Room 369

The Last Six Months

2007-11-17T12:39:00.000-08:00

If you hang out around physicists long enough, you eventually hear the theory that time is not linear...in other words, time can speed up or slow down depending on other factors. I don't really believe that theory (or most scientific theories), because physicists have beady eyes, greasy hair, and a proven track record of lying to the public. When was the last time you tripped over some dark matter, or fell into a black hole, or saw any real evidence of gravity? Exactly. It's all smoke and mirrors. But after the last six months I'm starting to believe this theory about time. It seems like June was just yesterday, when I was happily updataing my blog and complaining about the weather being too nice. Now suddenly it's November, the weather has changed to that awesome mix of cold rain and wind that Bostonians love so much, and the Oilers are well into what promises to be an embarassing season of losing to everyone and their backup goalies.

I guess a lot has happened in the past six months. I got married, the Red Sox won the World Series (with zero riot-related fatalities this time), I found out what it's like to work 85 hours a week (it's awesome), Karl Rove resigned, Scott and Jen had the CUTEST BABY EVER, and the world did not sink beneath the oceans while sharks devoured us all. Yet. Now I can only hope that the next twelve months go as fast as the last six...if everything goes according to plan, I'll be finishing my life as a student / feudalistic serf and re-entering the real world as a corporate sellout by next December. There HAS to be a huge job market for people who make lasers and know stuff about cancer but aren't sure what "remittance" or "due diligence" or "net present value" mean.

Well, that's about it for now. (*** start standard empty promise made by all amateur bloggers that is never, ever kept ***) Hopefully I'll have time to update more regularly now that work has calmed down a little bit. (*** end standard empty promise made by all amateur bloggers that is never, ever kept ***)

PS: The global economy will soon implode as every American house is repossessed by the banks and sold to China in exchange for lead-covered childrens' toys. TOXIC MOULD.

I Blame Stuff

2007-06-02T07:49:00.000-07:00

So here it is, the beginning of June, and it's become apparent that I haven't posted anything on here for over a month! Since I grew up in the 1980's and 90's I am incapable of accepting responsibility for my own actions, instead viewing myself as a victim and distributing blame to everything and everyone else that I can think of. Here are the top three reasons that I haven't been blogging lately. One reaon that you will not find on the list is that I'm lazy and uninspired, and am spending all of my free time trying to figure out how to get the junior students in the lab to do my work for me.

1. The government. This one is a perennial favourite amongst Canadians...you see, I am a member of a disadvantaged demographic that has historically been mistreated and oppressed by everyone else in the country if not the world. 600 years ago, Steven Harper's great great great great great grandfather's older brother Jebediah stole my great great great great great grandfather Karl's charcoal and papyrus by cheating in a game of croquet. This one heinous act set in motion a cycle of unfairness whereby all descendants of Karl were denied access to the writing implements necessary for scribbling down instructions on how to not get eaten by grizzly bears, and, by extension, the implements necessary for modern-day blogging. I have therefore been unable to blog effectively because the government has failed to compensate me for the present value of the charcoal and papyrus that were stolen from my ancestors...I estimate the fair value to be $8 billion, but am willing to accept Southern Ontario and all the parts of Alberta containing oil instead. And don't try to pawn Saskatchewan off on me...everyone knows you can't blog with wheat.

2. My parents. On the outside, it may seem like I had an "ideal" childhood...two parents to put food on the table, a little sister to play with, and a guarantee of cake several times per year. But what nobody else saw was what happened when I tried to express my inner blogger at an early age by scribbing all over the walls in permanent marker. My parents, obviously not schooled in modern child pyschology or parentology, would PUNISH ME! By doing things like sending me to my room! Or making me clean up the mess! Clearly, these early experiences were so traumatic and scarring that I can never again be expected to be a productive member of the blogosphere. As a side note, I also blame my little sister for turning into a much much better writer than me, further crushing my meagre blogging aspirations beneath the unstoppable force of her personal media juggernaut.

3. Lolcats. OK, seriously, have you seen these things? How can any decent human being be expected to blog when there are lolcats and lolruses being openly displayed on the internet for everyone to see! The hilariousness of the lolcats (and related lolpresidents) is completely unreasonable, and is probably leading to the downfall of Western civilization. I now demand that the government (which I previously blamed mercillesly) protect us from our own inability to select what we watch on the internet and TV! What if my nonexistant children were exposed to lolcats while doing a harmless internet search for "Louis Riel" or "directions for making potato clocks?" I am just not emotionally or grammatically ready to have a discussion on the meaning of lolcats with them yet, even though I am not actually a parent and don't have any friends who are parents either.

PS: I am concerned that Annie may soon get an H1B visa and become eligible for the new "draft all the foreigners currently standing in our country so we can totally invade Iran's ass" program. Also, drug-resitant tuberculosis being spread by personal injury lawyers on international airline flights will destroy all human and animal life next week.

What the Hell is Facebook?

2007-04-28T10:52:00.000-07:00

So about a week ago Annie was talking about how this friend of hers asked her to join Facebook, and suddenly there were all of these people "friending" her. My first reaction was "what the hell is Facebook?" and my second reaction was "it sounds super nerdy, how do I sign up?" So I joined, and am still learning the ropes, but here's what I've learned so far.

1. EVERYBODY on the planet is on this damn thing, including friends you made in grade 4 while conspiring to steal the girls' art supplies before recess.

2. People will find you and "friend" you at an unreasonably high rate. When people that you haven't talked to in 5 or 10 years add you, you're obligated to update each other on your lives but you've only got a few lines to do it, so it's always goes something like "uhhh I moved to <insert random location very far away from where you last saw them> then got a job at <insert surprising job that you never thought that person would do> and now I'm really into <insert hilarious hobby like miming historical figures from the Civil War era>.

3. I still honestly don't know what you're supposed to do with Facebook...it's not a blog, it's not a personal web site...it seems mostly like a way to increase the narcisism factor in your life. One time I gave my sister a virtual flaming paper bag as a gift, which is the most useful thing I've done so far on Facebook.

4. Sometimes your friends have links to their personal blogs, like this one, which makes you wonder about their emotional stability and gives you the urge to send them sandwiches, just so you know they're eating at least one good meal a day.

So far that's all I know...I'll keep you posted as I delve deeper into this new social experiment.

PS: Yesterday I killed two silverfish in my damn office. Stupid warm weather, hatching all the eggs...

Many Many Many Korean Pictures

2007-04-01T09:39:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody...so after looking at all of our pictures from Korea, I realized that publishing them on my blog probably wasn't the most effective way to share with everybody. So I made a web album in Picasa instead! Now if you want to have a look at the pictures, you can just go here to browse through them all. Enjoy!

LOOOUUUUD NOISES!

2007-03-18T09:41:00.000-07:00

So we're back from Korea and if I had to sum up this amazing trip with one phrase, that's what it would be! Korean culture is definitely different from North American culture in some ways, but I was a little bit surprised at how many similarities there are as well. One big difference is directness...Koreans will tell you exactly what they think of you whether it's positive or negative, which can (to North Americans) end up seeming hilarious, flattering, embarrassing, or rude depending on the circumstances. There also seems to be some differences between acceptable volume levels for "inside voices", as well as the acceptable number of people who can be simultaneously talking at the same time during a conversation. But somehow it works for them!

The similarities are even more striking...the importance of family, the desire for guests to feel welcome and comfortable, patriotism, and the pursuit of education are all very important to Koreans. In fact I'd say that most Koreans take these things much more seriously than most North Americans. During the entire trip Annie's family was incredibly generous and hospitable to us, and was always very concerned that we were warm / comfy / rested / happy / full enough. That last one was especially true...Koreans seem to love food, and I loved eating it! We had some truly great meals, but I won't dwell on that one since I'm sure Annie's blog will cover the food in detail (with pictures)! Instead I guess I'll talk about some of the most interesting things to me that I found out about Korea during this trip...this may have to be a multi-part blog though since there was so much to see!

The Environment

Koreans don't live in harmony with nature...they're locked in a 5000-year-old struggle with it for survival. Since 70% of the country is mountainous, the fruit and rice fields are cut into the slopes in terrain that would boggle the mind of a Saskatchewan farmer. The fact that South Korea grows enough surplus food to send aid to North Korea after feeding its own 48 million residents is pretty amazing, and really illustrates the hard-working nature of the people. The cold climate also explains why the food is so spicy and most meals (including breakfast!) have some sort of soup or stew.

The farming town near where Annie's brother's wedding was held. In the background you can see crops planted half way up the hillside.

Their History
Korean history goes back a long time, since people have continuously inhabited the Han river region for thousands of years. So the people are proud of their past, but are also very driven to succeed in the modern world. A good example of this is Seoul...the Seoul region contains around 23 million people (almost the population of Canada) within a radius of 80 km (smaller than Prince Edward Island), but has all kinds of historical treasures like the five royal palaces built by previous emperors before the Japanese occupation. We showed up for a tour at Changdeokgung just after closing time, but Annie's aunts argued / pleaded with the officials to let us in because we came all the way from Canada. After a few attempts, they succeeded and we got inside! Another case of Korean hospitality! Seoul also has a huge national museum (which we got a whirlwind visit to), a war museum, and a ton of other cultural attractions that will have to wait until our next visit.

