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November 26, 2007

Give Thanks

Here are the lyrics to one of the songs we sang at church yesterday morning:

"Give Thanks"
by Dan Moen

Give thanks with a grateful heart
Give thanks to the Holy One
Give thanks because He's given
Jesus Christ, His Son
(repeat)

And now let the weak say "I am strong"
Let the poor say "I am rich"
Because of what the Lord has done for us
(repeat)

Give thanks
Give thanks

It's a pretty simple song, but I think it's appropriate year-round, not just at Thanksgiving time. I know I could certainly stand to give thanks more often, and to remember that even if I'm flowing over with thanks for earthly blessings, that Christ's death and resurrection should always be #1 on the list.

Church was really good and refreshing yesterday morning. It was a combined service between State College Evangelical Free Church and Unity Church of Jesus Christ, which is a predominantly African-American church here in State College. Our sanctuary was pretty full, and the worship team was basically all from their church. At the risk of seeming somewhat stereotypical, it was really a louder and more lively worship set than what we usually do. :-) It was fun and envigorating! And the whole theme of the service was about unity in Christ, that no matter how significant or superficial the differences we might have with one another, we're all family in that we're brothers and sisters in Christ (and I would also add that while we might have different cultural backgrounds, we're all of one blood).

I was scheduled to play piano this past weekend at church, but when their worship leader contacted me asking if I was still willing to play, I asked if they used sheet music. When he replied that they don't use sheet music or chord charts, but rather just play by ear usually and change keys and whatnot, I said I could sit it out, because there were a couple pianists from their church available to play, and because I really can't play by ear. I think it all worked out for the best, though. It would be nice to be able to play by ear someday, but when I was taking piano lessons while growing up, I simply became incredibly dependent on the notes being written out on a page. It's not a bad thing, just a completely different way of learning music than to learn by ear. And unless you're brought up learning both ways more or less simultaneously, it's really hard to learn the other way because it's so radically different.

So now Thanksgiving break is over. Sigh. It ended much too soon. I had big plans for all that I wanted to get done over break, and while I definitely got some of it done, I definitely didn't get all (or even most?) of it done. I spent a good deal of time studying for the PhD Candidacy Exam, mostly working on just two really tough, time-consuming problems from one of the old exams (one on radiative transfer, another on barotropic instability - ugh). I also spent a fair bit of time simply relaxing, whether by watching football (this season keeps getting crazier and crazier, just look at the this week's BCS standings for all the "non-traditional powers" toward the top of the rankings), sleeping or watching some movies (such as "American Gangster" back on Tuesday night last week with Tim, Ben & Hae Won; I would give it a thumbs up). And then there was of course a very tasty Thanksgiving dinner at Chad & Rachel's place up in Bellefonte along with Tim and Will (hooray, I wasn't a shut-in on Turkey Day!), plus a couple other times of going out for lunch with people to force me to get out of the apartment, if for only a brief time. But now I must get back to the business of catching up on reading for Turbulence and the ensemble creation seminar/reading group, as well as continuing to learn how to run MM5 for my research. Only three weeks of class left before finals and Christmas break!

Australian Prime Minister John Howard and his Liberal Party (small-c conservative) were swept out of power in Saturday's election by opposition leader Kevin Rudd and his Labor Party (small-l liberal). I'm anxious to hear from some of my Aussie friends what their whole perspective on the campaign and election was and is, but from what I've read, it just seems like the Australian people got tired of John Howard's 11 years in power (the second-longest serving PM in Australian history), even though the economy was better than ever before and unemployment was at a record low. While some media outlets have tried to paint Howard's loss as a slap in the face for President George W Bush, I would disagree very much with that assessment. While it is true that Rudd did pledge to sign the Kyoto Protocol (which I think would be disastrous for the Australian economy if it's anything more than a symbolic signing), and to withdraw their 550 combat troops from Iraq eventually, and while it is true that Howard once proclaimed himself as Bush's "deputy sheriff" in the Asia-Pacific region, by most accounts the Australian election was run on domestic issues (education funding, workplace reforms, immigration, Aboriginal/reconciliation issues, etc). (That's in direct opposition to the Howard's victory in the 2004 election (which I was there for!), with challenger Mark Latham making anti-war rhetoric the lynchpin of his campaign.) Also, it seems that Rudd is pretty pro-American anyway, and there's been no indication that the American-Australian alliance will weaken. I think NRO has a pretty good take on the election Down Under that's worth a read. In any case, it'll be interesting to see how Kevin Rudd's government shapes up and pans out. If any of my Aussie friends who happen to read this would care to leave a comment about their take, feel free!

