Google Is Plotting to Take Over the Solar System

We’ll get back to the art some time. I promise. It’s just that things are actually happening to me these days, so I have some current content that takes precedence.

For example, I have recently uncovered a new dimension to the growth of Google: outer space. There now exist both Google Moon and Google Mars, along with the more famous Google Earth. Like their terrestrial counterpart, the two new websites offer complete maps of their respective heavenly bodies, although they are less helpful when trying to find, say, good hotels near Tycho Crater. However, the Mars maps come in Visible, Infrared, and Topographic modes, which is more than Earth can say, plus they have easy directions to help you find surface features like canyons or spacecraft.

This is all a lot of fun… but where will it end? Google’s avowed motto is “Don’t Be Evil;” let’s hope they stick to it.

Again, What the BLAP?!?

This weekend I visited the University of Notre Dame to see just what their graduate chemical engineering program has to offer. The campus overall has a serious old money feel about it, what with its gilded dome and numerous dual-purpose religious/football works of art (i.e. Touchdown Jesus, First Down Moses, and Fair Catch Father Corby). And the bookstore is very classy indeed, as you may have heard. The problem that I seem to be encountering, however, is that these visits increasingly do not teach me anything new about the program beyond what I learned from their website. Or at least that’s how it seems. Maybe I’m actually getting some kind of travel fatigue.

The other problem is this annoying pattern of bad weather arriving upon my return from a grad school visit. This time, I was sitting in the South Bend airport, and once again my mother informs me of some storm that blew through Nebraska and Kansas, dumping snow and canceling school (well, in Nebraska at least). What’s more, there was a second front on its way in Colorado, which could spell serious trouble for my expedition to the Black Canyon.

Coming into Kansas City, I was treated to the greatest amount of turbulence I have yet encountered. It was kind of like being on a big wooden, rickety roller coaster, but with soft drinks and little snack packets. Then I had to drive through some sleetoid precipitation most of the way back from the airport. Luckily, it didn’t really freeze, but since it was night, I (along with most of the other drivers on the interstate) still didn’t really feel comfortable driving 70 mph. After finally getting back to Lawrence, I conferred with Dana the Viking about our expedition, checking road conditions and weather forecasts with the Internet.

Now, the Prius is good at many things, but four-wheel drive is not one of them. In fact, I’ve never really tested the Prius in snowy, mountainous conditions, and Dana the Viking’s rear-wheel drive Volvo was certainly not going to do better. So, feeling very uncertain about driving in a small car on slick mountain roads, we cancelled the expedition, discouraged.

I’m pretty bummed right now. If anyone is still in Lawrence and wants to hang out this week, I’m basically available, aside from spending tomorrow with my grandparents, who have just returned from Egypt, and my cousin Brian, who had a birthday today, and his family. Other than that, I guess I’ll be reading and working on my Plant and Environmental Safety project. What an anticlimactic final spring break of my college career.

This better not happen again when I come back from Champaign at the end of the month.

What the BLAP?!? I Leave Town for a Few Days and THIS Happens?

This weekend I visited the University of California-Berkeley to see just what their graduate chemical engineering program has to offer. Answer: a lot of well-funded, well-equipped labs full of people who are very excited about what they are doing. That includes both grad students and professors. Also, beautiful campus scenery--lush forests (probably redwoods) standing right there, between buildings. And of course, there’s the matter of their superlative reputation. But as it turned out, the visit wasn’t the most interesting thing to happen that weekend.

Waiting in the Denver airport on my way back from Berkeley, I received a phone call from my mom. She had news of some sort of high winds disaster in Lawrence Sunday morning. Maybe it was tornadoes, maybe just high winds. The information wasn’t exactly clear. She also had some unclear reports of shingles or roofs or pieces of roofs coming off of KU buildings and maybe no classes on Monday.

