Today, no fever, to my knowledge: I’d rate the day as more “viscous” than “hot”.  My temperature rose to around 102 degrees Fahrenheit (38.9 degrees Celsius) at one point yesterday, and a little less on Tuesday. I was still mildly productive, working from home.  I committed a bit of a sin: I went to classes today.  I also went to classes on Wednesday.  Sorry, folks - at least I disinfected my hands and coughed into the crook of my arm, like they say ta’….

And for the MIT student, lest there be any doubt lingering in your mind, I submit to you this acid test of your health: you know you are sick when your mathematics professor abbreviates on the board “analytic function” with the first four letters of the first word and the first three of the second, and it doesn’t occur to you to laugh.

I don’t like staying home when I am sick, see.  I hate to fall behind in work.  But I was fairly-well invalided by this flu.  Dizzy spells and all.  After sufficient time with vacant stare in my office, I hobbled back the 100 meters or so from lab to home (one perk of living on campus), fell onto my bed, and attempted to assume the position of least pain.  And, after an hour or two of rest, I pulled out my laptop and wrote some code or graded some papers (effectively, though not efficiently) ’till my body threw in the towel for the day.

It’s funny that you become aware of your body during intense, though basic, experiences.  Let me explain what I mean: when the sun sets the sky on fire, the water of a river reflecting the fire, the wind blowing over the cool river and through the tufty clouds set aflame and through your hair, you take a deep breath and thrill at being alive.  And when you can’t really breath properly, nor think straight, nor sit up straight, and you are suddenly too hot and suddenly too cold and nothing feels right, and your orifices are far too involved with expelling all manner of unpleasantness than taking in the lovely sight just described, well, you may not thrill at being alive, but you are certainly aware of your body much more than you are usually.

When you’re deep in thought, however, as many of us graduate students aspire to be much of time, you’re consciousness is fairly-well focused in on a few abstract concepts, far removed from such mundane things like appendages and membranes (to clarify for the medical workers: your own appendages and membranes, not other people’s).  Experimentalists, too.  Sure, you may be aware of parts of your body while in the workplace.  You may find your hands woefully huge and clumsy and unsteady when picking at your samples with your tweezers under the microscope (been there).  Or you may sweat from lugging around huge blocks of steel and copper typical of places like the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (there now - it’s good exercise, and I love my hard hat).  But you’re seldom aware of the fact that you are a living, breathing (or, in my case, trying-to-breath) organism, with lots of elegant (and some not-so-elegant) stuff going on inside.

Perhaps it’s the way the feedback system works.  The unconscious body may not be interested in talking to the conscioussness unless something’s wrong (quit that) or needed (gimme’ this).  When everything’s accounted for, we feel “fine”, which is to say, we’re not really conscious of anything that’s not fine.  When we need a little peace, we go out and enjoy that sunset ’till we’ve had our fill, or go out for a bit of exercise, and when it’s done, we recede into our thoughts.  When we haven’t slept in…too long, or when we’re sick, we’re also very aware of our mortal confines.  And then, we sleep, or get well, and are scarcely aware of the body anymore.

Too bad.  The body is a marvelous thing, with beauties and ironies and fatal flaws to rival the most interesting novel.  And best of all, it can be quite humorous (get it? har har har!).

I will blog some more on this subject.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go gather up my lungs….

So I walk toward said class, crossing the Infinite Corridor, but turn off the hallway and walk out onto one of the many sets of stone steps in Killian Court, whereupon I commence to cracking at my solutions again.  And I squeeze off part d of problem 4 before heading on…to class?  No - to the nearest Athena cluster to quickly print out my homework!  Take note of the time, now: it’s 12:20 PM.  I’m twenty minutes late.

I go to the Athena Cluster in Building 12.  I log into the Quickstation.  I look at the printers.  One has a sign that says, “Dead since 9/14″ (it was September 28).  Another is busy undergoing a cavity search from a few industrious MIT students.  The third is taking up the queue from the full cluster.  So I bounce and head to the Athena Cluster in Building 4.

Enter Building 4 Athena Cluster and its printer, sanda.  sanda isn’t doing well.  It is jamming on some poor fellow’s print job.  And no sooner than I yank out the the jammed paper and shut the machine did sanda jam again.  A couple of iterations later, I bounce, feeling a bit like Sisyphus, or Tantalus, or one of those other poor blighters, and head toward the basement of Hayden Library, where there is another cluster to try.

