Sundays

I know it's a 3 day weekend, but I don't have school on Mondays anyway, I just do homework...

Sundays suck. As most of my loyal readers know, I just got out of a long relationship, the longest I've ever had. It was only a year and a half, but that's a long time for me; I'm focused, driven, and have a one track mind centered on my career. My friends, it's like old times and I couldn't be happier. All week for me is just a prelude to the weekend when I finally get to do what I really want to do: party ( I believe a wise man once said "Everyone's working for it"). I love to party more than the average person, and I sort of consider it a hobby. I love it for many reasons: drinking, staying up late, talking to friends, gambling, people watching, and most importantly, hunting for boys. I love boys. I like them short, I like them tall (mostly tall, the taller the better actually), I like them one, I like them all (they're always adding speakers when they find the room cause they know we love the guys with the cars that go boom). I like to look at them, meet them, flirt with them, talk to them, and touch them (mostly touch them). That's what makes the weekend so exciting. Each week the clock is set back to zero, the game is reset, the evening fresh, new, and undiscovered. Each weekend is ripe with chances for new encounters with boys that could be Mr. Right (mostly Mr. RightNow). I had mostly forsaken this and the other pleasures of the party during the tenure of my relationship. I didn't really have the money to do it and I didn't really have the motivation to do it since I couldn't troll for dudes. I forgot how much I love it! I know that you can theoretically meet dudes during the week, but I'm sort of on a different track during the week. Like I said, I'm driven. The downside of all this mayhem and tomfoolery is that, as the purple one said "Life is just a party and parties weren't meant to last." All good things must come to an end and the weekend is certainly no exception. It wasn't an entirely fruitless one, I did to get hang out with some recycled paramours that I still have fond feelings for, but alas, no fresh meat, so to speak. So that's why Sundays suck. All the excitement is over, the clock has struck 2:30 and the carriage has turned back into a pumpkin. It was still great fun. I got to drink, stay up late, talk to friends, gamble, people watch, and hunt for boys, and considering that I haven't done it for a very long time, it was almost enough. Almost. But, loyal readers, as we all know, next friday will come soon enough. I'll see you there.

Being Right Rules

I am trying to join a research group on Nano Crystallography (dont' ask), and the entrance requirement is rather strange. In order to gain entry you must read a speech by Ernst Ruska (Germans again!), given when he accepted the Nobel Prize for physics for inventing the first electron microscope, which was really just a modified cathode ray oscilliscope. The lecture, it is suspected, was written by hand by Mr. Ruska and then scanned and typed by some Nobel-related admin. This led to 2 apparently very prominent mistakes in the speech which was given uncorrected. So I have to find the two errors. I had found one of the errors and I searched and searched for the second. I finally found one which was a computational mistake regarding the resolution limit for said electron microscopes at diferrent voltages. I'm telling you what, I tried the numbers every which way but backwards and could not get the results he claimed. I was sure this was the error and presented it to my Professor, who really is a nice German guy. He informed me this was not it, and that those numbers were just estimates. I countered that it is not that the estimations are off from the measured values, but that the computations used to get the estimates are off, and that was the last I heard of it. That was about 3 weeks ago. Today Prof. Moeck told me I WAS RIGHT! (using the abbe equation it is not possible to achieve resolution of 2.2 Angstroms using electrons at 75 kV). I asked if that was enough to get me into the group, he said almost. COME ON!!!! That fucking rules, I don't care who you are.

Lord Kelvin; Genius

This is my second blog today because this is an entirely different subject than my other so I thought it prudent to split them up. As you know I like to mix some substance into my blogs, politics, religion, haiku (I love haiku), etc.

Today I'd like to drop some science on you.

So here goes:

Negative temperature is stupid. Negative numbers, as with all mathematic/scientific concepts, have very specific, thorough, and unambigous definitions, with extensive rules governing the way they are used and operated on. Now the cardinality of numbers is not that complicated. Positive numbers mean a surplus, a gain, a having of whatvever they are used to describe. Inversely, negative numbers mean a deficit, a loss, a losing of whatever they are used to describe. In addition, If you experience a series of gains and losses of something you can combine them together additively to find your end quantity. You can perform other similar operations on negative and positive numbers which you probably already know and I won't bore you with, but you get the idea. There are no such operations to be performed on negative temperature. Key to the discussion of negative temperature is 0 degrees. Take for example money. A simple example, I know, but an effective one. 0 represents a distinctive position, at which, on either side, what you are doing with the money changes. If I go one way from 0 I start gaining money and the other I give it away. This is not the case with temperature. There is nothing different that happens at 0, in which we starting giving away heat instead of gaining. The laws of thermodynamics see to it that heat flows from any area of higher temperature to one of lower no matter what their numerical temperature. Okay, okay, you could argue that in the celcius scale water freezes below zero and melts above it, but thats a feeble attempt at rationalization, as the loss/gain normally associated with negative/positive numbers still doesn't apply here. Water does start to expand at low temperatures rather than contract, as all other substances in the world do, but that expansion begins at 4 degrees celsius, when it is still liquid (isn't that weird?). In fact, when all computations involving temperature are performed such as the ideal gas law (PV=nRT, remember?) they are changed out of celsius (or farenheit, but no idiots except us use that) Into the vastly more useful measurement scale of...you guessed it, Kelvin. Unlike fahrenheit a change of 1 degree kelving is equal to a change of 1 degree celsius. What is different is the placement of zero degrees. In Kelvin, 0 degrees is at absolute zero, the lowest possible temperature the universe could ever think to hope to achieve, 273.15 degrees below celsius zero (brrr). And what about below that? There isn't any, BECAUSE TEMPERATURE DOESN'T WORK LIKE THAT!!
So any way, when your kid comes home from middle school and tells you they learned about negative numbers and then proceeds to cite negative temperature as an example (and they will, as it was just such an example in a middle school mathematics text which started this rant), please, PLEASE, for the love of GOD, explain the difference. Thanks

Amber Lauer,
Mrs. Wizard

ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

I'm considering a life-change haircut. Not to be confused with a change-of-life haircut, change-of-life meaning menopause. No, life-change, meaning I dumped my boyfriend and got a real life. Really, I've got this weird bang thing going on that I don't particularly care for, but also I feel I need my hair to reflect how different I feel. Did I mention I'm very particular with my hair? Obsessed really (but Amber, you don't get obsessed!). As I like to say, there are only 2 haircuts I look good with: long or bobbed, both all one length. It's true though. So guess which one I'm going for now? Okay, look for the brand new, better than ever, hot as hell, AMBER 2.0, coming soon to a bar near you. Okay the Sandy Hut.

gre scores

took the GRE this morning.

640 verbal 800 quantitative. Wont get my written analytical score back for 15 days.

update: 4.5 on my analytical. suck. That's out of 6, kiddies. It's really not very good. What do I care, though, after all:

Dammit Jim, I'm a scientist,
not a writer.

Oh, btw, the guy from 'Sean of the Dead' is gonna play Scottie in the new star trek movie. I haven't been this excited about a movie since 'THGTTG' (you better ask somebody). Do you see a theme?

3rd times a charm

why o why are people so fucking stupid? but oh well, the seal has been broken. The demon has been loosed!!! Lock up your sons.

You can't go home again

I am living with my Mom for the first time since I was 17, and it is odd, to say the least. For one, she has a new puppy, a toy poodle, that was a gift from her sister. She would never have bought one on her own. The weird part about it is how much she loves the dog. I have never seen her be this nurturing or affectionate, not even when we were kids. Honestly I don't blame her. She's had three kids and someone has tried to take them all away (not because she's a bad parent, but because divorce is a bitch). This is someone she can love and no one can take her away. Her name is China, because she could have become chinese food. My family's stupid sense of humor, what can I say.

Things I like about living at home:
1. My mom buys groceries like she's opening her own store.
2. My mom cooks like she's opening her own restaurant.
3. It's free.
4. It's temporary.
5. Cable.
6. Nice stuff, including a basement (stays cool in the summer).
7. My mom understands about partying.

Things that suck about living at home:
1. My mom cooks alot of meat.
2. I can't bring boys home.
3. It's in Vancouver.

Well, the good outweigh the bad. I guess I just made one of those pro/cons lists without even knowing about it.

peace.

ps ITS FRIDAY!!!!!!!XX

another way to skin a cat

So you may have seen or heard discussion of 'Schrodinger's Cat' and wondered what it was. Well let me tell you.

