It's Official

Happy Pi Day!

Snow Days are for Lazy Wusses

President Obama would like for you to all grow up and deal with it. "It" in this case is the weather. Quit being lazy, suck it up, clear your roads and get to work.

... Obama said he wanted to make an unrelated comment to the press. In a slightly amused tone, he noted this his daughters' school, Sidwell Friends, was canceled today because of a snow and ice storm that hit Washington.

The suburban schools systems and many private schools in the region were closed today and the District public schools opted for a delayed opening because of the sleet and freezing rain that made some roads and many sidewalks treacherous.

"Because of what? Because of some ice?" Obama said to laughter around the table. ...

He concluded by saying: " ... I'm saying that when it comes to the weather, folks in Washington don't seem to be able to handle things."

In the meantime, half of the graduate students in my department were here this morning for Coffee. We even talked about science for forty minutes, in a way that didn't resemble Lord of the Flies at all. No one else has shown up yet.

Movie Review: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

So this afternoon, the significant other and I decided we needed to see a movie. I voted Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. I was told this is not actually out in theaters yet (I don't really follow these things, but I finally saw a trailer for it for the first time last night, which made me want to go see it immediately). So we settled on a 1:50pm showing of Prince Caspian. We get to the theater and pay for our tickets, but my credit card got double charged. So I had to wait at the little desk for a bit to get my card reimbursed. As this is happening, a group of people (carrying legal pads!) comes in, looking mildly confused, and the lady helping me asks, "Indiana Jones?" My head does several 180s; she explains it's a press showing. "I have a blog! I can write a movie review!!" I go join the SO, who is standing in line to buy some popcorn. I do a recap, and a man in the next line over explains to us that it's in Theatre 15, and they aren't asking for credentials, only a name and affiliation. We decide we're too nervous (and maybe too moral) to try for it, and it's about five minutes before Prince Caspian is supposed to start, so no go. Well, actually, Prince Capsian wasn't finished yet, so we went and sat on a bench for a while, whereupon we realized that if we didn't try to see Indiana Jones—it's Indiana Jones !!!—then we would regret it. So we walked over to Theatre 15 with our popcorn and I told them we were from an Ohio State newspaper, and we walked right in.

Now, I promised a review, but, first, there's a slight problem, a dilemma if you will. See, I hate spoilers. I abhor them. I think people who spoil movies or TV shows without fair and ample warning should be drawn and quartered, or at least stripped of their right to enjoy any entertainment ever again. I don't read movie reviews because, if I know I want to see a movie ahead of time, why would I want to know what someone else has to say about it before I go see it?? I'll make up my own mind. And if I don't want to go see a movie, then why the hell would I be caring enough about it to read reviews?? It's just not logical. (And, no, I don't think that the first new Indiana Jones movie in 19 years will qualify for many under the third case of "and if I haven't heard about a film...")

As it happens, however, I happen to be dating someone who, while also having a strong aversion to spoilers, does not hold the same reservations towards movie reviews as I do. So the SO will be doing the actual review:

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is the first Indiana Jones movie to exist in the history created by the earlier films. I mean, did Indy ever talk about the stuff he'd already done before? The movies are pretty stand alone, right? There is, I believe, one little blink-and-you'll-miss-it reference to Raiders in Last Crusade, but that's it. The Indy we meet here, however, has done everything. He found the Ark of the Covenant. He found the whatever-they're-called stones. He found the Holy Grail. And he's done 20 more years worth of stuff that we didn't get to see. He fought in World War II, one way or another. He's done all this, and he's no longer afraid to talk about it. He's a guy starting to see the end of the tunnel and has learned that he likes telling his lifetime's worth of stories. This is not the Indiana Jones we met before, nor should it be. He's lived 20 more years, grown, maybe even learned a little bit since we saw him last.

