Mahalo.ne.Trash

Saturday Afternoon Music Break

2012-01-21T15:00:00.001-08:00

Via Bri: The Joy Formidable with their song Buoy

Mmmmmm, delicious planets

2012-01-17T08:52:00.000-08:00

Via Quinn, planetary chocolates!

From the comments area at Reddit:

"When I was a kid, they gave you 9 planetary chocolates"

"If they were to scale, the Jupiter chocolate would have to be as big as your head. Or, most of the planets would have to be microscopic."

"Eating Jupiter or Saturn would be a bitch."

Marism over dinner

2012-01-15T17:41:00.000-08:00

Over dinner:

Me: Guys, I have to go to a meeting in 15 minutes
Owen: WHAT?!?!? Again!??!?
Me: Yup
Marcus: Are you coming home when we wake up?
Me: I'll be back before then
Owen: Long before then
Me: And I'll get home around 8:30 tonight. I'll kiss you, and you and Daddy
Marcus: On the butt?
All: LOL

Berkeley Enough

2012-01-15T10:15:00.000-08:00

Berkeley Enough From the Whole Foods boys:

Needing a dose of granola.....

--------------
Yoga Girl will get you too--- best use of "Namaste", evah!

Office Furtniture

2012-01-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

When I first arrived in my new office in the Cahill Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics at Caltech I received a nice little pot of money to furnish and decorate. Among other things, I got some Humanscale office chairs and a Biomorph sit/stand desk, which are great.

This all comes to mind because I recently gave some ergonomics advice to a friend of mine. I also get a lot of comments about my stand-up desk. Admittedly I only stand about 20% of the time, but the kids, they love the stand-up configuration and motorized action. However, looking back, perhaps I should have instead opted for one of these:

Then again, it probably wouldn't be optimal for working after a big lunch at the Ath.

For maximum comfort/excitement while writing code or working on proposals, this option is the only way to go:

Then again, this setup might not work after a heavy lunch either, but for different reasons...

AAS Press Conference

2012-01-14T08:37:00.000-08:00

Here's a recording of the AAS/NASA press event.

News reel for KOI-961 and its three tiny planets

2012-01-12T21:12:00.000-08:00

NYT

MSNBC

BBC News

Pasadena Star News 1

Pasadena Star News 2

San Francisco Chronicle

Wired

New Scientist

and more!

http://www.sciencenewsline.com/space/2012011122470002.html

http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal-tech/science-tech/232400269

http://laist.com/2012/01/11/caltech_scientists_discover_3_smallest_planets.php

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120111154045.htm

http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0111/Scientists-discover-three-smallest-alien-planets-yet

http://news.yahoo.com/3-alien-planets-smaller-earth-found-191210276.html

http://news.discovery.com/space/kepler-spots-trio-of-tiny-planets-120111.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57357287/new-finding-points-to-crowded-and-crazy-cosmos/

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1201/11kepler/

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2017210653_apussciplentifulplanets.html?syndication=rss

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45960890/ns/technology_and_science-space/

http://www.kold.com/story/16501074/kepler-discovers-smallest-solar-system-yet

http://www.ktvl.com/articles/planets-1203373-stars-nature.html

http://www.njherald.com/story/16498148/astronomers-see-more-planets-than-stars-in-galaxy

http://www.newkerala.com/news/2011/worldnews-143403.html

Smallest Exoplanets Found—Each Tinier Than Earth

2012-01-11T17:10:00.000-08:00

Source: SPACE.com: All about our solar system, outer space and exploration

Smallest Exoplanets Found—Each Tinier Than Earth

I got to participate in a press conference today to announce three record-setting exoplanets that my group at Caltech discovered around a little red dwarf star named KOI-961. The paper, led by my postdoc Phil Muirhead, is on astro-ph tonight:

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2189

'via Blog this'

Finding the Next Earth: On TV!

2012-01-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

Back in March last year I was contacted by a very interesting person named Dana Berry. The funny thing is that I almost deleted the email before reading it because it was from an AOL email address (AOL?!). Fortunately I got over my email prejudices (have you accepted Gmail into your heart yet?) and opened the message, which read:

Hello Dr. Johnson,

I am producing a show for the National Geographic Channel about the hunt for the next planet Earth as it involves the Kepler and Corot missions, and the plans to characterize these new found worlds with missions like JWST, the upcoming TMT telescope, etc. We are already in post production, but had sought to get a "pick up" interview with Geoff Marcy. Alas, he is unavailable. This was a disappointment since Marcy is so extraordinarily good on camera.

But, Marcy highly recommends you as a potential replacement. Would you be interested in doing an interview about the follow up to Kepler, and to JWST? If so, are you available some time in the next day or two to chat on the phone?

So I wrote back, set up a phone meeting, and we agreed to shoot a piece on or near the Caltech campus a month later in April.

The shoot was supposed to last from 2pm-4pm, maybe as late as 5pm, Dana assured me. Well, we ended up having a grand time moving the camera around Cahill from one interesting shot to the next. By the time we wrapped up it was 10:30pm!

Fortunately, we had my industrious and faithful undergrad researcher, Kirit Karkare, on hand to help out. While they filmed the pieces with me talking while sitting in the Galex control room across the hall from my office (complete with a full space mission control center as a backdrop), Kirit set up the undergrad (Ay105) lab downstairs in the basement. The idea was to show me working in "my lab," but my lab was still in its infancy at the time, with optical components still in their original packaging.

Kirit set up a simple spectrometer with a light source and a few optics components. While we were showing Dana how the spectrometer works, we accidentally shone the refracted light onto the wall behind us. Dana jumped up and said something like, "Yes, go with that. That's what we need!"

Dana also got excited when I showed him a few Powerpoint slides illustrating how a spectrometer works and showing a false-color echellogram with a spectrum of the Sun (Vesta, actually). He instantly gained my respect when he told the cameraman, "That, that right there is all of astronomy. We like looking at the pictures, but all of the hard science is in spectra! We gotta shoot John pointing at spectral features!" Let me tell you: Dana Berry is a director who really get's it!

Well, I had no idea what would come of our 9-hour day. Would all of that footage end up on the cutting room floor, so to speak? Then, we got word that the show would be on NatGeo (formally the National Geographic Channel) in December. Erin, the boys and I got the popcorn ready and held our own little screening party. "THAT'S DADDY!" yelled Owen. "That's daddy?" asked Marcus. Liz and Lindsay called and exclaimed, "OMG, I can't believe you are in my living room on my TV right now. You sound SO smart!"

Someone posted the entire episode of "Finding the Next Earth" on YouTube, and the video is below. I don't know if it'll stay up, so enjoy it while you can. My first appearance is pretty early in, and I get the second segment when they're talking about "super Earths" with molten lava surfaces. From there, they feature my friends and colleagues, including Natalie Batalha, Sara Seager, Oded Aharonson, Francois Fressin and others. There's also an entire segment on my academic grandfather Steve Vogt. It was a HUGE honor to appear on screen with these much more established and accomplished astronomers!

A family that shoots together...

2012-01-02T13:01:00.000-08:00

In an early morning raid, Pasadena police found a large weapons stash at the so-called "Johnson Compound." The confiscated collection of firearms included 2 semiautomatic dart guns equipped with "whistler darts," a Berzerker pump-action dart gun with a center-launched rocket, a pump-action assault rifle with multiple ammo clips, and a compact yet high-power "Mar Gun" with a laser sight.

"We're glad we found these guns," said the police chief. "It's possible that these darts would have hit innocent bystanders visiting the compound for dinner or something."

The purpose of the guns is not immediately clear to investigators. However, experts close to the case speculated that the Johnsons may have planned to use the guns to shoot each other in crazy "dart wars," with Mommy and Owen on one team, and Daddy and Mar on the other.

Investigators painted a chilling scene of family members sprinting down hallways shooting at each other "Matrix style," with foam darts occasionally bouncing off of limbs and heads.

Said a detective close to the case, "It's a scary picture really. We're glad we were able to nip the situation in the bud early before things got out of hand."

My Sis

2012-01-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

My lovely and talented sister, Erin Johnson (not to be confused with my wife, Erin Johnson or my nephew Aaron Johnson) with her cover of Adele's "Someone Like You."

If you enjoyed this, please click through to YouTube and click "Like" and leave a comment. When she's famous you can say you were into her music before it was cool :)

Impressive Performance VII. Dub Step

2011-12-29T23:11:00.000-08:00

Impressive Performance VI. Jill Scott and The Roots

2011-12-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

My favorite version of this song is the one on the awesome documentary Dave Chappelle's Block Party. The video quality on this YouTube version it's spectacular, but the audio is much better than most. Jill Scott is a force of nature on stage, and the Roots are awesome as ever.

You can't put me in a box, no!
My soul just don't fit in one
I am the moon that will rise in turn
My new sh*t has just begun!
I can take you higher
I can take you low
It's not matter of what I put on
It's just matter of my soul!

Karmin

2011-12-26T09:20:00.000-08:00

You've seen this band, right? No? Check it out.

Impressive Performances V. Vince Young's 99-yard TD Drive

2011-12-23T08:00:00.000-08:00

There has been a lot written about NFL quarterback Vince Young, not all of it good. But I don't care, because his 99-yard touchdown drive against the Cardinals is such a thing of beauty that it covers a multitude of mediocrity-related sins. Seriously, could a Hollywood screenwriter have scripted this any better? Starting on his own 1-yard-line? How many fourth downs did he have to convert? Oh, the drama! And that finale? Come on, that doesn't happen in real life!

Mar!

2011-12-22T09:29:00.001-08:00

Impressive Performances IV. Rubik's Cube World Record

2011-12-22T08:40:00.000-08:00

Words fail:

chucklehouse

2011-12-22T06:09:00.000-08:00

marcus to owen, while in the shower: "you've been a thorn in my side all day long, kid"

owen: "hey, wait a second - is this snack or lunch"
me: "hmmm, both"
owen: "you can't eat lunch at 10:30, and we didn't have snack, so i'll call this SLUNCH"
(this kid is soooo my son!)

