Podcasts (in alpha order)

• Astronomy Cast – still one of my top favorite listens. Fraser Cain and Dr. Pamela Gay have wonderful voices to listen to and their weekly discussion on astronomical or physics topics is a delight. The target audience is your average non-physics graduate, but I still learn things on a regular basis.
• Geologic Podcast – George Hrab is a very non-standard (to me) musician and much of his music is not to my taste. However, I do enjoy his snarky humor and commentary on his weekly podcast, especially the Indestructible Bastards, Ask George, and Religious Morons of the Week. (But, really, can lose the Horrorscopes, Geo!)
• Grammar Girl and Modern Manners Guy are both podcasts from the Quick and Dirty Tips site (along with other themed shows on Math, Money, Health, Pets, etc.). The grammar tips are great and help reinforce things and keep my language skills relatively tidy. The manners show often has episodes on dealing with a variety of awkward situations that I hope I’ll never have to practice. All well-written and spoken.
• inFact with Brian Dunning is  new video podcast from man who brings us the amazing Skeptoid podcast (see below). It has promise! Only bad thing about vodcasts is that I can’t watch them while driving (my standard time to get updated on my ‘casts).
• Memories of the Futurecast – Hey, I like Wil Wheaton (which is in no way the same as liking Wesley Crusher). I’ve enjoyed everything I have seen him in lately (especially a very creepy performance on Criminal Minds and an awesome Evil Wil version on Big Bang Theory). In this podcast, he read excerpts and behind the scenes portions of us new book, Memories of the Future, Volume One, an episode-by-episode recap of Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first series. Incredibly entertaining listen! I wish he would do a full audio version of the book because hearing Wil read his stuff is vastly better than having to use my own voice.
• Mr. Deity – A wonderfully-produced vodcast about the every-day life of the creator and everything he must endure to manage his creation. It’s all hilarious, but I think the “Mr. Deity and the Identity Crisis” and “Mr. Deity and the Woman” are my favorite episodes so far.
• The Skeptics’ Guide 5×5 is a 5-minute, classroom-friendly discussion about a single bit of science, pseudoscience or news item by the creators of the SGU (next item). I like the boiled down aspect of it – no chatter, no silly jokes, just straight up, condensed talking points.
• The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe is a 80-minute(ish) podcast filled with current science news, skepticism and discussion of pseudoscience. There are often interviews with prominent scientists as well as other folks (including some on the “other” side of the skeptical fence). Although occasionally encumbered by too much irrelevant chatter (some is fine), including recently an in-depth discussion of quantum mechanics (which is interesting to me, but has no place at all on a Skeptics podcast), I do find the show entertaining and listen-worthy.
• Skeptoid: Critical Analysis of Pop Phenomena – My absolute favorite podcast. If I have a new Skeptoid available, I will listen to it even if I am in the middle of another one at the moment. Brian has no fear in tackling any subject in pop culture (paranormal claims, alt meds, pseudoscience, even religion) and he has the hate mail to prove it. Two things strike me most strongly about his work: first, he does a reasonable amount of research (for a 10-minute weekly podcast) to back up his statements; second, he always stresses that you do NOT believe him – he is merely giving you starting points to research if you have doubts as to the facts and opinions as presented. I think his podcasts should be required listening either in-class or as homework assignments for nearly all school ages. (E.g., listen to this week’s podcast, and then do your own research to verify or dispute the statements that Brian made.)

I have a few other podcasts that I get regular downloads for, but those generally sit there unlistened to until I get rid of the backlog of my favorites (with no school and no job currently, my car-time is reduced substantially – in the house, I usually have other things to do). Finally, there are some science news-based shows I only subscribe to when I can keep current, because it isn’t news if I don’t listen to it for 8 months!

I’ve just finished Carl Sagan’s Billions & Billions – the last book he wrote (indeed, the final chapter was written from his hospital bed). Very insightful, but that is nothing surprising for Sagan. Right now I’m working on Feynman’s Lost Lecture: The Motion of Planets Around the Sun. So far, it’s been historical information, which is very interesting and an easy read. Eventually it’ll get into the math and I’ll be slowing down a bit to figure it out with him.