But when I got there, the undergrad said, “Lo!”  Actually, he says (and I can’t even be sure he was an undergrad), “Yeah, I’ve got a couple of things printing, so it’s probably gonna’ be a while.”  I mean the fellow who is standing next to the printer, see, who I encounter after I sent my job off to the printer.  In the green shirt, you know.  That guy.  Who has to print those scanned-in .pdfs, bloated files what come out at 1 page per minute.  Several such.  Files.

So I bounce.  I head to the Athena Cluster in Building 56.  Funny story - you know those long, low-to-the-ground dogs?  I trip over one on the way to the Athena Cluster in Building 56.

Anyway, to follow the line of reasoning of the great Yogi Berra, that printing queue is so long, no one is getting anything printed.

And so I head back to Hayden Library (time check: 1:00 PM - class is over, anyway).  No dogs this time.  I go back down to the Athena Cluster.  The one in the basement.  The one in the basement, without the windows, with the cushy chairs nearby, and the books what distract you…anyway, I go to the library, where I encounter the same undergrad, still printing.

So I pop above ground and address a short letter to the IS&T (not to the professor of my class) which politely describes of my ordeal.

(Then I visit the printer again and infer that my print job has been canceled.  Exeunt.)

And then I finish my homework, and meet the professor of the class, and he accepts the thing late, anyway (though not before assigning me the Herculean task of tracking down his TA, and on an empty stomach, to boot!  Funny story.).

What irony - bad printing leads to better homework.  Who knew?

——————–

I emerge from the airport and start again at the dry air, not because it is so strange to me - more because I’ve been in a plane for a few hours and the cripsness of unfiltered air is refreshing.  I am very tired, and still have to handle myself in my third language.  But this part is routine.  I walk to the ticket counter, my motions a reflex to the blast of hot, dry air, and ask for the express bus, Chi 93.  I buy the tickets….

———————-

I get off the T and start walking back to campus.  I know I have about fifteen minutes before I reach my dormitory.  The air is moist and thick and heavy and the clouds are colored by the setting sun.  I breath and it is heavy.  And I am exhausted.  I pass the Stata center and I feel better….

———————-

From the bus to the train is not far - about ten minutes walk.  Only it is hard because you have to weave in and out of the people.  I have to show them that I am in a hurry.  Take no prisoners, don’t smile.  And I smile in spite of it because there is so much energy and I am not too tired and my legs resonate with the movement on the pavement, with the steps of ten million others, and I am spirited on my way.  Down, down the street and in and out and in and around and through and down, down, down the stairs into the harsh light in the subway tunnel….

——————–

I stand in the line at customs.  This time, there is another instructor next to me in the line, and we chat.  I have traveled the whole way here with her, and we are comfortable around each other now, though we had never seen one other when we set off about thirty hours ago.  I tell her that I should go to counter first because I know what to say to the border patrol.  This is my third summer here, and my fifth trip through customs, and I expect I know what to say.  So I am only a little excited when the guard beckons me to step forward.  She asks me, “What is the purpose of your stay in Israel?”

——————–

I get off the bus at the bus station.  It took a lot longer to get here than I thought it would.  Or was it just that my fatigue stretched the hour’s trip into something longer?  I walk into the station.  I stand in line at the counter to buy another bus ticket, and, while waiting, rehearse what I am going to say.  And suddenly, it is my turn.  “For Patras”, I state, with just the right inflection of purpose and question.  The woman at the counter says a number to me, and I don’t parse it, so I ask her to repeat it.  Still unsure, I put down a bill that I am sure is enough - I have left my tracks in this station and now follow them again and again, and I needn’t even think where I go.

I am hungry and want to buy some lunch.  I see an “Arabian Pita” and I smile.  It is from my other life.  Nostalogically, I decide to buy it.  I speak to the woman at the counter, pay, and eat it.  It is not authentic.  And this, too, makes me smile.

I get on the bus for Patras.

——————–

I reach my dormitory.  I will go to bed soon - I have not been in a bed for about two days.  I have not been in this bed for about two months.  I don’t care because I know it is flat and comfortable enough and so quiet.  Oddly high off the ground, this bed.  I will have to climb into it and that will be satisfying.  But first I have to shower, because of the trip.  I must cleanse myself of the journey, as much as soap and sleep will allow…

And I am in front of the door to my comfortable, quiet dormitory apartment.  I have opened gates on autopilot, navigated through hallways and stairwells and elevators.  The last steps of the long voyage go unnoticed as I toy with the idea of skipping my shower and hitting the sack directly.  And I am still toying with the idea even after hot water strikes my body and steam fills my nostrils….

