Random Thread: 2017.2
Excelsior!
Date: March 14, 2017
Categories: At the Top of the Blog, Random craziness
Comments RSS TrackBack 232 comments
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in March 14th, 2017 @ 06:47Happy Pi-to-Two-Decimal-Places-in-Countries-That-Write-Month-Numbers-Before-Day-Numbers Day!
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in March 14th, 2017 @ 07:30Normal countries celebrate the day on July 22 (22 divided by 7), which numerically is a closer approximation. And, of course, only English-speaking countries have an excuse for marking the occasion with pie.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 14th, 2017 @ 09:04You will notice that I have applied a pi to both your comments.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in March 14th, 2017 @ 09:04Also, happy Einstein’s birthday (1879-1955)!
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KaiYves
in March 14th, 2017 @ 19:06My mother bought us a pie yesterday because she was worried we’d be snowed in today.
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KaiYves
in March 14th, 2017 @ 21:46Also… NEW THREAD NEW THREAD YAY! Now to fill it up all over again!
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Cat's Meow
in March 15th, 2017 @ 13:20My friends and I tried to get pie yesterday from a pie-specific store in town, but they were all sold out. Fortunately, that store is the center of the “[town] Pie Festival” this Saturday, so my enjoyment of pie is merely delayed!
We had just gotten back from a one night camping trip to Joshua Tree National Park. It was lots of fun. I especially loved scrambling around on the big rocks.
After not getting pie, we realized that it was trivia night at a local bar, so we went there. Our greatest moment was when we went double-or-nothing on a 10 question round because the common theme among all the answers was that they were all titles of tabletop games. If we (as a group) know anything, it’s about tabletop games! Unfortunately, we were smacked down the next round by matching Golden Globe winners for drama and comedy/musical that were in the same year. We still came in 3rd out of quite a number of groups, though!
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 15th, 2017 @ 14:58In Britain, we have fish and chip shops. LOTS of fish and chip shops. For anyone who doesn’t fancy fish, they always have pies. We are blessed.
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KaiYves
in March 15th, 2017 @ 15:43Meat, fruit, or both?
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 16th, 2017 @ 03:13Steak & kidney, chicken & mushroom, meat & potato. Those are the usual ones, although individual shops might occasionally try something more exotic.
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KaiYves
in March 16th, 2017 @ 17:04Mmmmm, savory…
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 16th, 2017 @ 18:33Add to your bucket list : Go to England and sample the delights of a fish and chip shop.
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KaiYves
in March 16th, 2017 @ 20:59I’ve been to England and I think I did, but I can’t be sure because I was only four.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 17th, 2017 @ 02:51I’m not sure you’d appreciate the dleicate nuances at the age of four.
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ZNZ
in March 17th, 2017 @ 23:53What else should a person sample in England, if she were to hypothetically be studying abroad there?
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Choklit Orange
in March 18th, 2017 @ 07:57Ahem
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 18th, 2017 @ 03:24Eccles cakes, bread & butter pudding, a proper cream tea with home-made scones and clotted cream, served in a tearoom with oak beams. Try out your local carvery. That’s pretty much Thanksgiving dinner without the pumpkins.
Not much else food-wise, unless your’e into posh restaurants, of which there are several, or Asian restaurants (mainly Indian and Thai), which are ubiuitous. What England is really good for is old stuff. So much old stuff. Every major town has a medieval cathedral. There’s Stonehenge, Avebury, Cresswell Crags, Great Orme Mines, Grime’s Graves.. And lots of more modern old things, like the Tower of London and Oxford.
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Choklit Orange
in March 18th, 2017 @ 07:58Shout out to the chips butty, which is literally a french fry sandwich – I think this is disgusting but I haven’t tried it so can’t say for sure…
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 19th, 2017 @ 04:56The Chip Butty is legendary, and Really Good. Proper butter, mind. None of this plastic butter that comes in plastic tubs.
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KaiYves
in March 18th, 2017 @ 14:14Mmm, Thai food…
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KaiYves
in March 16th, 2017 @ 21:00Speaking of tasty food, today we went to a diner my parents were familiar with but that I couldn’t remember going to, and I got banana walnut pancakes!
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in March 17th, 2017 @ 19:56That is something *I* would have appreciated at the age of four.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 18th, 2017 @ 03:12I have just added bananas and walnuts to my shopping list.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in March 20th, 2017 @ 07:59Happy equinox, everybody! Vernal up here, autumnal in the antipodes.
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KaiYves
in March 20th, 2017 @ 11:11Happy Equinox!
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 20th, 2017 @ 16:57Reciprocal felicitions!
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KaiYves
in March 20th, 2017 @ 22:23Today I forgot for a moment that clocks go clockwise and read my watch backwards. Grad school is exactly as stressful as PhD Comics warned me.
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bookgirl_me
in March 21st, 2017 @ 14:02Sometimes I think Mike Slackerny has become my spirit animal.
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KaiYves
in March 22nd, 2017 @ 21:21The dorm council approved my proposal for a Yuri’s Night party! We just have to make a good budget (we already asked for 25 dollars to buy prizes at the American Museum of Natural History gift shop.) Since we don’t want to spend too much, I thought we could also buy Astronaut Ice Cream at the gift shop, buy small brownies and wrap them in tin foil to make meteorites, and turn oranges into alien heads with marker and toothpicks. Any other cheap ideas?
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 23rd, 2017 @ 06:57Model rockets made from toilet roll tubes, deodorant lids, and other random domestic items. In the UK, there was a TV programme called Blue Peter, which taught several generations how to do this sort of stuff. It was probably responsible for at least 50% of total UK sales of sticky-back vinyl.
But nowadays – I’d guess there are likely to be a few laptops and tablets floating round. Google Earth can be set to display the surfaces of the Moon and Mars, in consierable detail. There are also several good astronomy programs which will display the night sky, and there’s always NASA TV, which with a bit of luck will have a live feed from the ISS. If not, there’s archive video of space walks.
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KaiYves
in March 23rd, 2017 @ 09:47Oh, decorations are no problem, I have paint and I save scrap cardboard up for art projects (recycling is good, but reusing and THEN recycling is even better). We’re going to watch COSMOS (2014, I think), and play a trivia game, so we have entertainment. It’s food that we’re brainstorming.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 23rd, 2017 @ 09:48You could put various food items into sealable plastic bags marked “space rations”.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 23rd, 2017 @ 18:30Over here, there are sweets called “flying saucers”. They’re brightly coloured, vaguely flying-saucer shaped thingies, made of thick rice paper and filled with sherbet. If you can get them, they’d be worth adding tothe list.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in March 24th, 2017 @ 18:14Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters?
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in March 25th, 2017 @ 09:12Seriously, though, you could serve something Russian in honor of Gagarin. Russian specialty grocery stores sell nice chocolates. And you could have bowls of lucky NASA peanuts.
I’m trying to think of something appetizing to do with Tang, but nothing springs to mind.
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KaiYves
in March 30th, 2017 @ 23:15Our party got approved and the council will give us 50 dollars to spend on food! Now my friend and I just have to figure our which of these ideas we will spend it on.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 1st, 2017 @ 03:15Fifty dollars will buy a lot of Tang.
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KaiYves
in March 24th, 2017 @ 22:45My parents got the solar panels installed today! They sent me photographs, but I won’t see them until I come home for the summer. This just makes me so, so happy because I had been bugging them to do it literally since Elementary School and more recently forwarding them every e-mail about the New York solar tax credit I got from environmental organizations. And they finally did it!
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Rainbow*Storm
in March 25th, 2017 @ 23:58My Dungeons and Dragons group is getting really cliquey and weird in a way that I don’t like? Apparently they lied to one girl that D&D was cancelled so she would stop coming to games, and all they’ll tell me about why is that she was annoying and creepy with the maturity of a twelve-year-old and they never liked her.
They kept making mean jokes about her and saying how glad they were she was gone at today’s meeting, in a way that seemed extremely overly cruel if the problem was just that her personality didn’t mesh with the group. So either
a) some kind of drama happened that no one will tell me about
b) my friends will legitimately kick people out of the group for being annoying and immature, meaning I definitely have reason to worry, especially since I got along fine with the girl when she was in the group, thought we had a lot in common, and never noticed that the others didn’t like herAlso, today our DM told us that he was basing the whole plot off a podcast some people in the group listen to, so while I was really excited to find out what happened next in our adventure, others already know all the twists and battles ahead of us and so weren’t really motivated to play today. We ended up just playing boring card games while one person kept asking for advice texting a guy he’s going on a date with.
