you.

Winter is coming...

2011-10-27T02:22:00.000-04:00

marinebiochic0... $28.00	soap $7.00	Polymath $40.00
PaperUlixis $4.50	NaturesCubbyho... $56.25	VeloNoir $52.00
buffalonerdpro... $25.00	auntcindysatti... $450.00	NoSmallPlans $7.50
TwoHungryBlack... $17.00	molecularmuse $90.00	PaleoGirlCraft... $45.00
TouchTheMoon $10.00	trilobiteglass... $190.00	EarthDogStudio $18.00
jerise $6.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Music Monday

2011-10-23T12:13:00.000-04:00

Day 21 - A song that you listen to when you’re happyMost of my music tends to be happy because I'm more or less a happy person. At the least, I'm well-grounded. You could choose just about any song from my library and it would answer this question. For this one, I opened my media player and chose the next song that came up on random. And yeah—I do listen to this when I'm happy.

Music Monday: The Apropos Edition!

2011-10-17T11:54:00.003-04:00

Day 20 - A song that you listen to when you’re angry.

This one's been on my playlist lately. Especially since my last day at a terrible, soul-sucking job was this past Friday! Hurray!

Cameo Love

2011-10-13T08:14:00.001-04:00

Oreo cameos.

The world's best cookie meets one of today's most under-appreciated art forms.

Music Monday

2011-10-10T11:10:00.002-04:00

Day 19 - A song from your favorite album

It may speak to my age and ~~talkin' bout~~ my generation, but it is really difficult for me to think of a favorite album because it's really difficult for me to think of, in toto, any album at all. The ones I do think of, while obviously I really like them, I find hard to categorize as a favorite anything. Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, for example, will forever remain in my music collection. Those are albums that are almost too good to be sullied by association with me, a mere mortal. They are among my favorite, but in a detached, intellectual way. Not in the same way that "Again, Again" is my favorite Lady Gaga song.

Eventually, by defining "favorite album" as "album with the best ratio of tracks I like to songs I skip," I think I had to settle on either Simon and Garfunkel's The Concert in Central Park or CCR's Willy and the Poor Boys. CCR eventually won because it served me well on a train ride from Pennsylvania to Florida; one of my fondest memories of that particular trip to Disney World had nothing to do with the park and everything to do with being curled up on the train, drifting off to sleep, listening to John Fogarty's rendition of "Midnight Special." I couldn't have been more than 10 or 11 because I was using a bulky old Discman that ran on half a dozen AA batteries (it came with a wall plug!) that had to be retired early into middle school. Think about how much bigger the first generation GameBoys were than later iterations like GameBoy Color: that was about the size difference between this Discman and contemporary standards. The Concert in Central Park had loads of tracks I ended up recording to mixtapes for other vacations, but at the end of the day I didn't sit and listen through the whole thing all too often.

"Fortunate Son" is the one that always gets quoted off of this one, followed closely by the title track. They're definitely good songs, but this is the one that will always have a special place in my heart.

Music Monday

2011-10-02T21:28:00.000-04:00

Day 18 - A song that you wish you heard on the radio

I've spent many hours of my life listening to the local adult contemporary station (one of the curses of working retail). There's a whole litany of songs I would love to hear on the radio, but I think if this one came on, it would make my day. That said, due to the lyrics, it will never make it on the radio (at least the adult contemporary station).

That said, apparently there is a clean version, which is what he performs in the music video. While it's a good video, I like the song better with the F-bomb, so here you go. (First thirty seconds are NSFW, fair warning.)

Science Saturday: Skateboards, STEM, and Harvey Mudd

2011-09-24T11:18:00.000-04:00

This is awesome. Awesome to the point of wanting to be an undergrad again. Sometimes I wish I had gone the Comp Sci route in school. (Maybe I'll go enroll in Harvey Mudd?) Then again, other days I have dreams of becoming an English professor.

Maria Klawe skateboards and triples female enrollment in computer science. Oh, and she's 60.

As Harvey Mudd College President Maria Klawe strolled her Southern California campus recently, she stopped to talk with Lillian de Greef, a senior eager to discuss her plans to pursue a graduate degree in computer science. De Greef entered Mudd as a technology novice and, like a growing number of women at the school, she’s now fluent in multiple programming languages. “I just really enjoy learning about all this stuff, writing the code,” she says.

De Greef’s enthusiasm is a testament to the quiet revolution waged by Klawe, 60, since she arrived in 2006 from Princeton University, where she was dean of the engineering school. On her watch, the percentage of female computer science majors at Mudd, one of California’s prestigious Claremont colleges, has more than tripled, to 42 percent. Nationally, women account for 14 percent of college graduates in the field, according to the Computing Research Association.

Music Monday: Chuseok Edition

2011-09-13T07:04:00.000-04:00

I've missed a few Music Mondays (and Science Saturdays) because, well, I work too much. But I have a doozy of a one for you now!This past Monday was a pretty special day here in Korea. It was August 15th (according to the lunar calendar), or Chuseok.

Often called a Korean Thanksgiving, Chuseok is a day of being with family, games, celebrating the fall harvest, food, and honoring ancestors. August 14th, 15th, and 16th (again, lunar calendar dates) are all days off: one for traveling, one for celebrating, and one for traveling back home. I had off from work, so I went to Gyeongju for a few days at Golgulsa temple. This Music Monday comes from that experience; the regularly scheduled music meme will go back on schedule next week.

Day Trip: Bongeunsa

2011-08-28T01:33:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, my friend Breda and I, and her friend Bo Seul, went to Bongeunsa temple. It's kind of deep in the heart of Seoul, right across the street from COEX (of the aquarium fame). Despite being in the middle of one the loudest, busiest, most crowded cities in the world, Bongeunsa still retains a very quiet and isolated atmosphere. I'm pretty sure there's some kind of force field (powered by super secret Buddhist voodoo?) keeping out all of the sound and chaos of the city around it.

This is part of a display in the main courtyard of the temple. The white flowers are left in memory of people who have died. The other plants are left with wishes. On the other side, you can light an incense stick and leave it burning there as a wish. I guess the idea is that the smoke or the scent carries your wish up to heaven?