——————–

I get off the train and it is nighttime.  I look around for familiar faces, though I am not sure what I would say if I found one.  And besides, everyone is in a hurry.  Where I come from, which is here, trains mean hurrying.   We must be of the opinion that it is the destination that counts, and not the journey, because we always journey with purpose.  And this is ironic because the Hudson River is so pleasant to watch from the train window.  I emerge from the station and look for the familiar faces I know will be there, waiting for me….

——————–

It was harder getting through customs than I expected it would be.  And it has been harder getting ready for the summer, and it has been harder even to find food - cheap food, anyway.  And it is mostly hard because my routine has holes in it - because life appears and it changes and forces me to change.  And the irony that even the response to change is a familiar reflex….

And it doesn’t matter at all, really, because the whole of my being is waiting to be reunited with the reason I have come back.  And the reason I have come back is so simple - it is for love.  Because I have one hundred students waiting for me, and depending on me.  Because I am depending on one hundred students, too, to give me hope, to make my heart full, to remind me of all the good in the world.  They are my people, and I must come back to them.

And the reunion is soon, and I am nervous and tired and excited….

——————–

Out of the bus stop and into the taxi, out of the taxi and into the apartment.  Into the elevator, up and up to the fourth floor.  And when I get to the door, my grandmother will welcome me and ply me with sharp feta cheese and strong coffee and the flavorful foods of the wild landscape around me, with its still wild people.  I am very tired, and my appetite is dull, even for feta.  It was not an overly long trip, but I have not slept for a long time. And still I am excited.  My grandmother is of my people, and I am of hers.

——————–

And now I have cleaned and slept and I have stocked my refrigerator with food.  I am not used to this food yet.  The flavor is bland - the fruits are not ripe yet, the spices not as sharp.  Odd that I should feel alien even to this environment, which is more home to me than where I was.  But I will become used to it again.  And flavor is a matter of looking hard and being creative.

I wake up early because I will go back to lab today.  I am happy to return.  I will pick up my life here right where I left it.  It is a good life.  It has purpose.  And I have purpose that I believe in.  It is what has always driven me.

——————

And I am back home and my parents are before me and they welcome me and they are even more tired than I am, but their eyes are still beaming, and it makes me smile.

There is not one path in life, but many, and the road diverges and winds and rejoins itself.  But you cannot travel far before the urge comes to retrace the old, familiar paths, and see the footsteps you have made in the ground, and return to the places where you began.  And it is always love that brings you back.

Check out the pictures at the bottom of the post before you go!

————————————————-

The air raid siren sounds ominously.  Its voice is is one of unease, dissonance - a warning.  “The time has come,” it says.
And as the pitch reaches its zenith, it is joined by a second voice - a human one - accomplishing the same function.  “God is calling,” it says.  The time has come.
And that is life in Jerusalem.  A duet of two worlds, each separate and distinct.  The barrier has physical manifestations - things you can see and touch.  But much more, it is one of perception.

It’s evening of Saturday, the 26th of July, 2008, and I am sitting in an apartment on Al Zahara St. in East Jerusalem, listening to the sounds of the Shabbat going out and the muezzin calling for prayers.  I have taken a break from preparing the next day’s lessons, bracing myself for another tiring and inspiring week at MEET.  These sounds pass over me, and through me.  I am sure that they are significant - the fact that they come at me at once, together.  But I am also sure that I interpret them very differently from the residents of this ancient, delightful, troubled, and beautiful city.  I doubt I’ll ever understand what the twin sounds mean to the multitudes spread across East and West Jerusalem.  The song finishes, and I return to my work.

————————————————-

Two girls run up to me - they are distraught.  “Ted!” they say as one.  “How come there’s no pink?!”  Their complaint carries equal measures of righteousness and humor.  We are cramped in the Ross Lab, two to a computer, and to a seat in some cases.  The computer labs Hebrew University normally donates during the summer are still in use by university students finishing a semester prolonged by the nationwide student union strike, and so we have been inhabiting other areas around campus.

