Currently Listening American Water By The Silver Jews see related

- Night Society

My life rocks more than this song.

Fall 2005 Grades:

AST 301 Gravitational Astronomy: Newton to Einstein:     A
MAT 331 Analysis II: Complex Analysis:     B+
PHY 301 Thermal Physics:     A
PHY 305 Introduction to the Quantum Theory:     A
Fall Junior Paper (Fermi Motion in the MiniBooNE Experiment):     A-

I'm happy with my grades; this was my best semester, by far.  I attribute my success partially to the absence in my schedule of humanities courses, but more importantly to the presence in my life of Nari, my one true love.

Spring 2006 Courses:

PHY 304 Advanced Electromagnetism - Fun so far, the textbook is easy to read.
PHY 312 Experimental Physics aka Core Lab aka DEATH LAB - I fear this course.
PHY 506 Quantum Mechanics II - The second semester of the graduate sequence in nonrelativistic quantum mechanics.  Everything I thought I knew about quantum is wrong.  I have been living a lie.  I must unlearn what I have learned.
PHY 563 Physics of the Universe: Origin & Evolution - First semester of the graduate sequence in cosmology.  Cosmology is a very interesting subject.  There is new physics here.
Tentative Spring JP Topic - Quantum Nonlocality with Professor Herman Verlinde

With all the work I need to do, time is short.

To sum up:

I love Nari (my first and only Valentine).
I love Physics (even though it is very difficult, and not nearly as sweet as Nari).

Life is good (thanks to Nari and Physics).

Currently Listening Lullabies to Paralyze By Queens of the Stone Age see related

- In My Head

Godfrey's Fall 2005 Course Schedule

AST 301: Gravitational Astronomy (Introduction to General Relativity)
MAT 331: Complex Analysis
PHY 301: Thermal Physics
PHY 305: Quantum Theory

As you are perhaps already aware, I took six courses last semester.  You might think that since I'm only taking four this semester my life would be easier, but you would be sorely, sorely mistaken.  These courses, being hard science and math courses, are individually more challenging and more time-consuming than any three humanities or social science courses I have ever taken.  In point of fact, the reason I'm awake right now is that I'm trying to finish the problem sets associated with these courses before they are due.  Whereas last semester I might find myself up late but one or two nights each week, I don't really get much of a break at all these days.  Add to all this the fact that I'm also working on a Junior Independent Research Project (on Fermi Motion in the BooNE Experiment), and you can see how little respite I will have from my studies this semester.  Goodbye, sleep.

As brutal as my workload is, this is actually my favorite semester so far, because I am learning in direct proportion to the brutality, which is to say a lot.  A whole lot.  I am learning more physics more quickly than ever before in my life.  It's actually mildly intoxicating.

Currently Listening White Album By Beatles see related

- I Will

It has been seven months since Nari and I were Matched to each other, and a month and twelve days since we were Blessed. Words cannot express the depth of my love for her. Come to think of it, the notion that they ever could is patently ridiculous. Mere squiggly patterns in grids of phosphorescent cells arrayed on some screen could never convey such heartfelt emotion. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the fact that they can convey anything at all is a miracle in itself.

But I digress.

I love Nari, and she loves me. Nothing and no one can stop us from being happy. That is the beauty of love. A building of steel can be leveled by an earthquake; a supernova can destroy a planet; a black hole can swallow a galaxy. The recent Katrina disaster should make my point clear. A sufficiently destructive natural disaster could simply erase from existence every object ever made by human hands.

It is not so with creations of the human heart. A love relationship is the most durable thing any two people can build. A bond of love, once forged, is unbreakable. It can survive beyond death. Two people who love each other need never stop loving. Nothing can ever force them to stop. All it takes is commitment. Commitment is the bedrock of love. Compatibility with your spouse is all well and good, as having similar interests and values and goals makes it easier to get along with someone no matter who they are, but the fact remains that commitment trumps everything.

And when it comes right down to it, how could you not be committed to your spouse? If you spend time really getting to know someone, if you learn their hopes, their dreams, their fears, if you see them at their best and at their worst, how could you not love them? When you see their face and hear their voice and feel their touch, when you see them through happiness, sadness, and everything in between, how could you not long to see and hear and feel them forever and always? And when they have seen you at your worst, and they still love you, how could your heart not be moved?

