Happy Halloween!

Captain's blog, stardate 2749.8....
Ah, Halloween. An excuse to dress up in nerdy outfits, plus you get candy! What's not to like?
Also, my costume rocks. I bought the shirt, but the braid on the sleeves and the badge were sewn on by me, and it took a really long time. Totally worth it though. Check it out. (Click the pictures to make them somewhat bigger.)

Saturday evening there was this party kind of thing except not a weird party like frats apparently have. It was just open to all MIT students and there was candy and pizza and ice skating. (There is an ice rink at MIT; isn't that amazing?) There was also tea! I had Earl Grey. Also, you could get your picture taken. So I did, except it would be silly for me to post a picture of a picture, so you don't get to see it. I will just say one thing: There's dramatic lighting on my face! If you've ever watched the original Star Trek series, you'll know that Kirk very frequently has his face lit from the side or whatever to make himself look more dramatic. I think it's pretty awesome that my picture just so happened to come out the same way.

Nobody else had the same costume as me, which I was grateful for. There was a girl who had Uhura's uniform from the new movie and a guy in a TNG uniform though. They had bought their costumes though. Mine is all handmade and amazing (even if that's only because it's way too expensive to buy a costume, and besides they don't make Captain Kirk uniforms for girls.)

Did I mention there was ice skating? (That was a rhetorical question, FYI.) There was a somewhat long line to rent skates, which became much longer after I was on it, so I prided myself on my timing. While I was waiting for my skates, there was annoying music playing. There was even a Lady Gaga song! I think it was "Poker Face" because they kept saying "p-p-p-p-p-poker face". When I started to skate there was still annoying music. But just as I started to get the hang of it....this is so dramatic and awesome I am saving the reveal for the next paragraph....

...MUSIC FROM THE STAR TREK: 2009 SOUNDTRACK STARTED TO PLAY!!! I was skating like a pro (well, like a semi-competent person who hasn't skated in ages) and humming along. Then some random music that seemed vaguely familiar and non-obnoxious but wasn't from Star Trek played, and then there was another piece from the ST:2009 soundtrack! After that I stopped skating, because it was making my ankles hurt, and the music switched back to annoying. The only logical conclusion to draw is that I am so awesome I cause Star Trek music to play when I ice skate. Best superpower ever.

After that today was relatively anticlimactic, since there's no trick-or-treating at college really. (I still ended up with candy though, from the ice skating thing. Also my Aunt Beth sent me some cause she's cool like that.) I wore my costume for most of the day.

At the Asymptones, we had a little party before rehearsal where everyone brought food. I brought pineapple but nobody wanted it except me so I got to take it back and save it for breakfast or something. Most of the other people weren't wearing costumes, but one guy was wearing a kinda fancy black suit and had a toy gun. So of course when he wasn't looking I stole it.
Me: Haha, I have a phaser now.
Him: Hey! I need that!
Me: Why?
Him: I'm Bond. James Bond.
Me: But I'm Kirk. James Kirk.
There followed an epic battle of gun versus banana Laffy Taffy, which was the only weapon anyone would supply me with.
(By the way, I have a secret theory that Kirk and James Bond are secretly the same guy, because they're both named James, are impossible to kill, and date lots of people.)

To celebrate having such an awesome costume, I wrote a rap about the non-interference directive and its flaws. You seriously need to watch it. (Assuming my video embed works, that is.)

Miscellaneous Awesomeness

Captain's blog, stardate 9274.1...
Hi there folks! I'm procrastinating on my physics problem set and bringing you a few important pieces of news.

First of all: Splash registration is almost open! If you want to come to my awesome classes you'd better go register for them. (And I'd better actually start planning out what I'm going to say.) Registration closes on November 2, so you'd better hurry up! It supposedly opened today but still says it isn't open and I don't know why. Maybe by the time you check it will be working properly.

I got an 87 on my math test and a 94 on my chem test, so I'm very proud of myself. Well, not really. I'm not not proud of myself. Just tired enough that I'm relatively indifferent.

