I work with crazy scientist people

Not really, but I do work at a large research university where professors do all kinds of smart people stuff that I'll never understand.

For example, this colloquium was included in our daily list of campus events:

(Physics Colloquium) Exotic Quantum Phenomena and Topological Phases in Spin-Orbit-Coupled Systems

ID: 53580

When: Tuesday, September 28, 2010 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Where: Physics : 1410
Event Type(s): Colloquium

The recent discovery of topological phases of matter in solid-state systems has captured the imagination of physicists around the world with tantalizing properties such as protected boundary modes, exotic electromagnetic response, and possible non-Abelian excitations, which have potential applications ranging from semiconductor spintronics to topological quantum computing and quantum sensing. 

Despite the exotic nature of these states, they may occur in a variety of conventional material systems, where the internal spin degree of freedom of the electron is coupled to its motion. In this talk, Victor Galitski, UMD, will review recent theoretical progress in understanding exotic phases and phenomena that arise in such spin-orbit-coupled systems. Basic concepts of topological insulating states will be emphasized. *** Full Abstract at: http://www.umdphysics.umd.edu/events/physicscolloquia/462-exotic-quantum-phenomena-and-topological-phases-in-spin-orbit-coupled-systems.html

Website: www.umdphysics.umd.edu/events/physicscolloquia.html

So, aside from the fact that I don't even know what a colloquium is (or how to spell it before this exact moment -  watch out WordFeud opponents!), what the hell is this colloquium even about?

I got curious and Googled "exotic quantum phenomena." According to the National Science Foundation, this has something to do with wedding cakes.

Okay, so I Googled "exotic wedding cakes" and, just for fun, used the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. I wasn't actually feeling lucky, but I figured what the hell, it couldn't hurt, right? Wrong - it most certainly could hurt. I'm not saying I'm a wedding cake aficionado (whats up WordFeud?), but damn, these cakes look like someone walked into Michael's with a blender and a family-size bottle of Ex-Lax.

Here's the very first cake they show on there. 

Seriously?

The damn pleats aren't even straight! Really? A three-tier pleated chocolate cake with some frumpy looking flowers and extra-long butt-hairs sticking out of the top is your idea of an exotic cake? 

Ok, maybe I'm not being fair. Maybe there are better cakes further down the page. So I'll use my little scroll-wheel thingy, and viola!

Wait a minute.

Your cake is in an effing basket.

And it's not even a cake. What the hell is that? You can't just take a bunch of Cherry Jubilee Andes mints, put them in a basket, and call it a cake.

Also, did I mention that this cake is in an effing BASKET?





Ahh, but I digress. Looks like I had too many non-Abelian excitations for breakfast.

We need to get back to the crux of the matter, which of course is the dangerous presence of topological phases in spin-orbit-coupled systems. After all, despite the exotic nature of these states, they occur in a variety of conventional material systems. That's right, we could see this stuff even in any of those material systems that you have laying around your house. I don't have anything to worry about, though, because I live a conventional-material-system-free lifestyle. Just say no, kids.

Well, I guess it's back to Google. At the risk of making my computer explode, let's see if we can find out exactly what a spin-orbit-coupled system looks like. Google Images to the rescue!

Hmm, so dum-dee-doo...there's a bunch of stuff I can't really understand, some cool looking 3-D graphics, a picture of Saturn, and then...

...this guy.

Who is this man of mystery? And why is he the poster child of spin-orbit-coupled systems? WHY?? I MUST KNOW NOW!

As it turns out, Masayuki Yamamoto is affiliated with the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Hamburg. His focus is on electron transport blah blah Rashba coupling and wave packets of something else.

Wait a minute. A Japanese guy? In GERMANY? Doing things that I DON'T UNDERSTAND? AAAAAAUUUGH! ACTIVATE ALL CAPS AND XENOPHOBIC TENDENCIES!! IT'S ZEE GERMANS!

But wait, I guess not all Germans are bad. Oh wait, that was about World War II? Yeah, okay, I guess the Germans were pretty bad back then. Maybe he should appeal to his Japanese roots. Or, maybe not.

I know, I know, that was like 65 years ago, and we're all happy one world now. I should probably focus more on reading the entire event description before I go jumping to conclusions and Googling my way into a corner that I can't figure out how to write out of so I can end this post already.

