And evidence that he / she / it / we / they / you loves us!
Unless, of course, some day scientists tell us that coffee is bad for you. In which case, he / she / it / we / they / you is really, really mean and has a bad sense of humor. I mean, come on!
That’s right, curse you! You’ve made it so easy and convenient to make blog posts. Even on my homepage, there’s that nice little “New Post” button. I can just start typing without even leaving the page I’m on. And once I’ve finished my post, I can ignore my intuition that is screaming, “COPY THE TEXT” before I hit submit. Yep, I can just ignore that.
And then you had me.
Poof! It’s all gone. Countless seconds, multiple sips of coffee, part of a scone, and I’ve got nothing to show for hit. Desperately, I hit the ‘back’ key, the ‘forward’ key, the ‘back’ key once again. I try reopening closed tabs, checking my unpublished posts, crossing my fingers, but to no avail. It was too good to be true. You lured me with your promise of easy, convenient blogging and then dashed my hopes upon a merciless, impersonal sea of 1’s and 0’s. I had even used tags! You not only disappeared my words, you disappeared my tags. And if I’m using words like ‘disappeared’ now, it’s because you disappeared all the well grammar I hads, two.
So it’s back to the old way, the tried-and-true method of logging in, going to my Dashboard, and blogging the way God freaking intended us to blog.
No matter where you turn, the rhetoric is flying. As is the hyperbole, the flip-flopping, the promises, and the continual reference to America as ‘the greatest nation on earth’. Now before we go any further, let me just establish that this is not an anti-America blog, so before I get the famous, “Well, if you don’t like this country, get the hell out of here” line, let’s all be good and clear that I love this country, and I think it’s a great nation… I just hate that we call it that.
The problem with both sides calling us a great nation is that it is very easy to be complacent when you’re at the top. The top is the place for victors, for resting, relaxing, shopping, eating, getting fat… for being, here it comes… American! At least, that’s how we often perceive it. We’re king of the hill, so we can drop our guard and it’s smooth sailing from here on out.
But as any #1 sports team that has taken this attitude has soon discovered, #’s 2, 3, and all the way down to 157 are all working hard, training, and eager to steal that #1 title from our collective lazy ass. This is not the time for complacency. This is the time to work even harder.
But we don’t see it that way, myself included. Deep down, we know we are the best and that we will always be so. Our preachers, teachers, and politicians have drilled the idea into our heads… we are the greatest nation on earth, and that will never change. America is a finished, complete, glorious work of art. Let’s all stand back and enjoy her beauty.
What if, instead, we started calling her “a work in progress.”
America: a work in progress.
Rather than relaxing in the things we do right, suddenly the focus is on the things that need to be done. When we’re a work in progress, there are unfinished bits, gaping holes, parts being held on by duct-tape and crossed fingers, as well as many other unsightly areas. There are unemployed, the homeless, and the starving. There is corruption, hatred, and greed.
I can’t be complacent with a work in progress. There are things that I can do, things that I can choose to be responsible for. On a grad student’s income, there are still mouths that I can feed, lives that I can touch, and good that is within my power to bring about. This is my country, a great nation, I love it. And it’s a work in progress.
Yes, I know I shouldn’t, but it smells so good! Just one little taste?! Would that be so bad? A pinch? A nibble? Pretty please!
It has been pretty standard in labs since the middle ages: you don’t eat the chemicals. But I really struggle with this. Just yesterday, I created some light, fluffy, golden brown compounds that looked like meringue cupcakes. To make it worse, they smelled like really yummy lemon drops. Yes, it was a highly toxic heavy metal foam… but it smelled so good!!! Citric acid gave it that sharp lemony bite, while ethylene glycol gave it that alluring, tempting sweetness with undertones of vanilla and apricots. It was maddening! And writing about it is just making it worse. Now I’m salivating and thinking wistfully that I had some here. Just a little pinch… a little taste…
Of course, once the urge starts, it doesn’t stop. My curiosity has been roused. Even the things that don’t necessarily smell tasty, still have these peculiar, unique aromas that call to me. Like aluminum nitrate hexahydrate. It’s got a sharp, metallic fragrance that fills the imagination with thoughts of robotic cuisine. And it’s hygroscopic! Which means it will melt like candy in your mouth! Oh, the torture!