A long-time neighbor (they’ve lived here nearly as long as we have and we’ve been here over a decade now) died last year after a long illness. Knowing my interest in physics, his wife has kindly offered me any books from his library that interest me. And boy do they interest me! It turns out Bruce was a mathematician with a strong bent towards physics and astrophysics (especially solar studies and orbital science). I wish I had known his passion for physics during our early years as neighbors, before he got too sick to socialize. We could have had some good talks, I expect.

I brought eight books home with me (in no preferential order; the smallest book is on top and each one is physically larger than the next as they are in one big, neat stack):

• Introduction to Space Dynamics
• Fundamentals of Astrodynamics
• Methods of Orbit Determination
• General Relativity
• Wolfram’s A New Kind of Science
• Gravitation
• Comet by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan (the non-revised edition, though)
• Spacetime Physics

Not exactly light reading. The hard part was holding myself back from trying to cart it all away. Not that she would have minded, but I didn’t want to seem too greedy – and, let’s face it, there’s no chance I’ll get through even what I did pick up! I have been invited back for any additional books I might desire (he had a number of other Sagan books as well as a demonstrated fondness for both fictional and non-fictional accounts of Albert Einstein’s life).

In an unrelated event, I managed to snap a great sunrise picture the other day. I really need to carry the camera around with me more.

Anyone who really knows me knows that I plan to live forever. I totally hate the idea of dying – of ceasing to exist as a thinking entity. In that regard, I cannot entirely side with George (who was not entirely sure he would be into the idea). I would far rather live as long as I wanted to – even if (perhaps especially if) it means thousands of years – and die when I felt I had done everything interesting that I could possibly do than to leave this life at any earlier time.

George raised related issues, though, which I have thought about on and off over the years. It all revolves around three points of view – those of our current mind (the “meat”), the new mind (digital), and everyone else in the universe (others).

Machine intelligence
A common theme in sci-fi and near-future predictions is the ability to “download” (although, really, “upload” is a more appropriate term) our minds into a machine of some sort – computer, robot, whatever – and thus live happily forever.

My problem with this is that our mind is a collection of the entire contents of our brain. If that brain is emptied, our mind is gone. A copy may exist in that machine, but that copy is not, as far as our meat body is concerned, our mind. The meat mind will, for all intents and purposes, consider itself to be dying and will cease to exist as soon as the transfer is complete. The digital mind will think of itself as the “original,” because it will have all the thoughts of the meat mind up to and including the transfer, so it will feel as though it experienced a continuous existence. The rest of the universe will consider the digital mind to be “original,” because it will behave and react exactly as the original mind.

So, from a universal point of view, including that of the digital mind, a transfer from meat to machine would appear to produce the original consciousness in the new medium. However, to the meat, it will still feel like dying – the original consciousness will be gone and no amount of copying will ever change the fact that you, as the original meat, will have died.

Transporter disruption
This brings up a concept I thought of some time ago relating to Star Trek. From everything I understand about the “science” behind transporters, and without going too deep into semi-nonsensical Trekker speak, a transportee’s body is captured in a matrix, disassembled and then reassembled in the new location. (Keep any discrepancies between that simplistic explanation and Trekker lore to yourself – I really don’t care all that much.) From my point of view, the original transportee’s mind is destroyed at the first disassembling. Therefore, every person in the Star Trek universe who has ever been transported has been killed – there just happens to be a new entity with the same mind replacing that person. From a universal point of view, there has been a full transfer. From the original meat POV, death has occured. However, nobody notices it because everyone who goes through the transporter has died, leaving only perfect (or sometimes not-so-perfect) copies behind.

Ultimately, the best way to immortality without risking the meat/digital dichotomy presented above is to do it piecemeal. Don’t replace the brain, make modifications to it; change just a bit at a time via memory expansions, processor upgrades, sense modification, whatever the options are. If I just increase my memory, my mind is not destroyed. If it just works faster, nothing has otherwise changed. Over time and many changes, it is entirely possible that only digital will be left, but I am confident that during the entire process, there is no discontinuity of the original “meat” consciousness. It is the only form of digital immortality that would be acceptable to me. (Hurry up, science!)

This household eagerly awaits January 20th and the hoped-for changes the event will cause. (It would definitely be nice not to be despised by the majority of the industrialized world again.)

Life in a Fishbowl

Now that I have found most of my desk, school work of a sort begins again – I have research to restart, much to learn and studying for a dreadedly-anticipated Physics GRE to manage. This all will likely result in 2-3 days per week at GMU, because I have well-convinced myself that I cannot do serious work at home unless I am already totally in the grove (which will probably happen once I get seriously programming in IDL). It’s just way too easy to get distracted.

