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June 28, 2007

1 Month of Creation

It's now been exactly 1 month since the Creation Museum opened in Petersburg, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati. To say the least, it has generated tremendous amounts of controversy, for its assertion that the Earth was created in six days about 6,000 years ago as described in the Bible. This is not a blind-faith assertion, however, as they make the case that the scientific evidence actually fits the young-earth perspective better than the theory of evolution, which is of course the current ruling paradigm in modern scientific thought. While, as expected, there have been myriad vitriolic screeds about the new museum masquerading as "news" articles in the mainstream media, there also have been some pretty fair and even-handed articles, such as this one from the Toledo Blade and this one from the New York Times. I've been looking forward to this museum opening for quite some time, and I think that a museum of its kind is long overdue. In fact, back in late July 2005 my brother Nathan & I were able to take a tour of the Creation Museum on our way back from a conference in Virginia. And even though pretty much all of the exhibits were still very much under construction at that point, we both came away very impressed. The professionalism and very high quality of the exhibits is actually something that even the most vocal of critics of the Creation Museum admit, so there's no doubt that everything is designed very well. The Creation Museum's goal is not simply to create a new little creationists, but primarily to help lead people to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, and to strengthen the faith of those who are already Christians. After the series of exhibits leading from Creation to the Flood to the Cross (with much more than that, too), there is a small chapel at the end of the tour. The museum is expected to draw over 250,000 visitors this year, and hopefully it will touch countless lives for Christ. Kudos to the folks at Answers in Genesis for dreaming big and coming through with this wonderful new museum!

On another note, my goal of winning a set of tennis from Ben will have to wait. In fact, so will my intermediate goal of winning more than one game in a set against him. It was pretty sticky outside, but we played four sets tonight, with Ben winning them all, 6-1, 6-0, 6-0, 6-1. Interestingly, it didn't matter how many (or how few, maybe that's the better way to phrase it) points I got in any particular game, since Ben was 24-0 in games in which he scored at least one point. Just a little fun fact I made note of when I won my second game (well, not so fun for me -- there was even a game in the fourth set in which I was up 40-15, but still lost, argh!!). If I can ever get a little more consistent with my serve (and not make so many double faults) I should be able to compete with Ben and give him a bit more of a challenge.

I was quite heartened this morning when I found out that the "comprehensive" "immigration" bill was killed in the U.S. Senate, 53-46! Three cheers for the death of this atrocious Bush-McCain-Kennedy amnesty bill! Hopefully some Senators with their heads screwed on straight can start introducing some real immigration reform, starting with forcing the government to secure our borders to stop the invasion of illegal immigrants. I'm all for legal immigration, and think more immigrants should be allowed in, but the government needs to *enforce* its laws and its borders before I'll trust them with any sweeping reforms on immigration. Once the border is enforced, then we can figure out what to do about the 12-20 million illegal immigrants who are already living in this country.

One final thought for tonight. Not that I doubted that Australia is an awesome country, but this just serves as a little confirmation. Quite a contrast to the British!

Posted by Jared at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2007

Down Under Developments

Believe it or not, prior to last night I had never seen "The Shawshank Redemption." It's not that I'd avoided it or didn't want to see it, I just hadn't gotten around to watching it ever yet. Everyone I talked to always raved about the movie, so a few months ago when I saw it for ten bucks in Target I bought it, on the assumption that it'd be good enough to own. And last night I finally did watch it, with John, Ruth, Kerrie, Daniel & Ben (Ben hadn't seen it before either). It was such a good movie, I absolutely loved it! I can't believe I hadn't watched it earlier, but it was well worth the wait. Once "Shawshank" was done, we put in another all-time classic, "The Princess Bride," which Daniel had somehow not seen yet (I think he thought it was a chick flick). So I'd say it was quite an enjoyable movie night!

