skol?

I was just watching this amazing program called Madventures. I'd never seen this show before but it now one of my favorites.  It's these two dudes from finland traveling around the world with a camera doing a bunch crazy shit.  At one point one of the dudes says, "do we have time to get kentucky fried", meaning is there time to get really drunk.  That is my new favorite foreign slang.  It's on the same level as cool ranch doritos being called cool american.

 As far as foreign travel goes, I could go for a magnum bar right now.

another scientifically over looked movie

My last entry in this series was about Ghostbusters; this time I am going to talk about Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.  This is very informal; it should have citations and references, but I'm going to skip that stuff and keep this pretty short.  This could be a really good dissertation for either a film, history, or theoretical physics class.  It's too bad I used the space in the papers on traditional and well respected sources.  I am scienetificizing pop culture.

  The movie is a wonderful study in time travel, and more importantly the idea of temporal paradox.  Throughout the movie Bill and Ted survive by messages and reminders from future versions of themselves.   Their survival leads to the reality in which Rufus and that radical Black Dude sitting on a crystal throne with sunglasses on and everyone dresses like lady gaga at the grammys.  One thing couldn't have happened without the other happening. The definition of a temporal paradox.
  One thing that is commonly missed in stories that incorporate time travel miss is that while the person is time traveling they are living, therefore aging.  If they leave san demas 1988 at 12:30 and come back a few hours later their friends had only lived for those few hours.  Bill and Ted on the other side could have spent as long as they wanted going around time collecting historical figures.  In this instance Bill and Ted would have aged one day.  If they made a habit of traveling time then going back to the moment they left those hours would add up.  In the words of Matthew McCaughnihy (sic), I keep getting older, but they stay the same age. Someone should tell Hiro Nakamura.
   I'm not going to go any deeper into this right now, this could turn into a long one; I'll think instead of writing this now I will just bother my friends as I share these ideas.

this is a good one to play on the stereo

Stereo MC's - Connected @ Yahoo! Video

I keep saying I'm dumb, but this was really fucking stupid

Yesterday I went out to eat a burger.  I was fucking hungry and in good company, this distracted me.  So we go by the bar to kill time while we were waiting for our table; I decided to put my hand in the pocket I usually put my car keys. The keys weren't in there so I checked the other pockets and they weren't there either.  I say I can't find my keys so I am going to retrace the steps we took to get to the door. No keys.  I kept walking to the car and I remembered something I have done in the past.  That thing of the past was getting out of the car and heading to my destination without taking the key out of the ignition.  That's what I did.  I left my keys in the fucking ignition.  Between conversation and food the meal was a success; but it would have been ruined if my car had been stolen.  I'm glad it didn't get ruined.

song of today

Japanese techno

a rad meeting of math and nature

Chemistry Creates Self-Stirring Liquids

• By Laura Sanders, Science News  
• January 29, 2010  |  
• 5:09 pm  |  
• Categories: Physics

In a tail wagging the dog reversal, researchers have found that simple chemical reactions can mix a solution. Usually, chemicals are stirred to enhance a reaction, but a new study finds that the reverse is also true: Simple chemical reactions can trigger fluid flows, reports a paper in the January 29 Physical Review Letters.

The research has implications for many chemical reactions, including those inside stars or when carbon dioxide stored deep in the earth encounters water, says study coauthor Anne De Wit of the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium.

De Wit and her colleagues wondered what would happen to fluid flows if the reacting liquids were left alone and not stirred. The researchers watched a very simple reaction — the neutralization that occurs between hydrochloric acid and sodium hydroxide, a common chemical base — in the absence of stirring.

The researchers carefully injected the denser sodium hydroxide into a container and then added the hydrochloric acid. The sodium hydroxide stayed on the bottom and the hydrochloric acid sat on top. Where the two reactive chemicals met, the reaction’s products — table salt and water — began to form. As the salty solution formed, it crept upward and hit the lower-density acid, creating tendrils that started to mix the solution. But the same didn’t happen below the reaction line. This difference in how the reaction product interacted with each of its chemical parents drove the mixing the team observed.

These asymmetrical patterns, the researchers say, distinguish mixing during a chemical reaction from what happens when two nonreactive liquids meet, which may look more like diffusion or other kinds of mixing.

“These kinds of beautiful patterns can be observed with very well-known reactions,” says study coauthor Christophe Almarcha, also of the Université Libre de Bruxelles. “This is quite fascinating for someone who’s done this reaction hundreds of times.”

The researchers also describe reaction-driven mixing mathematically by creating a model that predicted a pattern that looked like the real thing. The model can be tweaked to predict patterns for other chemical reactions, which would vary widely, Almarcha says.

“Our little model system says ‘pay attention,’” De Wit says. “If there are reactions, then new things will happen.” For instance, if stored carbon leaches into an aquifer and starts reacting with water, “those reactions will trigger flows, which will enhance the mixture,” she says.

Image and Video: C. Almarcha/Université Libre de Bruxelles

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/self-stirring-liquids/#ixzz0eFgKwy1d

the previous evening

I had a good time last night.  It was pointed out to me that I always spend much of my time at concerts backstage as opposed to out on the floor.  I was asked if it was because I don't like crowds, I said no I don't mind crowds.  I had fun, but after being told that I do wish that I would have spent more time in front.  I didn't really talk to any of my enduring friends and this morning I wish I had.  I feel like I missed out, but at the same time I enjoyed myself.  No real point to this, just a bit of venting.  I really do wish I would have hung out with people more; I also wish the end of the night had gone on a little longer.  I should have taped the show, it would be interesting to see how stupid my bad timing made things look.   Who cares, I had fun, the guys played well, they sold a bunch of merch, the rest of my friends who played did it really well, and the last bit of my night was nice.  There were a lot of people I didn't talk to though, and there are a few I wish I would have talked to more.  Of course there are a whole group of people who I don't really like talking to, avoiding them is a big reason I stay out of the way.  Some say this about me, but I'll say it now about some others; some people are just fucking annoying.