I dreamed last night that my sister Mary and I were young versions of Spock and Kirk respectively, and that we went to Tarsus IV and destroyed Tom Riddle's diary with lightsabers. It was the awesomest thing ever. (My subconscious must be really nerdy.)

In other news, I worked harder on my Halloween costume than on my homework today. For shame.

Yo, people!

Captain's blog, stardate 2849.1....
Hey there folks, sorry for taking so long to update. Last week was pretty busy for me and I was really tired the whole time. So, not the best circumstances for blog updating. This weekend, however, I got to sleep! And my Shakespeare class was required to go see a performance of Henry IV, Part I today. This meant that I couldn't teach SAT prep today and had to get a sub--which in turn meant I didn't have to come up with lesson plans yesterday and could go shopping.

Yes, I went shopping of my own free will. I bought some nice gold braid and then....I went CLOTHES shopping! I went to the Salvation Army store and bought a random article of clothing to cut up. It took me a while to find something that was the right color, but that I wouldn't be willing to wear, so that I wouldn't feel guilty about ruining it. They have lots of nice shirts there. There was this one gold sweater that was so awesome I couldn't resist buying it. It was so bright and pretty and I needed a new lucky shirt since I'm sewing stuff on my old one. I'll test it out during my chemistry exam tomorrow. I have the feeling it will be very lucky, even though it doesn't have a black collar. I could always wear a black shirt underneath and then it would look like one of the uniforms from the 2009 Star Trek movie.

Hmm, other news. We read Henry IV, Part I and Henry V in Shakespeare class. Henry V had this lovely line at the beginning of Act 3, Scene 6:
Gower: How now, Captain Fluellen? Come you from the bridge?
It took me a couple minutes and a glance at the footnotes to figure out that they were talking about an actual bridge, not the starship kind. It didn't help that throughout the play people kept talking about how they would succeed in their "glorious enterprise".

Got to go to my a capella group practice and then sew more stuff on my shirt. See you all later.

Check This Out

Captain's blog, stardate 2834.1....
So it was Parents Weekend at MIT this weekend and all the a capella groups were in a concert; each group sang two songs. My group, the Asymptones, sang "White & Nerdy" and "Title of the Song". The people backstage said we got the most applause of all the groups :)
I don't normally use smileys in formal (or is this semiformal?) writing, but I feel that this somehow merits one. Go figure.

I narrowly escaped having to wear a red shirt--at first we were going to have girls in red and guys in purple shirts, but not enough people had the right colors so they changed it to girls in warm colors and guys in cool colors. This meant I got to wear my nice yellow shirt. Several other Asymptones complimented me on how much like a Starfleet shirt it looked. I was honored.

So guess what? Some person in the audience took videos of the concert and put them on YouTube! Take a look! The camera this random person used couldn't tell my face apart from my shirt very well. But I'm standing in the front row next to my friend Bones (technically short for "lazybones") who is wearing a red sweater thing.

Splash!

Captain's blog, stardate 2864.9....
AD BREAK!
Me: I'm gonna teach at Splash, I'm gonna teach at Splash!
Random Kids: What's Splash?
Me: Glad you asked! Splash is an educational opportunity for middle- and high school students. Students who register for the program can come to MIT from November 20-21 and enjoy classes taught by MIT students. The course offerings are incredibly diverse, ranging from crash courses in computer programming to knitting to board game strategy. There's something for everyone!
Kids: Wow! It sounds great!
Me: It is!
Kids: I wanna go to Splash!
Me: Registration for students will open in late October! It costs $30 for high school students and only $20 for middle school students--a low, low price to pay for the fun and educational value of this weekend!
Kids: Oh boy! Hey, didn't you say you were gonna teach something?
Me: You bet!
Kids: Ooh, I wanna come to your class! What's it gonna be about?
Me: I'm teaching two classes, actually! The first one is "Star Trek and the 1960s," in which we'll explore strange new worlds how the original Star Trek series reflected the issues of its time, and the other is "You Canna Change the Laws of Physics: Science Mistakes In Star Trek," which is exactly what it says on the tin!
Kids: WOW! That sounds so cool, Captain Quirk! I can't wait!
Me: *stares into camera* Splash 2010. Be there.