Idk man, this is pretty much the only time I see my friends anymore since we no longer go to the same school, and I don’t want it to be ruined by drama or people just getting sick of the game.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 26th, 2017 @ 03:09Unfortunately, most social groups have a tendency to go this way. It sounds to me as if there is a lack of maturity, but it’s not coming from the girl who’s been frozen out. What you do about it – well, it depends how badly you want to continue to associate with these people. Maybe the world needs another D&D group, with you as DM?
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POSOC
in April 1st, 2017 @ 12:59There’s nothing wrong with premade adventures, but if half the group knows what’s coming then what’s the point?? I concur with Paul.
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KaiYves
in March 26th, 2017 @ 11:26UGH, I forgot when Earth Hour was again! I know you technically can do it anytime and it’s better to be conscious of your electronics all the time and not just on one day, but it makes me feel like I’m doing it wrong. Still, tonight I will.
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E2MB
in March 28th, 2017 @ 20:44Wow, it’s been 10 years since I first came to MuseBlog, and the site’s still around!
Although last I heard from my younger brothers, Muse merged with Odyssey of the Mind, and the Muses were replaced with other comics. Oh well. Life marches on, I suppose.
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KaiYves
in March 28th, 2017 @ 20:52It’s pretty incredible to think about (the longevity, I mean, not the change in content of the Magazine, which is sad). My own 10-year-anniversary will be coming up in December, I think.
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Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)
in March 28th, 2017 @ 21:06Yipes, my nine-year anniversary is coming up soon. I’m glad Robert has kept the site up even with its decrease in active posters.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in March 29th, 2017 @ 08:41It’s peaceful now, but I’m planning some Time Capsules and other new material to keep things interesting.
Meanwhile, anyone who misses the old hustle and bustle is welcome to check out the Kokonspiracy team on Slack. A few dozen old-timers are there, some under new aliases. I’ll send invitations to anyone who stops by, but there’s no pressure, of course.
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KaiYves
in March 29th, 2017 @ 17:35What is Slack, exactly? I’m not very hip.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in March 30th, 2017 @ 01:34It’s not entirely dissimilar to WordPress, which powers MuseBlog. It’s where the cool people hang out until they decide it’s no longer cool.
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KaiYves
in March 30th, 2017 @ 00:20At this rate I think by visiting The Strand’s dollar carts at least once a week, by the time I get my PhD, I will have collected every book by Robert Ballard that I didn’t already own and most of the significant post-1950 works related to polar exploration, all without spending more than 3 dollars per book.
All hail Strand.
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Indigo (formerly Rós)
in April 2nd, 2017 @ 21:48Hello, all. I’m back (again)! I keep meaning to check here more often but I just… don’t. Hopefully this time it won’t be like that.
Anyway. I’m Indigo now. So I think this is the…. fourth? name I’ve had on here and this time I think I’m sticking with it. Rós was an alias I chose without much consideration, and pretty soon it just didn’t feel quite right anymore. Indigo is a shortened version of an alias I’ve been using elsewhere for a while and it feels more Me than other ones I’ve used.
How’re y’all doing?
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KaiYves
in April 2nd, 2017 @ 23:30We had a very warm day here and I ended up in Central Park while going somewhere else, so it went pretty well for me.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 3rd, 2017 @ 06:40I am exemplary, as usual. Traffic here is slower than of yore, but the content of inestimable quality. Welcome.!
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KaiYves
in April 5th, 2017 @ 19:22Ugh, so much to do this month…
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KaiYves
in April 6th, 2017 @ 20:09I love that this tea shop gives out sticky notes and lets people leave messages on the walls.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 6th, 2017 @ 21:26What do the customers write?
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KaiYves
in April 7th, 2017 @ 11:09All kinds of cute things– “So-and-so was here”, “My favorite flavor is…”, “Have a nice day”, etc. A lot of them draw doodles.
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KaiYves
in April 8th, 2017 @ 17:08The best one is probably “I hope you do really well and take over every other bubble tea place in the city.”
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KaiYves
in April 28th, 2017 @ 20:15A new one today: “If I have to choose between nihilism and bubble tea, I pick the small bubbles with a side of existentialism.” With a drawing of a mouse.
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Cat's Meow
in April 8th, 2017 @ 12:53I’m really a fan of when pull off things like that. There’s a famous calzones place near Washington State University that has many, many customers’ drawings featuring calzones all over its walls. The tablecloths are paper and they provide crayons, so you can be moved by their inspiration. Another place is a shaved snow/snow cream place in my college town where they have a cute outlined drawing of a polar bear which people have colored into all kinds of things – a hippie, Aang from Avatar, a scientist, whatever. About two dozen of those are posted on the wall as well.
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KaiYves
in April 8th, 2017 @ 00:01Why are hands so hard to draw?
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Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)
in April 8th, 2017 @ 00:51They’ve got all those appendages; it gets confusing.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 8th, 2017 @ 02:07If you’re using them to draw with, they keep moving.
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KaiYves
in April 8th, 2017 @ 17:11(In Patagonia store, watching promotional film playing on a screen)
Me: “Do you know where this is?”
Lady: “No, it’s good, though.”
Me: “I know that’s Cerro Torre and Mount Fitz Roy in the background but I don’t know what the region is called.”
Lady: “It’s in Chile, I’ve seen it before.”
Me: “Yeah, it’s in Chile but I don’t know what the mountain range is called. Is it just part of the Andes?”
Me: “Oh gosh I’m a fake mountaineering fan.”
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 9th, 2017 @ 13:19But a genuine mountain-spotting whiz.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 12th, 2017 @ 17:31Happy Yuri’s Night, KaiYves and all other celebrants!
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KaiYves
in April 12th, 2017 @ 18:23Thanks! We’ve got all our food and we’re listening to music while we wait for some more people to show up so we can have our trivia contest.
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KaiYves
in April 12th, 2017 @ 23:29Oh, it was amazing! So many people came and they liked the food and we listened to music and sung along to “Is Somebody Singing”. The trivia contest went well, everyone had fun, people knew more than they thought, everybody learned things, and the winners liked their prizes. Everyone wanted to take photos with my plush LGM, Gnomon and the space backdrop I made, and a lot of them took photos with their alien oranges, too. One of the best Yuri’s Night parties I’ve ever been to!
Rock the Planet!
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 13th, 2017 @ 20:19So, tell us about the food and the music!
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KaiYves
in April 13th, 2017 @ 23:43Food: We cut cheese slices into stars and moons with cookie cutters, and melted the leftover cheese onto crackers in the microwave so it wasn’t wasted. Permanent marker, toothpicks, and pompoms let us turn oranges into alien faces. We had astronaut ice cream that we bought at the AMNH, and “meteorites” made from marshmallows and macaroons wrapped in tinfoil.
Music: We played a playlist made by the Yuri’s Night organization, and my friends were really impressed by the video of Chris Hadfield performing “Space Oddity” on the International Space Station, so I showed them “Is Somebody Singing”, which we then watched a second time so that we could sing along because it’s catchy as cake.
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Castle
in April 14th, 2017 @ 21:11Nice to see you all! How’s 2017 treating everyone?
Coming up on my ten-year here: October 27th. I didn’t consciously realize this but something drew me back. I’m 19 now. My life is very different than it was.
I wasn’t aware Muse had merged with Odyssey until now. Sad to hear the Muses are no longer in the magazine, I was a big fan of Larry Gonick’s work. At what point did you stop advertising the blog in the magazine? 2009-ish?
I’ve definitely posted since then – I know I was active at least into 2013. The drop in activity must not have been as severe as the drop in new membership at that point. I’m glad you’ve maintained it. I like knowing that it’s still here.
What are the GAPAs up to? How have your lives changed since 2013 or thereabouts?
12.1.1.1 – I’m interested in visiting this place! Tell me more!
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KaiYves
in April 15th, 2017 @ 23:06Well, it’s not 2016, at least.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 16th, 2017 @ 20:24Hello, Castle! Welcome back to the blog!
Yes, Muse came under new management a few years ago. Larry Gonick and his beloved Muses got the boot, and I was unceremoniously dropped from the list of advisors. By that point I had already turned the Q&A column over to the wonderful Lizzie Wade, who is also Science magazine’s Mexico City correspondent. I haven’t kept up with Muse since then — it’s no longer the magazine that we knew and loved.
I have some odds and ends that I intend to post on MuseBlog when time permits. Meanwhile, a couple of dozen old-timers are hanging out on the Kokonspiracy team on Slack. Have you received the invitation that I sent you?
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 16th, 2017 @ 02:11Greetings, adn welcome! Have a scone.