Maing gate of Changdeokgung, one of the old palaces in Seoul. The huge park inside the gates would be worth billions to developers, but it's preserved to keep Korean history alive.

Modern Seoul

Alongside the history of Seoul is an energetic, modern city that is amazingly clean considering the population density. Actually Seoul is cleaner than most parts of Boston, and the subway is a joy to ride compared to the grime and crazy homeless people on the Boston T. There are enormous 60- and 70-story apartment complexes, endless restaurants, and of course shopping. Koreans (except for one of Annie's uncles) love shopping! We spent a lot of time finding this out first-hand, at places like the ultra-fancy Lotte World uber-mall as well as the open air Namdaemun market. People in Seoul work very long hours to pay for all the shopping...10-hour days are pretty standard, with 12-hour days not being too unusual. Maybe I should stop complaining about how tough it is being a graduate student...

One of the entrances to Lotte World. Imagine West Edmonton Mall, but without the wavepark, and with more super-high-end stores that only sell "small" and "extra small".

Namdaemun market, which is crammed with clothing, souvenir, and food vendors. Mmmm, spicy rice cakes!

Well that's all for now...more pictures from the trip later, I promise!

I'm Huge in Tehran

2007-02-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

As an ivory-tower head-in-the-clouds academic-type person, one of the nicest complements that you can receive is having another researcher ask for more information about your work. There are moments (or months) when you really wonder if what you're doing is having an impact on science, if anyone is really reading your publications, or if you're just toiling away for $10 an hour on a bunch of crap that is totally inconsequential to everything and everyone else on the planet. So having other people ask you more about your research, and (even better) having other people ask if you could help them incorporate what you've done into their work, really makes you feel good.

Unless they're a bunch of Iranians. Yup, the only people that are interested in my old work from Round 1 in grad school are a group of sketchy characters from the "Tehran Technical University." I keep getting emails from these guys, asking if I can send them the computer code that I wrote to remove noise from our medical images. The emails usually go something like this (no exaggeration):

"Dear mr desmond, my name are Mohammed Istanfazur, student for masters degree science in Tehran Technical University. Your works are the technically and joyous for take out the noise. We would like to also do this thing, for look at the babies or the eye retina. I have tried tried, and have a progress, but have a problem with a step. Please, could you send original code? We keep the confidential and not distribute it. I would be grateful and if you could send, help us a lot. Please send. Yours, Mohammed."

I've gotten three almost identical requests from this school for the same code in the last few months...it's pretty funny, because (a) their grammar is awesome (b) Iran isn't exactly known for its cutting-edge optical coherence tomography research (c) their email addresses are always gmail or hotmail acccounts (d) the "Tehran Technical University" website is 75% broken links and window dressing (e) they're all named Mohammed!

The other funny thing (well kinda) is that the imaging that our lab does is similar to synthetic aperture radar, which is used for satellite reconassaince and military air-search radars. Soooo...if a bunch of guys from Iran ask me to send them an advanced computer algorithm that could be used for enhancing military imagery, what is the correct response? Well I might disagree with a lot of the policies of the current US government, but hey I don't want to get deported!

"Dear Mr. Istanfazur, thank you for your email. I am glad that you've found my work useful. Unfortunately I cannot distribute computer code since this is the policy of our lab. Perhaps you could work together with the other two people from your institution who have also recently contacted me. Together I'm sure you could overcome your difficulties. Good luck. Des"

And if that doesn't work I've always found it useful to blame the American imperialist military-industrial complex, burn a few flags, and declare jihad on the computer. Computer bugs are known to surrender when faced with jihad.

New-ish Stragedy for Un Failure

2007-01-28T12:01:00.000-08:00

January 28, 2007 - Boston, Massachusetts. At an outdoor barbeque sauce cook-off on the front lawn of the White House, the President today unveiled a bold new strategy for turning the tide in the War to Make Des Buy Larger Pants. Speaking while perched precariously in the back of his '84 Dodge pickup truck, which was also parked on the front lawn next to the sauce vats, the President announced that he would be deploying a "surge" of 21,500 additional calories immediately to the battlefield. The plan has sparked controversy due to the spectacular/comical failure of every one of the President's previous plans, to which the new plan bears a shocking resemblance. The President attempted to explain the finer details of the new "surge" plan in between bites of back ribs and swigs of Bud Lite.

"The new calories will be stragedically directed to important-like areas of Des's body. Of the 21,500 calories, 17,000 will be composed of rye whiskey and will be deployed to his ass. I think rye whiskey is good, because that's what Cheney told me to say. Heh heh heh. The remaining 2,640 calories will be composed of cake. Everyone likes cake. Even Osama and Hillary Clinton like cake, and they're the devil. The cake will be deployed to his stomach. This two-pronged thing will work, and will ensure that Americans are safe and secure by making Des buy bigger pants."

When a member of the press pointed out that 17,000 plus 2,640 is significantly less than 21,500, the President responded by yelling "look over there! Terrorists!" and then making his escape on a golf cart driven by Charlton Heston. Democrats, outraged by the the plan's low chances of success, immediately responded by passing a non-binding resolution politely asking the President to please try to take more naps.

In a videotape released on a militant website known to operate as a front for Des and his pants, Des issued the following statement. "I wish this jerk would just leave me and my ass alone! This is just like that time he launched an air raid on The Netherlands for helping Spring back in 2006...except now I'm the victim, not those weird Dutch people with their windmills and pancakes and tulips. Man!"

In other news, the world will soon sink beneath the ocean as global warming melts the ice caps and sharks devour us all.

Christmas in the Arctic

2006-12-17T14:39:00.000-08:00

So here it is, December 17 already, and in just two days Annie and I will be flying to Edmonton to spend Christmas with my family! Note that my family celebrates "Christmas" and not "the ubiquitous winter period of temperate facial expressions and lukewarm handshakes and nondenominational wishes of not-unwellness", so I hope that nobody is offended by the use of the term "Christmas" throughout this blog. Please don't sue me or declare jihad on me, grad students don't make very much money and the only suitable targets for jihad are American skate sharpeners (don't get me started).

Since this might be my last post of 2006 I thought I'd wrap things up with the year in review, in chronological order since you don't get to type "onolo" enough anymore these days. Since a lot of awesome things happened this year, I think I'll do this in sections. And here is section 1!

January 23, 2006: Canadians brave cold and ice to go to the voting polls. A large snowshoe-shaped boot is given to Paul Martin's Liberals, and Stephen Harper's Conservatives form the nation's second consecutive minority government. Deposed limousine-acclimatized Liberal MP's and their heavily conditioned "GTA" supporters ("muuuuuuuust...... vooooooooote........ Liiiiiberal") immediately accuse Harper of being a secret agent for the CIA who secretly tortures puppies and hippies in the basement of his secret Alberta farm which is secretly plastered with secret adoring posters of George W. Bush. Dismay follows when the Conservatives actually follow up on the majority of their campaign promises, lowering the GST and passing tougher anti-crime laws (for example).

February 13, 2006: Dick Cheney, the Vice President of the United States of America, the guy who holds the authorization codes to launch an apocalyptic nuclear strike 24 hours a day......shoots a man in the face and chest!!! Oh man, whenever I think about this I crack up. The second most powerful man in the world blasted a 78-year-old friend with a shotgun while they were hunting together in Texas. Cheney at one point blamed the victim (like any good defense lawyer), saying that his geriatric hunting companion "shouldn't have been standing there" when Cheney fired. I wonder if the rest of the Bush administration applied that same logic to Iraq..."hey, we were just flying around dropping bombs and plowing over things with our tanks. It's not our fault that Iraq was standing there when we did it. Look out, terrorists! Vote Republican."

March 3, 2006: Research in Motion (RIM) agrees to pay tiny American patent holding company and general pain-in-the-ass NTP a sum of $612.5 million dollars in order to license NTP's contested patents which NTP claims RIM technology was infringing on. The NTP patents in question were basically something like "methods for transmitting and receiving information over a radio link", which is pretty much the stupidest thing you can imagine receiving a patent for. Some interesting equivalents would be "methods for using electron flow to create electricity" and "methods for exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide to facilitate not dying." The NTP patents are, later in the year, declared invalid by the US Patent Office...laughing and back-slapping and naps in the money pile ensue at NTP, while RIM follows up by releasing the hottest-selling smart phone in the world. Kind of makes you weep for the future of technological innovation.

Well, I guess I'll finish April to December later. Gotta go eat Christmas cookies!

