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January 1st, 2008
07:24 pm - Some thoughts about the Democratic primary
I registered to vote in New York yesterday. It was sort of funny; the woman working behind the counter at the Kings County Board of Elections office seemed positively shocked that I wanted to register to vote and honestly didn't know how to allow me to do so until the manager come in and showed me where the forms were. Is it really that unusual for people to register to vote in Brooklyn?
Anyway, the primary here is February 5, as it is in a lot of states. I can't honestly say that I'm particularly excited about any of the major candidates. I was very excited about Howard Dean in 2004, but when I think about a lot of his positions now I don't even find them very appealing (for example, he openly declined to support any sort of national single-payer health care plan, which I currently believe is the only way to overcome the deficiencies in the U.S. health care system).
That being said, I have some given some thought who I will be voting for, and I have decided on John Edwards. If you're interested in my reasoning, read on.
( Read more )
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June 9th, 2007
11:33 pm - If there's something inside that you wanna say...
Well, I don't really know if anyone still reads this, but I suppose I may as well update those who do on what I've been up to in the past... year? Or something?
I graduated from college. You know, Wesleyan was a pretty wild ride. I can still remember my first experiences with the school -- the giddy feeling of being at WesFest and meeting so many people I felt I could talk to and connect with. And really, I think that despite all that happened to me in four years there, my experience continued to stay true to that. I got older and my expectations and desires changed, but I don't think I ever got tired of the people I met and knew there.
Then again, Wesleyan changed me in so many ways I couldn't have possibly foreseen. I think a lot of people who only know stereotypes of Wesleyan think of it as a place filled with artsy bohemian far-left atheists. I'm not saying it's not true to some extent; I believe, in fact, that I was sort of attracted to that side of it when I first signed up to go there. But what happened? I was on the fence about whether I wanted to major in something quantative when I was a freshman, yet I majored in astrophysics and spent my last two years taking nothing but science and math classes. When I was a freshman I could not possibly have envisioned ever wanting to be associated with organized religion, yet somehow I ended up finding and embracing my Jewish roots and doing the Adult B'nei Mitzvah Project. Go figure.
Now I'm back here, in Portland. I spent last week breathlessly setting up the next phase of my life, which will take place partially in a small, well-lit apartment in Park Slope, in the Borough of Brooklyn and the City of New York. Later this month, I will begin my new job, as a web developer for an organization called People for the American Way. I also plan to spend my spare time writing up my senior thesis for astronomy journals and studying for the physics GRE, which is an awful, awful test that I unfortunately must take to get into graduate programs in astrophysics. But other than that, I have nothing planned. If you currently live in New York and/or will live there in the near future, and you're on my LiveJournal friendslist, we should hang out. Seriously.
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November 23rd, 2006
12:05 am - Schedule!!!
Oh god, I was so nervous about whether I'd get all my classes!
Just kidding. No one wants my classes. Anyway.
ASTR 232: Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology (Salzer), MW 2:40pm-4:00pm
ASTR 410: Senior Thesis Tutorial (Salzer), TBA
ASTR 431: Research Discussions in Astronomy (Herbst), W 12:10pm-1:00pm (0.25 cr)
PHYS 316: Thermal and Statistical Physics (Stewart), MWF 11:00am-11:50am
PHYS 356: Atoms and Molecules (Hüwel), TBA (0.5 cr)
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August 18th, 2006
12:56 pm - "Working Families for Wal-Mart"
So there's a fake grassroots advocacy organization called "Working Families for Wal-Mart." They, well, I guess they try to convince people that Wal-Mart is somehow good for working class people. Anyway, the chair of this group is former civil rights leader Andrew Young. In an interview with the Los Angeles Sentinel, he had this say when asked to comment on Wal-Mart's tendency to put Mom-and-Pop stores out of business:
Young, 74, has been lobbying minority groups and civic leaders to accept Wal-Mart stores in their neighborhoods, a relationship that has drawn criticism from other African American leaders. In an interview published in Thursday's Los Angeles Sentinel, he was asked about the retailer's role in displacing mom-and-pop stores.
"Well, I think they should; they ran the 'mom-and-pop' stores out of my neighborhood," he told the Sentinel, the oldest and largest black-owned weekly newspaper in the West.
"But you see those are the people who have been overcharging us — selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs, very few black people own these stores." (source)
Awesome, dude. I totally want to shop at Wal-Mart now.
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August 16th, 2006
01:10 am - Briefly noted
Seen on the back of a city bus in Baltimore:
1-800-FOR-BAIL
E-Z PAYMENTS
Remember, this ad was approved by the city transit authority.
