I ended up growing out my hair for about nine months between June of 2009 and March of 2010. I’ve only a picture of my hair 8 months into the growth… it shows my hair just before it got so long that I couldn’t do much of anything useful, including see:

I said that I would cut my hair when I passed boards… and then I just… didn’t cut it. Just kept having things come up, like sleep and homework and life. Finally, FINALLY, I got an appointment to get it cut. The results:

So that’s my haircut! Additionally, here is my haircut with Mykala’s bra on top of it:

And that’s the story of my first haircut as a married man.

8:52 and George eats at 9:00. His plaintive hunger meows echo through the hallway. “You are not forgotten”, I say. This does not seem to satisfy him. Me neither: seems a bit melodramatic. Next strategy: try to teach him to tell time. We’ll start with digital clocks first.

You know you’re growing up when you’re much more interested in the decorating and appliance choices made in the kitchens of Facebook pictures than you are in the people in the pictures. Also under development: maturity.

Words (phases) I really really hate for reasons not worth elaborating:

1. Staycation
2. Tummy time
3. Playdate

See also: shitty portmanteaux.

Coralie Bickford-Smith designs covers for Penguin Books. A few years ago, she did an amazing series for Penguin Classics.

I want to buy the collection, just because the covers look so great. I hope the typographic choices on the interior of the books are as good as the design of the covers.

A bit from Bickford-Smith in a 2008 interview about the book covers:

I wanted to create sumptuous books for people to enjoy, cherish and pass on.

I think she succeeded brilliantly; indeed, my first thought when I saw these was they have a timeless, heirloom feel.

Katy sent along this really seriously great rendition Gershwin’s “Summertime” by Billy Stewart. As tends to be the case with these things… the video doesn’t add a whole heck of a lot to the music. So queue up the music on this beautiful 60° Wednesday (while you are trying to do some work and avoid thinking about the outdoors) and enjoy the sweet stylings of Billy Stewart.

Special Relativity

In the New Yorker article Time Bandits lies the best plain English description of special relativity that I have ever run across (you owe it to yourself to read this carefully — it’s worth it):

Since light is an electromagnetic wave (this had been known since the nineteenth century), its speed is fixed by the laws of electromagnetism; those laws ought to be the same for all observers; and therefore everyone should see light moving at the same speed, regardless of the frame of reference. Still, it was bold of Einstein to embrace the light principle, for its consequences seemed downright absurd.

Suppose—to make things vivid—that the speed of light is a hundred miles an hour. Now suppose I am standing by the side of the road and I see a light beam pass by at this speed. Then I see you chasing after it in a car at sixty miles an hour. To me, it appears that the light beam is outpacing you by forty miles an hour. But you, from inside your car, must see the beam escaping you at a hundred miles an hour, just as you would if you were standing still: that is what the light principle demands. What if you gun your engine and speed up to ninety-nine miles an hour? Now I see the beam of light outpacing you by just one mile an hour. Yet to you, inside the car, the beam is still racing ahead at a hundred miles an hour, despite your increased speed. How can this be? Speed, of course, equals distance divided by time. Evidently, the faster you go in your car, the shorter your ruler must become and the slower your clock must tick relative to mine; that is the only way we can continue to agree on the speed of light. (If I were to pull out a pair of binoculars and look at your speeding car, I would actually see its length contracted and you moving in slow motion inside.) So Einstein set about recasting the laws of physics accordingly. To make these laws absolute, he made distance and time relative.

That’s one great explanation. The “shorter ruler, slower clock” phrase is particularly helpful. Another critical thing to remember is that this all occurs relative to the observer.

So, the slow speed of motion within the vehicle is only seen by the stationary person with binoculars… it is not experienced by the person within the vehicle traveling close to the speed of light.

Special relativity actually was illustrated quite wonderfully in the 1970s. Scientists used cesium-atomic clocks; these extremely accurate clocks base their resonant frequency on the decay of a cesium isotope, instead of the wildly inaccurate (by comparison) resonance of quartz. Current iterations of these clocks lose about 1 second every 17 to 30 million years. These clocks were put on jets which were flown around the world twice, in opposite directions. The idea was that the cesium clocks aboard the planes would record less time passing than the stationary clocks on the ground, which were used as a reference. To reference back to the New Yorker article: it would be as though you, sitting there, were watching these clocks tick slower because they were in the car chasing the light beam. This is, indeed, EXACTLY what happened. When the clocks were compared after the flights, the clocks aboard the planes recorded less time passing than did the clocks on the ground.

