Science for the hard of thinking

I went to a lecture on quantum computers last Thursday, given by a famous Canadian molecular chemist.* Despite being a professional computer scientist, I know fuck-all about quantum computing, and I have to admit that this hour and a half did little to change that. I mean, I know probably 85 or 90 percent of the words this guy used, but I don't think he was using them right. I felt like I was listening to someone read Lorem Ipsum while they flipped through Powerpoint slides of B-2 bomber schematics.

I was in good company. Of the fifty people in the room, only one seemed to be following along, and he was clearly a vampire, which I consider cheating. (Tall and very thin, pasty and pale, indeterminate age, hair like Bill Compton, you do the math.) Two others recognized a concept and asked a question, but they were obviously grasping and we pitied them.

Computer scientists generally don't know much about quantum computing, even though it's supposedly our future, which makes it fun to bring up in faculty meetings and watch everyone try to fake it. In fact, the only people who know anything about this seem to be physicists or molecular chemists.

In spite of all that, I quite enjoyed the talk. Freed from comprehension, I was able to focus on the trivia I found interesting, and marvel at what science has become.

First, I think we should establish -- and I can't stress this enough -- that quantum anything makes no sense whatsoever, and quantum computing is no exception. I felt a lot like someone trying to imagine what bathrooms would be like if we were built inside out. So even when I found a familiar concept it was immediately inverted and set on fire. Under water. It sounds like quantum computers will not calculate things so much as tell us all the things we could calculate if we had that kind of time, and then pick the correct answer from a set that never existed.

I did get a few interesting (to me, at least) tidbits, though I couldn't begin to tell you how they relate to the topic, or even what the topic was, if I'm being honest. It all started with a thing called a neutron interferometer. The idea is simple really (clearly a lie, but always how they start these things).

This apparatus is machined from a single crystal of silicon that costs north of 50,000 Canadian dollars. After months of machining, it is practically guaranteed not to do anything useful. (Image from here)

First you take a single crystal of silicon** about the size of a football, and machine most of it away. The idea is to get exactly parallel surfaces that are precisely spaced and smooth to the atomic level. Since this is plainly impossible, almost none of them work. Apparently this guy has a cabinet full of these things that are good for nothing, but much too expensive to throw away. The fun part is that no one tells the grad student spending two years of his or her life creating this thing that it won't work. They let it be a surprise.

Recently someone invented a machine to address this issue of non-workiness. The part I remember is that it uses a single cut facet of a large diamond to grind away 6-8 angstroms (ten-billionths of a meter) of silicon on each pass. After (I assume) about a millennium, you will have a working interferometer. I got a mental picture of someone's engagement ring stuck in this gigantic laser-driven Dr. Evil death ray, but that may not be exactly what it looks like. If it works out, they expect the graduate student suicide rate to decline precipitously.

As you can plainly see in Figure 1, the hypothetical neutron does or does not go one way or another as it passes through each  blade. Once the non-existent particle passes through the apparatus, assuming it has possibly taken the path we have not observed until now, we will be able to tell something. I guess. Figure 2 shows the graph generated by the passage of the midi-chlorians through the aether. (Image from here)

The idea behind this thing is that you shoot an individual neutron (a ridiculous idea to begin with) at one end. The crystalline structure will cause the neutron wave form to deflect one direction or another. Because a magic crystal is stuck on one path, you will be able to tell something about which way the non-existent neutron went once you look at it and it starts to exist. Or something.

One more fun fact. These things are crazy sensitive to vibrations and temperature change, so they spent six years and a crap-ton of money building three spring-mounted nested rooms and a special table to eliminate virtually all external interference. About the time they finished, someone figured out that if you just add a couple of extra fins to the crystal thing, noise wouldn't be a problem, so the room is unnecessary.

The guy also talked about some lattice of carbon and chlorine atoms that I think was supposed to be the computer part. There was something about stable free radicals and electron spins effecting nuclear spins, but by then I was feeling lightheaded and it all gets a little fuzzy. I never did figure out how that part connects to the neutron cannon we started out discussing.

I probably shouldn't admit it, but I love this part of my job. Every day I get to talk to people who are doing crazy shit with government money that not a hundred people on the planet understand. There is not much of it that you can do in your garage anymore, and most people think the work is preposterous, but if we ever get our flying cars it will be because of these guys.

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* I know, contradiction in terms, right?