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August 11th, 2006
09:17 am - Ready to go
I've developed quite a penchant for injuring myself while I'm here. Earlier this summer I was walking into a Subway (the sandwich shop, not the rapid transit) that was below street level when I slipped on the stairs and fell hardcore and sliced open my elbow. It still hasn't completely healed.
Last weekend we had an intern group camping trip in Shenandoah National Park. That was nice and all, but I developed the worst blister in the history of blisters on the back of right foot to the point where I couldn't hike up Old Rag because going uphill caused too much pain to my foot. Oh yeah, it still looks pretty nasty now.
I'm about ready to check out of Baltimore. It's been fun and I'm definitely going to miss a lot of the foreign (and American) kids, but I'm ready to go.
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August 9th, 2006
12:45 am - Upset of the decade
Ned Lamont beat Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate. For those who don't know, Joe Lieberman is one of the most pro-war, pro-corporate Democrats there is. I am so proud of Connecticut, even though I'm not really from there. I am proud that someone has the guts to stand up to people like Lieberman who are afraid to stand up to Bush.
It is ridiculous that Lieberman wants to run as an independent after losing. It's basically like saying, "Hey, voters, I don't care what you think. It's my seat and I'm keeping it. Wars and insane Supreme Court appointments be damned." Hey, Joe. It's a democracy. You don't get to keep your seat when you lose.
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July 18th, 2006
01:18 pm - Welcome to Bawlamer, hon.
My house was broken into.
At 10:30 in the morning.
They broke a window on the first floor, yet seemed entirely uninterested in the two TVs and nice bicycle there.
They also were not interested in my room or Housemate #1's room, unlocked, on the second floor, both of which contained TVs or laptops.
Instead, they broke the lock on Housemate #2's room, on the third floor, which had nothing particularly valuable in it. They opened some drawers, but took nothing, and then departed, leaving the front door wide open.
Housemates #3 and #4 slept through the entire incident.
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June 20th, 2006
11:53 am - Overheard at STScI
Older Researcher- "Goldbach's conjecture still needs to be proved. It says that any even number, starting with 4, can be expressed as the sum of two prime numbers."
Summer Student- "And there's no proof of that at all?"
Older Researcher- "No... they've verified it out to 1017, you know, with computers, but there's no proof of it."
Middle Aged Researcher- "That's pretty solid though, out to 1017."
Older Researcher- "Hardly, do you realize how much farther you'd need to go to get to infinity?!"
[all laugh]
Summer Student- "But isn't that sort of what we do in astronomy?"
Older Researcher- "No, in astronomy we would just verify that it works for 4 and call it a day."
- STScI Library, during morning coffee break
Bonus edit:
[While getting into the elevator. Accounting Woman pressed the button for floor 3]
Accounting Woman- "4th floor?"
Me- "...yeah. How did you know?"
Accounting Woman- "I dunno, you just looked like a 4."
I work on the 2nd floor which is mostly accounting offices. The science division is on the 4th floor.
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June 10th, 2006
01:12 am - Going down to Baltimore...going in an off-white Honda
Ok, so I'm moving to Baltimore tomorrow. It will be a nine hour drive, which is the longest I've ever driven by myself. But, I now have a working car stereo, several AAA maps of the Balt/Wash metro area, and a car that is packed as though a sane person actually did it.
But I'm going to be honest here. I have no functional reason for posting this entry other than that I wanted to make an entry with that title. It's only partially applicable because my car is neither off-white nor a Honda.
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May 21st, 2006
01:42 pm - Inclines and wires
So, it is senior week. I am now living in Butt A 229 for no apparent reason since they forced everyone to move out of Butt B (but stranglely not A and C). It is worth noting that I have now lived in all three Butts.
I went to a party on Cross Street last night with Dan and Zack and played "Catchphrase" with many people I didn't really know or only knew of.
I am not sure what I'm going to do this week except slog through honor board hearings leftover from finals week. Actually, I might play Starcraft in a computer lab, but it will be okay because no one is here and no one needs to do work.
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May 1st, 2006
06:20 pm - Actual post about something real
Okay, so I just remembeered this and wanted to write it down.
Yesterday afternoon I was walking across Foss Hill and stopped to watch the baseball game that was going on. As I was standing there, I overheard two girls standing near me, one of whom was on a cellphone. I caught fragments of the conversation, and the one on the phone seemed to be a freshman talking to her mother.