Everything in that ad was true, except for the part about random kids wanting to go to classes about Star Trek. Still, I bet some people will go.
...will YOU be one of the lucky few?

OK, advertising is over for real this time. In all seriousness, Splash is gonna be totally awesome, and if you're in the right age group and are available on that weekend, you should definitely come, even if you don't go to either of my classes. After all, they are pretty nerdy subjects. (Earn your nerd badge by coming to Star Trek class! Aw, right, no more advertising...)

The Most Awesome Game

Captain's blog, stardate 9274.8....
My sister Mary and I often end up chatting on Skype. Unfortunately Mary tends to quickly switch from having meaningful conversations with me to copy-pasting Star Trek quotes that she gets from iGoogle, for no apparent reason. I guess she thinks it's funny. Anyway, one time she was doing this copy-paste quote thing and I came up with the brilliant idea of playing along.

Hence, Awesome Game #1: In which Mary quotes Star Trek and I am a psychiatrist.
Here's a brief sample: (NB: iGoogle gives Mary quotes from all the Star Trek series, so don't be surprised if you don't recognize some of these.)
Mary: You're in love with a computer subroutine?
Elizabeth: No. Are you in love with a computer subroutine?
Mary:  It's like being pecked to death by ducks.
Elizabeth: Well, I've never loved a subroutine myself so I wouldn't know. Is it very difficult for you? What does your family think about it?
Mary:  I think I'm in trouble.
Elizabeth: Because your family doesn't approve?
Mary: I think I'm in love.
Elizabeth: With a computer subroutine, yes, you've already said so.
Mary: On my home-world it's much simpler. You choose a mate for life. There's no distrust, no envy, no betrayal.
Elizabeth: And you feel betrayed because your family doesn't support your choice?
Mary: Didn't think I had it in me, did you?
Elizabeth: This isn't about what I think of you. Tell me more about your family.
Mary: We're Starfleet officers. Weird is part of the job.
Elizabeth: So you consider them "weird"?

Here's another:
Mary: Either I've become impervious to antimatter explosions, or we're still dreaming.
Elizabeth: Dreaming? So you've dreamed about being impervious to explosions. That means you feel youself to be very powerful, even invincible.
Mary: I was trying to blend in!
Elizabeth: I see. And you weren't accepted into the group.
Mary: I had not considered that...It is a risk I am willing to take.
Elizabeth: What risk are you talking about ?
Mary: The anomaly, my ship, my crew, I suppose you're worried about your fish too.
Elizabeth: I'm not worried about my fish. But I am worried about you. What is this anomaly?
Mary: Oh, very clever, Worf. Eat any good books lately?

As you can see, we're very good at this. But since it gets annoying for me, I limit our "therapy" to once a week. However, Mary found out that iGoogle also has Star Wars quotes, and decided to copy-paste some for me even though she doesn't like Star Wars. (I know! How can anyone not like Star Wars?!) Introducing...Awesome Game #2, In Which Mary Quotes Star Wars and I Quote Star Trek.
(I didn't get my quotes from iGoogle, they were all ones I remembered or found in my Star Trek notebook, so they're pretty much all from the original series.)

We only played this game once, which was tonight, but look how good we are at it:
Mary: I've got a bad feeling about this.
Elizabeth: Emotions are alien to me. I'm a scientist. [Spock]
...
Mary: Are you sure about this; trusting our fate to a boy we hardly know? The Queen will not approve. [Padme]
Elizabeth: I've already got a female to worry about. Her name is the Enterprise. [Kirk]
Mary: Well I don't approve. [Padme]
Elizabeth: You will cease to pry into my personal matters, Doctor, or I shall certainly break your neck. [Spock]
Mary: You Jedi are far too reckless. The Queen trusts... [Padme]
Elizabeth: Mr. Spock, the women on your planet are logical. That's the only planet in the galaxy that can make that claim. [Kirk]
Mary: For a mechanic, you seem to do an excessive amount of thinking. [C-3P0]
Elizabeth: I'm a doctor, not a mechanic!! [McCoy]

Ah man...I'm such a nerd and I love every second of it.