Erwin Schrodinger, while famous for his children's stories about cats (not really) is actually more famous for his equation, aka Schrodinger's equation. It is rivaled only by Einstein's theory of relativity in importance in the world of physics, and is a fundamental equation of wave phenomenon. Everything and everyone in the universe has multitude of forms of waves, so it's important.

Back to his cat.

Quantum Physics may sound complicated but its essence is really quite simple. The word quantum is the singular of 'quanta'. Sound like the word quantity? Well it is. Take the humble river for example. As we experience this water, it is an amorphous blob of wet 'stuff' which can exist in infinte variations of quantity. However, you can seperate water into smaller and smaller units until you arrive at the smallest possible unit- the molecule- of water. This was long thought to not be the case with light, until a guy named Max Planck (lots of Germans, I know) came along and proved the contrary. Light, in fact energy in general, exists in smallest discrete units known as quanta. Quantum Physics describes these and other quantized phenomena.

But what about the cat?

Okay, well maybe I'm stalling because I don't entirely buy the quantum cat thing, or maybe I'm worried that the reason I don't buy it is I don't entirely understand it, but either way, here goes.

Say a cat is trapped in an inscrutable box with a vial of poison. The vial is set to break should the box detect a particular radiation. So the question is

Is the cat alive or dead?

According to Schrodinger NEITHER.

Until we open the box and discover what state it is in, we can't know what state it's in because it is 'stateless' until we open the box and discover what state it is in.
Is you mind blow yet? Yah, mine wasn't either.

Really, it was intended in it's bizaareness to expose the ubsurdity of some other interpretations of quantum phenomena, but it's use is often in the affirmative as an axiom of quantum exploration.

The adaptation most interesting to you dear reader is the quantum computer, which has been theorized as the end of electronic security as we know it. Instead of an information based on 2 state switches which always hold either one position or the other, a quantum computer would be in no state until you called upon it for it's data, at which time it would take any number (i'm not sure how many are possible) of positions. Why would it be an end to internet security as we know it? Because most of the sophisticated encryption algorithms in existence rely on the deceptively simple action of factoring very large numbers, albeit with a key. Hacking this  currently requires a mostly brute force method and takes a very long time to crack. The speed with which a quantum computer could do this would be minutes or even seconds, instead of days, weeks, and months (which is too long when they are changed frequently).

Why do I bring this up?
Because of the adaptation which is most interesting to me:

You can reason the options of a decision backwards and forwards for as long as you like, but in the end, you just don't know until you try.

And since you, dear reader, pressed all the way to the end of this over-winded blog, I will bless you with an extra nugget of information:

I'm ready to start bringing some players off the bench.

and the southern cross

Well we cheated
and we lied
and we tested
We never failed to fail
it was the easiest thing to do
You will survive being bested
and Somebody fine will come along
and make me forget about loving you

See, my ex is being a complete dick.
Even though it's to be expected, there's no law that says you can't be cool
when you break up with someone. I didn't want to leave, I made it clear what my beefs were, gave plenty of warning and plenty of chances. I didn't want to leave. So why the fuck do I get crucified?
One of my other male friends who I was hanging out with decided to pick a fight with me right before I was about to leave anyway. I guess so I'd leave sooner. Pick on the vulnerable girl, that's good laughs.
One of my other male friends cannot seem, no matter how long we've known each other, to see me as anything other than an object. And he's one of my oldest friends.
Basically what I'm getting at is I hate everything with a penis right now.

You all fucking suck.

Slip out the back, Jack

I am staring down the barrel of what could be the end of my most significant and lengthy relationship to date, and I'm torn. I'm happy to be rid of some of the weekly battles that caused us to break up, but mostly I'm just sad. Whatever I may say in many of the coming nights that find me drunk, he is one of the truly decent men out there, of which there are few. He is kind, funny, and smart. We just weren't right for each other, and that's truly sad. It's far easier to break up when you hate each other, but when you still have deep feelings it's hard. It came really suddenly (although observers may disagree), out of a place where we were really getting along, and I was in a 'we're gonna make it' phase. It's generally the way I am, though. I get irritated or dissatisfied with something and try and deal with it in various ways until poof, I just make up my mind. Actually, the battles may have just been a symptom of what was really the problem: children. He say's he doesn't want them and I know I do. I have to finish grad school and, hopefully, my PhD before that time, but still...Many times he has said he will probably cave and I'll get my way, but I don't think that's the right way to go about it. I don't want to think about it any more right now or I'll cry.