Guess what!

Well judging by the increase in hits to the blog today I see that sending out an email to friends about my getting married reminded everyone to check this thing out more often. Of course you loyal readers are now in complete shock because I never mentioned anything of the sort here either.

But it's true, I got married on Friday (Nov. 24th) to Deirdre in New York City. We had thought of getting married a couple of months back and figured that since neither of us wants a big wedding and has the time or money to put into something like that why not just go off and get married on our own. Plus with both or families in different countries and friends spread across the continent it's just easier for everyone this way.

The funny thing is that it's not all that simple a thing to get married at the drop of a hat. Ok, maybe it is in Las Vegas, but I didn't feel like having an Elvis impersonator marry me. See in Pennsylvania there is a three day waiting period before you can get married (funny how that's almost like buying a gun). In New York the waiting period is only 24 hours, from this I can only assume that the average bender lasts 20 hours in New York, whereas it lasts over 2 days in Pennsylvania.

So in order to get the marriage license in time we left Pittsburgh very very early on Wednesday and drove through the morning to NYC. Which succeeded in us timing our arrival at the Lincoln tunnel with every other idiot who lives in New Jersey. After that long slow journey we had the added joy of trying to find parking near the NYC court house and federal buildings, there's a fun new challenge. Particularly since it seems NYC like to play cruel jokes, such as providing a convenient municipal parking lot, that only takes special cards, quarters or dollar coins (which I've never seen), as payment in a lot that costs $2.50/ 30 minutes to park in. In the end we parked in a garage nearby for about $30, and we got to have our luggage searched before we left the car as well!

The rest of it was rather easy. Well, finding a witness for our ceremony was a bit tricky but we manage to borrow one from one of the parties in front of us. The really funny part was how fast the whole thing was:

-Judge calls us and witness into small room and asks us to close the door behind us.
-Judge: If anyone here knows of any legal reason these two should not be wed speak now.
-Me (thinking to myself): Who's going to object? It's a closed room with a hand picked witness.
-Judge: Do you Christopher Robin take this woman to be your wife...(it was so short I forgot what the rest was because the next thing I knew I was saying "I do.")
-Judge repeats vows for Deirdre then tells us to exchange rings and kiss, and we are done in about minute and change.

We ended up being in NYC from Wednesday to Sunday and enjoyed our stay and some of the city. We ate too much and relaxed a lot and really really didn't want to have to come back to the real world. But here we are and I should be back to posting again, but it's likely to be rather randomly as I have two job interviews in SoCal in the next couple of weeks. Oh and here's a picture of us in Central Park just in case you want to feel like you were there (and have cataracts).

Engineers hurt my brain

We have a grad student in my group who's background is in engineering. This isn't a bad thing by any means, that kind of diversity can only help a research group. But sometimes he just does things that are strange enough that trying to understand them hurts my brain.

Take right now for example. He has just finished meticulously tearing every page out of a brand new 160 page, lab notebook. Not only that, but he then proceeded to use a three-hole punch to obviously put three holes in each page. And now, though I can't confirm this because I am trying to subtle in writing about him while he's seated nearby, I would swear that he's going through writing in new numbers over the old ones.

My only question to this is why?

Ok, I think I found an answer, it seems that he collects all his lab book pages in a three ring binder, hence the three hole punch (yes, my deductive logic is fascinating). I should probably point out to those of you not in the sciences that have a lab notebook consisting of lose pages is a big no-no! There is a whole realm of recording protocols that are required in the sciences. Now ff this notebook were to be found in a pharmaceutical company by the FDA, the whole place would be shut down and probably lose their license. It's all about integrity of record keeping. Removable pages with hand written numbers just doesn't fit that very well. But what do you expect he's an engineer; seriously, for me this is a valid excuse for any range of fucked up behaviour.

Anyway, this might be the last that you hear from me for a while. I'm flying out to visit Deirdre today and I won't be back here until the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. But keep an eye on the site just the same, I may get a chance to post something while I'm out there.

"That's Dr. Christopher Robin!"

Now normally I'm not big on titles. I have a Ph.D. but I don't go around making people call me doctor, that's the kind of thing a pompous ass would do. Hell, I still think it's cool when I get an email and it says Dr. Christopher Robin on it. Ok, they don't say that exactly, but it would be really cool if it did.

As I was saying though, I don't make people call my by any title. Though I have pulled that card in joke arguments with friends when they call me Mr. Christopher Robin. Going all serious and saying "That's Dr. Christopher Robin" usually gets a good laugh...the first time anyway.

So, there's a grad student in the department who knows me and that I'm a postdoc here. And in his own quaint little way of being polite I guess he tends to address people as Mr. (your last name here). Well, I don't know what it is about that, but for some reason every time he does that to me I just want to turn to him and say "That's Dr. Christopher Robin!". I guess it just bugs me that he's trying to be all formal and proper with his greeting, yet manages to fuck it up and insult me (or it would if I truly cared) by calling me mister. After all I didn't spend five years in evil graduate school just to be called mister. And yes, graduate school is evil, despite the fun my girlfriend is having, by the time anyone has spent over four years in graduate school it is evil.

