Hertz Fellowship Interview
Chemistry graduate students are sailing smoothly in these troubled economic times. Our jobs and salaries are very secure. That said, we still apply for fellowships/scholarships. Why you ask? There is a slight increase in our salary if we win a fellowship. And because that salary is from an outside organization, you gain some freedom from your research institution. However, the main reason is to pad our resumes for future jobs.
Toward this end, I applied for the Hertz Fellowship, one of the most prestigious graduate fellowships in the nation. It has a reputation for being very selective, so most graduate students don't even bother applying. I figured, why not give it a shot? I got invited to the first round of interviews, which definitely made me feel good about myself.
I was interviewed today by Dr. Karl van Bibber, and I'm now a humbled man. Ouch, that interview definitely exposed my weaknesses in basic physics and mental math. To put the icing on the cake, van Bibber asked what other fields of science besides chemistry interested me, and I mentioned astrophysics and dark matter/energy. Turns out that he is a leading proponent for building a next-generation particle collider to detect dark matter. I must have seemed like a total stalker/suckup.
There's a chance I'll get invited for a second interview, but I'm not holding my breath. My advice to those thinking about applying for the Hertz Fellowship: give it a shot, but brush up on your physics before the interview!
Lateral thinking puzzles
Long bus rides were common for me in high school--we had to drive all over Indiana to enter speech and debate tournaments hosted at other schools/universities. To keep ourselves entertained, we'd huddle around the back of the bus and tell each other lateral thinking puzzles: an odd situation is presented, and yes/no questions are asked until the whole story is uncovered. For instance, a man is dead, hanging from a fan in a room without any furniture. How did he hang himself?
Until recently, I thought that these puzzles were unique to my speech team--some oral traditional passed on from class to class. But it turns out people from all over the US have heard the same puzzles. For your education/amusement, here are a few of my favorite lateral thinking puzzles.
- Romeo and Juliet are lying dead on the floor of an Italian house. Nearby is a broken bowl. There are no marks on any of the bodies, and they were not poisoned. No person was in the house when they died. How did they die?
- A man walks into a cafe and asks for a glass of water. The owner, who he has never met before, pulls out a gun and points it at the man. He says 'Thank you' and walks out. What has happened?
- A man who lived in a small town legally married twenty different women. None of the women died, and the man never got a divorce. How?
- A man is found dead in the desert. He is wearing only his underwear. Half of a straw is found nearby. How did this man die?
- A man walks into a bar renowned for its albatross sandwiches. He orders one and takes one bite. Then he leaves to the parking lot and shoots himself in the head. Why?
Got any more good lateral thinking puzzles to share? Feel free to take a stab at the above puzzles 
K 448 by Mozart…for violin & piano?
Screenshot of Lilypond-typeset music
One of my favorite classical songs is Sonate in D Major, K 448 by Mozart, a torrent of rising and falling scales and arpeggios, blending from one into the next. Patis heard it a couple of years ago in an episode of Ouran High School Host Club and enlisted my help in finding its sheet music. In the anime K 448 was played by one person, but in real life it is played by two pianos. Unfortunately, missing an extra piano and 10 fingers, Patis could not play the song herself.
I remembered hearing K 448 on a Baby Einstein CD a long time ago, and it turns out that this is the very song that the rumored Mozart Effect originates from. One study had people listen to either K 448, repetitive relaxation music, or silence, and then take an IQ test; the Mozart listeners scored ~7 pts higher than the subjects from the other two groups.
One of my goals for this year is to play the top voice of K 448 on the violin with Patis on the bottom voice with the piano. This Frankenstein variation will sound very different because a) some simple chords are near impossible to play on the violin, so I will omit chords all together, and b) part of the beauty of K 448 is that the two pianos blend together seemlessly (to the point where cartoon animators can pretend that only one piano is being used to play both parts). But who knows, harmonious sounds may result. So, I had Patis print off the sheet music, and I typeset a version for the violin with Lilypond.*
So I've gotten a page of music set and practiced a few times. My fingertips hurt from lack of practice, but I'm glad to be mostly in tune! Wish me luck!
* If you've ever searched the interwebs for free sheet music, you've probably found the Lilypond-maintained Mutopia Project. Lilypond is to music what html is to webpages, or perhaps what LaTeX is to documents. Using Notepad, you type in notes and their duration and articulation, and Lilypond spits out the sheet music and a midi of the music!
In case you're interested in Lilypond or the aforementioned sonata, download this .zip with the following files:
- k448.ly
- open with plaintext editor to see source code
- k448.pdf
- typeset sheet music
- k448.mid
- midi file of music
New layout
Javascript is at the heart of this new layout, which is not only statically beautiful, but also gorgeously AJAXified. Hopefully I will work out all the wordpress kinks in the next couple of days.
Things I want to do in LA
Visit
- Getty Center
- Universal Studios
- Sony Pictures Studio
- Farmers Market/The Grove
Hollywood Blvd- The Magic Castle (invitation only??)
- Hollywood Bowl
Venice Beach
Struck through items have been accomplished!