... 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.
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.
I'm in San Francisco this weekend for my first celebration of Passover. As I've never observed a religious holiday in a purely secular setting (and, no, Christmas doesn't count), this should be fairly fun and educational. Growing up, I always thought Easter and Passover occured around roughly the same time of year, but of course this isn't strictly the case. This year Easter was really early: it falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the first day of Spring, which this year all happened to make Easter three days after the Vernal Equinox. And, of course, leave it to an astronomer to explain all of the intricate calendar calculations and relations between Easter, Orthodox Easter, Passover, and Rosh Hoshanah. Basically, the confusing arises when the Vernal Equinox is approximated to be (as opposed to basing these holidays on when the Vernal Equinox actually is).
Today is apparently this blog's 2nd birthday. I'm too out of it right now to do anything special, mostly because I finally submitted the paper I've been working on for the last few months to ApJ (i.e., a journal) and the arXiv (it'll be up Thursday night and I'll probably write something real about it this weekend), and I've still go this "thesis proposal" thing to prepare for Friday. So, in the meantime, here is a word count breakdown of the paper. Your job is to guess the subject matter.
I'll get into it more later, but I've decided to amp up the political presence on this blog—or, rather, have one. But before I start doing my best to bias your political opinions, here is a survey based about political candidates a reader has asked me to forward along (yes, I took it, and yes, it was fast and painless:
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The purpose of this survey is to examine how people think and feel about the political issues, parties, and candidates in the upcoming election. In the survey, you will be asked a series of questions about two political candidates, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. We are very interested in how individuals that find information on the web think about politics, and your participation would be greatly appreciated. In total, the survey should take about 15 minutes to complete. The survey is completely anonymous and you can skip any questions you do not wish to answer.
As it turns out, typing ISBNs into the computer is more fun that it should be, and now that I have run out of books (I apparently own 201, 44 of which live in my office) I feel the need to keep going. I've made sure as many of the books as possible have the correct cover images associated with them, and even put notes on some of the obvious ones.
Fun facts: my library apparently shares two books with Tupac Shakur's and three with Thomas Jefferson's (but none with Amadeus Mozart—his are old and German anyhow). I apparently have three books autographed by the author; in order of date acquired, these would be The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene, I Sold My Soul on eBay by Hemant Mehta, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling. There are only three books which I have in common with only one other LibraryThing member; one of these is a friend who I did not know used LibraryThing but apparently took the same silly French class in college that I did. I would guess now that there are at least half a dozen books which I am the only user who has (somehow I was unsurprised I am a 1905 copy of Lanzo's Applied Mechanics or one of the Thai massage books I bought in Chiang Mai); unfortunately, while I can easily get the number of other users who have a certain book, I cannot sort my entire library by this parameter.
I also apparently have 30 unread books (or, if they are textbooks [which one rarely "reads" cover-to-cover], essentially never-been-used). I find this to be a surprisingly large nmber; I know I have a stack of about half a dozen books in my "to be read" queue (mostly new ones like Freakonomics and The Assault on Reason), but really?? Thirty?! And here I am wanting to go and buy other books? At least this will give me an excuse to start using the date started/date finished cataloging feature LibraryThing provides.
In unrelated-except-that-it's-also-on-the-internet news, I finally uploaded δ Carina to Kittenwar. She has currently won 4 battles and lost 2 ... how could someone not realize she is the cuttest kitty in all of existence?! Silly people.
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?
Just in case you were wondering, science is still awesome.
First up, synesthesia—the mixing of senses so that, for example, one associates or experiences certain colors with individual numbers and letters—is always cool. I have this to enough of an extent that I would totally love to have it even more. For example, in my mind Thursdays are a deep mustard color, but Tuesdays are a rich green and Wednesdays are a pale blue; I wouldn't be surprised if this association is one reason why I don't have to keep a calendar or datebook. The recent incredibly wonderful thing I've found out about synesthesia is that apparently colorblind synesthetes can experience colors via associations that their eyes are not actually capable of seeing. Brains are so fantastic.