Pretty sure this is related to some expression about enlightenment and the tail of a tiger or some such. Too lazy to look it up.

While we were there, they started the call to evening prayers.

After a couple hours of traipsing about the temple grounds, we sat here for a rest and a bit of zen.

And we ended the visit with spring water from a fountain.

We wandered around the long way to find it. Even though all the signs at Samsung Station point you towards exit 6 for Bongeunsa, it's probably easier just to walk all the way through COEX. Bongeunsa is right across the street. And best of all, it's free to visit. All in all, a great way to spend a free afternoon!

Music Monday

2011-08-22T07:35:00.000-04:00

Day 17 - A song that you hear often on the radio

Science Saturday: Zombie Rats?

2011-08-20T09:57:00.000-04:00

More like mind-controlled. The parasite Toxoplasma gondii actually alters rats' brain chemistry so that they'll be eaten by cats.

Music Monday

2011-08-15T10:09:00.003-04:00

Day 16 - A song you used to love but now hate.

This is tough because my taste in music doesn't really radically shift over time, merely expands. As far as I can tell, this may be the only song I know that fits this criterion. (And, it's Celine Dion. I'm sorry in advance.)

Music Monday

2011-08-08T09:00:00.000-04:00

Day 15 - A song that describes you.

There's any number of songs that capture what I would like to be, or what I hope people would want to say about me, like this one.

But that actually describe me? I typed "lyrics I don't give a" into Google to see what would come up, because I guess the best way to describe is that I don't give a $noun. This is the first hit, and I have to say, I'm surprised I didn't think of this myself.

The Great Pierogi Reckoning

2011-08-07T03:21:00.003-04:00

One of my kindergarten students went to a farm over their three-day hagwon vacation and picked some potatoes. ("On my vacation, I found out what it was like to be a day laborer!") Her mother, in a gesture you see far more often in Korea than in the US, gave both me and her "homeroom" teacher a giant shopping bag full of potatoes from the trip.

Mmm...

And as far as I'm concerned, there's only one thing you do with potatoes: starchy Eastern European goodness! Unfortunately, my kitchen in Korea is pretty much a short corridor with a fridge, four burners, a microwave, and a sink that takes up all the counter space. Making anything in large quantities is a bit of a challenge.

While I can more or less make pierogi by heart, I did keep this pierogi recipe open while I worked. It's extremely detailed with lots of tips, and recipes for a few different fillings as well.

Step 1: Assemble the other necessary filling ingredients.

The above-linked recipe recommends making the filling on one day, and then making the dough and packing up the little pierogi on the second. In addition to things like bowls and a hand mixer, on my first trip to HomePlus I picked up two important other ingredients for the filling:

Step 2: Filling Prep.

Chop onions, grate cheese, peel potatoes. Peel a lot of a potatoes.

Yes, I am doing this on my stove. I wasn't exaggerating when I said I didn't have any counter space!

This part took the better part of my day.

Step 3: Dough prep.

This is probably the easiest part: nothing more than flour, water, an egg, and some salt.

Step 4: Putting it all together.

For most labor-intensive step, this and prepping the filling are just about tied. This part is definitely the messiest, though, which is why I only have a picture of the final product (which will stay frozen for now):

Twenty down, one hundred and eighty to go!

Science Saturday: The Science of Food!

2011-08-05T21:48:00.002-04:00

The Exploratorium (where I've never been, though I desperately want to) has a really slick page on the science of cooking just about anything; I've been perusing the bread section in preparation for The Great Pierogi Reckoning this weekend. They also have some cool experiments you can do at home, like this yeast activity.

Music Monday (on Wednesday):

2011-08-03T10:37:00.004-04:00

Day 14 - A song that no one would expect you to love.

This one is tough. I don't think there's any ONE song that no one would expect me to love. Under the right circumstances, I could be taken for a fan of ANYTHING: Christian rock, Norwegian death metal, salsa, acoustic lesbian folk balladeering, etc.

I guess this is one that might be the most surprising, in that it's so old and kind of obscure.

And I do love it, because it's cute and also because of this amazing gag in my personal favorite Marx Brothers movie, Monkey Business:

"No, I'm Maurice Chevalier!"

Science Saturday: Fluorescent Animals

2011-07-30T00:57:00.003-04:00

Korean scientists have developed a fluorescent puppy.

Not just a novelty, the glowing pooch (a female beagle clone named Tegon) expands horizons for research into diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. Instead of artificially inducing fluorescence into a dog (which is only useful if you want to take your pet to a rave), scientists involved with the study can also artificially induce any number of the 268 illnesses we share in common with dogs. The good news? They can also turn off the fluorescence (or the disease) with drugs as well—meaning Tegon doesn't have a lifetime of fluorescence or Alzheimer's to worry about.

Music Monday

2011-07-25T09:11:00.000-04:00

Day 13 - A song that is a guilty pleasure

The song really starts at about the 20 second mark.

I have no good reason to like this, I know....but it's just so damn catchy!

Science Saturday: Benny Frank Goes to Space

2011-07-23T08:19:00.001-04:00

Or well, part of the The Franklin Institute, anyway.

Ferguson brought this small piece of the Franklin Institute to the space station and back. The 5-pointed 4-inch star from the Franklin Institute’s Fels Planetarium dome will be put on public display for the future enjoyment of millions of kids of all ages.

Chris Ferguson brings science museum to orbit.

Music Monday

2011-07-18T09:04:00.001-04:00

Day 12 - A song from a band you hate

It's really difficult for me to pick out a band I dislike enough to use the word hate. But then I thought back to my days of listening to "adult contemporary" radio and a personage bubbled to the surface: Adam Lambert.

I'm sorry to inflict this upon you all.

Elevatorgate: A Belated Perspective

2011-07-13T07:37:00.012-04:00

While I was away from the Internet (apologies; I owe a few Music Mondays!), drama erupted in the atheist/skeptic/science community, Internet and otherwise. Interestingly enough, pretty much on the one-year anniversary of the Sexy Scientists kerfuffle—and yet again it is gender and feminism drama.

This is multifaceted and unfolded over a few days.