I also hope to get a lot more exercise this year, including regular krav maga sessions now that I no longer have a class schedule in conflict with training. We’ll see how that works out!

WWII Memorial and Washington Monument

In the trickling way which will probably continue, here is another image taken from my Washington Photo Safari. In this one, I set up with my back to the reflecting pool (where I took this photo) and aimed at the area we had just left – the WWII memorial and Washington monument. I liked the setup, especially with the monument reflecting in the glass-smooth pool in the foreground. I definitely need to make my way back down to the monuments at night, alone or with another enthusiast, so I can take my time and get the shots I really like (instead of needing to stick with a group and being under a deadline).

Senior Physics Lab, taught by Dr. Karen Sauer, was quite interesting as I had hoped and expected it to be. It consisted of two 30-45 minute lectures followed by 3 official hours of lab work each week. We could work additional hours if we wanted to, except for the one experiment that required a radioactive source only the instructor was permitted to handle. Each student had to complete four projects/experiments over the semester, generally as a solo project (except for one or two projects considered difficult/complicated enough to duo). For my projects, I chose the Zeeman Effect, Plasma Diagnosis, Compton Scattering and Optical Pumping. The projects themselves ranged from fairly easy (ZM) to bothersomely difficult (PD). The write-ups, however, were the real challenge. Dr. Sauer demanded (after the first draft) fairly rigorous, publishable-level papers. Whether she got anything close to that level is a question for her, but I tried. My papers ran 1600-3300 words and were graded 9 out of 10 on average. My grade for the semester: A

Introduction to Astrophysics, taught by Dr. Shobita Satyapal, was a mixed bag. On one hand, the topic is incredibly interesting to me and getting some in-depth information on how the universe works was fascinating. On the other hand, I felt the class was easier than perhaps it should be. Granted, it is a survey course (like nearly everything else in the undergrad physics world), but I think we could have spent more time on the equations of astrophysics beyond the mostly-unproved basics. On the other hand, if it had been very difficult, I likely would have just complained about that, so I should just be happy with the A+ grade I received.

Even though I only took two classes officially, I still tried to squeeze in some more unofficially, just to keep things active.

Astrobiology, by Dr. Summers. I’ve taken this before and since I am nominally doing research for him and really enjoyed the class, I regularly attended this class. It was great two years ago and even better now. Class attendance has doubled and his slides have become even more awesome with time. It’s still fun. I took one exam without studying for it (did not realize it was being offered) and scored an 85, which was pretty good considering I usually forget things immediately after the semester ends.

Electromagnetic Theory – I sat through maybe half the classes of this one, hoping to pick up something I had missed in my first horrid class. However, the instructor was teaching off the same exact notes (word for word, example for example) as the ones used in the class I took officially and the teaching seemed under par.

Introduction to Quantum Mechanics was every bit as complex as I anticipated, but I attended and took notes as well as I could. I kept up fairly well with the topics until we reached Hermitian operators, at which point an entire class went by which sounded like a completely foreign language to me (the result of doing no outside work on the class). At that point, I realized I would be wasting my time attending further classes and used the time to extend my lab work or go home early and see my children before bedtime.

And so my undergrad career comes to a close with a cumulative GPA of 3.96. Now that I am not distracted by regular classes, I hope to be able to dig deep into my research, probably by taking my laptop to school one or more days a week and concentrating on things there, since I will always find a distraction if I stay at home. The grad school situation is currently fuzzy – my intent is to continue my work at GMU with Dr. Summers, but they now require applicants to take the Physics GRE and the next test is not held until just before the deadline for applications, so I may end up with a dead semester or two until I can get the paperwork completed, unless I can get a waiver to skip that portion given the faculty’s familiarity with me over the past several years. Time will tell.

The hardest part is trying to keep tabs on the girls. For a change, all my classes are in the afternoon, so I don’t need to dash out the door early in the morning for a 9 am class. The tradeoff, though, is that I am not around when their school lets out 4 days out of the week, which is tough on the whole family.

The first lab report (Zeeman Effect) has been handed in – it should do well (the draft version got high marks). The second lab (Plasma Diagnosis) is in progress, but has been very troublesome so far. Tomorrow is the last reasonable effort I can make to collect the needed data – report due in one week!