I am currently making a gittern and a renaissance guitar, redesigning the circuit boards for a MIDI controlled street organ, producing a DVD for a broken consort, doing my annual accounts, and trying to find timelsots to rehearse for a medieval gig, an Elizabethan gig, and pruning the shrubbery. This is my life.
Robert should be able to give you an invitation to the Kokonspiracy.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 16th, 2017 @ 20:23Indeed I have sent Castle an invitation.
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KaiYves
in April 16th, 2017 @ 12:45Happy Easter! (This year Greek Easter is the same as everyone else’s!)
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 17th, 2017 @ 04:56That’s rather sad. The whole point of Easter is that no-one’s quite sure when it is until it happens. We rely on Greece to add that extra bit fo confusion. Although, on reflection, I suppose the fact that Greece sometimes agrees is confusing in itself. Which is good.
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KaiYves
in April 17th, 2017 @ 11:12Well, it’s nice to be able to celebrate with my friends instead of a week or three weeks later.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 17th, 2017 @ 11:54You could always celebrate twice. Two celebrations, a few weeks apart, both involving chocolate.
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Rainbow*Storm
in April 16th, 2017 @ 13:38((Spring Bunny Massacre for old times’ sake?))
I’ve barely touched the plastic Easter egg when it erupts into a tide of teeth and pink fur. Not a traditional bomb, but a pocket dimension – what looks to be over a dozen bunnies pouring out like a clown car. I curse under my breath as I’m knocked to the ground. Around me, I hear more chittering and screams as other Muse Academy students touch the trapped eggs. Those pink demons found their way into Muse Academy. They always will. Bunny war never changes.
It’s a small mercy that no Muser would go to an Easter egg hunt unarmed. I reach my blasters and start shooting at the masses of pink.
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Errata
in April 16th, 2017 @ 22:22Hey everyone! I am tired and sunburnt, but I was in Chicago this weekend looking at squid and a sculpture Jadestone once proposed as a portal between worlds and so I wanted to pop in and see how everyone was doing.
My life’s going pretty excellently. My school is forcing me to finally formally declare the major I’ve been settled on since the beginning, I’m getting to the point in Greek that I can actually sort of read real texts, and one of my friends is coming back from a term off this week. College is a good place, even if it doesn’t leave me with a ton of spare time.
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Jadestone
in April 24th, 2017 @ 21:20I am just SO pleased that you remember that about that particular sculpture!!! I never did finish that story idea, but I think about it every time I pass by the statue (which isn’t often now, as I don’t end up back in Chicago unless I’m visiting my family for now). Glad you’re enjoying college
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KaiYves
in April 17th, 2017 @ 19:16So today I got reimbursed for the Yuri’s Night party and got a stipend check so I had some spending money. It’s Easter Monday, so I thought I’d go to the fancy burger restaurant one block over and get a cheeseburger because it’s Easter now and I can eat cheese and meat again! (I didn’t fast all 40 days, just Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and then all of last week.) But ironically I ended up getting their new synthetic burger just because it looked interesting and was called the “Impossible Burger”. It’s supposed to combine wheat and soy with the molecules that give beef its taste and look. I didn’t think it tasted exactly like plain beef, more like it had some kind of sauce other than the mustard I asked for– I can’t really explain it, but the flavor was kind of tropical. It was really good and I feel so futuristic!
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Piggy
in April 20th, 2017 @ 01:38Future food is cool. I’m trying to think of the most futuristic food I’ve had, but the only thing coming to mind right now is Dippin’ Dots. Eh, close enough.
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KaiYves
in April 19th, 2017 @ 21:42Today I met with Professor Wright and some older students to discuss PhD stuff, and it was very helpful and relieved some stress I had been having about meeting my deadlines on time. I even went out for sorbet with Professor Wright, and we just talked about non-academic stuff, and it was nice to interact with her in a setting where she wasn’t being strict with me.
But what surprised me when we got to talking about the Jefferson Market Library is that Professor Wright has a very old-fashioned view of comics that I thought only still existed in caricatures (always in short magazine-style format, never as bound graphic novels, only for children, not an art form in its own right, always shallow humor or fantasy, something it’s strange for adults to find interesting, not something schools would ever use for teaching or keep in school libraries, etc. Also, adults who read too many comics can’t tell fantasy from reality and are the are the kind of people who believe in Bigfoot.)
I tried, as politely as I could, to explain the error of these assumptions and that my High School library had had graphic adaptations of The Consitution and The 9/11 Commission Report. Do you think I should get her “Maus” to change her mind?
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 20th, 2017 @ 02:50Worth a try. Although if she has deep-seated attitudes to the whole genre, she may take some shifting.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 20th, 2017 @ 06:43It depends on how you frame it. If X were my dissertation advisor and Y were a topic unrelated to my research, I might be circumspect about saying anything like “Dr. X, you’re wrong about Y, and here’s proof.”
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 20th, 2017 @ 08:39Good point.
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KaiYves
in April 20th, 2017 @ 11:35That’s a good point, and I think because she did recognize as I was talking to her that “You could use that format to teach about archaeology”, I think what I really should do is find educational comics about archaeology and history to show her she’s *right* in that department.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 20th, 2017 @ 15:15Exactly! Like the old Grace Hopper trick: when there’s something you want to do, write a report about it and drop it on your boss’s desk, saying, “Here’s the report you requested.” Your boss won’t remember asking for it but will figure you wouldn’t have done the extra work otherwise, and will read it and embrace your brilliant ideas.
(Dr. Hopper described this ploy in a talk she gave at my college. I know it’s true, because my father was one of the nominal bosses she pulled it on.)
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26.2.2.1.1
KaiYves
in April 21st, 2017 @ 01:04Well, she didn’t *ask* for it, but she did say she saw the potential, so I’m not even putting words into her mouth– I’m just showing her that someone else also saw the potential and achieved it!
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26.2.2.2
KaiYves
in May 15th, 2017 @ 16:34I showed her “Lucy and Andy Neanderthal”, the adorable new graphic novel by the creator of “Darth Vader and Son”, and explained that it features cartoon-style comedic chapters about a Neanderthal brother and sister with every chapter ending with two modern archaeologist characters discussing which parts of the previous story were based on what we know about Neanderthals. (I didn’t mention this, but it’s also great that one of the archaeologists is a Black man and the other is a white woman.)
It is a children’s book, so I don’t think it made any difference in her opinion that comics are for kids, but it did show her that comics can teach about archaeology and she said that she would ask for it at her local bookstore when she went home for the summer.
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KaiYves
in April 21st, 2017 @ 01:03Can we talk about how awesome Sylvia Earle is? Because I just finished reading her memoir and I have a new appreciation of how awesome Sylvia Earle is.
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KaiYves
in April 23rd, 2017 @ 20:25Yesterday I accidentally got to hear a lecture by a man who climbed Mount Everest.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 24th, 2017 @ 09:25So, did anyone else attend a science march?
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29.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 24th, 2017 @ 14:54There was one in London, but I was bribed to be somewhere else. That happens a lot.
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29.1.1
KaiYves
in April 24th, 2017 @ 15:27So you’re a paid non-protestor?
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29.1.1.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 24th, 2017 @ 16:48I prefer the term “musician”, but it’s the same thing, really.
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29.2
KaiYves
in April 24th, 2017 @ 19:39I did! Saturday was a really full day for me and Sunday I was so tired I just went to church and then basically laid down until dinner and got nothing done, so I haven’t had time to write this out until today, but here goes…
I’m on the mailing list for the Wildlife Conservation Society (the organization that runs the Bronx Zoo, Central Park Zoo, New York Aquarium, and New York’s other zoos), and their e-mails said to be at Dante Park by Lincoln Square by 10:30 to get signs and bandanas, so I set my alarm for 8:15 and went to bed early on Friday night (both very unusual for me).
I got up, showered, got my stuff together, and went to the campus [Mermaid Chain Coffee Shop] for breakfast, then got on the subway and headed to 63rd Street. Some other people who were also going to the March got on and we complimented each others’ signs. (Mine was the Solar Impulse 2 slogan “Future Is Clean” on a piece of felt in fabric pen with drawings of the sun and a plane circling the world.) One of them was this older hippie lady named Cindy who had a bag with a built-in speaker that she would use to play environmental songs.