Posted by Jared at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)

November 19, 2007

Kerry Emanuel's Visit

Hooray, Thanksgiving break is finally here at Penn State; we don't have any classes at all this week! Once the Turbulence midterm exam finished back on Thursday (woohoo! I even think I did reasonably well too), it was essentially break for me. I'm not going home to Wisconsin at all, though. I'm staying right here in State College all week, primarily to get a fair bit of studying done for the candidacy exam (boo, hiss). Oh well. There are also a few other things I really should take care of this week, such as getting around to putting my old laptop up for sale on eBay. I've already dawdled entirely too long with that.

Happy Birthday Mom! You should have the deer campers treat you to dinner today. :-) And Happy Birthday to Kerrie as well! Also, congratulations to Jon & Steph for completing the Philadelphia Marathon yesterday!

I woke up Sunday morning to a great surprise: the first accumulating snowfall of the season! Everything's all white and pretty, and I love it. I didn't even mind scraping off the nearly 1 inch of wet snow off my car at 8am, or the additional 2-3 inches a bit after noon when I was done playing piano for both church services yesterday morning. Call me crazy if you like, but from November to February I absolutely love snow (usually by March winter's gotten old and I'm more than ready for spring). Too bad it won't stick around though, it's supposed to be back up to the low 60s by Wednesday.

Chris & Amber came up to visit from North Carolina this weekend, and it was good to see them for a bit at Jeff [Frame], Vic & Bob's place on Saturday watching some college football. I wish I could've gone bowling in the evening too, but alas, piano practicing prevented me from being able to do so. It's too bad they couldn't stick around for the meteo grad Thanksgiving dinner yesterday either, with Jeff, Vic, Bob, Lindsay, Nat, Robert & me. Mmmm, so much good food... I was so stuffed, but I'd expect nothing less after a Thanksgiving dinner!

Penn State's football regular season is now over. The Nittany Lions snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against the Spartans of Michigan State, losing 35-31 after holding a 24-7 lead in the 3rd quarter. The sad part of it all is that just about everyone saw it coming and felt it pretty much inevitable that we'd lose the whole game, even when we were ahead. At least I got that vibe, anyway. So now Penn State gets to wait to find out what bowl game they'll be playing in in a month or so. Since they lost this weekend, the two most likely options become either the Champs Sports Tangerine Bowl in Orlando on 28 Dec or the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio on 29 Dec. If they had won they might've been able to get an invitation to a New Year's Day bowl game (either the Capital One Citrus Bowl or the Outback Bowl), but an 8-4 record isn't good enough for that.

But hey, at least Penn State beat Michigan State in something that actually matters, the 14th Annual PSU-MSU Blood Donor Challenge. I gave blood early on in the challenge, and PSU was behind for most of it, but came roaring back to win 2,170-1,935 at the end. It's important to keep perspective on these things, that while people might be disappointed that the football team lost a game, many lives will be saved from the donated blood.

