Kitty Cat

Yesterday I saw a man walking around Union Square with a cat on his head.

Viva Los Angeles, Day 2

This is our Pontiac G6. It was silver and got really good gas mileage.

Day 2 began with Tiger Fist and I waking up and craving pancakes. So we proceeded to have breakfast at the nearby IHOP on S. Arroyo. We had a free day left before the show, which was tomorrow night. Our plans for the day were to go to LACMA, drive along Mulholland Drive, and go to the beach.

There were lots of lights outside LACMA!

We really wanted to see the new Broad Collection at the museum, we’d been hearing lots of good things about it even though nobody seemed to have gone yet. The art inside was really good; John Baldessari, Jeff Koons, and Damien Hirst stole the show for me. It was the first time for me seeing Hirst’s work in person, he had a really great life size greenhouse with live butterflies inside it. There were some Ed Ruscha’s and a giant sized dinner table as well.

Formaldehyde monitoring for Mister Hirst.

After exiting the museum and having a horrible meal somewhere nearby, we visited the La Brea Tar Pits!

There were elephants in the tar pits

After the museum and tar pits, we headed on up to Mulholland Drive so we could really see the city. On our way up we drove through Beverly Hills and West Hollywood. It was really nice seeing the manicured trees, lawns, and hedges.

Sunset Blvd., before sunset

I believe this sign said “Welcome to Beverly Hills.” I couldn’t really tell through all the trees though, maybe that was the point

Here is Tiger Fist in a patch of grasses and plants, looking over the city

Mulholland Drive was a really nice drive, it made New York look bad even! The only downside to going all the way into the hills was that you got an even better view at the giant brown cloud looming over LA.

Power lines descending into the valley below

After we reached the end of Mulholland, we took the 405 back down and headed out towards the beach. About 45 minutes later we arrived at Santa Monica and decided to park and walk down to the beach.

The sun was beginning to set and the light was romantic

We spotted this awful looking soup and toy water creature next to the rollerblading path

After our parking-meter ran out we wanted to get down to Venice before dark, unfortunately we missed it by about 20 minutes. We headed back to Pasadena just as darkness crept up on the City of Angels.

The 105 at 35mph

We parked at the hotel and walked up to Colorado Blvd. again, this seemed to be where the action was at in Pasadena. Tiger Fist found a pair of sunglasses she liked and we ate at a tapas restaurant. The food was not as good as the previous night’s, but was still enjoyable. We took in some more sights on our walk back to the hotel.

This tagging was a phallacy!

We were still amazed by the trees and plants!

Time to go to bed as we were still a bit jet-lagged. Show time tomorrow!

Viva Los Angeles, Day 1

A week and a half ago Alana “Tiger Fist” Celii` and I returned from our trip to lovely Los Angeles, California. You could consider it a business trip since we were gone for a weekend to see Tiger Fist’s show, Nature Morte. Also featured in the show were Nicole Jean Hill and Yuki Ando.

So Tiger Fist and I left on Thursday, immediately following our French mid-term (we both passed). We headed out to JFK via the J to the AirTrain. Our flight wasn’t too delayed and we were on our way. Six hours later we hit ground and discover we are in LA; LAX to be precise. It was about 8:00pm and we make our way to Budget to pick up our rental car. Alana hadn’t driven in quite a while, so she was a bit nervous- luckily we were outfitted with a new Pontiac G6 with an automatic transmission. We are staying in Pasadena at the lovely Pasadena Inn. Our drive there takes us about 30 minutes via the 105 and the 110 which eventually turned into S. Arroyo Pkwy. Upon checking in we are both famished and decide to go find us some of the world famous SoCal Mexican food. We find a nice sports bar 4 blocks away and cheer for UCLA while eating tacos and drinking divaritas. We get back to the hotel at probably 11pm, which feels like 2am- bedtime.

There was a pool at our hotel

Our room was modestly decorated and featured an ironing board

The foliage amazed us! Even at night!

Day 2 coming soon.

HILLARY IS MOM JEANS

Find out more about Hillary.

Stjernetåke

The distribution of the major elements between vapor and solid has been calculated for a cooling gas of cosmic composition. The assumption is made that high temperature condensates remain in equilibrium with the vapor, affecting the temperatures of appearance of successively less refractory phases. The model suggests that the major textural features and mineralogical composition of the Ca, Al-rich inclusions in the C3 chondrites were produced during condensation in the nebula characterized by slight departures from chemical equilibrium due to incomplete reaction of high temperature condensates. Fractionation of such a phase assemblage is sufficient to produce part of the lithophile element depletion of the ordinary chondrites relative to the cosmic abundances. Iron-nickel alloys have higher condensation temperatures than forsterite and enstatite at all total pressures greater than 7.1 × 10 -5 atmospheres. These data lend support to the origin of the core and mantle of the earth by a heterogeneous accumulation process. The temperature difference between the condensation points of iron and magnesium silicates increases with pressure allowing the possibility of greater fractionation of metal from silicate towards the center of the solar nebula where the pressure and temperature were highest.

-Lawrence Grossman

Neptunus

“Springtime on Neptune” from the Hubble Telescope.

