For Carbomb.

Carbomb. Im pretty sure that you like the thundercats, so this is for you. I would have put your face in there somewhere, but I don't have any pictures of you! Im getting a camera soon though, and so I will be sure to visit all my friends steal a part of their souls.
Carbomb, you're the greatest. I love you in the most appropriate ways possible... and beyond.

For Carbomb. Always and 4-3v3r

New Song.

In fact, new genre for this site. So far its been mostly punk and such, but here is a great hip-hop band that went on warped tour. Im more a fan of Jurassic 5's quality control CD vs. their newer one, but that happens. Anyway, they are a kind of Old school style of hip hop, and darn good at it. One of the neat songs on this album mixes swing and hip hop. pretty Original. Anyway, let me know how you like it.

Out of the Dark

The Production mentioned below is called: OUT OF THE DARK. It runs Friday through Sunday @8pm. It is at the Martha Nell Hardy Theater: Bingham Hall Room 203 on UNC Campus.
$7 Gen Admin; $5 Student/Seniors/UNC employees. Here is the verbal trailer:
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A collection of stories based on a Appalachian woman's ethnographic interviews with Virginia coal miners. The miners describe a relationship with the earth like no other-- in love with this dangerous place, working in 36 inch crawl spaces hundreds of feet under the mountains inhaling coal dust as they breath in the mines, they say that mining gets in your blood.

Growing up as proud 3rd generation miners in a region stigmatized as dirty stupid and poor, these stories tell a different narrative of Appalachia through music dance and storytelling. These interviews reveal how coal miners uild comunity and identity in the mines and later come to terms with disabling injuries that force them to leave the mines and comunities they love.
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I cannot vouch for the goodness of this production. It may be great; it may be terrible. I just thought it might be something different for peoples to do. If you are local and want to go, let me know, and invite a friend.

Im not dead yet....

Im getting better in fact. Right now I am in a super boring talk about dark matter and gravitational lensing. BOOOORRRRINGGG! Nah. Not really. Its not that boring. Its just that they place these talks right at the end of the day, and right when I am tired and I don't feel like hearing about super specialized physics. This weekend I think I will be going to a play. Some girl in my church is putting the whole thing on. She wrote, directed and is starring in it. What is she, Kevin Costner? Lets hope not. Calling all locals who are interested in going to this. Its friday saturday, and sunday and it is about coal miners of west virginia. I'll put up more info later.

the street value of prevention

Whats that old addage? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of tar heroine? Its always "tar heroine" it just souds worse for you.
Well the new cure-all as far as I am concerned is raw honey. I was told that because locally made raw honey is made from local pollen, that it lets your body build natural and diplomatic immunity to pollen alergies. "Raw" just means that it is uncooked... and that on mondays it wrestles with other would-be condiments. Well you can't argue with results. Well you can, but I'm not even sure how you would try to do so. Results are usually intangible concepts. Regardless, I, after several spoonings of honey last night woke up this morning to find myself breathing. It seems that there was a slight trade off. I was able to sleep and breath all through the night, and this morning, but I now have quite a tickle in my throat. The feeling like there is somthing there, but it refuses to be disloged. Oh right, they are called tonsils. Anyway, I give a hearty recomendation to local raw honey for you who are suffering from allergies.
Speaking of recomendations, I personally cannot reccomend Claritin or its knock-off. It has the effect of making one feel as though they have been in a dry desert for a week with a large rubber band fastend securely around your brain. the score so far:
Local Raw Honey: 1 Claritin : 0

working

So here I sit. It is almost 8 pm as I retake my seat in the student union. I quite fortunate actually. I have gotten a spot near a window, and near an ethernet jack. I don't bother with trying to use my wireless on campus anymore. I have found the Union to be quite nice in terms of personal productivity. Its quiet, there are bathrooms nearby, food nearby, people nearby (but all quiet). You might think the people are a distraction, but I somehow find that having a lot of people nearby to be a motivator. Since i don't know any of them I don't feel the need to go talk to any of them, but because they are people, I feel like I am interacting socially in some way. Maybe that is it. Who knows. Im no psychologist. All I know is that I worked pretty stedialy almost all day today and the "breaks" i took were all intentional and limited. Blah Blah blah. Now I am wasting a bit of time writing this and all. But no worries. I suppose that I should mention...
I have been reading this book "Blue Like Jazz" by Donald Miller.

