Caolionn O'Connell

3 Legs.

Notes:  I am normally keen on including pictures, but, well, that isn´t looking like it is going to happen (I think this computer is from the 80s).  I will post some pictures when I return, so we can relive my vacation TWICE! (Yeah, keep the nasty comments to yourself).  Also forgive the spelling mistakes, pretty please, my Spanish computer doesn´t do English spell-check, but I can make a "ñ" and "€" really easy.  You win some and you lose some.

Leg 1 (LAX to JFK):  On Monday, I was feeling brave when I woke up.  I thought to myself - if there was a day for not needing to self-medicate to make it through a flight, this was the day.  The flight was fine, I was fine and I was beginning to get smug, that was until we were over the great lakes; the turbulence was so bad, flight attendants were asked to sit.  I have decided the flights are so much better when you are only partially lucid.  From now on, regardless of my state of mind, I am taking the damn pills.

Leg 2 (JFK to MAD):  I took my pills and slept like a baby.  I was even more grateful that the toddler sitting behind me also slept like a baby (thank God for small miracles).  The best plane feature ever: The tail camera.  It shows the plane during takeoff and landing from the top of tail, looking down on the plane.  It was completely mesmerizing.  I am uncertain if it was the pills or the tail camera view, but I didn´t have a worry in the world on that flight.  Ehh ... it was probably the pills.

Leg 3 (MAD to SVQ):  Attempt one failed.  We missed our connection, so we spent some quality time in the Madrid airport, where apparently some women have no problem smoking while sitting in the loo.  How tough it must be for them to visit California where you can´t even smoke in bars.  We finally made it to Sevilla and, thankfully, the flight was uneventful.

I love Sevilla.  I haven´t even left yet and I already want to return.  The city smells like orange blossoms.  I wish I could figure out how to post pictures... sh*t!

Sporadic.

If this blog is your regular destination for wasting time at work, I will be sorry to disappoint, but I am going on vacation. Now this doesn't mean I will M.I.A. for the next two weeks, since I am assuming Morocco is like every other place in the world with internet cafes on every street corner. I promise to give a full account of my travels, but I doubt I will be making my daily quota. So while I have embraced not writing my thesis for two weeks (the laptop is staying at home), I wish all of you additional productivity having one less website to frequent while trying to avoid your responsibilities.

I'll be back on April 8th and I will return to my regular posting duties. Until then my running commentary will be a bit sporadic. Now I am just trying to determine the strain capacity of luggage zippers. Conclusions: Piss poor.

Mmm ... Sugar.

Peeps might well be considered the perfect food for those of us who love sugar. They are basically marshmallows dipped in colored sugar and come in various Easter shapes: bunny, chicks, etc.. In other words, they are sugar then coated in yet another level of sugar. How can anything be more perfect? I have happily sampled most of the Easter color and shape combinations over the last couple weeks. Why must all the good candy be associated with a holiday? (Mental note: Must make dentist appointment and probably sooner rather than later.)

Guilt.

(Scene) Last Night. Sam and I have duplicates of the same electronic equipment. We both have Apple laptops, I have the iPod mini and he now has my old iPod. I am packing and we are in the midst of figuring out who takes what cables.

Sam: Why are you taking the firewire cable and not the USB cable?
Me: I need the firewire cable which goes into the power brick so I can recharge my mini while I am gone.
Sam: Can't your computer do that with the USB cable?
Me: I'm not taking my computer.
Sam (incredulous): You're not taking your computer?
Me: No, I'm on vacation in Morocco. Why would I bring my computer with me?
Sam (flabbergasted): How are you going to work?
Me: Work? On vacation?
Sam (STILL confused): You're not going to work?! I thought you said you were going to work?
Me (guilt setting in): I maybe thought about working, but I never really said I was going to actually work. I never get work done on vacation.
Sam: Oh. If you say so.