Back on Friday I also went to my first ever women's volleyball game here at PSU. I'd heard they were pretty entertaining (and free for PSU students), so I went with Jeff [Grabon] to watch the match between #1 Penn State and #9 Wisconsin to the raucous Rec Hall (it'd be awesome if the basketball team still played their games in that tiny, noisy gym!). (We also saw Drs Shirer, Lamb and Verlinde at the game too, they're big volleyball fans.) It took a little while to get used to the rules, which were a bit different than in backyard volleyball. First off, the first team to 30 points wins the set (instead of 15). Second, the NCAA uses rally scoring, so that a point is scored off every serve, including service errors (instead of being able to score only when your team is serving). Third, if a serve grazes the net and goes over, it's still good (instead of being a fault and giving up serve to the other team). All in all it was pretty fun, even though there were an abnormally large amount of service errors for both teams. It was a pretty exciting, tight match throughout too, as Penn State defeated Wisconsin 3-1 (30-28, 30-22, 24-30, 30-25). With their win over Illinois on Saturday night as well, Penn State's record is 26-2 overall and 18-0 in Big Ten play. Not too shabby! If #1-ranked Penn State makes it to the Sweet 16/Elite 8 of the NCAA tournament (which will be held here at PSU), I think I just might go to another match!

As I mentioned in my last post, MIT professor Kerry Emanuel came to Penn State on Thursday. I had written that he's been in a few high-profile tiffs with other prominent scientists who don't share his view on whether humans are the primary cause for global warming, but after his visit I'm not so sure that's entirely true. While Dr Emanuel certainly does believe that humans are the primary cause behind global warming, he did not come off as an alarmist at all; in fact, he was quite reasonable and fairly soft-spoken. That, and he's clearly the opposite of a know-nothing blowhard.

I would say that by and large, it is the media and not the scientists who are responsible for irresponsible proclamations about global warming. Of course there are exceptions, but there are several factors that might contribute to sloppy reporting. Many "science reporters" probably have very little science background, given how inept science education is in the American education system today, but hopefully they at least have a bachelor's degree in a scientific field. In any case, when reporters have to translate scientific findings that are couched in scientific jargon in scientific meetings or publications into "normal" language, much gets lost, whether intentionally or unintentionally. This is partly due (sometimes) to reporters not fully understanding what the scientists are saying, and partly due to many reporters being required to write to the lowest common denominator, so that somebody with absolutely no science education or background can have a chance of understanding it (which goes back to the lack of adequate science education). As a result, certain findings are selectively included in media, and are often sensationalized so they can sell more newspapers or magazines. That's how there can get to be media reports of contentious wars of words between people like Drs Emanuel and Gray. Maybe they happened; maybe they didn't. Or maybe some sort of disagreement happened, but it was blown out of proportion by a sensationalizing media. A useful attitude toward most media, especially in today's day and age is, "Wouldn't that be something? I wonder if it's true..."

Anyway, a group of us grad students met with Dr Emanuel for an hour before colloquium, and we each briefly told him about our areas of research, and after he asked us what we think has been successful here at PSU about making a good graduate community, we asked him about how he transitioned from being a grad student to becoming a professor. And he had some really interesting things to say: he said that the very nature of a career in academia has changed significantly in the last 30 years or so. He said that when he started out, the reason for choosing an academic career over a business career was not the money, because professors didn't make nearly as much as many businessmen. The reason, rather, was that the lifestyle was much more relaxed in academia; people weren't nearly as busy, didn't have to do nearly as much administrative crap, and simply had time to think and ponder ideas in their office. Dr Emanuel has observed a change though, in that nowadays while it's still far less lucrative to choose academia for a career, the workload and time commitment is now just as much, if not more, than business. In his view, this is driving a lot of the best talent, minds and researchers away from academia, because they decide that if they're gonna be working 60+ hours/week, why not go into business and get paid a bunch more while being a workaholic? Several of us thought he hit the nail right on the head. I told Dr Emanuel that I agreed with him completely, that I have virtually no desire currently to be a professor at a major research university, with responsibilities to be simultaneously a full-time teacher and a full-time researcher. If I decide I want to do research, I'd rather go to a research lab (like NOAA or NCAR here in the US, or CSIRO or BMRC in Australia, for instance), and if I decide I want to teach, I'd rather go to a small liberal arts college (like Gustavus!) where the focus is still on educating students. I don't care if I'd be making less money; I'd rather have a higher quality of life and have time for things other than work.

