Things that must go

Websites that charge ridiculous fees on ticket sales. It's particularly bad when they do it per ticket. I've seen movie theaters that sell tickets for 6 bucks each that want to tack on 1 or 2 dollars more per ticket for letting you buy them online. Or, as was the case tonight, a site I saw that had a flat fee of $5 on $30 worth of tickets. It's one of those hidden costs that really ought to go.

(I listen to NPR in the car now. Too bad they don't have "things that must go".)

Elements

I saw an interesting blog today where someone (an organic chemist) had counted how many different elements he had worked with. Now, a lot of the ensuing discussion can depend on how you define "working" with an element. I'm having trouble putting a specific definition into words, but let's just say that I know it when I see it. In general, the element in question needs to have been a deliberate and important part of what was going on. So, here's what I've used, and, if I feel like it, what I've done.

1: Hydrogen - I've collected H2 gas off of a reaction using HCl, and also ignited H2-filled soap bubbles.
2: Helium - Does inhaling it from balloons count? Even if it didn't, I've put it through a diffraction grating and looked at it spectral lines. That one experiment from physics 107/150 is going to get me a whole handful of these.
3: Carbon - A whole semester of organic chemistry lab. Ewwww.
4: Nitrogen - Liquid nitrogen, for everything from shattering pennies, to making ice cream, to hammering rubber hoses into a 2x4, to actual productive purposes.
5: Oxygen - I've collected it out of the atmosphere as a liquid. Liquid O2 is very exciting. (And potentially very dangerous. I've never had more than a few mL of it.)
6: Fluorine - I use HF at work all the time. The first on this list that I haven't encountered in elemental form.
7: Sodium - It burns yellow. (Like the sun.) I've only burned it in solution though. Elemental sodium is quite dangerous.
8: Magnesium - Burns extremely bright white. It's what they use in fireworks, and it's fun to play around with strips of it. As a side note, water catalyzes it's oxidation, so be very careful how you fight a magnesium fire.
9: Aluminum - Drinking a can of Coke does not fill this requirement. But writing a senior thesis about microscopy of aluminum oxide does.
10: Silicon - More microscopy. And hours spent wedging it down until it is 0.000004 inches thick.
11: Phosphorus, 12: Sulfur, 13: Chlorine: As it turns out, a mixture of these 3 elements (as H3PO4, H2SO4 and HCl) will put holes in your pants quite nicely. Not quite the experiment that I was supposed to be doing, but it's the one that I remember.
14: Argon - this is what we use for an inert atmosphere at work.
15: Calcium - I've dissolved calcium carbonate in acid. Sounds exciting, but it's just limestone.
16: Iron - Well, who hasn't done something with iron?
17: Cobalt - The aluminum oxide I mentioned earlier, well, it was covered in cobalt.
18: Copper - Pennies aren't just for spending, they're also good to turn into brass.
19: Zinc - You take the old penny, disolve some zinc in acid, and, um . . . I forget the rest of the lab, but it ends up with a brass penny.
20: Gallium - it melts near room temperature, so it makes a nice phase transition lab for pre-med students. It also super cools pretty well, unless the surface of your sample is too oxidized, then it just won't re-solidify. And I use it at work all the time.
21: Germanium - I know thee well.
22: Zirconium - Used a strip of it as a heating element once upon a time. It had just the right resistivity.
23: Molybdenum - Hard to spell, and boring to measure the resistivity of a wire made of it! By this point in the periodic table, I'm now skipping the majority of the elements.
24: Indium - I've soldered with it to make electrical contacts.
25: Tin - Also used in soldering.
26: Cesium - I've measured the half-life of a radio active isotope.
27: Tungsten - My wedding ring is made of tungsten carbide. It doesn't scratch. I've tried. Yeah, it's a bit weak, but I'm counting this one.
28: Silver - I have deposited a film of silver onto glass to make my own mirror, which was then used in an experiment to measure the speed of light through different mediums. The experiement was a big failure, but it wasn't the mirror's fault.
29: Mercury - I've studied the spectral lines.
30: Lead - I've measured the half-thickness for stopping the radiation from the aforementioned Cesium isotope.

And, from here on out, pretty much everything is radioactive. There is one other radioactive isotope that I have worked with, but I can't remember what it was. Possibly it was a repeat, but I don't think it was. So, at this point, I can point to 30 elements I've used. There's probably another 1-3 that I have used, but I'm not remembering it at the moment.

Prognostications

I've never claimed to be the "prognosticator of prognosticators" or anything, but I did have a dream last night that the moon blew up. So, you should all be on the lookout.

Blog Comments

So, I'm about to ask you to comment on my blog in response to my blog post about commenting on blog posts.

Ok, I read various people's blogs. Friends mostly. And occasionally they express opinions about one thing or another. While the most common topic is probably politics, this applies to various topics. (Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I want to emphasize that there is no one person, blog or post that I'm specifically thinking of here, so don't try to read too much into this.) Anyway, my friends have a tendency to say various sensible things, a few things that I might not agree with, and then drop in something that is down right ridiculous, silly, wrong or dumb. Here, I'll create an example for you (which I am fabricating from my own brain right now):

"I can't believe Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, he hasn't DONE anything! This sullies the reputation of those who have won the prize in the past for substantive work. And since entering office, Obama has decreased our likelihood for peace! Sure, nothing has happened yet, but because of him blaming America for everything, we are going to be attacked more for sure. I guess this is what we get for electing someone who is stupid."