After all, by not reading the entire colloquium description, I missed that it would be emphasizing basic concepts of topological insulating states.

So instead, I guess I'll just leave you with this, courtesy of my friend Lindsey, whose dog can be seen below getting assaulted by Squishy (in her younger, more form-fitting years).

Enjoy, y'all!

Cut and Paste

The blog post here from Hyperbole and a Half is amazing.

I hope that one day I can make posts that awesome. Until then, I'll just have to link to them.

Nom o'clock!

Today, I had lunch. It involved the biggest apple of all time.

Here are some photos, with associated office-y stuff around for scale. Mind you, these are full-size office-y stuffs. I have no use for mini staplers and mini staple removers and mini legal pads in my life.

You'll notice a hippo hiding behind my business cards...there's a good reason for that.

Because when said hippo ventured out from behind the business cards, 

the damn apple was big enough to eat the hippo!

So, in the end, there's actually a moral to this whole story involving foam hippos, oversized apples, and blogging at work. Clearly, I didn't learn it, but I do have football-shaped Oreo cookies to make up for it.

Noms!

I'm lazy

I know, I know. It's been a while. I promise I'll quit being so busy and get on my ass again soon to put something new here.

But, I was just looking at the stats for this blog, and it's pretty awesome that I'm getting web traffic from Guatemala. I mean, I know why - it's because I'm awesome (and possibly because I have awesome friends who had the balls to get the hell outta Dodge). But probably mostly because I'm awesome.

Random Music Stuf

Oh hey.

So now that no one's in the office I got around to listening to the new Cee-Lo song, which I'm not going to embed because it's totally NSFPMA (not safe for pretty much anywhere (jeez, stay up on your interwebs acronyms, will ya?)). Not only is the song pure genius, the entire video is properly punctuated all the way through! A+, sir.

As as I was watching that, I also came across another Cee-Lo song that I can post here. Yes, I'm behind the times, what with you kids and your noise-box music changing every five minutes, but this song is also amazing and totally appropriate after last weekend.

The hook is the best part of the whole song, because the man stole my vocal cords to hit that note:

Georgia
You'll always be home to me
Georgia
I belong to you
And yes you belong to me
When they ask me where I'm from
I'm proud to say that I'm your son

Enjoy!

You're not quite Eleanor, are you?

I had a blast at my friends Chris & Mel's wedding this past weekend. It was good to be home...or roughly 100-ish miles from home. There really should be a law against the display of Auburn and 'Bama logos anywhere in the Great State of Georgia. Or at least some sort of special tax on it. Instead of a SPLOST, we could call it the Special Levy on Alabama Teams - the SPLAT tax.

But I digress. Home. Wedding. Happy people. It was fun seeing old friends, making new ones, and giving Chris a chance to return the favor of making me feel like a slightly inadequate groomsman at the wedding. We both have wives that just plan too damn well, and based on the actual weddings, make us way too damn happy. Aww, I'm being all cutsie. Please. It's 8:45pm and I still have four hours left at work - I have to pass the time somehow, and you're going to suffer for it.

Anyway, I don't really want to talk about Chris & Mel. They're cool an all, but now they're married and off to wherever, and it's back to me. Besides, Chris hasn't even updated his blog since March. It's so old, I'm not even going to link to it - and he has his own domain and everything. Fancy boy.

I decided to be a moderate badass for the weekend and see if I could rent some sort of car that was a little more upscale than the Yugo disguised as a Chevy Aveo.

Unfortunately, I don't have the magical soil that makes the crabgrass in my yard suddenly turn into flowers that bloom $100 bills, so I couldn't get that Aston Martin I really wanted.

Good thing I already got a chance to drive someone else's V12 Vanquish at the ho-tel (holla!).

Hey! Quit looking at the damn car. Back to me.

I was pretty surprised when I found that I could rent a Ford Mustang for just under $40 a day. Sure, not the craziest vehicle known to man, but the new ones are okay looking and hey, what the hell, right? Besides, Hertz's description and photo made it seem like it'd at least be a step up from the disturbingly catchy hamster mover.

