Random thoughts on a Friday evening

Happy Friday everyone! Are you all as tired as I am? It was a rather long week. Not having done any work over spring break meant that there was an over load of work to do this week, sadly with no end in sight. So here are some random things from my overworked and tired brain.
If you like sci-fi and haven't seen Battlestar Galactica, you should. It's really quite good. It's a very plot-centered show, meaning if you really want to start watching, you have to start from the beginning. But the show also has some great characters and now and again even has a point.
If you like cute things, you need to check out Knut, a baby ice bear that was born in the Berlin zoo a couple months ago. Here's a link to a website for a German news channel that covers a lot about the bear. It's in German, but you non-German speakers can still look at the pictures.

www.rbb-online.de/knut

On CNN today there's an article about catholics expressing outrage over a display of Jesus made out of chocolate. The article said the statue was life-sized and "anatomically correct", which is one of those lovely double-speak words for "his penis is showing". So this baffles me. Are they mad because it's made out of chocolate? I mean modern art does do some pretty weird things, so I can't say I'm particularly surprised or really even impressed. Or are they made because his dick is showing? And if so...why? Jesus was a man right? And men have dicks. So using basic logic, it goes without saying that Jesus had one too. Why they're outraged that an artist might show it, I just don't get. I know that there are several catholics who read my blog. Could one of you explain this to me?
Ok. I went on a little too long on that.
Speaking of articles and perhaps even tangentially the quality of articles. Here's an article that one of my fellow 1st years pointed out to me. It's about science in the news and really how it's not in the news at all.

http://www.thestar.com/article/190998


So I guess that's all that I have for now.
Have a good weekend all!

New York, New York

Over spring break Marcy and I decided to travel to NYC. Neither us had been there and given that I've been living in New York for 5 months now, I figured it was about time to go see "The City". Just to warn you, this is a bit long.
The adventure began not-so-bright and early on Monday morning. We jumped on the 7:20 bus out of Ithaca full of sleepy college students. For four hours we napped and watched rural New York pass us by. Eventually we enter a long, dark tunnel, and after a couple of minutes, pop out into the middle of Manhattan just like that.
Upon arriving at the Port Authority bus terminal, we make a beeline to the subway and head of up north to our hostel. We find it without issue. It's a small building. Not particularly attractive and certainly doesn't compare to hostels in Europe. But it will certainly do fine for a couple days.
Our hostel was a couple blocks from Central Park, so we decided to stroll a bit and eat our lunch. We decided to cut down on food costs by bringing rolls, PB&J and fruit with us. It turned out to be an excellent idea both because of costs and convenience.
Anyho! Our main goal for the afternoon was getting in line for tickets to a filming of The Daily Show. We arrived at the studio two hours before they opened the doors and ended up being the 156th and 157th person in line. I have no idea how long people 1 and 2 had been there. We passed the time working on Monday's crossword puzzle and actually reading the paper. Eventually we were give our tickets and let in the door and under a sign that read "Abandon all news, ye who enter here". We then had to go through what would not be our last trip through a security check point and metal detector but what would be the most thorough. I suppose New Yorkers have good reason to be paranoid, but I do feel that the bad guys have won just a little because of it. Anyho! I digress.
So the first thing that struck us about The Daily Show studio was how small it is. Somehow things always look bigger on TV. The stage part of studio was maybe 20 feet wide and about as deep, his desk is maybe only 4 feet wide and there are about 250 seats in the audience. After a brief wait and pep talk Jon Stewart himself came out and answered our questions for about 5 minutes in true stand-up-comedian style. I wonder if he does this to get himself ready for the actual taping or if his background is stand-up or what. But in any case it was hilarious, and he ended up using it in the taping. Those of you who watched on Monday night may remember references to students participating in the model UN. He learned that while talking with us and decided to use it in the opening of the show.
Part of my reason for wanting to go to a taping was to see the behind-the-scenes stuff. It turns out that he pretty much runs through the show in real-time. No retakes and I think they even alloted time for commercials. We all watched the "investigative report" just like we would have on TV, and it seemed like Jon Stewart was watching it, at least in its final form, for the first time with us. At some point he even started jumping up in down in his seat because he was so excited.
All in all it was a really great experience and well worth the two-hour wait.
After the taping we headed over to Time's Square. It had some of the flashiness of Vegas but concentrated on advertising. It was quite the shock to the senses. For dinner we jumped into a random pizza joint and for dinner sat in one of the four Starbuck's and people watched. So ended Day 1.
Tuesday turned out to be the marathon day. In the morning we swung by St. John's Cathedral, which is one of the largest cathedrals in the world. I was certainly not expecting to find a gothic-style (obviously not as old as true gothic cathedrals) church on par with those in Europe. Sadly it's not finished and most of the central nave was under construction and totally hidden from us. But we were able to go around the choir and see the little chapels. In recognition of NYC as the entry for most European immigrants to the US, each chapel was named after a saint from a different European country.
Next on the list was the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. By 10 am it was already too late to receive a time card to go into the statue, but we were able to go to the island and walk around her. Here's a photo from the ferry of lady liberty and Manhattan skyline.