Meanwhile, our MEET students are working on a graphics assignment - my humble attempt at introducing the concepts of Computer Aided Design to them while reviewing this week’s lessons of using Java objects and basic operators.  Around the room, triangles and circles and squares appear on the screens, each shape fitting in its precisely-defined location, each satisfying the geometric relations with the other shapes as specified in the laboratory guidelines, each with its required color.  I am tired and bleary-eyed - it was a long night preparing the lab’s materials - and I find it hard to concentrate over the din of 40 teenagers working in pairs, with all the passion that comes from approaching a challenge for the first time, and from sharing the experience with someone who is equally excited.  Shouting and moaning and laughter.  And for a moment, I can’t even understand what the issue is.  What?  What’s the problem?  No pink?  Who cares!  Pick another color!

And then I awaken to the current reality: Aalaa and Aviv are before me and explaining, patiently but urgently, why it’s unfair that pink is unrepresented among the available colors.  Clearly, immediate action is the only conceivable course.  “Oh, why didn’t you say so before?”  I finally reply.  “Can I drive for a minute?”  I sit before their console and find online a listing of RGB triplets with the associated colors displayed alongside.  “Pick a pink,” I tell them.  Excited by the prospect that their complaint made something happen, and that they could have an effect on the experience of the other students - that this important decision of the assignment had been awarded to the two of them - they eagerly scan the list of pinks before agreeing on the loudest, most in-your-face pink they can find.  I encode the new color choice into the backend of the lab software.

“Excuse me everyone!” shouts Aviv.  “Aalaa and I - oh, and Ted - just added pink to the colors.  It’s a really good pink so you should all use it!”

“Pink!  Yeah!” shouts Aalaa.  And cheering erupts in the classroom.

———————

“Where are you?” the boy shouts into Nadia’s face.  We are in the technical high school on the university campus.  Our morning lesson is halfway through, and we are taking a break.  The students are outside of the lecture hall, eating pastries and drinking  chocolate milk, laughing with one another, and two strangers have infiltrated our ranks, largely unnoticed.

We share the educational spaces with the high school’s summer session students.  By and large, the high schoolers accept our presence without incident.  But a few do not.  They harass our students, and in particular, our Palestinian students, so that whenever we are in this bulding, we instructors don’t feel comfortable letting our kids go to the bathroom or get a drink of water by themselves.

“Do you know where you are?” he shouts again.  He wears a derisive grin, as does his friend, standing off to the right.  Their objective is to force her to say, “Israel”.  They do not succeed.

“Jerusalem,” she replies calmly.  I hurry over.  I am enraged, and I do not have words.  So I convey my meaning with my eyes.  They return my gaze, considering me.  One - the one who was shouting at Nadia - walks over to me.  I have seen him before, coming by during breaks, trying to steal a pastry from the boxes set on tables outside the lecture hall.

“Do you have a problem?” he says, grinning.  I say nothing.  I do not move.  My restraint is stretched thin.  But the authority of my age and the austerity of my expression make the boy uncertain.  He walks off in a moment.  His lacky feels uncomfortable, it seems.  “He’s crazy!” he explains to me, apologizing for his companion before hurrying off after him.

———————————–

“Can I make a phone call?” asks Aviv.  It is a brilliantly sunny day in a summer of brilliantly sunny summer days, a bright blue cloudless sky overhead.  We are walking toward Silberman on the other side of campus, where the biology department is housed, and where we have been given access to an air conditioned basement computer lab.  It is larger than the makeshift lab in Ross but still uncomfortably cramped.  Along with the three other year one instructors, I am trying to hurry our forty students to our destination to salvage as much time in the computer room as possible.  They are wont to walk slowly in the afternoon heat.

“Walk with purpose!” I shout, before turning to Aviv.  “No!” I respond with a smile. It is a MEET policy that students are not allowed to use cell phones during the day.

“Why not?” asks Dor.  He has been standing next to Aviv; they had been chatting anxiously with one another before, likely breaking our English rule in the process.  “It’s important.”

“It can wait!” I say, waving on a few students strolling nearby.

“I don’t know how I can say it…” Aviv begins, turning to Dor.  “There’s been a shooting in the city, at a bus stop.  My mom’s supposed to be there - I just want to to see if she’s all right.”

“I want to check, too,” says Dor.

