Earthquake!

You wanna know how to tell if a place is in the middle of nowhere? Wait until an earthquake hits the region, and then see what's written up about it regarding the damage. The South Island of New Zealand was hit by a magnitude 6.7 earthquake yesterday, with aftershocks as high as 6.2. The epicenter of the quake was near Milford Sound in the southwestern part of the island.
A 6.7 quake, I'd like to remind everyone, is the same magnitude as the Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles in 1994 which sent that city into complete chaos and killed 72 people. But what happened in New Zealand? Well, according to the article-

Betty's Liquor Store manager Christine Gilbert said seven bottles, worth $350, were lying broken on the floor when she arrived at work at 7.45am this morning. Another 12 bottles were on the ground but unbroken.

Which raises an even more important question in my mind: what kind of stuff are they selling at Betty's Liquor Store that it's $50 a bottle? (NZ dollars, but still.) I recall the booze as being cheap in that country...

How to Advertise a Physics Talk

If I've learned one thing about undergraduate talks, it's that the advertising for them is slightly different than what you do for the proper seminars and colloquia. The undergraduate Physics and Astronomy Club is hosting a talk this week, and here's the flier we're distributing.


I mean, everyone wants to hear about physics, but your best bet is to emphasize the free food and avoid the "pop vs. soda" controversy if you want people to show. This form of advertising worked well last time, as we ran out of pizza and set a record in attendance (I think word filtered to the graduate students). Further, these talks always start at 5:30 as that way we can snag everybody just getting out of lab at 5:15- by comparison, the colloquia at Case start at 4:15 which is completely stupid because then none of the undergraduates can attend.

By the way, I sent out an email to our list earlier today too, which consisted of the basic information, a mention of Professor Kash's nickname per us students ("Momma Bear"), and a signature "love and snuggles, The Physics and Astronomy Club." There's nothing like a warm and fuzzy feeling when thinking about a semiconductor lecture!

Golden Kiwifruit

I found golden kiwifruit in the supermarket this weekend, which made me incredibly excited. (For those of you who have never had them, golden kiwifruit are a special type of kiwi that isn't fuzzy and has a sweeter taste, and obviously looks different than the average kiwifruit.) According to the little sticker they were a "Product of New Zealand," and while they were a little mushy I was so excited to find them that I didn't mind.

Stereotypical as it is, I miss kiwifruit. They were easier to find in convenience stores than apples, and often cheaper... Not gonna lie, you don't want to know how many times I ended up just having kiwifruit for breakfast. Nor do you want to know how many wheels of brie I went through, once I realized you could get a pretty big one for NZ$3: it might've been two islands in the middle of the Pacific, but there were distinct advantages to living in a country that was essentially one big farm!

God, I miss New Zealand so much sometimes that it hurts. Am I allowed to go back yet?

Quarked: PostSecret

Today my column about PostSecret appeared in The Observer. You know, the one I scored the free books to review for?

Turns out the PostSecret book, A Lifetime of Secrets, is at #50 right now on Amazon's bestseller list and still moving upwards. It's always nice to know you jumped the bandwagon for a bestseller!

Listening Through "Drastic Fantastic"

One of my favorite current artists out there is KT Tunstall, who is a singer/songwriter from Scotland. In fact, it turns out that my music collection is more gender biased than a physics department, and Tunstall is the only female musician I keep track of so the release of her new album, Drastic Fantastic, counted as a big deal in my world.

(By the way, if you don't know who KT Tunstall is, check out Suddenly I See or Black Horse and Cherry Tree and come back after that. If you follow recent music at all, you should be able to recognize these.)

Anyway, Drastic Fantastic. I like it. I already suspect that Hold On is going to be one of those songs I play endlessly on my iPod, as well as a few others, and while I might not like all the songs individually (but honestly, does anyone ever like all the songs?) it is definitely a great album to just listen to in the background. My one problem with it, though, is how (with the possible exception of Hold On) there is no loud, upbeat, I-am-going-to-take-over-the-world soundtrack of which there were several on her first album. (The first album, by the way, is called Eye to the Telescope. Turns out Tunstall's dad is a physicist!) I admit I have high expectations in this, as Suddenly I See has the #1 spot on my most played playlist and Black Horse and Cherry Tree isn't far behind. But hey, songs take some time to grow on you, so we'll see what happens in the next few days/weeks.

Looking Back on Sputnik

The 50th anniversary of Sputnik's launch was yesterday, and everyone's favorite geek column in The Observer covered the issue. From this week's edition of "Quarked"-

I must admit though, I am a little disappointed; the future prophesied at the beginning of the space age has not come to fruition. Space has not panned out to be the exciting final frontier it was promised to be: we haven't been back to the moon since 1972, and fewer than 500 humans have ever made it into space. NASA's Space Shuttle does not have an incredible amount of modern technological prowess either, as the fleet has been used for over a quarter-century and the computers haven't been updated since 1990. Your iPod has more computing power than the Space Shuttle, and it's not susceptible to falling chunks of foam to boot!

Now lest anyone get me wrong, I will be the first to say that the human presence in space has provided us with an incalculable wealth of new science, technology, and inspiration about the cosmos. Who doesn't feel a sense of awe when looking at the latest Hubble pictures, or see the advantages to a global positioning system? It's just that when it comes to manned spaceflight in recent years, I do not think NASA has much to show for their efforts. We did the whole Apollo program for just a fraction of what the International Space Station will cost when it's finally completed, even when adjusting for inflation, and space still remains inaccessible to all but a tiny handful. If you want to be an astronaut, you will probably have a better chance hitching a ride with a private company like Virgin Galactic once they begin operations in a few years, even with an initial price tag of $200,000...

Comments? Let me know either in person or here, as I like to know how these are received.

How to Score Free Books

Got these in the mail today-
How? Here's the story: one of my regularly scheduled Internet stops on Sundays is at Postsecret, and last week they mentioned that student writers for university papers could request an advanced review copy of the book A Lifetime of Secrets, due out October 9th. I realized with a jolt that hey, I'm a student writer!, and after a few emails with a very kind publicist the book was sent with the understanding that I'll be writing a piece on Postsecret next week for The Observer. Currently I'm just envisioning it as another column for Quarked rather than a proper book review, but we'll see how things go.

So anyway, the package arrived for me today and to my surprise there was another book too! Yay! This second one is Jubilee City: A Memoir at Full Speed by Joe Andoe (an artist chap). It came out this past summer and has great reviews on Amazon, and I'm really looking forward to reading that one.

I'll post whatever article that comes out of this once it comes out, of course, and let you know how my free book turns out as well. But this entire chain of events has really made my day, as it's not every day you snag free advanced copies with a retail value of $50! Perhaps there's something to this writer thing after all...