Impressive Performances III. Gilbert Arenas

2011-12-21T08:00:00.000-08:00

Before he took his role as a shooter too seriously by pulling a gun on a team mate in the locker room, Gilbert Arenas was one of the most impressive...um...gunners in the NBA. Despite only being roughly six-feet tall (he's listed as 6-4, yeah right), he played with an intensity matched by very few in the league. There have been many 50+ games recorded in the NBA, but my favorite is Arenas' 60-point game against Kobe's Lakers (sorry Lindsay!).

Impressive Performances II. Mouse on the Keys

2011-12-20T07:54:00.000-08:00

For most impressive performance by a Japanese post-rock, jazz ensemble, I present Mouse on the Keys with Saigo No Bansan

Amazing Performances I.

2011-12-19T07:52:00.000-08:00

Fifth-year astro grad student Tim posted this video to his Gmail status, along with the challenge, "If you know of a more impressive performance, please share."

What constitutes an impressive performance is a bit subjective, but then again, it kinda isn't. I'll be posting contenders in the weeks to come. If you know of amazing performacnes, musical or otherwise, please let me know in the comments!

Transiting Santa

2011-12-18T10:31:00.000-08:00

Merry Xmas! Where X stands for star crossing...

Ode to Joy!

2011-12-16T08:49:00.000-08:00

This will be on the exam

2011-12-15T09:00:00.000-08:00

Funny whiteboard from my Fall2011 Ay20 course. Full description at my student Nathaniel's blog:

Ay20: What I Thought of the Class

Love

2011-12-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

A homophobic mayor's lesson in love.

Our story begins in June, when Troy, Mich., realtor Janice Daniels decided she no longer hearts the Empire State. Apparently forgetting that Facebook pages can be viewed by other people, she posted on her wall that “I think I am going to throw away my I Love New York carrying bag now that queers can get married there.” [Daniels later became mayor of ~~Detroit~~ Troy]

...

Given Daniels’ “God-fearing love for this country,” it’s hard to be optimistic that Amy Weber’s plea for open-mindedness [see video below] will fall on receptive ears. But every time gay men and women — and their friends and families — come forward and confront small-minded politicians with eloquence and dignity, it makes it harder for the voices of division and intolerance to cavalierly spew their bile and get away with it. Those “queers” and their loved ones so easily dismissed on Facebook are your neighbors. Adjust your mouth accordingly. And “joke” though Daniels’ comment may have been, it’s nevertheless unfortunate that New York’s acceptance of same-sex marriage has made the mayor of Troy decide she can no longer “love” the state. Because as Amy Weber understands, it’s not fear, not ignorance and certainly not hate that move us forward. “In the end, love is all that matters,” she told Daniels. “No matter what you’re doing in life, if you can look at it through the lens of love, you will do the right thing.”

KeplerCon 2011

2011-12-10T08:39:00.001-08:00

Last week was the first Kepler Science Conference (or KeplerCon as I call it), at NASA Ames near Silicon Valley in Northern California. I attended with my grad student Tim Morton, and my new postdoc Phil Muirhead. Phil and I had back-to-back talks about our work on studying the least massive stars in the Kepler Field.

The Kepler Mission is a 1-meter space telescope that is staring at a 100 square-degree field of view. It measures the brightnesses of 160,000+ stars once every 30 minutes looking for the stars to periodically become dimmer, indicating the presence of an eclipsing (transiting) planet. Here's what a large signal looks like:

The Kepler Mission is exciting because it looks at so many stars and has such high precision. Here's a tiny signal from a tiny planet discovered by Kepler:

This is Kepler-22b, a 2.5 Earth-radius planet orbiting in its star's "habitable zone," which is the goldilocks region around the star where it is cool enough for liquid water. Pretty exciting!

Kepler is finding thousands of small planets like this, and each signal needs to be confirmed using telescopes on the ground. At the conference, Phil and I described our program to focus on the planet signals around very small stars known as red dwarfs, or M dwarfs.

Here's Phil's excellent talk:

Accurate Stellar Parameters of Low-Mass Kepler Planet Hosts.

Here's my talk right after Phil's:

Measuring the Physical Properties of Kepler's M Dwarf Planet Hosts.

And here are all of the talks from the conference:

http://kepler.nasa.gov/Science/ForScientists/keplerconference/

Required Viewing: Banks are Evil

2011-12-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

America's Next TARP Model

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

Bunches of planets!

2011-12-02T14:14:00.001-08:00

Caltech-Led Team of Astronomers Finds 18 New Planets

Discovery is the largest collection of confirmed planets around stars more massive than the sun

The twin telescopes at Keck Observatory in Hawaii. The astronomers used Keck to discover 18 new Jupiter-like planets orbiting massive stars.

[Credit: Rick Peterson/ W.M. Keck Observatory]

PASADENA, Calif.—Discoveries of new planets just keep coming and coming. Take, for instance, the 18 recently found by a team of astronomers led by scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).

"It's the largest single announcement of planets in orbit around stars more massive than the sun, aside from the discoveries made by the Kepler mission," says John Johnson, assistant professor of astronomy at Caltech and the first author on the team's paper, which was published in the December issue of The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. The Kepler mission is a space telescope that has so far identified more than 1,200 possible planets, though the majority of those have not yet been confirmed.

http://media.caltech.edu/press_releases/13476

The Turkey That Ate St. Louis

2011-11-25T10:09:00.001-08:00

I received this email from a colleague on Thanksgiving eve, and I thought it'd be worth re-sharing this holiday season.

This seems to be an auspicious occasion on which to introduce the first years (and perhaps others) to one of the department's greatest artistic achievements-- Seth Shostak and Bob O'Connell's searing masterpiece ``The Turkey that Ate St. Louis''. (Unfortunately, only the trailer was completed.) The actors were mainly graduate students in radio astronomy [at Caltech]-- except for Jesse Greenstein who plays Walter Cronkite. The locations were OVRO, Lake Street, and the Caltech Campus. Seth was already obsessed by movies when he came to Caltech. However, his first major effort ``The Teenage Monster Blob from Outer Space, Which I Was'' (1967) was neither a critical or a commercial success. In fact after its first and only showing, O'Connell remarked ``Gee, Seth that sure was a Turkey''. It was this chance observation that inspired Shostak's greatest accomplishment in the world of film:

Caltech!

Caltech Wins Home Opener!

2011-11-23T07:35:00.001-08:00

I attended the Caltech men's basketball home opener last night in historic Braun gymnasium, a.k.a. the Beaver Lodge. Okay, it's not also known as that. At least not yet. Prof. Geoff Blake and I made it up while watching the first half.

The Beavers had an amazing first 10 minutes against Pacifica College, with Mike Edwards and Frosh point guard Bryan Joel raining threes as if shooting free throws. The problem was that Pacifica kept hitting layups. I have no idea how a team composed entirely of guards was able to work the ball into the paint so often and easily, but I'm pretty sure Pacifica made it the entire first half without hitting a jumper.

To be sure, their guards were bigger than Caltech's guards. And faster. And generally more athletic. In fact, to be perfectly honest, only a few of the Caltech players look like basketball players at all, at least in the strictest sense. However, the Beavers have no want for hustle and heart, and watching them progress through their offensive sets makes it clear how well Coach Eslinger and his staff prepare the players each week. If you like team ball, fundamentals and...suspense, the Beavers are your team!

Speaking of suspense, with 1:30 to go, Pacifica ball, the game was tied at 60-60. As Prof. Blake noted, one-possession games were the Beavers' downfall all last season. Bryan Joel stole the ball, took off on a fast break, and got fouled on the layup attempt. Joel went to the line for the Beavers' first free throw attempts of the game (!), missed the first and hit the second. Pacifica then worked the ball in low, with their point guard hitting a running bank shot to put Pacifica up 62-61 with 0:40 to go. Caltech worked the ball in low to Alex Runkel, who backed into the post, and...oh crap!...lost the ball.

The ball started rolling between his legs and out of bounds, he reached and grabbed it, tried to call timeout and then all hell broke loose. I don't know what happened, but a very angry Pacifica player was pulled out of a pile of 5-6 players and restrained by his team mates, while Alex walked away to the other side of the court. After 5 long minutes of deliberation, the refs called an unidentified non-shooting foul (I think), giving Tech the ball out of bounds under their hoop, with 6 seconds on the shot clock, 16 seconds on the game clock.

The ball went in to Alex. He passed it to Ethan Boroson. Ethan?! the crowd seemed to gasp and ask in that brief second of time. He had zero shot attempts all game. I groaned. Alex, why'd you pass? But Ethan calmly banked the ball in from 6 feet with no time left on the shot clock. I can still see the calm look on his face as if he were just shooting around alone in the gym. The packed crowd went berserk. Geoff and I were jumping up and down like a couple of kids. But wait, there were 10 seconds left on the clock.

Pacifica's point guard, #1, quickly advanced the ball to mid court. However, the well-coached Beavers were waiting for him and his team mates, overloading the court to his favored right side. He crossed over, dribbled right to the baseline, elevated to shoot and...was blocked! Caltech recovered the blocked shot. Beavers win! Beavers win!

It was an exhilarating finish to a well-played game. Sure the Beavers had too many turnovers, too few free throws, and gave up too many layups to 6-foot-few guards. But they executed a well-orchestrated offense, rebounded the ball well, and won their first nail biter of the season.

GO BEAVERS!