So another softball game resulted in another loss. This time we were playing Penns Valley Community Church, the same team we opened the season against, at a rather dreadful field in Centre Hall. We got 2 in the top of the 1st inning, but then got ambushed for 12 runs in the bottom of the 1st. We were a bit shellshocked by that, since they only scored 2 runs in a full 7 innings against us a few weeks ago. We managed to hold them down the next three innings pretty well, but after our half of the 5th inning we were only trailing 14-5, so while the "official" score was 15-5, we kept playing till the middle of the 7th when we were down 23-6. Sigh. I playing in the first half at second base, but at the plate I was only 1-for-2 again, with a groundout to short and perhaps the weakest RBI single ever, a tapper that went barely 10 feet to the third base side of the pitcher. But hey, a hit's a hit and an RBI's an RBI. It would be nice to win a game again though, it's really been awhile.

I've got some pretty exciting news about Australia to share. I wrote an email on Sunday to Dr Cally (my Fluid Dynamics prof down at Monash, he wrote a letter of recommendation for me for grad school) to let him know that I finished my M.S. and everything. I also let him know that I am planning to visit Aus next summer, and that I'm seriously considering looking into a job or a post-doc down there after I finish my Ph.D. in 2010. Well, he wrote me back right away, and also cc'd Dr Reeder, the head of the Atmospheric Science dept at Monash, who also wrote me and invited me to give a seminar at Monash when I go down there! I'm thrilled! And Dr Evans up here at Penn State (whose alma mater is Monash) said she could also probably help set up meetings for me with other people down there from CSIRO and the BoM, too, so I might have a full day or two of "work" on my vacation, which, given the nature of the work, would be just fine with me. :-) Add these new developments onto the chance to go to Joel & Rosey's wedding, and it's looking more and more like I'll definitely be going back for another visit to the Land Down Under!

Posted by Jared at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)

June 23, 2007

Whitewater Rafting on the Lower Yough

The long days of summer are officially here, meaning outdoor activities are an absolute must. Back on Monday we had a church softball game at Bellefonte First Baptist. They have the prettiest setting for a field I've seen, as the field is up on a plateau, so out behind left and center field you see Bald Eagle Mountain rising up another few hundred feet, and then behind the field you can see all of Happy Valley, and Nittany Mountain on the other side of the valley. So I was really looking forward to playing there again, even if I wasn't expecting us to have a chance to win (last year when we played them at their field we lost 36-7 in five innings!). Adam gave me the start in the leadoff spot in the first half playing right-center field, but I only managed to go 1-for-2 with a groundout to third and a single to short center. We played pretty good defense and held their offense down to something reasonable (only one home run), but our offense just couldn't scratch together more than two consecutive hits in an inning; it always seemed we were hitting the ball right at their defenders. As a result, we still got mercied after 5 innings like last year, except this time the score was much more reasonable at 11-1 (we kept playing through the top of the 7th, when the score reached 14-3). Next up is a trip to Centre Hall to play the team we beat in the first week of the season for our only victory so far. It'd be nice to get back on the winning track.

On Wednesday evening I went to team meteo IM softball practice, which involved a bit more running around and deep throws from the outfield than usual, since Walter & Nat were the only two others to make it this week. Right after softball then I went to play some tennis with Ben. I hadn't played him since last year, and while I think I've improved since last year, he still smoked me in three sets, 6-0, 6-1, 6-1. Despite my unforced errors that started mounting late in the third set, I still had lots of fun. Maybe I'll be able to keep improving and post a better challenge against Ben later this summer. :-)