This type of almost incomprehensibly small difference in recorded time doesn’t seem that important, until you link together a global network of satellites designed to closely track your movements on the ground. You know… GPS. So, get this: if you just toss satellites up into orbit, they start seeing time passing differently than your computers on the ground, and the system gets all screwed up because all the computers can’t agree on time. So, scientists set the clock speed of the processors on the satellites to be 10.22999999543 MHz, and the speed of the earth-bound computers to be 10.23 MHz. If they hadn’t done this, along with a few other seemingly esoteric tweaks… your GPS in your car, the one that is supposed to make life so simple, wouldn’t work worth beans.

Science, even the crazy out-there relativistic science, matters in our daily lives.

The freeze-thaw this season has produced an extremely large amount of ice. Our walkway in front of the house was covered in about 4 inches of solid ice after a few weeks of the cold-warm-cold cycles. These weather patterns have also created the worst pothole season in my memory… which is where this story begins.

On the 28 of February, while coming down the steep Franklin Avenue hill in the dark, I hit a giant pothole associated with a manhole cover. If the pothole were described in dental terms, you’d call it an “insufficient margin with recurrent decay”. I was going about 25 miles an hour, and for a few seconds after I hit the hole, I thought I would be able to regain control. That, alas, was not possible. I don’t really remember the instant between bobbling my front handlebars and hitting the ground. I do, however, remember the sound of the 1000 denier Cordura of my Chrome Metropolis (the best bike bag I’ve ever owned, period) sliding along the ground and slowing me to a stop. BZZZZZZZZZZZ is my first memory after being upright — it echoed in my head as I slid along the asphalt. Slowly, headlights came up on me and my bike, and I looked down at the yellow street line directly below my head. I should have broken my arm was all I could really think. Thankfully, I only suffered some serious road rash. The heat of the friction with the roadway actually heated up my garments enough to melt parts of my jacket and gym shorts (which I had on beneath my scrubs, preventing me from ending up shorts-less). The large soft tissue trauma on my right elbow seems to be calcifying a little bit, but I think my joint will make a full recovery. This is important because you can get so far behind so fast in these dental lab courses… I am very very thankful my right arm made it through the crash in one piece. So thankful.

One of the drivers of the cars behind me must have called the city, because the hole was actually fixed not more than 3 days after my accident.

I am really really looking forward to warmer days with more sunlight, so I can see the road. Once the street cleaners go through, I get to once again ride my good bike: 2009 Specialized Allez Double. I am EXTREMELY excited to hop back on the skinny tires.

David Brooks - What Obama Stands For:

Readers of this column know that I’ve been critical on health care and other matters. Obama is four clicks to my left on most issues. He is inadequate on the greatest moral challenge of our day: the $9.7 trillion in new debt being created this decade. He has misread the country, imagining a hunger for federal activism that doesn’t exist. But he is still the most realistic and reasonable major player in Washington.

David Brooks is a GREAT columnist. I’d love to hear him speak somewhere, sometime.

From “the more things change, the more they stay the same” desk at tumbledry HQ: a quote that, I think, you may find applicable. (I hope Katy finds it enlightening, as well):

I will not go for a doctorate, because it would be of little help to me, and the whole comedy has become boring.

Can you guess the source? I just got screwed over on a lab practical; I’ll tell the whole story when I have more time. Spring break is days away.

P.S. Albert Einstein.

“It ain’t over till it’s over” may be tautological in nature, but it sure sounds profound to me. Motivating, even.

Mykala and I finally managed to attend our first ethnic Wednesday event (that’s the Dan-Ryan-Emily trip to a local non-crappy non-american restaurant) yesterday, and it was a complete success. Halfway through dinner, as the subject turned to marriage, Mykala turned to look at me and asked “Am I nicer to you now than I was when we were dating?” I guess I was a little surprised at the question, but without hesitation answered “yes, definitely”. We had fun dating, but marriage seems a lot better. That reminds me of this quote from a recent “Room for Debate” discussion at the New York Times called For Women, Redefining Marriage Material:

In this new model, which I have called “hedonic marriage,” couples who have similar preferences and desires for balancing work, fun, and family are well-suited. This new model of marriage thrives when households have the resources to enjoy their lives. Not surprisingly then, marital happiness is much higher among the college-educated and divorce has fallen most sharply for them.