I am dumbfounded.  The brilliant summer day is shattered for a moment as I take in the situation.  Nothing like this happened last summer.  I don’t know how to react.

“Yes,” I say.  “Yes, of course, you can make a phone call.”  Aviv and Dor and a few more students around us start dialing numbers into the cell phones already gripped tightly in their hands.  A group of Palestinian students nearby notices.

“How come they get to make phone calls?” they say with every ounce of honest teenage injustice.

“Let’s just give them a little bit of privacy right now,” I say, delaying the inevitable spread of the news, too afraid to take it head-on.

Later that day, I find out the incident is Jerusalem’s second bulldozer attack in a matter of weeks - a Palestinian construction worker has driven his machine through a busy area in the city, chasing cars and pedestrians and wreaking havoc before he is shot, first by an Israeli civilian - a settler - then by a policeman.  This time, he is the only fatality.  He is within a stone’s throw of the iconic old YMCA tower, where we house many of our students during weeknights, before he is stopped.

I think to myself: how will our students handle this?  What will the next day be like?  How will they look at one another?

———————————–

“I have to ask you,” says Or.  “Why do you wear that?”  She points to Lamia’s white hijab atop her head.  It is lunch time and I am sitting beside Shahira and Lamia, two of my students from last summer, and Or has just joined us.  I am a little surprised by the question.  Lamia is, too.  She turns and answers simply,

“It’s my religion.”

My thoughts are racing.  What if Or offends Lamia?  What if Lamia doesn’t feel like explaining these basic tenets of her culture to this outsider?  I panic - I feel the urge to say something.  “Just like my hat,” I offer, pointing to my sun bleached blue cap with the orange and white lettering, an object with which I have shared the entirety of my MEET experience.  “It’s a tradition.”  This seems to make sense to Or - she has, for some reason, decided that my old, beaten up hat is special - even asked to borrow it for a day, putting aside her new standard issue MEET hat for the year-old edition.

And I was wrong, of course, to worry.  Or follows Shahira and Lamia around during almost all of the free periods; the two second-years have adopted their younger friend, caring for her, it seems to me, as a kind of shared responsibility.  They laugh together, sit and talk together, hug at the close of the day.

I desperately wanted these students to be friends.  And it happened so naturally.  Was I any use at all?  Did my being there help to catalyze the formation of this friendship?  Is that what makes MEET work - having a reason to be there, all of us, together?

———————————-

It is October 1st, 2008, around 4:30 AM, and I am trying to finish my long-due writing on my summer.  I am still thinking about the experience of hearing the dual wail of the muezzin and of the siren marker for Shabbat -  the eerie beauty of it, the way it made the hairs on my neck and arms stand on end.  And I still doubt I’ll ever understand what Jerusalem as it is right now, at this very instant in its long history, means to its residents.  But a new thought strikes me.  I may not understand what Jerusalem means to its people - all its people - but I hope all its people can understand what hearing these two voices as one means to me.

-Ted Golfinopoulos

Aalaa, left, and Aviv, right, after their triumph in the Ross Lab.

Nadia smiling - close to Science Building at Hebrew University.

Dor (right) and Noura (left) working on a lab in Silberman.

MEET’s Angels - Subset of Team Monday, a Year One final project group.  Right to left: Or, Yarden, Nadine, and Ala’a.

Shahira (right), Lamia (center), and me (left) gazing off into the future.

More pictures to come…

You can also check out the more-dutifully-administered blogs of my Year One instructor colleagues, Sally Peach (jerusally.blogspot.com) and Froylan Sifuentes (elblogdefroy.blogspot.com, in Spanish).

People might be quick to point out that I am an MIT graduate student engaged in scientific research, and it stands to reason that I should be more concerned with counting the candy than eating it. This kind of a statement, of course, is really the same thing as putting a Three Musketeers bar in its proper pile. All those number crunchers, right? All the same.

It is the greatest strength, and occasionally a powerful weakness, of the human mind that it is incorrigibly obsessed with finding patterns, even where they don’t exist. The aspects of science that we find most amazing (and useful) are those which show similarities of behavior between widely disparate things, like amoebas and galaxies or a traffic jam and a river or hits at an internet site and radiation events out of thorium. And so practical, this pattern identification: throw the ball up, it comes down; fall on your face, it hurts; eat a burrito, feel sated. Life without patterns is – well – inhuman.

