Once upon a time, livejournal used to be really great for keeping in touch with my friends. Most of the people I cared about that I didn't see every day used to be on my friends list, and we would all post interesting things about our lives and then have interesting conversations in the comments. These days, most of the people I'm interested in ( Read more... )

Last year, I lost a girl to med school. This week, I lost a violinist to med school.

Med school and I are not friends.

Another song is posted ( Read more... )

http://www.youtube.com/lessersounds

Tell your friends.

I have just arranged to join Shamil Sunyaev's lab for a rotation in January. In a few weeks I will have more information about what project I will be working on.

Relatedly: some of you may remember that last summer I spent some time trying to calculate my Erdös Number. I have finally come up with a number, which is 8. The path goes:

1. Erik ( Read more... )

This is a little (okay, a lot) overdue, but hey, I published a paper last year! As first author! Here's the cite, if anyone's interested:

Jordan, DM, KM Mills, I Andricioaei, A Bhattacharya, K Palmo, ERP Zuiderweg, "Parameterization of peptide 13C carbonyl chemical shielding anisotropy in Molecular Dynamics simulations." ChemPhysChem 8 (9) 1375- ( Read more... )

In actual news: Either I've gotten worse at school since college, or school has gotten harder.  Probably a little of each, combined with the fact that I've lost the knack of caring about my classes.  Joining a lab might make me feel less like a waste of space and taxpayer money.  I've currently got two or three names on my list for my first ( Read more... )

 If I could have any woman in the world, my first choice would probably be Vienna Teng.  The rest of the list varies from day to day, but numbers two and three are currently the crown princess of Sweden and Freema Agyeman, not necessarily in that order.  My plans for meeting these women involve (respectively) becoming a successful singer-songwriter ( Read more... )

 Interesting side note about the election: the statehood party in Puerto Rico (called the Partido Nuevo Progresista or New Progressive Party) appears to have won the governorship, the non-voting seat in the House, and a massive majority in the commonwealth legislature.  Could we have a 51st state in a few years?

"This is a matter of how we prioritize the money that we spend. We've got a three trillion dollar budget, and Congress spends some 18 billion dollars a year on earmarks for political pet projects. That's more than the shortfall to fully fund the IDEA. And where does a lot of that earmark money end up? It goes to projects having little or nothing to ( Read more... )