from the desk of stinkpot

so wednesday night, my first evening free from finals and school, christina and i headed out to the druid’s (a local irish pub) weekly pub quiz. this has become something of a weekly tradition for the two of us and our good canadian friends, jesse and hillary.

these pub quizes are usually quite hard; the quizmaster is big on pop culture and the four of us aren’t too keyed into that stuff. to make matters worse, he’s big on pop culture from his adolescence – and he’s a good 10 years older than us. so, we often find ourselves scratching our heads, trying to recall names of lead singers from big-hair rock bands that we’ve never heard of.

prizes are usually awarded to the first place, second place, and of course, the last place teams. we’ve come close to placing in the first two positions before; most recently, i screwed our moose by misnaming the most valuable green property in monopoly (for some reason, i thought it was pacific ave).

so this week’s performance was especially noteworthy because not only did we come in dead last amongst 14 teams, but i think we got the lowest score in recent pub quiz memory. and since this isn’t scored like golf, that’s a bad thing. (note: that 10 pictured above does not denote perfection, since the winning quiz score was 268.)

in our defense, we did this on purpose; the last place team gets a free round of shots from the pub: “the only thing that’ll make us smarter.” so, given that about 1/3rd of the way into the quiz we realized we couldn’t win, we decided to tank. unfortunately, another team was racing us to the bottom and we were forced to tank really hard.

honestly, i viewed this whole episode as something of a victory. we set a goal and we achieved. who cares that the announcement of our abysmal score drew stunned silence from the rest of the bar? at least we weren’t those losers with a score of 12.

and, our free shots were magnificent! it’s amazing how much better high class tequila tastes than the stuff you find in liquor store bargain bins. i got another pub-goer to provide photographic evidence of our victory (below). our other two teammates there, by the way, are rachel and tim. tim (the fellow flashing the backwards loser sign), it turns out went to regis with me. turns out he’s in hillary’s phd program at hahvahd. that’s smaller than smallworld – it’s microworld.

the rest of the photos from the night are here.

reuters has posted their top 40 photos of the year here. i’ve posted one of them above; it’s a filpino man crossing a bunch of tires lit aflame by rioters south of manila, earlier this year. it’s really sick how good some of these photos are – they’re what happens when you’ve got: 1) talent; 2) good equipment; 3) luck.

i’d like to become a good photographer. but, things like exposure time, aperture and focus still refuse to completely tamed. i’ve been practicing a bunch, but i’m starting to run into a familiar trend i noticed while playing tennis. namely, the better you get at something, the more you realize that you’ll never be as good as the pros.

the funniest thing i’ve seen on SNL since Chris Farley’s El Nino:

the chronic of narnia

try this link if the above one is down.

mac users need to check this out.

it’s nice to see that microsoft can, at times, be playful.

ugghh – i got trashed by my biochemistry final on friday. it stings, since i actually devoted a bunch of time to studying for it. i thought i was well-prepared too; sadly, other people didn’t seem to think the exam was that difficult. that bodes poorly for me

in any case, i’m not too worried, given that mit at least appears to grade its graduate students on a very generous curve. for instance, i considered taking a graduate class on numerical simulations earlier in the year … the professor mentioned that of the 80 kids who took it last year, 78 got A’s. (i later chose to drop that class for philisophical reasons that can be explored in another post.) i just can’t get lower than a B, however, since the people who fund me (i know, i know, evil empire) will cut off my stipend if i pull any C’s. that and getting C’s really sucks – i got one in the second grade (handwriting) and i’m still not over it.

so graduate biochemistry felt like a good fit – i figured i won’t have to compete with any undergrads and, as aforementioned, i’d enjoy the fruits of the graduate curve. and for the cynics out there crying grade-inflation, bear in mind that graduate students ostensibly sacrifice 5 (of the most virile) years of their lives in the pursuit of knowledge. if you’ve seen our stipends, or the fat checks those damn business students pull down, you know we’re not in it for the money. so is there really any reason to get punished in class?

that digression aside, i also liked the idea of taking biochem, because i thought it’d make me a better persion. really. looking back, i realize that i learned a bunch of standard molecular biology assays and experiments as well as just a bunch of nitty-gritty biology in this class. it would be insane to call myself a computational biologist and have no idea what goes on in biology at the molecular level.

so yes, regardless of how my grades turned out, if you’re ever at mit and looking to learn some biochemistry, i highly recommend taking course 7.51. i had no previous training in biochem and still was able to take a lot away from that class. and, the lecturers are stunning – bob sauer, tania baker, and in particular frank solomon were quite enthusiastic professors who clearly enjoyed teaching. actually, i think frank solomon and his deadpan humor combined to form the best lectures i’ve ever enjoyed in a class.

in the age of pervasive media, it’s amazing how non-transparent our government can still be.

MoMa is doing a retrospective of Pixar’s last 20 years of work right now. I think the show runs until mid february (info here). I can’t wait to see this – I get the impression that the computer technology over at Pixar is good enough to nearly reproduce reality and yet, the animators always take a step back and put their own spin on how things look. that’s art – seeing the world in a different way, and somehow conveying it to everyone else.

mugglewumf!

now, all i need to do is figure out how to sneak into moma without paying their exorbinant ticket prices. heh, maybe the columbia id is still good for something.

i’ve decided to delay studying for biochemistry by playing with this really really nifty screensaver. the screensaver starts off with a random set of blocks and rules for how they are connected and can move. it then simulates movement for a couple of seconds and records how far the assembly traveled. things that show good locomotion are selected and allowed to “breed” with one another. (in other words, its a genetic algorithm.)

i’ve had a lot of fun with this for 3 reasons:
1) i like selection processes
2) it actually lets you watch these things move (that’s what the screensaver is)
3) it runs on the mac; in fact, it’s mac only.

so yea, grab it from here – you won’t regret it. be warned: this is very distracting and you won’t want to wake your computer whenever the screen saver loads up. also, you need to be patient – i’m on generation 18 and these little block creatures are still having trouble figuring out how to move. nonetheless, they’ve definitely been making good progress.

note: i believe brevecreatures is a more general form of breveWalker, in case anyone has come across that screensaver.

there’s a lot of buzz around this “mash-up” of green day’s american idiot – it’s called “american edit.” the dude who put it together (dean gray) is supposed to be quite talented. in any case, warner bros is trying to kill its release; a huge number of sites have responded by distributing the album today. you can find it here.

so jesse had a very fun mulled wine (apparently, its like hot sangria) party tonight. the high point of it was the most intense jenga game i’ve ever played.

here’re some shots of the game:

(a pensive robin)

(wes getting into position)

(the tower near its final height and for scale, the jenga box. for you non-jenga players, this ratio is ridiculously high.)

here are the rest of the night’s pictures.

oh, and i saw this stranger at the party. who on earth could she be?