Serendipitous Convergence of the Dodgers and Tarzan Boy

On a few occasions this year, I had noticed the Dodger organist playing Tarzan Boy, and I was wondering why.

I had thought it was for something like certain leaping catches in the outfield, but it turns out that it is specifically for rookie James Outman. I figured that out last night because they played it when he got a hit in his first at bat. (I revised my opinion from seeing this when Outman was at the plate and running for a hit, with his locks flowing.) I thought it might have been because of his luxuriantly flowing hair.

I decided to google it to confirm whether I was right, and indeed Tarzan Boy is played specifically for good James Outman action, although it seems to actually be because of a nickname that is catching on. (I hadn't known about eh nickname.)

I am very amused by the fact that this is a convergence between the Dodgers and Tarzan Boy, given how many people from my Lloyd House days at Caltech would associate each of those two things individually with me.

What Happens at Caltech Stays at Caltech

Well, obviously.

What Happens in East Lansing Stays in East Lansing

I have arrived in East Lansing, where tomorrow I will be giving the Science at the Edge seminar at Michigan State University.

I am being hosted by my Caltech undergrad friend Jaideep Taggert Singh (a fellow Lloydie), who is on the physics faculty at MSU.

Test Your Strength: Millikan Library and Lloyd Gong Edition

Yes, really. I am very amused.

A Most Excellent Welcome Back to Caltech Indeed: Googly Eyes at Caltech

So, I am here at Caltech today to be a dinner guest at Lloyd House, and I was so tired (and was just getting some work done) that I didn't even notice some excellent handiwork.

As part of my e-mail exchange with the current Lloyd President (Grace Park '16), I included the following message:

In case Lloydies want to have a completed prank ready for campus that Friday (I estimate a few hours of work when split across many people the night before), my recent inspiration for such things is summarized in the following two webpages: webpage 1, webpage 2

Simple, but elegant...

(This is inspired by one well-placed set of such eyes I noticed on the Stanford campus recently.)

Anyway, it's just a thought. :)  I don't arrive until the Friday, so I'll see when I get there if this happens.

They were up until 5am setting up googly eyes all over campus, and as you can see they picked some very sweet spots. (These are not anywhere close to all of them. There is also one pair on a door to the math building, a couple of cyclopean ones, etc. Maybe some more pictures will eventually show up?) And perhaps my favorite: one on Millikan Library itself!!!

I have seen people taking pictures of the Millikan bust with the googly eyes and indicating that it looks even creepier that way (and it's when I accidentally saw that after walking around a bit that I realized that it looks like they actually did it... I was pretty well zombified until then), I have on quite a few occasions heard people talk about the various places they have seen it, etc. Apparently, the Lloydies stayed up until 5am working on this.

Way to do me proud, modern Lloydies! I approve! (Let me count the ways... So awesome!) Now that's the right way to welcome an alum back to campus!

Update: Here is one more picture I took. (Also note that this prank is not only simple and elegant, but also inexpensive and very photogenic.)

What Happens in Southern California Stays in Southern California

I flew into LA this morning, and my early flight led to a way-too-damn-early pick-up by Supershuttle, so I am exhausted and extremely sleep-deprived at the moment --- which, I suppose is fitting, because I am visiting Caltech tonight to be a dinner guest in Lloyd House (my undergraduate House). I last was a dinner guest there around 2006 when I was still a postdoc at Caltech. This is the second time since graduating that I'll be dinner-guesting in Lloyd, although I have visited Lloyd on numerous other occasions for various events over the years. (When I first graduated, I visited a lot, though now I have even't entered the House since I was a postdoc.)

Unsurprisingly, two of the people behind the counter at Red Door Cafe on campus who have been working there for many years recognize me. Jeff Kimble also gave me a brief nod. Soon I'm going to walk over to the theoretical condensed matter group just to see if any of the people I know are around.

Tomorrow, I will head over to Westwood, as I'll be visiting Andrea Bertozzi's group at UCLA. I'll be giving an applied math talk on Wednesday late afternoon and then heading for the airport to return to the Bay Area.

What Happens at Caltech Stays at Caltech

You want an awesome ‪#‎tbt ('Throwback Thursday')‬? OK, I'll give you an awesome #tbt!

Tomorrow, I am flying out to Pasadena to attend a reunion/workshop for the 20th anniversary of the CDS* department at Caltech!

And I have even packed my faded 20-year old Lloyd shirt that I got ... [all together now] ... when I was frosh at Caltech in Fall 1994.

* Control and Dynamical Systems (not TFM)

Chiiiipwiiiiiiiiiiich!

The clarion call in the title of this entry refers to the delicious dessert known as a Chipwich, which sadly no longer exists in its original form.

I almost bought a Chipwich variant at CVS, but it's just not the same when (1) it is not as good as the original and (2) it isn't thrown in the general direction of your head at a high speed. (Many of the substitutes are really good, and I am sure that this one is just fine --- even though I don't think it had any chocolate chips stuck to the side --- but the mood of the moment was for the original version.) According to the Wikipedia page, the particular variant that I saw today appears to be the reason that the original Chipwich doesn't exist anymore.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with particular bits of Caltech --- or at least Lloyd House --- history from the mid to late 1990s, Chipwiches are also the reason that I sometimes brought a baseball glove with me to Lloyd House dinners on Friday nights (and why I sat with my back to the wall on those nights, if I could possibly help it). Frozen chipwiches chucked at high speed hurt a lot if they manage to hit you. But with a baseball glove and one side protected, I was well prepared.

By the way, the clarion call was sometimes pronounced more like "Chiiiiiiiiiiipwiiich".

RIP Chrissy Amphlett (1959-2013)

Chrissy Amphlett, the lead singer of The Divinyls, died yesterday

To this day, whenever I hear the song "I Touch Myself", I still feel like I should be abruptly ending whatever conversation I am having so that I can go somewhere to talk smack about people.