Black Friday

2006-11-23T11:56:00.000-08:00

So tomorrow is "Black Friday" here in America, the day when stores get people to line up outside in the cold and rain for 12 hours before opening at 5:00am, lured by the chance to get one of the six combination beer cooler / battery chargers that the store has discounted at 30% off. Holy hell people, now you can enjoy a cool and tasty beer while you're watching your batteries recharge! And for 30% off!!! They're not messing around...and if store happens to sell out of the best deals before you even come close to getting inside, well, you've already put in all that effort so you may as well drop a few hundred bucks on other stuff that you don't really need or even want, right? Maybe someone will get you The Beercoolercharger for Christmas. Anyway, Black Friday is kind of like the Boxing Day sales in Canada except every year a few old/sick people get trampled to death and there's at least one shooting.

"Step off muthafucka, that be MY commemorative Lindsey Lohan action figure, fo shizzle!"

All of the forthcoming awesomeness got me to thinking, what would a thoughtful constituent pick up tomorrow for his or her probably-unseated Republican senator or congressman? I'd like to make the following suggestions, which are actual sale items for tomorrow. Happy shopping, red states!

1. Garth Brooks special edition DVD set - $15. Now your depressed former representative can find solace in catchy (and appropriate) tunes like "Friends in Low Places", "Unanswered Prayers", and "Why Ain't I Running?" Just keep Mark Foley away from "To Make You Feel My Love"...I think the underage male congressional pages would appreciate it.

2. Nerf Showtime! Hoops - $99.96. Remember when senior Republican officials commented that the case for Iraq having weapons of mass destruction was a "slam dunk?" Well now they can dream up all the imaginary slam dunks they want, Nerf style! As an added bonus, a fantasy-world Showtime! Hoops slam dunk won't result in the deployment of a single infantry division! Neat!

3. Magellan RoadMate 3000T GPS System - $399.99. So you lost your seat to the Democrats...luckily there are still PLENTY of inbred Confederate-flag-waving hillbilly slack-jawed yokels in this country who will vote for you, no matter how many laws you push that will keep them poor and stupid, because you've got the right "values" or whatever. But how do you find the states filled with people like this? With a GPS system for your Cadillac! That's right, now all of the Republicans from moderate states can easily navigate their way to Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas to prepare for the 2010 elections. And if the batteries in the GPS die, they can just follow the smell of fried Twinkies.

4. Ice Age: The Meltdown - $9.99. Need something to pass the time now that your days aren't filled with lowering taxes for the wealthiest 1% of the population? Watch this hilarious fictional cartoon! It's great because it's so unbelievable and not rooted in science! I mean, the idea that the climate could change, causing undpredictable effects and altering many aspects of life on the planet...that's the funniest and most obviously not real thing ever! Hahaha! Oil is awesome.

5. Girl Crush Lip Gloss Potion - $13.99. One major reason for the implosion of Republican support this year was a mass migration of female voters back to the Democrats...if only there were a way to win them back. Hmmm, what do women love...well, there's lip gloss...yeah, now if only there were a way to create your own lip gloss, designed to appeal to the female voting segment. If only there were...a POTION! Yes! This is it! The way to win back power. And for only $13.99 your local Republican could buy it for himself, even though he's probably lost all of his rich lobbyist friends by this point.

Anyone else have any ideas?

Good = Not Bad

2006-11-09T17:29:00.000-08:00

There are some days when it seems like all is lost in the world. There are days when your milk has gone bad, even though it's 5 days before the expiry date, and you just need a little tiny bit to make scrambled eggs. There are days when the secretary and her gang of South Boston facilities friends make popcorn in the microwave and the whole office ends up smelling like chemical butter flavour. There are days when you realize that said chemical butter flavour causes lung cancer in chemical butter flavour factory employees, much like asbestos or smoking or living in Michigan. There are days when your lab head tells you to spend 10 hours machining a bunch of parts because "$40 is way too much to pay for them commercially." There are days when you want to put up signs in the washroom that say "if you can't figure out how to piss in the urinal or crap in the toiler or flush either of the above, maybe you shouldn't be at this school." There are even days, my friends, when you run out of tape in your labeller and can't label anything...ANYTHING. Imagine unlabelled lasers. The horror.

Today was not such a day.

Today the 2006 mid-term election in the United States of America officially concluded with the Republican incumbent senator from Virginia conceding defeat to his Democratic challenger. With this sad little whimper, six years of total domination by the right wing in this country has ended. There were no legal challenged (well, yet), no angry allegations of voter fraud, no backdoor maneuverings to stop recounts, no rejecting of ballots because someone kinda looked like they might have been a criminal once maybe. The Republicans knew that they were finished, that the public here has had enough, and that it's time to pay the piper.

Days like today can reaffirm your faith in people...you can believe that people do still think for themselves, that given enough time they will see through the lies, and that given enough suicide camel bombings they will question the policies they've been supporting since 2003. Maybe this is the start of something bigger...maybe people will wake up to the urgent need to address the ways that we produce energy. Maybe people will start questioning the wisdom of preaching tolerance and understanding for beliefs that go against all of the freedoms and liberties that Western culture has spent the past 500 years building up. Maybe people will start walking their dogs twice a day, because hey, dogs like it. Or maybe this is where it will end...either way, the world is a better place than it was 48 hours ago, and whenever you can say that you gotta grab the opportunity.

Idea Vaccuum

2006-10-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the smartest person I know left our lab. He was a post-doc here for the last 3 years, and is returning to Germany to start down the path for becoming a professor in Munich. Originally he was supposed to be here for a year, but ended up staying much longer because (in his own words) "progress was pretty slow." If you look at his first week on the job and last week on the job, that actually seems true. The first week he was here, our PI (principle investigator / professor-type person that runs the lab) told him that he should work on building a swept-wavelength laser for imaging the retina. Last week, we finished taking the first 3D datasets of human (ie, my own) retinas with just such a laser. In keeping with the academic tradition of finishing everything at the very last second, we were scheduling the imaging runs around the times when people were showing up at his apartment to buy his furniture. But in the end, everything worked out.

What happened in the 3 years in between is a bit hard to describe...basically he spent the first year trying a bunch of unsuccesful designs that were pretty much doomed to failure. In the second year though, he came up with a new kind of laser that is dramatically changing the OCT (that's optical coherence tomography) world...basically we can now image much, much faster than was ever possible, and suddenly things like imaging the entire esophagus or the entire retina in just a few seconds are looking reasonable. Over the last year, I was lucky enough to work with him on refining the lasers and doing some initial demonstration experiments, and man, the future's so bright I gotta wear laser safety shades.

There's a saying in academia that when you get your B.Sc. degree, you think you know everything. When you get your M.Sc. degree, you realize that you know nothing. And when you get your Ph.D., you realize that nobody else knows anything either. I think that's pretty true...there were many, many times when we were working in the lab all day, getting nowhere, and then one of us would yawn, stretch, and say "you know, we have NO IDEA what we're doing, do we?" And it was true! But somehow we ended up destroying all the OCT imaging speed records out there...the thing about a guy like him is that he knows how to stay creative and inventive even in the face of terrible results and massive frustration. I learned from him that even if you don't know what you're doing, you have to keep thinking and pushing and eventually you'll find that you're not quite as confused as you used to be.

The lab will miss him, and his never-ending flow of ideas...me, I'm just thankful that I had almost a year to learn from him.

Lets Get it Started in Here

2006-08-22T05:35:00.000-07:00

Usually, it's good to laugh...whether it's at the hilarious new direct-to-DVD Pauly Shore movie, or at an old friend who's just broken his femur in a tragic (but funny) waffle-eating accident. But sometimes you feel guilty for laughing...especially when it involves retarded people.

True story #1, June 2006: so we're watching game 3 of the Stanley Cup finals, Edmonton vs. Carolina, and it's the first game being played in Edmonton. We're over at another couple's apartment who happen to be from Illinois, having a good time as we get ready for the game to start, even though they're cheering for Carolina since they clearly have terrible taste in hockey teams. Finally, the pre-game show ends and they cut to Rexall Place in Edmonton...everyone is cheering, standing up, and the atmosphere is electric. The fat singer guy (Paul Oriel?) sings the American anthem with the fans cheering him on. Then he starts into the Canadian anthem...and after the first verse, raises the microphone to the crowd. Every person in the arena is singing along, and it's a truly unique and Canadian moment. The TV cameras cut to Joey Moss, who is absolutely singing his heart out, giving it everything he has. It's absolutely heartwarming to see him singing the anthem with so much enthusiasm, proud to be Canadian and proud to be part of the Oilers.

My friend: "Hahahahahaha! Look at that guy sing! Hahahaha! He looks hilarious! Hahah! Man, what's wrong with that guy???"

-- long pause --

Me: "That's Joey Moss......he's retarded."

-- long pause --

My friend: "Uhhh...oh...that's sweet...."

-- laughter erupts --

True Story #2, August 2006: So we're playing ultimate in Boston, out at our usual field which we've been playing on all season. The game is about 3/4 over and we're well on our way to another loss as usual. All of a sudden, everyone starts yelling "hold on, hold on" as two random guys have walked into the endzone. Someone politely asks them to walk around the field, but the two random guys just stand there. Confused looks are exchanged. The random guys are again asked to walk around the field, to which they reply "no, it's OUR field!" By this time people are really confused, especially since the two random guys are acting REALLY strange...one guy is holding his arm close to his body, walking unevenly, and slurring his speech. The two random guys insist that they in fact have a permit for the field, and that WE are on THEIR field, and that we should leave. Tempers flare, and a couple of the ultimate players decide to forcibly remove the random guys from the field.

