Fantastic Future Features

1. Stereoscopic 3D Post Viewer -- Words literally jump off the screen, into your eyeball, and peck incessantly until you look away or plead for mercy.

2. Specially formulated algorithms which keep inside jokes and bad puns to a very pleasurable and meaningful minimum

3. Financial News and Insurance Quotes: You gotta love that Allstate Guy.

4. Space and Time Transcendency -- Answer deep existential questions in a single sitting

5. "How We Rolled: Earth" -- Almost-real time view of Earth from above; all done in Crayola

6. Problem Set Generator -- OK, this is just a ploy to get someone else to do my homework for me

7. Koala Life Simulator -- Sleep for 20 hours, eat some leaves, and then hump something...anything.

Ohio is for Lovers

1. I think I'm getting paranoid. Lately anything could happen at anytime, and I'm going to be prepared for the worst; like all good Buttons should. Perhaps turning off my inner monologue would be somewhat helpful. Actually, cross that, I'm sure this is not my inner monologue's fault as much as it is the caffeine consumption. The more wired I become, the more annoying that little voice in my head becomes; and in an asymptotic behavior to boot.

The world just needs to chill for about fifteen minutes or so.

2. One of the more disturbing trends (or not, really) is the recent rash of awfully high-scoring Major League Baseball games. Note that as of this morning, I'm currently ranked 1541 (the 98th percentile) in the ESPN Baseball Challenge Fantasy League. I've got my sights set on the first place prize (1 plasma screen TV); and if I can't count on Roy Oswalt and the Astros to keep teams like the Brewers under 12 runs or the Jake Westbrook and the Indians to keep the Orioles under 18 runs, I'm going to find it difficult to continue my gradual upward ascent up the power rankings.

Some of the more astute observers are probably thinking to themselves, "But Jonathan, aren't you supposed to be studying for Physics exams and writing up excellent solutions to Physics problem sets?"

Well, yeah, that may be the case, but as long as I'm not spending long hours pouring over the bestiary of statistical trends and weighing the outcomes of such trivial match-ups as Eric Bedard vs. Jason Michaels with the wind coming in off the right field porch at Oriole park, I think I'll be just fine.

3. Without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, that sort of egregious waste of time is as disgusting as turdukenflomein...that would be a chicken inside of a duck inside of a turkey inside of a buffalo; all covered with heaping, heaping amounts of lo mein. Served slightly chilled with a fine sugary glaze.

4. "Oh yeah, I speak perfect Korean."

I went out to lunch at Taco Bell with two of the Korean international graduate students yesterday. At one point, they started talking to each other in Korean and pointing at the plastic lid. During a lull in the conversation, I pointedly said, "You press those dots in so that you know which drink belongs to whom if you're carrying more than one."

Pleasantly surprised, the one said, "Oh, you understand Korean?"

Eh, maybe you had to be there.

5. "I want to take you down by the river,
where you can watch me undress.
I want to lay with you in the water,
we can float naked in the sunlight."

I hate it when I start considering terribly cheesy song lyrics to be provocative.

6. I *heart* topological humor.

7. "A Weakly Interacting System of Moviegoers?"

8. Getting into an Atomic and Molecular Optics research group means that I'm officially one step closer to developing the famed 'Shit Lazor'.

9. "It's not good to be naked in Cincinnati..."

-- The opening line to the Scorecard column in last week's Sports Illustrated

10. Come back next time to see where who will be naked next.

Back to Builder's Square Roots

Identifying my motivation is not always an easy task. In fact, motivation for any particular action is probably easiest when you are young.

In one of the more endearing stories concerning my childhood, I make a lot of dramatic noise, which proves to signify nothing, and act like quite the petulant toddler. Around the time my little brother was born, I got yelled at by my dad and sent to my room because I was bugging him while he was trying to do some work in the garage. I was really upset over this because I don't think I had ever been yelled at previous to this. At any rate, my response was to run up to my parents' room and steal my mom's big, red suitcase -- which I promptly filled with all the clothes in my dresser and closet. I then dragged the big, red suitcase down the stairs and left it on the landing by the front door. Realizing that the whole family was in the basement with my baby brother, I went down to announce my imminent and permanent departure from the household. Earlier in the day, I went grocery shopping with my mom and bought some fudgsicles. I didn't think it was very fair that I wouldn't be having any, especially since I was the one that requested them, so I also declared that I would be taking the fudgsicles with me. I waved goodbye to my baby brother, hugged my mom and dad, and then left forever.