I knew there were a lot of people from NYU there, but I had no idea where they were, so I decided to stay with the people I had met on the subway. We were too late to find the WCS booth, so we just walked down some closed streets until we got to the place where we were supposed to wait, alongside Central Park. We waited for a while, but there were a lot of nice people to talk to and cool and funny signs to read– the guy standing next to me was a medical researcher who was also a scuba diver, and he told me about diving at Truk Lagoon. (The “Grave of the Imperial Japanese Navy”– the site of a famous WWII battle in the South Pacific that’s now an equally famous dive site because there are so many sunken ships and airplanes in relatively shallow water that have become accidental reefs in the seven decades since.) There were all kinds of people there, really just a cross-section of New York–including lots of little kids!
So eventually we got the signal to start, and, well, we just started walking and kept walking all the way to Times Square. That was 30 or so blocks, but it didn’t feel like a lot because there was such a great energy in the crowd! We chanted “Earth Day Is Every Day” really loudly.
People on the sidewalks behind the barriers were waving to us, and waving signs of their own. There were some TV news crews on the sidelines, too, and I walked right by this one cameraman whose badge said “Canadian Broadcasting Company”, so I shouted “Hey, Canada, thank you for Chris Hadfield!”, and he kind of made a weird face.
Cindy was playing music from her speakers and some other people were, too– at one section, we walked by someone playing Mr. Hadfield’s version of “Space Oddity”. At one point when we stopped, “I Will Survive” came up on Cindy’s playlist and a guy started disco-dancing to it, which had everyone laughing. Some people took pictures of my sign, and one lady interviewed the group of people I was with about the March and asked who our favorite scientist was– I said Sylvia Earle, because I’d just finished reading her memoir the week before.
It started raining towards the end, but I had my umbrella and was wearing boots, so I was okay. Times Square was the end of the March, so I folded up my felt sign and put it in my bag. I felt like I’d been part of something big and important and done something good for Earth Day– and it was only 1 PM!
I was feeling hungry, so I found the nearest subway stop and went back to campus to get lunch. By then it was still only 1:30, so I decided to go to the AMNH to check out their Earth Day programs. I missed the special tours, but they had a video playing on all of the big screens in the galleries about things that have changed for better and for worse since the first Earth Day in 1970– there is still a LOT of work to be done, but it was heartening to learn about the good that the Nixon anti-pollution laws have done in the US, the changes in industry, and the positive results that the bans on DDT, leaded gasoline, and CFLs have had. (The 70s sound like a scary time.)
In the Hall of Ocean Life, they had an inflatable planetarium where they were showing an “artistic” wordless film of sea jellies with background music in 360 degrees above you– the factual information was on cards you got at the door, the presentation was just the footage and music. Not a normal documentary, but still awe-inspiring and enjoyable. On the main screen, they showed shorts from a documentary about kids and conservation that the Museum had made with HBO that was airing that night– it was inspiring and very Muserly.
I think I was in the Museum for almost four hours, and I got to see almost everything I wanted to. I went through the different mammal halls (North American, African, and Asian), looking at the dioramas and thinking about Carl Akeley. (I also observed first-hand the differences between cheetah, leopard, and jaguar spots.) The Hall of North American Birds has dioramas about two of the species that have made impressive recoveries since 1970 because of positive human action, the California Condor and the Bald Eagle.
There was some kind of problem at the AMNH subway station and there were no downtown trains, so I decided to walk across Central Park to use one of the stations by the Met. The dampness made the flowers’ smells come up so much stronger, and I could see several places where there were leftover raindrops on leaves and flowers. I saw a red squirrel for only the second time in my life– it was nice enough to sit still for a picture. (In the UK, a different species of red squirrel is native and our North American gray squirrels are the invasive species. On the US East Coast, both gray and red squirrels are native but I had weirdly only ever seen gray squirrels before this year. I guess they outnumber everything here, too.)
I came out at the Bleaker Street station and realized I was in front of the SoHo REI (camping store), so I went in to see if they were doing anything for Earth Day. They were having a raffle of gear from the company Sea to Summit, so I submitted my name and was told the company founder was speaking downstairs in half an hour. I hadn’t eaten in six hours, but I was curious, so I went downstairs, grabbed two bags of free kettlecorn, and found a seat.
The speaker was an Australian mountaineer named Tim Macartney-Snape, and in 1990, before appearing in Beatles-Harry Potter fanfiction, he had become the first person to climb Mount Everest all the way up from sea level, starting at the mouth of the Ganges and walking hundreds of klicks through India and Nepal, swimming across rivers, walking through the foothills of the Himalayas, and making his way to Base Camp, and THEN climbing all the way to the summit solo and without oxygen. During the travel through India, he had some other people traveling with him to film, but during the actual climb itself, he had to film by himself with a camcorder that he passed around for us to hold– it wasn’t incredibly heavy, but I don’t think I’d like to carry it all the way up a mountain!
After the lecture, I got another synthetic burger (yeah, it was kind of expensive, but it seemed appropriate for Earth Day) and then headed home.
What a day!
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*Cskia
in April 26th, 2017 @ 20:45Hello, MuseBlog! It’s been quite a while, but I’m really comforted by the fact that MB is still here. I went to a Sam Bosma lecture today, and I was pleasantly surprised when he showed off some of his Muse illustrations. I hadn’t seen anything from the magazine for years, but I recognized the images immediately; so here I am!
I’m now a junior in college, majoring in Communication Design (which is pretty much design + illustration) and minoring in CompSci and Psych. I’m also an indie game developer of visual novels (mostly otomes and silly comedies at this point). Sleep kind of isn’t a thing at this point, but I think I’ve found what I enjoy doing, so at least I’ve got that going!
How have you guys been?
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30.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 27th, 2017 @ 07:43Greetings!
We’re still here, reduced but thriving. Nice to know you’re attacking life with gusto. Sleep is for the weak. (quote from Jadestone).
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30.2
AL
in April 27th, 2017 @ 19:00Hi! I’m heartened you decided to drop by after all this time.
I’m a freshman in college now, majoring in English. Right now I’m just taking in the full College Experience and trying to get through finals alive. I’m going to have a job on campus next semester, which is neat, and I’m looking forward to the future (when I won’t have as many papers due).
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30.3
Tesseract
in April 27th, 2017 @ 23:53What’s up! Sleep is for the weak! I have to be awake for work in like six hours whoops! I graduated from college in Providence last May (2016) and was very sad about it, did some summer internships in publishing and museum work in the Boston area, and now I’m trying to figure out this adulting thing in NYC where I’m working in publishing. I mostly like it a lot—the job is good, I like the city, etc. I don’t know a ton of people, so it’s also a little lonely, but all things change with time. By and large life is pretty good.
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30.3.1
gimanator
in April 30th, 2017 @ 00:49I’m interested to hear whatever detail about the move to NYC you’re willing to give up! I spoke with my professor about how a strangely large portion of his composition students made the move to Brooklyn once they finished their degrees (to ‘make a go of it’, presumably). Maybe it’s just that I’ve always lived on the west coast, but New York seems like THE most intimidating and overwhelming place to start afresh. Did it hold that imposing association for you?
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30.3.1.1
Tesseract
in April 30th, 2017 @ 16:43Like… yes and no, I guess? I did an internship here the summer of 2014, and my mom is originally from Queens and I grew up visiting my grandparents on Long Island, so it didn’t seem as Unknown And Huge And Overwhelming as it really could have. I also did a study abroad summer in Paris and spent the summer in Boston (where a lot of my friends are), so I guess the city experience probably helped too. But yeah, the New York-ness of it was just kind of what it was going to be and I didn’t really find it especially imposing. It’s true, though, that a city this big can be a little isolating. Friends can live in the city and still be an hour and a half away from you in a different borough, and people find refuge from the sheer size of the place by finding privacy in public in a way which means you don’t just like have friendly conversations with strangers much. It’s definitely a little isolating. But I’ve taken some art classes and joined an LGBT marching band and I’m finding that getting out and doing things helps counteract that!
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30.3.1.1.1
gimanator
in May 1st, 2017 @ 23:41Huh. Okay, thank you! This is quite helpful. Especially the social aspect (in ways I wouldn’t have guessed) – and good on you for finding connections to work against the undertow. I think the isolating tendency can find us in a lot of different environments. It certainly does here in the SF bay area. To be fair, judging by that hour and a half estimate, the scope of the whole area here versus the whole of NYC may not be too dissimilar.