I've been taking art classes at the local cultural arts center since June. Over the summer I took a clay sculpture class, and when I went back on my second week to look at what I had started, I was rather freaked to discover that the piece was partially covered in mold. Turns out, the more microorganisms there are living in clay, the more aerated the clay is, and thus the higher quality it has the potential to be for sculpting. Also in the art department, last week I was working with two pieces of sheet metal (I'm taking a jewelry class now) that I wanted to have have identical borders, so I superglued the two pieces together so they wouldn't move relative to one another as I filed the edges. But then I wanted to, you know, unsuperglue them. The most efficient way to do this, apparently, is to simply anneal the metal—that is, put it under a big torch until the superglue burns away and the pieces come apart. I was working with copper, which normally when annealed turns a nice deep red color, but with the superglue on it, turned a dark grody grey.
It's been all over the news, and I obviously didn't get around to writing this post yesterday, but the Auger collaboration has finally come out with their first big result: cosmic rays appear to not be isotropically distributed on the sky. They come just short of saying that comsic rays are produced by supermassive black holes (specifically, supermassive black holes actively accreting matter), but due to a liberal use of the subjunctive in the paper, this is essentially the take-home message. Chad has already done a detailed analysis of the paper and all that jazz, but he fails to mention the fact that the effective size of the Auger detector, located in Argentina, is roughly the same area as Rhode Island—and they're looking to expand. I'm not sure if this is just a statement of how large their detector is, or how small Rhode Island is, though.
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...
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.
In about a week—at 7p.m. EDT Friday, October 19, to be precise—I'll be in New York City to spend some quality 2000-on-1 time with the one and only J. K. Rowling. Apparently this is the first time she has toured the US since 2000; the stint in NYC will be the only not-for-just-kids appearence on her jam-packed four stop tour. Now, I don't particularly consider myself a Harry Potter "fan" ... you may have noticed the lack of zomghp7!!!$!!%!!!! posts here back in July. I do, however, enjoy the books (even if I don't actually own all seven yet—I'm holding out for a boxed set of paperback copies of the UK adult version). They are enjoyable to read, and the world Rowling has created is simultaneously entertaining and interesting. And, yes, I picked my copy of the Deathly Hallows up at midnight the night of July 20, and had it read by dinnertime that night.
Interjection: Just now, as I was writing this post, a friend messaged me and started talking about the band "Draco and the Malfoys," who are the foil to "Harry and the Potters." I am now disturbed.
So the reason I am bringing all of this up is that I need help. See, we've been told that there will probably be some sort of question-and-answer session at the event, but everything I can possibly think of wanting to know that could be gleaned from a one-question-one-answer situation is along the lines of, "So if the Potters were all alone the night that James and Lily died, the how did Dumbledore hear about it before everyone else in order to send Hagrid over there, and how come it took so long for Hagrid to arrive with Harry if he was one of the first ones to know?" This kind of technical nitpicking is right out for this particular venue, but I haven't got any better ideas.
So: if you could ask J. K. Rowling one question, what would it be?
Update (10/16/07): It's been pointed out to me that Rowling is a rich person. Wouldn't she like to donate money to astronomy like all of the other cool rich people?
Update (10/17/07): We just submitted this question to the website:
You've been writing this series for 17 years. How difficult was it to keep the style consistent over all that time, even when you as a writer surely must have evolved considerably?
So I'm going to be observing in Arizona for about the next week. This evening, I was waiting for the other graduate student to get off of the plane in Tucson, I was just standing next to my luggage. A Japanese man, about 60 years old, comes up to me (as he's leaving the jetway) and asks (I kid you not): "*mumble, mumble,* are you a physicist?" Me: "*stammer, stammer,* yes." He asked what I was doing here, and I said observing at MDM, and he was like, "oh, okay," and went away. I didn't realize the weirdness of this story until after he'd left (I'd been asleep on the plane so I was not exactly "awake" yet) ... but I don't think there was anything about me that screamed, "I am a physicist!" I checked, and I wasn't wearing a physics shirt or even anything particularly nerdy (is a Hawaiian shirt, black slacks, and black loafers that unusual?). The other graduate student postulated that perhaps he had been in earshot of our conversation at the beginning of the flight over which temperature scale is superior (which included calculating the average body temparture in Celsius); apparently the guy across the aisle from me had been shooting us weird looks for the duration of this discussion. But does a discussion of temperature scales really give it away that I'm a physicist?