Occupy UC and Police Brutality and Hope

2011-11-22T01:18:00.000-08:00

In case you missed it, students at UC Davis recently held a nonviolent protest in solidarity with students at UC Berkeley, as inspired by the Occupy movements nationwide. At both campuses students erected tent cities, and in both cases the police, fully clad in riot outfits, came in to forcibly clear the tents and arrest the protesters. Here's the sad, sickening video of UC Davis college students getting pepper sprayed by a callous, abusive cop:

These are students exercising their First Amendment rights. These are not trouble-makers. They are not threatening anyone's safety. They are US citizens, or at least here legally to earn an education. Many of them take U.S. history classes that teach them about our constitutional rights, and about how wonderful and free our country is.

As I watched this video, a few questions come to mind:

Who ordered the police onto campus in riot gear? No matter who made the call, the chancellor is ultimately responsible for this act. A brave, junior professor recently wrote an open letter to Chancellor Linda Katehi calling for her resignation. It's hard to argue with his reasoning. A snippet is pasted below. I honestly don't know if I'd be this brave if such an incident occurred on my campus. I hope I could be...
On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, “it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.” You write, “while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.”
I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to “a safe and inviting space for all our students” or “a safe, welcoming environment” at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating “a safe and inviting space?” Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to “a safe, welcoming environment?”
Where are the libertarians? Where are the anti-tax, constitution-worshiping, tea-partying, "true" Americans? Why weren't they standing around brandishing their constitutionally guaranteed firearms, keeping the police at bay? Or is only one amendment important?
Where are the Christians? I'm sure there are followers of Christ interspersed among the OWS protesters, but where are the mega churches? Why haven't they mobilized in defense of the poor and the oppressed? Why is it that they come out in droves to deny law-abiding citizens the right to marry, but they sit on their hands (or SUVs) when it comes to economic injustice or the oppression of the rights of others? Or is this sort of thing less important than this sort of thing? Again, I'm sure that there are many individual Christians are sympathetic to the plight of the poor. But where are Rick Warren and his thousands of followers? (Here's a Google search of his website for "Occupy Wall Street.")
I really wonder what those cops must have been thinking with the chants of "Shame On You" rising all around them. I'm sure most of them justify it in their minds somehow. But, still, I wonder how many of them really felt shame. For those of them who did, I feel sorry for them. What other job options might they have during these times? What else could they do but follow orders and clock in for work the next day? I'd really hate to be one of them trying to look my kid or my wife in the eye at night. But at the same time, wouldn't I be happy to have a job?
This response by the students at UC Davis is amazing, encouraging, and somehow exhilarating. Could this have played out any more dramatically and appropriately if it had been written into a movie script?

Over the past year I've found myself extremely pessimistic about our country when I think in national terms. We live in a time of endless wars against abstractions such as drugs and terrorism. Funding for education, social services and science continues to drop nation wide while our country's leadership searches for new countries to bomb and invade. Three weeks of war in Afganistan would cover California's deficit and provide for its public schools, public works, and social services for the poor; a little over 2 weeks would pay for the James Webb Space Telescope. We live in a country in which the amount of taxes avoided annually by a single corporation would fund NASA's science division (the corporation in question got a refund instead). We have a congress completely ill suited to deal with our country's economic problems because they have been purchased by the same people who wrecked our economy while escaping prosecution.

However, I'm deeply encouraged once again when I think locally about my family, my neighbors, my colleagues, the students in my department and their heart for education and outreach. Somehow people on scales of dozens can be good in the truest sense of the word. Yet when gathered by the millions, peaceful protesters get pepper sprayed and arrested for peacefully protesting economic injustices. Wars are waged, both externally and internally. The Occupy Wall Street movement is the first national movement that I've felt hopeful about. It's the first to take the goodness of my local surroundings and focus it on a large, effective scale. I'm also encouraged by its aims: to bring attention to the extreme income inequality in the U.S. To bring attention to the fact that the American Dream is an abstraction. As sad as that first video is, the fact that the students linked their arms even tighter and stood in the face of such brutality fast gives me hope. They truly believe in what they are doing. I wonder if I could be that courageous.

Chart from The Heritage Foundation

This is about the most cogent thought I can muster at the moment. I don't have all my thoughts worked out yet. Part of me wonders how novel my fear of the degradation of our rights is, and how much it resembles some 35-year-old living in 1960, or 1901, or 1870. But another part of me just can't rest easily with what's happened in our country since 9/11. I dunno. I'll keep thinking on it...

So alone

2011-11-20T18:40:00.000-08:00

http://xkcd.com/979/

Erin's adventures in Community Service

2011-11-17T21:00:00.000-08:00

Three months ago, after a great deal of beating around the bush, I pulled my resume together, wrote a mission statement and threw my hat in the ring for the Class of 2012 for an organization called Leadership Pasadena. While the decision to do so was fueled by encouragement of friends and family, the desire to step out of my comfort zone (being a stay-at-home-mom)was certainly lacking. Boy, has stepping out of that comfort zone been empowering!

Leadership Pasadena was started in the early 1990s by a group of community members who wanted to address the issue of gang violence in Old Town (which was quite different than the Old Town of today). In examining the issue, this group recognized the need to address critical and often controversial issues in the greater community of Pasadena. I am now one of 14 members of the Class of LP12. Our collective passion is a desire for facilitating community connections. My passion is creating an excellent educational experience for my children and for ALL children in my community.

Deciding to put the boys in public school in Pasadena was and is a choice. A choice that John and I made as adults, parents, friends, and professionals who value equal access to education for all. In the last two years, we have been challenged in even very casual conversations to defend this decision, because it is not a conventional one in our community. Today, forty percent (40%!) of school aged children in Pasadena go to non-public schools (private, parochial, charter, homeschool). Many families never set foot in a public school or even consider doing so because in Pasadena, "the public schools are bad". A number of real estate agents will encourage their clients to consider buying only in choice neighborhoods because of a particular school. Other agents have made statements to individuals like myself to "look in South Pasadena or La Canada, where the schools are better" or further "avoid buying a home in Pasadena because the resale value of your home won't hold due to the poor public schools in Pasadena". Even friends without children looking at property here have had similar experiences.

What does this say about our community?
What does this say about our city?
What does it say about the children who ARE in public schools in Pasadena?
What does it say about community definitions based on race and class?

I'm asking myself and you, readers, all of these questions so that together we can work to change things. I know that PUSD schools can be great. Public will to allow ALL children in Pasadena access to the vast resources within our community is the only thing keeping them from greatness.

It's tough for middle class families to consider stepping out of their comfort zones and surrounding their children by a diverse set of peers. As I've personally learned, again & again, no great good comes without risk.

Earth from space

2011-11-16T23:14:00.001-08:00

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space, Fly Over | NASA, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Owen: Reading Machine

2011-11-11T13:25:00.000-08:00

Modern day pen-pals, I guess. Owen's first grade Dual Language Immersion class often communicates with other classes around our country. Only they don't write letters and send them by snail mail like we used to. His class uses skype! Today, Owen had the honor of reading Book Fiesta to a class of fourth graders in Michigan who has just started taking Spanish one day a week, so Owen's class got to show off their bilingual skills today.

Marversations

2011-11-10T17:44:00.001-08:00

Over dinner tonight, Erin recounted the following Mar conversations (Marversations):

Conversation 1
Mar: Mom, you can't stand up to go pee. Only me and Owen can. You can't stand up to pee because you don't have a penis. Moms don't have penises. But i know a mom who does have a penis

Erin: Really?!

Mar: Yeah, really.

Erin: Who?!

Mar: His name is Clarence Simmons and he is a good guy and he is a mom. For real.

(We don't know anyone named Clarence or Simmons.)

Conversation 2
Mar, Owen and their friend Mila are jumping on the trampoline.

Owen: Mila, are you allergic to peanut butter?
Mila: No
Owen: Okay, then you can have a peanut butter sandwich, too!
Mar: But no. I don't want one. I'm allergic to sharing.

(This is, indeed, a fact. Mar is allergic to sharing...and quite often allergic to manners, too)

On Parenthood

2011-10-31T11:55:00.000-07:00

Erin recently sent me this amazing post On Parenthood. A snippet:

As an adult, you may think you've roughly mapped the continent of love and relationships. You've loved your parents, a few of your friends, eventually a significant other. You have some tentative cartography to work with from your explorations. You form ideas about what love is, its borders and boundaries. Then you have a child, look up to the sky, and suddenly understand that those bright dots in the sky are whole other galaxies.

You can't possibly know the enormity of the feelings you will have for your children. It is absolutely fucking terrifying.

When I am holding Henry and I tickle him, I can feel him laughing all the way to his toes. And I realize, my God, I had forgotten, I had completely forgotten how unbelievably, inexplicably wonderful it is that any of us exist at all. Here I am with this tiny, warm body so close to me, breathing so fast he can barely catch up, sharing his newfound joy of simply being alive with me. The sublime joy of this moment, and all the other milestones – the first smile, the first laugh, the first "dada" or "mama", the first kiss, the first time you hold hands. The highs are so incredibly high that you'll get vertigo and wonder if you can ever reach that feeling again. But you peak ever higher and higher, with dizzying regularity. Being a new parent is both terrifying and exhilarating, a constant rollercoaster of extreme highs and lows.

This is so well put that I have a lump in my throat and goosebumps on my arms.

On the flip side, I was recently describing parenthood to a childless friend. Before relaying what I said, I have to issue the disclaimer that it was at the end of a particularly rough day with Owen and Marcus. Here's how I explained it:

To imagine parenthood, imagine extreme happiness. But imagine that happiness coupled with the following. Imagine doing a task that you don't want to do, something like unloading the dishwasher or scrubbing a counter. Now imagine that you can't do this task because a little life form is demanding your attention, screaming about some inconsequential circumstance, or impatiently insisting on your help in finding an item that they, the little life form, misplaced despite your warnings about losing things. So there you are, not able to do a task that you don't want to do because...well, because you decided to do something as crazy as having a kid.