So, lets analyze this hypothetical post. There are various things I agree with: Obama won the peace prize, and he hasn't achieved any meaningful peace, in my opinion. Then there are some things that I don't necessarily agree with, but that I can at least respect as a plausible opinion: America might be less safe now than when Obama took office, because of his policies. Then (and it always seems to be at the end) the post says something downright silly: that Obama is stupid. Say what you will, the man isn't dumb. He holds degrees from Columbia and Harvard.

So now we're down to my dilema as a blog reader. Someone I know has just written this silly statement that Obama is dumb. My first reaction upon reading is to write up a snarky comment pointing out to them that while they may not like Obama, they should stick to actual criticism, rather than illogical logorrhea. I usually get most of the way through the comment when I start to think about how the author will react. Because it's the internet, whatever I type will come out sounding argumentative and condescending (I think the internet does that to whatever you type, whether you mean it or not) and they will get defensive. Arguments will ensue, and now I've just taken a friend and created a whole bunch of bad karma. And the worst part is, I agreed with most of what they said! So, in the end I wind up not commenting at all. And they never know of their silliness, and they get no comments on their blogs.

So dear reader(s), what am I to do? Do I sustain my "keep the peace" policy? (Can I get a Nobel Prize for that?) Or do I try to politely point out that they are dead wrong on a topic and risk the ensuing melee? Some of my friends have some pretty strong opinions, and, while I know I do too, I try to remember that there are more important things than convincing other people that I'm right all the time. (Because I am, and deep down inside, you all know it.)

So, time for you to comment about commenting on friends blogs when you disagree with them. By all means, go ahead and disagree with me. :)

Cluck

So here's what we learned: Cougars can lay eggs.

I didn't watch the entire game. (It was too painful.) But it was clear that BYU was simply not ready to play, at least not to the same degree that Florida State was, particularly when FSU had the ball. They ran everywhere they wanted to, and BYU didn't stop them. After not allowing a play over 20 yards in either of the first two games, BYU continually hemorrhaged yards all over the field in big chunks. It was disappointing. But it provides a good opportunity to discuss an important aspect of college football: luck and timing.

I'd still bet on BYU to beat FSU. Through a 12 game season, a team is going to play poorly at some point. The key is getting those games to align with your crummiest opponents. I don't know how you can do that, but if you do, you get a special season. If BYU had played FSU last week, and Tulane this week, they might well be undefeated still. But they didn't and they aren't. BYU beat OU, and made their heisman winning QB look just ok. They made his backup look very mediocre. That backup threw 6 TDs against Tulsa this weekend as OU destroyed them 48-0 or whatever it was. If OU had played that game vs BYU and played their BYU game vs Tulsa, they would still be undefeated and ranked in the top 3 still. The point is, in college football you must be both good and lucky.

One more point: Chambers needs to get smacked upside the head, and hard. I'm tired of watching him (and anyone else) strut around on the field after an 8 yard completion, particularly when he's got 2 costly fumbles already this season. For the most part, no one should be strutting at all on a football field, but if you are going to do it, you'd better be darn sure that you are actually helping your team win. He did it last year, too, when his main role was #4 receiver and #2 punt returner. Now that he's been up graded to #3 receiver, he's still doing it. Someone (anyone) needs to pull him aside and let him know that he looks ridiculous.

Stats

I was only able to watch about 1 quarter of the BYU game today. (The second quarter.) Tulane isn't exactly a terrific team or anything, but there were a couple of stats that jumped out at me from the game:

• 0: Zero punts. On 10 offensive possessions BYU had 2 field goals, 6 touchdowns, an interception and a turn over on downs. That's pretty efficient football. (Of course, that took our best kicker out of the game, it seems. For the second game in a row, we had a kickoff out of bounds (how hard it is to keep it in bounds? the field is like 30 yards wide) and Payne missed a PAT.)
• 6/9: Third down conversions. 67% is pretty darn good, but that isn't really the number that piqued my interest. The interesting number: 9. BYU only had 9 3rd downs all game long. 79 plays in the game and all but 67 of them were either 1st or 2nd down. It's a good thing when your offense doesn't need 3 tries to get a first down.
• 16: Players that gained yardage for BYU. Sure, it helps that it was a blowout and everyone got in on the action, but on 26 completions no one caught more than 4 balls, and 45 runs were split up between 10 players with no one getting more than 12 carries. 9 players averaged 3.5 yards per carry or more.

Yeah, its true, playing a team like Tulane will always help you put up big stats, but it's still not every day you see numbers like these. (Note: I am not arguing that a team that has 9 players averaging 3.5+ yards per carry is somehow better than a team that has one back carry it 30 times. I'm mostly just interested in these stats as statistical anomolies.) But while we're here, lets compare some other teams on the winning ends of blowouts:

Florida (56-6 over Troy): 3 punts, 10/14 3rd downs, 6 players 3.5+ ypc

Oklahoma (64-0 over Idaho State): 4 punts, 4/13 3rd downs, 4 players 3.5+ ypc.

