threemonkeys

12:04 pm: School Reunions - a question
So have any of you geeky types been to your school reunions? What were your experiences? The reason I ask is that my old high school is having a major anniversary reunion at Easter this year. I wasn't even considering going, but over xmas down south I had a couple of conversations(1) where I was actively encouraged to attend. The thing is, I suspect that I have nothing in common with old school mates. My experiences whenever I've bumped into old fellow inmates is that the lingua franca of such encounters is children (and now grandkids) - a language which I do not speak. It doesn't help that I'm from a rural area and most people stayed in that environment when I didn't.

So are my concerns justified, or have you had good experiences? Of course I may not be able to go anyway - work commitments and money might get in the way (and if I had plenty of time and money, I'd be going to Swancon or Eastercon for sure).


(1)The two conversations were both with pairs of sisters who went to the same school. The older sister of each pair was called Bronwyn and the younger was in the same year at school as me. The fact that I find that worthy of note goes a long way to explaining why I suspect that I will be out of place at a reunion.

10:55 am: Been Away
I have on occasion remarked that Wellington seems keen to get rid of me and reluctant to take me back. Traveling down South this year it was the other way around. First the long term parking I had pre-booked (and pre-paid) was full and I had to be directed elsewhere. The the flight had a whole bunch of small delays including a long wait on the plane waiting for takeoff clearance.

On the way back, the plane arrived early. Then the luggage from the flight was unloaded so swiftly that it was already on the carousel by the time I had walked there straight from the plane. Then without fuss or bother the parking attendants waived my ticket for my alternative parking so I didn't pay any extra.

Good to be home.

09:18 pm: Cross
Oh damn, I appear to have become one of those people who put test posts up, supposedly to test the client, but really to tell everybody that they have a new toy. Except that behaviour was all over two years ago. So I won't.

09:56 pm: Cosy and Warm
Many of the local shops have small ads posted in their windows etc for various local handyfolk services. The local takeaway has a notice up advertising the services of a nanny - it reads more like a babysitting service. But unlike most of the stores, the ad isn't in the window - it is stuck to another glass surface. It is on the hood above the display cabinet where this takeaway shop keeps their cooked chicken on display. Unfortunate placement or subtle advertising - you be the judge.

01:04 pm: Testing political attitude
I live in the Ohariu electorate. It is quite marginal and after Epsom, the general roll electorate most likely to affect the proportionality of parliament according to who is returned as the local MP. So what kind of candidate behaviour is likely to affect my electorate vote? I've already mentioned the arrogance level that causes the distributors of advertising material to ignore my "No Circulars Please" sign. So far, with less than two weeks to go, only one party has irritated me with this behaviour and they did it twice.

On the way to work today, I encountered a bunch of political supporters by the side of the road. They were on both sides waving signs and flags. Not only is this behaviour potentially dangerous, it has the effect of causing the traffic to slow down creating a tail back which in turn will lengthen journey times for commuters and generally annoy them. Again you have to question the mentality of people who would indulge in this in this behaviour. The "your concerns don't matter to us" arrogance of it rankles. On the other hand it may be simple thoughtlessness or stupidity - but who wants that in their MP either.

For what its worth, this was done by the same party who left their stuff in my mailbox. The party of the electorate candidate who threw a hissy fit because he didn't get top billing at an electorate event - ahead of his own party leader. Somehow I don't want this person in parliament representing me. Unfortunately he will get in via the party lists.

10:58 am: Recycling puzzle
The local suburb's residents association is running its annual inorganic recycling/rubbish collection day today. This year I was actually organized enough to remember and put a bunch of stuff out. There has been a small but steady flow of vehicles cruising around with people slowing down to peruse the piles along the street. I wasn't expecting much of the stuff I put out to be attractive to the collectors and which would therefore get picked up in the final "rubbish" collection. Although there were a couple of items that I thought might be desirable. Thus far everything except that couple of items has been taken away. Go figure.

07:58 pm: Biorhythm upset
Back in the workforce. Two days now. You would think that the first day back after a long break would be the biggest shock to the system. But no, the second day was harder. One day adjusting to a different pattern can be covered by adrenalin. The second day is harder. Starting a job on a Wednesday isn't so bad though - it is Friday tomorrow TGIF.

The job itself - well it looks like it will be OK. Seems like a friendly bunch of people.

10:44 am: GUFF
The GUFF ballot is now available. As the saying goes - vote early,vote often.

02:05 pm: Where have all the numbers gone
Just read a book that didn't have page numbers. Not a comic or picture book but a full size paperback. It was just an oddness - a little disconcerting. Every time I picked the book up, I noticed the lack of numbers. Yet, despite the oddness, how many of us actually use the page numbers for anything except perhaps checking the last page to see how fat the volume we are considering reading is? But despite the lack of usefulness, all books are usually numbered. I'm thinking novels here of course - its a bit different with short story collections where a table of contents allows you to go to a specific story.

As it happens, there is an obvious explanation for the lack of numbers in the volume in question. It is an el-cheapo omnibus edition of three Agatha Cristie novels printed prior to the days of electronic typesetting. When joining the, already laid out, three books together the page numbering of each had to be removed. But because it was cheap edition, it wasn't worth the effort of re-numbering it. Simple, yet strange.

09:58 am: The Chemistry Nobel and Science
I'm delighted to see that Dan Shechtman has won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his work on quasicrystals. The idea of regular crystalline-like forms that don't have a repeating translational component is just fascinating to me. My PhD research work involved ways of representing three dimensional crystal structural concepts. The basic mathematical model (Space Groups) at the time was thought to represent all crystal forms. Space groups does not allow for five-fold symmetry in crystals. I remember being required to do an on the fly proof of that during a research review (a proof that relies on the assumption that all crystals have a regular repeating translational component).

But even then, we knew that not all solids that appeared crystalline fit the space group model. Ice is a common example and elemental Boron a less common one but even more interesting because it has five-fold components. Also, during the time I was doing my PhD, word was coming through from Russia of experimental evidence of crystals with five-fold x-ray diffraction patterns. So even then, cracks were appearing in the supremacy of the Space Group notion. But here is the crucial thing, the possibility of unprecedented crystal forms did not upset those of us working in this area. It excited us with the prospect that things could be bigger and stranger than we had previously thought. Sure, it meant that the work we were doing was no longer the only way of defining a crystal, but it was still valid as a sub-set of the new greater whole. When Shechtman published and validated his work, it turned that prospect of a bigger picture into a reality. That is often the way science works - an expansion of a vision to a bigger picture.

It is sad to read about some of the personal struggles that Shechtman suffered doing this work. Which isn't to say that he shouldn't have had to struggle in a professional sense. When you introduce something as big and ground changing as his work into the world, you have to expect to be challenged and you have to expect to defend your work with great rigour. The skeptics have a saying "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". That is the way of the scientific method.

Which brings me to another point about science. Contrary to the way many people view it, science is not a monolithic block of knowledge which explains everything in the universe. Science is a process - a way of taking information and theory and turning it into knowledge. The body of knowledge generated is not science as such, simply the product of it. What is more, as science continues, that knowledge is fed back into the process and may become changed by doing so. The body of knowledge is not fixed but constantly being examined, refined and changed. That is not a failing of science but instead is its strength. I could go on about how people who come at this with fixed belief systems struggle to understand this dynamic concept, but you can draw your own conclusions. What I say instead is congratulations to Dan Shechtman for doing his bit to reshape our view of the universe.