1. Rebecca Watson posted a video on her blog about, among other things, boorish behavior of some men at skeptic/atheist/science (which I'm just going to abbreviate as SAS from now on) conventions. Specifically, while she was on the elevator to her floor, a man who had heard her already voice complaints about being sexualized and objectified, who had heard her say she was tired and going to bed, asked her back to his room for coffee at four in the morning. The whole Mythbusters, Robot Eyes, Feminism, and Jokes video is up.

2. A few posters on the blog and YouTube channel were summarily dismissive of the situation. Some video rebuttals appeared as well. Friends of Rebecca's mention that they've seen similar attitudes on Facebook, Twitter, etc.

3. Watson disagreed with these dismissals of the situation and mentioned a few commentators by name in a talk she then gave at the CFI Student Leadership Conference. Most notably, she quoted a student (Steff McGraw) as part of her presentation on the Religious Right's War on Women.

4. People became incensed that Watson would quote Ms. McGraw's post and mention her by name specifically. The Internet exploded with bile.

5. P. Z. Myers decided to weigh in and took Rebecca's side, arguing that a good skeptical thinker always names names and that she was justified in feeling weirded out in the elevator. People posted comments.

6. Richard Effin' Dawkins showed up in the comments on Pharyngula and basically commented that Rebecca should stop complaining because, "You weren't violently assaulted! It wasn't that bad!"

7. Shit just got lost all over the place.

Got that all sorted? Great. Time to put on the Social Awareness Goggles!

Now, how many problematic (or potentially problematic) things can you spot in this picture-find? I found:

1. The original "ElevatorGate" incident in question (i.e., one man's act of propositioning a woman whom he knew at the least to be tired, and probably also knew was skeeved out by unwelcome sexual advances).

2. People's defense of Elevator Guy.

3. Watson's decision to call out an undergrad student by name, without permission or at least forewarning.

4. Dawkins' (and not a few other anonymous Internet commentators') opinion that Watson should stop complaining because she doesn't have it that bad.

1. The original "ElevatorGate" incident in question.

This one splits into two sub-problems. First, there's the problem of threat. Simply put, similar scenarios to this (late at night, enclosed spaces, invitations to private quarters) can and do lead to rape. It's not unreasonable to be nervous in this situation. An invitation to really private quarters (a private hotel room) for a really illogical reason (coffee? at 4 am? when she wants to go to bed?) only escalates that. At the very least it's a sexual proposition. And if her gentleman companion is an angry, violent drunk, for all she knew he might have reacted violently.

The second sub-problem is totally separate from the rape issue. It would be an issue even without the threat of rape, and it's the issue of this: disregarding stated desires. He had been present in the bar and had heard Watson declare her intention to retire because she was fatigued. He had probably also heard the talk she had given about not being sexualized and objectified at SAS conferences. Certainly this fellow had access to enough data to know that really, truly and seriously, Ms. Watson just wanted to go to bed and was not looking for any attention from him.

A really great article on both of these sub-problems (in a general sense, not related to this specific incident) is Schrödinger's Rapist (or a guy’s guide to approaching strange women without being maced).

My advice to you, ElevatorGuy and all men who might find themselves in this situation some day, is this: get some business cards. Cards with your name and cellphone number. Should you stumble upon an attractive, intelligent, funny, intriguing young woman in an elevator, don't ask her back to your place in fumbling desperation to see if maybe she's The One. Instead, hand her the card, with a brief explanation. "I think you're really interesting, maybe we could meet for coffee and brunch tomorrow morning," for example, is a good one. It leaves the decision in her hands, and it moves the encounter away from a potentially dangerous private space to a much safer public space (thus making her more amenable to agreeing).

("But I'm not a rapist!" you whinge. "She's judgmental and wrong to think so!" Too bad, so sad. Once rapes stop happening, she'll have no reason to consider you a potential rapist. So maybe talk to your fellow men about their behavior.)

But I don't think the biggest problem here is ElevatorGuy. On a scale of one to five Cups of Coffee, I give him a one and a half.

2. People's defense of Elevator Guy.

A lot of men (and some women) have chosen to focus on the Elevator itself, defending Elevator Guy from imaginary accusations of being a rapist. As if Rebecca is somehow at fault for not appreciating an unwelcome sexual advantage, or at the least for publicly mentioning a most-likely sheepish-feeling fellow's failed attempt to get into her pants. I call this the "Won't Somebody Please Think of the Men?" argument. Can you see the invisible sarcasm tags around that?

In other words, this argument is based on the assumption that in this situation, the man's desire for sex somehow trumps the woman's desire to be treated without regard for baby-making parts, or at least her stated desire to be left alone. If a man wants to have hot 4 am atheist sex, why does he need to proposition a woman who has clearly expressed her disinterest in anything except sleeping? If his desire is so great, he can satisfy both Rebecca's desire to be left alone AND his desire to get laid by asking someone else

Also,to outline the larger paradigm that I think contributes to this assumption: men's desire to not be considered potential rapists somehow trumps women's desire to not be raped (and sometimes killed). If we stop acting like there are potential rapists out there, sure you get to feel better about yourselves, but then we also get to be raped more. What?

I mean, I'm sure Elevator Guy was probably just awkward and drunk and desperate, and I do kind of feel shitty for him because now his faux pas is all over the SAS community for people to laugh over, but there's still no good excuse for his actions.

Now we're getting into the problematic territory. I rate this one three out of five Cups of Coffee.

3. Watson's decision to call out an undergrad student by name, without permission or at least forewarning.

Watson justified her decision on her own blog, saying that she did it because basically she would expect it out of someone quoting her in a presentation; that she expected Ms. McGraw to be mature enough to be adult about it; and also pointing out that they had all linked and quoted her specifically when disagreeing with her.

I think these are all good justifications, and I can see how if Watson were quoting another woman of her own caliber on stage, no harm no foul. But we can't know that, and neither could Watson as she was writing up her presentation. If you are a badass skepchick, you can forget what it's like to be younger, more sensitive, more unsure of yourself. What it's like to see someone you admire (or at least someone with more renown and more social sway in your community than you currently enjoy) shut you down.

