robcoyne [dot] com

I have to admit that I’ve always been an on-again, off-again blogger. I’ll go through these periods where I post incessantly, and then a few months later forget that I even had a blog and ignore it for long periods of time. Even back in my glory days of blogging where my livejournal was ablaze with depressing emo posts about how few friends I had and how much I wished that I had a girlfriend I couldn’t keep it going at a steady pace. This point was emphasized when I ran across my old livejournal in an attempt to archive my youth and I read over some of those old posts. Wow. Terrifying. I will say that back in those days I was certainly blogging a lot more, so with any luck I’ll be able to work back to that. Blogging - like almost any activity - requires the direct application of muscle (in this case, the creative writing centers in my brain), and mine are currently atrophied. I’ll have to put together some kind of workout routine. As Chris always says “Every day, something. Even if it’s small, something every day.” Of course, I’ve never actually known him to say that - at least not outside of that blog post - but that doesn’t make it any less true.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I want from my life. Some of it has been driven by the same nagging self doubt regarding my potential as a Physicist that drove me to stop blogging in the first place a month or two ago. When I got my GRE scores back for my Physics section I was stunned, the results were about a hundred and fifty points lower than I expected. What’s worse is that those expectations weren’t inflated due to some misplaced concerns for my ego, I had been taking practice exam after practice exam and repeatedly scored between 740 and 780 on them. Three unique full length exams taken the week before the real deal all landed in that range, yet somehow I still managed to end up with a 610. In the end, I suppose a combination of bad luck, nerves and an overactive bladder all conspired together to ruin that test, but needless to say it did a number of my confidence.

Over the past few weeks though, those concerns have diminished. I’ve filled out five applications to PhD programs thus far, and I’ve realized that those GRE score really are the only bad mark on my record. Even then, while they’re no means good, they’re not as bad as they could have been either. So onwards I go, back to the thinking about my life that I’ve been doing. What I’ve decided after these extensive periods of self-reflection (which I guess are important when you’re trying to sell yourself to grad school without actually lying) is that in order to prepare myself for the next stage of my life I need to start doing things differently. Over the past two years my motivation and drive has improved by leaps an bounds, I’ve gotten to a point where my work is done, and it’s done well. When I start a project I can generally finish it, but with certain things like this website and my secret project, I just haven’t been able to get them to a point where they’re moving along steadily. Maybe that’s a personal failing, perhaps I’m stuck living in a life that will be full of periods of productivity in an otherwise unproductive work cycle. I don’t think so though, so I’m going to make an effort to start changing that.

Enter this post, one of the many “recent” posts that have been little more than self-affirmation and a promise to do more with this site. Wish me luck interwebs, if this is going to work, I’m going to need all the luck I can get.

Self-Reflection Blog News, ramble, reflection

I kept waking up the missus, so I retired to the living room where I could write this post without worrying about risking her wrath. You see, my wonderful girlfriend is a bit of a bipolar sleeper, and it’s sometimes difficult to get a read on what kind of night she’s going to have. Most of the time, a rhinoceros could crash through the wall and wrestle violently with a grizzly bear that tore its way up through the pipes and she’d sleep right through it. Other times - like this night in particular - even the most subtle change in the brightness of my monitor will send her shooting up in bed faster than you can say “I swear I wasn’t looking at porn!”

It’s that kind of strange inconsistency that seems to be governing my life right now. Between the roller coaster ride that is the grad school application process, and my total lack of time to do anything constructive anymore, things are pretty unpredictable. That’s alright though, if I learned anything from my quantum mechanics class, it’s that just because we don’t know all the details about a system, doesn’t mean it won’t all work out in the end anyway. I just hope nobody comes along and collapses my grad school wave function into a series of rejection letters. That would suck.

The first person I catch looking over my shoulder at my applications gets my fist tunneled through their face.

In other news, I’m thinking about taking this blog public at some point in the near future. (That felt so strange to type, knowing that next to nobody is able to read this right now). As per usual with these types of things, Josh (the non-physics one) has inspired (read: goaded) me into taking down the electrified fence protecting this blog, allowing me to once again let my thoughts flow freely through the intertubes. I’m going to miss the attack-iguanas though. They’re so cute!

My biggest concern about the whole deprivitizing process is the unspoken expectation that I actually produce content. I should probably take another page out of Josh’s book and provide some regular features. I know he’s doing Monday reviews, and the Friday-Five, and so on, and I can’t help but concede that as a pretty good idea. I don’t think I’ll run anything quite so regimented, but a number of dedicated fall back subjects that I can reliably post about from week to week (and enjoy doing so) would be a great help for turning this into what I ultimately wanted it to be in the first place: a repository for my thoughts on the world.