From the sidelines, Annie Kim is heard to remark... "HEY, why is everyone beating up on those two retarded kids???"

Turns out they weren't retarded, just drunk and high, but I can understand her mistake!

True Story #3, August 2006: So we're over at a friend's place for a barbeque, and he's telling us about this 30-year-old guy who lives near his building that's always riding around on bikes that are three sizes too small with a helmet that's seven sizes too small, at all times of the day and night. Quote... "Yeah, we thought he was retarded for a really long time, but it turns out he just likes riding around on bikes."

Oh man, those stories aren't that funny, and I feel shame.

Last Post from Boston for a While

2006-07-17T05:48:00.000-07:00

I know I haven't posted very much this month, but things have been totally insane at work...everyone was trying to finish experiments and write up submissions for the big biomedical optics conference in San Jose next year, and the deadline is today. So after two weeks of 12 - 14 hour days and no weekends, it's over and I'm pretty happy with the results. For example, we took this wicked picture of my retina...look, it's creepy!!!

Anyway I'm going home to Edmonton on Wednesday, so maybe I'll post once or twice from north of the border.

PS: My favourite George W. Bush quote so far from the G-8 meeting this week... "Russia is big, and so is China." Wow...profound words from the master of international policy. Maybe we'll get some more gems like "chili hurts my tummy" and "cows are smelly" before the meeting wraps up.

A Stealth Bomber with a side of Cure For Cancer

2006-06-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

(Warning: my accountant girlfriend has just told me that this blog subject is, like many of my blog subjects, "boring")

So I was reading the Globe & Mail online today, since it's one of the only ways to get Canadian news here in Massachusetts, and I came across an article describing the government's plan to spend $15 billion on new military equipment. Actually it wasn't that hard to find the article since it was plastered on the front page (front memory block?) of the site, since this issue will no doubt be a contentious one in Canada. I personally think that this is a good idea, since our military is driving/flying/rowing around in antiquated vehicles that are clearly not up to the tasks that we're asking them to perform. And yes, we could save the money by not participating in any NATO missions and only tasking them with snow removal in Toronto when the city goes into "fuckup mode" (thanks Heather!), but what happens when their donkey-drawn battle trolleys get bogged down while trying to tow the snow into Lake Ontario?

Anyway, that's not the point. The point is that $15 billion is a LOT of money. The point is also that $15 billion is a TINY amount of money compared to the US defence budget. All of which got me to thinking...if the United States needed a smaller military, what else could be accomplished? I'm not going to do some crazy calculation and say "what if the United States had NO military", just smaller, like maybe 20% smaller. OK...the total US defence budget is $426 billion dollars (NOT including funding for the war in Iraq). A 20% decrease in precision-guided shock-and-aweing would free up approximately $85 billion, leaving the US with $341 billion to buy huge rocks to drop on Middle Eastern theocracies from space or whatever. With that money, here is what could be accomplished:

1. Buy six times the amount of military equipment that Canada is planning to purchase and give it to Greenland, Canada's sworn enemy in the north, just to get back at us for exporting Celine Dion to Las Vegas.

2. Hahaha...okay that first one was a joke. But now I'll be serious. Give every man, woman, and child in the country $300, which is enough to equip every person with a brand new Xbox 360!

3. Okay okay...for real. Quadruple the budget of the National Insitutes of Health. The NIH funds the vast majority of biomedical research groups in the US, and if someone ever finds a cure for cancer or diabetes or influenza or Republicanism, it will be because of an NIH grant.

4. Increase funding for Pell grants (federal scholarships that the US gives out to students who are too poor to afford university on their own, which is pretty much everyone) by a factor of 7. Can you imagine the impact on society if 7 times more people obtained postsecondary education here??? This is a bit simplified since there aren't enough spaces in the colleges for this many people, but you could probably split the money between grants to students and grants to schools to increase the number of graduates by a factor of 2-3.

5. Provide fully subsidized health care to about 42 million people. 42...MILLION...people. That's based on what my health insurance costs are (unsubsidized) in Massachusetts, which is one of the most expensive states to be insured in. It would probably be something like 50 million people if you averaged the cost over all 50 states.

6. Create 21 gigawatts of solar power generation, which could provide as much power as approximately 20 nuclear reactors. Sure you'd have to pave New Mexico with solar panels, but there's nothing there anyway.

There are tons more things that you could do with $85 billion besides liberating countries to death...anybody out there have any more ideas?

Ammunition Day

2006-05-27T09:33:00.000-07:00

So it's the first long weekend of the summer here in the U.S., and as always I was having a hard time remebering the name of the holiday on Friday. Luckily my helpful officemate reminded me that it's Memorial Day...when I asked him what we were supposed to be memorializing (memorizing?), I wasn't too surprised when he said "soldiers." I like to joke around with people here because all of their holidays seem to involve freedom or liberty or eagles or war or justice or apple pie or something, whereas in Canada all of our holidays are about the Queen. So I thought I'd write down all of the official federal holidays here and give you non-Americans some insight into what people here get to celebrate with a day off of work.

New Year's Day: start off the year with a holiday that's NOT about blowing shit up, but celebrate with fireworks anyway

Martin Luther King Jr. Day: honours a guy that fought for civil rights, but probably wouldn't be a holiday if he hadn't been shot

Lincoln Day: not a federal holidy, but observed with a day off in many states (including Massachusetts). This day also exists solely because somebody got shot...you might argue with this, but there's no Roosevelt day and he was every bit as kickass as Lincoln. Interesting to note that with stricter gun control laws, the US would already be down two holidays (MLK Jr. and Lincoln).

President's Day: a day to celebrate the birthday of George Washington, who is currently being described in ads for a TV miniseries as "America's first action hero." Made famous, of course, by blowing up the British.

Good Friday / Easter Monday: NOT a holiday in the US! The Americans miss out on a perfectly good opportunity to have a day off that doesn't involve shelling something.

Memorial Day: recognizes all of the fallen soldiers from all of the wars that the US has fought, originally conceived to honour (oops, honor) the civil war dead. This war, of course, started when they ran out of British to shoot and had to resort to shooting themselves.

Independence Day: a day that I like to refer to as "America Day", this is their second go-around at celebrating how much they blew up the British. Also celebrated with fireworks, to symbolize all of the blowing up that occured. Stands in contrast to Canada Day, which is also celebrated with fireworks for some reason, even though we got our independence from Britain by waiting 100 more years and then asking politely.

Labor Day: Not to be confused with LaboUr day in Canada, this holiday does not involve any kind of ammunition or assasination. 2nd such holiday in the year, it occurs in September.

Columbus Day: a celebration of the day that Europeans began their conquest of North America by shooting all of the natives. This holiday commemorates the first use of heavy weapons on the continent.

Veterans Day: seems somewhat similar to Memorial Day, and falls on the same day as Remembrance Day in Canada. Last holiday of the year that deals with blowing stuff up. In all seriousness, a very important holiday for every one of us.

Christmas: the third and final holiday that doesn't involve war or hydrogen bombs, but it takes the birth of the SON OF GOD HIMSELF to force this one onto the calendar. May have been replaced with "tank day" or "damn did we blow up the British good" day, barring this event.

Strange but true!!!

Alert Level Magenta! MAGENTA!

2006-05-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

Boston, Massachusetts - May 6, 2006

UPDATE: As Spring continues it's insidious and unpredictable spread throughout New England, the U.S. government has raised the national Holy Shit level from Burnt Orange to Magenta. The colour-coded warning system is designed to provide citizens with an easy-to-understand assesment of exactly how terrified they should be on any given day, with the lowest level Paisley corresponding to "you are somewhat unlikely to be killed today, but double-bolt the doors and seal your house with plastic wrap just to be safe" and the highest level Eggshell corresponding to "immenent death and destruction, unless you elect a Republican." Magenta, the current level, indicates that "they could strike at any time, anywhere, with any weapon, but we don't know when, or where, or who they are, but it's really really bad."

This troubling development comes in response to a recent resurgence by Spring, which had been driven back amid a series of cold, depressing rain showers throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Just two weeks ago, following his weekly grammar briefing and nap time, President Bush had gone on the air telling the world that Spring was "on the run", crediting the invasion of Iraq for the success against Spring. The President also linked the invasion to lower nation-wide circus ticket prices, a rise in the number of late-night Taco Bell drive thru locations, and an overall feeling of awesomeness that can only come from pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the desert.

However with reality inconsiderately contradicting the President's statements that Spring would be "hunted down and brought to justice, Judge Judy style", the administration had no chance but to react with further measures. In addition to replacing the White House chief of staff, deputy chief of staff, press secretary, secretary of the treasury, and director of the CIA with a series of country singers, Texas BBQ chefs, and a rodeo clown, the President also instructed the Pentagon to draw up plans for air strikes on Belgium. The President's new press secretary, Mr. Goofy Shoes the Rodeo Clown, explained that "everyone knows Spring is being given safe haven in Belgium, which has a long and evil history of doing all kinds of bad and un-American things...like that time they started World War 2, or when they tried to beat usat olympic basketball." Apparently, economic and political sanctions were briefly considered to force Belgium to comply with demands to stop aiding and abetting the spread of Spring, but in the end the military option won out since it's way harder to make a Fox miniseries about sanctions.