The definition of that “hedonic marriage” seems a bit limited, though. I really think when you can have a thoughtful, measured, meaningful discussion about the world around you… that’s when your marriage has great potential. Those discussions, that wordplay, those debates… they don’t rely on age, beauty, or mobility — they’re a romance for the head, and that’s the strongest kind.

Word of the day: phenology:

Phenology is the study of periodic plant and animal life cycle events and how these are influenced by seasonal and interannual variations in climate.

It turns out that phenology rose to prominence amongst scientists in the early 1700s and then took off as a general pastime in the mid-1800s. What better way to show off your wealth (I’m not so busy that I must always work) and interest in science (I am recording numbers) than to help other scientists track the data underlying the seasons? But then:

The Phenological Reports ended suddenly in 1948 after 58 years, and Britain was without a national recording scheme for almost 50 years, just at a time when climate change was becoming evident. During this period, important contributions were made by individual dedicated observers. The naturalist and author Richard Fitter recorded the First Flowering Date (FFD) of 557 species British flowering plants in Oxfordshire between about 1954 and 1990.

Perhaps it sounds like the pastime simply fell out of fashion, but I think a sudden end to a 200 year tradition of phenology points to a deeper trend: we increasingly live at odds with nature. That is, we prefer to fight the trends of seasons than embrace them. I hear of far more trips to warmer climates in the winter than investments of similar amounts of disposable income on skiing equipment. Why would people stay and investigate the nuances of their own surroundings and seasonal rhythms when they could jet off elsewhere? Given our relatively recent gift of easy and safe global travel, the siren song of the unfamiliar (and warmer) triumphs over lashing yourself to the mast and recording winter’s course.

I’m frequently looking for songs to play that can be described as achingly beautiful. Thankfully, I’ve the perfect example of that today. It’s a song by José González from his 2007 album In Our Nature called Fold.

Mykala and I left the St. Louis Park Costco at sunset this evening. I got 110 servings (10 pounds) of Old Fashioned Quaker Oatmeal for $6.89. With horse-sized servings of cereal in the trunk, we set out for home. As you head into Minneapolis from the west, past the mansions on their faux bluffs just south of 394, your view opens up. Thanks to fortuitous timing, I had a perfect view of hundreds of little birds dotting the sky, on their way to roost. Skeleton trees, not yet pushing nascent leaves into the cold world, looked as though they’d jumped the gun and sprouted big berries: extended families of birds were waiting for sunset in the shelter of the branches.

It’s hard to stop, but when you do, you realize that you are small and everything else is big. This is an important thing to understand.

THIS IS A REAL QUOTE FROM A REAL ARTICLE:

In Manhattan, the brutally competitive nursery and kindergarten admissions process is leading many parents to sign up their toddlers for therapy. “Preschool admissions tests loom large,” said Margie Becker-Lewin, an occupational therapist on the Upper West Side. “In many cases, parents know there is nothing wrong with their child, but they feel caught in the middle.”

If that doesn’t sound like something from the satirical paper The Onion, I don’t know what does. Yes, you can read the rest of the article at the New York Times: Occupational Therapists Are Helping Children With Handwriting.

Conformity at PsyBlog:

As soon as there’s someone who disagrees, or even just dithers or can’t decide, conformity is reduced. Some studies have found conformity can be reduced from highs of 97% on a visual judgement task down to only 36% when there is a competent dissenter in the ranks (Allen & Levine, 1971).

First, last, and only time I’ll ever laugh while reading about chlorine trifluoride… Sand Won’t Save You This Time:

There’s a report from the early 1950s of a one-ton spill of the stuff. It burned its way through a foot of concrete floor and chewed up another meter of sand and gravel beneath, completing a day that I’m sure no one involved ever forgot. That process, I should add, would necessarily have been accompanied by copious amounts of horribly toxic and corrosive by-products: it’s bad enough when your reagent ignites wet sand, but the clouds of hot hydrofluoric acid are your special door prize if you’re foolhardy enough to hang around and watch the fireworks.

HOWTO make the perfect fruit salad and get laid:

Wash your hands with soap. Do this in the kitchen, not in the bathroom, even if you just came out of the bathroom. Even if you spend your entire day submerging your hands in a sterile bubble, wash your hands in front of your sweetheart. Do it now.

