Another Living Fossil

I just got word from my friend Tommie that yet another living fossil has been found…this time they call it Jurassic Shrimp. I said in a previous post that if they ever found a dinosaur they would just call it a living fossil and while this isn't 100 million years old it is on the same order of magnitude as the dinosaur. Oh yeah these guys went extinct “50 million” years ago. Perhaps they went extinct and then re-evolved to produce itself once again…man is that lucky.

Jurassic 'shrimp', Neoglyphea neocaledonica, believed extinct for 50 million years, found in Australia's Coral Sea (Image: B Richer de Forges)

Quick Rant

I’ve got to do it…I know we are all just sucking it up and accepting the fact, but someone needs to point out the facts. Michigan was flat out robbed of their national championship shot. I understand that their destiny was in their hands with the Ohio St. game, but supposedly there is a bowl game that is advertised as the national championship game. If that is in fact the championship game than the number one and two teams from the regular season should be in that game. So lets suppose that this spot is between Florida and Michigan (I’m sure if Florida would have lost to Arkansas I would have to say it was between Louisville and Michigan). I’m going to make a quick comparison of the two teams.

(1) They both have only one lost and both were on the road (EVEN)
(2) Florida played 4 two 25 teams while Michigan only played 3 (Florida)
(3) Of those games Michigan average opponent ranking was 6.3 and Florida’s was 10.5 (Michigan)
(4) Michigan lost to the number one team in the country that is undefeated while Florida lost to Auburn which finish 9th in the country with loses to Arkansas (#12) and unranked Georgia (Michigan)
(5) Florida lost by 10 points while Michigan lost by only 3 points in a game that went right down to the wire (Michigan)
(6) Common opponent – Vanderbilt…okay while Michigan scored more points on them and gave up fewer I’m going to call this one even because both teams did crush them (EVEN)

So basically Florida’s only claim to the spot is that they played one more ranked team than Michigan. The bottom line is that Michigan deserves to play in the national championship, but the BCS would rather avoid the controversy that would occur if Michigan did beat Ohio State. See if they let Florida go then even if Florida pulls off the win they can say that both teams had one loss, but Florida won the head to head match up. My argument that Michigan would still be the rightful winner of the championship if they split with Ohio State is that Michigan would have won on the neutral field in the bigger game. This of coarse would not set well with the rest of the country, but the way people feel about the outcome should not be the deciding factor.

Alright I’ll let it go now…I’ve got it off my chest so I feel better. Now I’m going to say some nice things about the Buckeyes so all you diehard Michigan fans may want to stop reading now.

I hope that Ohio State goes out and completely crushes Florida, and that Michigan completely crushes USC. That way everyone will be thinking while watching two wasted bowl games that they could have seen the two best teams in the country play each other again if only they could have stomached the idea of a rematch. I was in Florida for the first game and the bar I was at was packed with people watching the game and I didn’t see anyone wanting it to end.

Picture Post

I know I’ve become a rather poor blogger, but frankly I just don’t have much ambition to do much of anything. I don’t even read other blogs (yeah I’m so lazy right now that I don’t even want to do my procrastination activities). Even though I’m not willing to put much effort into anything I shall still post something by making use of two great things…(1) lists…no need to think about how to connect thoughts or statements, just put whatever you want and (2) pictures…no need to form your thoughts into any kind of rational form because a picture paints a thousand words. So with no further ado…here are some pictures I would like to share.

(1) Schmocktoberfestive (Schmocktoberfest IV)!

The winner of the pumpkin carving contest...if you couldn't tell the party took place during the MLB World Series...even though the Tigers lost I'm still proud of them

I don't have a good picture of the best costume winners (however I will give congrats to Mike and Karen on their costume) so I'll show this penguin

(2) Trip to Tampa Bay

Here I'll share a quick story....I went to Tampa Bay for a conference just before Thanksgiving. It was suppose to be a nice "break" from the work I had been doing, but due to some interesting timing I actually had to take an exam while at the conference. The professor that is teaching my class was also going so while I was down there he just gave me the exam and I took it in the hotel room. Also while the pictures show a nice looking city it actually is completely empty...it took me over an hour to find a candy bar, which I had to purchase from a vending machine in a parking structure.

St. Pete Times Forum...home of the 2004 Stanley Cup winners. This is the view from the balcony in my hotel room.

This is another view from my balcony but looking out at the rest of the city...so you can tell I had a really nice view while taking my advanced acoustics exam

(3) You Discussed Me!