War on Pollen...ism

2006-04-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

Boston, Massachusetts - April 19, 2006.

In a bold and unexpected move, Spring made a dramatic frontal assault on Boston this week, releasing pollen into the air and confusing citizens with an onslaught of colours and odours. There were unconfirmed reports of trees, formerly thought harmless due to their dead appearence, sprouting leaves at an alarming rate which could only be explained by bioterrorism or possibly witchcraft. Strange behaviour was reported amongst the local residents, who recklessly removed heavy winter jackets and proceeded to lounge on the grass while consuming ice cream. Authorities belive that this may be due to neurotoxins released by Spring, but also speculated on a link to Iranian secret agent spy-types.

When reached for comment at an undisclosed location, President Bush issued the following statement. "hmmummaa........freedom. Terrorists...bad. What? Smoke 'em out...on the run...liberty. Values! Get 'em...American pie. Axis of Evil...eagle, free, democracy. Constant threat? Freedom." Vice-president Dick Cheney responded to the news by shooting Spring in the face and chest, eventually commenting that he didn't mean to do it and Spring shouldn't have been standing there when he fired.

I Need Home For a Rest

2006-04-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

I miss that town, I miss the faces.

You can't erase, you can't repalce it.

I miss it now, I can't believe it.

So hard to stay, too hard to leave it.

--Nickelback, "Photograph"

Well, it's been a busy few weeks for us here...Annie and I had two of our best friends from Edmonton come for a visit two weeks ago, and now two of her friends from Montreal are here for the weekend. It's nice having people from Canada come to visit, since it reminds me of all the things I love about home. Even Annie's Quebecois friends are making me miss home, but more in an "I-miss-all-things-Canadian" way than when Scott and Jen were here, which was an "I-miss-Edmonton" kind of thing. Home (at least for me) is a funny thing when you think about it...Edmonton is a city of less than a million people in the middle of absolutely nowhere, where it's so cold in the winter that you will likely die if you stay outside for an hour, where there is none of the bustle or atmosphere or history of other places I've lived, but the longer I'm away the more I realize that I want to eventually end up back there.

I know a lot of the reason why I want to eventually move back is because my family and friends are there (except for my little sister who will hopefully one day stop being crazy and move back from Toronto), and because I grew up there. And as Annie put it, "your mom would totally love to be our free daycare service!" This is definitely true. But there are other reasons too...I like the relative isolation of the city, for one thing. I think it's great that you can drive for 20 minutes and be in the middle of nature, even if "nature" is densely populated with cattle. I like the small size of the population...there's no traffic, no crowds (except for WEM on Boxing Day), and you can buy more than a 500 sq ft condo with your $400,000 25-year mortgage. And when the Americans invade Canada because of our covert nucelar weapons program, you KNOW that Alberta is the place they'll shock-and-awe the least because that's where the oil is!

Yup, Edmonton is always going to be home...all the other places I've lived are great for their own reasons, and it would certianly be easier for me to find a job in Ottawa or Vancouver or Toronto (hahahah, oh wait, no, I'm never gonna live in Toronto!). But you can't see the northern lights in Ottawa and you can't learn to skate on a pond in Vancouver, and those are both things that I want my as-yet-to-exist children to experience.

PS: damn I can't believe I had to use Nickelback lyrics for this post...

The government, they promised me a measly little sum,
But I've got too much pride to end up just another bum.
Then I thought "who gives a damn if all the jobs are gone?"
I'm gonna be a pirate on the river Saskatchewan!

--Captain Tractor, "Pirates of Saskatchewan"

Education or Electrolysis

2006-03-21T18:20:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've been following the story about an Afghan man who is under arrest for converting to Christianity. As I understand it, he may be put on trial and may face a death sentence for his crimes since the Islamic beliefs that form the basis of Afghan civil law prescribe death for apostasy (abandoning your religion). Of course the US government has weighed in on the side of religious freedom, and thankfully (but slightly surprisingly) the European and Canadian governments have also condemned the trial with varying degrees of severity. I think that Canada is officially "very concerned", while Italy is considering withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan. The Afghan government, which is relatively moderate, seems to understand that their country is 100% dependant on Western economic and military aid, and wants the case to go away. The Afghan judiciary, which is largely filled with conservative Muslim clerics (they do make for terrific judges), is pushing for prosecution and execution by beheading.

These events raise a whole host of issues that we should be openly debating...should we provide miliary and economic aid to a country that flagrantly violates the most basic of human rights? What does it mean when Western Muslim gropus angrily condemn and protest a cartoon, but, through their comparative silence, implicitly condone the practice of executing Christian converts? Would it be a neat experiment to write someone a $13.74 ticket for being Muslim in North America, and then use a millisecond timer to determine how long it takes for the car bombs to start going off? I think what this all comes down to is the huge chasm between Western and conservative Muslim values, a chasm that has probably existed for a long time but which is only coming into focus now due to the increased contact and friction between the two cultures. I also don't think that we'll ever have peace between the cultures unless we reduce the chasm somehow.

So how do we do this? Well, one option that used to be pretty popular south of the 49th parallel went something like "pretend the have the bomb, invade them, take their oil, instantly transform them into freedom-hugging democracies, high-five ourselves, then go back to Texas for some BBQ." Turns out that doesn't work so well (who knew???). A better approach, in my mind, is education...there are certain inescapable conclusions that you come to when you learn about the world in a secular, non-jihad-centric manner. Some of these undeniable realities are that the world is a very complicated and interconnected place, that because of this there are many points of view to every issue, that to truly understand something you need to consider as many points of view as possible, that one of the most valuable human gifts is our ability for free and independant thought, and that authoritarian dogma which supresses that gift usually does so for purely self-serving reasons. I don't know if it's been proven, but I'm pretty sure that the number of hijacked airplane-bombs taking out office towers is inversely proportional to the number of people capable of reasoned thought in the world. I think education might also have a bit of an impact on economic growth, national development, quality of life, and all of those other neat things that Muslim countries might be able to use.

The problem is that the common people living in many Muslim countries don't want to be educated. Or rather, the people that control the countries don't want them to be educated, and the people don't even know enough to KNOW that they don't know enough. Religion is a terrific way to control people, whether you're Christian or Jewish or Muslim, and increased education almsot inevitably makes people less willing to follow their religious leaders blindly. Not that I think education and religion are mutually exclusive...I think that one balances the other, and that you need to have both to really understand the world. But for authoritarian theocratic rulers to stay in power, they need to command with the fear of God since they don't really have much else going for them (like any interest or ability to improve the lives of their citizens). So, keep the people in the dark ages, control them with a twisted interpretation of a religion, and when somebody tries to "leave the compound" by converting to another religion, it's execution time in the town square.

So I think we have two options...Option 1: stick in it for the long run, slowly try to bring knowledge and balance to the parts of the world that need it most, in the process narrowing the value chasm between our cultures, and maybe maybe maybe eventually bringing about some kind of peaceful coexistance. Option 2: develop cheap, reliable hydrogen-based power generation, electrolyze a couple of lakes, power the West for 200 years, withdraw completely from the Middle East and let the people suffer forever. Both options probably involve the same amount of effort, but the first one seems better to me for some reason.

Whitebread, Vermont

2006-03-05T15:24:00.000-08:00

Jock-O-Rama on the brain,
Redneck-a-Thon drivin' me insane.
The future of America is in their hands,
Watch it roll over Niagara Falls

--Dead Kennedys, "Jock-O-Rama"

Last weekend, Annie and I took a road trip from Boston to northern Vermont and (briefly) Ayer's Cliff, Quebec to get her American work visa. The scenery was beautiful (except for the I90-to-I93 interchange), the conversation was enjoyable, and the border guards on both sides of the imaginary line were quite pleasant. Sure the American guards were heavily armed, but they seemed nice enough and I felt like it was pretty unlikely that they were going to shoot anyone. They were even relatively friendly to the two guys in the car behind us, one of whom was dressed in pyjamas and the other of whom looked like a skinhead, as they claimed that they visited "a couple of spots" in Quebec and were doing "nothing really" in the car that "belonged to this other guy's mom, I think, or something". I bet the border police even warmed up their hands before the cavity search.

For the most part, the trip was totally incident-free...well, unless you count the unplanned detour that took us 3/4 of the way to Hartford instead of back to Boston. Turns out it's a bad idea to fall asleep just before an important Interstate intersection when your girlfriend is driving. :) The only other bad part of this trip was lunch.