Okay, now I am racked with guilt. Do I bring the computer with me?
Pros: Should I feel inspired to work, the computer will be there. I can download pictures off my camera regularly, so I don't have to worry about losing them in case my camera gets lost/stolen. I love my computer; it is like my child. Why would I deprive my child from seeing Morocco?
Cons: Why on earth would I bring my prized possession on vacation in Morocco?! What if it gets stolen? And really, let's be honest, am I actually going to do any work or am I just going to lug an extra 5 lbs. around the world?

Crap. This seemed like a very simple problem before we had this conversation. What happened?

Crackpot?

For those of you who are not a member, sometimes it hurts to be left out. Granted you might not miss being inundated with all sorts of material you couldn't care less about, but occasionally (maybe even rarely) you actually get something worth reading. Case in point: "The Crackpot Index" which was in the APS newsletter-thingy. The article was written by John Baez and, based on certain criteria, his index rates "potentially revolutionary contributions to physics". Being that I don't care a whit about these things called "permissions", I will include some pretty stellar lines:

* 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
* 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were evidence for sanity.
* 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a theory", as if this were somehow a point against it. (Caolionn says: Take that, creationists!)

Care to read more? Check out the whole list for yourself.

This is one of those days ...

... that totally suck. I got feedback on Chapter 4. If my advisor had corrected using a red pen, it would have looked like my paper bled to death. The chapter actually merited a "special meeting" to discuss his comments. My favorite comment came toward the end of the meeting, when he mentioned that he thought I should include some other data we took, which means more work. When I shot him an icy stare, he added that I shouldn't think about it until after I was done being pissed at him for all the other comments. Well, he gets kudos for lightening up the mood.

To be honest, Chapter 4 is the least critical item on my list of things to do. I leave Friday to spend Easter in Los Angeles with my family and Monday I leave for Spain and Morocco. Yeah, yeah, tough life - I assure you, you wouldn't be the first to comment. So I am presently preoccupied with doing laundry, finding my passport, finding my stash of Euros, getting my no fear of flying pills (totally succumbed to medicinal aid to counter-act my neurosis), etc. – none of which has been accomplished yet. I am running out of space on my hand trying to keep track of everything, since I have totally given up writing "to do" lists on paper. I am a firm believer that hand notes are much better reminders; it's a bit tough to ignore your hand, whereas paper can easily be stashed in pockets and backpacks and quickly forgotten. Now I just need to decode what I actually wrote and I'll be good to go.

'Tis the Season

You might have missed it, especially with all the rain we've had around these parts, but spring has sprung. Technically this event took place on Sunday. Spring combined with the fact that I am 27 means only one thing: wedding season is about to start. Not my own, I assure you, Sam and I are not really ready for that step. We are prepping for moving in together and that's enough stress, so a wedding is not on our radar screen.

Between now and the beginning of July, we have seven wedding celebrations to attend. That's right, seven. I bet you can't top that. If you can, you have my condolences. It's not that I am against marriage as an institution, it seems to work, well ... at least 40% of time, but I hate weddings. All the sermons on two becoming one, one thought, one soul, yada, yada, yada. This is usually accompanied by a sweeping gesture, where the minister/preacher/rabbi takes his two index fingers and brings them together in an arching motion. It is at this point in the ceremony I whisper to Sam that he has permission to shoot me when we start only have one thought and he responds by fake vomiting. Yes, there has been more than one occasion when we have been scowled at by little old ladies sitting in the pews around us. I mean, isn't marriage about having interesting company legally bound to stick around? How does that work when you only have one thought?

Between the smarmy sermons and watching grown women dive for wedding bouquets, I just don't have the stomach for these things. Alas, with seven in my immediate future, I better get over it and fast.

Ammunition on the Hill.

Granted it has what might be considered the cheesiest slogan ever ("Innovation is American's Economic Heartbeat. Don't Flat Line our Future!"), but the report produced by the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation is actually a really interesting read. The supporters of the task force is not a combination normally seen (Texas Instruments, National Assoc. of Manufacturers, American Physical Society, etc.), so the fact that they have come together to produce it says something.