(Tip of the cap to whoever does the Facebook posts for They Might Be Giants.)

I'm... Too Sexy For This List... Too Sexy For This List...

Business Insider has published its list of the 50 sexiest scientists.

To paraphrase Right Said Fred: I'm... too sexy for this list. Too sexy for this list...*

* Full disclosure: I have not yet actually looked at the list.

Lloydies from my era should read that list with visuals from a certain airband skit, of course! :)

(Tip of the cap to Kevin Hickerson.)

Congratulations to Dr. Tim Elling!

I am delighted to report that Dr. Tim Elling has just successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis in Applied and Computational Mathematics at Caltech. His thesis is called GPU accelerated Fourier-continuation solvers and physically exact computational boundary conditions for wave scattering problems, and it was supervised by Oscar Bruno.

I actually looked through the thesis for a bit and saw Tim give a practice talk. There is some pretty cool stuff in there. But one gap does remain: What about random cracks? :)

Stephen Hawking and Me

One of the guys who works at the hotel saw that I was at Oxford, so he asked me if I knew Stephen Hawking personally. (Yes, I know: He's at "the other place" [tm].)

[I did mention Hawking's visits to Caltech to visit "friends", but I didn't get into his having been a dinner guest at Lloyd House.]

All Too Familiar

The reason I like this xkcd is because so many discussions at Tech --- especially in Upper or Lower Crotch, for example --- worked like this.

A Techer's New Adventure

Tomorrow, fellow Lloydie Rachel Gray '00 goes to Italy to start her new life as a nun. Pretty soon it looks like none of us will hear from her for a long time (she won't have internet access, and apparently she can't write or read snail mail except from close family). You can read about her life decision on her blog (which I suppose won't be updated for quite a while...), so for those of you who know her, now is definitely the time to send her well wishes. Hopefully our paths will eventually cross again.

XKCD and Lower Crotch

The new xkcd strip reminds me of Lower Crotch conversations (and also Upper Crotch Conversations, for that matter). In fact, I'm sure that this topic has arisen on several occasions, and there are even specific people who I could imagine making the final comment.

MIT Technology Review's Young Investigators (TR35) for 2009

MIT Technology Review has released its list of 35 investigators under 35 for 2009. Among the list is a very familiar name: Ellis Meng, a Lloydie from the class of 1997. Congrats!

Another familiar name is a Santa Fe Institute postdoc (Nathan Eagle), who I have either met or seen speak. (I don't remember whether I talked to him.) He's one of the people doing interesting things with mobile phone data.

Tales from the arXiv: "But all the people with motivation are already on the Lloyd Special Forces team"

I couldn't help thinking of Jeremy Gawle's [sp?] line from one of the old Lloyd movies when I saw the title of this new paper on the arXiv. Here are the title, authors, and abstract:

Title: Mathematical formalism of physics of systems with motivation

Authors: Ihor Lubashevsky, Natalia Plawinska

Abstract: The paper discusses fundamental problems in mathematical description of social systems based on physical concepts, with so-called statistical social systems being the main subject of consideration. Basic properties of human beings and human societies that distinguish social and natural systems from each other are listed to make it clear that individual mathematical formalism and physical notions should be developed to describe such objects rather then can be directly inherited from classical mechanics and statistical physics. As a particular example systems with motivation are considered. Their characteristic features are analyzed individually and the appropriate mathematical description is proposed. Finally the paper concludes that the basic elements necessary for describing statistical social systems or, more rigorously, systems with motivation are available or partly developed in modern physics and applied mathematics.

Hmmm....

Hmmm... This post makes me wonder if the person who runs the blog Sad Guys on Trading Floors is a Techer (and a Lloydie)... Then again, maybe there is some other thing that that was originally referencing and I just need to catch up on a cultural tidbit...

10-year anniversary of my (in)famous Black Celebration

As I briefly discussed in this space two years ago today, February 14, 1998 was a special day in my life. It was my favorite episode of the radio show that I broadcast on Lloyd Radio with Lemming.

Given my propensity for enjoying groups like Depeche Mode, mood swings, and an enjoyment of bittersweet songs in general, there would occasionally be special episodes of our radio show (and of the radio show I did by myself the previous year) that I liked to call "All Depressing and Cynical Song Specials". On this day ten years ago, we decided to have the "All Depressing and Cynical Song Special: Valentine's Day Edition" in which we started with a live version of Depeche Mode's "Black Celebration", play depressing and cynical songs about love for about 2.5 hours, and ended with "Blow Your Brains Out" (What is this song actually called? And who sings it? I never remember...).

While we were doing this, there were naturally two recently-hooked-up couple slurping each other right outside where we were broadcasting for the entirety of the show. (It's not clear precisely how much they were aware of what we were doing just a few feet away.) One of the things I distinctly remember is our Resident Associate walking out of her apartment (which was also next to where we were broadcasting) and giving us (or was it just me?) just about the most horrified look I have ever seen in my life. She also seemed to have a sort of helpless feeling because there was simply nothing that she could do about it. It was wonderful.

By the way, there were a couple of other episodes of my radio show that were rather memorable. One of them was when my show was "taken over" by certain people who insisted that I play The Ride until they got showered (people finally had to come over from Ruddock to help with this). Autumn Looijen and I are planning to include a blurb about this incident in Legends IV. (It was punted from Volume III to Volume IV at the last minute.) The other was when I got the folks on the second floor of page to drunkenly sing along with the chorus to Faust and Lewis's "Save the Beer" back when Lloyd Radio was still broadcast from the "Llove Shack" (the bunker that Nestor Ocampo and Walter Brisken built for their Ditch Day stack).