What a dame!

Seoul. Five thousand miles west of anywhere called 'home'; thirty-one miles south of hell. The last time I was here, this city almost broke me. I swore I'd never give it another chance. The Universe had other plans [takes a drag from his cigarette].

Yes: I have been working on that paragraph since I decided on this trip two months ago.

Yes: I am back in Seoul, though only for two weeks (really, two more days, but I've been here for eleven).

The last time I was here, Eric (my boss) was eager that we should all experience "Doctor Fish." The year before, he and a few other Berkeleyans had gone to a cafe where, for a nominal fee, you could soak your feet in a fish tank while you drank your coffee. The fish -- known to biologists as Garra Rufa (does one capitalize species names?) -- feed off of dead and diseased skin. Your feet are not ignored during the experience. According to the wikipedia page on the species, the Turks use this as a treatment for psoriasis and other skin diseases (giving us something to ask after we've sorted out why Constantinople got the works). Incidentally, I saw something similar going on in a mall in Bombay when I was there for a friend's wedding this past January. (Un)fortunately, by the time I arrived in Seoul in September 2009, the cafe in question had closed and no replacement could be found.

Until now.

Two days ago, an intrepid expedition made up almost entirely of foreigners (the one Korean who joined us opted not to partake; I guess, maybe, that should have been a warning) traveled to the Gangnam district where we had rumors of active "Doctor Fish." The rumors were not hollow. There were two tanks of fish. One tank contained fish that were about as long as the last two knuckles on your little finger and, volumetrically, a little smaller than that. Anyone who was ever five years old with a sibling who enjoyed tickling the bottoms of your feet knows what it felt like when these fish fed. The other tank contained fish that were fifty percent larger than an adult thumb. I repeat: these fish were larger than your thumb. When they swam to the surface to beg for food, you could clearly see their mouths opening and closing. Feeding these fish was significantly less nerving. Imagine lowering your feet (or any part of your body) into what you thought was an empty pool only to find a human hand there, waiting and eager to take hold of whatever you had to offer. I stayed in that pool about thirty seconds before deciding I was done.

It is unclear that the experience had any effect other than to provide substance for this post. When I returned to my room and took off my shoes, I thought I could see red pockmarks on the bottom of one of my feet, but I only saw five of them and there were significantly more than five fish. At the very least, I have completed the final stage of my vegetarian certification: I have allowed animals to feed on me. I'm told that's what it's like in Soviet Russia.

I, for one, welcome our new overlords

My parents have this plant. It's called a gunnera. Every spring, it emerges from something that looks like it was grown in the marsupial pouch of a Vorlon encounter suit. I think it's here to assume guardianship of the planet and shepherd our species towards a new way of life. I'm not convinced that this new way of life will be better than the one we are living now.

To test this hypothesis, my parents purchased a timelapse camera from a company called Wingscapes (shameless advert here). We set it up to take a picture every half an hour starting at 6am and ending at 7pm. This is the result of the first week of operation.

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Obviously, there are some issues with the mounting (and we started too late in the season to instill in you the proper fear of this malevolent force of nature; look for something far more terrifying this time next year). I will try to stabilize the camera and post something longer and smoother in the coming months.

I also owe you something with a monster made out of a soda can and hot glue...

Probably not a new car

There is a door in the basement of the University of Washington physics building labeled "Liquid Nitrogen and Lactation Stations." The door is locked. My key does not open it. I like to think that working in the academy means that you are forever safe in the assumption that your place of employ is a bastion of liberal sensibility, however, it is impossible for me to escape the obvious, somewhat regressive explanation for what goes on behind this door.

Please, help me escape. What do you think happens behind this door? Points will be awarded based on awesomeness.

The internet is for porn!

In honor of spring, here is a picture I took last fall, when I was still living at my folks' house after moving back to Seattle from Seoul.

I was dashing out to the garden to harvest spinach for my lunch, when I noticed this underfoot.





I'm pretty sure this is slug sex. After all, what is sex but two consenting (I'm glaring at you, ducks) adults coming together to exchange a little slime? Good to know there are some things that still make us all animals.

Look for another seasonal post shortly. By which I mean a post relating to seasons. Not a post relating to this season.

But, Mom, he followed me home...

I've been told I need a new hobby. This, to me, seems absurd when the old hobbies are all still perfectly viable.

Here is a primitive first attempt at stop motion animation.



You will note that "walking up to the camera" looks significantly less impressive than "getting up on his hind legs and roaring." I suspect that is because his small feet made incrementally moving him difficult (as soon as he was on fewer than three feet, he started slipping all over the place). Here he is with the addition of bottle cap feet. (That's right: the theorist just did an experiment. Don't worry. I won't include any error bars.)



Well... that's better.... but it's not good. The point is to be able to tell a story (involving monsters!) with this, and, at this point, I think the discontinuous nature of the motion is still too distracting to make that feasible. Suspending him from two pieces of fishing wire (as I have) may not be the best way to hold him steady against gravity between frames. I'll need to think some more about this.

Special thanks to Tim, who taught me that there is nothing you cannot do with a hot glue gun.