But can we have too much of a good thing? Well, there are certainly times we see patterns where there aren’t any. Sports fans (including many here at MIT) will swear by the “streak” – “this batter’s been hot lately”, “this guy/girl has been hitting all the free throws”, and so forth. I once read an article in a philosophy class at RPI on the topic of made basketball shots and the hot hand. I’m pretty sure it was this one by Thomas Gilovich:

Gilovich Article

It turns out that the “streaks” of consecutively-made field goals, free throws, and controlled shots were completely consistent with normal fluctuations in a binomial distribution – that is, the thrower wasn’t any more likely to make the twenty-third free throw in a row than to come off a “slump” of thirty straight misses.

A more basic example: lots of people feel like, after flipping a coin and getting twenty heads in a row, the next flip is more likely to be tails. It’s not – the coin has no memory of whether it landed heads last or tails. It is rare to get twenty heads in a row (one try in about a million, on average), but the probability of getting twenty-one heads in a row is the same as getting twenty heads followed by one tails.

And why have I brought this up? Well, it’s really because I heard a radio broadcast on NPR (a station and idea which I love deeply) which said something to the effect of “Dr. X is a scientist and [therefore] sees the world through equations.” And tonight, I heard a radio broadcast of a (very entertaining) play called “Camping with Harry and Tom” by Mark St. Germain, a fictionalization of a real camping trip between Harold Ford, Thomas Edison, and President Warren G. Harding. Edison’s character in the story is great, and also follows the usual stereotypes for the scientifically-inclined (accurately or not, I have no idea). And from these and many other experiences, I get the sense that people, or at least listeners of my favorite radio station, tend to lump those engaged in my profession or related ones into a common group.

My (paranoid?) theory is that people believe in a kind of “geek” class of humanity, revered for its insight, braininess, and (restricted) creativity. Also thought to have – mmm – less-functional interpersonal skills. And somehow less compassion for fellow human beings. Indeed, in an interview with the author, St. Germain, of the afore-mentioned play, the interviewer led the author to describe how the play juxtaposes the “head” (Edison), “heart” (Harding), and “guts” (Ford). Is this a kind of “geek racism”?

Well, I wouldn’t resent being thought of as a geek – first of all, if it means I get to be here in grad school and doing the things I’m doing, then I know I’m on the right track. Plus there are those movies about nerds getting their revenge which I needn’t discuss further. But still, I guess I don’t like people thinking of me as having less “heart” than the average person because I’m a student of science. Interpersonal skills on the fritz from time to time, okay, maybe. But I think that the average grad student in technology or math or science is fundamentally just as much a bleeding-heart idealist as his or her counterpart in the humanities – maybe even more so. I’d say the overwhelming majority of my peers and colleagues really are motivated by the belief that their work may benefit the whole of humanity in real and immediate and far-reaching ways. I know I am motivated by this belief.

And as for this whole idea of grouping people into categories, I’ll close with rumination on the words of a good friend of mine named Peter (a fellow grad of ECSE at RPI). He said to me once, “You have to judge the individual.” I know he wasn’t the first to say it, but he’s such a nice kid that I like to associate the concept with him – it helps me to live by it. Maybe there’s some statistical validity behind the geek stereotype (where none seems to exist for the “hot hand” in basketball). But bottom line is it’s a real injustice to make assumptions about the character of an individual because he or she is of a certain race or ethnicity, or even, yes, profession. So words to live by from Peter to the world. You read it here on T Blog!

Sorry I’ve neglected you for a while. But I am, after all, a graduate student. My procrastination is spoken for.

You see, Blog, I’ve fallen for another. Wikipedia. Wikipedia has everything I’m after – useful and useless tidbits, links to take me off-course, circular arguments, and censorship. And best of all, I can pass it off like I’m doing work – after all, isn’t Wikipedia the new World Book of the World? And isn’t it my job as a researcher to … research? Besides, does anyone really want carefully cross-checked references? Wouldn’t we rather the mystery – the suspense – associated with the possibility that what we’re reading is just the fanciful invention of another’s imagination?

Yes, Blog. I want more articles on nerdy topics like “Interpreted Languages”. I want a donation bar to make me feel guilty for using and abusing you without paying for the privilege. I want to see what you would look like in simplified Chinese or Esperanto. If you ever want to see me again, you better shape up.