I love my kids dearly. Being a parent has transformed me into a better person, a better man. But it's important to keep in mind that my decision was not made based on logic or reason. It was a crazy decision. I gave up my life. The moment Owen was born, life was no longer about me and my hopes, dreams and concerns. There's no logic in that decision. There's just this thing called love, and I'm eternally grateful to know it.

So, yeah, parenting is a wonderful mishmash of contradictions that somehow sums to net happiness. As the author above notes at the beginning of their post, it's that 1% that makes all the difference:

'via Blog this'

Dragons and Space Dust

2011-10-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

My teaching assistant, Jackie Villadsen, recently completed an excellent podcast for 365 Days of Astronomy. The audio and transcript are here. Here's an excerpt:

Stars are the dragons of the Universe. Their massive fiery bellies boil with an inconceivable heat. This heat comes from nuclear reactions. When we set off a nuclear bomb on Earth (which is a very unfortunate and unnatural process), we create for just a tiny moment and in a tiny space the high temperatures needed to fuse together four hydrogen atoms and make helium. By comparison, this process of fusion chugs along constantly, and completely naturally, in the belly of the Sun for 10 billion years! Imagine 10 billion years of continuous nuclear bombs… how strong that is!

The rest of the post takes the reader through the fascinating process of stellar nucleosynthesis, or the way in which all of the elements heavier than lithium are processed in the centers of massive stars and blown back into outer space through supernova explosions. These elements then form the seeds of planetary systems, some of which eventually give rise to life. We are star stuff!

Sunday Morning Music Break: 8-bit edition

2011-10-16T08:26:00.000-07:00

Q: How many marimba-ists does it take to reprise an 8-bit Nintendo song?
A: As many as it takes to result in this level of awesomeness:

Feynman Science and Beauty and Doubt

2011-10-11T14:44:00.000-07:00

Oh, internet...

2011-10-11T10:57:00.000-07:00

I was looking for exoplanet-related pictures using a Google Images search, and I stumbled upon this bit of awesomeness:

(The sine of the angle b divided by the tangent of b is the cosine of b, or cos b.)

Monday's guest astronomer

2011-10-07T18:08:00.000-07:00

Oops, I meant to post this to my Ay20 class blog. Oh well, enjoy it anyway!

Monday we'll be joined by an esteemed visitor, Dr. Jon Swift:

http://jonswiftastro.com/

Dr. Swift was my graduate student mentor at UC Berkeley and we both ended up at the University of Hawaii together as postdocs, where he was a Sub-millimeter Array Postdoctoral (SMA) Fellow. His research focus is on massive star formation and he uses interferometers to study molecular clouds where these behemoth baby stars are born.

Dr. Swift is also a professional musician, photographer, poet and an accomplished surfer.

Come prepared with questions for our guest. We'll also be learning about blackbody radiation, so stay tuned for the worksheet, which will be posted this weekend.

Wednesday morning pick-me-up

2011-10-05T10:39:00.001-07:00

h/t Brian

My students' writing

2011-10-03T08:00:00.000-07:00

A friend and colleague of mine, Prof. Andrew West, gave me the idea of having my students maintain research blogs, both as a way for him to keep up with what they are doing and for the student to practice writing.

This has worked so well for my mentees that I decided to use it in my Intro Astro course. I was further encouraged by this article, in which the author Prof. Cathy Davidson notes

Given that I was teaching a class based on learning and the Internet, having my students blog was a no-brainer. I supplemented that with more traditionally structured academic writing, a term paper. When I had both samples in front of me, I discovered something curious. Their writing online, at least in their blogs, was incomparably better than in the traditional papers. In fact, given all the tripe one hears from pundits about how the Internet dumbs our kids down, I was shocked that elegant bloggers often turned out to be the clunkiest and most pretentious of research-paper writers. Term papers rolled in that were shot through with jargon, stilted diction, poor word choice, rambling thoughts, and even pretentious grammatical errors (such as the ungrammatical but proper-sounding use of "I" instead of "me" as an object of a preposition).
But it got me thinking: What if bad writing is a product of the form of writing required in college—the term paper—and not necessarily intrinsic to a student's natural writing style or thought process? I hadn't thought of that until I read my students' lengthy, weekly blogs and saw the difference in quality. If students are trying to figure out what kind of writing we want in order to get a good grade, communication is secondary. What if "research paper" is a category that invites, even requires, linguistic and syntactic gobbledygook?

I've already found this to be true. Remarkably true, in fact. Check out the first handful of blog posts from my students. I was anticipating that I'd have to give a lot of feedback and corrections on their initial posts, but they all came out of the starting blocks blogging like pros!

Cassi Lochhaas: Life and its Relation to Astronomy (or Vice Versa)

Daniel Lo: The Night Beckons

David Vartanyan: Abstrosizics

Eric Mukherjee: Astronomer, Not Astrophysicist

Iryna Butsky: Twinkle Twinkle, Little Star

John Pharo: Looking Up

Juliette Becker: Starstruck

Lauren Gilbert: Ay20

Mee Wong-u-railertkun: CQ, this is W9GFO.

Monica He: Ay20

Nathan Baskin: Star Stuff

Tommy Heavey: A Chemist in Astronomy

Please leave comments if you really enjoy any of these posts. They need all the encouragement and feedback they can get on their way to becoming professional scientific researchers.

Order of Magnitude Astrophysics

2011-10-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

From the Ay20 blog, here's a solution to one of the week 1 worksheet problems.

Estimating The Luminosity of a Sun-like Star

by: John A. Johnson, Jackie Villadsen

Abstract

We present the solution to Worksheet problem #2, from week 1, estimating the power output of a Sun-like star. Each group should submit one to two of these per week. Decide amongst your group members who will be first author, second author, etc. Acknowledge people and resources used in your solution. Cite ancillary information. State your assumptions clearly. Write your solution such that a frosh could duplicate your steps and arrive at the same solution.

Introduction

The oldest astronomical instrument is the human eye. A marvel of evolution, the eye has both high sensitivity and a large dynamic range. A classic study of the eye's response to light conducted in 1942 showed that of order 10 photons need to impinge on the eye in order for the brain to register detection (Hecht, Schlaer & Pirenne 1942). In other words, the eye has a gain of 10 photons/DN. In this contribution we use this fact as a starting point for estimating the luminosity (power output) of a Sun-like star. As additional input for our calculation we note that a Sun-like star at 100 light years is just barely visible to the naked eye if the star is viewed from a dark site. (As a side note, this corresponds to a G2V star with an apparent magnitude of V=6).

Order of Magnitude (OoM) Calculation

We start with a rough estimate of the aperture area of the eye. Fully dilated, an eye has an entrance diameter of roughly Reye = 0.5 cm, corresponding to an area of 0.25 cm^2. From here on we consider only a single eye since it is unclear how two eyes would combine for the detection of a faint star, and since we will only incur a factor-of-two error at most, which is insignificant for our OoM calculation. As an additional assumption we ignore absorption by the Earth's atmosphere and set interstellar reddening to zero.

The star is at a distance of 100 light years. Light travels at 3x10^10 cm/s, and there are (π x 10^7) seconds in a year. A light year is therefore D ~ (10 x 10^10 x 10^7) = 10^18 cm. The star emits some number Nemit photons isotropically, and the eye subtends a tiny fraction of the area of a sphere with a radius of D = 10^20 cm and receives 10 photons. This fractional area is (AD/Aeye), where Aeye is the area of the eye and AD is the area of the sphere surrounding the star. Thus

We are interested in the power output of the star, which is the energy emitted per second. We can get the energy corresponding to Nemit photons with

where \lambda is the wavelength of light. We can assume that the eye's spectral response is well-tuned to the peak of the Sun's spectral energy distribution, which corresponds to about 550 nm (we'll learn more about this after we estimate the Sun's temperature and learn about black body radiation). Thus

where I have used cgs throughout (note that 550 nm = 550 x 10^-7 cm). Now we need to figure out the time interval. The eye detects the 10 photons at a certain "readout rate." This can be estimated by noting that movies are typically shot at 24 frames per second. At a slower rate the eye would notice a distinct slowing of the movie scenes (imagine watching a movie that shows one frame every second, i.e. a slide show), and at a faster rate the movie studio would be wasting film. So the time the brain takes to "read out" the eye is about 10 milliseconds or 0.01 seconds, to an OoM. Thus, the power output of the Sun-like star is

This compares well to the actual luminosity of the Sun, which is 3.862 x 10^33 ergs/s.

Summary and Discussion

We have performed an OoM calculation of the Sun's luminosity by noting that a Sun-like star at 100 pc is barely visible to the naked eye. Our final answer is correct to within a factor of 4, demonstrating the usefulness of OoM calculations. By not worrying about the exact numbers, but instead focusing on the problem-solving process, we are free to concentrate on the physics of the problem knowing that we can perform the exact calculation using the same reasoning and a bit more time/effort.

Acknowledgements

We thank Owen and Marcus Johnson for playing nicely with each other for the 45 minutes it took Daddy to write this. We made use of WolframAlpha when our initial estimate of the photon energy was off by two orders of magnitude, and when we couldn't remember Planck's constant in cgs. WolframAlpha helped us realize that we needed the wavelength of a green photon in cm rather than meters. Duh. The equations were generated using CodeCogs online LaTeX editor.

Dreaming of a Basketball Future

2011-10-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

Owen, Mar and I have been watching a Youtube video of Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry, the two fleet-footed guards on the Golden State Warriors. Owen likes to imagine himself as the shooting guard Ellis, and Mar is the point guard Curry. The music is nice, too.

A vision of things to come? At the very least we'll be at the Warriors vs. Clippers (pre-season) game later this month!

Mar is 3!