This means, of course, that the movie takes place in the 50s, and if you manage to forget this fact, you'll be reminded as the film traverses every archetype (or should I say stereotype?) of the nostalgia decade before the end of the first reel. Shia LaBeouf does a reasonably good job of inhabiting one of those ----types. But not as good as Cate Blanchett, who, in her unending streak of impressing me more than I expect her to, may very well have crafted the best Indiana Jones villain ever from what is really an underwritten role. She's a wonder to behold, and she and her minions never quite manage to fall into the incompetent villain class, despite being constantly outsmarted by the heroes.

Now, I have to say something about the title. When I first heard it, my response was something like "'Crystal skull'? Really? I mean, seriously?" It really didn't seem like a sufficiently substantial object, particularly compared to the Ark or the Grail. But the movie sold me. It totally sold me. I don't want to say how exactly it does this for fear of spoilers, but it does.

My biggest complaint is that the movie sometimes seemed too eager to underdevelop a character or a dramatic situation in order to get back to another in a very long line of witty action sequences. I think that if you go in expecting the Second Coming of Spielberg, you'll be disappointed. This is not really an important film. It won't change the face of cinema as we know it like Raiders did, and it won't take Indiana Jones to a place he's never been before or will again like the Last Crusade did. All it will do is give us a few more events in the unusual life of Henry Jones, Jr. I suspect that nothing that occurs in Indy 4 is really so spectacular for him, which makes this new (older) Indy different, but it is fun to spend a few days walking around underneath his hat again.

Why I Will Be Voting for Barack Obama

Let me preface this with two statements: first, the reason this post is so well-written is because most of it is written by a friend who for various reasons wishes to remain anonymous. Secondly, if in the unfortunate event of the November being Clinton v. McCain, then yes, I will vote for Clinton. As it should be clear to anyone who has attempted to make the Obama v. Clinton decision based on policy alone, the two candidates simply don't differ substantially on the issues, forcing us to make our decision based on other reasons (see the end of this post for a better-phrased rendition of this point).



Practical Reasons Why Barack Obama Should Be the Next President of the United States, and Hillary Clinton Should Not

Much of the media coverage surrounding Barack Obama's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination has focused on the Illinois senator's theme of "change." While Senator Obama downplays the obvious and awkward race/gender implications, he has deliberately framed the contest as a generational conflict. While a conspiracy to prematurely put the Baby Boomers out to pasture is indeed seductive, it does not earn my vote. Irritating as it may be, there must be substance. So, here are my practical reasons why Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States:

1. "He Has No Experience. Nobody Knows This Guy." That's the Point.

Senator Clinton's most durable and effective jab against Obama's potential as President is that he just does not have the necessary political resume to assume the highest political office in the land. After all, he's only a first-term senator (more on that later). To Obama's supporters, this argument misses the point. They support him because he does not carry forty years of political obligation with him into the Oval Office. He has not spent the greater part of his adult life learning what can't be accomplished on Capitol Hill. The political climate in America is perhaps more polarized and vindictive than it has been since the late 1960s. Hillary Clinton can endure that climate. Barack Obama can change it. It is counterintuitive to argue that a politician whose entire public life is emblematic of the political polarization of a nation is somehow most qualified to unite it.

Perhaps equally importantly, he is not saddled with the cult of hatred that has burdened Hillary Clinton since 1992. Whatever Hillary Clinton would gain as president from her political "experience" would be negated by the fact that so many legislators and citizens would reflexively stonewall her purely by fault of what (they perceive) she is and what (they perceive) she stands for. Is anybody under the impression that another Clinton administration would not be the target of a new generation of Kenneth Starrs and Ralph Reeds? That we wouldn't all have to endure another round of Whitewater and similar absurdities? We would, and it would mean, once again, neglecting the real business of the nation.