Yesterday a big group of us took the day off from Walker to do something heaps more fun: whitewater rafting! We drove almost three hours down to the Lower Youghiogheny River (YAHK-ah-GAY-nee), a Class III river at Ohiopyle State Park in southwestern PA. After some trouble that Anke, Dave, Kerrie & I had with finding the place (Mapquest tried to send us offroading, onto an unmarked country/forest road that started as gravel but quickly changed to grass -- fortunately we missed the turn and managed to ask a country reverend for different directions a mile or two later), we finally got there 15 minutes late (meaning I didn't have time to put on sunscreen). They gave us some basic instructions on what and what not to do out on the water (such as NEVER try to stand up in the river if you fall out of the raft), and then it was time to go rafting! We split up into two rafts (Justin captained the raft with Aviva, Dave, Anke, Jeff and me in it, and Steph captained the raft with Jon, Shannon, Jerry, Kerrie and Bob in it), and had tons of fun! The guides (in separate kayaks) stopped us usually between every set of rapids to keep the whole 11:30 group together (there were probably 20 or so rafts total), which was a little frustrating, but on the other hand it was nice to have breaks every so often. Justin did a really good job of captaining our raft, and we only managed to get stuck on a handful of rocks (the river was really low for this time of year), and usually wound up making it through the rapids without a problem, often passing several (stuck) rafts along the way. Dave was completely flipped out of our raft once, and I kind of fell out twice. By "kind of," I mean that my legs were still in the raft but I was jolted out of the raft so that my back was in the water as we were going through some rapids -- kinda fun! :-) There was a raft with some boy scouts (probably 14-16 years old) with a pirate flag (and associated pirate songs and sounds) that were pretty fun too, we kept bumping into them and a couple times they tried to board our raft unsuccessfully (for one of those they thought we had stolen their pirate flag, hehe). Justin tried to do the same at one point, launching a sneak attack on them by swimming completely under another raft, haha. When it was all said and done we had rafted 7.5 miles down the Lower Yough, dropping an average of 25 feet per mile (next year we might consider doing the Upper Youghiogheny, which drops 120 feet per mile and is a Class IV river). I'd never been whitewater rafting before either, so this was a great first experience! In our about six hours out there I also got pretty badly sunburned on my upper arms, and knees/lower thighs, so even though that's still a bit irritating, the whole whitewater rafting trip was so worth it! I had heaps of fun, I'd totally do it again! Some of our group decided to stick around and camp out after rafting, but I elected to head back to State College with Jeff, Bob, Justin & Aviva. I knew I'd be tired and exhausted enough (and sunburned enough) that I'd be better off resting in my own bed, instead of being probably uncomfortable camping. In any case, it sure beat sitting in Walker all day!

Posted by Jared at 03:57 PM | Comments (2)

June 17, 2007

Baseball on My Mind

Ahh, how nice it is to have a weekend where I'm not doing a lick of work, and not feeling guilty in the least about not setting foot in Walker Building! I've been taking the evenings off too, mostly either just reading or sending out some emails or other stuff I've fallen behind on in the last month-plus, it's great!

Friday was Anke's birthday, so a whole bunch of us went out to dinner at Fuji & Jade Garden. It was billed as a "sushi & sake" event, though I got neither (I did have a couple rolls from the huge sushi boat that Dave & Anke got though!). After the tasty dinner most of us went over to Dave & Anke's apartment to play some Super Nintendo and DDR (Dance Dance Revolution). Initially I was pretty skeptical about the whole DDR thing and almost didn't go, but I'm glad I did because it was a lot of fun! The whole concept of a video game that gives you some exercise is a new one to me, but I rather like it. It was actually pretty exhausting! Daniel kinda wussed out and didn't wanna give it a go at all, though. Maybe he thought rumor of it would get back to his Auburn or Air Force buddies, haha. :-P

Yesterday was pretty fun too. First there was a church picnic at lunchtime (can't pass up a free meal!), then in the afternoon I played some tennis with Kerrie, Daniel & Katie for a couple hours. After supper I went over to Walter's with Petters, Jacob, Ben & Margaret to play some Hot Death Uno, a cool variant on Uno that Walter found. It gives some cool new twists to an old classic, to be sure. Then it was time to head into Bill Pickle's for some footy! Setanta Sports aired the Geelong Cats v Brisbane Lions game live starting at 11pm (1pm Sunday afternoon down in Aus), and so I got to see my second Cats footy game in two weeks. :-) Petters, Daniel, Katie, Kerrie & Andrew all came down for at least part of it to see what I was always raving about with Aussie rules football. Unfortunately some early rain made for slippery conditions and very sloppy, low-scoring footy (not the best match to introduce people to Aussie rules with), with Geelong taking a 32-4 lead into the half (even 32 is fairly low-scoring for a half, to say nothing of Brisbane's measly 4!). The action did pick up in the second half a bit and the quality of the footy was a bit crisper, but still Geelong cruised home to an easy 85-35 win, keeping them atop the ladder at the mid-season break with their 7th straight win.