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30.3.1.1.1.1
Tesseract
in May 2nd, 2017 @ 07:53I’ve never been to the bay area (I want to!) but I think the scope of the area differs because of driving–like, NYC is dense and huge, and everyone gets everywhere on the subway and yet traffic is still scary, so times to get places can be inflated by having to navigate around on trains or dealing with metric tons of traffic. It takes me over an hour to get to Astoria (Queens) from where I live in Brooklyn because I have to pass through Manhattan to do it. But if I drove it would take anywhere from like half an hour with no traffic up to to 45 or 50 minutes–because it is also genuinely far. A more direct train root is up to the top of the Bronx where my friend lives, and that takes like an hour and a half on the subway–but would 40 minutes up to well over an hour driving anyway because it’s 20 miles away. We live in the same city, and there are no suburbs between us, but there’s more distance between us than there is between the house where I grew up and the major mall–and that requires getting on the interstate.
I often try to meet friends who live in Manhattan/Queens/the Bronx for a drink or dinner after work because we’re both already in Manhattan that way. I have a couple of friends who by coincidence live in my neighborhood, and on weekends that is really nice.
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30.3.1.1.1.1.1
gimanator
in May 2nd, 2017 @ 22:31Actually, our local rapid transit (sometimes subway, mostly just rail) was precisely what drew the connection – I’ve traveled an hour plus by it to meet up with friends, and it’s pretty common for people to be on it about that long to get from their home to work in the city (at the more extreme ends of a commute). Granted, you’re passing through both city and suburb here. Traffic can be about that bad, but it’s not constant throughout the day. I’ve only been to NY a couple of times, so the comparison is limited, but your listed numbers seem pretty similar.
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30.3.1.1.1.1.1.1
Tesseract
in May 3rd, 2017 @ 21:37Oh! Well then yeah, it probably is pretty similar.
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Robert Coontz (Admin)
in April 28th, 2017 @ 16:31So, would anyone who isn’t there already like an invitation to join the Kokonspiracy Slack team?
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31.1
gimanator
in April 29th, 2017 @ 11:57I’m interested! Is this the sort of thing that requires an account to be made in advance?
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31.1.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 13:10I don’t think so, Gim.
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KaiYves
in April 28th, 2017 @ 17:43This may be the day the GAPAs feel both very old and very proud of themselves.
I’ve previously observed that searching for old issues of Muse online is incredibly difficult because there are many other magazines with the same name, but now I actually need to do so for school…
For my final presentation in my European Prehistory class, I’m choosing to present on the history of the Ryan-Pittman theory of a catastrophic End-Pleistocene/Early-Holocene flooding of the Black Sea since it was first proposed in 1997. I think it’s a fascinating topic, both in its own right, and for the fact that while the original theory has permeated popular consciousness because of popular scientific books/articles/documentaries around the turn of the millennium, the later studies suggesting the flood was far *less* sudden have not done so.
Because this is a presentation and not a paper, it has a strong visual element and can be a little bit more informal, so I would like to begin with the time-honored “This is how I first got interested in this subject” slide. My own introduction to the theory was Doug McInness’ article “And the Waters Prevailed: The Violent Birth of the Black Sea”, in the October 2001 issue of Muse. (The issue that had the cover about photomanipulation with the pumpkin-headed girl on the cover, even if Google Images won’t show me it.)
Muse does not appear to be indexed by Google Scholar or any database NYU is part of, although I see that McInness also published an article with the same title (but not subtitle) in the journal “Earth” in 1998. Do you know of any way I could find scans or transcripts of the article that I could use to begin my presentation?
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32.1
KaiYves
in April 28th, 2017 @ 18:07I’m thinking of starting out with “My topic today is how science proved my childhood was a lie.”
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32.1.1
KaiYves
in May 1st, 2017 @ 00:17“After When, The Deluge?” is probably the cleverest I’ll be allowed to go with a title, or maybe “Did the Waters Prevail?”
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32.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 06:48Alas, I only have copies of the issues in which my random musings appeared. The other GAPAs may have a more extensive collection.
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32.3
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 07:20Kai,
I have extra copies of that issue of Muse (and of many others). I’ll be happy to send you one.
By the way, I edited Doug’s article in Earth and probably have a copy of that issue stowed away, too, if you need it.
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32.3.1
KaiYves
in April 29th, 2017 @ 09:59Thanks a million! I’m presenting on Wednesday, so it’d probably be easier to send scans. I have a transcript of the “Earth” article because that IS on ProQuest.
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32.3.1.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 14:48Which format would you like, Kai? PDF? JPEG? TIFF? BLEH? (Okay, I made that last one up.)
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32.3.1.1.1
KaiYves
in April 29th, 2017 @ 17:12PDF would probably be best.
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32.3.1.1.1.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 20:26Kai (and anyone else who wants to see the article): A scan is now available on MuseBlog’s Dropbox folder at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ggjl2qdepgfxqpq/AABstSKd5XI576f2VBdLWNEUa?dl=0
Let me know if you have any problems getting access to it.
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32.3.1.1.1.1.1
KaiYves
in April 29th, 2017 @ 20:42Merci! Ah, I’ve missed that “Popped like a champagne cork” joke for 16 years…
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32.3.1.1.1.1.1.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 20:47Sorry about the quality of the second page. I can re-scan it if need be.
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32.3.1.1.1.1.1.1.1
KaiYves
in May 2nd, 2017 @ 17:33Ironically, Pwt’s “Did the scientists find any human bones?” comment foreshadows the fact that the lack of clearly drowned sites or evidence of disruption of regional settlement patterns is one of the major flaws in the theory of major catastrophic flooding. Koko and Pwt’s discussion of oral history as mentioned above is also very insightful.
(And hoooooo boy is Koko right that so much of this boils down to reading papers about looking at mud…)
Also ironic, given the region, is how much the current picture sounds like the “Soviet Radio” jokes:
Was there a catastrophic flooding of the freshwater Black Sea around 7,000 years ago by salty water from the Mediterranean Sea, displacing the existing local farmers and prompting them to move west, spreading farming?
Yes, but before the reconnection the Black Sea was brackish, not fresh, it was not in 7,000 BP but in 13,000 BP and not from the Mediterranean but from the Caspian Sea and not catastrophically but gradually and the inhabitants were not farmers but hunter-gatherers who experienced no disruptions and farming appears to have spread eastward into the Pontic region, not westward.
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32.4
KaiYves
in May 3rd, 2017 @ 23:17The professor liked my presentation! Thank you for helping me with it, Robert!
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Alice
in April 29th, 2017 @ 08:44Hey folks!
I was thinking this morning about how it’s been over ten years since I first discovered MuseBlog, and the formative experience it had on my youth, and the embarrassing (and not so!) things I said on the internet as a teenager etc. Thought I’d stop by and see what had happened in the last (five? Four? Six?) several years. And here it is, all the same people still here! I hope you guys are all doing well!
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33.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 11:30Alice! Good to see you! The “Who’s Posted How Much” page (https://musefanpage.com/blog/?page_id=2296) shows that you have posted 12,177 comments — still the highest number of any non-GAPA, despite your long absence.
So, how’s life?
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33.2
POSOC
in April 29th, 2017 @ 11:41SUPER long time no see! How on earth are you??
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33.3
gimanator
in April 29th, 2017 @ 11:55Ah, this visit merits pulling myself from the lurking shadows! What sort of things have you been up to? Where has life taken you?
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Alice
in April 29th, 2017 @ 12:33Robert, I thought by now someone would surely have overtaken me but it looks like things have quieted down around here considerably. So I guess I still have that claim to fame!
Let’s see, to recap my adult life… I graduated college in 2015 with a BA in theatre, which let me tell you is a terrible reason to go into massive amounts of debt, since theatre careers are by nature freelance and unstable. I fell in love with devised theatre my last semester in college, but with next to no training, my friends all working on their own projects, and no more money to spend on higher education, I’ve let that aspect of my life go a bit dormant. I spent my first post-grad year working as a nanny and in a bookstore and trying to adjust to not being in school. Last summer I moved to the east coast, where my boyfriend is getting his PhD, where I now live in an overpriced studio apartment and work as a barista. I miss the west coast, but I’m adjusting. I recently bought a bicycle and the increased mobility is helping me feel a lot better about my new city. I’ve been taking circus classes for about a year and would now describe myself as an “advanced beginner” on trapeze. I’ve come a long way since I was terrified to hang from my knees! That’s definitely my main passion right now and the most exciting aspect of my day-to-day life.
That little recap makes it seem like I lead a really boring life! I don’t think I do, but I am floating in the post-grad void right now. I think there’s a lot of pressure to be wildly successful right off the bat–making connections, doing projects, going to grad school–and I’m just working on being happy with where I am, supporting myself financially, enjoying the day-to-day, and not feeling guilty about not working in my field.
How have things been going with everyone here?
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 12:50That sounds like a rather cosy existence, with the odd excursion into extreme danger to enliven it. It’ll do very nicely until you decide what to do next.