Plus, McGraw and stclairrose were posting about Watson on the Internet. On the Internet. It's quiet on the Internet, and if you are attacked or mentioned in a debate on the Internet, you have the capacity to respond, in real time, and in equal merit in front of your audience. Not so when your post is up there on the stage. In that moment, the power dynamics of the situation were all about Watson. If McGraw were giving a presentation herself later in the day, it would be another matter entirely. But she wasn't; McGraw was a student attendee.

But again, this is hardly the biggest problem here. One and a half Cups of Coffee out of five.

4. Dawkins' (and not a few other anonymous Internet commentators') opinion that Watson should stop complaining because she doesn't have it that bad.

And finally, where everyone lost their shit (myself included). This is the coveted five out of five cups of coffee.

I will admit that I am not the biggest fan of Dawkins. Truth be told, I think he's an asshole. I don't care how brilliant you are, if you can't bring yourself to play nicely, I have very little respect for you. Who you are is more important than what you do. This is a bone of contention with The Boy, who is a huge Dawkins fan despite acknowledging he's made some pretty significant missteps. (What you do trumps who you are.)

But for a man who advocates for women's rights elsewhere in the world and who makes passionate arguments against things like female genital mutilation or stoning adulteresses; who talks about having more women in science; there is some serious cognitive dissonance in him telling Wagner to basically be quiet and deal with it. No, seriously. Phil Plait over at BA quoted the meat, if not the entirety, of Dawkins' response in that entry.

I mean the argument that "some women have it worse so stop complaining" is totally fallacious. Not only that, but if Dawkins wants more women in skepticism and science, guess what? Boorish behavior on the behalf of some men needs to be addressed. You don't just snap your fingers and get equality, Dawkins. You don't just wake up one day and suddenly there's just as many women there as there are men. They're not joining the sciences and the skepticism movement solely because they're somehow too dumb or too ignorant, they're not joining because you're not making it a very comfortable place. You generally but also, with the that comment, you specifically.

Mr. Dawkins, you enjoy a certain position of power within the SAS movements. While people are free to disagree with you, you influence the way many of the people in the think about issues—probably doubly-so when the people in question are involved in a debate they normally don't think much about. It's a bit lazy of them, yes, but you're otherwise intelligent and it's generally accepted that the views you hold are rational and well thought-out. Especially for someone whose nerdery is more about evolutionary biology than about sociology and feminism, could they really be blamed for simply towing the (Dawkins) party line? And the truism holds just as much for you as it does for Spider-man: "With great power comes great responsibility."

I can already hear the outcry. "But skepticism and free-thinking is all about challenging authority! Science is all about objectively looking at the data and not who says it! We're not just dumb sheep!"

Reality check: we're all human; we're all inclined to put people on pedestals and forgive people mistakes we would not allow from others simply because we like them better. Crow about your objectivity all you like, but at the end of the day it's still that unreachable calculus limit.

Dawkins' ill-thought, unnecessarily snarky and condescending brush-off of the incident in question (and Rebecca Watson's hysterical audacity to even feel uncomfortable in the first place!) has the net effect not only of alienating countless "skepchicks" (who doubtless looked up to him to begin with) with his words alone, but also to encourage and justify prevailing attitudes of other persons not quite so celebré—who in turn continue acting in ways that alienate women.

This incident casts an unfortunate pall over at least some of Dawkins' words and writing about Western women and the sciences. It seems more and more that for him, "More women should study the sciences" really means, "Why can't a woman be more like a man?"

Hopefully, Dawkins will have the same grace, tact, and self-awareness that Luke Muehlshauser exhibited about the "Sexy Scientists" debacle and offer up an apology. (Note: not an explanation or a rationalization, but an apology.) And hopefully in the future, he'll take issues like objectification and male entitlement seriously, even if no one's stoning us to death or permanently mutilating our genitalia.

Science Saturday: Magnetic Stripes and Plate Tectonics

2011-07-02T09:30:00.001-04:00

I spent a free period browsing Mr.SciGuy today, since I'm teaching a class on weathering, erosion, and rocks. I had never heard of this argument for Pangea and continental drift before! (Probably because I missed earth science class in high school.)

http://www.mrsciguy.com/magnet.html

Also he has some pretty rad pictures of shifting tectonic plates on the earthquake page!

Music Monday (belated)

2011-06-29T09:03:00.003-04:00

It's Music Monday, the Wednesday edition!

Day 11—A song from your favorite band.

I already talked about my undying love for Oasis AND included a song of theirs. That said, I'm going to move on to another favorite band, simply for variety's sake (and because really, truly, I can't pick JUST ONE favorite).

Ben Folds is among the list of musicians i my library whose music I can almost never bring myself to skip, no matter what kind of mood I'm in.

Science Saturday: Virtual Planetarium

2011-06-25T09:30:00.000-04:00

There is nothing so disorienting as not being able to see your childhood's night sky—or any stars at all. And the light pollution in Seoul is going to make stargazing difficult when I start teaching there next month.

Fortunately, Neave's virtual planetarium will fix just that. Not only can you look around at any place in the world (and at any time!), but you can also click on the stars to find their name, their magnitude, and how far away they are! My childhood fascination with stars and constellations need not fall by the wayside. :)

Greetings From the Road

2011-06-22T09:30:00.001-04:00

CarawayCache $2.50	coinringman $23.50	iowajewel $14.99
schmairb $14.00	thephotocube $1.75	AdornmentsNYC $25.00
WanderingiVint... $8.00	snapco $25.00	Holcroft $10.00
AtticEmporium $6.99	FeedbackTheatr... $17.95	efollansbee $15.00
birdAve $20.00	jonsutton $7.00	windshop $10.00
vintageinmichi... $10.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Music Monday

2011-06-20T09:30:00.001-04:00

Day 10—A song that makes you fall asleep.

Not in a disparaging way at all, though. I love Donora. This song is so mellow and comforting, it's like being wrapped up in a cloud.

Science Saturday: Fluorescence

2011-06-18T10:25:00.001-04:00

Fluorescence is one of the more dazzling properties of minerals. I mean, how can you not be wowed by this?