I had originally planned to go to the Braves-Indians game over in Cleveland today with Vic, Lindsay & Kerrie, but when we tried to order tickets on Friday we found they were gone, except for the expensive tickets and some really crappy seats. Then we tried to find tickets to the Tigers-Phillies game down in Philadelphia, but that was sold out for today too. Who would've thought that so many people would take their dad out to a baseball game on Fathers Day? ;-) So we're gonna take a raincheck on visiting Jacobs Field, and probably go to the Twins-Indians game in late July (and then I'd probably continue on home toward Wisconsin from Cleveland after the game). All this talk of baseball got me motivated to see what I could find for Twins-Yankees tickets for their upcoming series in New York the first week of July. Ticketmaster was all sold out, but on eBay I managed to find a 6-pack of bleacher tickets in right field for $12 apiece (incl. shipping). So a group of us meteo folk will be going to historic Yankee Stadium to take in a ballgame on the night of Tuesday, July 3rd! I can hardly wait, I've never been there, and I was really hoping I'd get to go to a game in Yankee Stadium sometime before their new stadium opens in 2009. And that it's a Twins game? Double bonus! Now I've just gotta see if anyone wants to road trip with me to Toronto in late July to take in a Twins game north of the border (Ryan?). I could really check off a few stadiums this summer (last year I went to games at PNC Park in Pittsburgh and Camden Yards in Baltimore, to add stadiums other than the Metrodome in Minneapolis finally)! I won't be sad about missing the Twins play the New York Mets this week in Shea Stadium, though. I've heard that that place is such an absolute dump that it makes the Metrodome seem like a spectacular place to watch a baseball game!

Posted by Jared at 04:35 PM | Comments (1)

June 13, 2007

Thesis Defended!

Like I mentioned in my last post, I was pretty laid back about my thesis presentation coming into the weekend, since my dry run went pretty well back on Thursday. Based on what I did this weekend, you wouldn't even know I had to defend my thesis on Monday morning!

At trivia on Friday night we had a small team (Daniel, Katie, Walter and I) due to all the Houserville guys being down in Atlanta for Robert & Lindsey's wedding. We did very well through the first four rounds, only a point off perfect, but then the questions were insane in the fifth and sixth rounds (including "What is the name of the professor on 'The Powerpuff Girls'?" -- who the heck knows that?!?), leading to our downfall.

Saturday afternoon I played some tennis again for a couple hours, with Daniel, Katie, Kerrie, Steph & Petters. I'm definitely hitting the ball better than I was last year, for whatever reason. Got a nice light sunburn to boot, which mellowed quickly into a good tan within a day like normal. I think I can usually avoid getting burnt to a crisp as long as I stay out of the Australian summer sun, which definitely is not a problem these days, haha.

Speaking of Australia, after stopping by a party at John's place for a bit, (South African) Daniel & I went into Bill Pickle's Tap Room to watch some Aussie rules football! I only discovered earlier that day that they carried the satellite channel (Setanta Sports) that airs Aussie rules here in the States (they also air rugby league, rugby union, Premier League soccer and Champions League soccer), and since my team was being shown live at 11pm, I was totally going. It was the first footy game I've been able to watch since the 2004 Grand Final too, so I wasn't gonna miss it. Even though they didn't have the sound on, I was able to follow it just fine, and loved every minute of the tense 69-62 victory on the road for the Geelong Cats over the Adelaide Crows. The Cats are now 8-3-0 with a six-match winning streak and are tied for first place with West Coast. And luckily for me, there's another Cats game being shown live at Bill Pickle's this coming Saturday night at 11pm, this time a home match vs the Brisbane Lions. You can bet I'll be there again!

On Sunday after church we had a meteo cookout down at Whipple Dam State Park, just southeast of State College adjacent to Rothrock State Forest. It was a really nice time, and it was wonderful just to be near some water again. I was almost beginning to doubt that there was any water here in central PA, but my faith was reaffirmed. :-)

I made sure to get into Walker plenty early on Monday morning, though I really don't know why as I was basically already all prepared, and so wound up just twiddling my thumbs for awhile. But I guess it's better safe than sorry, right? My defense went pretty well, though. I started out stumbling over a few words on the first couple slides because my mind was thinking faster than my mouth could talk, but eventually I settled into a nice pace, finishing in about 35 minutes. The questions weren't too bad (except for a question by Stauffer about Walter's research that I thought was kind of unfair and couldn't really answer because I didn't know what he was even asking), and neither was the committee grilling afterward. In fact, for most of the grilling I just kept my mouth shut and listened to Joel and Wyngaard discuss/debate stuff. Fine by me! But they passed me, and that's all I really cared about at that point. Not that I was really ever worried about not passing, but it's still really good to have that out of the way. So now I just have some thesis corrections to be working on, and then I should be good to go for getting it bound. But thanks to everyone who came, I really appreciated it!