Oh, by the way – Greetings!
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34.1.1
Alice
in April 30th, 2017 @ 11:00You’d think the danger would come from the dangling in the air with only meager strength to support me, but more realistically it comes from the bike!
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in April 30th, 2017 @ 19:02Bikes are pretty safe, provided no-one else is using the road.
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34.2
gimanator
in April 30th, 2017 @ 00:40The bizarre pressure for showy activity out of undergrad can be oppressive, to be sure. One of my greatest fears has become stagnation in life – arbitrarily, of course, as at some point (for any period of time) I’ll need to be at a point where I can comfortably sit without some goal dangling in front of me. I finished up an undergrad degree in music composition last year and even though I’m currently working (unrelated to the degree, albeit) and have plans to attend a masters program come fall (hello, future debt!), I’m still haunted by the idea that I’m not moving forward fast enough. A good portion of the fear/guilt/what-have-you is a false standard that, if left untended, will never be satisfied. I’m sure many muserly folks around here would testify to the presence of that tricky false standard of super-achievement in their lives. A clear path to a predetermined destination must be reality for so few people, too; why not find a way to be satisfied with where life drops you, since it will inevitably surprise you?
Anyway, despite my dour overview, I’m actually pretty happy to have a sense of direction at the moment. I may even be speaking a bit out of turn since I scarcely even post on here nowadays, but there you have it.
And it’s quite good to hear an update from you! I noted your conspicuous absence from those who had sporadically popped in since I first thought to check back on into MB and have wondered as to your whereabouts since. Was the coast to coast transition a jarring one?
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34.2.1
Alice
in May 1st, 2017 @ 08:01It’s true, we’ll all have to learn to stand still eventually. I guess the idea is that you just continue on your meteoric career until you retire and slowly waste away from ennui.
West coast to east coast was/is hard, less I think because of the specific places and more because it’s always going to be hard to uproot from a place you’ve lived your whole life, leave your friends and family, and go somewhere new. Leaving home is another thing that feels like it has a lot of pressure placed on it–if you stay where you came from, you’re boring at best. I don’t know. I can do what I’m doing anywhere, so I’m doing it where my partner is, at least for now.
More specifically, the traffic is bad here, there’s hardly any green space (and it all turns grey and muggy in the summer anyway), the cost of living is so high we can’t even afford a little balcony, much less a yard, not that anyone here has yards, and the sheer density of people makes me want to scream sometimes. But that’s city life and I was never entirely content in my last city anyway. You make trades, never seeing the stars for getting to take circus classes, living elbow to elbow with other humans for readily accessible ramen, that sort of thing.
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34.2.1.1
gimanator
in May 4th, 2017 @ 00:47I had to pause for a moment on ‘leaving home’ (that is, the concept you brought up, not what you said) because on the one hand it seems the sort of thing I would encourage anybody, but at the same time that stance comes from a privileged viewpoint. Honestly, much of this ‘ideal self’ we craft is probably rooted in the liberties class/money offer. But it doesn’t mean that aspiring to the goal is necessarily bad? I miss some of the absolutes I used to take for granted.
Anyhow, waiting two days to respond may have been long enough for you to redisappear, so I’ll at least make a point of wishing luck! and courage! as your east coast stay develops in the hopes you’ll catch the message. I obviously can’t tell from here, but it sounds like the move was a good choice and I hope it reveals itself as such.
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34.3
Cat's Meow
in May 1st, 2017 @ 20:44Hullo, Alice! It’s wonderful to see you! I also have been wondering how you’ve been.
I’m graduating this spring (two weeks from yesterday, actually – yikes) and will be starting a program to become a science teacher this summer at Stanford. I would say more now, but I’ve got a 10 page paper due tomorrow which is my last real barrier between me and graduation. (Because I turned in my thesis six hours ago! Yay me!)
Hopefully we’ll talk more soon!
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34.3.1
Tesseract
in May 1st, 2017 @ 22:11Congrats on turning in your thesis!!
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 29th, 2017 @ 20:48Happy almost-27th-birthday, Oxlin!
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Piggy
in April 29th, 2017 @ 21:20Does anyone have any good (ideally free) materials for a just-starting-out guitarist? I may or may not have a pretty little Les Paul 100 coming in the mail. Hey, sometimes an organist needs a change of pace.
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36.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in April 30th, 2017 @ 17:55Hm… You might want to get a nylon-string guitar to learn chords on while your fingertips toughen up. Steel strings can really chew up unaccustomed hands.
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36.1.1
Piggy
in May 1st, 2017 @ 12:11Eh, I don’t need functional fingertips anyway. I’m done typing most of my papers for this semester.
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36.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 2nd, 2017 @ 02:16There are lots of “teach yourself guitar” courses and videos on the Web, and a plethora of similar books. Unfortunately, I’m not qualified to tell you which of them would help with a Les Paul. Now, if you wanted to take up the lute…..
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KaiYves
in April 30th, 2017 @ 12:04Since “IMAX Cosmic Voyage” was an updated version of “Powers of Ten” and was created twenty years later, and it has now been twenty more years (Holy Cake!) since “Cosmic Voyage” was released, does that mean that while both are very excellent educational films in their own right, we should have a third one that includes the Higgs Boson?
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bookgirl_me
in April 30th, 2017 @ 13:34re alice, giminator- Don’t worry, you “having stable employment and a well-rounded adult life” people are absolutely terrifying to grad students.
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38.1
gimanator
in May 1st, 2017 @ 23:50Ah, if that’s the way I come across, I must certainly have been misrepresented!
I get the sense that most everyone falls into the job that guides them to the next stage in their life, graduate school or not. Postponing the fall by filling your life with new experience can’t be a bad thing; you tip the direction of your previous connections the vast majority of the time, and grad school is just as legitimate a method as some sort of job. (I’d rather not, of course, slip into some of my least favorite rhetoric that suggests all our end goals should be employment, but that’s a different topic.)
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38.1.1
bookgirl_me
in May 2nd, 2017 @ 12:53I do think grad school is legit, but I feel like it’s slowing me down on other paths to adulting. As in, I have weeks where I eat nothing but 2-minute tortellini off weird small plates from the back of the cupboard and wear old sweaters from high school because deadlines happened and laundry, cooking, hobbies etc. was replaced by frantic coding. I’m in a decent spot financially, but mostly because my parents support me financially. I also moved back in with my dad.
This isn’t all grad school’s fault, but the work does have a tendency to follow you home and the playing field’s pretty even- if you really want something, you need to work harder (ie longer) for it. That being said, I’m definitely taking less classes next semester
Compared to those of my peers who are living on their own/with SOs, eat homecooked meals with fresh vegetables and actually earn non-negible amounts of money, I feel a bit like a basement dweller.
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gimanator
in May 2nd, 2017 @ 22:42Well, at least I’ll know what I’m getting into when I jump into it. It’s interesting to hear (read?) you talk about it, since giving up some parts of my life for the sake of study hasn’t yet been that much of a concern for me. What it really means, though, is I probably don’t have enough friends who have gotten on with their lives for me to feel deficient in comparison. It doesn’t help that most of my older friends are grad students and don’t really give a good picture of ‘real’ life.
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KaiYves
in May 4th, 2017 @ 11:34Happy Star Wars Day, everyone! May the 4th Be With You!
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39.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 4th, 2017 @ 14:50And with you!
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39.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 4th, 2017 @ 17:42And with you, unto the depths of eternity.
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39.2.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 5th, 2017 @ 00:35Or at least until May 5.
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39.3
KaiYves
in May 4th, 2017 @ 19:41You know, taro boba tea is technically blue (-ish purple) milk.
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39.3.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 5th, 2017 @ 02:44Also, it’s not tea.
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KaiYves
in May 5th, 2017 @ 03:55It’s not English tea, but it is Taiwanese tea.
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39.3.1.1.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 5th, 2017 @ 04:25Taiwan isn’t the only place with weird ideas. Australians keep trying to convince me that they can make tea from some random shrub they found in the outback.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 5th, 2017 @ 06:38Discovered by a bloke called Roy, if I remember right. It’s still not tea.
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39.3.1.1.2.1
KaiYves
in May 5th, 2017 @ 15:28How do you feel about moji tea?
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39.3.1.1.2.1.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 6th, 2017 @ 09:36See, you need to understand British culture. Tea – black tea, with milk and optional sugar – is a staple food, like potatoes and carrots. It’s also a universal source of pleasure and comfort, and a cure for all psychological ills, We don’t buy it in pretty designer packets. It comes in the form of tea bags nowadays. One generally buys a box of at least 180. The best brand is hotly contested, the major contenders being Tetley, Ty Phoo, PG Tips, and Yorkshire (I favour the latter, even though it’s the newcomer.) Anything attempting to call itself “tea” which departs from the norm is regarded with great suspicion and mocked.