Updating in 5...4...3...2...1...

Captain's log, stardate 2845.6....
This is going to be a mostly news post to make up for all the completely uninformative ones I've been providing you with. Not that important information about which fictional characters' names can be spelled out using the periodic table isn't informative...it's just that some of the point of this blog is to help you guys keep up with my incredible exploits, so you've got to give me a chance to brag about those.

1) The concert choir (which I'm in, or why would I be mentioning it?) is going to be singing in a concert (*gasp*) on November 20 at 8pm! There will be other singing groups too, but the concert choir is totally the awesomest. We're gonna sing some Carmina Burana, the Bach Gloria in Excelsis Deo (assuming we manage to get it right by then because gosh it's hard. Also it doesn't help that there are two soprano lines so we make less progress in sectionals than every other voice part and then we get in trouble for not knowing the music. Yeah.). Also we're gonna sing some other songs that I don't really know, and the Hallelujah chorus, which is really fun.
Anyway the point of that was to say if you just so happen to be near MIT on the evening of November 20 you should definitely come to hear us, because we rule at everything in the world (except singing Bach. Which we will hopefully rule at by the time of the concert.)

2) The parenthetical remarks in that announcement took up around half of the text. This is a mark of bad writing! Avoid it like the plague! (The plague avoids all marks of bad writing!)

3) I survived my first round of tests at MIT and didn't fail any! Congratulations to me!

4) I'm getting pretty good at swimming, and the swim teacher said our class would go in the deep pool in a week or two. Aren't you all so proud?

5) Gym classes at MIT go by quarters, so swimming will end pretty soon and we get to take a different class. Wanna know what I registered for?
...Fencing!!
(Now I can impersonate Sulu except with a shirt! I'm so excited! That is totally not the reason I'm taking the class! My frequent use of the word "totally", like, totally makes me sound like a valley girl!)

Updating Periodically

Captain's blog, stardate 2719.5....
Did you know that all of the Enterprise's bridge crew can have their names spelled out with elements from the periodic table, but Scotty and McCoy can't? Now you know!
I shall show you, and alternate colors between different elements.
We have: CaPTaIN KIrK, SPOCK, CHeKOV, NYOTa UHURa, and HIKArU SULu. Bonus points to Uhura and Sulu for having their full names. Bonus points to Spock for having the only name spelled with just one-letter elements. Bonus points to Kirk for being Kirk. McCoy doesn't work at all, but BONeS does. Scotty doesn't even come close.

Now it's time for Star Wars!
LuKEsKYWAlKEr (Yes, I know it's cheating to push the two words together, but it was the only way. Besides, Han Solo, Leia, Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Darth Vader don't work at all! I had to get someone in! And also, I'm proud of myself since this is such a long name.)
PAlPAtINe
CHeWBaCCa

It takes a while to get started with these, but once you figure it out, it's elementary! *ducks rotten fruit* Yeah, sorry, that one was really lame.

Hey look! A post that's not about Star Trek!

Captain's blog, stardate 1027.4....
No Star Trek-centric post today, I promise. I had a chem test on Monday. I did OK on it, not great but not bad either. I never do all that amazing on assignments or tests. Then again, I don't really care what my grades are except in math, so that would explain a lot.

Tests remind me of a good topic for you all to be aware of: test-taking superstitions! I'm very superstitious, but only for fun. All my superstitions are ones that I came up with myself, so you can reassure yourself that I'm not blindly following others.
How to Have Good Luck on Tests
1) Put a small braid in your hair, and (preferably) pull the rest of your hair back. I shall illustrate.