When I was little, my best friend Jimmy lived next door. Without asking, I went over to his house and asked if it would be OK to live there from now on. He thought that was a fantastic idea, so I dragged my suitcase into the house, put my fudgsicles into their freezer, and then we plopped down in front of the TV to watch Dukes of Hazzard. Afterwards, we played a make-believe game of baseball where he was the Yankees and I was the Indians.

The next morning, Jimmy and I were eating fudgsicles out on the front step when I noticed that my mom was pulling into the driveway after working for the night at the hospital. Suddenly, I got really sad. So I ran home and gave my mom a big hug and told her how much I missed her. I went back to Jimmy's to grab my suitcase. I told him that he could have the remaining fudgsicles (I suppose it was only the just thing to do).

I must remark, with or without irony, that I suspect that I also felt a bit of shame for spending the night in the home of an avowed Yankees fan. Jimmy ended up not being the greatest friend. He would get me in quite a bit of trouble from time to time. One time he suggested that I eat two Flinstones vitamins. Everyone knows that more than one a day is harmful for little kids because of the danger of overdosing on iron, but who was I to resist its oh so addictive flavor.

I was always surprised by how little my parents seemed to care about and how little they mentioned the whole running away episode. I'm a bit disappointed that the story only seems noteworthy (or even footnoteworthy, for that matter) to me. Not until much later would I realize that my parents saw right through my dramatic call for attention. Clearly I was feeling neglected with the new baby around and all. More importantly though, I only went next door. I'm sure they also thought that I would cave pretty quickly. At any rate, I guess they knew what they were doing (I hope).

My runaway attempts always seem to play out more dramatically in my head than they end up actually occurring. Whatever the motivation for running away though, I always come running back. More alarming though is the fact that regardless of how bad I know running away will play out, I seem to fall into it so easily -- must be like riding a bicycle (a big and stupid bicycle, the kind with a rusty chain and two flat tires).

One can only hope that one day I will manage to prevent my attempts to sabotage the whole growing-up process. Maturation is hard enough to come by when you don't have some odd feeling of nostalgia for your own childish behavior. So cheers to my clingy, attention-starved, and emotionally unexpressive self! You have indeed served me well all of these years.

Crossroads of the Revolution

Punctuate your statements with a period.

I guess sometimes I opt to take an altogether different route. For instance, most people would say, "When life hands you lemons, you should make lemonade." Although, from time to time, I may subscribe to such a statement, I think I often would say something more along the lines of, "I'd much rather enthalpically create my own lemons out of the vacuum of this universe than wait for them to pop into existence on their own accord." Maybe others would opt for the more violent, "When life hands you lemons, throw them at the people you hate." I would humbly suggest though that this particular route is wholly unnecessary.

I can't come up with any solid reason or smoking gun or red-handed culprit when assigning the blame for my unnecessarily bad attitude. I can however come up with some shaky arguments based on seeming red herrings, false motives, or circular reasoning. As an aside, I think it's fairly humorous that at one time, i subscribed to the notion that circular argument could be a useful rhetorical device, rather than the fallacy that it truly is -- but I suppose that discussion is for another time.

Without further explanation or loss of generality, I would like to propose that I am fairly proficient at creating bad, awkward, or messy situations -- situations that I am wholly unable to get myself out of without recourse to some form of substance abuse. On the same token, or rather in my defense, I think I'm normally patient, in that I can make do with, rather than fight against, those situations which are immutably set in granite or etched across the cosmos. Like galaxies writ large across our sky, most situations, whether bad or good, are the result of some quantum fluctuation in the background of my life. And that's how we are brought up, believing that every little thing and piece of minutiae counts for something, no matter how trivial the pursuit or meaningless the midnight fling. At the same time, there exists the paradoxical knowledge that you can dismiss rote memorization by attacking and exposing the very root of every situation -- that is to obtain some wild sense of all that just happened.

At any rate, the matter still remains: What to do with all these damn lemons? How many lemons is too many? And when is the right time to walk away from all the lemon trees you senselessly choose to plant for yourself?