How does that even work?

First, you need three ingredients: a mineral, darkness, and an ultraviolet light. A moment to go over that last one.

Light comes in different wavelengths, ranging from infrared to ultraviolet (or UV). Fluorescent minerals "glow" under the high-frequency, short wavelength ultraviolet light. But even within ultraviolet there's a range.

The kind you probably have at home—the kind you can buy in Spencer's or Halloween stores—is a "long wave" black light, with emits ultraviolet light at a wavelength of about 380-385 nanometers.

The other kind is, predictably enough, a "short wave" black light. They aren't sold in regular retail outfits; you need to go to an online specialist or a rock and mineral shop to find one. The wavelength on a short wave back light can be as little as 254 nanometers.

What does this mean for minerals? It means that the fluorescence of a mineral will change depending on the black light you use. Some minerals will only fluoresce within a very specific range, others will change colors.

But anyway: you have your rocks, you have your black light, and you've turned out the other lights. Enjoy the fireworks for a moment.

Ooooh. Pretty.

But where do those colors come from?

When such a high frequency light hits the atoms inside, they get excited. And then, soon after, un-excited. It's the movement from excitement to boredom (for lack of better term) that causes the colors we see (in the movement "down," so to speak, the atoms will emit a photon—light, basically).

Not every specimen of every possibly fluorescent mineral will necessarily fluoresce. Plenty of fluorite fluoresces, but plenty of it doesn't. For that reason, all you rockhounds, it's best to buy your fluorescent rocks in person.

Caves!

2011-06-16T00:19:00.004-04:00

Tomorrow I leave for a road trip to Greensboro, NC; then on to Chapel Hill and then back home.

Between me and Greensboro is the Shenandoah Valley region of Virginia.

View Larger Map

Coincidentally, the Shenandoah Valley also houses all of the caves of Virginia (or pretty much all):

Since I'm a member of the National Cave Association anyway (this means: free admittance to member caves), I figured why not make it a nice leisurely drive through the caves and caverns of Virginia? The only one I've been to out of all of them is Luray, which was years ago. Unfortunately, I don't have time for all of them, so I'm just visiting the NCA member caves I haven't seen yet:

(And for good measure: Copper Fox Distillery!)

Pictures and tales from the road forthcoming!

View Larger Map

Music Monday

2011-06-13T09:32:00.000-04:00

Day 9—A song that you can dance to.

I'm well aware it's a terrible song, BUT I REGRET NOTHING.

Science Saturday

2011-06-11T09:30:00.001-04:00

This inaugural Science Saturday brought to you by a cool new Tumblr, Science in Everything, by NewEnglandStarlight from the Mad Scientists of Etsy.

Why are rubies and sapphires so different in color, even though they're both corundum? The answer is smaller than you might think!

Music Monday

2011-06-06T09:25:00.000-04:00

Day 8—A song you know all the words to.

Oh, was this not what you meant? Very well.

Scientific Literacy, Power Plants, and Shutdowns, Oh My!

2011-05-31T08:20:00.004-04:00

The deadly and tragic earthquake in Miyagi was without a doubt the preeminent geological event of the year. (Aside: people are certainly still trying to rebuild the communities and towns swallowed up into the earth in March, please consider donating. The flow of cash has most likely slowed down now that we don't see it in the news on a daily basis. Need outlasts people's memories.)

But what continued to make headlines long after the fact was the meltdown at the Daiichi power plant. Nuclear power and the ramifications of it are already not well understood by the general public; add in sensationalist news stories and ill-informed bloggers calling Daiichi "the next Chernobyl" and drawing all kinds of conclusions and connections and the result is nothing good. People in California panicking and buying up potassium iodide supplies, for example, and now Germany is scrapping its nuclear program in favor of coal.

Coal. Coal is non-renewable, kind of dirty, and not terribly efficient.

And while they were already planning to take them offline, the speed-up in the shutdown is due pretty much to the panic over Daiichi.

I do not mean to understate the dangers of radiation or the living hell that is radiation sickness. But just because coal isn't radioactive doesn't mean it's inherently better, or safer.

A very scientifically literate friend of mine, Scott, laid it all out over at his blog. It's a clear, cogent, and entirely readable explanation of nuclear versus everything else; I'm reproducing it in part. (The entire entry, including comments from other readers, is here.)

You know what kills more people per year than nuclear plants?

Everything.

According to the Clean Air Task Force, coal plants kill about thirty thousand people per year in the US through pollution (which causes respiratory disease). There are six hundred coal plants, so that's about 50 deaths per plant. These numbers are much higher - maybe even by an order of magnitude - in Chinese and third-world coal plants, which lack the US' stringent environmental restrictions.

So far there have been zero deaths from the crisis in Fukushima; this doesn't preclude deaths from cancer later on, but because of the speed of the evacuation I don't think it is too optimistic to hope the final death toll will be below fifty.

So think about that for a second. When you hit a nuclear plant with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded, then immediately follow that with a twenty foot high tsunami, and then it explodes, it still kills fewer people than an average coal plant does every single year when everything goes perfectly.

I'm going to repeat that entire paragraph for emphasis. When you hit a nuclear plant with the fifth largest earthquake ever recorded, then immediately follow that with a twenty foot high tsunami, and then it explodes, it still kills fewer people than an average coal plant does every single year when everything goes perfectly.

Yet now Germany says they're going to suspend their nuclear program. You know what's probably going to replace it? Coal. And protestors in the US are agitating to close my home county's beloved nuclear plant of San Onofre. You know what's probably gonna replace it? More coal.

A useful measure of power plant capacity is the "terawatt", equal to one trillion watts. Coal kills 2500 times as many people per terawatt as nuclear. In fact, nuclear power has the lowest fatality per terawatt of any form of power in existence. Rooftop solar power has a per terawatt death rate ten times worse than nuclear power because of - I kid you not - people falling off roofs when installing the panel. Hydroelectric power has a worse fatality rate because of dams bursting and flooding people. Even wind power has a worse fatality per terawatt rate - seventy three people have died in windmill related accidents.

...

