Today I got a salad and soup and some chocolate milk from the MGH cafeteria. When the cashier rang me up, the total came to $6.66. She gasped and said “Oh no, I can’t believe I did that!” Then she made the sign of the cross and charged me an extra penny so that I didn’t owe 666. “You can’t have that karma following you around all day.”
First snow of the year
Falling gently from the sky
Big fluffy white flakes
And now I will proceed with my madness and start the Bing Crosby and pull out the (fake) tree…
If you’re here from the Glee Club Scavenger Hunt, you really want to follow this link
Tonight I went to hang out with Breath, the birthday boy, and we celebrated by going to a lecture in building 32 (aka the Stata Center). Now, before you berate us for being nerds, this was a lecture on origami given by Robert Lang and I thought it was a fine way to celebrate a birthday. I mean, we got to make party favors and everything.
The first thing he talked about was the one-cut theorem, proved by Erik Demaine, who lectured 6.046 when Breath and I took it, even though he is barely older than us. The theorem states that you can cut any shape or collection of shapes that you want out of a piece of paper with only one cut, provided that you fold it correctly. To demonstrate, we first made a five pointed star, which is rather trivial. But the complicated finale piece (which took us about an hour to fold) was the MIT Logo. (The new ugly one, not the old seal — it wasn’t that complicated.) Breath took some pictures and movies, which I’ll link to as soon as he posts them.
And then came the really cool math and artsy stuff — this guy is amazing. He explained his disk packing algorithm and TreeMaker program that allows him to create pretty much any origami shape you can imagine. The artistry of it blows my mind. There’s the fish which is all one piece of paper, no cuts. If that’s not cool enough for you, there’s also the organ player — if you pull her head, her arms move across the piano as if she was playing it. She’s also just one piece of paper. In fact, most of his stuff is one piece of paper — his website has bunch of pictures.
He said he has spent up to three days folding one piece. I was tired after spending an hour. But the best part is that this stuff is actually applicable to the real world. They’ve apparently made origami stents for heart patients that expand after you insert them. It’s also been applied to airbags and telescopes. This is by far the coolest application of math theory I have seen in a long time.
Okay, fine… we’re nerds. Berate away.
Today, not one, but two of my favorite people in the world turn 23. (Incidently, another of my favorite people turned 23 last week.)
Also of note, my favorite author turns 82 today.
And while we’re at it… Leonardo DiCaprio, Calista Flockhart, Demi Moore, Marc Summers (of Double Dare fame), Jonathon Winters, Alger Hiss, and George Patton were all born on Armistice Day as well.
http://vagina.mit.edu
And as soon as Usman throws the link up, you’ll be able to sign-up for auditions here. (Okay, technically, you can go straight to that link yourself and sign-up now.)
If you still want to pretend that the election isn’t over, the Comedy Central website has a fun Electoral Showdown puzzle. It’s surprisingly difficult — I beat the easy mode quickly enough, but have yet to crack difficult mode.
It’s official. Kerry conceded. So much for the Washington Redskins. It’s probably better this way. Bush won flat out. There’s no recount, no popular vote dispute, no sitting around for months thinking that maybe the results will change. Ultimately, there is nothing to blame it on but the American people, of which I am a part.
This country has survived it’s share of idiotic presidents. We can survive four more years of this one… at least that’s what I’m telling myself.
Today is election day. But according to my uncle the cheesehead, the race has already been decided. Since 1936, the outcome of the Washington Redskins most recent home game has accurately predicted the next president — if the Redskins win, the incumbent wins. Snopes.com confirms this. On Sunday, the Green Bay Packers beat the Redskins by a score of 28-14 at Washington. If you buy into the correlation, this means that George W. Bush will lose today.
I’m just glad I didn’t hear about this before the game, or I would have had to consider cheering for the Packers. Blech.
Of course, this is the year in which the Red Sox beat the Yankees and won the World Series. And I wasn’t even sitting in the lucky chair when they did, so clearly this is a year in which curses don’t mean anything. Thus, I’m not going rest easy until the votes are tallied. (You did vote, didn’t you?)
Yesterday, they paraded the trophy all around Boston. And I saw it — twice. Amrys has photos and movies in her recap. We spent a lot of time standing around in the rain, and before it ever started, the crowd had a food fight. My favorite tossed items were the popcorn balls that we initially thought were baseballs. Luckily, we weren’t near the people that actually did throw baseballs — apparently Pedro was hit in the head at some point during the river leg of the parade. The last I heard, no one knows who did it or why.
And now baseball season is really over. Arguably, it was over on Wednesday, but now that the parade has happened, there’s no pretending anymore.
As I look back, it was actually a pretty disappointing World Series. Four game series always are. And in this one, the Red Sox led the entire time. Outside of the sloppy first game, there was no drama, no come-from-behind rallying, and no real heroes — they weren’t necessary. The choice for MVP — Manny Ramirez — was questionable. I mean, the guy had two errors in game 1. Because the primary reason Boston won was due to lack of St. Louis being able to put anything together, the award should have gone to a pitcher. But you couldn’t really give it to Schilling, Pedro, or Lowe, because they only pitched one game apiece. My pick would have been Foulke, who pitched in all four games and earned a save and a win with a 1.80 ERA. But they don’t let me make those decisions.
I suppose that given that I had the flu during the end of it, I ought to be grateful that this series was so cut and dry. I don’t think my immune system could have handled all of the excitement if it had been like the ALCS.
Back in April, I went down to DC for the March on Women’s Lives and must have given someone my e-mail address, because now I am on both the Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice mailing lists. To top it off, during the DNC I joined the Revolutionary Women of Boston with the sole purpose of being able to go to a rally and see Hillary Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Carol Moseley Braun, and a few others speak. (Incidently, I went to the wrong room and accidently crashed a $250 a plate Emily’s List luncheon, where I saw Ann Richards and Barbara Mikulski speak as well.) But the real point is, I also gave them my e-mail address.
As a result of all this, I get about five or six e-mails a day telling me to Get Out the Vote and give various groups money so they can campaign. They mostly say the same thing — this election is important for women, your vote makes a difference, not enough women voted in 2000, etc. But the most depressing statistic (which I haven’t been able to verify) came from a Planned Parenthood e-mail. According to them, more young women voted in the American Idol contest than in the 2000 election. They made a mildly entertaining flash animation to go along with it.
If this is true, than I am disturbed.
Colossus of Rhode 