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39.3.1.1.2.1.1.1
Jadestone
in May 6th, 2017 @ 11:50yeah, you can say that all you like, but I’m gonna go ahead and call Nope. Tea is a beverage of leaves/vegetation infused into water. China started Producing tea in 2700 BCE, and exHanded to Japan and Korea around 600AD, who also began producing their own varieties of the beverage. England didn’t get their hands on it until the 1600s, and it was another century before it became accessible/popular. China doesn’t consider only the one type of leaf to be tea (several varieties with different benefits, green tea or rooibos, etc) and I’m giving definition preference to them. If they consider tea a wide range of beverage then that’s how it is. Brit latecomers who get defensive about there only being One True Tea and only one way to make it are the ones to be mocked because their part of the history of the beverage is incredibly short, comparatively.
(I say this with love, as I’ve said it to you before
I just 100% disagree with you)
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39.3.1.1.2.1.1.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 6th, 2017 @ 15:04Quite, And you also know that you shouldn’t take most things I say seriously. I suppose we should alert the rest of Museblog to that one.
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gimanator
in May 10th, 2017 @ 00:16Ah, PG Tips, stuff of my youth! … and stuff of today, too, really. Since my mother instilled that habit, it’s been impossible to shake.
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Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 10th, 2017 @ 18:30Once your brain is pickled with tea, you’re hooked for life.
But do try Yorkshire tea. It’s a disreputable upstart, but many inveterate PG Tips people have defected.
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39.3.1.1.2.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 6th, 2017 @ 02:30It’s a weird tea-based concoction. It’s probably very nice, but I don’t think it would go down well in Kingswinford.
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KaiYves
in May 8th, 2017 @ 14:01I don’t want to do final projects. I want to sleep and walk in the sun and watch Jacques Cousteau documentaries and read comic books…
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40.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 8th, 2017 @ 14:26Soon, KaiYves, soon! Plenty of sunny days lie ahead after your deadline.
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40.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 9th, 2017 @ 02:50You have discovered the Eternal Conflict, which continues throughout life. Persuading oneself to do what one is supposed to be doing, rather than – well, just about anything else – is a mighty and heroic struggle.
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KaiYves
in May 9th, 2017 @ 15:48Taking three hours-ish off because Prof. W gave me an extension to “tonight” and I needed to shower and now I need to eat, so, let’s talk something fun and not school-related: how many nicknames can you think of that have a different first initial than the name they’re short for?
Peggy- Margaret
Polly- Molly
Liz- Elizabeth
Bill- William
Bob- Robert
Ted/Ned- Edward
Dick- Richard
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41.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 9th, 2017 @ 16:58OK, now you’re REALLY procrastinating.
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41.1.1
KaiYves
in May 9th, 2017 @ 17:02I’m not procrastinating, I was working all of last night and this morning-afternoon period. I’m just taking a break before tonight.
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KaiYves
in May 9th, 2017 @ 20:26Wait, was that a joke that showering and eating are unbelievable luxuries? As you can imagine, my sense of humor, like everything else, is a bit off at the moment.
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41.2
ZNZ
in May 9th, 2017 @ 21:16Also Beth for Elizabeth.
Ronnie for Veronica, Gretel for Margaret, Babas for Sebastian. (Babas isn’t common in Anglophone places but I’ve definitely heard it.)
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41.2.1
ZNZ
in May 10th, 2017 @ 21:04Oh, and Drew for Andrew, and Sander/Sandy for Alexander.
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41.3
Lizzie
in May 11th, 2017 @ 10:33my favorite – Gretchen – Margaret
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41.4
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 11th, 2017 @ 13:39“Polly” and “Molly” both used to be nicknames for “Mary,” though nowadays they also exist as standalone names. Similarly, “Nancy” was originally a nickname for Anne.
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KaiYves
in May 10th, 2017 @ 04:32Ahhhahahaaha, done, Bronze for the Bronze Age! Sleep for the Sleepyheads!
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42.1
Cat's Meow
in May 11th, 2017 @ 00:51Congratulations! Sleep well.
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KaiYves
in May 10th, 2017 @ 23:24I saw a rainbow sundog today while walking in Hudson River Park!
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vanillabean3.141
in May 11th, 2017 @ 06:36Hello everyone!
It’s been quite a while.
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44.1
KaiYves
in May 11th, 2017 @ 11:59Hey, Vanillabean! Welcome back!
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44.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 11th, 2017 @ 15:13Greetings!
Pull up a stanchion.
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44.3
Selenium the Quafflebird
in May 16th, 2017 @ 14:09Hello and welcome back!
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44.4
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 17th, 2017 @ 16:47How have you been, ‘Bean?
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44.4.1
vanillabean3.141
in May 18th, 2017 @ 07:30Overall, pretty good! How about you all?
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44.5
AL
in May 18th, 2017 @ 19:53OMG, hi!! This’ll sound weird but I was remembering all the old MB’ers and was like “vanillabean was so cool, I hope en is doing alright”.
Glad to hear from you!
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vanillabean3.141
in May 22nd, 2017 @ 05:27Aw, thank you! I hope things are well with you.
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KaiYves
in May 13th, 2017 @ 23:33So guys, consider this a PSA, if you’re in Manhattan between May and October, the weather is nice, and you have a day to spare, go down to Battery Park and take the ferry to Governors Island. It’s two dollars and you won’t regret it.
It’s a little island in the harbor 400 meters from the tip of Manhattan that’s basically shaped like an ice cream cone. It was a military base until the 1990s so it was set up as a small town in its own right on this island within New York City. Now the city and the Park Service run it as a recreation area for visitors.
The forts built in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 are open to the public and you can explore them and take tours with rangers. The infrastructure is still there so there are buildings with water and electricity, and sidewalks and asphalt paths– there are no cars allowed on the island, but you can rent bikes and electric golf carts.
The neighborhood where the officers’ homes were is this weird surreal abandoned suburb with shade trees and two chapels and a rec center with an empty swimming pool, and it really feels like anywhere except the middle of New York. The homes are being preserved/restored and you can go inside some of them and see art exhibitions as well as displays by local environmental groups. There are oral histories by people who grew up on the island that you can listen to, too.
The whole south part of the island has been turned into ballfields and meadows, and they’ve built up some artificial hills you can climb to get amazing views of the harbor (but really the views are great from anywhere on the island, and there’s a road that goes all around the edge of the island that you can walk or bike on)– Liberty and Ellis Islands are right across the way, and the Statue of Liberty is so close you can see the folds in her robes.
There are a few food vendors there every day and on the weekends, food trucks come over on the ferry and there’s a whole food court along one of the streets. Most of the vendors will give you a box to go so you can picnic by the hills or on the parade ground. When I went yesterday, they had a jazz band playing as a special event.They’ve set up hammocks and benches all around the island and there are sculptures by different New York artists along the paths.
It’s really just this quiet, green little island within sight of the city skyline and it might be the most relaxing place in the city.
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45.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 15th, 2017 @ 19:20I visited Governor’s Island right after the base closed. “Eerie” was the word for it, a community from which every inhabitant had suddenly disappeared. The lawns were mown, and there were even notices on the notice boards. I hope those huge beautiful old trees are still there.
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KaiYves
in May 15th, 2017 @ 22:59Oh yes, there are huge shade trees all over the Historic District (the name they use for the north half of the island run by the NPS), and they’re one of the reasons it feels so much like a place apart– on Colonels’ Row or in Nolan Park (the neighborhoods), you can stand in the middle of the street and not see any of the skyscrapers because the trees block them out and muffle the city sounds. (You also aren’t in danger of being run over because the bikes and golf carts go so slowly and people will call out to you to move.)
It’s very quiet in the neighborhoods, especially on weekdays, but it also feels a bit lonely for the reasons you described. I can understand why one of the installations last year was a haunted house in one of the houses in Nolan Park with an invented story about the residents disappearing on Halloween night in 1989.
When I visited on Sunday, some kids set up those folding miniature soccer goals in a grassy space in Nolan Park and playing soccer. I thought about how the sounds of their play must have been so much more common during the Army and Coast Guard days.
Eventually as the Powers That Be continue to expand the visiting season and restore more buildings, it will probably become more lively again. I would like to be able to go into the chapels and it would be cool if they could turn the YMCA’s water on again and fix up the swimming pool so that they could offer swimming as one of the guest activities.