** The stuff that Star Trek pizza monster was made of, not the stuff they put in boobs.

Nerdvana (Part 2)

I think we left our story after the launch of Endeavour was scrubbed on Super Bowl Sunday morning, and the wife and I had suffered the drive from Hell back to our hotel. My head hit the pillow about 8:00 am, and I was aware of nothing until almost noon. We had scheduled an extra day in our trip because of the shuttle's 70% scrub rate, so we had one more chance to see a launch. The next attempt was scheduled for 4:15 Monday morning. Because of weather and other events at Cape Canaveral, we knew this would be the last attempt for a while.

Once we were convinced that we were not going to sleep anymore, we got ready and went to meet an old colleague of the wife's who works at Patrick AFB. After a pleasant visit, and a "just what the doctor ordered" breakfast at Breakfast at Lilly's in Satellite Beach, we decided we might be able to squeeze in a one hour nap before the Super Bowl. In what we have come to think of as typical JD style, my friend had invited us to watch the game at his home, despite the fact that he didn't really know us, they had a house full of company, and they were both going to have to be up all night for the second night in a row. Their hospitality was over the top (including a place for another quick nap after the game), we had a great time, and of course the game was awesome. I also had the unusual experience of watching a Super Bowl sober, knowing that we had another long night ahead.

Many of the actual VIP's had gone home after the previous night's scrub, so JD and his wife had a chance to give us a different experience than we had the night before. We had the great good fortune of riding with JD, whose pre-launch ritual is to ride around the base talking to people and watching some of the other prelaunch rituals. Our first stop was what he calls the Astro-parade, where the astronauts get in their big Airstream van and ride to the launch pad.  There is something cool and sort of "Forest Gumpish" about witnessing things in person that we have seen all our lives on TV. The astronaut van was cool like that.

The next stop was the airstrip, where we watched a couple of other astronauts take off in a T-38 on the pre-launch weather flight. This is also where the shuttles that have to be piggy-backed in get unstacked from the top of their 747 carrier, so we got to see the tower where that happens.

After riding around some more until we were well and truly disoriented, and had talked to approximately every person standing watch somewhere at Kennedy Space Center, we returned to the Saturn V center to await the next attempt. The weather had been cloudy all day, and we were not optimistic. Fortunately, our naps were holding up, so we were not nearly so tired as the night before.

About an hour before launch, the weather started to clear. It was not crystal clear by launch time, but apparently clear enough. After listening to the traditional roll call of department heads and "go" responses, we heard the Director say, "You are go to launch Endeavour." When the message was relayed to the crew, you could hear the excitement in their voices. A spontaneous cheer went up from the crowd at Banana Creek, which I'm sure was echoed at all the other viewing sites.

The launch itself was magical. The shuttle was behind the launch platform from our perspective, so the first thing we saw was a tremendous brightness when the main engines started. It got even brighter when the solid rocket boosters lit. They tell me it's brighter than the sun, and I don't doubt it. The shuttle came into view about a second later. If you hold your fingers at arm's length about an inch or so apart, that's the apparent size of the shuttle from three miles away. It was small, but clearly visible. I can't describe the sight of that little thing riding an enormous column of flame. It's just one of those things you have to see to understand. The sound hit us about fifteen seconds later, and just kept getting louder. I found I was quietly repeating the word "go" under my breath.

A shuttle launch doesn't even begin to compete with the best that nature can do, but it is impressive, especially if you engage your brain a little. When I heard, "Endeavour is now traveling 6000 miles per hour, altitude 65 miles and 200 miles downrange," it was really hard to reconcile with the fact that I could still clearly see the glow from the main engines. It really was a special moment, and one I'm glad I got to experience.

JD got us through the crowd and back to his home in no time, and we were in our hotel by 5:30. After a few hours sleep, we started the long drive home, exhausted but happy. The wife commented on the drive home that she couldn't think of a better way to spend a weekend, or better people to spend it with. I couldn't agree more.

Nerdvana (Part 1)

It has been a dream of mine to watch a manned rocket launch since I watched the Gemini and Apollo missions on TV as a kid, but it seemed like a dream that was destined to go unfulfilled. Not that I couldn't make it happen. It just seemed like there was never a good time, and they usually don't go off on time, and it's crowded, and on and on and all the reasons we use for putting off the things that we will someday wish we had done.