That picture is from me being Anakin Skywalker last Halloween, but it demonstrates the proper hairstyle. The braid is traditionally worn by Jedi padawans to designate their status. It's good luck because it means the Force is with you. The Force is very useful on tests. Particularly physics tests (I'd apologize for making so many jokes at the expense of physics, but it's their own fault for using every letter and a whole bunch of common words to stand for things...)






2) Wear a yellow shirt!
There is actually a sliding scale of which shirt colors are best to wear on a test day. Yellow is best, followed by green, blue, most other colors, and finally red. Red shirts should be avoided at all costs. If you have ever seen the original Star Trek series, you know why. (The people who die always have red shirts. Well, almost always, there are a couple exceptions.) Yellow (and, on occasion, green) is the color of Kirk's shirt and he is one of the luckiest individuals ever. Blue is worn by science officers and thus is probably helpful on science tests, though I haven't tried it.
3) Eat apples. This is a brand new one that I made up only yesterday. It does not have a source, it's just because I like apples. A lot. Actually, if you do want a source, watch the new Star Trek movie. Kirk is eating an apple while he takes the Kobayashi Maru exam. (He passes. Duh.) Therefore, by application of incredibly flawed logic, apples will help you pass tests!

Well, I didn't lie when I said this post wasn't about Star Trek, cause it wasn't. It was about superstitions. I never said I wasn't going to mention Star Trek, now did I?

Aaaaaaanyway, got a whole lot of homework to buckle down to. See y'all later.

I Have Been Assimilated

Captain's blog, stardate 8239.2....
Being assimilated into college life takes a while but I think I've done a pretty good job. Just ask my mom because she came to see me today and it was amazing. She said I was doing great and everybody missed me, and we walked all over Harvard Square and all over Boston and talked to each other and had a totally awesome time.

She even helped me plan my lesson for SAT Prep tomorrow. I'm going to be focusing on vocab questions so she suggested I talk about important prefixes to know and how to break words down so you don't need to memorize too many. I picked out some practice questions from the study guide and also made up some of my own which were way more exciting than the book ones. To wit:

1)      The means in which words are ----- on the SAT creates the impression that the test-writers are trying to hide -------.

(A)   Concealed .. bias      (B) Obscured .. obscenities         (C) Presented .. solutions             (D) Divulged .. profanity        (E) Explicated .. comprehension

[The correct answer is B. And the sentence is totally true. It looks like all the sentences were full of curse words and the test writers hid them with dashes.]

2)      The dispute over whether Kirk or Picard was a more ----- captain has raged for decades, ----- fans and turning them against each other.

(A)   Efficacious .. consolidating          (B) Inept .. abetting        (C) Competent .. polarizing         (D) Mercurial .. mitigating    (E) Mundane .. petrifying

[The correct answer is C. By the way this is a very important point of contention.]

3)      The SAT is quite ----- and  features pointless questions which fail to test ------.

(A)   Paradoxical .. ingenuity         (B) Intriguing .. perspicacity         (C) Inadequate .. perusal              (D) Abominable .. prescience  (E) Deficient .. aptitude

[Answer: E. This is completely and utterly true. Even I admit it and I teach test prep for the stupid thing. At least I get to use lots of vocabulary words, which is fun, so it's not a total loss.]

But I know when you all read the title of this post you were hoping for Borg references. Well, I shall not disappoint! Enjoy two of the lamest Borg jokes ever invented, by yours truly.

Q: What do you call a Borg who beats around the bush?
A: Circumlocutus of Borg.
[Circumlocution is a cool word. In related jokes, a Borg who speaks very clearly would be Elocutus of Borg.]

Joke #2 coming right up:
The Borg assimilated a high school student who ended up having to take physics. At first he did very well thanks to the knowledge of the rest of the Collective. However, when he took a test on circuits, he did very badly. The first question was "What is the voltage across a resistor in a circuit?"
The Borg's answer was:
The voltage is the product of the square of the current across the resistor, the inductance, the electric field, the force on the circuit, the potential energy, and the time elapsed.
Voltage = (Current)(Resistance) = (Current)(FUTILE) = (Current)(Force)(Potential Energy)(Time)(Current)(Inductance)(Electric Field).