So around 12:30, we were getting really close to the border but needed to get gas. Since gas is cheaper in the US and I get paid the equivalent of $10/hour, we decided to stop in a tiny little town just off the highway. Actually "town" probably isn't the right word, since I didn't see any houses, just a couple of gas stations, a Ford dealership, the McDonald's, and a veterinary clinic that shared a building with a diner. We decided to eat at the only restaurant not directly attached to a place where they incinerate dead animals. We parked the car, Annie very happy about the prospects of a McChicken meal with a diet coke, me somewhat nervous about the health laws in a town that lets vet clinics and greasy-spoons cohabitate.

As soon as we walked into the lunch-rush-packed McBuilding, we both felt instantly uncomfortable. For Annie, I think it was because every other person in there was white and a lot of the kids were openly staring at her. For me, it was because a significant fraction of the people (males AND females) were wearing NASCAR jackets and/or NASCAR hats and were talking with what honestly sounded like Alabama accents. Even if I hadn't walked in holding hands with my Korean-Canadian girlfriend, this place would have freaked me out...I think I got almost as many stares for my spikey hair as she did for her straight black hair. Anyway, we both felt incredibly uncomfortable so we slammed down our McFood and got the hell out of there as quickly as possible.

Now, I should say that we didn't really feel any animosity or "we don't serve your kind here" vibes from these people. It was more like we were a spectacle, something that they never see, something different that didn't quite fit. And even though I'd never go back to that town, I think the experience was educational for me because now I think I understand a little bit about what makes a state "red" instead of "blue" (Republican vs. Democratic for the non-politcal-junkies).

I think towns like that one make up the majority of the population in the red states, and I'm sure that towns like that one don't make a lot of use of the Democrat checkbox on their voter registration forms. They're relatively isolated, homogenous, conservative...they know how things have always been, and are maybe a little bit afraid of things changing...ideas that go against their view of the world or how things should be makes them uncomfortable...they go to church (nothing wrong with that), listen to the minister (nothing wrong with that), and probably don't question anything that he or the President tells them (everything wrong with that). And right now in the United States, people like this make up slightly more than 50% of the country's population, so the direction of the country is in their hands.

The problem is that the world is a complicated, interconnected, rapidly changing, shades-of-grey kind of place. People may want things to stay the same forever, or for everyone to share their values or ideas of what's important for a country, but that's simply not possible anymore (if it ever was). Politicians that cater to voters like this may be able to win an election based on demographics, but when they implement policies or start wars that embody this way of thinking it sets the country back years or decades. I think that people in the red states and towns are hard-working, intelligent people who appreciate the truth...they just need leaders to stop treating them like children, and level with them about the future. Things will continue to change, everyone needs to adapt, the solutions aren't simple, and they're going to have to get used to seeing people that don't look like themselves at the McDonalds.

Well I was born in a small town,

And I can breathe in a small town.

Gonna die in this small town,

And that's probably where they'll bury me.

--John Mellencamp, "Small Town"

Cracks in the Bell Curve

2006-02-24T21:04:00.000-08:00

They deftly maneuver and muscle for rank,

Fuel burning fast on an empty tank.

Reckless and wild, the pour through the turns.

Their prowess is potent and secretly stearn.

--Cake, "The Distance"

With the Winter Olympics and all the accompanying Olympics-themed fast food promotions in full swing (Dunkin' Donuts is now offering, for a limited time only, gold, silver, bronze, and thank-for-coming-out flavoured imitation cream cheese spread on their imitation bagels), I've been thinking a bit about our need to rank things. Whether it's athletic accomplishments, beauty, musical talent, cooking ability, intelligence, etc etc etc, we expend a huge amount of time and energy determining who is the best (or worst) in a huge number of categories. Sometimes these rankings are created solely to sell magazines by giving people something to complain about...I myself am guilty of buying Maclean's annual university review issue just so I can bitch about how the rating system is skewed towards Ontario schools. Other people buy every third issue of Cosmo so they can bitch about how Ashley Simpson/Tara Reid/Steve Guttenberg beat out Jean Cretien/The Hindenburg/Kim Cattrall in the Top 10 Best Cowboy Dances/Worst Disasters Caught on Film/Most Awesomest Police Academy Cast Members lists. But I think that a lot of the importance we place on rankings is because they somehow tell us in an objective, detached, emotionless manner exactly where we stand in the world.

To some degree, I guess this is a normal human desire...we want to feel good about ourselves for being somehow "better" than a group of people who are ranked lower at something than us, and we want to know how much harder we need to work to cath up to the people "ahead" of us. Producing rankings for certain things like productivity, body mass index, or grades can motivate us to work harder, improve our health, and study more. However, placing too much importance on rankings can lead to burn-out, eating disorders, and transfering from a real faculty into business school (yes, Sloanies, this means you). This effect gets amplified in populations where people are all very similar and all very competitive, since the criteria for differentiation between levels of awesomeness become tighter and tighter. Just listen to Olympic figure skating commentators and I think you'll agree..."well John, I'm shocked and disgusted with the Rumanian's performance. I mean, her left toe pick was AT LEAST two millimetres too far to the left when she landed that quintuple-reverse-backflip. What does she think this is, Spongebob Squarepants on Ice? I don't see anyone in a jellyfish costume, Ivona!" Ivona comes in 29th overall and has to return to her job in the whale blubber packing plant, while the girl who landed the jump with her toepicks properly aligned gets (is forced to?) meet the president.

While the Olympics are probably the ultimate example of achievement-hair-splitting, the western bank of the Charles is also pretty good at amplifying these effects to ridiculous levels of ridiculousness. When TA's assign grades to their students, the difference between an A and a B often comes down to missing two or three questions over the course of the semester. Sure there are some people that clearly deserve their D's (like the kid that handed in a photocopy of his friend's -handwritten- homework once), but for the most part all of these people know what they're doing and are very good students. Still, undergrads and grad students alike compete fiercly with one another for the limited number of available A's, and put themselves under huge amounts of stress to move up in the rankings.

Now, I've already come to accept the fact that I'm really kickass at being a mediocre grad student. This kind of mindset allows you to stay sane while your colleagues throw themselves off the top of Building 10. But sometimes the urge to rank yourself and compare yourself to the people around you is still pretty strong. The other day I was giving a lecture (since the professor got stuck in California due to some snow scaring all the airplanes away from New England) to a bunch of grad students in nonlinear optics. If you just went "WTF is nonlinear optics", then you pretty much know as much about it as me. So I'm lecturing from his notes, trying to sound like I understand more than 2% of the material, when I get to a page that made zero sense when I went over it before class and somehow made negative sense when I reached it in lecture.

Since the class is half-full of Harvard physics students who really, really, really like math (what a loser school), they of course start to ask me questions. I started to freak out internally...what if they think I don't know what I'm talking about? What if they think that I'm not as smart as them? What if they assign me a rank of C- as a TA? AAAHHHH!!!!!!! I momentarily considered trying to BS my way through that page of notes...but then I remembered that I don't want to throw myself off of Building 10, and leveled with them. "You know what guys...I have no idea what this page is trying to show. It's just a bunch of math, we don't ever use it for anything, and I don't even know why it's in here. So just ignore it and save your questions for stuff that I at least slightly understand."

In my experience, over-emphasizing ratings causes you to lose sight of what's really important in your work or personal life. Doing the best job that you can, being the best person that you can to the people you love, and not throwing yourself off of buildings. Besides, I have insider information that the people doing the ranking usually aren't any better at the task in question than the people being ranked. So don't sweat the numbers, and pray that the professor makes it to lecture on time.

And I hate it
When you fake it.
You can't hide it,
You might as well embrace it.

--Sum 41, "In Too Deep"

PS: for everyone that harassed me about not posting in a long time, this is what you get!!!! SIX PARAGRAPHS!!!

Nooooo!

2006-02-06T11:54:00.000-08:00

Sweet Caroline (bap bap baaaahhh)
Good times never felt so good (so good, so good)
I've been inclined (bap bap baaaahhh)
To believe they never would.

--Neil Diamond, Sweet Caroline

Crap! That last post somehow overwrote the Neil Diamond post, and now it's gone forever, lost in the internet jetsam, along with brittanyandkevinforever.com and paulmartinrules.org! Dammit!!!

And now I look at the night,

And it don't seem so loney.

We fill it up with only two.

--Neil Diamond, Sweet Caroline

O...M...G... (Can I Still Type That, or Will Allah Come Get Me?)

2006-02-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

No suitable lyrics for this post, so I'm foregoing the tradition.

While I've been sitting around my empty apartment all morning waiting for the moving company to deliver my stuff, I've been reading some coverage of the "cartoon riots" that have been spreading across the Muslim world. The list of countries that have experienced riots / flag-burnings / embassy-stormings / slogan-chanting / jihad-vowing JUST TODAY include:

Iran
Iraq
Syria
Lebanon
Afghanistan
India
Indonesia
Australia

I haven't really been following this story very closely since it seemed, well, silly until now, so I'm not sure if there have been demonstrations in Europe but it seems more than likely. After reading about how violent some of the protests have become, including attacks on Christian neighbourhoods in Beirut, I decided that I needed to have a look at these cartoons. Since they have "offended" (I think that's the wrong word, since when someone "offendeds" you in the civilized world you typically write a strongly-worded letter in response) these Muslim extremists enough to form molotov-cocktail-tossing mobs, I imagined that they must be something truly nasty and hateful...the kind of nasty and hateful that I can't even begin to imagine, since I can't imagine ANY newspaper ANYWHERE printing ANYTHING about my religious beliefs that would convince me and 200 of my buddies to storm an embassy. I was even prepared to give the the benefit of the doubt, since I don't pretend to have a deep understanding of their faith and these people do seem to enjoy a good flag-burning, whatever the occasion.