"There's an old saying in Tennessee (I know it's in Texas; it's probably in Tennessee)..."

I believe I have said this before, but it bears repeating: the principal way you know I'm a liberal is not that I believe that we need to stop calling it "gay marriage" ("the right to not have the government pick your spouse" seems more to the point), or that "taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society" (wait! that was a Republican Supreme Court nominee/Justice; time's arrow man....weird). No, you know I'm a liberal because I don't actually believe anything until either Jon Stewart or Ira Glass whispers it soothingly into my ear.

This week's "This American Life" is fascinating (yes: I keep that sentence on hand and cut and paste it to this blog every other entry). It tells two stories of people fed up with their political parties. It should come as no surprise that the "Democrats are stupid" story is much more forgiving than the "Republicans are stupid" story. Democrats are stupid because they don't know how to run campaigns. Republicans are stupid because... I wonder.

The Republican half of the episode focuses on Tea Partiers in Michigan and their quest to restore "conservative values" (the theme of this post is that I don't know what those are) to the GOP. I've never really taken the Tea Party seriously. That may actually be a trenchant piece of self-reflection, since it was barely 3 years ago that I could be seen waving a sign accusing the President of the United States of being a fascist. I like to think that I've grown since then. Listening to the interviewed Tea Partiers (I will resist the urge to abbreviate that TPers for the rest of the post, though it would be pretty high-larious), one contradictory idea slowly became clear in my mind. These are people who are as mad at George W. Bush as I am, but have reacted exactly opposite. We both agree (I think) that the end result of the Bush Presidency was somewhat less than desirable. We disagree why. The Tea Partiers claim that the Republican party drove this country into a ditch because they "broke with conservative values" and that the party, therefore, needs a quick shot of new blood. I claim that the Republican party drove this country into a ditch because they exemplified conservative values and that conservatism, therefore, needs to be tarred, feathered, and run out of Washington, D.C. on a rail.

My question for all you Tea Partiers out there (yeah, right; Tea Partiers read my blog) is this: in what way were the Bush years not a conservative wet-dream?

Judeo-Christian ethics were codified (remember stem cells and the aforementioned marriage rights?).

Environmental concerns had to ride in the back middle seat of the free market's station wagon.

Taxes were slashed (as we marched into not one, but two wars; I'm going to break with my half-assed attempt to remain civil here and state my belief that our grandparents, who went without stockings because nylon was needed to send paratroopers into Nazi-occupied France, are particularly ashamed of us on this front).

Missile Defense installations were funded.

Boom! Recession!

Am I missing something? How is the reaction to this that we need more conservatism in American politics?

...but it is often true...?

Late in the 2008 campaign and even early into his administration, there was a lot of talk comparing Obama to Spock. By "a lot" I mean that there was any at all. On "Wait, wait, don't tell me," Leonard Nimoy recounted the tale of how, during one of his convention appearances, a candidate for high public office stepped out of the crowd and flashed him the Vulcan hand sign; "[the candidate] was not John McCain". I think there was also a Newsweek cover.... The chatter was driven by the perception that Obama was/is rational to the point of aggravation (his logic can be most annoying), even though, "he only knows how to give pretty speeches," seemed to be an equally popular criticism.

I think I just found another parallel.

I love Star Trek (for those who didn't know that: "Hi, my name is Scott; who are you?"). I love Star Trek so much that I define it only to include television episodes that were aired between [fall 1966:spring 1969, fall 1988:spring 1994] and movies featuring Leonard Nimoy that have even numbers in their titles (though, it has recently been brought to my attention that Captain Kirk is climbing a mountain). None of those are typos. The dates are chosen very carefully. That is how much I love Star Trek.

Were it my decision, I would reserve a special place in movie hell for Abrams Trek.

My problems with the most recent Star Trek movie are many (no one but William Shatner should ever be allowed to scream: "I am Captain Kirk!" and be taken semi-seriously). Today, the villain stands out in my mind. For those of you who haven't seen the movie (DON'T), the villain is a Romulan from the future bent on destroying Vulcan. Why is he bent on destroying Vulcan? (Because he's in love; you didn't click on the link, did you? you should really click on the link). He is bent on destroying Vulcan because, in the future, Spock failed to save the Romulan homeworld from falling into an artificial black hole. Spock did not make the black hole; Vulcans did not make the black hole; but, because Spock (having already saved the galaxy from Klingon-Federation war, a giant space Amoeba, THE Doomsday Machine, whale-loving hippie goofs....) failed this once in his heroics, every Vulcan everywhere had to be punished. No Melville was spouted in the pursuit of this vendetta.

Oh yeah, I was talking about Obama. I haven't heard anyone claim that he or the Democrats caused this recession. Most of the academics (read: people who make a living trying to understand the economy through the intellectual lens that helped us invent computers and wipe-out smallpox) I've heard seem to believe that recent government action actually helped prevent the recession from becoming a depression. Nevertheless, voters seem bent on punishing the blue team this November, not because they hurt us (like the other guys probably actually did), but because they couldn't save us... enough.

Maybe the president should stop stumping and start figuring out how to slip his katra into John Boehner's coffee.