To celebrate my successful defense I took the afternoon off, then played some softball. This week we hosted Runville United Methodist, and promptly fell behind 16-0 after two and a half innings (a bunch of good hits plus a few errors), before Adam made the second-half team switch an inning early. We got 5 runs on the board right away and really cooled off their offense, but it was still too big of a hole to climb out of, and we were mercied 20-8 after 5 innings. I played in the second half in right field, catching the one ball that came my way, and going 2-for-2 at the plate (two singles, one an infield hit to third and the other a solid knock to short center) with a run scored and an RBI. Next week we pay a visit to Bellefonte First Baptist to watch them put on a home run derby like they usually do (last year they beat us 37-4 in 5 innings!!). Should be fun, hopefully we can keep it a bit closer this time! After the game a few of us went to The Creamery for some ice cream, and then I joined some of my meteo friends at The Darkhorse for a couple celebratory drinks. All in all it was a very enjoyable day.

Hmm, now that I'm done with my thesis defense, what on earth am I gonna do with my evenings? 'Tis a very good question. :-)

Posted by Jared at 10:45 PM | Comments (3)

June 08, 2007

3 Days Till Defense

Okay, so working on my thesis and my presentation have caused me to live in a bit more of a hole recently than I anticipated. But I have still managed to get out and do some things not thesis-related, believe it or not. Here's a recap:

Commencement for M.S. and Ph.D. graduates was on May 20th. Daniel's parents flew up from Alabama for it, so I made sure to find where they and Katie were sitting. There were quite a few meteo grads getting their M.S. degrees - Daniel, Jon, Addison, Margaret, Ben, Kerrie, Amy, Amber, Vic, Zack & Zach. Levenia's sister LaMonique was also there to accept the M.S. degree which was posthumously awarded to Levenia. Only one meteo grad got his Ph.D., Song-Lak. A few PSCGers also graduated, including Steve (M.A., but wasn't there), Anna & Pei-Hsuan (Ph.D.s). Overall it was a nice, relatively quick ceremony (especially for over 500 Master's and almost 200 Ph.D.s being conferred). For the most part people were respectful and didn't shout or sound their noisemakers, though there were a few during the Ph.D. portion. I really thought that was a bit classless, especially since this is a graduation for a professional degree. I know you're proud parents and friends, but interrupting the name-reader with noisemakers during a graduate-degree commencement is bit ridiculous. This isn't high school or undergrad commencement! Treat it with some level of respect, please.

We've had two more church softball games, both of which were losses. A week before Memorial Day we hosted Faith Baptist and wound up losing 19-6. I played the first half in left field and was 2-for-2 with singles to center and the first baseman (I beat him in a race to the bag, woohoo!). But there's a reason why we lost the way we did. You see, we had to modify a ground rule at our home field. It used to be that if a batted ball struck the houses well past the left field fence on the fly or the first bounce, the batter was out and the runners could not advance. Well, after having three balls hit the house the week before, resulting in an upset home-owner (but seriously, what do you expect when you buy a house next to a softball diamond??), we decided to change the rules. Now if a batter hits a ball that makes contact with the house at any point -- even if it gently rolls down the hill and taps the house -- the half-inning is forfeited, including any runs that may have scored in that inning prior to the home run. Well, Ben hit a home run in the bottom of the 5th to pull us to within single digits (and hence prevent the mercy rule), but the ball did roll down the hill and came to rest in contact with the house, meaning the inning was over (and therefore the game, since our runs in that frame were forfeited, leaving us behind by 10 or more after 5 innings). Who would've ever thought that rule would hurt us?!? Ben said it was his first-ever walk-off home run, and it's probably one of the few home runs in baseball/softball history that resulted in a loss! Then this Monday we had our first road game of the season, at Calvary Bible Church in Bellefonte. After sitting out a passing shower, we were able to get the game underway. I played the first half again, this time in right-center with a bit of an unnecessarily circus-like catch in the field, paired with going 1-for-2 batting (infield squib hit and fly out to left) with a run scored. We were only trailing 8-5 at the halfway mark, but then their home run hitters poured it on, and they wound up winning 19-7 after five. Now our record stands at 1-3, oh well.