Commitment can exist only when undergirded by the mutual understanding that love is more important than anything else. You cannot let short-term emotional states destroy your long-term love relationship. Emotions are fleeting and transient, but love is eternal and permanent. In this respect, love is not really an emotion. Emotions are impressions and reactions, but love is an essence. More precisely, love is the flow of heart, and heart is the essence of God. This is why you can never sacrifice love. Rather, all must be sacrificed for the sake of love.

No one can stop us.

Currently Listening The Colour and the Shape By Foo Fighters see related

- Everlong (Acoustic)

For Nari

Hello,
I've waited here for you
Everlong

Tonight, I throw myself into
And out of the red,
Out of her head she sang

Come down,
And waste away with me
Down with me

Slow, how you wanted it to be
I'm over my head,
Out of her head she sang

And I wonder, when I sing along with you,
If everything could ever feel this real forever,
If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I'll ever ask of you,
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when
She sang

Breathe out,
So I can breathe you in,
Hold you in

And now, I know you've always been
Out of your head,
Out of my head I sang

And I wonder, when I sing along with you,
If everything could ever feel this real forever,
If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I'll ever ask of you,
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when
She sang

And I wonder,
If everything could ever feel this real forever,
If anything could ever be this good again

The only thing I'll ever ask of you,
You've got to promise not to stop when I say when
She sang

Currently Reading The Naked Ape : A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal By Desmond Morris see related

I recommend the book I just finished reading, Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape, to anyone who would like a better understanding of what it means to be a human being.  Although I disagree with him on several important points, and he has a tendency to state his own views as fact, it is nonetheless refreshing to read a book written by someone who doesn't give a crap for being safe or politically correct.  For the most part, he gives (as far as I can tell) an objective analysis of the human animal, the "naked ape," as he calls us, from the perspective of a zoologist.  He tries, as much as possible, to be as objective in his analysis as he would be were he examining any other species.

For me, the most enlightening thing about reading this book is that it has given me a framework for understanding many of the diverse, seemingly disparate observations on the human condition that I've collected over the years.  Every couple of pages or so, sometimes even more often, I would find myself reading about some human trait that I had noticed and taken an interest in, but never really understood.

The most valuable thing I've taken away from The Naked Ape is a heightened sense of perspective on the members of my own species and their interests and concerns.  Consider, for instance, people who unthinkingly pursue such meaningless things as position, wealth, or fame as ends unto themselves to the exclusion of all else.

Immanuel Kant, the brilliant 18th Century German Philosopher, has a very nice definition of moral behavior (one which philosophers call the Second Formulation of Kant's Categorical Imperative, in case you were wondering).  A rough translation would be: "Treat people as ends, never merely as means."  Treat people as people, and not as things to be used.  People are primary, and everything else should be secondary.  Don't subordinate people to any other concerns.  Those who become truly obsessed with attaining power (or position, prestige, wealth, fame, etc.) place these concerns above their regard for people, and are clearly acting immorally from a Kantian perspective.  Furthermore, in Kant's view, rationality is the essence of humanity (yeah, there may be other things, but the capacity for reason is definitely one of them), and morality is no more than a dictate of rationality (that dictate being, of course, the Categorical Imperative).  So, to be human, one must be moral.  Immoral people are, in this sense, something less than human.

I think Kant is the man, so even before reading The Naked Ape, I had come to the conclusion that people who act immorally are more like animals than people.

In reading The Naked Ape, I learned that Kant was right on.  Those traits, capacities, or pursuits which are uniquely or especially human include curiosity, creativity, reason, sex, love, laughter, smiles, music, art, science, technology, language, and so forth and so on.  The aforementioned human traits and pursuits are essentially different from anything found elsewhere in the animal kingdom.  On the other hand, the games people play for power, prestige, position, wealth, or fame, the posturing involved in manuevering within social hierarchies, the use of social constructs for domination and manipulation, as well as any tendency towards repression of our distinctively human traits and pursuits have all been taken directly from the hairy apes.  Our uniquely human traits add an edge to human social bullshit, but it is no different in essence from ape social bullshit.

The Divine Principle explains what causes some people to act more like people and others to act more like animals.  Just as the human body needs air, the human spirit needs love to grow and develop.  It is those who feel a lack of love who revert to animalism.