second order approximation...

Sometimes I feel a pull to revisit old writings. I think it's a sign of pending transitions. I think it's a way of revisiting versions of myself that I used to be, to remind myself that I'm not that person anymore, and probably won't be this person forever either.

Anyway. I was kind of surprised to see that this even still works.

I'm thinking I may try to use the Google+ for things that are too long and boring for tweets, that I would once have blogged, but don't anymore.

Any blog readers who want into the "Circle" of internet people... let me know in the comments.

...it looked like I was going to start blogging regularly again? I really had all of you fooled. And by "all" I mean "both".

(I blame the iPad. If I can continue CONSUMING internet while I'm on he train, there is no reason for me to take the time to PRODUCE internet.)

Also, I've been fairly good about using the train rides to actually prepare for my classes. They are going swimmingly this semester.More often than not, I walk out of class feeling like I nailed it. This is a big switch from last semester, when most days I walked out of class feeling like I succeeded in adding to students' confusion rather than their knowledge.

There's a lot going on right now… nothing I feel compelled to blog about. Upcoming conference in Miami… promotional review for Associate Professor… impending public performance art… all stuff that should make me nervous, but that I'm feeling pretty dismissively nonchalant about. Which means one of them is sure to blow up on me. Maybe I'll feel like blogging about THAT.

An example of why I love teaching here...

(passing student in stairwell)

HER: Hi...
ME: Hey...
HER: OH! Dr. M! Before you go, I wanted to show you--
(begins removing her sweater**)
ME:...
HER: --the new tattoo I just got!

What is remarkable about this experience is how unremarkable it is. It's bizarre, but kinda sweet that students would want to share their science-tattoos with me.

(**Inside of her upper arm... nothing scandalous.)

Those of you who follow me on the Tweeterer have probably seen me talk about the science monologue/storytelling event I've been attending in Brooklyn every month -- The StoryCollider. Well, I've sucked up to the organizers enough that they've accepted my submission for the April show. So I have three or four months to panic now.

The timing couldn't be better, since I'm up for review again this year. See, since I teach at a slightly-flaky liberal-arts school, here aren't enough scientists to fill up a tenure review panel, which means that the scientists have mostly slightly-flaky liberal-arts people reviewing their work. And humanities and arts professors can't really be guaranteed to understand how or why the science education stuff I do is different or necessary or important, but if they see that I performed a 20-minute one-man flaky-artsy-monologue in Brooklyn, they can look at that and go "Ooh! We understand what that is!" So, that's good.

The story I'm telling is about the time I sent a fax to Carl Sagan pointing out an oversight in one of hiss books. I'm not sure I want to get into the details, because I don't want to spoil the story for everyone. (By "everyone" of course, I mean the 4 people who read my blog.) There will be a video online eventually. For now I need to spend a couple of months figuring out the perfect balance between "too nervous to talk" and "too drunk to talk" so I know exactly how to time my liquor intake on the night in question. (Bad Idea: "Hey! Maybe I'll practice on my Astrobiology class!"

Do you people have ANY IDEA how hard I work on a syllabus? Day by day... in some classes minute by minute detail. Daily lecture topics, readings, due dates...

Second day of class the city gets 19" of snow, school is canceled, and suddenly both of my syllabi are a day behind BEFORE THE SECOND FUCKING DAY OF CLASS.

This is making me very angry. Very angry indeed.

The students better hold onto their fucking seats on Tuesday, because I swear to God, I'm covering 3 hours worth of material in 90 minutes if it fucking kills me.

I'm so fucking done with this winter. The other morning when I left for school it was -9.6º. I'm sorry, but negative temperatures belong in Antarctica and science labs, not New York. And then after getting pounded repeatedly with a foot of snow or more, I was nearly killed yesterday by the inch and a half that fell at 6:00 AM, since it was apparently a surprise and nobody bothered to try to salt or plow the roads. And of course the driveway didn't get shoveled, because I had to leave the house at 6 AM, which means now it's going to transform into a glacier that will last until May.

And I'm sending job applications to schools in VERMONT? What is wrong with me?

The other day, a bit of random Googlage sent me down a path that eventually landed on a YouTube video of a talk by my undergraduate mentor. This particular professor was one whom I had for no fewer than SEVEN courses as an undergrad. Well… depending on how you count. One was actually the same course I took twice because he gave me a "D" the first time. And in a very real way, that D was responsible for my success as a physicist. Because it was a line in the sand, really. "Are you going to do this? Or are you just fucking around?" And I decided the next semester, yeah… Ok… I'm really going to do this. And I never got anything less than a B again for the next 6 years. So I owe him a lot for that wake-up call.

When you have one professor for 7 courses, that person can become the anchor of your entire academic experience of college. So, when I watched this YouTube video the other day (which was a colloquium he gave on the occasion of his retirement) the sound of his voice and his laughter was like a time machine. I was instantly 20 again. And apart from the feeling of nostalgia, it really underscored something for me, which is -- I AM THAT GUY for a certain group of students. And it makes me really wonder… am I living up to that job description? I really wonder. Especially after having a kind of shitty semester last fall, and after really failing one particular student in a particularly spectacular way. It's kind of an important job -- not all the time, of course… it's clear that some students forget me the second they turn in their final, but sometimes… for those other students… I wonder… am I doing things for them that will still mean something in 20 years? Because I'm not 100% sure what those things look like. They are probably all the things I'm worst at. But it occurred to me while thinking about all this… I'll probably be doing this for another 2 decades… which puts me at only 1/3 of the way through my college teaching career. There's no reason not to get better before I get worse.

I'm starting to get pretty pissed at how badly the media is butchering this zodiac story, as if some dude who runs a planetarium in Minnesota discovered the precession of the Earth's axis last week. Try Aristarchus of Samos in the third century BCE. Those traditional astrological birthday cutoffs haven't been right for CENTURIES. Besides, constellation boundaries are arbitrary anyway. It's a total non-story. And yet I heard a newscaster today say, "Several other researchers have come forward to say the theory is false." Theory? False? What "theory" are we talking about? Precession of the equinoxes? Or the theory that any of this is even remotely meaningful?



I wish I could go on NPR right now and set this whole thing straight!

If I go to bed at 12:30, I'm asleep by 12:45.

But if I try to go to sleep at 11:30, I can't fall asleep, and so I'm up until 2:30.

I hate my fucking brain sometimes, I swear.