2. Now, Let's Discuss Experience...

Hillary Clinton is neither an experienced politician nor an experienced administrator. She has won only two elections, and that only with a massive financial base, almost-universal name recognition and—of course—the strong and vigorous endorsement of an ex-president. The majority of her public life has been spent in the capacity of First Lady, first of Arkansas and then of the United States. Being in close proximity to power is far cry from wielding it, and Mrs. Clinton hopes that the voters will not realize that. She over-estimates and over-represents the breadth of her political experience. Her argument that Mr. Obama is either not electable or not an able politician ignores the fact that he more or less single-handedly built a political base rivaling hers in the past twelve years. He has won more elections than she has with fewer resources. His recent work as a ground-level inner-city community organizer gives him a much better perspective on the realities of race, class and, yes, gender, than does Clinton's work as a prominent corporate nearly attorney thirty years ago.

3. ...And Gender.

Among Hillary Clinton's most reliable supporters has been a demographic of baby-boomer women frustrated at what they perceive as entrenched patriarchy at the highest levels of national power. They lived through and led the women's liberation movements of the sixties and seventies. For them, a second Clinton administration has the potential to complete a feminist narrative that began with suffrage. The problem is the first Clinton administration. It is difficult to understand why a generation that has identified so strongly with the idea of feminine autonomy chooses to champion a woman who spent a quarter century supporting her husband's rise to power. And after her husband fulfilled his every ambition, he allowed her to use his political machine to achieve some of hers. A feminist triumph indeed. References to her long-ago legal career notwithstanding, the majority of Clinton's public life has been spent in the capacity of First Lady. Furthermore, unqualified feminist support for Hillary Clinton assumes that any woman, by virtue of her gender, will be a better advocate for women's issues than any man. If this is indeed why Clinton enjoys such strong support from women of her generation, it is a sad testimonial to the state of contemporary feminist thinking. Modern feminists should consider not only which candidate is most representative of their struggle, but which is most able to build the consensuses and piece together the coalitions necessary to continue real progress towards gender equality in America. Much of America has already decided—by no fault of her own—that Hillary Clinton is a dangerous and radical relic of the more bizarre elements of the women's liberation movement. Barack Obama does not have this image. By virtue of his strong and charismatic masculinity, he will be more able to successfully continue the work to which Senator Clinton's generation is committed.

4. P.S. - The Rest of the World.

No foreseeable political event could redeem America's standing in the world more than Barack Obama taking the oath of office as President of the United States. His election would represent a clean break from the face of America which has earned us such antipathy from enemies and allies alike. Consider his potential for international credibility: the biracial son of a Muslim African, raised in Indonesia, who was a vigorous opponent of the Iraq War from the beginning, could hardly be cast as the Ugly American. He would have a wealth of international political capital completely unavailable to Senators Clinton or McCain, largely because nobody could argue that he doesn't care. His insistence on meeting with problematic world leaders such as Chavez, Ahmadinejad & Co. challenges the dangerous and juvenile American myth that you can make progress with a nation by ignoring it. Furthermore, don't be concerned that a man so liberal will be perceived as a push-over. I doubt his administration will have trouble convincing anybody that a tall black man from inner-city Chicago is aggressive enough.


More than a few political reporters have noted that the two Senators have remarkably similar political platforms. Their observation is accurate. Quibbling on particulars of health care plans aside, there are few glaring political or ideological differences between the two politicians. In very general terms, therefore, it is a contest of both image and leadership. Senator Obama is a bold and capable leader. He is not encumbered by the political baggage or obligations of a quarter-century at the highest levels of American politics. And he represents a vision of America that the rest of the world did—and could—love. Through his political intuition and force of personality, he has the potential to advance a strong progressive agenda at home and abroad. These are my practical reasons why Barack Obama should be the next President of the United States.

Awesome

This paper by Conroy, Wechsler, and Kravtsov has got to have the best footnote I have ever seen. They put forth a straightforward way to model "galaxy clustering through cosmic time," and their model does a surprisingly good job of mathing the data. The text to sum this all up reads: "Overall the agreement is excellent on all scales for all four samples.⁸"

Footnote reads: "⁸ Booyah!"

