Fancy Schmancy

Check out my fancy schmancy monitor in the lab. Its squarish and nearly as cool as my fancy schmancy desktop PC. I think the new EEEPC has specs on par with my lab PC, if not better.

good wine, good food, and great friends

I have this friend, Hitesh, who I've known since I was 15. We met randomly at a local youth group event and grew to be really good friends. He's truly brilliant...he finished five majors in the amount of time it took me to barely finish one, and one day he'll make a really great lawyer...or doctor...or anything really, just as soon as he picks something :) Hitesh and I have a hard time matching schedules, especially during classes, so we decided to get together when the semester ended. His last exam was friday, so I invited him over to dinner friday night.

For the last couple weeks, I've been spending a lot of time with my cousin, Yogi, and another old friend, Push. The two of them have gone into real estate together and are doing absolutely fabulously. Who knew that my childhood partner in crime would turn out to be such a convincingly knowledgeable businessman? Anyhow, the two of them are very sweet and tend to pick up tabs and bills when we're out, which is great because I love spending time with them and wouldn't be able to quite as much otherwise, given that academia (while "rewarding") just doesn't pay well. So I invited them to dinner as well, partially as a thank you and partially because, well, we usually hang out on friday nights.

Now the great thing about living in the same town your entire life is that everyone knows everyone else, especially within ethnic communities, and especially when you all go to college together. Yogi, Push, and Hitesh were all in the same fraternity in college, so they all know eachother quite well. In addition, my roommate, Sonya, went to college with us and knows everyont, too. So of course she was invited. Slowly the list of dinner guests grew until there were 8 of us.

I decided that an event with more guests than chairs definitely deserved truly engaging culinary endeavor on my part....so I enlisted the help of my dear friend Tracey (you probably know her from her blog, Cooking Ameristyle>) and learned an awesome new trick: how to cook a whole chicken!

All in all, between prep time and actual cooking time, hours were spent in the kitchen, but in the end it was definitely worth it. It's not everyday that you get to do something fun for your friends!

The entire menu was:
hors d'oeuvres: hummus, pita chips, olives stuffed with garlic, and mini dill pickles.
appetizer: tomato and goat cheese stacks, drizzled with a balsamic reduction and garnished with a sprig of cuban basil.
main course: oregano roasted chicken with roasted vegetables (potatoes, carrots, onions, fennel, and multicolored peppers).
dessert: mango sorbet with fresh blueberries.

blag

so there are a few web comics that i follow somewhat religiously. the list is cyanide and happiness, xkcd, amazing super powers, and piled higher and deeper (phd). i've been following phd the longest, then xkcd. amazing super powers and cyanide and happiness are the two latest additions to my list, but recently cyanide and happiness has become the one i check most often. xkcd used to hold that position. actually the guy who does xkcd used to go to middle school with me. i didn't know him all that well, but we had some classes together. anyway, his blog (which he calls a "blag") is the only blog i like to somewhat keep up with. one of his recent posts is about the difficulty of reading in bed....the ultimate position involves minimal muscle activation, so you can read until you fall asleep. basically he came up with a device to hold his kindle while he lays on his side in bed. its a cute design, made of a coat hanger. my bed issue doesn't stop at books, though. the big thing for me is my laptop. right now, while blogging from bed, i'm propped up on some pillows and my knees are bent to support my laptop at an angle where my wrists are relatively comfortable on the keyboard. this position isn't sustainable for long periods of time because of the strain it puts on my neck and legs. at some point, hopefully as i drift off to sleep, i'm going to want to lower my legs and relax my neck.

so randall munroe's blag got me thinking...is there an easy fix for my bed laptop problem? a couple of months ago my roommate and i built a table for my bed. it spans the width and has casters on it so i can roll it up and down the length of the bed. ideally, it would enable me to sit in bed and work on my laptop without having to be in this awkward position. the only problem is that its about 8 inches too high for laptop use. while i realize this is an easy problem to fix, the issue becomes more complicated when you consider that i need new mattresses. any new mattresses will compensate for the additional difference in height. the table is actually pretty cool, but it doesn't really serve its intended purpose. if you happen to read this and think of a simple solution let me know.

speaking of reading this, i dont give anyone the address of my blog. maybe its because blogging feels so inherently 2001-ish that despite its growth in popularity i just can't commit to doing it regularly.

walking away

i find it no coincidence that the song stuck in my head as i sit here the night before this exam called "walk away". to be honest part of me wants to. if only walking away could give me back the hours spent studying and preparing. unfortunately it cant, so i'm stuck here, whiling away the hours until that fateful noon exam. lets see how things go. i think i'll be fine. at least thats what i keep telling myself. one of these days it will all get better. its like that strokes song that says, "I'm working so I won't have to try so hard/Tables they turn sometimes." the funny thing is that the next line is "Someday I ain't wastin' no more time." very fitting, given my history. music is very therapeutic on nights like this. so is revising physics formulas. I think its now time for the latter.