A comment about that article, from its author: “That post still gets 1500+ hits a month from people searching for variations of “fruit salad recipe.” I get at least 1 email a month from random strangers who appreciated getting more than just a recipe. :)”

NPR’s Guy Raz interviewed William Fitzsimmons a week after I got married… William Fitzsimmons: A Songwriter With Vision:

RAZ: You were a counselor and you dealt with all kinds of grief, people who were dealing with it. I mean, you are writing about a divorce, and you’re essentially revisiting it over and over and over again, as you tour through the country.

Do you think as a counselor, you would give somebody this kind of advice, in a sense, to sort of revisit what they’ve been through?

Mr. FITZSIMMONS: No, I don’t think I would.

The New Poor - Despite Signs of Recovery, Long-Term Unemployment Rises:

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Does a jobless recovery deserve to be called a recovery?

5 steps to taming materialism, from an accidental expert:

In hindsight, I realize it felt safe to live somewhere I could afford if my company went bankrupt. Which it did.

“If all the roads were paved with ice that wouldn’t thaw or crack / I could skate from Maine to Nebraska then on to Alaska… and back.”

Have you ever seen anyone without a lower jaw? Roger Ebert: The Essential Man:

Roger Ebert can’t remember the last thing he ate. He can’t remember the last thing he drank, either, or the last thing he said. Of course, those things existed; those lasts happened. They just didn’t happen with enough warning for him to have bothered committing them to memory — it wasn’t as though he sat down, knowingly, to his last supper or last cup of coffee or to whisper a last word into Chaz’s ear. The doctors told him they were going to give him back his ability to eat, drink, and talk. But the doctors were wrong, weren’t they? On some morning or afternoon or evening, sometime in 2006, Ebert took his last bite and sip, and he spoke his last word.

Let me again point you to one of the best blogs online, Roger Ebert’s Journal. A little about it (also from the great Esquire article I linked to up top):

… five hundred thousand words that probably wouldn’t exist had he kept his other voice. Now some of his entries have thousands of comments, each of which he vets personally and to which he will often respond. It has become his life’s work, building and maintaining this massive monument to written debate — argument is encouraged, so long as it’s civil — and he spends several hours each night reclined in his chair, tending to his online oasis by lamplight. Out there, his voice is still his voice — not a reasonable facsimile of it, but his.

The thing I like best about Ebert’s reviewing is that he identifies what a movie sets out to do: Dumb summer romantic comedy. Or, Make an artistic statement. And onward. He reviews the movie based on its own goals, on its own terms — has the movie given up on itself and settled for mediocrity? Or worse, is it hostile towards the audience? Or has it overreached as it strove to do something new? I think this is how I would try to review movies… it seems fair.

Once you learn what is expected of you, the tooth cutting strategy for placing silver fillings actually makes sense. All lines should be crisp, smooth, and flowing. You must cut in such a way that you prevent the tooth from cracking and avoid drilling into the bloody and full-of-nerves pulp. You must also cut in such a way that the silver you place does not crack when your patient bites food. Finally, you must make sure that the silver stays put in the tooth.

Those goals are formalized into a set of millimeter measurements, degrees, and clearance tests. I’m finally familiar with those requirements. However, I’m so nervous when I cut these teeth (well, when I cut their plastic counterparts in pre-clinic). Over the course of a 2 hour practical, you can do enough damage to fail in 3 seconds. Try it, count backwards from 3: 3… 2… 1… ok you just failed your practical. That’s nerve-wracking!

And then there’s the mirror factor.

When you cut into someone’s top teeth, you have 2 options. OPTION 1: you can bend way over and around and look directly at the tooth as you cut. This will result in you having to get your neck fused. This has happened to more than one doctor in our school. OPTION 2: you do all your cutting by looking through a mirror.

So, I’m sitting there literally sweating and my heart pounding as I try to guide this drill, upside down and backwards, over and through this tiny little tooth. I’m trying for option 2, but I’m thinking… I’d rather have terrible posture right now and pass… and then figure out how to do it ergonomically later.

It’s conflicting… do you do what’s best for you now (option 1), with the risk of developing bad, potentially debilitating, habits? Or do you try to do it all at once: good posture, passing grades? It feels impossible. And so you practice at 6:30pm on a Friday night, sitting there all alone in lab… and the 500,000 rpm drill catches, slipping around the mesial buccal cavosurface angle of the proximal box you were cutting… and that’s it. That tooth isn’t going to pass — time to get another on which to practice.