The One Thing Humans Can Agree On

New Year's Eve (and Day, I suppose) is my favorite holiday of the year for the reason that it is an entirely human celebration ... there is no "giving thanks" or implicity-but-now-commercialized worship to some deity that most people don't believe in anyhow. It's quite simply a celebration of saying goodbye to the old and hello to the new, an arbitrary reason to try to "start over." But moreso than that, I like New Year's because the time and date is the one thing that we as the human race can actually agree upon. No one right now is actually saying, "no, no, it's really February 17, 2086."

I'd say more, but in five minutes it's going to be 2008 here and then I can go to sleep, so I'll end with the lame question of: can you come up with anything else that everyone agrees upon?

The Indie Art Capital of the World

So, apparently Columbus has been named the Indie Art Capital of the World. I'm not really sure what this means, but it is true that I have become a lot more aware of art—and people creating art—since moving to Columbus. In fact, the guy I got δ Carina from (thanks, Craigslist!) is an independent artist; he even gave me a self-printed short comic book (about SPACE! and Dylan Thomas being cool!) as a thank you for taking my new shoe-sized meow-monster.

Probably part of Columbus's new title can be attributed to the monthly Gallery Hop in the Short North area of town (the aptly named neighborhood shortly north of downtown). Art galleries littered along about a ten block area stay open late on the first Saturday night of each month, as the crowds wander from gallery to gallery, bar to bar, shop to shop, navigating the random music being played and jewelry and other random things being sold on the sidewalks. And, in these cases, a place doesn't necessarily have to be a "gallery" per se in order to attract people looking for visual and mental stimulation; if you have open wall space to hang a few paintings on, you're in business. Just tonight bought my first piece of what could be considered, you know, real art: a 12"x18" print of the above pretty lady, Sernity, from Robert Walker, an artist displaying his paintings at a realty office. I was also lucky enough to see the original of Rachell, this purple-haired vixen on the right, who I might have just taken home with me had I had $1000 to spare...

Turning a Sphere Inside Out

Ever wanted to see what it looks like when a sphere gets turned inside out, or simply know what is meant when people talk about turning closed surfaces (like a sphere) inside out? Hat tip to Scott Aaronson for this video:

As it turns out, I actually recognize several of the intermediate steps (for a few of the algorithms they show) as neat-o sculptures that often show up near math departments.

Dumbledore is Gay, and Authority is Not to be Trusted

So tonight was The Night with J. K. Rowling. I'm pretty tired right now, and perhaps rather inebriated, so I'm going to keep this short. No promises on a longer post later, but we'll see. If you haven't actually read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, well ... at least one horrid spoiler follow.

The obvious highlight of tonight's event was the question-and-answer session. The questions were all picked ahead of time, and were largely plot-centric (which meant that questions relevant to writing process/style such as the one we submitted were right out). As much of the internet already knows by now (I'm such a slacker, going out for chocolates and wine afterwards instead of writing a blog post immediately), one of the most interesting answers was in response to a question about Dumbledore's past. A general meme with the questions being asked was "I'm such a big fan, your books have had such a big impact on my life, here's my question." The person (a young teenage girl, if I remember correctly) who asked about Dumbledore actually phrased these compliments fairly well, talking about how the books had taught her a lot about relationships. She then asked, since Dumbledore is such a champion of the power of love, "did Dumbledore ever find love?" Rowling's response was essentially, "Well, since you've been so honest with me ... I always saw Dumbledore as gay." This was followed, of course, by a huge applause and lots of cheering; and, of course, the idea that this wonderful (even if fictional) role model that so many people have come to know and love is *gasp* not straight is fantastic. As far as the Harry Potter plotline is concerned, however, it is also relevant: apparently Rowling thinks of Dumbledore as having been in love with Grindelwald, which is why he was so devastated when he realized Grindelwald's true nature... and then was so reluctant to confront him later in life. Another of Rowling's comments on this revelation: "Wow, if I'd known people would be so excited by this, I would have mentioned it sooner," and "Oh my god, the fanfiction now."