But when I finally saw the cartoons (have a look here if you're interested) my only reaction was...IS THAT IT?????

It is absolutely unimaginable to me that so many people are so upset by these CARTOONS that they would form violent mobs and attack the citizens, embassies, and personal property of other countries. Yes, I can understand that drawings of their prophet are forbidden by their religion, and I can understand how the cartoons would be offensive in the "hey that offends me, let me write a letter expressing my feelings to your newspaper, or perhaps start an intelligent dialogue about the problem" meaning of the word. But firebombs and rioting?????? All that these people are doing is proving the cartoonists right, and showing that a significant (I'm not saying majority) number of Muslims are absolutely fucking crazy.

The fact is, the world is a diverse place with very diverse values. Many many many things about fundamentalist (I'm not saying mainstream) Islam deeply offend me, like their treatment of women, approach to education, and incessant need to blow shit up. Likewise, many many many things about fundamentalist (I'm not saying mainstream) Christianity deeply offend me, like their literal interpretation of the Bible and incessant need to hold bake sales. But we all have to learn to live with people that don't share our own views...fundamentalist Islam (thankfully) is not the official and sole religion of the world, and these people need to understand that they have no right to enforce their twisted beliefs on the rest of us through violence. Similarly, us Westerners have to understand that our way of life is also not the official and sole way of life for the world, and that our beliefs may seem twisted to a large number of people, and that maybe invading Middle Eastern countries is not the best way to promote tolerance and understanding between our cultures.

At any rate, holy shit (oops I just offended myself...JIHAD ON ME!!!), it's a cartoon...maybe these people should be focusing their anger on the repressive regimes that keep them locked in abject poverty, their desperation fueling the uncontrollable rage that their leaders channel towards the West and use as a bargaining chip on the international stage. A little bit of inward-focused anger in some of these countries (Iran, Syria, I'm looking at you) would do a lot more for the wellbeing of the Muslim people than declaring holy war (there's a great term) on a couple of Danish cartoonists.

A Disconcerting Uplifting Feeling

2006-01-27T15:25:00.000-08:00

Yeah, down by the river, down by the banks of the river Charles,
That's where you'll find me, along with the lovers, fruggers, and thieves.
Well I love that dirty water,
Oh, Boston, you're my home.

--The Standells, "Dirty Water"

So I have a big announcement! This is the first (but certainly not the last) blog entry that I'm writing from campus! More specifically, from the very nice but vertigo-inducing Stata Center, which to me looks like a massive pile of crushed McDonald's burger boxes. Asthetics aside, it's a great building for grad students...it has a gym, a cafetria, library facilities, common areas, about a hundred winding staircases, a complete lack of square angles, and luckily for the purposes of this blog, abundant wireless access! I guess that's not so impressive though, since the campus bars also have high-speed wireless access points (but no hard liquor).

I've only been back for a couple of days, but I'm already very concerned about how I'm feeling about the city and the school...I'm feeling very, very good. The problem is that I spent so much time and energy worrying that I'd hate grad school again, and now I'm worried that all the worrying was in vain.

It's very strange feeling happy and at-ease in this city...so strange, that I almost feel afraid and not-at-ease. There are still plenty of things that I know will stress me out, like the workload in the lab and the not being able to watch Hockey Night in Canada every week. But the lack of HNIC will probably make Annie happy, which will make me happy and therefore not stressed out. And who knows, maybe learning how to build a laser (especially a frequency-domain modelocking laser...oooohhhh, sexy) will actually be good for me. For those of you who don't know, I'm totally joking when I say that I play with lasers all day. I actually don't know anything about lasers, other than the fact that you shouldn't stick your hand in front of the 10-Watt pump beam, and that you need to kick a 5-femtosecond Titanium-Sapphire laser to get it to start pulsing. I'm not kidding about either of those two things. But now I'm supposed to learn a bit more than "fire is hot" and "kicking is good", which was temporarily stressing me out, but upon more reflection it will probably be fine.

I don't know what's different this time...maybe it's that I've got more of a big picture view of the world now, so I realize that OCT isn't the most important thing in the universe. And maybe it's because I've learned to say "no" to my advisor (already did it once last week...you are officially reading the blog of the person who WON'T be TA'ing nonlinear optics this term!). Or maybe it's because when I looked out at the skyline as I was taking the T from Boston into Cambridge, I realized that this really is a beautiful and unique city, and I'm enormously lucky and blessed to have a second chance at things here.

Whatever the reason, I'm happy, and I know things can change but it really does feel different this time. Maybe this is one entry to keep in the archives, so I can look back on it in 8 months and say "what the hell was I thinking????" :)

Do you have the time to listen to me whine

About nothing and everything all at once?

I am one of those melodramatic fools,

Neurotic to the bone, no doubt about it.

--Green Day, "Basket Case"

Coming (Back) to America

2006-01-20T23:09:00.000-08:00

So kiss me, and smile for me, tell me that you'll wait for me.
Hold me like you'll never let me go,
'Cause I'm leaving on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again.
Oh babe, I hate to go.

--John Denver, "Leaving on a Jet Plane"

Well today was the big day...the day that I said goodbye to Vancouver, to my old job, to my apartment by the beach, to the Maple Leaf flying proudly in the Pacific wind, and temporarily, to my girlfriend. As the America West Airbus-320 (ironic, I know) climbed out of the GVR, I stared out the window at the mountains and the ocean surrounding the city that’s been my home for the past year and a half. I know there are a lot of things that I’ll miss about Vancouver...the natural beauty, the ethnic diversity, the delicious and reasonably-priced sushi, the ultimate frisbee, and the little chuckle I get from hearing Vancouverites refer to Alberta as “out east.” I also know there are a lot of things that I won’t miss...the traffic, the attitude towards drugs and crime, the unbelievable (to an Edmontonian) housing costs, and the ever-present fear of getting T-boned by a 17-year-old driving an SL55 with neon ground effect lighting. I guess that no city is perfect, but taken as a whole, Vancouver is a pretty great place to live. And as I came to that conclusion at about 25,000 feet (wow I’m already working in feet again) I thought back to a very simple question that my lab adviser asked me when I was visiting Boston to look for apartments a few weeks ago.

“What’s so different about Canada?” See, I told you it was a very simple question. My adviser knows how hard the first two years of grad school were on me, and he knows that a lot of it was because I had a tough time living on the east coast of the US. So his question to me was an attempt to understand the differences between our two countries that caused me, and a few other Canadian grad students that I know, so much stress as we tried to adapt to Boston. But my response to his question really surprised me...so how did I answer?

“Uhhhhhhh, well, I don’t know...it’s hard to explain I guess.” Now, I consider myself to be a very patriotic Canadian, and I certainly feel that there are significant differences between Canada and the US. Some of our core values (universal health care, redistribution of wealth, recognition of the value of different cultures within a federal framework) are clearly different than American values (you-get-what-you-pay-for health care, a tax system that disproportionally burdens the lower class, melting-pot mentality) but how do these value differences translate into concrete behavioural differences that one could describe to an American? What I eventually came up with was that Canadians are more relaxed, more laid-back, friendlier, easier to talk to, in essence, “nicer.”

But even that isn’t necessarily true...Calgarians are just as stressed-out as Bostonians, Torontonians are just as rude as New Yorkers, and our overloaded health care system has just as many problems as the two-tiered American system. Yet still, I and many other Canadians living south of the border feel much more at ease when we’re at home. When I thought about it some more, I came up with a few things that I’ve never heard a Canadian say...some examples would be “we need to spread the Canadian way of life around the world,” or “we need to protect Canadian interests in the Middle East,” or “Canada is in constant danger from international terrorists.” In fact, just writing down those three quotes felt absolutely ridiculous. Yet exchange “Canada” for “America” and you’ve got a standard sound-bite from Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or Rice. And it’s not limited to the present administration...American politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, have been saying things like that ever since the start of the Cold War. And at any particular point in time, a large number of American citizens would be in agreement with at least two of those three statements.

So what’s my point? Well, maybe living in a culture that perceives itself to be perpetually on the offensive (against communism, or terrorism, or crafty Canadian lumber companies) or the defensive (against communism, or terrorism, or crafty Canadian lumber companies) in some sort of global war leads people to emulate some of the behaviour of the soldiers that are put up on a pedestal for doing the fighting for them. Single-minded focus on indoctrinated beliefs, unwillingness to compromise or tolerate dissenting opinions, blind trust in the leadership of authority figures, and unflinching belief that the American point of view is the RIGHT point of view are all attributes that make for good soldiers. These, I realized, are also attributes of Americans that have the most negative affect on me. Of course not all Americans are like this, and the vast majority of the people that I deal with at school are reasonable, tolerant people who dislike the Bush administration just as much as I do. But maybe that’s the big difference that my advisor was asking about and that I was trying (unsuccessfully) to explain...America is a nation of soldiers, and Canada is a nation of hockey players. We work together, play hard, and aren’t afraid to drop the gloves...but when a fight breaks out, it’s over in 30 seconds and there’s never too much blood.

