Second Day of Teaching

Today went so much smoother. I was more relaxed, the students talked a little bit, the lecture didn't seem so dry. I think it will keep getting better!

First Day Teaching

Wow...it went way different than expected. I wasn't nervous last night like people said I should be. Butterflies took off only about 15-20 minutes before class started. To compound that, Calhoun was sitting in on my class. The system was down so I couldn't print my roster and "call" roll to match names with faces. The computer stuff went way faster than expected. I ended up jumping into the math/graphing review. I let them out after 50 minutes (in a 75 minute class).

I was shaken after class. I felt like I did a crappy job. I forgot to highlight a few aspects of the syllabus. Maybe I should have started with an intro into "what is econ" before the math/graphing review.

I think that tomorrow I'll be a little more at ease, and probably have my personality showing through by early next week. Hopefully I can develop a sense of dialog in the classroom where the students aren't afraid to comment/ask questions.

White Trash Bash

If you're reading this, then you probably have heard about the party, but if not: This Friday, 10:45pm...my house. It'll be fun. Check it out on Facebook.

Pick #23

System of a Down - Suggestions from the self-titled album.

Free Comic Book Day

Thee first Saturday in May is "Free Comic Book day" and I went with Nick to the 4 comic book stores in Tally to get free comics / posters...It was kinda cool...I have never before been in a comic book shop and I got to see a side of geekdom that I've never before experienced. They also had games...I thought about getting Settlers of Catan, but it was $38 everywhere we went...a major drawback is that you need 3-4 players for that game...2 doesn't work.
I ended up with a couple free comic books (rated 18 years +) and a poster of the Fantastic Four (who are they??? I dunno).

I mentioned how there must be a lot of comic book geeks for Tally to support 4 comic book stores. Nick mentioned how the major bookstores like B&N and Waldenbooks sell graphic novels, thus providing another level of competition with the local stores.

Nick knows the people who work in all of these shops. In fact, I think he was just in all of them last week giving them syllabi for his class coming up in the summer.

The coolest thing I saw on this adventure was a dude decked out in a Storm Trooper outfit at the second shop we hit up. Totally looked authentic, but it was home-made.

Dried Mud

This was on a construction site. Mud does this when it's the nasty kind of mud and the sun bakes it so that the corners come up. I like the grass growing out of it.

The Physical Possibilities of Time Travel

So, Nick gave me a book that he read a couple years ago. It's called "The Physical Possibilities of Time Travel" subtitled "The Pysical Possibilities of Travel Through Time" by a physicist named J. Richard Gott. He talks about different mechanisms for traveling through space-time faster than a beam of light. Pretty interesting stuff, although most of it is fairly impractical now...like constructing a giant dense sphere around you with the mass of multiple suns.

Here were some statements (all consistent with Einstein's theory of relativity) in the book that blew my mind:
First, as illustrated above, the universe could have created itself through time travel. The loop on the bottom represents the infinite/recurring beginning. The black cones are all different universes going through the inflation stage.
Next, by weird properties of space-time and not-so-weird properties of light, "if you went on a long enough journey at a velocity near to but lower than the speed of light, you could actually return home at the time you started or even before" (p.92).
It explained weird geometries of space-time...one was compared to a room where when you walk out the front of the room, you immediately enter the back of the room...or when you go out the left side, you reappear on the far right side (like in some older video games)...likewise, go out the top and you're re-entered on the bottom. It's easy enough to think of this situation as a bunch of identical cubes stacked in a lattice, but it's hard to imagine for only one universe.
It also talks about how 2 different observers can have different perceptions of an event and both be correct about their observations.

In short, I recommend it...quick read...I finished in 2 days.