I found another exchange to be particularly interesting not so much because it was enlightening, but because Rowling delivered a particularly juicy quote. The question had to do with whether or not the Death Eaters were influenced from history by the (obvious choice of) the Nazis. Rowling basically kind of avoided the actual question, but she did say, "You should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth ... the entire series is a prolonged argument against intolerance and bigotry." Very well said, Ms. Rowling.

ActBlue: Daniel Biss or Kakistocracy?

For those of you wondering this Independence Day what you can do to "get more blue states," I'd like to direct you over to ActBlue, "the online clearinghouse for Democratic action." The idea is that, through the ActBlue website, you can find out who the Democratic candidates are for given elections, and also through the ActBlue website, you can donate money to these campaigns. (They even have a blog if you'd like to get some up-to-date statistics.) Through ActBlue, you can learn about such candidates as Daniel Biss, who is a (very cool) University of Chicago math professor running for the Illinois House in District 17—he's also someone you can actually believe when he says his top priority is education, and that he thinks everyone should exercise their right to vote, regardless of their political leanings. Or, if you like to get entertainment value out of your donation money, you can donate to Maine's Hancock County Democratic Party by purchasing a Kakistocracy bumper sticker. (For those of you in need of a vocabulary lesson, a kakistocracy is a "government by the least qualified or most unprincipled citizens.")

Red Gloves

When I visited here a little over two years ago as an innocent prospective grad student, I was coming from what was supposed to be a three week trip to southern California (mostly Caltech), and I wasn't prepared for 20 degree weather. My layover was in Denver, and between gates I bought a pair of red leather gloves in hopes of surviving Ohio in January. They were nice red gloves, very soft leather, decently warm, and very very red. They lived in my jacket pockets, because that's where gloves belong and are easily found.

Last week it was much warmer here than usual, so I switched from my winter jacket to my more-of-a-raincoat-except-it's-not-really-waterproof jacket. My gloves, wallet, and phone also made the transition. Then Saturday morning I woke up and it was snowing and this was sad and I needed to switch back to my regular ole winter jacket. But, wait! Only the left pocket of my other jacket was harboring a glove, and I had no idea where the other one could have gotten to. It could have fallen out pretty much anywhere, and after verifying that "anywhere" wasn't my apartment or my office, I was quite sad. My right hand was quite cold all weekend.

Then last night I was walking to the bus stop (the bus only runs on weekdays) to come home, and out of the corner of my eye, I see: red! I look down, and there is a lonely red glove on the ground by the sidewalk, in the mud. I picked it up and put it on; sure enough, it's my right glove, slightly muddy but relatively unfazed by Saturday's snow. And there's no way I would have noticed it in the dim light if it had been some boring color like black or brown.

What really gets me is that yesterday was a rather craptacular day, one of those days that had me wanting to crawl under my desk and hide. And yet finding my red glove, which only put me back on par with where I was Friday, was the best thing that happened all day.

And I really have to wonder what was going through the mind of the guy about ten paces behind me on the sidewalk.

I Do It For The Money

CNN has an article today listing the 50 highest paid professions in the U.S., based on median annual salary. Here's my summary of the top 30:

1. Doctor: $177,690

2. Doctor: $174,240

3. Doctor: $171,810

4. Doctor: $163,410

5. Doctor: $160,660

6. Internists, General: $156,550 <-- what does that even mean?!

7. Head Doctor: $146,150

8. Doctor: $146,080

9. Doctor: $140,370

10. Person with big corner office and no hobbies: $139,810

11. Doctor: $139,230

12. Airline Pilots, Copilots, and Flight Engineers: $135,040

13. Doctor: $133,680

14. Doctor: $111,250

15. Lawyers: $110,520

16. Air Traffic Controllers: $105,820

17. "Managers": $105,470

18. Computer people: $102,360

19. "Managers": $101,990

20. Astronomers: $101,360

21. "Managers": $99,140

22. "Managers": $98,510

23. Petroleum Engineers: $97,350 <-- oil, yick

24. "Managers": $96,620

25. Former Lawyers: $95,570

26. Doctor: $95,500

27. "Managers": $95,470

28. Computer People: $94,030

29. Judges, Magistrate Judges, and Magistrates: $91,500

30. Physicists: $91,480


Take that, you "real" physicists.

