s h i r o u

When Radiohead's King of Limbs (KoL) came out in February, a lot of people complained that it isn't as good as Radiohead's previous albums. I reserved judgment: I typically like to listen to a song or album several dozens of times before I come to any firm verdict. Now — nine months later, with a gin tonic in hand — I feel ready to talk about it.

I agree that KoL is disappointing as an album. Several of the songs are good, but the album feels incomplete because it's short — only eight tracks — and because there isn't enough variation between the songs. They all have some combination of a nervous, tense energy and a somber, melancholy flow. The problem isn't that the songs sound the same — they don't, thanks to falling in different places on the nervous/somber spectrum — it's that the album is missing crucial elements. The primary deficiency, in my opinion, is the complete absence of anything exciting to get the blood flowing, like Bodysnatchers or Jigsaw Falling Into Place from In Rainbows.

On the other hand, the significance of the album as a stand-alone object is diminishing. Rarely do I sit down and listen to an album from beginning to end, or even just a subset of a particular album. I do as most people do these days: I compile a playlist and listen to the songs in a random order. In this environment, the cohesiveness and completeness of the album become secondary to the quality of the individual tracks.

Using this measure, KoL fares much better. Four KoL songs — Morning Mr Magpie, Little By Little, Lotus Flower and Codex — regularly make it onto my playlists. That's 50 percent, which for me is not at all bad. Little By Little in particular has emerged as one of my favorite songs. Thus, while I'm not likely to sit down and listen only to KoL, I can't say that I'm disappointed with it. I appreciate the songs for what they are and I've developed a real love for a few of them; when I'm in the mood for a more loose and lively style of Radiohead song, I turn back to Bodysnatchers and other older songs.

Next weekend is my 10 year high school reunion. I do not plan to attend, although coincidentally I will be in Birmingham at the time. However, the fact that it's been ten years has me looking back a little.

In a way, high school doesn't seem like it was that long ago. I remember it clearly; I remember what it was like to be me during those days. This is in contrast to elementary school: I cannot recall much of what I felt as a child. I can remember facts -- eg I did X, I did Y -- but even if I can remember what I was feeling, I remember it in an impersonal, third-person manner. I remember that I was happy (or sad, angry, or whatever) at a particular event, but I can't put myself in the place of my childhood self; I can't feel the emotion as mine anymore. I can remember a lot of what I felt in high school, though, and I remember it personally.

However, in another respect, high school seems like a very long time ago. I have done so much and changed in so many ways over the last ten years that, while I do remember high school in a first-person manner, I have a hard time identifying with the person I was then.

There are a couple of reasons why I cannot attend the reunion, but part of me regrets that I won't be going. I think it would be kind of fun, not to mention surreal, to reconnect with a part of my life that has become a distant memory.

I've been spending a lot of time lately looking at apartments online. We'll be moving to Arlington in the first week of December. It's tough to choose a place just from the websites. In a couple of weeks we will be driving up to look at places in person, but we still have to narrow things down before we go. I've made appointments for us at the apartment complexes that look best. Here are the three that I think look most promising:

1. The Palatine Apartments
2. The Madison at Ballston Station
3. Liberty Tower Apartments

I'm still suffering somewhat from sticker shock. In Durham, we pay $1050/mo for a townhouse with 3 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, a large kitchen and a very large, open living room. In Arlington, we will pay at least twice that for an apartment with 1 bedroom, 1 bathroom, a small den, a small kitchen and a medium sized living room. Plus, we'll have to pay extra fees for our cats, and an extra fee for parking! There are cheaper apartments, but we want something that is conveniently located and not ghetto.

The price is a downside, but I'm going to be pulling a good salary, so we will be able to afford it. There are also many upsides: primarily, we will be close to everything. We will be able to walk to the metro, to nice grocery stores and other good places to shop, and to lots of restaurants, bars and coffee shops. We'll be a short train ride from a wealth of museums, theaters, concert halls and the like. I'm really looking forward to living in the middle of a bustling city.

The current plan is that we stay in Durham through the beginning of December. Our health insurance will last through the end of the month in which Laura leaves her job, so if she leaves on 29 Nov it will terminate on 30 Nov; if she leaves on 1 Dec it will terminate on 31 Dec. So we'll probably move around 5 Dec, and we'll have a couple of weeks in the DC area to acquaint ourselves with the neighborhood. We'll probably go to New York for Christmas, and I'll start my new job on 4 Jan.

So if you're familiar with the DC area, suggest to me wonderful places that we should go!

ps. If you're still following me on livejournal, please consider looking at my dreamwidth page and commenting there. I am intentionally leaving this entry public (on dw, not on lj), so you should be able to see it.

My doctor's appointment for this morning was canceled, so I went to the liquor store instead. Actually I went to two liquor stores, as the first did not have what I was looking for: St Germain's elderflower liqueur.