That's how it stayed until a few months ago, when I got back in touch with my old high school friend JD. After a distinguished military career, JD landed a high-ranking position at Kennedy Space Center, and he invited us down to watch a launch of the space shuttle. Realizing that this was likely to be my last chance to see a big launch, I jumped at the opportunity. Endeavour was scheduled to lift off Super Bowl Sunday at 4:35 am, carrying the Tranquility module (and the Colbert treadmill) to the International Space Station. We decided to drive down instead of trying to fly, mostly for the flexibility, and the ability to carry whatever the hell we wanted without paying for a bunch of checked bags. It's about a twelve hour drive from here, not much further than a trip to see the in-laws.

JD called a few days before the trip to talk over the plans, and invited us to a KSC reception on Friday night. Knowing that it would be close on timing, we left the house early, dressed in our party clothes. We would have made it on time, too. I realized the flaw in our plan when we passed the sign that said "Now Entering Eastern Time Zone." We were going to lose an hour that was not accounted for in our schedule. Luckily, my car is capable of going faster than it had been going.  We were almost back on track when we hit a ginormous traffic jam in Gainesville, involving three separate accidents on I-95.

Anyway, we got to the reception about a half an hour late, but didn't really miss anything. We located JD, met his wife and her cousins, and proceeded to shake off some of the road dust. Within about 15 minutes I had a chance to see JD standing at the front of the room with the Director of KSC and the Director of NASA talking about what a great asset he was.  This was when I first realized that my friend might not be just another NASA employee. About 10:00 we realized we had been up for about twenty hours in a row, made our apologies and drove the half hour to our hotel.

After a decent night's sleep, we had a quick breakfast and made the hour drive to the KSC Visitor's Center. We had a couple of hours to kill before the VIP* briefing, so we toured the exhibits and rode the shuttle launch simulator, which I have to admit is pretty cool. JD delivered the first third of the briefing, and I was impressed. His particular blend of drive, leadership, humor and love of people seem to fit his new life perfectly, and spending time with him was at least as much fun for me as the rest of the trip.  While JD was always (mostly) serious and dedicated about doing something real with his life, he was not really a star at much of anything in our high school, and I think some people there would be surprised that he has matured into a proverbial "leader of men." It was fun to see him work a room of 400 people with the skill of a politician, but without the lying. I could definitely see a political career in his future. I know I would vote for him.

We had a few minutes after the briefing before they closed the launchpad, so we hopped into JD's car and hauled ass out to see the shuttle. While we weren't exactly standing on the gantry, we were much closer than I had imagined we would get. I could clearly see "Endeavour" printed on the side of the orbiter. We only had about five minutes to gawk and take pictures, but it was definitely one of the highlights of the trip. We drove past one of the big crawlers on the way out to the pad, which was also pretty cool.

Knowing that sleep would be hard to come by from here on out, we drove back to the hotel for a nap. We slept for about an hour, and spent two more lying in bed wishing we were sleeping. We had a light dinner and headed back to KSC about 10 pm.

The next few hours were the hardest of the trip. We had been standing or walking for much of the day, and it was getting to be past our bedtime. We wandered the Visitor's Center, watched the IMAX movie, shopped for warmer clothes and looked for a place to sit until it was time to queue for the bus. We stood in line for about an hour for the relatively quick trip to the Saturn V Center at Banana Creek, where we would watch the launch. We arrived with about two hours to kill until launch time.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the Saturn V building, though I don't think any shot I could take would do justice to the scale of the building, or the giant rocket suspended overhead. I primarily would like pictures of all the exhausted people wandering around or slumped over or lying on any available surface, so I could have some way to remember how tired we were. It looked like an airport after everyone has been snowed in for a couple of days.

The weather was so clear that I wished for my telescope when we first got to Banana Creek, but within an hour a low overcast had moved in and the launch was in jeopardy. We listened as launch control changed the launch status from 80% go, to 60%, to 30%, to red, back to green, back to red, green and red again. They scrubbed the launch a little after 4:20 am. By that time we were just happy to be able to get back on the bus for a short nap.

The drive back to the hotel was a nightmare. It was fairly easy to get out of the VIP parking lot, and we got away from KSC with no real trouble. About a mile and a half later we hit a solid line of cars that was barely moving. We spent almost two hours traversing the next two miles, and it was nearing 8:00 when we pulled into the parking lot of our hotel. Trying to stay awake, alert and engaged on the drive home reminded me of my worst days on the road, and it took all the will I could muster not to drift off to sleep.

This turned out to be the low point of the trip, and things steadily improved from this point. But thinking of that Sunday morning drive has made me too tired to continue. I will have to take up the second half of the trip later.