And knowing the chemistry behind these compounds just makes it worse. “Oh, copper oxide? Why, it’s just copper atoms and oxygen atoms, that can’t be too bad.”
Or, “Cyanide? Why it’s just a little carbon and nitrogen… That can’t be too bad.” Knowing the chemistry really doesn’t help. Everything seems so innocent. These big, scary chemicals look so colorful and sweet when you hold them in your hands. I know how they’re made, I even know that the body needs trace amounts of certain ones, I might actually be making myself more healthy by licking the weighing paper after I’m done…
Fortunately, I’ve been well-trained. I don’t eat the heavy metal oxides, I don’t sip from the ethanol container, and I don’t smoke around the flammable cabinet. I don’t smoke at all actually, but if I did, it wouldn’t be around the flammable cabinet. Instead, I suffer as polymerizing organics make my lab smell like a candy shop. I suffer.
And I dream about lemon drops.
Move in progress! Everything’s not gone, it just needs to be unpacked. This cowpoke is headed to greener pastures. Did I really just call myself a cowpoke? Yes, damn it, yes I did. I’m saddling up and galloping away from my old host and their endless stream of unfortunate bovine humor. I’m tired of stepping in… well, you get the idea.
So it’s on to wordpress.com hosting. It’s a new format, and I’m losing my plugins, but there’s a big, bold horizon out there and the air smells clean. Meanwhile, I’m still in the lab, cooking up some tasty science, and soon we’ll be back, serving up quantum dots with our patented alchemical dressing.
Enjoy!
Grog. Yep, grog. It’s one of those mornings. Saying ‘groggy’ would be too much effort, let alone “I feel groggy.” It’s cold and foggy outside, way too early, and I’m already in the lab. There’s an empty coffee cup in my hands, I’m pretty sure it had something in it, seeing that it’s empty and all, but I don’t want to have to think back 30 seconds and remember. Way too much mental effort. There’s sleep in my eyes and I’m still waiting for the alleged coffee to start coursing through my veins and jumpstart my brain.
Yep, it must’ve been coffee. I have to pee.
I trudge down the long hall to the bathroom. I think I pass some people or animals or something along the way. Sleep is close now. I can feel it calling me. Maybe I could just lay down here in the hall and close my eyes for a few moments. My bladder protests, sigh, so I continue.
I don’t notice the smell right away, not a bad smell, a clean smell. That would be a nice change from the usual bathroom bouquet if I was paying attention and not blindly walking into the stall. I do, however, suddenly notice the toilet bowl. The water is bright blue and makes me pause… “Huh, someone must have cleaned the toilets. Either that or a smurf just peed in here and didn’t bother flushing.”
I internally smile (my body’s lethargy prevents the smile from manifesting physically, but it’s on the inside and that’s what counts) and try to dismiss the thought. I politely brush it aside, but it just comes right back.
“Someone must have just cleaned the toilets this morning or a smurf peed before you came in.”
Why is my mind engaging me on this?
Okay, mind, yes, I suppose one of those choices is true, and I’m pretty sure someone just cleaned the bathroom. I smell bathroom cleaner.
“True, true. That could be the smell of cleaner, but then again, that ammonia smell could be the smell of smurf urine. In fact, I would be surprised if smurf urine didn’t smell like that.”
I thought acknowledging him would make him go away, but my mind is oddly latched on to this idea. He’s like a little puppy that wants to play fetch. I’m trying to be sleepy but he’s sitting there with a ball in his mouth, tail wagging at about 10 Hz, looking at me with those big brown puppy eyes. Aww! How can I say no to that?!
Okay, I’ll play. Smurf urine probably would have some kind of ammonia smell to it, most urine does, so yes, it’s entirely possible that a smurf peed in here immediately before me. But there’s the whole ‘smurfs are imaginary, made-up cartoon creations’ point. I think the cleaning lady was in here recently. End of story.