It is a really great book. It is engaging, and very real. It has almost nothing to do with Jazz so far (and I am almost done with it), but is enjoyable none the less. It is subtitled "non religious thoughts on Christian Spirituality". And like I said before, it is very real. It seem pretty much free of the cliche phrases one tends to hear when talking about spirituality, and offers some really provacative insights. I can't think of a person to whom I wouldn't recomend this book. Christian and Non-Christian alike would both enjoy and benefit from this book. (what, am I trying to sell it?) Anyway, go read that book.

<------ New Song!

Gloria by Brave Saint Saturn. Reese Roper is one of my favorite lyricist. This is an older song from BSS's first record. Sorry its been so long since I updated this, but I know that nobody actually listens to the songs.

Pocket Change Movie: 5 thumbs.

Two stars up, even. Bravo! Big thanks to Tim for taking so many months out of his life to make this movie. Big thanks to Heather, his wife for enduring the effort. Big thanks to Jesse and Miranda for hosting the premier. Big thanks to Grover for being one of my lifelong best friends even though I am selfish. Big thanks to Luke for his commitment to the band and for laughing at everything that I said, even when it was sad. And another round of Thanks, praises and adulations to all my band mates for helping to make the PC years the best of my life.

Pocket Change
1995 - 2001

New post on Ask a Physicist !

You've gone too far

Dr. Pepper needs to reevaluate its marketing department. The latetst installment from the Dr. Pepper franchise is this:

Thats right. Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. As if this wasn't insulting enough to my sense of taste, they try further to real you into buying this drink with this:

Thats right folks. Get your classic diet cherry vanilla Dr. Pepper, just like Pops uses to serve back when you and your best pal Jughead used to talk about Betty and Veronica and Jughead's obsession with hambugers. And of course Big Ethel had a crush on Jughead. Those were the days. And nothing makes me think of those days more than the Soda fountain classic of a Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. The worst part is that it tastes no different (as far as I can tell) than Regular Diet Dr. Pepper, which despite millions of dollars of advertising, tastes no more like regular Dr. Pepper than it ever did. In summary, don't buy this drink more than once.

A poem

Neutrinos, they are very small
they have no charge and have no mass
and do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
to them, through with they simply pass,
like dustmaids down a drafty hall
or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
ignore the most substantial wall,
cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
insult the stallion and his stall
and, scorning barriers of class,
infiltrate you and me! Like tall
and painless guillotines, they fall
down through out heads into the grass.
At night they enter at Nepal
and pierce the lover and his lass
from underneath the bed- you call
it wonderful; I call it crass.

-J. Updike, Telephone Poles and other poems (1963)

It's...

Pocket change's video world premier. This friday, April 15, is not only tax day. It is not only Chuck's Birthday. No ma'm. Its also the world premier of the video that is sure to put pocket change on the map... or ... well... show you the map that pocket change used to be on... back when maps were much cooler anyway, ya know? Anyhow, the premier is being held at the Jesse Theater in Cary aka Jesse's house and will be attended by Writer/ Director Tim Asimos, Camera man/ production assistant/ theater janitor Jesse Kaluka, and, of course, Assistant Executive producer/ Director of Cinematography/ 1/2 of the mass of the band, Charles Arnold. Of course there will be throngs upon throngs of groupies as well. And by "throngs" i mean "some", and by "groupies" I mean "groupers".
Well it is all very exciting and I can hardly stand it. I suppose i will just have to focus extra hard on worki... Hey look! a distraction!

Undercover fratboy

What happened to me. I've changed. I used to be cool. I got my mp3 player goin, my trendy shades, my visor... Oh dear. It must be a ruse. Yes. I have infact attempted to penetrate the seeming underbelly of greek life. More on that later.
So I am a small time away from buying a sony vaio laptop for myself. I ask anyone who reads this to please PLEASE PLEASE give me your advice... and your credientials. we'll say you should rate yourself on a scale of 0 to 10, 0 being an art-history major, and 10 being Dr. Sony Vaio.
In other news, I found out a month too late that I could have had some dentist work done for free by the university. Or at least for greatly reduced cost. I knew this to an extent, but not as concretely as I know now. Oh well, I didn't want that $600 dollars anyway.

Dance Dance: Reloded

You might have to think about that title for a second to get the joke. I'll give you a hint: Its a parody of Dance Dance Revolution, and the Matrix Trilogy; you see, the sequal to "the matrix" was matrix: reloaded, while the last movie in the series was matrix: revolutions. So you see, what I did was combine the two things in a way that was quite clever... clever to the point of you laughing out loud. Then I explained the joke further adding to the comic value of this whole discourse. Now I will pause as you continue to laugh.