I was quite concerned, so after finishing that conversation, I called my flatmate, Magic Steve, to ask what was up. He reported that our house was fine and, in fact, most of the town was fine, but our house also didn’t have electricity. Sure enough, classes were cancelled for Monday, and yes, there were pieces of trees down everywhere. But at least I could stop worrying about my residence.

As I later learned, Lawrence was hit Sunday morning by a microburst, which apparently is a region of high (as in, 70 or so mph) winds that can form at the base of thunderstorms. Don’t feel bad if this is Greek to you; I certainly had never heard of this, the ball lightning of windstorm phenomena, before Sunday. I still don’t really understand what it is. And actually, my house had a little damage--one of my windows blew out. But mostly the storm just brought us a day off from school (probably only the third time classes were cancelled in about twenty years) and a night of that odd sense of togetherness and cooperation that only shared natural disasters can bring.

If you want to know more, the Lawrence Journal-World did a much better job of covering everything than I could.

Rip Van Winkle

On the night of February 1, 2006, I fell asleep.

On the morning of March 4, 2006, I woke up. There was a black Accupress binder next to my bed, so I took it with me when I stepped in my car and drove through the morning rain, grey skies lowering. Upon arriving at the Kurata Thermodynamics Laboratory, I presented this binder to Dr. Howat, who gave some acknowledgment and wrote my name down on a list.

I only have vague memories of the period in between those two events, so I am led to the conclusion that I slept the whole time. I do remember some of my dreams, though.

Most of the time I was in a room with computers lining the walls and windows covering most of one wall. The windows could have been nice, except that instead of looking out over a twinkling cityscape, or the ocean, or a forest, or a mountain, they faced a brick wall. And at night, the wall was just a shapeless black.

It was night most of the time in my dream. I don’t remember seeing much sunlight.

There were other people in this room, but they didn’t say much. I recognized most of them, although they only seemed to be chemical engineers I know. Not the usual mash-up found in dreams, where cities are overlaid, and a person often has one appearance and a different personality.

One time in a dream I found myself getting off a plane in some Blade Runner city: wet, drizzling rain, dark skies but for the light of skyscrapers. Like one of those mash-ups, it suddenly turned into Seattle as soon as I saw the Space Needle on the skyline. I spent quite some time in Seattle, and it was enjoyable, but for the knowledge that I would have to return to that room all too soon. And even in Seattle, I found a binder shackled to my leg, dragging me back to my hotel room to scribble formulas in it for hours.

In downtown Seattle, I found a musical fountain. The jets of water sprayed in time with whatever was playing, which happened to be Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” when I stopped by. It was some sort of orchestral arrangement, not the organ version that I love best, but a decent effort nonetheless.

The fountain was the sort of place where, in the summer, children might run around haphazardly, shrieking with glee as the cool water drenched them. But it was cold and a little windy when I visited, so the fountain played alone.

But on the plane that carried me away from Seattle, something magical happened. I was flying over Idaho (sometimes called ID) when the clouds parted and breathtaking landscapes were revealed below. And even though I knew I would soon return to the room for days more of toil, I was able to let that fact go for a time, leaving me at peace. My cares having departed, I gazed at snow-covered mountains and rippling watersheds that wrinkled the Earth below.


Even as I left the mountains and crossed over starkly flat plains, I continued to be amazed, because it seemed that no people lived in this vast area at all. Could such large areas of wilderness still exist in the Lower 48 states?, I wondered. It looked more like Antarctica than America.

Then, at the edge of more mountains, I saw a road. A single scratch of habitation existing in what many would call a wasteland. Many, but not myself; I have always found snow comforting and beautiful. This is no doubt due to my North Dakota childhood, which taught me many ways of using snow for recreation.

The snow cover on the mountains decreased with my latitude, as did the sun’s height in the sky, until finally I found sunset over Colorado. And so the sky dimmed, and my wondrous visions of natural beauty ended. But I knew the images that remained in my mind would shield me from the troubles I still had to face. And it is perhaps this assurance, this hope that I remember most from my strange dream.