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*There are around 4000 VIP tickets for a given shuttle launch. The experience is definitely superior to what you can buy tickets for on the Internet, but it's not exactly a night in the Lincoln bedroom.

After the Crash

So, we watched A Crude Awakening last night. I probably should have learned my lesson from reading the food book, but I'm trying to anticipate the right moment to convert my 401K to canned goods and ammunition. The film gives a pretty early impression of being a Chicken Little hatchet job by people who hate America,* and that impression never completely one hundred percent goes away. But there's math, and graphs, and this dude that sort of reminds me of Ross Perot, with a cartoon voice and a bunch of graphs, who apparently predicted that America would stop being the world's top oil producer in about 1970.

People thought he was a nut job. Actually, he kind of seemed like a nut job. But he was right. And intercut between some hilarious old films about how great oil is for civilization, a bunch of old guys with chicken necks and pretty good credentials lay out some pretty disturbing facts. The two most disturbing facts are that oil production is very unlikely to ever increase significantly ever again, and that demand will grow by almost an order of magnitude over the next 20 years. Oh, the third disturbing thing is that the old film strips are right -- practically everything in our modern civilization is built on the assumption that oil is plentiful and cheap.

So, great. I'm not convinced that it's time to cash out, but I may start building some shelves for the canned goods.

Happy New Year!

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* This group includes liberals, environmentalists, vegetarians, anyone who wears sandals, democrats, socialists, gays, muslims, people from New England and the poor.

Free Spirit!

I've been fascinated by the Mars rovers ever since the Number Five-looking things made it through Martian Civil Defense and landed on the red planet. I know the word "hero" gets tossed around a lot these days, but if these little robots aren't heroes then neither is the person who calls 911 when they see someone in danger.

The nerds at JPL couldn't be any happier than I am that the rovers have lasted this long, or more worried about little Spirit getting stuck. So I've been following the effort to free the little guy for the last couple of months, keeping up with the rovers on Twitter, and generally irritating the crap out of my wife by telling her how much the right front wheel rotated on the last test, or making her look at pictures of what look like random areas of New Mexico or Utah.

So, does she ignore me, or tell me to grow up or get aggravated because I spend so much of my attention focused literally millions of miles away? Well, maybe a little. Can you blame her? But mostly she listens patiently, and looks at the stupid pictures, and then buys me this for Christmas.

So boys and girls, my Christmas wish for you is that you have (or find) someone who will give you things that make you happy, even when they know that they will have to look at (if not step on) the little pieces all over the house for months afterward. That's a real hero. Did I mention that she bought me a telescope as an engagement present to reciprocate for her ring? To be fair, I think my ex-wife gave me potholders or something the last Christmas we were together, and I gave her an emerald ring. I guess things average out.

Merry Christmas to me! Oh, and to the rest of you too, I guess.

At home with Dorkfinger

So, I was browsing xkcd, the comic strip for people who think Dilbert is too artistic or not geeky enough, when I ran across this strip:



First sad thing: I think this is hysterically funny. Physics and James Bond are natural bedfellows, like firearms and alcohol.

Even more telling was what happened when I showed The Wife this strip. A discussion ensued on the exact nature of the centripetal/centrifugal debate, since we were born just the right number of years apart that we were told different versions of this story in school. This kicked off two hours of extensive Web searching, discussion and debate on rotational forces, velocity vectors and the best examples for explaining the concepts involved. If I hadn't been so late for work I'm sure we would have ended up at the whiteboard with something tied to a string on the end of my fish scale.

Wocka Wocka

It has been called to my attention on several occasions recently that I am, in fact, a nerd. Or a geek, there is some dispute on the exact nature of my condition, but I am definitely some flavor of poindexter. This was confirmed today for the eleventy-millionth time when a student pointed me to this:

and I determined that it was possibly the coolest thing I have ever seen. That's right, it's a Pac-Man game built from Roombas. And the laptop he is running it on looks just like my oldest one, which needs to be repurposed, anyway. This could get ugly, though I suspect the cats would enjoy it immensely.

The part that will make some of you jealous, and the rest of you* sigh with pity at the way I like to spend my ever-diminishing spare time and disposable income? Part of my research is ways to make computing physical, so I could potentially kinda-sorta say this is work-related.