So I was fairly dead to the world (of the internet) in August. But with September comes a whole new month! I've been so slack on reading blog posts (probably a good thing, of course, given the general inverse correlation between number of blog posts read and amount of work done) that I've started using Google Reader to keep track of the unread posts. Seeing as how I've also recently bought my very own coffee pot so I can enjoy real coffee at home, this morning's internet perusal is also slightly more caffeinated than usual. In reality, I was actually planning on reading a set of papers on absoprtion systems in close quasar pairs, but I cleverly left the stack in my office. So you, whatever little readership is left after such a month of non-posts, win.
The Friendly Atheist talks a little bit about an article in the Columbus Dispatch on the recent surge of atheistic books; the article itself isn't terrible enlightening or interesting, but I think it represents a response to the overwhelming support the editor of the Faith & Values section was sent after innocently asking in February whether or not nontheists should enjoy a more representative sampling of articles in the F&V section than is typical.
Elizabeth Wood over at Sex in the Public Square rightly points out that the whole "debate" over whether sexual preference is chosen or biological is completely irrelevant to the fact that it isn't something that should be a basis for discrimination.
We also saw (and are seeing) all sorts of people fleeing from the White House like rats from a sinking ship; see this recent AP story on Tony Snow for a probably complete list. My favorite quote is:
Snow, ailing with cancer, had said recently he would leave before the end of Bush's presidency because he needs to make more money.
See, he could have said, "for health reasons," or something completely believable and forgivable like that ... but "more money"?! Sheesh. And certainly the timing these sudden desires for more money and wanting to spend more time with family are mere coincidences rather than being due to knowing something we don't know and not wanting to be held as accountable later. Certainly.
Speaking of people focussing on all the wrong things, Mark at Cosmic Variance provides a nice superposition of people worried about action rather than hypocrisy and baggy clothes rather than crime.
On a completely unrelated note, it seems that ScienceBlogs is doing a 500,000th comment contest, and it appears that the winner will be sent to Cambridge (the one in the UK, that is). Personally, I think Boston is the "greatest science city in the world," and I'm completely unbiased, but I also think most people (myself included) would rather score a free trip to England. I'd be perfectly happy to get my hands on one of those Sb mugs, though.
This is also one of the more fantastic times of year for those of us on the evil quarter system, seeing as how plentyofotherplaces have already started classes and are being innundated with floods of undergrads. Best part is: I'm not taking classes this term! Or next term! Or, really, ever again! I doubt the gloating will ever get old.
And then we have this delightful gem showing us that I may not be representative of those educated in South Carolina:
So some lady just called me looking for the Political Science department .... I told her that I am in the Astronomy department, not Political Science. So she asked me if I believe the universe is expanding. Yes ... "That's because of the redshifts, right?" Yeah ... "So who owns the Hubble telescope?" Uh ... "The US Government owns the Hubble telescope, right?" Well, I wouldn't put it quite like that. "The French government doesn't operate it, so it must be the US." Does that really follow? "Astronomy is a science, right? What's the phone number of the chair of the science department?" Uhm ... It's 6pm... I don't think anyone is going to be in their offices right now.
Sigh. I clearly need more practice talking to crazy people while still allowing them to remain "interested" in astronomy, though this one seemed rather well-informed, albeit with big warning bells going off all over the place. In other news, Google announced today that the Sky is now part of the Earth, in that Google Sky is now part of Google Earth. This was enough of an incentive for me to finally download Google Earth and waste lots of time looking at pretty galaxies and galaxy clusters and nebulae and other such fun things. Constellations and planet orbits are included. Much like Google Earth, Google Sky is much more in the hokey fun category than the useful category, and unfortunately the objects I'm prone to looking at first are the ones I know well enough to be annoyed at how poor some of the data is. The entire sky has been mapped by the Digital Sky Survey (DSS), and a fourth of it by the more recent and absolutely fantastic Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). The Sloan images include all of the delightful astrometric precision of SDSS, as well as all five wavelength bands of the survey. Then, for the popular select few objects, the Hubble Heritage project has kicked in with "informative" blurbs about "zoom lenses" (also known as "the Virgo Cluster") and other such things, though one useful bit about these is the links to outside sources like ADS for said objects. The Hubble Heritage project by itself is a pretty interesting archive to nose around in if you haven't already, as well as the recently released Hubble Legacy Archive (which is actually good for scientific purposes).