Speaking of thoughts, I’ve been thinking a lot about Bill Nye recently. I think of all the figures on television when I was growing up, and all the fantastic shows that shaped me as a child, the one man with whom I connected the most was Bill Nye. To this day I still remember the theme song, and I was always impressed with his rigor and easy to understand explanations, especially when compared to that hack Beakman. In fact, as Kristen and I were watching an episode of Time Warp on the Discovery Channel and I couldn’t stop thinking about crazy old Billy Nye and all the fantastic times we had together. Holding that thought for a moment, I have to take a brief aside to say the following on the subject of Time Warp:

What a horrendously addictive, but wholly substance-less show! Seriously. They do awesome stuff, and catch it on high-speed cameras. What more could you want? I’ll tell you: show hosts that know what the fuck is going on. Ugh! I couldn’t stop myself from correcting all the little mistakes they kept making when they tried to talk about Physics. Freshmen-level Physics at that! Honestly, I couldn’t tell if it was really because they didn’t know what the script they were reading meant, or if they were just trying to dumb it down for the average Joe, but either way, if I’m watching a show that tries to imply that it contains some degree of rigor… I’d like my hosts to get it right. Augh! Frustrating as hell. Still awesome though. Very awesome.

Anyway, aside over. Back to Bill Nye.

As I was saying, Kristen and I were watching Time Warp and my thoughts drifted back to Bill Nye, which reminded me of a conversation I had last semester with Subir - a colleage of mine who’s now working towards his PhD at Columbia. We were sitting in the Computational Physics lab here at Uni, and Subir turned to me and said “you know Rob, you have the gift. I think you could be a great spokesman for Physics.” At the time he invoked the name Brian Greene - the well known String Theorist who has released a couple of hugely popularized novels - but as the conversation continued on, Bill Nye - among others - were thrown out there as well.

At this point, I think it’s important to point out that Bill Nye and popular physicists are on two entirely different levels. Both contribute to science in their own unique ways, but scientists like Brian Green, Stephen Hawking, and the myriad of others recognizable by the laypersons of the world have the magic knack of making high level Physics simple, interesting, and easy to understand. Bill Nye, the Mythbusters, even Mr. Wizard bring something else to the table: they bring charisma (sometimes) and (more importantly) enthusiasm (which is great for getting those children excited in the physik).

On one hand, you have the ultracomplicated made simple and interesting, and on the other hand you have the dull and boring made exciting and engaging, and as Kristen and I sat and watched two grown men dance on Oobleck in super-slow motion, I turned to her and said…

“I want to be Bill Nye.”

That’s not the end of the story though. I don’t just want to be Bill Nye, I want to be Brian Greene too. I want to do both, and that’s where this long, winding, senseless path finally culminates: I think my regular content is going to be putting physics - real physics - out on the table, and make it engaging and interesting, regardless of its level.

And that’s all I’ve got for now. This long assed post (which was started over an hour ago, and should have been a lot shorter if I was going to stick true to the title) got way out of hand, and I really need to hit the sack. But now you (and by you I mean the two people who have access to this right now) have a small preview of what I’m going to try to do with this. Who knows, maybe if I get a savvy lab coat I can even put my camcorder to good use.

And with that folks, my EEE and I say good night.

P.S. I just had to finish proofreading this right when an episode of South Park came on the TV.. Now I won’t get to bed until three. Dammit! Curse you television for distracting me so!

Blog News, General, Physics, Self-Reflection josh, kristen, Physics, ramble, reflection, television

Someone recently accused me of being bitter. To that I will reply simply that I cannot be bitter, for I have found Physics and she fills me with her love. With Physics in my heart, there is no room for bitterness. I think I then proceeded to inadvertantly insult a couple of people who were listening in on the conversation because they thought I was being sarcastic towards religion. While I don’t practice much religion myself (although apparently the entire world is convinced that I’m Jewish) I don’t hold any particular ill will towards it. I have my own spiritual beliefs, and other people are entitled to theirs. As long as religion continues to drive people to be good, morally upstanding citizens, then it’s fine in my book.

At this point, I’d normally go into some discussion regarding the difference between science and religion, but that’s one can of worms I don’t ever intend to open directly.

That’s really all I’ve got right now. I’m looking to get my hands on a scanner so I can start putting up some of the xkcd-inspired comics I drew in my notes last year.

Blog News, Physics, Random Physics, ramble, religion