Population control problem

So how about a change of gears. Instead of my ranting about things that annoy me, how about some meaningful thought...yeah, I know, it's going to end the streak of comments but I think this is interesting.

So we all know that there has been a policy in place in China. It was a really smart idea, keep the family sizes manageable in order to curtail population growth. And it worked, they only have a population of just over over 1.3 billion people, a little over 39 times the population of Canada. But there is one little thing that I don't think anyone really thought about; the Chinese desire to have a male child. Of course once that came out there was the obvious problem, with aborted and abandoned female infants. But what about when everyone grows up? What happens when there are way more men than women?

As it stands, we are in the third generation of this program. Now one would have thought that the people would have noticed a problem with selecting for males only might not be a good idea. But the current birth rate is at 117 males for every 100 females, the highest difference to date. In fact if you look at the CIA's world factbook (it can't be good to link to them can it?) you can see that there are almost 30 million more males than females between the age of 15 and 64...that's almost the population of Canada!

So what happens when there are that many men, who I would imagine, don't have a lot of opportunities to take care of their sexual urges? Well, for some reason, and please don't ask, I have been thinking of this, and here's what I think may happen:

1) Massive homosexuality - well, that's if you go by the religious conservatives ideas that homosexuality is a choice. With 30 million men who may never have sex any other way you would think that the male sex drive would lead them to being gay, if it was a choice. So maybe those people who think it's a choice should look at China and see if their ideas are right.

2) Even more computer nerds - after all, it's the natural domain of the eternal virgin. Of course this will lead to more cyber-sex, likely to be had with NASCAR/gun enthusiasts who pose as teenage girls on-line to further hide their homosexuality from themselves. I'm also betting that there will be some great technological advances in the area of sex-dolls.

3) Profitable prostitution - This is probably quite likely. I mean here's a client base of 30 million people I'm sure that there is likely to be some kind of market to import women to provide services. Somehow I envision a company like McDonald's jumping all over this.

4) China goes to war - This is the problem I worry about. With this many men with pent up sexual frustration there is likely to be a lot of tension in the country. The government would be wise to send the men to war, get them out of the country, where they can work out their anger. Unfortunately this will of course involve much rape and pillaging, more than a normal war.

Of course I could be completely off base on this idea. But I really do wonder what will happen if the ratio of the sexes in countries that are adopting policies like China's without thinking about he consequences. Either way, China is going to be an interesting country to watch in the next few decades.

One gone, five replace it

As you can tell, there was no photo of the banana today. Maybe it was eaten, more likely it crawled off to die. The really unfortunate part is that it's been replaced with a whole bunch of brown speckled bananas. The stench is already getting to be too much for me. I may have to put a stop to this in soon.

On another note, or rant if you prefer, how hard is it to do your laundry? I've lived in apartments and shared houses for well over a decade and there always seem to be someone in the building who can't figure out the laundry machines. It's really not that hard. Every place I've been to the washing machine is gone in about 30 minutes, the dryer in about an hour. All you need to do is pay attention to the number of times to Fox News says "terrorist" or "war"...7 times in half an hour, 14 in an hour.

I really hate having to pick out someone elses clothes from a washing machine. I don't want to see what kind of nasty leopard print thongs you have. And guys, if you are living on your own and still wear tighty-whities, STOP. Those are for six year olds and it makes you look like you're wearing a diaper; not a good thing for a grown-up. And one last one, if washing your underwear doesn't get out the skid-marks, throw them out...better still, learn some personal hygiene.

How's it going?

How's it going?

Now normally this would be a perfectly acceptable greeting when talking to someone. Getting people like that over the internet, in a forum where they probably won't respond really is kind of meaningless. So why the hell do people constantly greet me with "How's it going?" when I'm walking past them?

Seriously, this has to be the stupidest way to greet someone in passing. Sure, if you stopped walking and greeted me that way it wouldn't be so bad. I could stop and give you a real answer. But when you ask me that when we are both walking in opposite directions, say passing through an intersection, you clearly aren't expecting an answer.

Of course, I've been socially conditioned to respond positively:

You: "How's it going?"
Me: "Good, how 'bout you?"

The stupid part is that I will say "good" under any situations. I'd probably say it if there was a piece of rebar sticking out of my temple, it's just reflexive. And that's why I hate getting "How's it going?" as I walk past someone. After all, I walk fast, even if you walk slow I will be well past you as my automated response of "Good, how 'bout you?" comes out. At which point I start to feel like an ass for both asking a pointless question, because you're now five feet behind me, and for appearing to talk to myself to the people behind you.

Hell, I'm starting to think that asking someone "How's it going?" as a greeting is the complete opposite of being friendly. It's just such a default and thoughtless quasi greeting. You really don't care how things are going for me, if you did you might actually stop walking! So I suggest that it should no longer count as a greeting and be sent where other failed greetings, such as "Whassup?", go to die.

Banana update

I really don't get it. The damn thing is still there. Not only that, but it's either moving on it's own or the owner of said banana is saving it for a later date.
This is suddenly reminding me a web site involving photographs of gradually decomposing meat. I sincerely hope this doesn't go that far. But it is kind of funny to think of the resulting mess if the liquefied banana drips onto the laptop on the shelf desk beneath it.