And everyone, please stop pretending like this somehow "proves" nuclear power doesn't work. Nuclear continues to be the safest and most environmentally responsible form of large-scale power generation ever invented. One incident, no matter how tragic, does not change that. The fact that "radiation" is a scary-sounding word does not change that. The fact that people can say things like "twenty times background radiation" or "almost a microsievert per hour" when what they really mean is "eight bananas" does not change that. And if people let their fears get the better of them and kill off nuclear projects, they'll be getting rid of one of our best hopes for a solution to climate change and the general problem of power production.

I will grant that uranium extraction may still be a major issue; what to do with nuclear waste is as well. (I vote for shooting it into space.) But until we perfect solar energy (our efficiency with solar, in terms of sun captured versus usable energy output, is pretty sad, although the synthetic leaf may change all of that), nuclear is probably our safest and most efficient shot. Internet fear mongers: give it a rest, please.

Also, on the related topic of encouraging scientific literacy in the general populace, check out this rad magazine called Guru. You can download it for pretty much anything, or page through a Flash version right on your PC. It's a cute balance between lifestyle and science (like an intellectually stimulating, useful, and not-offensive-to-feminist-sensibilities version of Cosmo) and the first issue, at least, is free!

Music Monday

2011-05-30T20:49:00.002-04:00

Day 7—A song that reminds you of a certain event.

I went to see Roger Waters during his tour of The Wall last October. Imagine seeing this live and in your face and with fireworks and fog machines. AWESOME

Music Monday

2011-05-30T09:00:00.000-04:00

Day 6—A song that reminds you of somewhere.

I have a habit of finding new music and, if I really like the song, listening to it non-stop for days. Such was the case with this song, which I would listen to on my runs around my neighborhood in Uijeongbu for a week or two. Even now, upon hearing this song, I involuntarily picture the main drag of the 'dong: dentist, banks, bakery, car dealership, bus stop, electronics store, the under-construction elevated train line...

Here it is, coming up to it as I would from my apartment building:

And, the song:

Music Monday

2011-05-23T09:00:00.003-04:00

Day 5—A song that reminds you of someone.

While there's lots of songs I associate with a variety of people and places, this is the one that has the strongest (and oldest) association.

My oldest and most frequented Internet haunt is Room With a Moose, a fan site dedicated to the long-canceled Invader Zim. This was back in high school, and after a couple years of message boards and chatrooms we decided to make our Internet friendship a meatspace reality. The first "MooseCon" happened in 2003, and to mark the occasion we all submitted music to one member, who picked out the best song or two from a person, put it on a CD, and make us a soundtrack. Another member did cover art, and thus began a tradition of twenty-first century collaborative versions of mixtapes.

This was one of my favorite songs from the first one, which even today is pure magic to listen to.

And happy post-Rapture, everyone!

The Prince's New Ruby

2011-05-18T23:14:00.003-04:00

Rubies are the rarest out of all of the gemstones. (Rarer even than diamonds, which are rare only due to the mind-boggling efficiency and ruthlessness of diamond cartels like de Beers.) Technically speaking, rubies (also called corundum) are aluminum oxide, or Al₂O₃:

Trivalent chromium occasionally replaces the aluminum, which is what makes a ruby red.

But this is a rare, rare situation indeed. Rarer even than older societies realized. Many stones that their expert jewelers and gem-setters took to be rubies (aluminum oxide with chromium) were actually red spinels, part of the aluminum group of spinels: A²Al₂O₄ (A² representing a magnesium, iron, or zinc cation).

You can't fault them for the confusion, as rubies and red spinels are often found in the very same deposits. Red spinels occur more often, as the rubies will only begin to form after the red spinels have exhausted all the magnesium in that particular location. It's extremely difficult to tell the difference between the two without the sophisticated equipment and methods we have today. As a result, many of the world's most famous imperial decorations include not rubies, but red spinels.

The most famous of these is perhaps the Black Prince's Ruby, in the Crown Jewels of England.

The link has the entire dramatic and bloody life of the stone, but in a nutshell: it was first mined in what is now Tajikistan, in the great ruby and spinel mine of Kuh-i-Lal.

The ruby made its way westward and eventually surfaced in Spain, where it changed hands a few times. Eventually it went to Edward of Woodstock, also known as "The Black Prince," and with him it went to England.

The ruby had a few narrow scrapes in England: it was almost lost in a military campaign against the French; it was almost junked (along with the rest of the original crown jewels of England) by Oliver Cromwell; it was nearly stolen by Thomas Blood; it was nearly consumed by fire in 1841 and was a point of concern during Hitler's blitzkrieg bombing of London.

Nonetheless, it survives as a brilliant and beautiful specimen, not of a ruby, but of a red spinel.

Today, spinels are easily synthesized in labs. Because of the variety of color with which one can infuse them, spinels are often used as an imitation gemstone: sapphires, emeralds, alexandrites, and others, in addition to rubies. It might therefore be tempting to turn your nose up at a red spinel as a second-rate imitation, but remember this: those spinels were good enough for English, Russian, and Persian royalty—are you so snobby as to be above royalty?

This raises an interesting ontological point, then: is a ruby simply and only the aluminum oxide specimen with chromium? When many of what we consider to be the preeminent specimens of "rubies" technically aren't? What's more important, the chemical definition or the cultural shorthand marker? Remember, the most distinguished jeweler in field the 18th century would consider your lab-grown red spinel a fine and outstanding ruby.

More About Rubies:

Rubies on MinDat.org
Rubies on Flickr

More About (Red) Spinels:

Spinels on Minerals.net
Red spinels on Flickr
Spinels
Spinels Buyer's Guide

Music Monday

2011-05-16T09:00:00.000-04:00

Day 04—A song that makes you sad.

I'm going to cheat and put two, because I can't pick between them. Both of them are by Harry Chapin. My parents both love Harry Chapin. As the story goes, they were planning on going to the free concert Harry was going to give in New York when he had a heart attack on the Long Island Expressway. I grew up more on his brother Tom's cheerful (if borderline "black-footed hippie") children's music; I have infinite respect for Harry's master songwriting, but it seems that everything he does just about breaks my heart, so I don't listen to him as much as I should.