My first (only?) mid-term exam is next Thursday, in Astrophysics. I am somewhat worried about that one – the instructor classifies it as a hard exam. This is the professor who thinks the homework is fairly easy, but it invariably causes stress for most of the class. At least we can bring a sheet of paper with whatever we want on it – and I can write in very tiny print.

My research is totally slacking – I’m supposed to be learning how the outer layers of the sun work hydrodynamically (in order to assist with other work I’m done – I’m not actually studying stars for this research). I’ve just been so swamped lately – in part due to an out-of-town medical emergency (now passed – hi, Mom!) which chewed up most of a week of mental time, in part due to me being a slacker still – that I have not taken the time to truly absorb the material. I need to get my butt in gear before he casts me off.

Right now, I am watching the 2nd Obama/McCain debate instead of doing homework or studying for the probability/uncertainty quiz I have tomorrow, but at least I’m not on the Xbox. And where are McCain’s manners? He ignores Obama while the latter is talking and various other rude moments tonight and throughout the campaign. The worst, though, is totally blowing off Obama’s hand shake offer at the end – he tapped Obama in the back to get his attention, and when Obama turned around with his hand out for a shake, McCain looked at it and turned away! Obama recovered well and turned to McCain’s wife (who did accept the hand) and then continued his business. Manners, Mr. McCain, manners – you must be civil to the Democratic nominee to the highest elected position in the country, even if you despise everything about him (as he must be to you, as the Republican nominee).

This Friday, I am taking a photo workshop with Washington Photo Safari (monuments at night), which could be cool (with the offset problem of possibly getting me too interested in photography again – like I have the time!).

Finally, I am attempting to keep up my training in krav maga at least twice a week – I was on a good roll until a few weeks ago when I lost two weeks in a row. Now I have to get my butt in gear again. I might add on a second type of training (perhaps muay thai) just so I can open up another night or two to work out – the krav sessions just don’t fit my schedule well this semester.

However, it amazes me-although it should not-just how many folks apparently believe it will. Miniature black holes, strangelets, vacuum bubbles and more are expected by doomsayers to pop out and obliterate our world (and, occasionally, the universe).

It is all nonsense.

Even at full power, which the LHC won’t get to until next year, the power of the large hadron collider pales in comparison to the experiment the universe performs on us every single day. So far, cosmic rays striking the earth have performed the equivalent of about one hundred thousand lifetime runs of the LHC on us and, unless I missed a memo, we have not gone poof yet.

A blog on tgdaily.com today mentioned that now LHC scientists, including a Nobel laureate, are receiving death threats against starting up this marvelous machine. Dr. Brian Cox, as usual, has the perfect response. There are many sources explaining how not-at-risk we are here, although Wikipedia, as usual, has a good summary page on it.

I am taking two physics courses for credit and sitting in three others unofficially. That gives me Sr. Physics Lab, Astrophysics, E/M Theory, Astrobiology and Quantum Mechanics to worry about (total of 11 lecture hours and 6 lab hours per week), plus a weekly meeting with my research advisor (more below) and bi-weekly meetings for astrophysics journal club, physics club and physics club officers (I’m the VP). Plus occasional seminars here and there. Oh, and research to do.

When I stopped to talk with my research advisor, he told me he had come up with not one, but two (unrelated) projects for me to consider. One deals with NASA’s AIM mission and the other with exoplanets. Both are way cool, but I suspect I will be going with the exoplanets one because it fits my interests and (very basic) foundation a bit better. So now I have another hundred or so pages of research papers and presentations to read plus some online work, preparatory to doing a lot more IDL coding. His hope is that the introductory work would keep me busy for the next two semesters (I’ll have a lot more time after this one, since I’ll have no classes at all this spring, most likely) and we would submit an official PhD thesis proposal(!!) next fall.

Of course, we’ve ignored (so far) the fact that I actually have to prepare for, take and suitably pass both the general and physics GREs to get into GMU’s graduate program, but at least I have a direction in which to travel.

And some time during all this (3 days!), my darling children head back to school, so I probably should pay attention to them occasionally as well (plus their mommy).

I started it off with a visit to my research adviser, who has not one, but two different PhD thesis-level projects in mind for me. Gift horse, anyone? One of them involves an active NASA mission. One is related to (but not directly involved with) my Charon work. The first one comes with funding, wherein I would draw a stipend (plus, presumably, funding for conference travel). The second has no funding itself, although Dr. Summers said he could probably spring for a couple conferences.