2011-09-30T10:42:00.000-07:00

technically, he's been 3 since Aug 2 :) it just takes mommy forever to post! ;)

Back to Teaching: Intro Astro for Majors

2011-09-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

One of the older Caltech undergrads in my Ay20 class (j/k)

My posts here will be a bit sporadic since the academic year just started with a bang here at Caltech. I'll be teaching Astro 20: Intro to Astronomy for Majors. We met for the first time yesterday and I have 16 bright, enthusiastic Techers in my class, ranging from Sophomore Ay majors, to Junior physicists, up to the lone Chemistry-major Senior. I'll be blogging regularly about Ay20 here, along with my faithful second-year TA, Jackie. I'll cross-list posts of interest here at Mahalo, but you should add the Ay20 blog to your RSS feed to keep up with the latest. My students will also maintain their own blogs, which will be linked from the Ay20 site. Please follow their writing and leave encouraging comments and requests for more excellent astronomy posts (I'll try to update here as the student blogs come online)!

Here's my latest post on The Power of Dumb Questions.

Nope

2011-09-18T12:13:00.001-07:00

soccer!

2011-09-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

We just began our first AYSO season and we're going in full force. I frikkin' love soccer, so it warms my heart that Owen does too! He will be the first to tell you that "I am the smallest, but I'm the fastest" and he has become fast friends with a couple of teammates already!

His team is called Dragon Flares and although they lost their pre-season game against the Slayers, Owen scored his first goal!

My Superheros

2011-09-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

What started as good-guy, bad-guy play (using fly swatters and water guns) evolved into a serious dress up session involving lucha libre masks and the creation of super hero capes. Owen was so thrilled to finally have his own cape & each of the kids helped to sew their own letters onto the back. Fortunately everyone's powers were effective today and none of the flying resulted in injury.

Go Dodgers

2011-09-13T12:31:00.000-07:00

I took Owen and his cousin Giovanni to a Dodger game a couple weeks back as part of the annual Caltech/JPL Dodger Day event. 25 bucks for bleacher seats and all-you-can-eat Dodger Dogs, nachos, popcorn and soda.

It was fun, but HOT in that stadium. The Dodgers were playing the Rockies and with two outs at the bottom of the first inning, the Dodgers gave up five runs. Owen said, "Dad, I think they put in a belly itcher on accident." Indeed. At another point Gio said, "Cotton candy kinda looks like insulation." Owen added, "Yeah, fiber glass insulation!" Which is worst, fiber glass or actual cotton candy, is debatable, but the cotton candy was certainly appreciated.

In true LA fashion, we left in the 7th inning and didn't catch the final score. That's Dodger baseball!

From the Top Rope

2011-09-12T08:00:00.000-07:00

I think this picture is more enjoyable without an explanation, but then again, it's so strange that it probably deserves one. I was in my friend Mike's wedding and all of the groomsmen received lucha libre masks as gifts. Mike had an extra one and gave it to Erin. This was a year ago I guess. Anyway, I was recently searching for a hat in my closet and I found the masks, which are a huge hit with the boys.

The Tempest

2011-09-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

I think this is supposed to be pretty, and it should be to many people. But as an optical/infrared observer, I find this positively horrifying! Oh no, my night is ruined. The stars are gone! Ack, now I'll have to wait until next year to observe my targets. Queue wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Tempest Milky Way from Randy Halverson on Vimeo.

2011-09-08T09:44:00.000-07:00

When I become the king of Pasadena, my first decree will be the elimination of turf grass, to be replaced by desert vegetation, veggie gardens or artificial turf. We do, after all, live in perpetual drought here in SoCal...

2011-09-07T16:00:00.000-07:00

Oh, DINKS...

Explosions in the Sky

2011-09-06T08:53:00.000-07:00

I like post-rock music. The lack of lyrics, the gently rolling soundscapes, the slowly building peaks and gentle falloffs all make it ideal as background while coding, or writing, or just sitting around thinking. Seriously, hit play and sit a spell:

This song is by one of my favorite bands, the Austin, TX-based Explosions in the Sky, who recently released a new album. I'd write a review, but a recent Slate article by Mike Spies summed it up very nicely:

[T]hough the band has crafted, over the span of a decade, 38 separate tracks, it would be more accurate to say they've crafted one, gorgeous, ever-evolving score, to which listeners establish an individual relationship. While the music is very emotional, per se, it resists revealing itself and never asks to be "understood," which is why it tends to attract people who have nothing in common, as there is no singular message to unite under—no inside joke to be shared among fans. Instead, the music attaches itself to the situation in which it is played, giving shape and purpose to moments worthy of status updates while, simultaneously, recalibrating the planet's hierarchy of importance in the process. Suddenly the Arab Spring takes a backseat to the eating of a Boston cream doughnut. Suddenly the death of Osama Bin Laden takes a backseat to a trip through Target. Suddenly, like a teenager, you feel as though you're the center of the world.

New Additions to the Johnson Family

2011-09-04T09:18:00.000-07:00

Introducing our new fish tank and fish!

Erin, our resourceful American picker, found a very nice fish take for, like, a dollar. Those are two Ikea tables for support. It works surprisingly well! The tank is in Marcus' room. I have no idea how we negotiated that setup without Owen's strenuous protestation...

This is Owen's fish, Squirty Spark. S.S. likes to sleep during the day perched under the green fake plant, which initially had us very worried that he was dying. But watching him squirt and spark around the tank at night squelched our fears. Squirty Spark is the fastest fish in the tank, and his specialty is doing "face plants" in the early evening while searching for food among the rocks.

This is Mar's fish, Nemo-Dory. N.D. swims around non-stop, making clear photography very difficult. Nemo-Dory has no respect for territory, and cares not for sleeping or sleeping fish. N.D.'s specialty is searching for and eating food near the surface.

This is Dad's fish, Genevieve. Genevieve is the prettiest fish in the tank, with her red fins and tail. Her territory is in the "cave," as pictured above. Like Squirty Spark, her specialty is searching for and eating food among the pink rocks at the bottom of the tank, which generally comprises particulate matter falling down from Nemo-Dory's feeding frenzies.

Sadly, Mom's fish He-Ra Princess of Power died soon after introduction to the tank. May He-Ra rest in peace.

Say something nice!

2011-08-31T08:13:00.000-07:00

Wingsuit Proximity Flying

2011-08-30T18:48:00.000-07:00

Further evidence that humans can do pretty much anything allowed by the laws of physics:

Dark Matter

2011-08-12T18:56:00.000-07:00

Here it is, explained and animated:

Dark Matters from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

One of my students in the news

2011-08-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

Here's an article written for the campus website, Caltech Today, about one of my summer undergraduate researchers, Keith Hawkins. A snippet:

Like so many things in life, it all started with a girl.
In fifth grade, the girl who sat next to Keith Hawkins every day in class would check out encyclopedias and look up subjects in astronomy, admiring pictures of swirling galaxies and colorful nebulae. Hawkins would join her, and the two of them would sit together and gaze at the heavens, one page at a time.
Then, the following year, she moved away.

MOVE

2011-08-05T14:27:00.000-07:00

We're still on vacation and having a blast!

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

road trippin

2011-07-30T10:14:00.000-07:00

The Bikers Won!

2011-07-18T08:33:00.000-07:00

http://www.slate.com/id/2299432/

"It was a bad day for intra-metropolitan area commercial aviation. Jet Blue flight No. 405—the flight that was supposed to help Angelenos beat the chaos resulting from the closure of the 405 freeway—was bested not only by the @wolfpackhustle A team (elite cyclists who had pledged to follow traffic rules), but by @garyridesbikes, a late entrant promising to take only public transit and walk, and, if Twitter is to be believed, a Rollerblader, @jennix, who supposedly came in third. The gripping tale of the race to the Long Beach lighthouse is there for all to see on Twitter at #flightvsbikes.

"According to Twitter-based calculations by @bcgp, the unofficial finish times were:

Bike: 1:34
Metro/Walk: 1:44
Rollerblades: 2:40
Plane/Lost Cabdriver: 2:54"

Sunday Afternoon Music Break

2011-07-17T13:27:00.000-07:00

Feist again!

How's your Carmageddon?

2011-07-16T12:34:00.001-07:00

Did you hear that they shut down the 405 freeway between the 101 and 10? If you live in LA, it would be impossible not to know about. Around here they call it Carmageddon. So far, however, it seems pretty benign. Then again, we live in East LA!

One especially fun development is that Jet Blue is offering $4 flights from Burbank to Long Beach as a way of avoiding the 405...but mostly as a marketing gimmick, of course. A group of LA bicyclists responded to a challenge to race one of the planes from one destination to another. Both teams of travelers must start from a set location outside of Burbank and they end up in a park in Long Beach. More here. Go bikes!

Bibimbap

2011-07-12T09:00:00.000-07:00

Bibimbap is a perfect summer dinner! I used this recipe and let the boys choose their veggies, they both chose spinach, carrot & cucumber. The magenta business on there is some pickled radishes I made a couple days ago from the veggie box using rice vinegar, garlic, ginger & lime. There's some rice hidden beneath the veggie goodness & the beef was super tender and sweet!

Friday Afternoon Music Break

2011-07-08T16:33:00.001-07:00

I heart Feist!

From Missy's Google+ post! Google+, catch tha fever!

summer fun

2011-07-07T19:39:00.000-07:00

6 years ago today....

2011-07-01T22:54:00.000-07:00

...baby owen was born....look at him now!

happy birthday to you!

Improv Everywhere: Horse race at the park

2011-06-28T20:32:00.001-07:00

bubble brothers

2011-06-24T21:16:00.001-07:00

doesn't get much better than bubbles at bath-time

Hallelujah! Delay-send for Gmail

2011-06-24T09:11:00.000-07:00

I have long dreamt of a way to write an email now and schedule it to be sent at a later date. Suppose I'm checking my email and a new message arrives right then. I check it, and hooray, I can respond to it with a single sentence and get it out of my inbox. But wait! I don't want the recipient to start expecting 1-minute turnarounds to their emails. Friends know this happens from time to time, but I don't need the registrar's office to think this is how I roll. However, I can't just let the email sit there, or worse I might forget to mark it as unread, or forget to "star" it.

