Pretty Picture

This is a close-up picture of the star Rigel, which sits on the left foot of the constellation Orion. Rigel is a so-called "blue supergiant," since it is so hot that its peak is in the ultraviolet. If our sun was replaced with Rigel, the star would fill up almost half the sky, and the sunlight would be 70,000 times brighter.

Important Link

While my girl was searching through the academic periodicals at the KITP, she stumbled upon this important link in a research article

Mysterious Sound

Last night I was trying to sleep and heard a little sound in my left ear. It sounded pretty much like a pure tone, which made me think my ear was ringing. But then it didn't go away, and it was slightly changing pitch. So I raised my head from the pillow and realized that now I was hearing the sound in both ears. That means it must be real. I tried to ignore it for another couple of minutes, but it was really bothering me. So eventually I got out of bed to try to figure out what the sound was. Couldn't figure it out for a while, and then realized that the sound may be coming from outside. So I opened the door to hear what sounded like a running engine, disturbingly close in this remote locale at midnight. I grabbed my pants to check it out when suddenly a helicopter emerged with a searchlight from over the trees. The guy was flashing his light directly into the window as I squinted my eyes. I thought he might be in on the plot, but he flew away. Now with pants on I rushed outside to see what was happening. But the sound was gone. So I decided to walk down to the office structure to pick up my copy of "Aspects of Symmetry," which I had been thinking about before going to sleep. Put the book by my bedside table, jumped into the bed beside my girl, and went to sleep.

Dipennies

Recently I've been in the United States carrying around a lot of change. Today I bought some cookies and a drink, and they charged me $3.44. What do you know, I only had 3 pennies. So I couldn't pay without collecting another one. I kind of wished I could pay them 3 pennies to charge me $3.45. That way I'd have no pennies.

But since everyone loves the penny, I propose introducing a new coin: the dipenny. The way it is, the number of pennies you have to carry before knowing you can spend them is 4. That is way too much. With the dipenny, the greatest number of pennies you'd need is one. And you'd only need two dipennies before using the nickel. You can convince yourself that the maximum number of pennies+dipennies you'd ever have to carry at a given time is 2. That is only half the amount of change you have to keep track of now. So I think dipennies are a good idea.

Edward Cullen---long on looks and vampire superpowers---short on personality

Tornado in Goleta!

Awesome damage