The report basically highlights the economic consequences of this chronic under-funding I've been harping about. It looks at five benchmarks to assess America's "knowledge economy": education, workforce, knowledge creation, R&D investment and high-tech economy. Although it has a bit of a nationalist tone (American losing its competitive edge and the sort), it is a good read nonetheless. At the very least, it has excellent graphics.

To show I haven't been lying about that whole under-funding thing:

What's interesting (or grim) is its long-term effects, which can be seen in the surplus to deficit of the U.S. trade balance of hi-tech products from 1990 to 2002:

Okay, I am done with all my doomsday scenarios on the future of basic science research. It's out of my system, we will now return to our regularly scheduled programming of thesis-writing and plasma wake field acceleration.

Emergency Exit Flying.

I flew back yesterday on a 6:30 am flight and, in order to make my flight, I had to get up at 4:30 am. Simply stated: I am not a morning person, so the whole process was painful. Waking up that early, it makes sense that some others on the flight might be inclined to stay up all night and when I got on board, there were two guys who clearly chose that option. They managed to bring beer (Miller Light) with them and continued to drink throughout the flight. Provided you're not throwing punches or singing your national anthem, I don't really care if you get drunk en route to your destination, but in this case they were sitting in the emergency exit row and they were totally tanked. I thought for sure the flight attendant would encourage them to sober up, you know, "in case of emergency," but she didn't say a word.

I have always believed the emergency procedures in planes were a sham. If the plane is falling out of the sky, I really don't think the life vest is going to help you out. Not to be totally macabre, but a friend once joked that they probably only included the life vests such that the bodies would float to surface, so as to be recoverable. Now that it seems they don't care if you're sober enough to sit in the emergency exit row, I feel as though my fears have been confirmed.

As luck would have it, I got a seat in the emergency exit row for the second leg of my journey (let it be known that I was sober). I never request the emergency exit, so I was pure coincidence my seat assignment put me there. It's like first class space at a coach price. I even slept with my head resting on the fold-down table, which is something I haven't been able to do since I was 10. To be honest, having now enjoyed the luxuries of the exit row, I don't care if it is a scam: I want the frickin' leg room.

Selling Science.

Science is not a controversial topic. Generally, everybody likes science, some may fear it, but on the whole science is everybody's friend. Yeah, we do cool stuff. Yeah, we add to the technical know-how and knowledge base of society. Yeah, we produce a population of well-trained scientists and engineers. So with all the net positives, why do we have so much trouble getting money to fund these endeavors?

This week in D.C. has been filled with both positives and negatives. There are a lot of people in Washington who really believe in the importance of basic science research and I think their statements are genuine. In the past, they have signed their name to legislation that we, as a community, have supported, and we are grateful. Many symbolic legislative gestures have been made, but cash has not always shown up.

What are we doing wrong? Physicist have a reputation of being arrogant and projecting attitudes of entitlement, but we have worked very hard to curb those tendencies (at least, on Capitol Hill). We are trying to become more politically involved and trying to present a better face to the people with public relations campaigns. We started asking offices, who are known supporters of science, "What can we do better?" The most frequent response has been to have people in physics and those supportive of physics to talk to their local representative. So using my soap box and stealing another's slogan for my own purposes:

THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY

If you are a supporter of science, write your representative tell them, you, as a constituent, feel basic research in the physical sciences is important and should be funded. If you can't remember his or her name check out Congress Merge and don't use gov't resources (e.g. SLAC email account) to send your letters or emails, that's a big no no. Better yet, make an appointment at the local office - remember: they work for you - and talk with the staff. To be honest, there won't be any increase in funding until people (including physicists, themselves) really speak up for it. Without people willing to spend the five minutes for an email or letter to their congressperson, we will most likely continue along this path of chronic under-funding.