Kerry Emanuel's colloquium presentation, "Hurricanes and Global Warming," was also very good, one of the best I've heard in my time at Penn State (112 Walker was also *packed*). He presented quite a bit of interesting research, some of which I'll summarize here to the best of my recollection (and for those of you who were there, please correct me via comment or whatever if I've misspoken), since hurricanes and global warming are topics of such popular interest. He had several metrics that he uses which indicate that hurricanes have become much more powerful over the last ~20-30 years (following a dip from the 1940s-1970s, which followed a rise from about 1900-1940, but the overall trend since 1900 is a marked increase), and that the overall intensity (by his metrics) match up reasonably well with yearly variations in average SSTs (sea surface temperatures) over the last century (except for a blip from 1939-1945, when maritime radio communication, including of weather reports, was kept to a minimum because of the war), though SSTs are far from the only factor influencing hurricane intensity. Then he presented some new findings in palaeotempestology (I'd never heard of that word or field of study before, apparently it's pretty new -- it's the study of past storms by examining the geologic record, such as beach cores from coastal lagoons) that indicate, in addition to a multi-decadal time-scale that we've been able to observe this century, the last ~100 years have been relatively active (possibly connected to the intensity increase in that same time frame?), much more so than the calm period for the ~1000 years prior to that, and comparable to the active period in the preceding 1000-2000 years before that. And perhaps the most interesting part of his talk was the last bit, where he investigated some of the feedbacks that tropical cyclones (TC, same thing as hurricanes/typhoons) have on climate; most current studies have only investigated the feedbacks that climate has on TCs, but he emphasized that TCs also have an impact on the climate. It's well-known that SSTs are markedly cooler in the wake of a TC, due to colder water from below being mixed up to the surface, and warm surface water being mixed below. (The colder water that gets mixed up to the surface is also nutrient-rich, leading to explosions of plankton populations, which in turn draws fish to the region -- do those weather-induced biological cycles have an impact on the climate system? Nobody's really researched that yet.) Well, he notes that while the surface temps recover and re-warm, the sub-surface water stays warm -- meaning the oceans have a local net input of heat from tropical cyclones. As this heat accumulates, the earth system naturally regulates itself by transporting the heat poleward, in the form of ocean currents. Therefore, Dr Emanuel is hypothesizing that tropical cyclones are in fact the main driver of the thermohaline circulation (the worldwide system of ocean currents that move warm water poleward and cold water equatorward). That was a very new and revolutionary theory to just about everybody in the room, as the current prevailing theory in oceanography is that the thermohaline circulation is ultimately caused by the moon -- tidal forces causing internal waves which break on underwater topography and lead to mixing, if I recall correctly what he said. Climate prediction models simply do not account for this effect of tropical cyclones on climate. It's not that they resolve or treat the process poorly, they don't include it at all! Inclusion of this effect would have *huge* ramifications on climate model predictions, though it's unclear at this point what that would be, since the atmosphere is a chaotic, nonlinear system. It'll be *very* interesting to follow how this new theory is accepted and/or criticized.

Well, onto studying. After a lunch break. :-)

Posted by Jared at 11:26 AM | Comments (0)

November 13, 2007

Operation Christmas Child 2007

This Saturday a bunch of us from Penn State Christian Grads got together to participate in the Operation Christmas Child toy drive. OCC is an ministry of Samaritan's Purse, an organization led by Franklin Graham (son of Billy Graham). Their aim is to provide shoeboxes full of Christmas gifts to children around the world, along with Gospel messages, in the hopes of helping these children (and their families) come to know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. A very noble cause indeed! Anyway, last year we in PSCG packed about ten or a dozen or so shoeboxes, so we decided to do it again this year. Several of us met up at the Dollar Tree and Wal-Mart on Saturday evening and were able to pick up all sorts of gifts. We all went back to Ash & Heather's house to have a wrapping and pizza party, and by the time it was all said and done, we were able to pack 20 shoeboxes full of gifts! I was glad that we were able to increase our number from last year, and I'd just like to thank everyone who contributed in some way for their generosity, for it would not have happened without you! I dropped them all off at State College Evangelical Free Church on Saturday night, where they're being collected until this Sunday. I'd encourage all of you to consider participating in Operation Christmas Child in your area, if not this year, then certainly next year! Need doesn't take a vacation.