“But you don’t actually know that they’re made up. They could be real. You’ve just never seen one. I maintain my position. Someone either just cleaned the toilets or a smurf has been here bright and early having a smurfly pee.”
This is ridiculous. I don’t know why you’re insisting on this smurf thing, and I don’t know why I’m arguing with you. This is all highly unlikely and kind of weird. It was obviously the cleaning lady. Smurfs are not real.
“Just because you’ve never seen one? Just because no one believes in them? How about this… GOD.”
What the f***?! He’s playing the God-card? That’s my card, little bastard… He knows me too well. I again try to brush these thoughts away, it’s way too early for this, but he just won’t let this rest.
“Well?”
Fine, fine, I concede. I cannot disprove the existence of smurfs. Both possibilities, however improbable one might be, are, in fact, possible. Yes, a smurf may have peed in here just moments ago.
“Is this the scientist speaking?”
What? What’s he getting at?
What? What are you getting at?
“Your tendency is to dismiss possibilities. You only see one thing. The blue water is a fixed object with a fixed story. It holds no mystery for you, you don’t even notice it. You automatically assume the cause was the cleaning lady, and yes, it may have been. Or maybe it was the cleaning man. Or our mysterious smurf. Or any number of a million things. Instead of being open to the possibilities, you make up a story, pretend that it’s true, and miss out on the whole experience.”
What experience? What am I missing out on?
“Look again. Get rid of the stories, stop pretending like you know what you’re looking at and really SEE. Look without knowing. Look with all the possibilities. Stop seeing the object and see what’s behind it all.”
I stand there gazing into the toilet bowl. The water is very blue. I’m still half asleep but I feel myself opening up, I feel my mind getting quieter.
Ok, what if it wasn’t the cleaning lady? Get rid of that story. It could have been anything… smurfs, leprechauns, a kid with food coloring, someone with a serious urinary peculiarity, the alchemical distillation of a blue bird, anything. I don’t know what I’m looking at. I’m full of guesses, but when it gets right down to it, I just don’t know. I don’t know the why this water is blue. I don’t know where it came from, and if I turn my back, I don’t know that it will still be blue. I don’t know anything about it.
Ok, I think I’m beginning to see.
“See what happens when you cast off the assumptions? Look again. Really look. What do you see?”
I don’t know. I don’t know the story. It could be anything. It’s a bowl full of toilet water, and it’s blue, and I feel like there should be a story. I like having a story. Stories keep trying to jump on to the experience, I keep wanting to reduce the water to a known quantity, but to really see, I have to keep letting go of the stories. I have to not know. And when I really experience ‘don’t know’, something starts changing. There’s a new seeing. I’m not looking at a known object anymore, it’s too vibrant. I feel like I’m looking at what’s behind the object, what’s making it up. I don’t know that I’ve ever really seen like this before. The water seems almost alive. Like Story can spring up from it. Right now, it’s just potential. It’s creative energy. It could be anything. I want to say it’s beautiful and wonderful and glorious, but something keeps telling me that it’s toilet water.
“But you don’t know. You really don’t know. Your scientific mind doesn’t even want to question. It just assumes it knows everything. All stories. One way, one possibility. There’s no magic in that head. But if you start from ‘don’t know’, you begin to See. Don’t know is the beginning. Then you must see things as they really are. See the soul, the essence, the forces at work in everything, giving rise to everything. Then your soul can talk to that soul, and all things become possible.”
You mean like miracles?
“Exactly. As long as you ‘know’, that water will always be water. But when you don’t know, when you really don’t know, that water can be anything. The toilet water can become toilet wine.”
I don’t think I’d want to drink toilet wine.
“That’s because you’re still trying to know. Your head is still full of assumptions. Stick with ‘don’t know’ for now. Let everything be a big question mark. Let go of all your beliefs and opinions about people, places, things, and ideas. Don’t know. Then you’ll start to see. Then you’ll start to experience. You’re doing it now. How does it feel?”
It’s amazing. Everything feels so… creative and alive. Like I’m tapping into this awesome, dazzling force. Everything has a vibration, a hum to it. I feel like I could resonate with it all.