Seeing as how I no longer live next to a set of rather active railroad tracks, I've gone and changed my Blogger profile to reflect the now official move to a better, less undergrad-saturated area of town. The old apartment wasn't all that bad; the only noise problem was due to the people upstairs, and their 3:30a.m. trysts had cut into my sleep one too many times. And the bathtub was horribly disgusting, as it was shaped such that the lowest point was in the center of the tub rather than at the drain. The front door could never be open for more time than it took for one or two people to go through it due to a nasty fly problem, and the laundry room was three times as far away as the railroad tracks and down a flight of stairs. So it was time to get out, but I hate hate hate moving: I hate putting stuff into boxes, I hate taking stuff out of boxes, I hate standing in the middle of a room with some random thing in my hand wondering where it should go, and I hate having stuff everywhere. I've taken several half days and three full days off (and it would have been many more and would have been a lot more painful had my mother not decided to drive up and help), and I'm completely ready to get back to thinking about astronomy instead of where the permanent location of the box of stuff will be. And, now that I've got internet at the New Place, I might even start blogging more than once a week.
When I was little, I had a "game" box that I kept neat things in: stickers, neat shells (small ones), odd game pieces, a multicolored crayon that I never used because I didn't want to waste it. I mostly used the objects in this box to design games around; of course, one important rule in all of these games was that I could always add new rules, and therefore always win.
I'm moving to a new apartment this week, and as such everything in my apartment is finding its way into boxes. This afternoon, I went through the Box of Stuff that has been sitting relatively ignored in the corner of my bedroom since I moved here two years ago. It's called the Box of Stuff, by the way, because everything in it originally came from the Drawer of Stuff back when I was living in a dorm. I figured a Box of Stuff I have barely touched in two years is probably full of stuff that can happily make its way to the trashcan, but boy was I wrong. This Box is like a treasure trove.
I found seven boxes of matches, two boxes of sparklers, several candles (one of which smelled kind of funky), and a small thing of green glitter I bought for about ten cents in Taiwan (I think). There was also a dozen matchbox cars and a mostly used tube of super glue, from back when I spent hours trying to glue matchbox cars to the ceiling of my dorm room freshman year—turns out getting super glue to stay where you want it on wheels that turn, and then getting the wheels to stay where you want them, is more difficult than it had seemed at first thought, and so the plan of having a city on my ceiling never really panned out. The Box of Stuff also revealed a box of 100 poker chips, five six-sided dice (in an unopened box), about eight decks of cards including one unopened one with the kings and queens of England on it from when I visited the UK when I was ten. I was delighted to find a can of silly string, a leftover remnant of the first year I ran HMMT and got to pick out all of the prizes; there was also an HMMT frisbee. There was also a leaf of Lothlorien (a clasp like the ones in the movies), a long roll of Caution tape (borrowed from some place), a long roll of CAUTION INFINITE BUFFET (caution) tape, a thing of Magic Grow Safari Animals, an Exacto knife, a surprisingly large collection of paint (about 10 different colors, also from when I was attacking the ceiling and door of my freshman dorm room). I found (and threw away) two large road reflectors (one yellow and one blue); these were from when my dad was going through a phase of collecting road reflectors of all colors and giving them to friends. (My mother claims he wanted to give them to all of this friends so that they could each bring one to his funeral, but since he's stopped, it must mean he thinks he isn't going to die, or else he's gotten distracted by something else shiny.) The Box further revealed a large collection of Mardi Gras beads, several pocket tools with belt holsters, twine (off-white, yellow, and neon orange), and a box of the most excellent colored chalk you can imagine.
Hopefully my next generation of treasure collecting won't be in the form of Horcruxes... What's in your box of stuff?
Friday night's AstroMovie was Simply FOBulous, sponsored by a graduate student whose boyfriend is on of the Also Starrings in the independently made film. The movie is about the oldest daughter in a Vietnamese-American Seattle family which is pressuring her into marrying a nice Vietnamese boy. The solution is a mail-order husband from Vietnam who she doesn't really want to marry. He arrives in the US seemingly Fresh Off the Boat (or FOB) and naive. Hilarity ensues as various people try to teach the new arrivee about life in America.
While there are parts that scream "low budget!"and many of the characters are strongly stereotyped, Simply FOBulous is simply hilarious. There were lines that many of us didn't catch because we were still laughing from the previous exchange. You can support independent film by buying the DVD, which was just relseased last Tuesday.
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.")
I'm a graduate student in astronomy in the cloudy midwest. I have a "cozy" little apartment and an office desk by a big window. If I find something interesting to write about, I usually do; if everything is really boring, I write about that as well (unless I don't).
