Spring Break AK '08

In March 2008, Harry and the Potters went to the LAST FRONTIER.

NASA USRP Internship

Last week I was offered an undergraduate student internship with NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD.  I will be moving down there in January to work with Paul E. Racette on modeling and data analysis of nonlinear and non-stationary processes.  The research I will be doing will have immediate applications in the calibration of radiometers.  NASA uses radiometers for a few different things, one of which is measurement of salinity in the ocean.  That is one way earth scientists model climate change.   There may also be applications in astro-biology.

To commemorate this momentous occasion in my scientific career I have posted above a telescope photo of the Pücman Nebula.  

SAVE DARFUR! HELP BURMA! STANDfast and the Genocide Intervention Network

As some of you may know, some of my greatest friends and heros are leading members of the Harry Potter Alliance.  The HPA is an organization that uses the Harry Potter stories as motivators to get people involved in social activism, channelling all the positive energy of fandom into a world-changing-real-life Dumbledore's Army.  It's sort of like how my band uses the harry potter books to subversively expose kids to the world of DIY punk rock ethics.  They've had great success in the past from participation in antigenocide programs to mass voter registration.   

Anyway the HPA has been talking a lot about STANDfast which takes place today.  STAND is working with the Genocide Intervention Network to aid civilians in Darfur and Burma among other genocide stricken regions.  

A $3 donation allows a woman in Darfur protection from rape so that she may collect firewood for her family.

A $5 donation grants radio access to a Burmese family so that they may be warned of oncoming danger.  

This is an easy and effective way to help the lives of people.  The Genocide Intervention Network is currently the only civilian protection organization in Darfur.  

You can donate at any time any day

at the HPA website

or the STAND website

or at the Genocide Intervention Network website

MERRY CHRISTMAS and PEACE ON EARTH

LOVE

Joe

NAILED FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!

Finally!!! I've been ALLEGEDY NAILED FOR COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!!!

After years of impersonating and warping the the character of Harry Potter I have been officially accused of violating copyright laws.  But not for that....

FOR THIS:

I made this movie as an ad for the junk shoppe in worcester.  www.hbml.org.  Maybe someone thought I was using Sam Gaskin's Pizza Wizard without permission.  Maybe someone did not realize that let alone the united states national anthem, ALL NATIONAL ANTHEMS are not copyrighted.  Maybe someone thinks pücman is a copyright infringing bastardization of pacman.  Am I missing something...?   

If I can appropriate Harry Potter for thousands of people around the world I don't see the harm in making this crappy little video that at most a few hundred people will watch and most of them will turn it off halfway through because its too weird.  

JESUS, Facebook!

Marc Zucherberg, why you gotta bring this up?  

TOM never had a problem with the Harry and the Potters myspace. He was our friend.

Yesterday was Halloween.

At the Firehouse I was at the biggest singular non performance house party ever.  Jacob Berendes had a few words of wisdom:

"Shows are for the people.  But parties are the people."

Bohr-ing

Today I made this flier for a show at my house.  Snakes Say Hisss! is an awesome band.  They are one of my favorite all time dance bands. 

Tonight the Phillies won the World Series.  I saw the last two plays on my TV.  I had just come into my house after an engaging physics lecture. 

Mendel Sachs came campus to speak on the the direction he believes physics will ultimately take by the end of the next century.  Early in his career he saw there were fundamental differences in the way Einstein viewed the universe and the way quantum theories present it.  Einstein's theory of relativity paints the universe as a continuum.  The universe is a continuous field.  Quantum theory relies on assuming that the universe is made up of particles.  Sachs went on to explain that in science when a law is proclaimed is is to be true universally.  As in the case of relativity, the phenomenon predicted by Einsteins theory are true in every frame of reference.  However in quantum theory the "laws" do not seem to have the same universality that relativity has.  For example, depending on the experiment you design, you can either show an electron behaves as a wave or as a particle.  But it can never be both at the same time.  Mendel Sachs volunteered an allegory he created to represent the views of the universe that result from Einstein's relativistic theory and Niels Bohr's resultant quantum theory:

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Little Niels Grasshopper is sitting at the edge of a lake and sees an acorn fall into the lake.  He observes the wave that results and makes some measurements.  He finds where the wave is highest and lowest and soon postulates that there are little particles in the lake, lake quanta, that make up the lake and the wave is where the particles are displaced.  But when little Albert Grasshopper sees the acorn fall into the lake he sees the lake change continuously.  The wave is everywhere all at once.  

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Mendel went deep through scientific history digging up theories of long dead greeks: Democritus- the propser of Atoms - we could potentially call him the first quantum physicist  There was another Greek he mentioned that say the universe as a continuum and also the later Baruch Spinoza.  Then he went through the history on modern physics, most of which I had heard in my intro to quantum physics lecture last year.  But to get to the point Sachs was saying that the basis, the initial assumptions, of quantum theory is flawed and sooner or later physicists are going to look at the mess they are making with the all these new theoretical particles and see that they aren't getting anywhere.  Then they will have to use the basis of relativity to construct a field theory that can successfully explain all the results observed in "quantum" phenomena.  - Whoa.

Sachs spoke of the way some of his colleagues react to his ideas.  He says they will straight up leave the table because they won't have anything to do with it.  They don't want their fundamental beliefs under scrutiny.   Sachs says when it gets like this that, "Science has become a religion." 

After the lecture I went to see a show at Forbes.  I was hoping to see Terribles play.  They were the first band I ever saw when I moved to worcester.  Two years ago they were playing at the Ship Room which was a place that wasn't supposed to ID usually but the night I went they were.  So one of friends who was inside opened the backstage door while Terribles was playing.   The backstage door was literally on the back of the stage.  We opened it up and jumped through the band and into the crowd and started partying like animals.  It was exhilarating!!!   So I called up my new friend Tom and Mickey and said I'd pick them up soon for the show hoping to revisit the exhilaration I felt in my youth.   Tom met me outside his dorm I went to grab some earplugs, saw the Phillies win the World Series and then went to pick up Mickey.  Mickey and his friend Josh jumped in the car.  Josh was holding a beer and I told him he couldn't have a beer in my van so he chugged it and threw the bottle in a bush.  I stepped on the pedal and we accelerated towards Forbes Street.   We got there just in time to see the last two songs of Doom Hawk.  The were the best and unfortunately the only fantasy metal band I'd ever seen.  TRUE.  Then Filth Mattress played loud songs and before the last song the singer said, "THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO GO CRAZY."  I don't think he said that but he said "this is you last chance to... [something something]".  And everyone did [something something].  I eneded up missing the Terribles set.  :<  It was fun to get away from school and the people in school who live life boringly.  Bohr-ingly... heh... get it?

This is my first blog entry.  I will write here about things I make think see and do.  The above picture is from an animation I'm working on.