...







(the dots indicate that I am pausing)




...


There. That should have been enough time for you to get that comedy well out of your system.
On with the post!
Last night I swing danced. ( I seriously thought about ending the post here, purely for comedy's sake, except that I had such a good time, I wanted to elaborate.)
Last night was exceptional. I seem to be having exponetially more fun each time I dance. The equation would look something like this:

Fun = (weight/age)^N *e^(i*E*t/hbar)

where "N" is the average number of times that I go dancing in a month. Don't worry about that exponetial factor. That just something we physicists throw into equations all "willy-nilly" just to say that the expression evolves with time, and that fun is quantized.
The groups that I came with included ~8 girls and ~4 guys. I danced for almost every song, trying to evenly distribute my dance flava to all the fly honies in our group. In summary, I had an awesome time. Guys, learn how to dance. Just not better than me.

all my jewish friends: challah back at me!

What a limited audience. I must admit, I don't have many jewish friends (for no particular reason)... even fewer who know about this site. This is really an aural joke. you know... like I am a rapper saying "holla" (which by the way, is how you pronouce the word above.) For those that don't know "challah" is an, often braided, bread served on jewish sabbaths. It's very tasty.

Anyway, Its thursday night, and I am here at school just trying to make my way through the universe. Really I am trying to motivate myself to finish my masters presentation, but I am easily distracting myself. If only I didn't have to be here with myself. Then I couldn't distract me. Well onward with work.

A little help.

So i got sidebars on either side like I like, but does anyone know how I can get them further to the right and left freeing up the middle some? That would be very helpful if someone would tell me.

Well here is a story about last nights celebrations...

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

UNC IS NUMBER ONE! ALL OTHERS ARE NUMBER 2 OR LOWER!

After the sweet sweet tarheel victory I and 50000 of my closest friends went to franklin street to celebrate. Though I did not participate in the celebratory vandalism, I did get some crappy shots of it with my camera phone.


It was a great game and I hope you got to see it. Never a doubt.
Things I saw and heard tonight that stood out from other nights:

• A guy on a bike pulling a presumably stolen push lawn mower.
• Seconds after winning, going outside to hear an entire group of townhouses rejoicing.
• huge bonfires in the middle of normally busy streets
• over 50,000 people

All in all a good night to be a TarHeel!

Augh!!!!! Good Grief!

So the kite eating tree devoured my kite this past sunday. Next thing I know, Lucy is pulling the ball out from under me as I try to kick it, and my dog is writting mystery novels. Other than that, my weekend was pretty good. Dancing, UNC game, Ultimate frisbee, etc.
Tonight will be the final NCAA tournament game. I can't remember which schools are in the championship game... was it your school? .... hmmmm No... not your school... Oh wait thats right... MY school is in the championship game. The UNC tarheels will square off against the Illinois... um... inbred hicks? I know nothing about Illinois. The state is kinda shaped like an ear of corn... I mean , how rediculous is that? Sorry Illinois, but if you want to compete, get yourself a new state shape. I call tonights game to be UNC : infinity factorial, Illinois: 0. Also, all the illinois players will foul out of the game, and even though the refs have been paid off in advance by Illinois, UNC will still win by said score becuase Illinois won't even shoot the ball. In fact, the ball will probably never be on thier side of the court. We'll see....

El Tango.... y cash?

Ahh sylvester stalone. Last night I went Tango dancing for the first time in a while. It was pretty cool, although there weren't very many people there, so i am glad that I had a partner I knew who could show me some moves. I think it only sounds scandalous to dance with your frined's fiance. At any rate, it gave me the reaffirmed desire to join the ballroom dance club at UNC. First of all, the club is free! So its a free lesson every monday night. Second, dancing is so much fun... when you aren't worried about what you look like (im my case). But the more dancing I learn, the less I'll care about what I look like, the better dancer I'll become. This is starting to remind me of a Movie idea I once had called "Fancy-free" where dancing was outlawd, and yet throbbing techno music is constantly played over loud speakers on the streets... but I danced anyway... BECAUSE I GOTS TO! It was a classic tale of a wild romp where I put the system on trial... I give it 3.5 stars. But those are AGB stars. (Asymptotic Giant Branch)... so .... I think we all know what that means... in terms of solar masses its really quite goo....ANYWAY, its a saturday and I am going to the gym since i have been delinquent this week.

April Fools

Today is not April Fools.




APRIL FOOLS!
Oh man I got you GOOD!