It was fabulastic! Absolutely fantalous! I got a lot of attention for my talk - and offers of help - and support from all kinds of people that's lacking in the lab at home. I got a terrible cold, though, so I'll write more later. But, let me tell you... ruthenium is HOT!!

I just got really excited about a paper entitled "Dependence of the strain energies on grain orientations in HCP metal films." I don't know what to say, other than WHY DIDN'T I FIND THIS BEFORE?

The Globalist has an opinion article in three parts this week (Part 1, Part 2 Part 3) about US foreign policy entitled Diplomacy and Empire by Chas W. Freeman, former U. S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and Assistant Secretary of defense for International Security Affairs. He's been a diplomat for 30 years and clearly picked up on a thing or two. It ( Read more... )

Last time I spoke with mom, she mentioned that just as I have a scheme for deliberately upsetting the status quo on people's minds there, she has one too. I've heard my father mention with significant bitterness in his voice that in the labor negotiations, the workers took the attitude that all management did was sit and drink coffee all day. (He ( Read more... )

"We may estimate the critical homologous temperature for fcc metals using the relation X^2=4D(tau) where X=0.1 nm, D=10^-7*exp(-6.5T*/T m^2/s, where T* is the melting point temperature in ( [sic] degrees Kelvin) and T the actual temperature, while tau the time period will be taken to equal about 3600s for grain boundary migration and to N0(omega)/R ( Read more... )

Listening to a mix by Timo Maas on Radio One, the following thought pops into my head: In rave culture, it's the loss of self during dancing that is the goal. Ravers relieve separation anxiety and death wishes and all kinds of things by losing themselves in the music and becoming only one of many non-selves... This is my church, indeed. And that's ( Read more... )

Sett i en artikel i Aftonbladet: "Många unga lider av multipelt utanförskap (är utanför den normala samhällsgemenskapen på mer än ett sätt)" Ett samhalle som har ett sant koncept ar ju fan lite besatt med gemensamhet. Inte undra pa att svenskar flyr andra svenskar till sina sommarstugor. Dom kan ta sin javla "sammanhallning" och dra at helvete, det ( Read more... )

Helsingin Sanomat reports that North Korea has sent a diplomatic notice to Finland about the treatment of some North Korean diplomats traveling on a train from Russia across the Finnish border with a final destination of Stockholm. DN also has a longer report on the story, and I found an article from IHT as well (in English, for the majority of the ( Read more... )

Step number one: The department forwarded my application to Intel. I find out sometime in April. *crosses fingers ( Read more... )

SvD har en artikel om FPs nya forslag om att ge sprak och matematik mer vikt nar gymnasieelever soker till horgskolan. Smart. Det var pa tiden en svensk politiker kom med ett konstruktivt forslag om hur systemet ska utformas sa att alla belonas for sadant som livet belonar. Svenskar har ofta svarigheter att medge att vissa maktpositioner i ( Read more... )