By lani 08 Apr 2002
so i’ve decided to post an add in the city paper to make friends with fellow recovering anti-social types.
<p>so far:</p>
<p>“wanna meet other people who hate other people?”</p>
<p>“will provide dark corners…”</p>
<p>“let’s be awkward and misunderstood together.”</p>
<p>any ideas?</p> By lani 04 Apr 2002
or Dan Stedman to some won a queer film (“Teddy”)award for best short at the Berlin Film Festival. The short was called “Celebration” and it’s about a 6 year old’s coming out party. This is only funny because Dan kept telling me about how he was trying to find someone to play the kid. He asked several Bates professors without luck and in the end paid a professional child actor a load of money from sponsorships.
<p>If he becomes famous, I think I have super8 footage of him on a toilet making faces.</p> By lani 01 Apr 2002
so i left new york and spent about 24 hours in maine. only about 11 were spent awake at Bates.
<p>list form of highlights:</p>
<p>*walking along congress st., i gave a homeless guy 35 cents and he told me i was “cute…for a girl.”</p>
<p>*justin lloyd uses the word “swicked”. he’s been known to say stupid things, but i’m wondering if it’s a legitimate form of new england slang. “sweet” + “wicked”?</p>
<p>*julia has bangs and bob length hair.</p>
<p>*i tried japanese water candy. you start with a clear sugary liquid and a pair of chopsticks and keep twisting with the goal of not dripping until the candy turns white and gets more viscous. i’m trying to figure out if there’s rice in it. yuko doesn’t think so, but the taste reminds me of the rice paper that botan rice candy is wrapped in but sweeter.</p>
<p>*parv introduced me to the “honey roasted cigarettes” and “smokin’ joes” that she bought from a smoke shop in brunswick. “smokin’ joes” claim to be the “first native american tobacco company”. it’s pretty cool because they’re all natural and they took a shot at american spirits by putting the most prolific native american icon abused by large companies and sports teams in a cute rectangular frame of golden proportions: the great plains chief with headress. </p>
<p>*mrs. skannotto sells 30 cd’s at their cd release party which meant that chris hoover spent the rest of the show in his blue stripped boxer briefs with “30 cd’s sold” written on his chest. unfortunately, they didn’t sell enough to shave simon’s head or take out justin’s “liver” or light the cymbals on fire. damn.</p>
<p>*i mastered the art of swaying with a lit lighter in each hand.</p>
<p>*saw amy kinnunen in full village 1 debauchery dressed as a prostitute pirate. (think eye patch)</p>
<p>*blair, eric mac, simon, and i took turns using blairs new air gun to massacre a picture of alanis morissette.</p>
<p>*daphne says the words,“don’t give lani the gun. please, don’t give lani the gun.” </p> By lani 27 Mar 2002
yura finished up the pictures in the disposable camera and took it apart to retrieve the film because he claims they charge extra money if you drop the whole camera in the box.
<p>“now we can make a taser,” i said as chris and yura were examinining the parts.</p>
<p>“so i’m thinking about my butt plug idea here,” says chris,“and figuring out what a good voltage would be to make it noticeable but not too painful.”</p>
<p>“now we can make a taser!”</p>
<p>[more talk mingled with sounds of television. talk moves to background and attention is drawn to Smallville.] </p>
<p>[bzzzt pop!]</p>
<p>oh f*ck!</p>
<p>[yura jumps out of his seat and falls back into it holding his wrist and twitching a bit.]</p>
<p>“taser! taser! taser!” i said, with arms cheering.</p>
<p>[yura calms down and laughter breaks loose]</p> By lani 20 Mar 2002
Yesterday the NSF sponsored a symposium on Nanoscience mostly featuring leading scientists from their six newly funded nanoscience centers, which are located at Northwestern, Harvard, Cornell, Rice, Columbia, and RPI. It was more of a showcase of what these scientists have been doing and why NSF should keep funding them, but I got to see a lot of cute demos and animations. Including a prototype cellphone and DVD player with OLED displays (I could make out shapes on the DVD player from across the auditorium!).