On Saturday I had a drink called a gin blossom, which consisted of St Germain's, Hendrick's gin and Sprite. I was skeptical since I am not a fan of soda, but I felt like trying something new. Am I ever glad I did: it was incredible. Determined to reproduce this drink at home, I went this morning on a search for St Germain's. Liquor stores are generally not in abundance where I live, but thankfully I happen to live within 5 minutes of two, and the second I visited had the liqueur.

I don't have any Sprite, but I'm going to try it tonight with tonic (my usual mixer) instead. If that isn't as phenomenal, I guess I'll have to start making an exception to my usual "no soda" rule. Currently I'm practicing my thesis talk and trying to avoid the "it's five o'clock somewhere!" mentality.

I have written 112 pages of actual content for my dissertation. So far I have:

• Half an introduction. I started writing this, but then I decided that it would be better to write the body of the paper and return to the introduction, as the body is what I need to introduce. Theoretically I knew from the beginning what the body of the thesis would contain, but the actual writing of it makes much more concrete in my mind what I need to motivate. In addition to writing the latter half of the introduction, I will now need to revise heavily the former half.
• A chapter on the mathematics needed to understand my work. I assume that the reader has already learned multivariate calculus and differential equations; I'm not going to spend my time reviewing undergrad mathematics. Instead I focus on the problems of nonlinear dynamics and high-dimensional systems. This chapter will require only minor revisions.
• A chapter that follows my first publication. Between 1/3 and 1/2 of this is copied directly from the paper. The paper was short, though, and I felt that significant expansion was necessary. This chapter will require only minor revision.
• A chapter that follows my second publication. This publication is recent and I am quite happy with it as is, so this chapter is about 90% copied. Yeah, it's a cheat, I know. But hey: my words are my words, and I'm free to use them. I did add a page on distribution functions that we cut from the paper because, while it puts the work on firmer foundation, it doesn't add a lot of insight. This chapter will require only minor revisions.
• A chapter on the background of a biological process that I have modeled. My ability to describe biology sucks terribly. Dammit, Josh, I'm a doctor physicist, not a biologist! (Josh, btw, is my promoting professor.) This chapter will need heavy revisions, but fortunately I have collaborators in biology who can help me with that.

Still to come:

• Revisions.
• The latter half of the introduction.
• A chapter on the mathematical modeling I did for the aforementioned biological process. In truth this is partly written already, as I am working on writing the paper that we will submit for publication, and once I have that, I will pretty much just copy it into my dissertation. :p
• A conclusions chapter. I am excited about writing this because some experimentalists upstairs have found that one of the features I identified is necessary for explaining their results. That's right: my theory has helped explain an experimental result, and the theory preceded the experiment. Fuckin' sweet. It's not a complicated theory, but if it's useful, I count that as a win.

A couple of people asked for my chocolate mousse recipe, so here it is. The measurements are in English/American units, so I apologize to my international readers. The recipe comes from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Délicieux!

( Mousseline au chocolat )

Finally, I feel compelled to pimp Dreamwidth one more time. If you are reading this on Livejournal, I strongly encourage you to check it out. My Dreamwidth page is here. I have several Dreamwidth invitation codes, so please let me know if you (or somebody you know) wants one.

I noticed on CNN a link for an article titled "Will right-brainers will rule this century." I thought to myself that some right-brained person was certainly creative with his grammar, and out of amusement I clicked the link. Fortunately the typo was on the main page only, and the actual article was titled "Why right-brainers will rule this century." It turned out to be a transcript of a conversation between Oprah and the author of a book with the same title as this article.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/05/07/o.Oprah.Interviews.Daniel.Pink/index.html

In this interview, Oprah describes a left-brained person as a "linear, logical number cruncher." I hate that. I get the impression that most of the world has no idea what it takes to do well in logical disciplines like physics and mathematics. Certainly it does require a facility with numbers, but that's just the starting point. That's arithmetic. Success in a quantitative field requires the ability to think abstractly; simple linear progression won't get you there.

Research requires an enormous amount of creativity. Creativity is not an "artistic" trait. Of course a good artist needs to be creative, but creativity is not confined to the artistic realm. There is no single method for solving logical puzzles; as new problems are encountered one needs to be creative and invent new techniques.

Take, for example, the theorem of Pythagoras which everybody learns in grade school. According to Wikipedia, the theorem was known by the Babylonians and the Indians, but it was not until Pythagoras (and/or one of his students) that a proof was constructed. The proof is trivial; even without trigonometry, one can use dimensional analysis to write it in just a few lines. The Babylonians and the Indians had the mathematical tools to find the proof, and they surely would have understood it had it been presented to them, but they didn't find it because it took a spark of creativity.

Today we are trying to prove theorems that are much more complicated than anything Pythagoras encountered, and we are trying to develop an understanding of systems far more complex than triangles in flat space. The answers we seek will not come to us by virtue of computational power alone. If that were the case, we could put up our heels, have a drink and let computers do the work for us (nevermind who is going to program those computers, which also takes creativity!). The rules of logic constrain what is possible, but they will not guide us on a linear course toward the solutions we desire. It takes innovation, imagination and inspiration to explore the space of possibilities -- many of which haven't even been thought of yet! -- and make progress in our understanding of the world.