Well, with Boomerang for Gmail I can write the insta-reply, but turn it into a delayed response:

The Wholefoods Parking Lot

2011-06-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

Erin emailed this to me saying, "best rhyme ever at 2:20. wait for it..."

This buster's on his iPhone talking to his friends
Picking up some cayenne pepper for his master cleanse
You're the most annoying dude I've ever seen brah
Could you please move, you're right in front of the Quinoa

Mar's Lesson in Pronunciation

2011-06-13T17:00:00.000-07:00

We've been working on Mr. Chatterbox (aka Marcus) on pronouncing hard k's and c's, which for him sound like t's. In the car the other day he tried to give back a little:

Owen: "There's a Sally car!" (referring to Sally, a Porche in the movie Cars)
Erin: "That's right, a Shally. Wait, did I just say 'shally'?"
Mar: "No! Say Sally. Kuh-, kuh-, kuh-. Sally!"

Our Swagger Wagon

2011-06-12T22:14:00.001-07:00

Sunday Erin and I took the step over the brink. Yes, we officially crossed the line into hard-core parenting with the purchase of a minivan. However, we tried our best to hedge our position and we bought the smallest, swooftest-looking minivan we could find: the Mazda5. We found a certified used 2009 version on Autotrader for well below the Edmunds TMV, and braved the purchase process at a south-LA Mazda dealership. Fortunately we did plenty of research, had all our numbers and paperwork in order, and we closely followed the advice of the Motley Fool's guide car buying. Thanks Ben and Elisa for buying that book for us!

It has leather seating for 6, a sun roof, a CD changer, Blue Tooth so we can use our phones hands-free (omg!). Now we don't have to rent a car to take out-of-town visitors to the beach!

On the Height of J.J. Barea

2011-06-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

Dallas Mavericks point guard J.J. Barea standing between two very tall people (from: Picassa user photoasisphoto).

Congrats to the Dallas Mavericks, who beat the Miami Heat tonight in game six to win the NBA championship.

Okay, with that out of the way, just how tall is the busy-footed Maverick point guard J.J. Barea? He's listed as 6-foot on NBA.com, but no one, not even the sports casters, believes that he can possibly be that tall. He looks like a super-fast Hobbit out there. But could that just be relative scaling, with him standing next to a bunch of extremely tall people? People on Yahoo! Answers think so---I know because I've been Google searching "J.J. Barea Height" for the past 15 minutes.

So I decided to find a photo and settle the issue once and for all.

I started by downloading a stock photo of J.J. from NBA.com, which I then loaded into OpenOffice Draw:

I then used the basketball as my metric. Wikipedia states that an NBA basketball is 29.5 inches in circumference, or 9.4 inches in diameter. I scaled the image so the basketball in J.J.'s hand is close to one inch, and I repeatedly used my cursor to measure 0.99+/-0.01 inches on the image scale. I then measured J.J. to be about 7.11+/-0.02 inches on the image (I tried to measure down to where his heal would be in his shoe, and did several trials for each foot). So J.J. is about 7.18 +/- 0.08 basketballs tall, which is much less than 6 feet! In fact, according to my estimate, he's only 5 feet 8 inches tall, maybe 5' 10" at 3-sigma, or his shoes on, or an overinflated ball in that stock photo.

So there you have it. J.J. Barea is pretty short---for an NBA star---and the NBA website cannot be trusted for player heights. But we knew that already, right?

Mar and his cape

2011-06-11T01:14:00.000-07:00

One day at preschool, about a month ago, Mar discovered a stash of superhero capes. He sported one of the school capes his whole day there and declared "I'm a super hero and I help people who are hurt". He became so attached to the idea of wearing a cape that I promised he could pick out some fabric from my stash and we'd make him his own. Indeed, we did!

So here are some photos of his very own cape, which he wears for days at a time..... at home, at school, on errands, to the park, and sometimes to bed.

More Angry Birds!

2011-06-10T12:31:00.000-07:00

a.k.a. best ad campaign, evar.

Loving v. Virginia

2011-06-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

Joan Walsh of Salon.com pointed us to this great video. An pair of nerdy lawyers, one conservative and one liberal, deliver the essence of Loving v. Virginia & Prop. 8.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM5A8kiNA6o&feature=player_embedded

Kaboom!

2011-06-09T09:51:00.001-07:00

As you watch this amazing explosion, keep in mind that the Earth is about the size of the "o" in "org" at the bottom right of the screen:

The main movie comes from the Solar Dynamics Observatory satellite.

Caltech Basketball in the News

2011-06-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

Linked to one of Owen's basketball videos on Youtube is this ESPN segment, from a few years ago before Coach Eslinger arrived:

And here's a Katie Couric segment from this year after Caltech ended their 310 game conference losing streak:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cu2KNyIdYo

Owen and the art of the jump shot: Part 2

2011-06-04T13:45:00.000-07:00

Owen is shooting about 75% with his mini-basketball...on a 10-foot hoop. He recently started using an adult men's ball when we go to the gym. He's deadly from about 5 feet:

Meanwhile, my jumper remains...serviceable:

Book Fiesta in Owen's class

2011-06-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

or: http://youtu.be/ihpERhKqFA0

here's owen's (& our) san rafael family - such an amazing bunch of people.

Epic Lip Sync

2011-06-02T11:57:00.001-07:00

Memorial Day at Hermosa Beach

2011-05-30T17:28:00.001-07:00

Telescope Time Lapse

2011-05-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

These are the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescopes (VLT). Each of the four large telescopes has an 8.2 meter (diameter) primary mirror, and they can be used individually, or they can be combined together to form a much larger telescope through a process called interferometry.

This video also shows the wonders of the Southern Sky. As our Aussie readers can attest, there is a much higher density of stars visible south of the equator owing to the orientation of the Earth relative to the Galactic plane. I've observed once on the Magellan telescopes at Las Companas, Chile, and I can't wait to go back one day soon.

The orange streak emanating from one of the telescopes at 2:44 is the laser guide star adaptive optics system. The laser excites sodium atoms in the atmosphere and forms a fake star above the telescope. The light emitted from this fake star traverses back down through the atmosphere and a sensor on the telescope measures the deviation of the light from a perfect point. Basically, by sensing the twinkling of the fake star, the telescope's camera can adjust its mirror to compensate for the ripples in the atmosphere and form nice, sharp images. There's a laser system like this on Keck, and just last week the Robo-AO laser system was tested successfully at Palomar on the 1.5-meter (60-inch) telescope (see image below).

It is not a matter of if—but when

2011-05-26T20:46:00.000-07:00

Via Savage Love, Mayor Bloomberg's recent speech on marriage equality (full speech here):

When the Village erupted in protest 42 years ago next month, New York—and every other state in the union, save one—still had laws on the books that made same-sex relationships a crime. A couple could go to prison for years, just for being intimate in the privacy of their own home. For men and women of that era, an era many of us remember well, being in a gay relationship meant living in fear:

Fear of police harassment.

Fear of public humiliation

Fear of workplace discrimination.

Fear of physical violence.

Today, in some places, those fears still linger. But as a nation, we have come a long way since Stonewall. Today, two women in a committed relationship—who years ago would have hidden their relationship from family and friends—will instead take part in a wedding ceremony in front of their family and friends. Today, two men who are long-time partners—who years ago would never even have entertained the idea—will adopt a child and begin a family.... Today, a majority of Americans support marriage equality—and young people increasingly view marriage equality in much the same way as young people in the 1960s viewed civil rights. Eventually, as happened with civil rights for African-Americans, they will be a majority of voters. And they will pass laws that reflect their values and elect presidents who personify them.

It is not a matter of if—but when.

And the question for every New York State lawmaker is: Do you want to be remembered as a leader on civil rights? Or an obstructionist? On matters of freedom and equality, history has not remembered obstructionists kindly.

Not on abolition.

Not on women's suffrage.

Not on workers' rights.

Not on civil rights.

And it will be no different on marriage rights.

Awesome Cover of Angry Birds Theme Song

2011-05-24T08:58:00.000-07:00

It's so personal

2011-05-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

The state of Minnesota is facing the same budget crisis that every other state is facing, with major cuts to social services, public education, and huge unemployment numbers. The solution?

Minnesota Gay Marriage Ban Amendment On 2012 Ballot

Minnesota lawmakers on Saturday night approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, sending it to voters for their approval, the Star-Tribune reported.

Yes, apparently the best way to solve your state's budget crisis is to make sure that a portion of your citizens are banned from marrying. To be clear: gays and lesbians are not currently allowed to marry in Minnesota. This ban would be a preventative measure just in case they should get all uppity push the issue during a year of non-apocalyptic budget woes.

This directly affects two of our closest friends, Liz and Lindsay, who live in Minneapolis. They have been in a committed, monogamous relationship for fourteen years (4 years longer than Erin and I). They are high-school sweethearts, and they now have a handsome little 14-month-old boy. As they write on their family blog

Sarah Anderson, the representative from my district...sent us a note right after Jude was born letting us know that she was so excited to hear about the birth of our son and to "let her know if there was anything we needed." So, Liz took Sarah Anderson up on her offer and asked that she vote no on the amendment. So there we were, watching the lights by the representatives' names light up green or red. Looked like green was winning. Sarah still hadn't voted. And then she did. Her light turned green and I took it personally.

Yeah, I take it personally, too. Sarah Anderson, wake up and realize that you are way on the wrong side of history. How do you get to the point in your political career where you can do this to your constituents and still sleep at night? Also, how exactly does this reduce your state's deficit or create jobs?