Formerly yours,

Ted

P.S. Well, okay, I’ve actually been suffering from the end-of-semester crunch! But Wikipedia was in there, too.

Sad events around the world – a call for all to be thoughtful.

P.P.S. Countdown to MEET: 46 days. If this letter’s drama turns out happily and Blog and I strengthen our relationship, I’ll keep you posted in the MEET category about all the cool things going on. Check out http://meet.mit.edu for more information!

Now, when my colleague put in the order for my YSZ (that’s yttria-stabilized zirconia – cubic zirconia stabilized at room temperature by yttria, and yes, that is cubic zirconia like all the fake ice you see the popular grad. students wearing) substrates, I knew I was cutting it close. Only a little over a month to fabricate the electrodes and run the experiments. But what do I know? Let’s try, right?

Wrong. Because “rushed shipping” from a California μ-high-tech. means your product will be shipped in four weeks instead of five. So now, instead of staying in my lab for a few days to get the experiments done in time for my May 9^th thesis deadline, I will not turn in my thesis, and wait another semester.

Is this my first experience with the UPS blues? No, not really. Way back when in undergrad. (read 2.5 years ago), I had the occasion to order several stainless steel plates from a manufacturer somewhere out in the Midwest. Half were to make their way directly to ye olde CommuniTute (that’s RPI for the uninitiated); the other half were to make a detour in California to get electroplated. Eventually, the first half of plain stock arrived. No one quite knows what happened to the electroplated pieces. Was there embarrassment and forced last-minute improvising? Yes, spades.

So could this latest fiasco have been avoided? Evidently not, because it seems both my fore- and hindsight need strong correction (I’m thinking of getting contacts – it’ll be more stylish, non?).

My point is: plan ahead for these things. This is why it takes six years to get a Ph.D. degree. Oh, and write your thesis while things are shipping (this I did do, and it really helps!).

Otherwise: this week happens to contain both Passover and the Orthodox Easter Holy Week. So happy holidays to those readers who are celebrating.

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STREPSIADES: …Throw open the Thinkery! Unbolt the door and let me see this wizard Socrates in person. Open up! I’m MAD for education!

The ekkyklema is wheeled about to show the whole interior court of Socrates’ Thinkery. High overhead the crane supports Socrates in his basket busily scanning the heavens. Hanging on the walls of the Thinkery are various charts, maps, instruments, etc. In the center of the courtyard stand a number of utterly pale, emaciated students deeply engaged in a rapt contemplation of the ground.

Great Herakles, what kind of zoo is this?

STUDENT: What’s so strange about it? What do you take them for?

STREPSIADES: Spartan prisoners from Pylos. But why are they all staring at the ground?

STUDENT: They’re engaged in geological research: a survey of the earth’s strata.

STREPSIADES: Of course. Looking for truffles.

To one of the students.

–You there, don’t strain yourself looking. I know where they grow big and beautiful.

Pointing to other students who are bent completely double.

Hey, and look there: what are those fellows doing bent over like that?

STUDENT: Those are graduate students doing research on Hades.

STREPSIADES: On Hades? Then why are their asses scanning the skies?

STUDENT: Taking a minor in Astronomy.

To the students.

–Quick, inside with you. Hurry, before the Master catches you.

STREPSIADES: No, wait. Let them stay a little longer. I want to speak to them on a private matter.

STUDENT: Impossible. The statutes clearly forbid overexposure to fresh air.

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While Socrates did not operate such a formal school, his most famous student, Plato, did – the Academy. Anyway, the moral is: it can’t be said that no one warned us….

One statement from the real Socrates which may cheer you up a bit:

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

You can extend this principle for non-spring-break situations. For example, when you’re fed up because your lab mate makes funny noises, and so does the heating system, and you have to sit through it for hours, plus Windows, just do what I do: go on strike for fifteen minutes for “better working conditions”. Make your own picket line by the water cooler, harass the strike breakers by engaging them in conversation to prevent them from working, too. Drink an antioxidant-filled beverage. Have some antioxidant-filled extra-dark chocolate. Share. Everyone will be much healthier for it.

On a sadder note, I just want to acknowledge the passing of an iconic figure at MIT, Professor Jin Au Kong (1942-2008). A researcher, educator, and historian of electromagnetics, witty and humorous and enthusiastic and kind, beloved by students and faculty, alike (no comparison intended), and one of my favorite people at MIT. His presence will be missed.