I'll likely be studying a bunch tomorrow for Thursday's midterm exam for Atmospheric Turbulence, but once I get past that, it's Thanksgiving Break time! But we do have a rather interesting colloquium coming up on Thursday afternoon: Kerry Emmanuel of MIT. He's primarily a researcher in tropical meteorology, and lately that has necessarily gotten into topics of climate change in recent years. Because of that, he's one of the most prominent people in all of atmospheric science today, and has gotten into some rather high-profile debates/tiffs with other prominent atmospheric scientists who don't share his viewpoint, such as Bill Gray of Colorado State and Chris Landsea of the National Hurricane Center. At any rate, Dr Emmanuel is going to be giving a talk entitled "Hurricanes and Global Warming." Whether or not I agree with him, I definitely don't wanna miss that!

Speaking of climate change, check out Climate Audit, winner of the 2007 Weblog Award for Best Science Blog. I only recently discovered it, and I haven't yet had a chance to do more than scratch the surface of what all is on there, but it looks very good and interesting to say the least. I added a link to it on my Links page as well.

And congratulations to Walter, Anke & John, who all passed their M.S. thesis defenses here in meteorology since Friday! And I'd also like to give a shout out to Chris, who passed his defense over in acoustics last week too! Must be thesis deadline time again. I'm so glad I got that over and done with back in June! :-)

Posted by Jared at 11:58 PM | Comments (0)

November 10, 2007

D-III GameDay

As I write this, I'm watching the first-ever broadcast of ESPN College GameDay from a Division III campus. I was a bit surprised a couple days ago when I found out that this week's show was going to originate from Williamstown, Massachusetts, for the rivalry game between the Amherst College Lord Jeffs and the Williams College Ephs (you've gotta love those nicknames!). It's the 4th-most-played rivalry in all of college football, and the oldest in Division III, and these two schools really don't like each other. Seriously, Amherst College was founded when Zephaniah Swift Moore bolted from Williams College, taking with him several students, professors -- and even some library books! Williams has never forgotten. Now *that's* a rivalry!

Being an alum of a D-III school (Gustavus Adolphus College), I'm thrilled that ESPN is giving some love to Division III colleges, and giving the rest of the nation a peek at what I think is the most pure form of collegiate athletics, as Division III schools put academics first and don't offer any athletic scholarships. These student-athletes really are students first, athletes second, and that's how it should be (average SAT scores? 1430 for Amherst, 1420 for Williams; it also costs $45k per year to attend both schools, yikes!). That being said, I still harbor a wee bit of animosity toward Williams College, as back in 2003 the Williams Ephs beat the Gustavus Adolphus Golden Gusties 67-65 for the Division III National Championship in men's basketball. Yet in watching this show, and hearing them talk about D-III, I can't help but have a sense of pride for my D-III brethren. Hopefully GameDay will come back to another D-III game someday, as there are a lot of great rivalries and great games out there.

Posted by Jared at 11:47 AM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2007

First Flakes of Ought-Seven

The first snowflakes of the 2007-08 season have been sighted in State College! Yesterday a little before 1pm, as I was coming back to Walker Building from Subway, I spied a few isolated flakes falling. To call it a flurry would be extremely generous, but they were definitely snowflakes. A few others I talked to today said they saw some legitimate flurries yesterday as well. And then this afternoon around 3 or so there were some pretty decent flurries for a few minutes. Normally I wouldn't get excited about leftover lake-effect crap that always dies as it gets to the Alleghenies, but hey, the first snow of the season is always exciting! Now as for the first accumulating snowfall of the season? That's another story, but if everything breaks right we've got a chance on Friday from a clipper that's passing through. I think we'll have to wait longer though.

Now this is the real reason that I put up a post tonight, so I could share this! [Hat tip: Zach Armstrong]

That just might be one of the coolest things I've ever seen/heard! Yes, those are Tesla coils playing the Mario Bros. theme song. And yes, that's just another reason that Wisconsin is awesome. :-)

And while I'm at it for strange happenings, it can't get a whole lot weirder than having a cow hit a vehicle -- from above. And it can't get much more pathetic than lottery players in Britain not understanding the concept of a number line. But then again, if they're playing the lottery with any regularity, they must not be very good at math to begin with...