There's another video floating around on YouTube of him on Soundstage, doing a live performance. He gives a nice little intro to it, giving credit to his wife, and then he also echoes my sentiments entirely: "And frankly, this song scares me to death."

And here's the Soundstage performace of "Mr. Tanner," with a good long introduction. Based on a real review from the New York times of a debut singer, though with poetic license taken. I still can't listen to it without a lump in my throat.

A Practical Application of Prime Numbers: Cicadas and Web Design

2011-05-13T09:00:00.001-04:00

Cicadas, those loud and pesky vuvuzelas of the insect world, are renown for breeding in cyclical patterns. ("Cicada" is actually a Latin word meaning "buzzer." The more you know!)

Where I live, they come out in 17-year cycles. Other parts of the US it's every 13. Why the prime numbers?

Prime numbers help cicadas avoid predators. According to the article:

Research has shown that the population of creatures that eat cicadas — typically birds, spiders, wasps, fish and snakes — often have shorter 2 – 6 year cycles of boom and bust.

So, if our cicadas were to emerge, say, every 12 years, any predator that works in either 2, 3, 4 or 6 year cycles would be able to synchronize their boom years with this regular cicada feast. In fact, they’d probably name a public holiday after it called Cicada Day.

That’s not much fun if you’re a cicada.

On the other hand, if a brood of 17-year cicadas was unlucky enough to emerge during a bumper 3-year wasp season, it will be 51 years before that event occurs again. In the intervening years, our cicadas can happily emerge in their tens of thousands, completely overwhelm the local predator population, and be mostly left in peace.

Resourceful little guys, eh?

DesignFestival than takes this concept of using prime numbers to avoid synchronizing into regular patterns and applies it to designing backgrounds and images for web pages. That's cool too, and Alex Walker has more detail on that in the original article. I just can't get over the use of prime numbers to outwit predators!

WIP: Avogadro Choker

2011-05-11T09:00:00.000-04:00

I'd start a "Work In Progress Wednesday" but I very rarely have a project so complex that it remains "in progress" for very long. I either finish something right away or lose all interest. ;)

WIP Wednesday: Brass and Jasper Avogadro Choker:

Music Monday

2011-05-09T09:00:00.003-04:00

Day 3—A Song That Makes You Happy

There's lots of music that makes me happy, at least some of the time. This is just one piece of many.

I was (am) an orch dork; I studied piano and other instruments to varying degrees of competency. "Small c" classical will always be a favorite of mine, with a special nod to "big C" Classical (as in, the actual "classical period" that spans from about 1750 to about 1825). Something about the repetition and firm sense of structure appeals to me, I suppose. I once compared listening to Mozart to "defragging your brain."

Happy Mother's Day!

2011-05-08T09:14:00.001-04:00

'Song For My Mother' by Kokoba

My mother, in a nutshell. A sixteen piece nutshell. :)

goodforonefare $26.50	anandi $38.00	Emmarose1231 $150.00
Lunayarns $17.00	willowtreepott... $25.00	ChuckEBrydWall... $21.50
nicholasandfel... $20.00	nlmbooks $1.75	andybartosjr $25.00
soap $5.75	maidstonejewel... $630.00	LoucheLab $45.00
BunnyRabbitVin... $18.00	BlueKimonoStud... $78.00	AllThatArt $11.99
BrookMarks $11.99

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

Experiments in the Baking (Cooking) Arts: Gluten-Free Shells & Cheese

2011-05-04T00:02:00.004-04:00

I decided to try my hand at making a gluten-free dish for my boss, whose husband recently passed away. And what better food than pasta with vodka sauce—grown up mac and cheese?

I decided to go with a vodka sauce recipe from Giada de Laurentiis, using a pre-made marinara sauce instead of the tomato sauce recipe she provided. It's pretty straightforward. I used more tomato sauce than the recipe called for simply because I didn't want the sauce to be too rich—I don't really see my boss eat that much in terms of cream sauces, even if she sprinkles parmesan cheese on her salads and veggies. It still came out okay, though probably not as thick as it should have been.

To be honest, I breathed a big sigh of relief when it came out tasty. There have been some horrible recipes on the Food Network shows over the years (Sandra Lee's Kwanzaa Cake, for example, is a full-blown Shakespearian tragedy of a dessert) and I didn't know if this would be one of them. Fortunately, Giada de Laurentiis fares better than Sandra Lee, at least in this case.

I baked the whole shebang (uncovered) at 350* F for twenty minutes, which you don't really have to do, I guess. Preliminary taste test yielded positive results, and Lawyer Mom agrees that it smells delicious. Yum!

Music Monday

2011-05-02T09:41:00.002-04:00

Day 2 — Your Least Favorite Song

Like the first day, it's hard for me to choose a stand-out least favorite because that will change with time and taste as well. For example, right now I want to drown puppies every time I hear Adam Lambert, but only because the adult contemporary station plays that godawful single on a daily (sometimes twice-daily) basis. So again, like the first day, I'm going with a song that has the longest track record of annoying me:

Not because of anything wrong with the song itself (even though it was intended as a B-side filler and the songwriters themselves thought it was mediocre), but because this single has the worst production quality I've ever heard, ever. I remember hating this song when I was single digits in age, because the tracks are so poorly mixed—and even now I could barely stand to listen to more than five seconds in the video up there, just to confirm that it still bothered me. You can barely hear Tommy James over the scratchy and mind-numbingly boring rhythm guitar part; it's Phil Spector's "wall of sound" technique gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Because otherwise I enjoy Tommy James and the Shondells. There is a staggering gulf in the distance of production quality between singles like "Crimson and Clover" or "Sweet Cherry Wine" and...this. According to James:

I don't think anybody can record a song that bad and make it sound good. It had to sound amateurish like that. I think if we'd fooled with it too much we'd have fouled it up.

No. You wouldn't have fouled it up. You would have made it tolerable. Of course, when you record it at a radio station, you take what you can get. But I can't deal with this song at all, and I think if I had been working during the summer when this came out, I would have wanted to rip my ears off.

