science

Back to the ROC II

Sunday was pretty quiet and included a visit to First Unitarian, which was good, if somewhat weird since I’ve been gone quite a while now, and most people were at General Assembly. Otherwise, it was very hot, so there was a trip to cool down at an oddly-juxtaposed gelato shop / African art gallery/store on Park Ave. (more…)

Travertine Falls

I took Monday of Easter weekend off to go on a geology hike with my coworker Nancy, who was trained as a geologist, and Tyler, who was visiting from Rochester and is also a geologist. It was a good day for it, sunny and sufficiently warm. The site where we went is called Fall’s Ridge and is sort of within sight of my apartment – at least, I think it’s part of the ridge that I can see from my balcony. (more…)

Staerkel Planetarium Art

In thinking about “Blue Boat Home” (and various other starry things…) I’ve been reminded of the really great art the planetarium at home has. My family spent a vast amount of time at Staerkel Planetarium when I was growing up, to the point that apparently we spent many Friday nights there, and Dave the planetarium guy knew us on sight. We went to the star shows, science lectures (more…)

Blue Boat Home

I mentioned in passing that I’m learning a new song – “Blue Boat Home” by Peter Mayer – for my singing lessons. I love the song, it’s probably one of my favorite Unitariany songs, though admittedly the version I’m familiar with is Priscilla Herdman‘s cello-heavy arrangement. To help me learn to sing more expressively, my teacher asked me to remember the song is poetry, and to “write a (more…)

Racing Pennies

Sometimes it’s been hard not to hear the start of a poem when I’m out walking these days. And too many people have been saying nice things about my poems and encouraging me to write more (soon they will learn their mistake! muahaha): so, another poem I was fiddling around with. (more…)

Element 117

They’re creeping closer to developing element 119 – Nature says element 117 has been discovered! o.O That came sooner than I expected… but it sounds like I should have known better: “…analysis of the new element suggests theories (more…)

Deaf Academic Research

For the past half year I’ve been working with Ron Kelly at RIT/NTID on a research project about deaf/hard-of-hearing students’ low academics. It takes something like five years (on average) for one of our deaf students to graduate from the NTID two-year associate degree programs, and we lose about half our students by the time four years have gone by. (more…)

Die Prinzen

So, Janine gave me a whole bunch of music by the German band Die Prinzen the other day. I remember watching “Millionär” in German class and “Deutschland” always reminds me of one of the videos from Big Show my senior year, so it’s really cool to hear the rest of their music. Evidently they (more…)