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45.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 16th, 2017 @ 06:46If I ever get across to NY, I will put Governeor’s Island on my visiting list.
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KaiYves
in May 18th, 2017 @ 20:13If oil comes from ancient plankton, then in a metaphorical sense, doesn’t Plankton already rule the world?
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46.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 19th, 2017 @ 12:43Less than it did 20 years ago, thank goodness.
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KaiYves
in May 19th, 2017 @ 15:50Oh GAD SpongeBob debuted almost 20 years ago, didn’t it?
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46.1.1.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 19th, 2017 @ 19:03Eighteen years ago this month, according to Wikipedia.
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Piggy
in May 21st, 2017 @ 21:36I’m smack dab in the middle of finals and organ/chant/polyphonic preparations for ordinations and first Masses, and I’ve finally nailed down my summer doings: I’m driving out to DC next week, then flying back, then driving to New Hampshire, then driving back, then flying back to NH and flying back again. Then I’ll probably do a camping trip. (；´Д｀)
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47.1
vanillabean3.141
in May 22nd, 2017 @ 06:04Not your own ordination, I assume (just based on the plural). Are you still thinking about becoming a priest?
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47.1.1
Piggy
in May 22nd, 2017 @ 15:40No, not my own! That’s a few years down the road yet, God willing. I’m just finishing up year two of seven at the seminary.
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Cello-Playing Mathematician (AKA Kyra)
in May 22nd, 2017 @ 23:37Glad to hear you’re on track to becoming one!
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vanillabean3.141
in May 24th, 2017 @ 04:40Diocesan, or attached to an order?
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Piggy
in May 24th, 2017 @ 16:21It’s with an order called the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, whose “thing” is the Traditional Latin Mass. My classics degree is actually paying off, almost!
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KaiYves
in May 22nd, 2017 @ 18:53Today I had to manually enter the word “Mound” 212 times because ArcGIS is incredibly annoying.
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48.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 25th, 2017 @ 02:57It’s disturbing that “mound” isn’t a recognised word in a mapping program. It sounds like a job for a simple script. Even a Windows keyboard shortcut would help.
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KaiYves
in May 25th, 2017 @ 11:13It’s just that there wasn’t an option to automatically change the “null” values in a table to something else.
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48.1.1.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 25th, 2017 @ 12:10You could always do it in Python.
*hides behing sofa*
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KaiYves
in May 25th, 2017 @ 12:33I don’t know nearly enough about programming to try.
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KaiYves
in May 23rd, 2017 @ 15:38These other guys at another workstation in the computer lab kept talking about “avoiding fairies”, and I was really confused until I realized they were also working with map software and trying to find a route that avoided FERRIES.
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KaiYves
in May 24th, 2017 @ 19:40I am getting sick and tired of wrangling these MUSE-CAKED DATASETS in this MUSE-CAKED GIS!
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 25th, 2017 @ 05:36Happy Towel Day, froods!
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51.1
Piggy
in May 25th, 2017 @ 11:22It’s Thursday, isn’t it? I could never get the hang of Thursdays.
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51.1.1
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 25th, 2017 @ 12:11Just think of it as a solid, comforting sort of day when nothing much happens.
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51.2
KaiYves
in May 25th, 2017 @ 12:34Also, HAPPY 40th ANNIVERSARY OF STAR WARS!
(And 9th anniversary of the Phoenix lander’s touchdown on Mars.)
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51.3
Rainbow*Storm
in May 25th, 2017 @ 13:39I wore a towel around my shoulders at the bank today, but nobody seemed to notice. Someone Else’s Problem, I guess.
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POSOC
in May 25th, 2017 @ 23:07Robert: I think I’m starting to understand what you meant about the bottom of the learning curve.
When you’re just learning a new skill or subject, your absolute knowledge is very small. But your knowledge relative to what you used to know is enormous. Each additional thing you learn feels like huge potential vistas opening up. You don’t get that feeling when you’re more proficient.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 27th, 2017 @ 07:29Exactly! What are you starting to study now?
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POSOC
in May 27th, 2017 @ 15:41Mainly the history of the Islamic world, but I’m also seeing if math is any more enjoyable without the persistent anxiety of grades and tests.
(Not sure how much time I’ll have for either, though, since I need to start hunting for jobs after Memorial Day.)
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KaiYves
in May 27th, 2017 @ 02:43Any ideas for role-based color coding in a fictional underwater exploration organization that wouldn’t come too close to ripping off Star Trek?
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53.1
bookgirl_me
in May 27th, 2017 @ 03:36Maybe switching up the whole uniforms? À la technicians get jumpsuits, scientists get something more lab-coat inspired, etc.? Or people with similar uniforms get colored logos (a green cross for medics)?
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KaiYves
in May 27th, 2017 @ 16:57Oh, the uniforms won’t be based on Star Trek, I’m just trying to create a consistent color-coding scheme that will be on badges and the like independent from the actual uniforms. For one thing, I don’t see the logic in giving engineering and security the same color.
I know I want to separate security/defense, science, vehicle and equipment engineering/development, underwater base architecture and maintenance, medical (maybe combine the last two when within a base as “support”, and a cross-trained role for people who can do a little of each.
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KaiYves
in May 27th, 2017 @ 19:01I also like green as the medical color, it fits with the organization’s large European component.
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53.2
Paul Baker (Administrator)
in May 29th, 2017 @ 06:45I could make some suggestions, but they’re probably a bit too lateral for your purposes.
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KaiYves
in May 29th, 2017 @ 17:25How so?
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 27th, 2017 @ 09:49Attention, New Yorkers! Manhattanhenge is imminent. Here’s when:
• May 29, at 8:13 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.
• May 30, at 8:12 p.m. E.D.T.
• July 12, at 8:20 p.m. E.D.T.
• July 13, at 8:21 p.m. E.D.T.
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54.1
KaiYves
in May 27th, 2017 @ 20:01– Thesis work
– Thesis work
– Hopefully not in Turkey yet, so I’ll try to go
– Hopefully not in Turkey yet, so I’ll try to goI guess I’m not a good New Yorker in that I’ve never seen it (I’ve actually seen the “Bostonhenges” for various neighborhoods there more, because multiple street grids makes it less rare), but I’m usually on Long Island during the summer.
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Piggy
in May 28th, 2017 @ 09:50It looks like I’m going to have some free time in DC during the day on Tuesday. Anyone for lunch?
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 28th, 2017 @ 15:54Possibly, Piggy! What part of town will you be in?
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Piggy
in May 28th, 2017 @ 18:34Near the Mall, I think.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 29th, 2017 @ 11:59Great! Why don’t you and I (and any other MBers who would like to) meet at noon in the lobby of the Museum of the American Indian? The museum’s cafeteria-style restaurant, one of my favorite places in Washington, serves dishes based on ingredients that were available in the Western Hemisphere before the Europeans arrived.
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Piggy
in May 29th, 2017 @ 12:16It’s a deal! If I can’t make it for some reason I’ll post here, but I think it’ll work out great.
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55.1.1.1.1.1
Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 30th, 2017 @ 11:02I’m here! Standing near the Indian Chief motorcycle, wearing a Kokopelli sticker. There can’t be many people here who fit that description.
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Robert Coontz (Administrator)
in May 31st, 2017 @ 10:24Piggy and I met as planned. What a rare treat to meet an MBer for the first time! Of course, I took a selfie:
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Piggy
in June 1st, 2017 @ 00:22In my nonexistent free time lately, I’ve been thinking more about writing. I do write poetry, slowly, and at some point I would like to collect some of my poems into a bookish thing. I’ve been editing some of my old poems for that, as well as writing new ones. The conversation Robert and I had on Tuesday, which touched on (among many topics) fanfiction and sci-fi, also made me realize something: the ideas, or rather the images, for a novel that have been lurking in my head for a while now could be put into short stories instead. I just don’t think I have the experience or the attention span for a full novel right now, but short stories seem doable, and I think they’d help me organize what I want to do. Maybe once I’ve explored this universe, a longer work would start to take shape for me.
</random_musings>
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KaiYves
in June 1st, 2017 @ 20:02There, thesis draft submitted by June 1, 2017, so they can’t expel me for not meeting the deadline and I can eat and sleep and have summer vacation and go home for a week before I come back for lab work and can I please wait until July 1 to start working on the final version and just take the whole month of June off?
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KaiYves
in June 2nd, 2017 @ 14:15I’m so glad May is over, this May was just 3 weeks of crunch time with maybe one somewhat relaxed.
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