Also note that all those doctors and lawyers (and probably many of the managers) had to have lots of icky schooling after college—icky because they probably had to pay lots and lots for it instead of, you know, not.

Bismuth Crystals

I have a friend living in Cambridge who has recently gotten into Bismuth crystal making. Unlike lead, bismuth is a surprisingly non-toxic (real) heavy element—in fact, it's the reason for the "Bism" in Pepto-Bismol. You can buy it for about $20 a pound. It melts at about 520°F, which is cool enough that you can melt it on the stove. To form a crystal, melt some bismuth on the stove (my friend uses some stainless steel bowls he's dedicated to the mission), and let the molten bismuth sit for a bit. It will begin to cool and crystalize on the surfaces (top and along the sides of the bowl); as it crystalizes, you can kind of break off pieces. It's easier to get lots of small pieces than big ones, and it takes some magic to figure out how to control the color of it—the color is due to a thin layer of bismuth oxide which forms on the surface of the crystal as it cools. If I remember correctly, gold (clearly the least interesting color when up against purple and blue) is due to too much oxidation. It is also possible to make "Bismuth eggs" (or really, "Bismuth any-kind-of-mold-you-might-have") by melting the Bismuth in a mold and then pouring out the molton Bismuth before it gets too crystalized and fills up the mold.


It's difficult to tell from this perspective, but the upper-right one looks like a conical square spiral, both inside and out. The bottom right one (zoomed in below) totally looks like a Frank Gehry building, but that might be because I've seen more of Building 32 in the last weekend than I have in the last year. The two on the left were originally one piece, which was going to be a Christmas tree ornament, but it broke while spending the day in my pocket. I guess I could still glue the two pieces together (they both have relatively flat sides) and stick a piece of string in the glue as well and still end up with a nice ornament.

UPDATE (09/13/2007): My friend has a few corrections and comments to add.

The colors: it's interference coloring, like you get on soap bubbles and oil slicks, based on how thick the oxide grows. As the layer grows in thickness, it will cycle through the colors repeatedly until the oxide gets too thick to easily transmit light, or something, and then I think it just turns gray. With the crystals, the oxide stops growing as the crystal cools. I do think I got more interesting colors when the crystals were cooler before they were exposed to air, so that they oxidized less, but I think it's a mischaracterization to say that one color or another is the result of too much oxidation.

Rubik's Cubes

Rubik's cubes are not really all that difficult to solve. You just need to have an algorithm, and to follow it. It was amazingly difficult to find Rubik's cubes in stores this Christmas season, thanks to Will Smith solving one in The Pursuit of Happyness. It really gets me that people think that solving a Rubik's cube is "impossible," or that only "smart" people can do it. It is much like many older people with "technology" (i.e., computers): they decide it is difficult and they do not know how to do it, and like any self-fulfilling prophecy, the task becomes insurmountable.

While it does take a calculating mind capable of 3-D visualization to invent/discover complicated moves that move around certain pieces in a particular way while not disturbing other certain pieces, it takes a much less creative mind to simply follow directions and to figure out which order to apply these moves in. I am in the second category: I do not have the patience or the foresight to come up with complicated maneuvers, but I can look at a cube and figure out what needs to be done in order to solve it. Different people use different algorithms for solving Rubik's cubes. For the classic 3-by-3-by-3 cube, I choose a face (usually the yellow) to start on. I first get the four yellow corners in place, and correctly oriented. You can tell when the four corners are in the correct place when the yellow side is on the same side as the yellow center and the other-colored side (such as, say, blue) is on the same side as the other-colored (e.g., blue) center. I then get the yellow edge pieces in place, with the correct orientation. My next step is to put the four white corner pieces in the correct locations (these being the four remaining corner pieces). Once these four corner pieces are in place, I rotate them so that they have the correct orientation; I usually do this by "storing" one of the white corner pieces in a yellow corner spot while twisting the others around. I then take care of the white edge pieces; it usually possible to get them all in both the correct location with the correct orientation, but sometimes one will have the wrong orientation. This leaves the four other non-yellow and non-white edge pieces, which are easy to move to the correct positions. Sometimes I am left with a pair of edge pieces in the correct locations but with the wrong orientations; correcting this is the only fancy-schmancy "magical" scripted move I use.