Cincinnati (70-3 over Southeast Missouri State): 4 punts, 7/12 3rd downs, 6 players 3.5+ ypc.

Ok, I'm done.

Eruptions

For labor day, we went to Bryce Canyon to do some hiking. Bryce is about 2 1/2 hours away, though we didn't really get a good estimate of how long it really takes. We were about 2 hours into the trip up there, when suddenly, from the back seat, there was an eruption. And then everything was covered in barf. (Anyone who might have come with us: be glad you didn't. We might have been tempted to carpool and then you would have been in the kill-zone.) Turns out the yogurt for breakfast did not agree with Julia at all. So, we got every parent's delight: wiping things down on the side of the road with wet-wipes. Once we were about cleaned up, a family was nice enough to stop and ask if we needed any help. There really wasn't much they could do for us, but we appreciated their willingness. Thank you family of strangers! (Though it would be a real long shot, we should have asked if they had any febreeze in their truck!)

So, we made it to Bryce and went on the Navaho/Peekaboo loops. 4.9 miles total. Not sure how long it took us, because we didn't reliably look at a clock the whole day. Anyway, the weather was nice, in the 70s, and there was often a breeze. Bryce is a fantastic place, because it has large, grand views, but you can also go hiking down through all of it and experience it up close, and away from crowds. We also learned that 4.5 miles is about my limit for toating Julia on my back. We'll see how the shoulder feels tomorrow.

We managed the trip back without any eruptions. Instead we got a 30 minute backup on the freeway from an accident.

Wow. It's been 12 hours, and it's still sinking in. BYU beat #3 Oklahoma on a not-quite-neutral field. Wow.

• BYUs defense was the best unit on the field througout pretty much the entire game. Better than either offense, and better than OUs defense.
• Replacing 4 offensive linemen, having a top offensive player out with an injury and losing another important player to injury in the first half might might be a decent excuse for losing a game. But it's real hard to make that arguement when it applies to both teams. There simply isn't any ground to say that any one play was the game breaker. OU lost their starting QB. BYU turned the ball over 4 times. (The muffed punt was particularly eggregious.) Both teams got called for pass interference in the endzone. (The call against BYU was pretty iffy in my opinion.) Both teams picked up lots of penalties and did it in bad spots on occasion. (OU kept putting themselves in 3rd and long situations from their O-line, and BYU essentially put OUs final drive together for them with a kick out of bounds, a face mask and a late hit (if I remember that correctly)). In short, it looked like the first game of the season.
• I found it particularly interesting that in the second half both teams moved the ball down to about the 5 yard line, ran a few plays, got a PI call in the end zone, started fresh at the 2 yard line, and then was called for a false start. BYU got a touchdown, OU didn't.
• The final BYU drive of 16 plays, 78 yards and 8:44 was really impressive. I was most worried for our chances at the opening kickoff, and then again near the end of the 3rd quarter. In the 3rd quarter the OU O-line and D-line seemed to be wearing down BYU, which happens so often in big games. I feared BYU would run out of gas and a bigger, faster and more talented OU team would finally push by them and win pulling away. Instead, BYU ate up most of the 4th quarter on a great drive.
• Speaking of drives, OUs 3 longest drives were 52, 43 and 35 yards. BYU put together drives of 78, 63 and 59 yards.

Football

College football has started, and I'm watching Utah/USU online. Thank goodness for people streaming things! Unfortunately, the game is on the mountain. The mountain has been around for a number of years now, and for every one of those years, they've had the same flaw in their on-screen game clock. In the final minute of a quarter, the clock shows 39:04 when it ought to show 39.4. So I have to sit there watching the clock tick down: 39:04, 39:03, 39:02, 39:01, 39:00, 38:09, etc. I understand how the error could be made, but I don't understand how it can be allowed to stand for years, when it ought to be simple to fix. So, either no one at the station is paying enough attention to notice, or no one cares enough to display a time that makes sense, or maybe no one can figure out how to fix it.

Total Eclipse. Literally.

I find that I'm usually the last person in the world to catch on to the latest cool youtube video. The people dancing down the aisle at their wedding, yeah, I was dead last. 70-year-old grandmas had it in their facebook status before it worked its way to me. Apparently I live on an island or something. Anyway, the following video only has 3.6 million views on youtube, so at least 90% of the country hasn't seen it. (Whether any of that 90% reads my blog is, of course, another question.)

The idea here is that what you are seeing in music videos doesn't always correlate well with the lyrics. So, people have been creating 'literal versions' of music videos, where the lyrics have been adjusted to represent whatever you're watching. There are a whole lot of them on youtube, with a wide range of quality. The vocal talents of the re-recordings are severely lacking on some of the videos, and obviously some videos are better suited to the project to begin with. But here is the best one that I'm aware of out there. The lyrics are on the screen so you can sing along! Well, without futher ado (thanks for laboring through all that ado!) I present the literal version of Total Eclipse of the Heart.