Spotted!: Video Game Goodies by Mark Wengryn

2011-04-30T20:03:00.002-04:00

I work in a jewelry supply store (which is how I got into this). Today, I found out one of our regular customers MAKES THE MOST AMAZING JEWELRY EVER.

Bronze Goron Cuff Bracelet by Mark Wengryn

For the uninitiated, that is a bronze replica of the Goron's Bracelet from Ocarina of Time:

He also has a tiny, less-than-inch square Companion Cube. In case you were lonely and wanted something to accompany you for the rest of the experiment.

Weighted Companion Cube by Mark Wengryn

Mission: Impossible: Bolo Ties

2011-04-27T19:46:00.004-04:00

For years, bolo ties have been the butt of many jokes at work. They're probably the slowest-moving of the "mount it yourself" items—behind even the belt buckles!—and while you can blame our East Coast location for part of it, the official neckware of the state of Arizona (no, seriously) is not exactly the most understated of accessories:

But recently our boss put a whole bunch of bolo slides (the "pendant" part) and tips (the...tips) on sale, which gave me a mission.

I'm bringing bolo back.

5 Reasons Why Bolos Are Cooler Than You Give Them Credit For

They can work for either gender! Which means: great (graduation) gifts for men! Especially the men who have everything—unless they live in Montana or the Southwest, because then they probably already have a collection. But they could always use another!
It's all the dressy factor of a tie without the hassle of knots or the sensation of being slowly choked to death all day!
It's a great, uncluttered way to feature just one stone or piece you really like.
Adjustable for every neckline and comfort zone. Wear it high up close to the collar one day, or loose and opera-length the next. This is perfect if you're anal-retentive like me about having certain lengths of necklaces with certain necklines on tops. One tie is so many options!
They're already pretty unique; they can also be stylish and cute! The aesthetic style of the bolo is not limited to Southwestern/ultra manly designs. Check my latest (and most glamorous) bolo creation:

Action shot:

So they're not just for cowboys and Southwestern sheriffs anymore! I have two (the other, slightly more understated, isn't pictured) already and I'm working on a third. I'm giving you the heads up now: these are going to be huge. ;)

Music Monday

2011-04-25T09:23:00.001-04:00

There's a meme doing the rounds on Facebook: the 30 Day Music Meme. I'm porting it to my blog for a few reasons:

1) I love music.
2) It'll keep me posting regularly (at least on Mondays!).
3) I love music.
4) I already post enough ~~crap~~ content on Facebook.
5) Did I mention that I love music?
6) I have more room to justify my choices and expound upon them in a blog entry than in a Facebook status.
7) No, you don't understand. MUSIC.

Day 1: Your Favorite Song

This one is tough for me. I'm sure it's tough for many people. The problem for me is, I go through music cycles. While music I like, I generally like forever, I'll go for years listening to a few bands and genres, and then randomly shift gears into something else entirely for no apparent reason for the next couple years—while still enjoying what I was listening to before as well. So a favorite song of all time is really, really hard to come by. Out of all the music in my library, this has probably been near the top of my list for the longest (since I was 10, when it first hit the charts), so I feel it's the best answer to the question asked here.

Oasis was my first favorite band, though I never managed to tune in to the rest of the Britpop coming out at that time. Thanks to Pandora, I'm a little bit more informed about that whole trend now, but Oasis is still the only band from that movement whose discography I know at all and whose albums I actually own. They're always within the first three bands I list when asked to name favorites.

The general consensus among the music enthusiasts I know is that Oasis had an overblown sense of themselves, shamelessly ripped off other musicians (mostly The Beatles and Lennon's solo career), and that the mainstream success they've enjoyed doesn't really reflect the quality of their music. Since I'm not equipped to deal with them (both in terms of knowledge and in terms of temperament), I just keep my love of Oasis quietly to myself.

And yes, these same music enthusiasts have made me well aware of the fact that Noel Gallagher was so off his face when he wrote "Don't Look Back in Anger" that he doesn't even know what it means. Don't care. Still love this song.

Experiments in the Baking Arts: Koulourakia

2011-04-22T16:53:00.004-04:00

Today, my friends and I are basically being decadent and watching Titus Andronicus all night. Since I had today off, I decided to bake some Greco-Roman munchies.

Challenge: Others are bringing the sweets, so some savory would do nicely; make them vegan-friendly, since 1/3 of those involved are vegan.

Solution:

Koulourakia cookies from PlektaByHari1946

Koulourakia.

I followed the above recipe but my dough turned out a bit crumbly, more so than pictured there. In fact, I wasn't able to properly fold the "dough logs" as pictured; I instead criss-crossed two shorter "dough logs" over each other. If you follow the above recipe, I'd recommend:

1) Over-stirring the wet ingredients. I think that may have been part of my problem; the shortening was still clumping in places.

2) Keeping water on hand when you go to roll and bake them (in case the dough ends up crumbly anyway).

3) Having someone around to taste test. :) When I bake cookies, it's usually my dad.

4) Adding some of your favorite spices for a bit of flavor. I think vanilla, cinnamon, or nutmeg would work really well in this recipe. PlektaByHari uses orange and vanilla.

They're soft and savory and ripe for dunking in about anything you please. Tonight, we ~~dine in hell!~~ dunk ours in sangria. Alcohol makes everything better, so I'm not too worried about whether or not I pass the taste test. I still want to perfect this cookie recipe, though—I shall document my further experiments here!

Feedback time: Tectonic Plate Pendant(s)

2011-04-07T18:30:00.004-04:00

I did the first mock-up of my Mad Scientists of Etsy April theme challenge (plate tectonics) item: the Filippino Plate, one of the three plates that meet under Japan.

The real version, if I get around to it, will be cut out of metal. But I did a version in clay first so I could get an idea of what a thing of that size and shape would look like. I think it needs some pizzazz, so I'm going to add some kind of kanji character to the design (on the Filippino plate; the other two plates are large enough that I'm going to draw/cut out the Japanese islands). These are the only two appropriate ones I can think of:

I'm leaning towards the top one because I'm more clear on the meaning and because it's simpler. Corrections on my interpretations, or suggestions for other characters, are much, much appreciated.