If you know how to solve a 3-by-3-by-3 Rubik's cube (3x3x3? I'll call it a 3³), then the 2-by-2-by-2 (a 2³) is easy because it is just like solving the corners of a 3³ one. I haven't quite yet figured out how to solve the 4³ one, which I got for Christmas, though the algorithm I am currently trying is to basically try to reduce it to the 3³ case, which I know how to solve. First, I want to get all of the 2x2 centers together, since the lack of fixed centers in the 4³ cube is one of the reasons it is so tricky. For example, in a 3³ cube, if the yellow and white faces in the solved cube are opposite one another, then it is impossible to make the center yellow and white pieces be on adjacent faces. This is not the case with the 4³ cube. Having completed the step of consolidating the 2x2 centers—with the correct relative orientations—I now want to gather all of the edge pieces together. That is, there are two edge pieces that have blue and white on them, and I would like for them to be next to one another such that the two blue sides are adjacent and the two white sides are adjacent. I have not yet done this part, but I think I know how to. Once I have this done, the 4³ cube will essentially be reduced to the 3³ case: it will have 2x2 centers instead of fixed single centers and two pieces per edge instead of one, but if I treat these groups of pieces like single units, I can solve it like I would a normal 3³ cube. At the end, though, it will be possible that, for instance, one edge will be flipped relative to its neighboring centers, which is not possible in the 3³ case.... but I'll wait until I get there to deal with that.

The 5-by-5-by-5 cube is not mine to play with (and I'm not allowed to mess it up)*, but I am guessing that it is similarly reducible to some combination of the 3³ and 4³ cubes. Because it has fixed centers (thanks to the odd number of pieces per edge), it does not suffer from the same orientation issues as the 4³ cube.

Apparently the original Rubik's cubes and the newer "retro" cubes have opposite faces differing by yellow: red is across from orange, blue is across from green, and white is across from yellow. The Rubik's cube I learned how to solve first, though, had blue and white across from one another (and yellow and green across from each other), so I still get mildly confused when I see an edge piece with both blue and white on it.

The 2³ cube is notoriously stiff and difficult to move. This one in particular is also difficult to solve because the orange and red faces are nigh indistiguishable; I have colored the red squares red with a red Sharpie, but this now means that anyone who plays with it will be repaid with red fingertips. This 3³ one is brand new, and amazingly smooth and easy to twist and turn. (I in fact bought it to replace no fewer than four 3³ cubes that had been used and taken apart so much that none of them moved well anymore, and most of them had stickers of indiscernible color.) The only disappointing part about the new 3³ cube is that the orange color is a rather icky orange. The 4³ and 5³ ones are monstrous and difficult to handle; note also that the more pieces a cube has, the smaller the individual pieces are. The 4³ one one seems more poorly constructed than the 5³ one; the stickers are not exactly in the middle of the squares, and already one piece has simply popped out and had to be stuck back in.

By the way, if you know where I could obtain a 1-by-1-by-1 Rubik's cube, please let me know. We'd like to complete the collection at the small-n end.


* Playing with Rubik's cubes is really really bad for your wrists, especially if you already have wrist problems induced from RSI (Repetitive Stress/Strain Injury). This means that Rubik's cubes are dangerous to have around if you have RSI and are ... compulsive.