“And that’s just from not knowing. That’s just the beginning. And it leads to a world you haven’t yet dreamed of.”
Look! The water! It’s turning green!
“The sacred and the profane, sigh, I guess they’re all one. Even this is a beautiful moment. Don’t forget to flush.”
People have accused me of being picky, but those people are wrong. I’m not picky, I just happen to know what I like. Here, take coffee as an example…
I prefer to have freshly roasted beans ground no more than two minutes prior to steeping. Those grounds, having been ground at the Medium-2 setting on our burr grinder, should then be mixed with RO water heated to 185 *F. Eleven seconds of mixing in the Aeropress, filtration into my favorite mug, and then stir in 3/4 tsp. honey, 1.5 tbsp. half-and-half, plus an additional approximate 20 mL of heated water for dilution to the perfect concentration. Stir, sip, and enjoy. It’s that easy.
Sure, I could make the coffee another way, I could use 190 *F water, or less cream, or old beans, or whatever you want. Sure, I could… But why would I do that? If you have perfection available, why would you choose some inferior brew? That’s not about being picky, it’s about knowing what you like. Doing otherwise would just be silly.
Anyways, now that I’ve explained myself and you clearly see that I’m not picky, here’s what happened… I’m at step 13 in my post-work coffee making ritual (the steps above are the abridged version), when, horror of horrors, I find that we’re out of half-and-half! I quickly tamp down the feelings of panic, dread, anger, nausea, dizziness, agony, frenzy, fear, and alarm that threaten to overtake me, and my engineer’s mind kicks in. It rationalizes,
1. I can use something else. As long as it’s half-and-half.
2. We have milk and cream, so I can just make my own half-and-half.
A quick google search confirms my suspicions that half-and-half is composed of half milk and half cream. Having discovered the etymological origins of this compound, I carefully measure out equal volumes of the needed reactants and mix. Crisis averted! Homemade half-and-half is added to my coffee, and the world is once again a blissful place.
Except that now there’s weird little chunks floating in my coffee.
So what do I do? Do I go to the store to get more half-and-half? Do I make a cup of tea instead? Do I try again on the homemade 50-50, this time armed with my knowledge of surfactant chemistry, stabilizers, and suspensions? No, I just drink my coffee. Like I said, I’m not picky.
I’m sure there’s a lesson in here somewhere. Something about the universe being a complex place and how even simple things don’t always work out like you intend, but I don’t feel like going there. It’s quitting time, and I’m looking forward to a perfect cup of coffee.
It’s Nanowrimo, and you know what that means!
edit:
Well, it was Nanowrimo 6 weeks ago when I started this post and made it through a whole sentence, but then life happened. Nanowrimo, for those of you that don’t know, is NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth. While I didn’t have intentions of writing a whole novel, I was going to at least do a blog post every day for the month. I would like to write a novel someday, and one of the purposes of the Nanowrimo blogging would have been to develop my writing style. But alas, November has come and gone, and holy crap, December is halfway through.
On the plus side, I’ve knocked out a few research papers, presentations, and finals, changed lots of diapers, and gained a few levels in Skyrim. One more final tomorrow and I will officially be saying no-no wrimo to my PhD courseload. Then it’ll be pure research from here on out.
So Nanowrimo has come and gone, and this introductory post is a little late, or maybe I’m just getting an early start on next year. Yeah, I’ll go with that. I’m planning ahead, 11 months ahead, and there’s more coming your way.
Because I’m totally on the ball here.
A few atoms can change the electronic properties of millions of atoms, a few words can change your soul.
This blog is made possible by doping. In the semiconductor world, impurities are often added in very small quantities to pure silicon in order to change its electronic properties. Different dopants have different effects on the final product, and through various combinations of doped semiconductor materials, we get solar cells, LCD screens, microprocessors, iPods, and pretty much every modern electronic device you can think of.