Now I have to decide between an interesting project I get paid for and a (somewhat more interesting) project that I won’t necessarily get paid for. And since I could conceivably be working on whichever one I choose for the next 6-8 years (although presumably I would eventually find some funding for the latter project – except in the current anti-science administration, that’s pretty well impossible), I need to choose pretty carefully. However, it’s a good problem to have – rather too many projects than not enough (or an unhelpful research adviser).

After that meeting, and some chatting with various friends in the hallways, I headed to Senior Physics Lab. This promises to be quite an interesting class, with two half-hour lecture periods followed by 3-hour lab periods each week. Additionally, we can always get a key to the advanced physics lab to work independently whenever we wish. We each have to work solo (with a couple exceptions) on four different experiments throughout the semester. My first is a study of the Zeeman Effect on mercury vapor. On Wednesday, we have an oral pass/fail exam on our individual experiments which we must pass before we’re permitted to begin work, then it’s radiation safety education and quizzing next week and finally we can begin work.

Following lab I sat in on the first Introduction to Quantum Mechanics course. Although this course is packed to full (every seat taken), I have permission from the instructor to sit in on it unofficially. It is now a required course for all new Physics undergraduates. However, since I am running under an older catalog, it is only optional for me (I’m taking Astrophysics instead), but it is still a good idea to know the contents since a significant part of the physics GRE uses the knowledge. My main surprise in the class is the number of physics majors in there whom I swear I have never seen before. You’d think I would know (at least by sight) all the junior/senior level physics students by this point (since there are only a few dozen total physics undergraduates).

Tomorrow – three more classes (two audits, one for credit)!

Not too badly.

While I only registered for 6 credits this semester (3 lecture, 3 research), I actually sat through 9 credits of lecture. One extra class was by invitation from my research advisor. The other less invited, but he did not seem to mind (after all, I was a more consistent attendee than half the class). The full rundown then…

Senior Research Project – I talked a bunch about my research project here. I did not do any more flux work since my last post, but did continue working on vapor pressures of certain molecules (N2, CH4, CO and a variety of C2H* species) at very low (30-60K) temperatures. I originally was asked to turn in a sort of journal of my efforts for the grade. Before the semester was out, however, Dr. Summers let me know I had already earned an A (yay me!) for my work, but he still wanted me to turn in a paper which might be suitable for publishing on the low temperature vapor pressures. I finished writing that today and will submit it tomorrow for his review/editing.

Modern Physics – This was a very interesting class — a “survey” course (touching relatively lightly on a number of topics) covering special relativity, introductory quantum physics, Schrodinger’s wave functions, perturbation theory and similar fun. My one big regret is that we did not get to the last part of the book, which deals with subatomic particles (quarks and things). That was what I was looking most forward to! The instructor, Dr. Karen Sauer, is engaging and effective. I enjoyed her teaching and look forward to having her again for Senior Physics Lab next semester. The tests were not easy – GRE-based multiple choice plus course-based quantitative questions. No equations were given (just like in the GRE), so we had to memorize all the formulas as well as knowing how to use them. I studied harder for the final exam (5 full days) than I have for any other exam I have ever taken. Result (including her substantial curve to get the class average up to a B): A+ for the course.

Thermal Physics – I just sat in this class, not signing up for it (or talking to the instructor about it) because I was told it was critical for an astrophysics career (it probably is). However, it is not (currently) required to graduate – just one of a list of electives – and I chose to take a second semester of research for more fun. The instructor, Dr. Peter Becker, was not bad, if occasionally a goofball (humor is good, though). The book, however, was horrible. It was written in 1965 and completely unsuitable to today’s education environment – just page after page of text spamming your eyeballs without a gap. I could not take it and did not even crack the book after the first week or so. I still took very thorough notes throughout the semester in case it ever becomes important to me.

Atmospheric Physics – Another survey course! (Don’t we ever get to learn the real stuff?) This one was taught by Dr. Summers and I sat in it at his request. As expected, it was an enjoyable class full of great slides and interesting information about how the atmosphere works.

All in all, not a bad semester, although I started losing the urge to be in school somewhere in April (about par for me). One more semester of undergraduate courses – currently scheduled for Senior Physics Lab and Introduction to Astrophysics, although I may sit in one or more other classes as well again. We’ll see what happens!