On May 27th, the day before Memorial Day, we had the third semi-annual Bad American Swill Festival up at Jeff, Vic & Bob's house in Houserville. (For those of you who don't recall, the BASF is a bad-beer smell/taste-test, where everyone brings the worst beer they can find. The goal is to crown the worst of the worst beers in the land. Why do we do this to ourselves? I really don't know.) I made sure to bring back the defending champion from BASF2 -- the one and only La Crosse Lager, which tastes just like the aluminum can it comes in, and has a smell to rival the taste. I was pretty confident it could repeat as BASF champ coming in, though I did see that it had some stiff competition this time around. Not that the beer for BASF2 was any treat, but I think the overall quality of the beer this time around for BASF3 was even worse. After the single-blind smell test (15%), cold taste test (65%) and warm taste test (20%) were completed with the ten "contestants," with each person ranking the beers in each category from 1-10 (using each number once, no ties), the final standings were announced -- and La Crosse Lager finished a shocking 5th, a big uspet. This year's medal winners were Koch's Golden Anniversary (second straight bronze), Gennessee Light (silver) and Big City Lager (gold) (scores might be posted in a comment once I get a copy of them). Big City Brew is actually made by the same brewery that makes La Crosse Lager, and Walter & Frame picked it up the day before down in Harrisburg, for something like 8 bucks for a 30-pack, haha. Man alive those beers were awful! I have to regroup though, and figure out what to get for BASF4, which will be held around Labor Day. La Crosse Lager is still a possibility since it finished in the top half, but if I could find one that's worst that'd be great. Any suggestions from my reading public? It'd preferably be something I could purchase in Minnesota, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.

2007 student season tickets for Penn State football went on sale this morning (Thursday) promptly at 9:00am. Last year I missed on getting tickets by a few hours (they sold out in a record 13 days, and I called on the 14th day), and with this year's sale being online for the first time ever, I wanted to make sure I wouldn't miss out, so I stuck around at home until I got my tickets. I logged in and submitted my ticket request on Ticketmaster probably 10-15 seconds after the sale opened, but the queue was apparently already so long that it took 20 minutes or so before my request was able to be processed. Fortunately, the order finally went through and I was able to secure my season ticket. Many people weren't as lucky though, as all 21,500 student season tickets sold out in a mere 59 minutes. (I think that figure's exaggerated though, since Jim tried submitting a ticket request at 9:25am and was turned away because the online queue had already been closed; the tickets had really sold out in fewer than 25 minutes, for all practical purposes.) I have several friends that got tickets (Jon, Steph, Walter, Andrew, Jeff, Meaghan, John, Ruth, Kristin, Elisa), and several that also didn't manage to get tickets (including Vic, Lindsay, Adam, Isaac, Daniel) for various reasons, mostly because they didn't expect them to sell out in less than an hour. I'm just glad I'll be able to go to the Notre Dame and Ohio State games under the lights, and to the homecoming game vs Wisconsin. Those are the three I'm most looking forward to, although Iowa and Purdue aren't bad either. As for the inevitable sacrificial lambs Buffalo and Florida International? Meh. It should be a fantastic 2007 season for the Nittany Lions though, and a great time to be in the best and loudest student section in the country! WE ARE... PENN STATE!!

I have a few more minor changes to make to my power point slides for my thesis presentation, but I'm basically all done with preparation. I just need to do another dry run or two and I should be all good. I'll be so glad once Monday afternoon comes and I can finally relax...

Check out the size of this wild hog that an 11-year old boy shot in Alabama! That'd sure be tough to barbeque!

Posted by Jared at 01:11 AM | Comments (0)