<p>Since it was not just scientist targetted symposium, I did get to see a few presentations and panel discussions on the social and economic impact of nanoscience. Although most of it could have been classified under the “we’re doing this because <span class="caps">NSF</span> is making us” genre, there were some interesting insights. Herb Goronkin of Motorola (who plainly stated that their research is not funded by <span class="caps">NSF</span>) identified several of the risk factors that they have considered in their nanoscience research, two of which included that quantum behavior will require probabilistic circuit design approaches and that power consumption of nanodevices may be nonlinear. However, the advantages of nanodevices (which are enough that Motorola is still investing R&D) were reviewed in various presentations. Ralph Calvin used a statistic (to which he admits some skepticism) that an <span class="caps">NEC</span> executive presented which stated that at the rate that consumer use of electronic devices…and don’t think that miniaturization will help…Japan will have to build 30 new nuclear reactors. A <a href="http://domino.research.ibm.com/comm/wwwr_thinkresearch.nsf/pages/cmos398.html">paper by Philip Wong</a> of <span class="caps">IBM</span> was also referenced on what <span class="caps">CMOS</span> can’t do.</p>
<p>Some of the more fun science presented included that of Eigler who is famous for being able to <a href="http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/atomo.html">move atoms controllably</a> using an <span class="caps">STM</span> tip (Scanning Tunneling Microscopy), and was also referred to as an expert in nanopolitics by Eric Heller because the first thing he wrote was “<span class="caps">IBM</span>”.</p>
<p>They’ve developed a lot of fun media tools to make the moguls happy, including an animation of flying through an <a href="http://www.almaden.ibm.com/vis/stm/stm.html#fly-by">atomic landscape</a>. He also did a demo of a teaching tool that he has developed where you can move atoms from a remote computer. (Sorry, didn’t get the password on that one.) Eigler does some theoretically interesting work that “mimicks” on an atomic level what the Weber brothers (had trouble finding picture) by building atomic corrals which are shaped in circles, ellipses, etc. and various atoms at different points and “imaging” the mirage of wave patterns that occur with one or two or four atoms.</p>
<p>Another impressive presenter was Angela Belcher who does <a href="http://txtell.lib.utexas.edu/stories/b0006-full.html">biocomposite research</a> at U of Texax. She demo’d a clear film made of viruses engineered to grow inorganic quantum dots to exploit the viruses natural organizational properties for materials. These engineered viruses exhibited three different types of liquid crystal behavior (smectic, nematic, and cholesteric). </p>
<p>And the great part about <span class="caps">NSF</span> funding for people like me is that to satisfy the community outreach requirement, Purdue has put together <a href="http://www.nanohub.purdue.edu/NanoHub/HubInfo/resources.html#courses">NanoHub</a>. This includes some tutorials and links. Including one to the Center for Quantum Computation, which has a section on <a href="http://www.qubit.org/intros/cryptana.html">quantum cryptoanalysis</a>. </p>
<p>“Those who control materials control technology.”</p>
—Eiji Kobayashi, Panasonic By lani 18 Mar 2002
i checked my messages at 6pm on Saturday night, and there was Amy Hare’s voice saying something through the static about going down to Richmond and passing through DC for dinner. By 8pm, i came in from smoking to find Cheryl (Amy’s best friend from Jersey now at VCU) in my bathroom. Ethiopian food, lost hamster, and an invitation.
<p>And then I was in Richmond, lighting another cigarette. Sunday morning we went to 821 for brunch. And Stu (Cupid’s—yes, that’s her given name—roommate) told us that he was participating in a smoking survey! oh my god! welcome to tobacco country! everytime they call they send him two packs of unmarked cigarettes. he smokes them and hands in a survey. he let me try a few. i found them to be light yet hearty with a hint of extra additives. Stu thinks that they got his name from the Camel Reps who come into clubs and hand you a pack of Camels and a pack of whatever you smoke. what! there are no cigarette fairies in my world! maybe I should move to Richmond.</p>
<p>then we rented a couple videos and drank irish beer and wine coolers. We saw Down by Law and Fishing With John Part I, which have three things in common: Tom Waits, Jim Jarmusch, and John Lurie. </p>
<p>“There’s nothing like waking up in the morning with a rod in your hand.” </p> By lani 11 Mar 2002
I don’t know too much about him or what is involved in his art, which is is why I plan on going to hear him lecture at the National Academy of Science next week.