Ok this one isn't so much of an event but something that brings me a little bit of joy each time I have to go to the lab. While preparing for the experiment in Memphis Ciara and I would have some play time in the lab (above you see her trying to stump me at a game of hangman), and one day she said the phrase "you discussed me." Seriously say it out loud...it cracks me up. Thankfully no one will earse the hangman or the "you discussed me" from the blackboard so it still gives me a laugh when I go down there.

Conrats Rey and Tom

I have several things that I want to post, but for now I'll just send out my congrats to my sister Rey and Tom who got engaged over Thanksgiving. I thought something was odd during the Thanksgiving dinner when my dad asked Tom to say grace...then Tom said a nice prayer and then had everyone say two things that they are thankful for. We went around the table and Tom went last. He said he was thankful for our family welcoming him into our family and then for my sister. It was at this point that it dawned on me that he was going to propose...my instinct was to say "oh you're going to propose." Fortunately I didn't blow the moment by opening my mouth. It was very nice, and Tom welcome to the family.

Tom and my sister Renee'

Politics of Science

I spent the day sitting at a 10 hour long meeting in which I received plenty of criticism (well it wasn’t directed at me personally, but I take full responsibility for the data I collected and that was being “attacked”). First off I’ll admit that it was hard on my pride to have my mistakes criticized in an open forum for 10 hours…especially since I’ve been doing this on a daily basis for most of the past week since these problems first surfaced. Apart from my personal annoyance with this aspect, I also lost some interest in research as a career path. I love doing research, but I’m pretty sure that I love it for reasons separate from the majority.

This meeting was just like the last one I attended in which the lions share of the talk was criticizing the experiments (mind you the previous meeting the experiment hadn’t even started yet). This seems odd to me because the “objective” of the program was to produce computer simulations that could predict our results, which in the end one was in the ballpark while the other was out in left field. Now I fully admit that I have many errors that still need to be sorted out (that was a given when I have weeks to process a years worth of data), but the trends of the data are not going to be totally different no matter how long I stare at the data files. The general approach was to assume that if the experimental data didn’t match the simulations the experiment must be wrong, but it was already given that the code neglected certain physical phenomena that we showed was present…my question at the end of the day is why did their data match so many conditions.

I then went back to the hotel to get some sleep before starting day 2 of these meetings (the 2nd day should be much easier than the 1st). I fell asleep contemplating the above points when I was awaken by my phone (I actually thought it was my alarm since I use my phone as an alarm clock when on the road and started getting ready for the day only to realize it was 10pm not 6:30am). At this point I was too awake to go back to sleep and decided to do a little reading. I began reading “Christianity and Literature”, a paper C.S. Lewis wrote in Theology. What he wrote about literature, I think, illustrates the cause of some of my frustrations with research.

“The Christian will take literature a little less seriously than the cultured Pagan…The unbeliever is always apt to make a kind of religion of his aesthetic experiences…The real frivolity, the solemn vacuity, is all with those who make literature a self-existent thing to be valued for its own sake.”

Lewis then at the end of his paper contrasts the unbelievers created “religion” associated with his craft to that of a believer portrayed in Paradiso.

“…Pope Gregory, arrived in Heaven, discovered that his theory of the hierarchies, on which presumably he had taken pains, was quite wrong. We are told how the redeemed soul behaved; it was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.”

The connection between these excerpts and my story may not be obvious, but trust me there is a point. In my view I only pursue research because I’m interested solely in better understanding God’s creation. So my attitude about the meeting is hey lets be honest with the situation, everyone did some really impressive work, but the bottom line is “blah blah blah” (I’ll spare you any specifics here). To everyone else they are even better aware of the bottom line than I am, but it is more important to them that it is shown just how good their work really was. Their main interest being that while this technology was feasible it is important to show the sponsors that they really are good at what they do and hopefully get more money from them for a different project. Now I’ll admit that they have every right and probably even an obligation to do this, but for me this whole “game” is a waste of time and effort. I’ve known this for awhile, but today was one of those days that the fact that stupid politics will have to be dealt with in order to get funding to do research. Thus I’m left with the dilemma of whether my love for research out weights my hatred towards politics.

....also I'll share a short quote from Lewis that I felt like sharing because why not (man I should have made this into a list so I this totally unrelated quote won't stand out).

Walter Hooper (friend of Lewis) told Lewis about an epitaph on someone's tombstone that read "Here lies an atheist, all dressed up but with nowhere to go." To which Lewis replied: "I bet he wishes that were so."