Many thanks to physicists for assigning every letter in the alphabet to some physical property or another so that my horrible physics joke could exist.

Coincidences

Captain's blog, stardate 1893.2....

What do you know? Turns out I do have some entertaining news to share with you! Guess I was just too tired before to remember it.

Anyhow. Coincidence #1: On Sunday, I was eating my supper in the dining hall, as per usual. I had a salad, which is nice because I like salad if it's not just lettuce and dressing. So anyway, I was eating my salad and thinking that there was a pretty good variety of food in the dining hall. I was comparing it to the food at home and noticed that there had never been any hamburgers in the dining hall, whereas we have those every so often at home. So I was thinking "Hmm, I wish there would be some good hamburgers for supper around here..."
And then, the very next day, that's what was for supper in the dining hall.
They plan these things out more than a day in advance, so either whoever decides the menu predicted what I would want to eat on that particular day, before I even knew, or...the dining staff plants subconscious suggestions in the minds of everyone who eats there so that they'll want whatever's on the menu! How insidious!

Coincidence #2: This one doesn't involve evil dining hall staff. Also, the setup for this one is really long but totally worth it. So, I was tired today (as you might have noticed from my previous post's lack of coherence) and during math the professor was taking a long time to set up a problem that wasn't that hard (he was trying to explain the physics behind it). Hence, I got distracted and started to think about really random stuff. Namely: the similarities between Harry Potter and Star Trek, in particular the 2009 movie (because I'd been thinking about that movie earlier in the day). Seriously, think about it. Kirk=Harry, Spock=Hermione, McCoy=Ron, Nero=Voldemort. So I got to wondering what would happen if the Star Trek characters re-enacted the plot of the Harry Potter series. I was just wondering who would take on the more minor roles. In particular, I was wondering about Viktor Krum, who has to be involved with Hermione (Spock), which led me to think maybe he could be Uhura.
Now, most Harry Potter fans could tell you that Viktor Krum is famous for using a Quidditch move called the Wronski Feint. Just as I was thinking this, the professor introduces a concept called...a Wronskian!!
I kid you not.

Isn't that awesome? By the way, if you have more Star Trek 2009/Harry Potter correspondences, leave 'em in the comments.

Busy, Busy, Dreadfully Busy

Captain's blog, stardate 8172.4...
Well, I finally remembered that I'm supposed to be updating this blog. I guess that's a good start. If I had anything to say, that would be an even better start. Let's see what we've got.
Had a physics test on Monday. Had a math test on Wednesday. Had two problem sets and an English paper due today. Have a chemistry test on Monday. Have lesson plans to come up with for the SAT prep class I'm teaching. How the heck one is supposed to teach reading comprehension I have no idea. Guess I'll be figuring that out pretty quickly.

If I keep up this style of posting I'll have to invent a new label, Whining. I hope it doesn't come to that because nobody wants to hear me complain about how college is too hard and all that nonsense.

Oh right! I can talk about what we're doing in classes. Well, in physics we're just starting capacitors. The professor had a 100mF capacitor that he charged up, and then when he released the charge it blew up a wire, which is pretty cool because hey, explosions! Mindless destruction is always enjoyable!
Our chemistry class started out learning about electrons. Then we learned about atoms. Now we're going to learn about molecules. I make it sound like I'm in third grade here instead of college but if you want me to be more official, we learned about orbitals as solutions of the Schrodinger equation, radial probability distributions, electron distribution, and periodic trends. I believe that sounds impressive enough for the time being.
In math we have learned how to solve first-order linear differential equations using integrating factors and about autonomous equations, stable/unstable equilibria, and phase lines.

Oh, by the way, just so you know, I have a life outside of classes, which consists of singing, trying to stay in touch with everyone back home, and avoiding writing my blog. Oh, and eating when I remember to do that.

Since this was a really boring post, have a funny video I found floating around on the Internet.