Posted by Jared at 11:57 PM | Comments (1)

November 04, 2007

Fall Cleaning

Admittedly, I'm not typically a clean- or neat-freak. Various and sundry piles tend to grow in my bedroom and office rather steadily, and usually in a bit of a haphazard and messy fashion. Oftentimes I'm not at all bothered by it, and know pretty much everything that's in the piles and where I can find particular items. Eventually I reach a breaking point though, and get a tremendous urge to clean and tidy up everything. Well, I finally hit that point once again last week, so I took all or part of the last few evenings to clean my room (among the things I found: the license plate renewal registration notice from the Wisconsin DMV in a bundle of mail that I never remembered receiving, *sigh*), and get all caught up with my finances (I had a big pile of receipts dating back to mid-July on my desk that I needed to reconcile with credit card and bank statements, ugh). It feels good to have just about everything cleaned up again at long last (I hadn't cleaned my room since probably early July), and I won't make any pronouncements about how I plan on not letting everything go that long again. Such resolutions in the past obviously haven't stuck, so why bother making another one? That being said, my life would be a whole lot easier if I could just stay on top of everything and keep my room relatively neat and organized constantly. :-)

The last home football game of the season for Penn State was this Saturday, when the Nittany Lions hosted the Purdue Boilermakers. It was a noon kickoff, and I was kind of tired of organizing all the meteo tailgates this season (especially after really long waits to get out of the parking lot after the Wisconsin and Ohio State games), so there wasn't any tailgating for me. It was a really nice day for a football game again, with crystal clear skies and cool temps. Purdue took the opening kickoff back to the house for a 7-0 lead, but then Penn State came back to take a 13-10 halftime lead, and hung on for a 26-19 victory over the visitors. The officiating was pretty bad throughout the game though, with the incompetent Big Ten officials making several horrible and head-scratching calls throughout the game that hurt both sides. In any case, it was good for the PSU seniors to go out with a win in their final game in Beaver Stadium. It's hard to believe that another home football season has gone by the books already, this semester has just flown by so far. Penn State currently sports a 7-3 record, and will try to close out strongly with road games at Temple and Michigan State the next couple weeks.

I finally got my plane tickets for Christmas break on Friday night. I figured I'd probably end up flying out of Harrisburg or Pittsburgh again because State College is usually so expensive to fly out of, but I managed to find a good deal: $391 for State College to Minneapolis round-trip, with only one stopover both ways in Detroit. Not too shabby! Then tack on that my parents bought it with air miles from their credit card, and it was an even better deal! Thanks, Mom & Dad! I had planned on flying out on Fri 21 Dec, but it was significantly cheaper to leave on Thu 20 Dec, so that's what I'm doing now. I'll be flying back to State College on New Year's Eve day so that I have close to a full week to study before I take the PhD Candidacy Exam [whimper]. I'll be so glad when that test is over...

I don't know about you, but I'm getting tired of all the "rages" that we have these days as a seeming excuse for poor behavior -- "road rage," "cell phone rage," etc. But this is a new one entirely: "suburban water rage". I mean, I know the drought in Australia is bad, but this is getting ridiculous, especially when the victim was completely law-abiding and obeying the water restrictions.

And finally, Adrian Peterson is single-handedly giving me reason to cheer for the Vikings again, and to hope for good things in the future. After torching Da Bears for 231 yards and 3 TD earlier this year, he ran roughshod over the Chargers for 296 yards and 3 TD today! It was only the eighth game of his career, and he's already set the NFL single-game rushing record! And he's doing all this despite the fact that the Vikings have an absolutely pathetic passing game; everyone in the stadium knows the ball is going to Peterson, which makes his accomplishments all the more impressive. Skol Vikings!

And will the first snowflakes of the season in State College fall on Tuesday night? Stay tuned!

Posted by Jared at 05:49 PM | Comments (0)