At first it sounded like a fairly standard rant about how expensive Wesleyan is, so I kind of tuned it out. (Although it should be noted that I immediately assumed she was not on financial aid, since people who are on financial aid usually don't complain about tuition hikes since they don't affect us much). But, she kept ranting and it soon became apparent that she was mad about the fact that Wesleyan has students living next to public housing projects. She was saying things like, "it's ridiculous that we pay so much and they can't do anything about this! I mean, twice in one month! They should have thought about this and tried to build the school closer to, you know, the nicer neighborhoods! Well, I know, but eventually I will be a junior and I'll have to live there too!".
Frankly, I was stunned. I was so mad I almost went up and confronted her about it when she hung up, but realized that would be completely pointless. But seriously, I thought almost everyone at this school had the sense not to miss the point so completely as she did. I thought, during the debates about the relationship between Wesleyan and Traverse Square, that the students were at least mindful of how our neighbors perceived us and it was the administration that was the problem. But maybe it's the students (or the parents) who are the problem too.
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05:38 pm - From the jungle to the city...
So...yeah. I haven't updated this thing in a long time. If I were to update while at Wesleyan it would mostly consist of "ha ha, wow, did so much physics today." It's going well though. I feel like I'm learning things and my research and thesis are starting to take shape. Over spring break I went to Montreal with Molly and Tori for a week and then to Kitt Peak (near Tucson, AZ) for a week. It was nice to be back there but draining, since Chris (a fellow astro major) and I were running the telescope by ourselves for the better part of 4 nights (and we were there for 8 nights total).
I was flown out to Hawaii in April with my advisor from Williams last summer for the IAU planetary nebula symposium. I felt extraordinarily guilty for missing a crapload of class, but it was an interesting experience to be around the 100 or so other people in the world who knew more about planetary nebulae than I did (including the 4 other undergraduates who were in my situation). And being in Hawaii was, you know, okay and stuff.
Anyway, the year is winding up here. I have a job this summer working at Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. I'm pretty excited -- I'm going to be subletting a row house with some other people from the program and I'm just looking forward to living on my own, in a new city, close to Molly (who will be in DC) and not in a frickin' dorm anymore.
Which reminds me: I'll be at 43 Fountain next year (and still being paid by ResLife to boot), so stop by.
Right now I'm trying to decide whether it's worth staying for senior week. I've been asked by Ed to present (along with Chris, Seth, and Raomej) at this "WesSeminar" about our Astro 211 class trip to Kitt Peak. I think that itself will be fun, but it will be on Friday the 26th. I can get free housing until then so I'd essentially have senior week to do nothing and screw around. However, I'm going to be in Los Angeles to visit Molly from May 31 to June 6, and will be moving to Baltimore on June 9 or 10. And then subsequently moving directly from Baltimore to Wesleyan on August 20, so I'd basically never be at home. Advice? I miss Portland a lot sometimes.
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November 21st, 2005
10:23 pm - Open letter
Dear people who can drive home for break any time they want without needing to plan their trip around whether it's going to rain or not because their windshield wiper motors actually work,
:(
Sincerely,
Matt
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November 17th, 2005
12:02 am - Obligatory Schedule Post
So I'm only posting my schedule because I find it hilarious how many classes are on it.
ASTR 222: Modern Observational Techniques (MW 2:40pm-4:00pm)
ASTR 422: Undergraduate Research (tutorial)
ASTR 431: Research Discussions in Astronomy (W 12:10pm-1:00pm)
PHED 118: Strength Training, Introduction (MWF 1:10pm-2:00pm)
PHYS 214: Quantum Mechanics I (MWF 10:00am-10:50am)
PHYS 324: Electricity & Magnetism (MWF 9:00am-9:50am)
PHYS 345: Electronics Lab (TR, 3rd qtr. 1:10pm-4:00pm)
PHYS 346: Digital Electronics Lab (TR, 4th qtr. 1:10pm-4:00pm)
It's actually only 5.5 credits and all but 3 of the classes (ASTR 222, PHYS 214, PHYS 324) are pass/fail. It should be a fun semester.
Also, you know you're a physics major when you have two professors with umlauts in their name in one semester (Lutz Hüwel and Reinhold Blümel).
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November 14th, 2005
03:59 am - Chaotic Evil
So...I may or may not have just gotten back from the Science Tower after working on the most recent Chaos problem set since, oh, I don't know, about 7 pm.
Let me give you a brief timeline of this particular problem set.
Monday: Receive problem set in class. Note that, if the trip to Williams on Thursday is to be possible, all problem sets must be done by 4pm Thursday. Note that Computational and Waves must also be done, and are due before Chaos (which is not due until first thing Monday morning the following week.)
Wednesday: Begin problem set in the P.M., after finishing Waves, while on duty. Become hopelessly stuck on all three problems. Note that there is no recourse for this at the time.