Still, I had my doubts. To me, renting a sports car that's listed as one of 78 within the "Fun Collection" would probably end up being a similar experience to riding on that back bar of a shopping cart while making your way through the parking lot. When you get on it seems like it'd be a lot of fun, but then you realize that the thing has zero creature comforts built-in and you can't go nearly as fast as you'd like. And to top it all off, you've now just given up the ability to fit that 64-pack of toilet paper in the trunk.

So, I was kind of surprised when I walked up to a shiny 2011 Mustang and opened the door to find this:

I mean, damn. Leather? Creepy voice command bluetooth lady in the stereo? Functional seating for 4? Oh wait, scratch that last part. The half-inch gap between the front of the rear seats and the back of my front seat, even accounting for my ridiculously short legs, tells me that you couldn't fit a half-price baby clown in the back seat of this thing, let alone an actual person. Sure, there's a seat belt back there, but you'd have to just arrange some clothes in the figure of a person and strap them in if you wanted to try to get in the HOV lane.

This is getting boring. I forgot how I was planning on getting to this, but by far my favorite part of this car is the fact that you can set the dashboard lights, halo lights, and ambience lights (why does Blogger think I misspelled ambience?) to whatever color you want. Not just a handful of preselected colors, either, you can actually get into the damn RGBs and change them to whatever the hell you want. I made an attempt at puke green and canned corn before just settling on a nice Russian-submarine-in-battle-conditions red.

The best part? If you try to change any of these settings while you're driving down the road, creepy voice command lady turns off your radio and yells at you for trying to fiddle with things while you're driving. Literally, everything turns off and she says something like, "For your safety, you cannot access this function while driving. Please stop the vehicle in a safe location in order to continue. Otherwise I'll effing cut you. Please shut the hell up and I'll give you the commands from now on."

I was going to leave y'all with a wonderful recording of my new friend Madam Sync, but alas, the interwebs have failed me tonight. So instead, I'll leave you with a classic documentary chronicling some guy's dilemma with local wildlife and leave you to pontificate on the intersections of and conflict between man and nature. Enjoy!

Let's get FOXY!!!!!!!!!!

At the risk of this blog becoming a wasteland of stupid emails that I get, I couldn't resist sharing another message we just got from the semi-literate folks at our old gym/pit sweat depository/sketchy place sending 587346.99% APR credit card offers out of its back office (no offense to legitimate hawkers of 587346.99% APR credit cards).

Further ado is probably appropriate here, but it's the end of the day and I'm only running at about 80%, so here goes:

Let's get FOXY!!!!!!!!!!

OK- so school is almost back in session, the days of summer are slowly coming to an end and your daily routine is slowly creeping back in!! Wow - time does fly!!

So let's mix it up a little and get FOXY!!!
Yes! Foxy!! Foxy Fitness will add a some excitement to your life!
Come to our seminar on September 16th at 7:00pm and find out how we define "foxy"!!
We will discuss things like false dieting, metabolism, strength training and will reveal some serious Myth Busters!!

Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)!!!! Do what now????

Yup - all that and much more!!

You want more free stuff? Ok, ok: Participate in the seminar and give us the contact information for three of your friends, that you think could use a little "foxy" in their lives and receive a free [GYM NAME] T-Shirt.

Give us a call or stop by the front desk to sign up for Seminar!

Cheers,
 The [GYM NAME] Team

Le sigh.

It's weird. I feel like they swooped in and replaced regular exclamation points with rogue, anti-exclamation points that look exactly like regular exclamation points but just make me want to vomit into my lap, and then I get depressed that these exclamation points are making me reject the lunch I just paid $6.17 for (and I didn't even get chips!).

Maybe the "Thermic Effect" of my food actually caused the vomiting. (TEF)!!!! Man, I actually need to go to this seminar. Lord knows what the long term effects of (TEF)!!!! could be! And hey, I could definitely use a little "foxy" in my life.

If you're still not convinced, here's the kicker. You can't afford to not go to the seminar, because it's not just any ordinary Foxy Fitness seminar. (Do what now????) Oh no, it's a Seminar.


That's right folks, a Seminar with a capital S!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! See y'all on the 16th!


Cheers,
the words about stuf team (TEF)!!!!