Stay tuned for more updates!

I hate bananas!

First off though, I want to apologize for anyone who got a massive list of my "new blog posts". I upgraded to blogger beta and I guess part of the process sent out a lot of my blogs as new on RSS.

Anyway, back to my hate of bananas. Ok, I don't hate bananas unilaterally, I just have problems with them at some times. My main problem is what happens as they age. They get soft, splotchy brown and really kind of smelly. See to me a perfect banana is kind of crisp, almost a bit green. At that time the banana is still firm and full of flavours. As it ages and becomes more and more like baby food the flavours go and it's mostly a sweet and overpowering rotting banana taste.

So yeah, I have issues with bananas. And normally this wouldn't be the subject of a blog post, but obviously things aren't normal. One of my labmates, with whom I share an office, has evidently forgotten about a banana that he brought into the office. I don't know how he didn't get overpowered by the stench from the thing the other day, with the door closed there was a constant unpleasant stench in the office all day. Thankfully today I can either no longer register that odour, or it's simply run out of stench, because it's still on the shelf above his desk. This is why it's not a good thing to share any space with a pack rat. Below is a picture of the banana, if it sticks around through tomorrow I will start making a collection of decaying banana photos. I hope you like them!

Art or ad?

For a while I've been seeing ads on billboards and bus shelters that have started me thinking, and not about bicycles, my girlfriend or chemistry. I know, it's strange but it happens from time to time. See what I have been seeing are ads for an art exhibit called "Red Bull: Art of the Can". Oh, the annoying music will go away as soon as you move away from the home screen.

It's rather interesting when you think of it. The exhibit is a combination of a touring show and local competitions to produce works that will be exhibited. So from an artistic perspective, it's really a neat idea, with a travelling theme that can be coloured with a local flair. But is it really art? I mean I have probably seem more ads for this exhibit than I have for any other art exhibit in the past ten years. And I understand the concept of commissioning art, but to limit it to the type of can to only being Red Bull makes it feel a lot more like an ad to me.

Of course ads have always required the use of artistic creativity to attract attention. But is this going too far, trying to conceal ads as art. Or is this the future of art, where commercial ventures are the rare source of funding to promote the fine arts and allow for artistic creativity to flourish?

I don't know the answers to this; I'm just a scientist (he he). But I'm kind of curious if anyone who reads this has any thoughts on this crossover between artistry and advertising.

Idiocracy

So how many of you have heard of the movie Idiocracy? I'm guessing that not many of you have a clue what I'm talking about. It's a new Mike Judge movie, the writer of Office Space. It seems that Fox is taking a similar route with this latest movie to what was done with Office Space. Essentially they are not promoting it, actually they are barely showing it anywhere! If you check IMDB.com it would seem that Idiocracy is playing in all of 1 theater in the US.

By chance there happened to be a showing of Idiocracy in Minneapolis this past weekend. It was one showing only, a midnight show which gets virtually no promotion. The theater was maybe a third full. So I ended up going with a couple of friends. And I have to say that this may be one of the funniest movies I have ever seen!

You can find a few reviews of the movie out there but they just won't do it justice. The thing is over the top funny from start to finish. And most of the obvious humour is the brainless Beavis and Butthead level that would appeal to everyone. However it is all a satire of the downward spiral of society; where appeal to the lowest common denominator is leading to grossly misplaced social goals.

One of the funniest segments was the segment contrasting the family planning of an intelligent couple to the lack of planning and rapid family expansion of a hillbillyesque family. Though it was clearly an exaggeration the fact remains that for the most part the smartest are breeding less than the ignorant.

So anyway, if you have a chance to see this movie, even if you have to drive ten hours to get to the theater please go see it! The ending alone is beautifully creative and I'd love to hear other opinions of it (email me, don't ruin it for others). Here's hoping that it comes to DVD soon, though Blockbuster online claims it will only be available Dec. 31st, 2007!!!

How to hurt a cop's feelings

Apparently all you need to do is ask the cop if he's a jelly belly.

Now, I'm not too sure what would happen to you if you did this, so please be careful whom you say this too. Particularly if you are in Winter Haven, Florida. It seems that those cops are real big softies, in every sense of the term.

It seems that the police chief sent out a memo asking the officers if they were jelly bellies. In the outline he outlined why it might not be a good idea for a police officer to be overweight. You know, the obvious reasons like chasing down suspects. Though I don't think me mentioned anything about being stuck in a car, though some of the people I've seen around here certainly appear to be firmly situated behind the wheel. Which makes me wonder what happens when the airbag goes off?

Anyway, the point of this post is that apparently the chief was forced to resign. Why? Because some of the officers took offence! Seriously people, if you are offended by someone mentioning that you are overweight, and that it may be dangerous to your health, you now have TWO serious problems. I realize that it can't be easy to be overweight but when someone points it out to you in terms of being able to do your job properly maybe you should suck it up and take it as a wake-up call, it's for your own good. Though I still don't think this is as bad as the woman who tried to sue her doctor because he told her she was too fat.