Well, I was told that a good experimentalist cannot be afraid of anything. How fucking romantic is that notion? So here comes the physicist, regaled in shining armor, to save the day. But I suppose there is much truth to that. If only I had more courage, I'd be willing to try every creative and conceivable angle at deriving a solution to every predicament which rears its ugly head. Maybe then I'd learn something, and at the end of that day, I'd lay my head on my little pillow with the smug satisfaction that for once I was correct.

Instead of becoming the active participant though, I sit somewhere in the middle of the crowd which wastes its time observing -- some of that crowd, I pray, actually hopes that some odd situation can figure itself out in time for my sanity to make a remarkable recovery.

But how likely is it that a problem can just figure itself out? It must be like magic sometimes -- this life that you are free to make remarks about or may deem worthy to make note of.

At any rate, why would a seemingly sane person choose to solve his problems by spinning up new ones on a whim? Regardless of what the state quarter may claim, don't search for the crossroads of the revolution by travelling through New Jersey. It's just a harmless idea, right?

This Week in Baseball

1.Weird dreams that I've had the past couple nights (x-zibits a through c):

a. I realize that I'm dreaming and so am really pleased with myself after punching out a car window and experiencing no pain.
b. Murphy Brown is a pregnant zombie.
c. Hulk Hogan is dead.

Those dreams seem a bit dated, don't you think?

2. Unbernzing is a one step process. Step One: Unbernzing.
Bernzing
Unbernzing

3. Eating healthy seems really expensive, especially considering that you can now purchase a McGriddle for one dollar. I don't even know why I try anymore. If Texas had any White Castles around, I'd just go binge eat myself into grease oblivion right now.

The thing is, I don't think the breakfast that I prepare for myself most mornings is all that healthy in comparison. Ok, that's a lie, the breakfast i prepare for myself most mornings is at least ten times healthier than a McGriddle sandwich.

At any rate, is it sad that I get pretty excited when I consume my daily recommended value of fiber? The way I figure it, all the fiber intake has to somehow counteract all the coffee consumption. That could be entirely way off base. At the very least, I'm sure the generic rip-off of Centrum Performance that I take every morning is boosting my health levels some. (I don't think health levels is an accurate metric of overall health. I think I just made the term up.)

4. I do like spinach a whole lot. That's a bit of a recent development.

5. Sorry Scott, but if I win this, I want Grady Sizemore to be my best man.

6. After one week of fantasy league play in ESPN's Baseball Challenge, I am in the top 95.8%. The Jobu Aggie Nation is currently ranked at 3127. I've got a long way to go to get to number one, but I've got my sights focused on it. Furthermore, I'm certain that what my team lacks in talent evaluation is more than made up for by my team's overall heart and desire. Let's not overlook that.

The first place competitor at the end of the season wins a brand new plasma tv.

7. Vivian Jaffe: Have you ever transcended space and time?
Albert Markovski: Yes. No. Uh, time, not space... No, I don't know what you're talking about.

8. I went to the super special spring Midnight Yell this past Friday (although coinciding with parents' weekend here, it was presumably meant to usher in spring football practices). I saw an aggie's dad wearing a Cleveland Indians jacket, so I gave him a thumb up sign and said, "Go Tribe!" Then he said, "Hey yah, we won today!" And then he gave me a high five.

I really like it when fans say "We won!" over "The Indians won today." I mean, I became verifiably excited when he said that and gave me the high five. God Bless America.

9. I'm starting to get worried about when my next set of midterms is going to take place. If I were a betting man though, I would place all my money on Good Friday and Easter Sunday as the most likely dates to have them. I can't imagine a better way to spend a religious holiday than in a classroom sweating and swearing over how much I don't know.

I probably shouldn't be gambling on Good Friday and Easter Sunday though, so I take all of that back.

10. I get hot-skipping mad (not so much mad as giggly) whenever I see the ad for "The Final Theory" atop my gmail inbox. And I see it there quite a bit since, well, 80% of all my incoming mail has to do with physics. The Final Theory is proof that people will believe anything and is ripe full of misrepresentations based on what most people learn in high school physics.

Since I don't want to end on that note though, take a moment to consider this interesting, readable article about a current problem in physics in regards to how we keep time. Basically, it explores the notion of the seeming paradox that as we keep time more precisely, down to a scale of 10^-17 seconds, general relativistic effects make it impossible to keep a uniform measure of time.

"At the level of accuracy of parts in 10^17 or 10^18, comparing clocks scattered around the world would be no more meaningful than comparing the rates of pendulum clocks on small ships scattered in the oceans, each bobbing in its own way and keeping its own time."