METH

Recently I've been learning a lot about METH. METH is a really interesting drug. It resembles the chemical structure of dopamine and stimulates the brain to release excess amounts of dopamine, which is what causes the associated feelings of euphoria. In terms of drug use it is one of the fastest growing drugs in America. This due in part to the fact that it does not have to be imported. METH can be made fairly easily from a list of readily available, legal ingredients.

Although it induces an unrivaled state of euphoria (due to its ability to release more than ten times the amount of dopamine released by cocaine use), the negative affects of METH are staggering. Smokers get "METH mouth", a condition in which the teeth and soft tissues of the mouth are literally rotted away by the harsh acids and other chemicals in METH. Snorters suffer similar damage to the soft tissues that come in direct contact with the drug. Injectors have high incidence of AIDS, and preliminary studies indicate that METH use exacerbates and accelerates the progression of AIDS. Also, in recent times it appears that METH users are prone to getting a more virulent, difficult to treat, form of AIDS.

Given all this information, the question remains why is METH use increasing so rapidly? Especially among younger kids? Studies have shown that METH binging during adolescence can speed the progression of degenerative brain diseases like Parkinson's later on in life. Given the events of recent years involving the increase of school shootings and child-initiated violence, I find it no coincidence that the popularity of a drug that artificially induces a state of euphoria is extremely popular among American youth. This appears to be a symptom of a deeper societal problem regarding our youth. Something is terribly wrong with the kids of today. For some reason there is a deep repression of emotions and an inability to constructively address them. This manifests itself in various forms, one of which is increased METH use.

Recently I was talking to a friend who thinks a large element of the solution to this problem lies in the cessation of the supply of the drug. Unfortunately, basic economic theory tells us that as long as there is a demand there will always be a supply. And when you're dealing with a substance that can be "cooked" so easily from readily available materials, it is impossible to control the available supply. "So what do you think we should do?" he asked me. The problem with that is to be honest, I don't know. My initial instinct was to say education, but we have all been through DARE programs and know their ineffectiveness at preventing drug use. Telling a bunch of kids that drugs are bad won't keep them from using any more than saying no stops a toddler from continuously dropping a toy. Maybe education would be more effective if it were more clinical. But the concern with that would lie in the appropriateness of exposing children to the harsher realities of life, such as the physical and long term effects of drug use. Personally I think if kids in the 8th grade are our fastest growing population of increased METH use, then they are old enough to see the gruesome effects of the drug in a controlled classroom setting. Unfortunately the thought that "My kids wouldn't do that, so they don't need to be traumatized by this information" prevails among many parents.

So where does the solution lie? In answer to this question I would again like to reiterate that METH use is a symptom of a deeper problem. Focusing on treating the symptom is at best a short term solution. As long as the children of our society suffer the inability to adequately feel happy on their own, without the abuse of stimulants, this will continue to be a problem. I don't know where the grand solution lies, and I don't believe that there is one magic answer to solve such a deep, complex, societal problem. In the mean time symptomatic treatments may be the best we can do. The one thing I do know for sure, though, is that the millions of tax dollars spent to target and incarcerate the people who supply METH would be better spent on research into a real, sustainable solution to the problem.

Useful links:
http://www.nida.nih.gov/Testimony/4-21-05Testimony.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oIQ7hvo-I

the rat who made it

i read all of my entries from my old blog today. it was really interesting to see what i was like back then. also, there were a lot of things that i had forgotten about. my favorite is what i still consider the best secret ever: when vikram told dipti that he was going to get a pet rat even though mom and dad had said no. vikram was in a saturday morning enrichment class about odd pets, and at the end of the session they were allowed to take one of four odd pets home...the choices were a rat, a weird type of cricket, a spider of sorts, and something else that i cant remember. i still remember coming home after a late night in the lab on a saturday, and talking to my mom about this rat. vikram really did bring it home...but dad wouldn't let it in the house (his logic being "you dont bring rats into your house; you try and keep them out"...i can't really argue..), so they left the rat in a cardboard box on the front porch. i thought that was a little messed up because there are a couple neighborhood cats that like to hang out in our yard, and they are definitely the killing kind because they leave us little "gifts" from time to time. i thought it was a bit messed up to leave the rat essentially trapped in a place where the cats could get to it, so i brought it in and let it spend the night in my room. luckily dad was already asleep when i did that. the next day, vikram woke up really early and ran outside to check on the rat. when he saw that the rat was gone, he came up with this whole story about how it was pregnant and ran off to have its babies. i asked him if that was the case, then why had the box also disappeared? and he said that the rat needed a home for its new family, so it took the box with it. later that day dad secretly donated the rat to a local pet store. he did make sure they didn't just use it as snake food, though.

Digital Love

last night i had a dream about you
in this dream i'm dancing right beside you
it looked like everyone was having fun
the kind of feeling i've waited so long

dont stop, come a little closer
as we jam the rhythm gets stronger
there's nothing wrong with just a little little fun
we were dancing all night long

the time is right to put my arms around you
you're feeling right
you wrap your arms around too
but suddenly i feel the shining sun
before i knew it this dream was all gone

ooh, i dont know what to do
about this dream and you
i wish this dream comes true

why dont you play the game?

--daft punk