It's probably going to take me a while to gather the materials and clear time in my schedule. If I am in your house in the next few months and you own a Roomba, you might want to check for it after I leave. I'm just saying. In the meantime, Ida brought us unexpected clear weather for the next few days, so I guess I had better drag out the telescope again. This nerd business is an around the clock occupation

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* I'm pretty sure The Wife is a member of that second group.

Nerd Alert!

Okay, let's establish up front that I'm as much of a nerd as the next person. I like science toys. I have a telescope. I take off work when a new Star Trek movie comes out. (Everyone does that, right?) I saw Alien in the theater the day it opened because I had read about it in Omni magazine. I was distraught when Battlestar ended, and I'm heartbroken that Disney is buying Marvel. I bought a copy of X-Men #1 the week it came out.

But I had to prostrate myself in unworthiness -- Wayne and Garth style -- when I saw the e-mail announcing the ping pong tournament at the big Physics Block Party this afternoon at my university. I mean, it's not so much the ping pong, though given the fact that probably half the physics students are Chinese, I expect the competition to be fierce. No, it was the paragraph describing all of the other "much good food and fun competitions" that will be taking place that showed me how real nerds pass a good time.

"The food will include free pizza (at 3:30), sodas, homemade brownies, and LN2* ice cream with various mixins for flavors. The competitions will include the Ping Pong Tournament (sign in by 3:30), Guitar Hero (throughout), the notorious Physics IQ test (due by the end), and the Maniacal Laugh Contest (starting at 4:00)."

The message ends, "This should all be fun." Perhaps the saddest part, especially for my wife who has to take me out in public, is that it all does sound like fun. If I weren't thirty years older than everyone who is going to be there, I would probably show up. I mean, hey, what's more fun at a party than liquid nitrogen? Plus, I think I could hold my own in the maniacal laugh department.

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Liquid nitrogen ice cream. A better example of nerd food preparation is hard to find.

The Eagle has Landed

When I started college for the third time at the age of 32 I was required to (re)take a number of introductory courses, despite the 100+ credit hours I had already accumulated in my previous academic wanderings. Which is how I found myself in freshman English Composition with 20 or so people who still thought drinking 'til you puked was sexy. We were introducing ourselves on the first day, and I had just finished a summary of myself which I'm sure was both deep and engaging, when the girl next to me turned and exclaimed, "Wow! You were alive when they landed on the moon!"*

Yes, I was alive when they landed on the moon. In fact, I was nearly six feet tall, my voice was changing, and I was beginning to feel ways about stuff. I watched Apollo 11 take off, I watched them land, and I watched a grainy and semi-transparent Neil Armstrong step off the ladder and speak the words that caused 750 million people to turn to those closest to them, tears in their eyes and ask, "What'd he say?" I can still remember staring up at the moon, trying to wrap my mind around the idea that there were people standing there.




I guess this is one of those events that will forever separate those who remember it from those who don't, like Pearl Harbor, JFK's assassination or the
premier of American Idolfall of the Berlin Wall. Like those other events, the moon landing forever changed how humans viewed themselves and their subsequent experience, and the world was in some way fundamentally different from the way it was the day before.

It is almost impossible to convey the audacity of the act. It had been less than a decade since people had sent the first object of any kind beyond our atmosphere. Most Americans had never flown on an airplane and no one was really sure what the moon's surface was like. There were knowledgeable people who believed the LEM would sink into a powder many feet thick and never been seen again. Less than a year before the landing, humans had never laid eyes on the far side of the moon, or seen the Earth from a distance. If they tried to do this again today, they would never even get the contracts awarded in the time it took to develop the entire Apollo program.

These three men took off on a dangerous adventure in a largely untested craft because -- well, wouldn't you? I know I would have. It was the first time people had ever set foot on any solid surface other than the Earth. It was crossing a boundary that had never been crossed in Earth's three billion year history, and that could never be uncrossed. It is estimated that one fifth of the world's population watched on about one-twentieth of that number of televisions , and it was all anybody talked about. And I don't mean all they could talk about like Michael Jackson. I mean as soon as someone walked in the door of their home or their job or a restaurant they would ask how it was going, or if there was anything new.

I watched every launch of every American spacecraft from Mercury 9 through the first handful of Shuttle launches. I grieved every cancellation of the later Apollo missions, and mourned the subsequent loss of exploratory manned spaceflight. Because let's face it -- what they have done with the Shuttle and the Space Station is certainly important, but it's not exploration.