Throwing the Baby out with the Bath Water

In honor of defenestration being the Dictionary.com Word of the Day this past Sunday, let us pause to reflect on the great defenestrations of times long past.

de·fen·es·tra·tion (d-fn-strshn) n.
An act of throwing someone or something out of a window.

Things to Defenestrate Before the Close of yet Another Year:

1. A 1980's style printer
2. A clunky, 45 lb, supposedly portable laptop
3. A peck of hens (how many hens are in a peck?)
4. An albatross, uncaged
5. A donut-ham-hamburger (that would be a hamburger inside of a ham sandwich, using donuts as buns; courtesy of Jim Gaffigan)
6. One electron
7. A collection of Peter Frampton vinyl LP's
8. A bestiary of solved Electromagnetic Theory exam example problems
9. A One-Hundred Tonne Load Anvil
10. Twenty bowling balls (simultaneously or otherwise)

Things to NOT Defenestrate:

My keys.

Like a Kid on Opening Day

1. This walrus is as big as a walrus.

2. This person that is not my brother recently got a perfect score on the SAT. At any rate, the Scott Button that is actually my brother will be going to the University of Toledo next year. Scott was not available for comment, but my mother reports that he was indeed admitted into the pharmaceutical program.

3. I would say that I was disappointed in walk-on, senior starting forward Chris Walker of the Aggie Basketball team for this video, were it not for the fact that I would have made this also if the idea had come to me earlier.


4. "You smell so fucking pretty." -- Jay from Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back



5. Grady Sizemore signed a 6 year deal worth over $35 million to live in Cleveland and play baseball. He's 23 years old. I figure have approximately 50 days left to accomplish the feat before I too turn 23. Grady re-upping with the Tribe is great news for the ladies of Cleveland also, apparently.

6. Technically, I passed my last E&M exam with a percentile score of exactly 60%. Amazingly enough, that score is somewhat respectable when taken relative to the performance of my fellow domestic graduate students.

7. Somehow I've managed to watch the following movies in the past week: Shaun of the Dead,The Weatherman, and V for Vendetta. All are very good. Shaun of the Dead is a comedic take on zombie movies. The Weatherman is a somewhat sad movie about a middle-aged man whose career is on the up and up, but his family life is ripe with crisis. And V is quite the action-packed thriller.

8. S is for Surprise
a)Sabies
b)Seagulls
c)Segals
d)Sangles
e)Sungles
f)Sagles

We'll feed sagles to sabies who play with seagulls on the seashore while watching the sangles play a tune about sungles and segals.

9. What is with Burger King these days? Their food makes me want to vomit everytime one of their ridiculous commercials come on. "Keep Bucking Chicken?" What does that even mean?

10. Go Tribe!

Strangely Patriotic

A wistful sentimentality and a false sense of accomplishment, ultimately just some window dressing to an altogether haphazard existence, conspire vindictively and fatally to warp reality beyond recognition.

During our last lecture, my E&M professor, frustrated with our poor performance on the previous exam, asked the class what he needed to do in order to make the class better. One of the international students quickly responded that we needed more time on the exam to finish the problems. To which the professor replied, "You could masturbate all night, and if it's not going to happen, well then it's not going to happen." Aside from the glaring reality that the poor international student probably did not catch all of the subtle nuances of the statement, I definitely thought it was one of the funnier things I had heard in awhile.

Frustration seems to be standard these days. I would like to go back and order up my life to come custom with bluetooth wireless compatability, side airbags, and perhaps some tacky ground-effects lighting.

When I was a grade schooler and I asked my dad for a word's spelling, his first response, invariably, would be to say, "Well, look it up." Some learning comes from rote memorization; while in other subjects, intuition comes at the heavy price of arduous problem sets and cranky, sleepless nights. Most unfortunately though, only a finite number of references exist. That's lame.

How much of myself is my own work? How much is cribbed from the canon of culture that biases opinion towards an ambiguous point of reference? Maybe it's deep inside of me, behind a left ventricle, that hint of originality and creativity. I'm fairly certain though that the notion was copied from somewhere -- most likely a music video or some movie or a documentary I just watched.

At any rate, in case you were wondering, my professor is right. You may perform the experiment at home, if you wish. But please wear your lab coat and goggles.