<p>I was reminded of my plans, while viewing the “Corot to Picasso” exibit at the Phillips Gallery with my old friend Ana. I also started thinking about a book I saw in Bridge Street Books on Saturday called “Einstein, Picasso: Space, Time, and the Beauty That Causes Havoc</p>
<p>,” by Arthur Miller. <a href="http://www.physicstoday.org/pt/vol-54/iss-12/p49.html">“Arthur Miller addresses an important question: What was the connection, if any, between the simultaneous appearance of modern physics and modern art at the beginning of the 20th century?”</a></p>
<p>and ok, so i haven’t gotten through <span class="caps">GEB</span> yet…yet, but it has me wondering about science/art and social shift. i think about heller’s work and i wonder what the next step will be or if it has already happened. or whether there will be a “step” at all?</p> By lani 06 Mar 2002
my sister’s boyfriend left TurboGo on my mom’s computer as a gift, and i finally visited the site. i was happy to find the download, tutorials, history, etc. i figured it would be a good idea to start with a program, because finding a)go players and b)someone i’m comfortable with has been difficult. somebody told me you could play online too, but i’m afraid.
<p>part “b)” is a funny lani-ism (although maybe other people share it?). i really don’t like competitive games. i didn’t like chess or scrabble. (my father made us play.) and i never really got into debate, even though i kept going. </p>
<p>i like Go, though. i like the lack of heirarchy. the simple rules, but the complex nature. i like what you learn from and about your partner. and it’s weird, but i can only really play with lovers and would-be lovers. i’ve tried to play with other people, but it hasn’t worked out. i often make the comparison to <a href="http://inkpot.com/film/pillowbook.html"> “The Pillowbook”</a>, when i try to explain it to other people. </p>
<p>amy hare thinks i shouldn’t change a thing, that it belongs to the sacrosanct world of “quirk”. but what if i never play go again. i think it’s silly of me, but i haven’t succeeded in driving it into exile yet. so TurboGo, here we go…</p> By lani 27 Feb 2002
well, except for the moment when i regurgitated a bit of my lunch, i’d put the veggie dog on my successful meat substitute list. not that you really need to find a “substitute”, but if you’re going to please make it palatable. now i am pro tofu. i will eat tofu in any form possible (raw, sweet, with cherries on top), EXCEPT for “tofu pups.”
<p>oh how i despise them. i tried them raw. i tried them cooked. i even tried them with condiments. but i tried in vain.</p>
<p>so when anders wanted to pick up veggie dogs at the store, i admit that i could still taste tofu pup. but the voice of reason told me that you have to try more than one brand, especially of these things. anders had to leave before we ate them, so i thought i would promote their tastiness. i’d say they had a milder taste than tofu pups with a hint of soy fields in kansas. i’m not sure if they are my chosen snack yet, but maybe that has more to do with me eating them dry and with a pita. i suspect that with the right toppings thought that they’d be quite delectable. suggest a french rose sec.</p> By lani 22 Feb 2002
had one of those odd and strangely vivid dreams last night. it started with seeing some people in matching clothes walking out. a famous performance group/gang (A). then entering a club through a dark, brick hallway. the room was dark with red lighting and i had a friend but i don’t remember who it was. trying to piece it together, i remember parts at the same club talking with members of another performance group (B). club had the feel of scenes from fellini’s satyricon, familiar but alienating and obscure. one part took place on the street with members of
<p>performance group B who were four or five people. they were all wearing white things that looked like scrubs with white gauze/elastic wrapped around their heads and under their chins. perfomance group A (15 people or so) comes down the street and one member from each group starts talking. something about a prize that group B wasn’t aware of. then a scenario where a member of group B duct tapes a random boy to the side of a red VW-looking van. then back to the club (which was always preceded by the hallway). and i woke up.</p>