In doping, very specific elements are introduced to bring about the desired quality in a compound. And it doesn’t take very much. As few as 1 dopant atom in 100 million bulk atoms is all it takes to drastically alter the properties of your semiconductor. A few tiny atoms have a very big effect. When these atoms enter into the crystal structure of the parent compound, visibly, you probably don’t see anything different. But the essence of the compound has wildly changed. Everything is different. A pinch of boron or phosphorus or sulfur… and an ordinary compound gets extraordinary properties. What once was just very clean sand is now capable of all kinds of technological wonders.
We’re no different. Our minds are made up of all kinds of thoughts, ideas, opinions, dreams, worries, fears, and fantasies. This is our unimpressive, undoped state. And like undoped silicon, our minds in that state aren’t very useful. But add the right dopant and our consciousness changes. A few words, a simple idea… add these things to your mind, put them in your consciousness, and see what happens.
“We are all one.”
“I love being me.”
“I am unstoppable.”
“We are all perfect.”
“Love is all there is.”
Pick a thought, mix it in, let it crystallize. Keep it in the back of your mind as you go about the day. Where there was once separateness, now there is connection. Where there was once fear and loneliness, now there is love. It doesn’t take much… just a pinch of an idea, just a mustard seed amount, and mental mountains will have moved. This is doping for the mind, this is doping the divine.
I made the mistake of watching an episode of Dr. Who. This was a mistake because it was really good, I’ve got a million things to do, and getting sucked into a TV series is exactly the thing that I don’t need to be happening right now. For a few years, people have been telling me that I need to watch this show, that I would love it. But I’ve steadfastly resisted the temptation and their recommendations because I have so many other things to do. Familial duties, work, research, school, exams, the occasional blog post, plus a myriad of side projects – all demanding my time. Watching Dr. Who should be one of the last things on my priority list.
But the deed has been done. I had a taste, just a small little taste, and even now, I hear the Doctor calling me from beyond the bounds of space and time. I really shouldn’t watch anymore. There’s no good reason to.
…Or is there?
What if this isn’t about entertainment? Yes, I found the first few episodes entertaining, but that wasn’t what drew me back. There was something else going on. Something profound, something… dare I say it, spiritual. There was wisdom in his words, wisdom and power. I wasn’t just watching some ordinary sitcom, this was no reality TV-show. No, this was a spiritual metaphor, a lesson, and a journey for the soul.
Who is this man, this doctor that smiles in the face of the imminent destruction of the human race? About to be incinerated by hellacious fires, or have the life sucked out of him by giant aliens, he stops, makes a joke or two, hits on a hot girl, and then continues running for his life.
What joy! What freedom! He is himself, completely, 100%, no matter what is happening. He is his own master. Death and destruction do not cower him, hatred and judgement can not touch him. The past and the future have no meaning. All he knows is the present. Whether it’s the present today, at the end of the universe, or 1 million years ago, it all exists in the Now. He gives no thought to what tomorrow may bring. In a world that’s fallen asleep, his presence radiates, “Be here NOW. Enjoy this sacred, perfect moment. And while you’re at it, watch out for that death ray that’s pointed at you.”
What passion! What ferocity! Like an arrow, he springs toward his objective. Nothing can stand in his way. He plays the game of life for high stakes. He plays all out. Whether it’s finding a bite to eat or preventing the takeover of London, he does it with all his being. And if he doesn’t hit his target, it doesn’t matter. Yes, the world may end, yes, he might die, yes, the entire universe may be snuffed out, but he’s having fun. He is being himself, he’s truly giving his all in everything he does. And when you live like that, when you enjoy life like that, the outcome really doesn’t matter. You’re there for the journey, for the ride, for the sheer joy of it.
Here’s a man who could have anything. Riches, fame, fortune… but what fun would that be? Instead, he roams the space-time continuum, seeking fun and adventure, fighting the good fight, dancing with death, and enjoying every second of it. From an alien race of time lords, he brings us a message about humanity, about ourselves. What would the world be like if we all had the wisdom and power of Dr. Who?
The phone booth is open. Stop what you’re doing. Heed his words. Find enlightenment in his smile. Take some of the Doctor’s medicine and live life like you’re indestructible.
Ok, I’ve convinced myself, I need to finish the season.
Cooking with sulfur 