In another post, L&L post some of the letters their friends and family sent to the Minnesota state legislator. I was particularly touched by the letter sent by Lindsay's mother

My husband and I are not residents of Minnesota, but we have three very good reasons why we are urging you to vote no on your state's proposed marriage amendment: my daughter, her partner, and their 14 month-old son. As you know, we are fighting this same battle here in California and we are hoping fervently that Prop 8 will be overturned.

When we learned that our daughter is gay when she was 17, we were shocked, sad, and most of all scared - scared that she would be discriminated against. Fourteen years later, after a great deal of learning and emotional adjustment, we see our daughter's family just as we will see our son's family should he have one some day. I dare any of you to spend a day with them and then say they don't have the same right to legalize their relationship that your heterosexual children have. They are both college graduates, have good jobs, own their own home, and are doing a fantastic job of raising their son. If only all children had the benefit of being raised in such a loving family, the world would be a much better place.

Please, take some time to learn about this issue rather than voting blindly along political lines. Don't prohibit my daughter from having the same civil right as yours.

This is what it comes down to: whether or not to deny rights to law-abiding, productive citizens. More to the point, denying equal rights to two loving parents. The basis for this denial? Nominally it's to "protect the sanctity of marriage." As if gay people getting married will cause divorces. As if Erin and I will continuously have our marital bliss endangered by gay people devoting their lives to one another. This is the weakest of weak-sauce arguments out there.

Of course, the real reason rests in a tradition of bigotry. This is how it worked with slavery, the oppression of women, segregation, modern intolerance of Muslims, and it's how it continues with gays and lesbians. Fortunately, this intolerance is weakening. The major driving force behind this sea change is the number of people who know gay, lesbian and queer people is steadily increasing as more and more people come out of the closet, and more and more straight people recognize the senselessness of the previous generations' bigotry.

Late last month, Gallup released findings from a new poll demonstrating that opposition to marriage equality is higher among American adults who say they don’t know anyone who is lesbian or gay. Check out this article about the pole results, which says

The survey, which was conducted earlier in May, found that Americans oppose legalizing marriage between same-sex couples by 57% to 40% . That margin hasn’t changed notably since a previous Gallup poll about a year ago.

When the May sample was split into those who said they have a gay or lesbian friend, relative, or coworker (58% of the sample) and those who didn’t (40%), the differences in marriage attitudes were striking.

The latter group registered overwhelming opposition to marriage equality — 72% opposed it whereas only 27% favored it...By contrast, respondents reporting personal contact with a gay man or lesbian were almost evenly split — 49% supported marriage equality and 47% opposed it.

It's just very difficult to be intolerant of a group of people when you know some of them at a personal level. It's easy to rail against those damn Mooslims when you haven't ever spoken to one. It's easy to enact discriminatory legislation against people when you don't recognize them as people.

This was certainly the case in the evolution of my own views toward gay and lesbian people. I vividly remember a sermon at my church in which the pastor said that homosexuality is a special kind of sin that God abhors more than others, because when a man loves another man it causes the men to be less a reflection of God Himself. I bought into that at the time. It was easy, because after all...ew. Just....ew! Right?

That is until I started meeting gay people. It turned out that some were annoying, but it was just because they were annoying people, not because they were gay. It also turns out that some were the most kind, funny, intelligent and interesting people I had ever met. Some of them became close friends, and still are to this day, like Liz and Lindsay. And far from being a threat to Erin's and my marriage, Liz and Lindsay's relationship is a model for us. Knowing them has protected and strengthened our marriage. And as a result, I want to protect theirs against the senseless bigotry of people like Sarah Anderson and the other MN legislators that are attempting to strip the rights of MN citizens.

The fight for marriage equality is very personal for us.

On Science Talks and the End of my Tour

2011-05-21T10:45:00.000-07:00

Thinking back to my time as a postdoc in Hawaii, I can remember waiting around for invitations to give science talks at other institutions. My thesis work had fully matured, was yielding exciting results, and was promising to lead to even more exciting research directions. On top of that, I was following the advice I had received by branching out into other projects of my own design. I was eager to go out and share my science with other astronomers.

Unfortunately, the phone rang very infrequently. I gave talks at JPL here in Pasadena, and another at the University of Washington. Both were excellent experiences and confirmed my feelings that I was ready for other big stages. I later recognized that I should have been inviting myself to various places, but at the time I was feeling discouraged that I wasn't able to book good gigs, so to speak. After all, how was I going to get recognized as a good faculty candidate? How was I going to move to the next stage if I couldn't show off what I was doing?

Well, all that changed after I got the job I was seeking. Once I became an assistant professor, the phone finally started ringing. At first I thought this was rather ironic: now that I have the job I was hoping to advertise for, I finally get the chance to advertise. But it turns out things were working as they were supposed to. As an assistant prof. I was seen as a fully vetted speaker, someone definitely worthy of inviting to other institutions. And by taking these invitations, my efforts are certainly not wasted. I have tenure to earn, and as such I'm pretty much still applying for this job. And while a few usual suspects will write me letters of recommendation, my tenure committee will solicit many more letters from colleagues at other institutions. My advertising has just begun!

A big part of professional science is communication. I spend a large fraction of my time writing papers, writing proposals, writing letters of recommendation, giving lectures and giving talks. The small fraction of the time left over is spent writing code, planning observations and actually observing, in decreasing order of time spent. As such, a large part of my future (and ongoing) job evaluation is based on my ability to not only do good science, but communicate it clearly and enthusiastically to a broad scientific, and in some cases public audience.

Hitting the "talk circuit" in astronomy is a lot like a band playing gigs. As a new, struggling act (grad student) you first start locally giving talks at your group meeting. From there you give a journal club talk, whereby you give a 30-minute presentation about a research paper you read that week. Later, you might get invited to a neighboring institution to give a lunch talk. These are informal brown-bag affairs during which the speaker gives a 30-45 minute talk on their research project, while the audience of students, postdocs and a stray prof or two much on sandwiches. From there you give your thesis defense, and perhaps a postdoc job talk or two, and in astronomy it all culminates in a 15-minute dissertation talk at the American Astronomical Society meeting.

I vividly remember my dissertation talk. At first I was extremely disappointed that it was scheduled for the last session on the last day of the Austin meeting in Jan 2008. However, since there was nothing else for everyone left at the meeting to do, I had an audience of about 500 astronomers and I gave my presentation in the huge plenary session room, the stage flanked by two 40-foot projection screens. It was awesome!

After you graduate and take a postdoctoral position, you either wait around for the phone to ring like I did, or you do the smart thing and invite yourself to institutions. This is where the connections and friendships you built in grad school start to pay off. Give your buddy at Princeton a call and ask if you can get a Wednesday lunch-time seminar talk (a Wunch Talk as they call them). Book an early flight home for Christmas and stop over somewhere on the way to give the last theory seminar talk of the semester.

All of this presenting can be for naught, or even a net-negative, if you don't put the necessary time and preparation into your science talk. This is where paying close attention to the fine details of colloquium talks pays off. Take notes on what works and doesn't work in weekly talks at your institute. Talk to other postdocs and professors and get advice on how to make clear slides, tips on organization, and pointers on how to dress, where to look (e.g. not at the screen), how to handle Q&A, etc. As I tell my students, you spend months writing a paper and a dozen people in your subfield will read it carefully. But if you give a good talk, you can reach dozens at a time from a wide variety of subfields. You should therefore but as much or more effort into your talks.

The next step up involves giving colloquia. While lunch talks are like playing local bars or doing opening acts for bigger bands, colloquia are like the big shows at downtown venues. Think the Troubador in LA, or the Great American in San Francisco (sorry, I don't know the big venues on the East Coast!). They are usually held at the end of the day on a Wednesday or Thursday, right in the heart of the week. Not the end of the week when people might take off early for a long weekend, or the beginning of the week when people are returning from weekend travel. There's usually a "tea time" before the talk consisting of Costco cookies, coffee, maybe some wine and cheese. After eating and drinking, a large fraction of the department gathers for the big talk of the week: 45-55 minutes followed by 5-10 minutes of Q&A.

Another big part of giving colloquia are the meetings you get to have with various people in the dept before and after the big talk. These are usually 30-60 minute chit-chat sessions during which you talk about your research ("tell me something you won't cover in your talk"), ask about their research, and maybe even get a lab tour or two. These are great opportunities to learn about exciting science outside your field, put names to faces, and have your face put to your name. Colloquium visits also usually involve a lunch date with the grad students, and a big post-talk dinner out at a fancy local restaurant. These dinners are where you get to hear all of the good gossip, catch up with old friends and enjoy good food and good drinks. Think: the post-show part in green room.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that these colloquia engagements are a vital part of one's career development as a young scientist. I'm learning a lot about others research, other departments' approaches to teaching, meeting interesting people in my field, gaining a lot of public speaking experience. Plus, people are learning a lot about me, my research and what I'm up to over here in Pasadena.

At the same time, all of this travel has its cost. It leaves Erin home with the kids for long stretches, I miss my kids, it takes me away from my students, and it's not easy to do research on the road. So after two solid years of monthly speaking engagements, I've decided to take a long stretch off from traveling. It's going to be a good summer home with the kids, lots of hands-on advising, weeks at a time to do my own research, and I even plan to take a 3-week vacation!