As exciting as it was to see the statue of liberty, I was far more interested to go to Ellis Island, which is the second stop on the ferry. Ellis Island is one of those things that's interested me since high school, and I was not at all disappointed by the museum. The museum itself is actually the original main building of the immigration service, which was converted into a museum a couple decades ago after Ellis Island itself closed. Here's a photo of the Registry room.



Upon arrival in Ellis Island, immigrants ascended the stairs from the baggage room and entered this room. Here they underwent the quick medical exam during which received the chalk mark on their coats designating any medical conditions for further check-out and were registered in the big book. Legend says that names were "anglicized" if they were too complicated, but according to the official history, this is not true.
After a full afternoon walking around the museum we returned to mainland and walked over to the ground zero site. It's current state is construction zone. If you didn't know better, you wouldn't know that two huge skyscrapers had once stood there. (Except for maybe all of the fire system hookups and sewage pipe in the wall of the foundation.) Standing there it struck me how small the space really was considering the ramifications of what happened there.
After the WTC site we went to Grand Central station and grabbed tea at Starbuck's. Then we got lost twice (the only time we got lost in fact) trying to find Rockefellar Center. After a few minutes of watching the ice skaters, we finally learned the location of "curry row", a block of really good indian restaurants. It was definitely the most amazing indian food I've ever had. After a long day of walking it really hit the spot, and I was rather giddy. (I think the mango lassie cocktail also contributed to this state of mind.)
Finally we swung by Times Square again, this time armed with cameras. Times Square is hard to photograph, but here's my best effort:



End Day 1. Begin Day 2.
Day 2 is a little easier. Namely we spent 7 hours walking around the Metropolitan Museum of Art and by no means saw the entire thing. It was everything from mummies and sarcophagi to Picasso to medieval armor to Tiffany glass and a reconstructed room from a Frank Lloyd Wright house.
After ingesting enough fine culture for an entire working day, we took a stroll past the UN building. Not much to see but at least I can say that I saw it. Dinner was at the South Side seaport. More than anything my feet were happy for the rest. Full, happy and tired we headed back to the hostel for our last night.
Thursday was another early morning, but we were on the bus by 8 am and back in Ithaca by 1 pm. So ended our adventure in NYC. Quite successful if you ask me.
The rest of the week was spent sleeping, being generally lazy and trying to get myself to get myself back in the work mode.

Almost spring

Happy Wednesday!
I always find it hard to decided how to start an entry. Any other blog-writers out there have that problem?
Anyho! So it's been about a month now since our big snow storm, and winter's been stubborn in leaving. But today is one of those days that makes you realize spring will eventually arrive. Warm and rainy.
Things have been busy around here. Lots of homework. I just now took a midterm. It was long and didn't go particularly well, but that was the sentiment of the whole class.
I've also been trying to figure out what I'm going to be doing this summer for research. My goal is radio astronomy instrumentation and there are several people here who are really enthusiastic about me doing that, but no one has active projects so it's a little unclear what kind of project will eventually materialize. Right now I'm still confident that something will work out and haven't started panicing yet.
More importantly next week is Spring Break! Instead of joining the mass exodus of students to the south (Arizona, Florida, etc.), I'm taking a trip to sunny NYC. Marcy and I will be there for a couple days doing to touristy thing. Statue of Liberty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Times Square, etc. I'm really excited.
I guess that's all the news from my corner of the world.
Bis später!