This is a recipe for collard greens drawn mainly from Bottega Favorita. The original recipe calls for spinach, but I like collard greens better. I'm sure it would also work with any other kind of green.

Ingredients

• collard (or other) greens
• olive oil
• butter
• pine nuts
• raisins
• garlic
• juice of 1/4 lemon

Directions

1. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil. Add the greens, let the water return to the boil, and cook for one minute. Remove the greens and immediately plunge them into a ready bath of ice water to stop the cooking. Remove and let dry.
2. Toast the pine nuts in a small quantity of olive oil.
3. Soak the raisins in water for 10 minutes. Drain and dry.
4. Melt the butter is a fry pan and add the garlic. After a minute or two, add the greens, lemon juice, pine nuts and raisin. Serve after the greens have wilted and everything has heated through.

The blanching (step one) helps reduce the bitterness of the greens and locks in the bright green color. It can be done far in advance of the wilting, so this dish is not only easy, it's also convenient as an accompaniment to something that requires more careful timing. The addition of the pine nuts and raisins is what makes this recipe a novelty -- the actual preparation of the greens is standard -- and they are what makes this dish stand out (in my opinion).

I toast my pine nuts in a fry pan with a little oil, but you can also spread them on a sheet pan and put it in the oven. I prefer the fry pan because it's easier to keep an eye on them; pine nuts have a tendency to burn when not carefully watched.

( Pictures! )

Yesterday I took my cats to the vet. It was time for their annual check-up, they needed an update on their vaccines, and one cat, Miki, required blood work. A year ago (I think), the vet told us that Miki probably has kidney disease. Kidney disease in cats is fatal, although death can be postponed for years with proper care. Miki was diagnosed with kidney disease because his urine was very dilute (low density), and cat urine is usually very concentrated (high density). I pointed out that Miki likes to drink a lot of water, but the vet assured us that this is a side effect of kidney failure.

At that time, we were very concerned. We had blood work done and took an ultrasound of Miki's kidneys. Nothing showed up. Six months later we again had blood work done, and again everything seemed normal. Still, Miki's urine was dilute. That's the first sign, we were told; the other symptoms will come.

I neglected to mention that this past weekend, we visited my wife's parents, and we brought our cats with us. Miki is the more nervous of our cats, and while he travels well enough, his behavior in the house of my parents in law is not quite what it is at home. There are some rooms that he will not enter, and he doesn't drink as much as he usually does. He just gets a little stressed when he's away from home.

So I take the cats to the vet. Miki hasn't been drinking as much, and lo and behold, his urine is quite concentrated. The vet is impressed. Miki can't have kidney disease: the fact that he produced concentrated urine is proof that his kidneys are capable of the feat. Now the vet tells us that although it's unusual, every now and then one does come across a cat that just likes to drink water.

Gee, that sounds a lot like what I said before I allowed myself to be talked into spending well over $1000 on diagnostic tests. I'm relieved -- very relieved -- to know that my cat is healthy. I just wish his thirst had not cost me so much money.

----------

In other news, I am posting this entry to my dreamwidth account.
Dreamwidth: http://www.dreamwidth.com
My dreamwidth journal: http://shirou.dreamwidth.com

Most of you are probably reading this on livejournal. Dreamwidth has a cross-post feature so that everything I post to my DW will also get posted to my LJ. I will continue to use the cross-post so that people who follow my journal on LJ can continue to do so. However, I encourage you to check out DW when you get the chance. DW is based on the LJ code, but with significant improvements. In addition to numerous functional improvements (both current and forthcoming), there is also a dramatic improvement to the management. The management of DW differs from the management of LJ in that the owner and the employees are active journal users. DW promises to be a community in a way that LJ is not, or rather, is no longer. Currently DW is in closed beta, meaning that you won't be able to sign up just yet, but it will enter open beta in 9 days, so you should be able to get an account then. DW will use invite codes for free accounts. You can go ahead and guarantee that you will receive an invite code by registering your LJ OpenID with DW (here).

My livejournal hasn't seen much use in the last several months year or two. I could say that this is because I have been busy, and while it's true that I have been busy, that isn't the reason I haven't been posting. The truth is that livejournal lost a lot of its appeal when I became disenchanted with the management and the community at large. It's hard to explain why this would affect my feelings toward livejournal, as none of that impacted my daily use, but that's what happened. My friends also posted less. I think it just got stale.

I hope that Dreamwidth will be a new beginning. I am going to make an effort to post more, including not just the events of my life, but also my thoughts on the things I read and see. Now, in this community that I think I can support, I will try to make the journal/blog that I want to have.

Now, I wonder if I can set up my livejournal to update automatically when I update here.