I still follow the space program pretty closely, and I check on the Mars rovers every now and then. They are still wandering around up there, more than 5 years after their warranty expired, doing important science and taking cool pictures. And I'm sure I will be watching the return to the Moon and/or the first manned trip to Mars, on the off chance that I'm still around by then. But for me, none of it could ever match the feeling I got hearing Armstrong's voice crackle out of the speaker on our big console television, "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed."

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* I think I'm beginning to understand why my first paper in that class was about the best method for committing suicide. I got an A+.

Robot Birthday

Yesterday it was my birthday. I hung one more year on the line.* It ended up being sort of a robot-themed day, partially through coincidence, if you believe in such things. I had decided while watching trailers before seeing Star Trek that I wanted to see the new Terminator movie on my birthday (NERDS!!!). I did not know that my wife had already bought me this:

Inevitable, really. I've been fascinated with automation and figuring out how things work as far back as I can remember. The first symptom I remember came when I was about five or six and I picked out a Big Bruiser from the Sears Catalog for my number one Christmas present. If you are too young to remember the Sears Catalog in its heyday, think of it as a paper version of Amazon.

A year or so later I got an Erector set, and built a skyscraper with a working crane.

The year after that it was a crystal radio kit, which I still believe is magic. I mean, I put the thing together myself. I know there was no battery in it, but I could listen to the radio (almost) as well as people with batteries. That might be the first "What the Hell?!?!" experience I can remember.

Subsequent Christmases and birthdays saw a steady procession of telescopes, microscopes, chemistry sets,



rock collecting kits, crystal growing sets and dissection kits. That's right, kids. In those days you could buy something in the toy department that would help you carve up little woodland creatures that you might capture around the house. It came with a frog and a couple of bugs in formaldehyde**, but how long is that going to amuse a curious 10 year old boy with a scalpel, tweezers and low power microscope?

This was all in addition to the dozens of watches, clocks, toys, tools and household appliances that I took apart to see how they worked. Of course, this included many of the items mentioned above. In my defense, most were broken when I started, I got almost all of them back together with no pieces left over, and I actually fixed a few things.

Then I got older and put away childish things. Except for the year after I was married and got the Big Trak.

Oh, and then the rockets.

And the RoboRaptor.

The cats are pretty sure he is mentally challenged.



So, that's a roundabout and memory-filled way of saying I've always been a science nerd and a sucker for cool toys, and I suppose I always will be.

As for Terminator. It was good. Star Trek was better. Oh, and this is what I built with my robot kit:

I'll be back.

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*With apologies to Paul Simon

** Kids today don't appreciate a good carcinogen in their toys like in our day. Nowadays you put a little lead in a toy car and everyone starts acting stupid. Oh,wait. Sorry.

Best computer science paper title ever!

"Dynamic Taint Analysis for Automatic Detection, Analysis, and Signature Generation of Exploits on Commodity Software"

Thank you James Newsome and Dawn Song of Carnegie Mellon.

An Inconvenient Truth

You know what sucks about the Universe? It's the whole "arrow of time, events have to happen in a particular order" thing. I mean, I can't tell you how many times I have woken up frustrated that I am not a trans-dimensional being.

For example, there's this research paper that I'm currently writing on such a short deadline that I'm embarrassed to tell anyone the due date. And I don't embarrass easily, believe me. If you have doubts, keep reading. Anyway, the thing about research papers is that they are usually written to report the results of work that has already been performed. At least that's the theory. The inconvenient thing about this one is that I haven't done the work yet. At least not all of it. But I know what I'm going to do -- more or less -- and I know that it's going to work -- more or less -- and what more do you need, really? I mean, these things always work out, right?

Why don't I just do the work, you ask? Well, I need to get a draft of the paper to my co-author to review, which is probably going to take as long as it would take to do the work. So if I could just finish the paper and then do the research then I could maximize efficiency and minimize wasted time and have a chance in Hell of making the deadline. But alas, stupid spacetime has to be four-dimensional, like that's going to get anything done.

You know what else sucks about the Universe? Gravity. Gravity is a harsh mistress. I walked out of my lab yesterday and someone had just mopped the floor, so I thought it would be appropriate to fall down. And I don't mean "tripped and stumbled against the desk" fall down. I mean "lost your balance ice skating, high kicking and windmilling arms" fall down. The most amusing part was seeing the "Caution: Wet Floor" sign at the end of the hallway as I lay there trying to decide if I was hurt. I wasn't. I just ended up with one of those face of the Virgin Mary stains on my pants.

So don't talk to me about the Universe this week. The Universe is on my shit list.