Thursday, morning: Continue "work" on problem set. Visit the office hours of Professor Stewart. Become perhaps more agitated by said professor's unnecessarily coy approach to assisting students with the problem set.
Thursday, afternoon: Leave for Williams, problem set undone, to work on all things astronomical.
Saturday: Return to Wesleyan. Note that it is Saturday evening and I was just at Williams. Resolve to have actual fun and not think about problem set until Sunday.
Sunday, afternoon: Continue to put off problem set, waylaid by Galactic project and V&M problem set (which is considerably easier)
Sunday, evening: Pay visit to Katrina, attempt to make progress. Largely fail, although suceed in making a few plots. Depart for Science Tower around 11:00 P.M., because it is not possible to use KaleidaGraph anywhere but the public labs.
Monday, wee hours: Have burst of delirious insight which may or may not prove to be heinously incorrect. Scribble out final touches to problem set solutions. Ride elevator to physics department, staple sheets, slide under Professor Stewart's door.
Okay, this isn't how I'm used to handling physics. This is also not a general physics complaint, as I'm quite happy with how Waves and Computational are both going, and Special Rel wasn't a big deal when it was happening before fall break. Galactic is another story, but that's not really a physics class, so anyway.
This is ridiculously draining, on my time and energy, and it's a half-credit elective. Where does Stewart get off making problem sets like these?
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October 23rd, 2005
October 21st, 2005
05:05 pm - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
If you have ever been to the Argus website, you may have seen this page. It's a really simple form script. All it does is send the contents of the form to my email address. I intended it to be used for things like "I found a typo in an article" or "this image is in the wrong place on my browser" and so on.
It's amazing how many rants I receive about actual newspaper content. I always either forward them to the editorial board email address or just tell the people to email them themselves. It's even more amazing how many commercial solitications I get (usually around 1 or 2 a week).
Usually it's a press release describing some product or service that some upstart company came out with. It's always bizarre and completely unrelated to the Wesleyan community and thus not at all likely to appear in the Argus. What's more, though, is that we do run ads. For money. How arrogant do you have to be to draft an official-looking press release advertising your awesome new product or service and then send it to fledging but fiercely independent college newspapers and expect them to give you free advertising? Wow. Just wow.
I always want to dash off really snarky responses to them. Like, "Yes, the Argus would LOVE to do an in-depth feature about your new College Student Gift Registry. Please tell us more!" The only time I've ever done it was when I received a very personalized solicitation for the site to join some revenue-sharing ad network. I hate web-based advertising. I actually sent them a response consisting entirely of "We couldn't be less interested. Thanks."
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03:29 am - "Ha ha ha..."
When I was at the KNAC symposium at Middlebury two weeks ago I was hanging out with Jesse (whom I had not seen since leaving Williams at the end of the summer) and talking about how it will be tough taking Quantum next semester, with the six hour problem sets and whatnot. The Williams kids all laughed at the idea of six hour problem sets.
In retrospect, it was a silly thing to say. Because I just spent more or less eight hours in the observatory working on Galactic.
And we didn't finish, either.
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October 18th, 2005
01:10 am - Blame is the cure
So I've been sort of following the anonymous confession board as it becomes more and more heated and hostile. I realize that I have very little of value to add to a discussion of...anything, being a straight white male who grew up in the white-picket-fenced suburbs of a sleepy New England city and heard nary a discussion of sexuality and gender identity before Wesleyan (unless you want to count being called "fag" a lot in middle school).
That said, it seems like people are really just talking past each other. It's the same reason why "political diversity" on college campuses now is such a canard. Social conservatives claim their views are not represented. Liberals respond that those "views" consist of little more than a desire to ostracize certain groups of people for basic components of their identity. That is to say, the debate isn't about the merits of the issue at all. It's about whether or not the other side is even legitimate.
That is to say, it's not the sort of "I disagree, we should do it this way instead" kind of argument you might have about fiscal policy. It's the "fuck you, you're a horrible person for saying that" argument you have about social policy. And that's when it gets personal. And that's when people get angry.
Now, I mean, I certainly can't claim to truly understand the experiences of queer people. I can only try to put myself in the place of the non-queer people complaining that they don't like the "fuck you and your white picket fence upbringing" sort of rhetoric. Sure, it's hard to hear that when that's your childhood that you have happy memories of. But I think we need to get to a place where we can allow other people to reject things we hold dear without getting all offended about it.
For my part, I honestly can't picture going to college somewhere where people didn't bitch about the gender binary and heteronormativity. It's been enlightening, even if it hasn't always been "comfortable" for me. But really, at no point is anyone threatening my ability to be straight and male. So what's the big deal? Don't abuse your privilege. Live and let live.
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