Oh the good ol' hockey game
Is the best game you can name.
And the best game you can name
Is the good ol' hockey game.

-- Stompin' Tom Connors, "The Hockey Song"

Pursuit of Fortune

2005-12-25T20:36:00.000-08:00

If you take the sacred things,

The things that we hold dear,

Empty promise is all you'll find,

So give me something, something to believe in

--The Offspring, "Something to Believe In"

Well Christmas is over, and although my family is very focused on the important aspects of the holiday (love, spending time together, and consuming lots of turkey) it's still hard to escape the onslaught of Shock and Awe consumerism that permeates our lives from Halloween until Boxing Day. Or is it Boxing Week now? Anyway, it all seems to burn itself out by mid-January, until it's time to start Easter shopping. So having been marinated in Wal-Mart commercials and Future Shop flyers for the past two months, I thought I'd reflect a bit on the most common reason that people think I'm going back to grad school, which is the pursuit of fortune.

In our culture, people are often judged as successful or as failures based on their income and the worldly posessions that come with the paycheque. So almost everyone that I've told about my plans has said something to the effect of "wow, I guess you'll make a ton of money when you finish, eh?" We tend to see education as means to an end, and we tend to assign value to the various degrees, diplomas, and certificates in terms of the salary attached to them. So a B.Sc. in engineering is about 60,000 units of goodness, a B.A. in education is about 45,000 units of goodness (but is guaranteed to increase in goodness by 5% per year...thank YOU, unions!), and that certificate in 20th century African philosophy? Well...let's just say that "Do you want fries with that" is worth about 6.5 units of goodness per hour. But the truth is that education, especially graduate school, shouldn't be viewed through a lens made out of $20's.

In my opinion, grad school is something that you should do if you truly feel like you need to understand more about the world that we live in. Whether you study engineering, one of the pure sciences, English literature, or African philosophy, you need to go into it wanting to explore questions that don't have any answers yet, and you need to be aware that you might not be the one to find the answers. Money should be the last thing on your mind, since you need to focus all of your energy on your job as an academic researcher, which is to fundamentally advance the knowledge of your community. And odds are, you're not going to get rich doing it. Here are some interesting facts about the program that I'm going into to illustrate my point.

1. The average Ph.D. student takes home about $1700 after taxes. Average rent in the area around the school (or areas easily accessible on the subway) is about $700-$800 per person, and the average grocery bill is about $200 per month. Add utilities ($100), phone ($50), cable ($50), internet access ($50), and health care ($150), and you're left with about $300 for fun stuff like clothing, transportation, and maybe the occasional calzone from Cinderella's.

2. The average M.S. graduate from this school working in industry makes about $76,000 per year which works out to about $4200 per month after taxes (in the U.S.).

3. The vast majority of Ph.D. graduates continue to work in academia as post-doctoral researchers for about 5 - 10 years (where they earn about $40,000 - $50,000), and eventually become professors (where they'll crack $80,000 if they're lucky).

4. If our same M.S. graduate gets a 5% raise every year for 5 years, he would earn approximately $97,000 per year.

Finally, my accountant girlfriend was telling me one day that there's a huge opportunity cost associated with going back to grad school. Basically you take the difference between what you could earn by staying in industry and what you will earn as a student, and multiply that by the number of years that you plan to be a student. In my case, it works out to something like $177,000. Even if I go back to industry after graduation, and earn 20% more than I earn right now, it will take me about 9 years to recoup the opportunity cost. So basically, you are MUCH MUCH MUCH better off NOT going to graduate school if your goal is to make a lot of money.

Well, this posting is already way too long, so I'm going to wrap it up. Fortune is the main motivation for doing a lot of things...for me, it was the biggest motivation for getting that B.Sc. in the first place. But if you want to live in the land where textbooks don't exist and nobody's got an answer key, forget about dollar signs because they're a long, long ways away.

Pay attention to the cracked streets and the broken homes.

Some call it slums, some call it nice.

I want to take you through a wasteland I like to call my home.

Welcome to paradise.

--Green Day, "Welcome to Paradise"

Daveisms

2005-12-12T22:07:00.000-08:00

Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know

Turn off the lights and I'll glow.

To the extreme, I rock a mic like a vandal

Light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle.

--Vanilla Ice, "Ice Ice Baby"

A list of Daveisms, to balance out the way-seriousness of that last post!

"Man I gotta Dave out of this meeting."

"Shit, has anyone ever managed to Dave out on one of these grant proposals?"

"OCT of human skin??? I can't believe Optics Letters Daved out on that review!"

"Let's Dave on over to the food trucks for some pizza."

"He totally Daved out of cleaning the lab again!"

"My f'ing piece of ass laptop just Daved out on my f'ing thesis!"

"Martin St. Louis is totally Daveing out of this season and it's costing me in the hockey pool."

"Boy did the Conservatives Dave out when they picked Harper to run the show."

It's no surprise to me I am my own worst enemy.

'Cause every now and then I kick the living shit outta me

The smoke alarm is going off and there's a cigarette

Still burning, please tell me why?

--Lit, "My Own Worst Enemy"

Pursuit of Perfection

2005-12-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

This place is so empty, my thoughts are so tempting

I don't know how it got so bad.

Sometimes it's so crazy that nothing can save me

But it's the only thing that I had.

--Sum 41, "Pieces"

This weekend a friend from one of my previous lives as a happy, blissfully ignorant telecom engineer came to visit me. It was a good weekend, but it brought back a lot of memories for me. Talking about all the fun that the group of us had in the summer of 2000 (before everyone finished undergrad) and then from 2001 to 2002 (before everyone went their separate ways after Ottawa's high-tech sector collapsed) made me wonder what happened to all of that happiness. Please don't think that I'm at all unhappy now...I have a wonderful family, a wonderful girlfriend, and I've been blessed so far in life with opportunities that make me wonder if (when?) some kind of cosmic "conservation of momentum" law is going to catch up with me. But what happened to the person that was perfectly happy with a B.Sc., perfectly happy applying that B.Sc. to technology that mostly just increased the download rate for illegal MP3's, perfectly happy being a small part in a huge machine and never wanting or needing more than a nice paycheque and for the rain to stay away during the ultimate games on Parilament Hill?

Well, I think what happened to me and so many of my friends is that we fell victim to the pursuit of perfection...a lot of us went back to school, trying to perfect our education. And for me, the first place that the pursuit of perfection led to was a realization that I knew nothing about the world, scientifically or spiritually. And for someone who thought that he had a pretty good handle on everything, that was very a scary realization. I think that most people who go into graduate studies have a similar experience, and different people handle it in different ways. For me, I spent a year desperately trying to do everything perfectly to prove to myself and everyone else that I did know something. Of course that led to stress, anxiety, health problems, and close to zero progress in my research.

Luckily I had a couple of amazing people in my life at the time that got me through it all, and I realized that the solution was accepting my limitations and dealing with the fact that I couldn't possibly operate on the same level as some of the other people in the lab.

The result? Acceptance of the fact that I didn't really understand very much, getting back to a relatively good state of health, and two first-author publications. I'm never going to be perfect, and it seems like the pursuit of perfection only leads to self-destruction, so this time around I'm going into the program knowing that I suck and hoping to maybe suck a little bit less in 3 years. And even if I still suck the same amount, at least I'll take time to enjoy the chowder!

Everything is bleak, it's the middle of the night

You're all alone and the dummies might be right.

Outside the darkness lurks

My music at work, my music at work

-- The Tragically Hip, "Music @ Work"

2005-11-29T22:51:00.000-08:00

Yelling is fun

The Countdown is On

2005-11-28T20:45:00.000-08:00

Rent a flat above a shop, cut your hair and get a job.

Smoke some fags and play some pool,

Pretend you never went to school.

But still you'll never get it right

When you're lying in bed in night

Watching roaches climb the wall

If you called your dad, he could stop it all.

--Pulp, "Common People"

Well, here it is, November 28 2005, and in less than two months I'll be back in Cambridge to face the old demons in Building 36 on Vassar Street. Ever since I decided to go back my emotions have been swinging between wild exuberance and stark terror, with exuberance leading going into the stretch. The first two years were the hardest and darkest of my life, but my family and friends and God got me though before and I know that they'll get me through again. So if you're curious about my second attempt at life in a small technical college in the United States, check back here every now and then. Hopefully I don't start typing with an accent... :)

So come and talk to me on my computer screen.

The best days of our lives aren't as easy as they seem.

And one day we'll look back and then we'll have to laugh.

They used to call us names now they want our autographs.

-- Good Charlotte, "Click"