Voyager 2 images of Neptune reveal a windy planet characterized by bright clouds of methane ice suspended in an exceptionally clear atmosphere above a lower deck of hydrogen sulfide or ammonia ices. Neptune’s atmosphere is dominated by a large anticyclonic storm system that has been named the Great Dark Spot (GDS). About the same size as Earth in extent, the GDS bears both many similarities and some differences to the Great Red Spot of Jupiter. Neptune’s zonal wind profile is remarkably similar to that of Uranus. Neptune has three major rings at radii of 42,000, 53,000, and 63,000 kilometers. The outer ring contains three higher density arc-like segments that were apparently responsible for most of the ground-based occultation events observed during the current decade. Like the rings of Uranus, the Neptune rings are composed of very dark material; unlike that of Uranus, the Neptune system is very dusty. Six new regular satellites were found, with dark surfaces and radii ranging from 200 to 25 kilometers. All lie inside the orbit of Triton and the inner four are located within the ring system. Triton is seen to be a differentiated body, with a radius of 1350 kilometers and a density of 2.1 grams per cubic centimeter; it exhibits clear evidence of early episodes of surface melting. A now rigid crust of what is probably water ice is overlain with a brilliant coating of nitrogen frost, slightly darkened and reddened with organic polymer material. Streaks of organic polymer suggest seasonal winds strong enough to move particles of micrometer size or larger, once they become airborne. At least two active plumes were seen, carrying dark material 8 kilometers above the surface before being transported downstream by high level winds. The plumes may be driven by solar heating and the subsequent violent vaporization of subsurface nitrogen.

-Science Magazine

Svart Hull

Black holes came into existence together with the universe through the quantum process of pair creation in the inflationary era. We present the instantons responsible for this process and calculate the pair creation rate from the no boundary proposal for the wave function of the universe. We find that this proposal leads to physically sensible results, which fit in with other descriptions of pair creation, while the tunneling proposal makes unphysical predictions. We then describe how the pair-created black holes evolve during inflation. In the classical solution, they grow with the horizon scale during the slow roll down of the inflaton field; this is shown to correspond to the flux of field energy across the horizon according to the first law of black hole mechanics. When quantum effects are taken into account, however, it is found that most black holes evaporate before the end of inflation. Finally, we consider the pair creation of magnetically charged black holes, which cannot evaporate. In standard Einstein-Maxwell theory we find that their number in the presently observable universe is exponentially small. We speculate how this conclusion may change if dilatonic theories are applied.

©1996 The American Physical Society

XYZZY

YOU ARE ON THE EDGE OF A BREATH-TAKING VIEW. FAR BELOW YOU IS AN ACTIVE VOLCANO, FROM WHICH GREAT GOUTS OF MOLTEN LAVA COME SURGING OUT, CASCADING BACK DOWN INTO THE DEPTHS. THE GLOWING ROCK FILLS THE FARTHEST REACHES OF THE CAVERN WITH A BLOOD-RED GLARE, GIVING EVERYTHING AN EERIE, MACABRE APPEARANCE. THE AIR IS FILLED WITH FLICKERING SPARKS OF ASH AND A HEAVY SMELL OF BRIMSTONE. THE WALLS ARE HOT TO THE TOUCH, AND THE THUNDERING OF THE VOLCANO DROWNS OUT ALL OTHER SOUNDS. EMBEDDED IN THE JAGGED ROOF FAR OVERHEAD ARE MYRIAD TWISTED FORMATIONS COMPOSED OF PURE WHITE ALABASTER, WHICH SCATTER THE MURKY LIGHT INTO SINISTER APPARITIONS UPON THE WALLS. TO ONE SIDE IS A DEEP GORGE, FILLED WITH A BIZARRE CHAOS OF TORTURED ROCK WHICH SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN CRAFTED BY THE DEVIL HIMSELF. AN IMMENSE RIVER OF FIRE CRASHES OUT FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE VOLCANO, BURNS ITS WAY THROUGH THE GORGE, AND PLUMMETS INTO A BOTTOMLESS PIT FAR OFF TO YOUR LEFT. TO THE RIGHT, AN IMMENSE GEYSER OF BLISTERING STEAM ERUPTS CONTINUOUSLY FROM A BARREN ISLAND IN THE CENTER OF A SULFUROUS LAKE, WHICH BUBBLES OMINOUSLY. THE FAR RIGHT WALL IS AFLAME WITH AN INCANDESCENCE OF ITS OWN, WHICH LENDS AN ADDITIONAL INFERNAL SPLENDOR TO THE ALREADY HELLISH SCENE. A DARK, FOREBODING PASSAGE EXITS TO THE SOUTH.

>KILL DRAGON
WHAT WITH, YOUR BARE HANDS?
>YES
CONGRATULATIONS! YOU HAVE JUST VANQUISHED A DRAGON WITH YOUR BARE HANDS (UNBELIEVABLE, ISN’T IT?)

YOU ARE IN A MAZE OF TWISTY LITTLE PASSAGES, ALL ALIKE.

PLUGH.

Droit vs. Gauche

According to this site, if you see the dancer turning clockwise, you are more right brain dominant. If you see her turning counter-clockwise, you are more left brain dominant.

Robert Goulet

The man with the great voice and great moustache.

In memoriam: Robert Goulet