This is also a good time to look back. For my own records, if not your entertainment, here's where I've traveled in the past two years. Think of it as the JohnJohn 2009-2011 US Tour:

2009 March: Caltech Job Talk, Pasadena, CA
2009 June: Gordon Conference, Invited Speaker, Mt. Holyoke, MA
2009 Sept 10: UC Berkeley Astronomy Colloquium
2009 Sept 16: Penn State Astronomy Colloquium
2009 Oct 22: Missouri University of Science & Technology (MST), Physics Homecoming Colloquium
2009 Oct 27: MIT Astronomy Colloquium
2009 Oct 28: Boston University Astronomy Colloquium
2009 Nov 4: UC Santa Cruz Astronomy Colloquium
2009 Nov 5: Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (Stanford), Astronomy Seminar
2009 Nov 9: Keck Institute for Space Science (Caltech), Invited Speaker
2009 Nov 13: Sagan Fellowship Symposium (Caltech), Invited Speaker
2010 Jan 5: 215th AAS meeting, Oral Session Speaker
2010 Feb 23: University of Texas-Austin, Astronomy Colloquium
2010 Mar 23: Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics (UCSB), Exoplanets Rising Workshop, Invited Speaker
2010 Apr 15: University of Utah, Astronomy Colloquium
2010 Apr 21: Discover/TMT Discussion Panelist
2010 May 3: European Geological Union (Vienna, Austria), Oral Session
2010 May 15: Caltech Seminar Day
2010 May 18: Caltech Planetary Sciences Seminar
2010 July 10: Palomar Public Lecture
2010 July 22: Keck Observatory (Hawaii) Public Lecture
2010 Aug 18: Penn State Public Lecture
2010 Aug 19: Penn State Precision RV Conference, Oral Session speaker
2010 Aug 21: Cool Stars Meeting (Seattle), Oral Session speaker
2010 Oct 15: Keck Science Meeting, invited speaker
2010 Oct 21: UCLA Planetary Science Seminar speaker
2010 Oct 28: Ohio State University, Astronomy Colloquium
2010 Oct 30: Caltech Board of Trustees, public lecture
2010 Nov 10: UCLA Astronomy Colloquium
2011 Feb 10: Harvard Institute for Theory and Computation Lunch Talk (my talk starts at the 0:54 mark. I'm really proud of this talk because I had never given it before, nor had I practiced it.)
2011 Feb 10: Harvard CfA Colloquium
2011 Feb 15: Carnegie Observatories (Pasadena), Astronomy Colloquium
2011 Mar 2: Princeton University, Astronomy Colloquium
2011 Mar 3: Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ), Astronomy Seminar
2011 Mar 30: Columbia University, Astronomy Colloquium
2011 Mar 31: Hunter College, Astronomy Colloquium
2011 Apr 20: University of Florida-Gainsville, Astronomy Colloquium
2011 May 2: American Physics Society, Plenary Speaker
2011 May 4: Exploring Strange New Worlds conference, Flagstaff, AZ, invited
2011 May 16: NASA Ames, Space Sciences Division seminar

Whew! It has been quite a ride. I'm glad to say that I have no talks lined up until September. After that, maybe I'll play a show near you.

Image credit: (top) Random Physics Colloquium Image, Harvey Mudd, (middle) my blurry iPhone image during setup before the APS Plenary Session, (bottom) Group photo from the NASA Exploring Strange New Worlds conference in Flagstaff, AZ. Where in the world is JohnJohn?

First Bingo

2011-05-08T12:01:00.000-07:00

Owen: "This is my first bingo in a row!"

"Outside" for 63 points. "Ouch!" says Dad.

goobers

2011-05-01T17:53:00.000-07:00

More fun with words

2011-05-01T08:58:00.000-07:00

Speaking of fun with with words, more from The Books:

Night-night time

2011-04-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Forget Goodnight Moon, here's a bedtime book written by a tired, frustrated parent:

The cats nestle close to their kittens.
The lambs have laid down with the sheep.
You're cozy and warm in your bed, my dear
Please go the f@#k to sleep.

Friday afternoon music break

2011-04-29T13:00:00.000-07:00

Another Japanese band, Mouse on the Keys. They're on the same label as Toe.

Better parenting through science

2011-04-28T08:48:00.000-07:00

Owen's latest obsession is basketball. Scratch that, Owen's obsession has been basketball, for a while now. He practices his shot twice a day, once at school and again after school on the hoop we bought him for his birthday last year.

His practice routine is to shoot until he scores some predetermined number of points, usually 50 to 100. Like most young basketball players, he has been spending a lot of time shooting long-distance three-pointers. However, after missing several in a row he gets very frustrated, which starts a negative feedback loop that causes him to miss more shots (lack of concentration), which causes him to get more upset, etc.

Sometimes he's able to remind himself of what Kobe says: "I'll make the next one." But unfortunately, the more his shot improves, the more he's unsatisfied with anything less than perfection. I had been at a loss lately because, while I'd like to tell him that the likelihood of making a shot is just that, a mere probability, not a certainty. But this point is subtle enough to be missed by 90% of basketball players, based on my experience in pick-up games (and made-up percentages). I always shake my head when I play with people who yell at their teammates after they miss two shots in a row. "Com'mon, man!" Come on? As in, come on small-number binomial statistics?!

Anyway, this weekend when Owen was crying after missing too many shots in a row, I said "Owen, do you think we could---hmmmm, I don't know. Maybe you can't handle it..."

"Wait, what? Can't handle what?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing. I just had a cool idea about an experiment we could do. But I'm not sure you can do it if you're crying."

"What's an experiment?"

"It's something you can do to figure out how the world works."

"Oh...I want one."

"Okay, get a pen, paper and the measuring tape."

We began by marking off regular, 1-foot intervals on the "court."

Starting at 3 feet from the back of the rim...

Out to 16 feet, by the air conditioner.

I then had Owen take 10 shots at each position, keeping track of the number of made shots out of 10. Owen really liked the process of recording the distance and number of shots made after each round. However, note the "instrument failure" at 5 feet, when he nearly lost it after missing the first 3 shots. I reset the instrument ("Take a deep breath. Remember what Kobe says.") and he made 7 of 10.

Half way through, he was beginning to predict how many he'd make at the next step back. "I bet I'm going to make 3 shots at 13 feet." Then, at 16 feet, "Dad, it will be okay if I only make 0 shots or 1 shot from here!"

After we were done, I told him: "These numbers right here, these are (whispering) data." He asked, "Whoa...what are data?" I replied, "They're pieces of information that tell us about how the world works. We can plot them, model them and start understanding."
Owen typed the numbers into a text file, and I read them into IDL to make the plot above. I asked him a bunch of questions and we had a great discussion of topics including:

What kind of shots are the easiest? "3 feet or 4 feet."
Is it okay to miss longer shots? "Yeah, they're harder."
"Dad, this mark means 3, and this mark means 5, and this is 7!"
How many shots do you think you'll make at 10 feet? "Um...five!" We then checked the log sheet and high-fived.

Next weekend we'll go over how to fit a linear function of distance and compare it to an alternative model (logistic function) using Bayesian parameter estimation and evidence ratios.

Or maybe we'll just shoot around.

bieber

2011-04-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

while mar loves glee, owen loves justin bieber. i learned this the other day at breakfast when he was singing a song that i hadn't heard before. when i asked him about it he told me it was called "baby" and he'd heard it at a friend's house.

since then, we've downloaded a few bieber songs, listened to "baby" on repeat in itunes, and had multiple conversations about the biebs, including the all important conversation about daddy's "allergy" to pop music.

o (upon seeing a youtube video of bieber): is that what justin beaver looks like?

me: yup

o: he's a kid, not a beaver?!?!

me:(lmao) yup

o: oh, i thought he was a beaver who could sing. you know, like a cartoon fantasy!

-----

the next day, again about "baby"

o: do you think that justin bieber made up this song by himself?

me: i don't know, maybe. likely, he is singing words that someone else wrote

o: or maybe he had a dream about the song and just woke up singing it

me: maybe

o: how does he sing soooooo good?

Waiting on waiters

2011-04-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Over at Slate there's an excellent new tech piece on the possibility of replacing waiters in restaurants with small tablet computers, on which customers can place their orders and pay at the end of the meal:

It works like this. The company manufactures tablet computers with full-day battery lives and a credit-card reader attached. The interface is easy enough for a grade-schooler to use. You select what you want to eat and add items to a cart. Depending on the restaurant's preferences, the console could show you nutritional information, ingredients lists, and photographs. You can make special requests, like "dressing on the side" or "quintuple bacon." When you're done, the order zings over to the kitchen, and the Presto tells you how long it will take for your items to come out. Want a margarita in the meantime? Just add it on the console, and wait for the waiter to bring it. Bored with your companions? Play games on the machine. When you're through with your meal, you pay on the console, splitting the bill item by item if you wish and paying however you want. And you can have your receipt emailed to you.

For most dining experiences, I'd be in favor of such a device. And keep in mind that I worked 3 years in the food service industry when I was in high school, starting as a bus boy and working my away up through Sunday brunch server and occasional host ("this way to your table, sir."). I usually sympathize with the wait staff. But a lot of the time these days I'd rather not have to interface with a human.

Sure, ideally you'd get prompt service from a server who would be there to meet your every need. But in most establishments, particularly those with entrees less than $20, you end up playing a game of "I need you/I don't see you." I hate this game. It usually plays out with me sitting at the table, all hungry and wondering why no one has stopped by our table since the hostess sat us. I then try to make eye-contact with passing servers who then play "I don't see you," deftly averting their gaze just when I think they'll pass through my line of sight. Damn, they're good!

Most of the time I much prefer the restaurant in which you walk up to a counter, place your order and pick up your food when it's ready. This way I can know for sure that my order has been received, I can get my own water when my glass is empty, and at the end I don't have to worry about how much to tip. Granted, these types of establishments don't often provide top-of-the line dining experiences. But most of the time our family eats at these places because Erin doesn't want to cook, and/or we're out of the house and hungry right now. During these times, especially with the kids, I don't want to spend half of the time looking around the room for our server only to have to pay an additional 15% tax on the bill.

On the nights when I take Erin out for a fine dining experience, I'll go to a place with professionally-trained servers who will notice that my glass is half empty and refill it, and who know how to recommend a wine to go with my particular entree (hello Ruth's Chris!). After that type of service, I don't mind shelling out an extra 20% for a job well done.

For all other dining experiences: bring on the tablet waiters!