The weather was pretty cold near the beginning of the semester.  Some of the plants around campus froze.  But after the first week or so, it warmed up and was regularly in the 70s and sunny.

As I said, it’s mostly been business as usual; the interesting part is my new classes.

Physics 112: Second semester Honors Physics, Electricity and Magnetism.  A great class by all accounts, still taught by Hannon, at the same time and with the same structure.  It seems like it’s been a rather slow start so far.  We’ve mostly just talked about surface and line integrals, and how to evaluate them in certain circumstances even though we don’t know multivariable calculus yet.  He gave us Maxwell’s equations in integral form, which together with the simple Lagrange force law and F=ma is the entirety of E&M.  That’s pretty cool.  Since then we’ve been looking at Electrostatics and Gauss’s law.

CAAM 210: Engineering Computation: essentially a course to teach you basic programming skills in MATLAB.  So far it’s pretty easy (though that will probably change eventually), and I enjoy the work.  It will be a useful course for future lab/research work, and a lot of my friends are taking it too.  Our prof, Dr. Cox, is supposed to be the best.  He’s pretty cool: he has an amazing beard and a great sense of humor.  For the first project, we made this pretty fern.

POLI 210: American Government and Politics.  This course seems designed to be an easy class which gives credit for the Social Sciences, the D2 distribution requirement.  Dr. Alford is really chill: the first day of class he said that if you sleep through all his lectures, he’d be happy because you’re able to get that extra rest.  If you want to play World of Warcraft in class, just be sure not to disturb your classmates who might be sleeping.  It’s a very low-pressure class, and it’s turning out to be pretty fun.  He has a lot of amusing anecdotes and makes all sorts of off-the-wall comments, and he makes the subject matter interesting, if not particularly deep intellectually.

MUSI 335: Rice Chorale.  Yep, I’ve joined the chorale!  Steven Nelson, a senior from central who goes to Canterbury at Palmer and who was is Dr. Byrd’s history class with me last semester, walked by on his way the first day and invited me to come along. We are working on the Brahms Liebeslieder Waltzes for a concert on February 23, and will be doing Beethoven’s 9th with the Shepherd School Symphony Orchestra on April 23rd. I love chorale, it’s not too much of a time commitment, I get a one-credit automatic A.  :-)  Dr Jaber is really nice but also definitely knows what he expects from us.  He reminds me a lot of Mary Anne.

MATH 211: Ordinary Differential Equations.  Gao is hilarious.  His accent isn’t too bad, but his jokes are like nobody else’s.  Some people say that he teaches the methods not the concepts, and that may be true to some extent, but I’m getting both so I’m happy.  We’re currently working on autonomous equations with stable and unstable asymptotic equilibria.  I like the pictures.

MATH 300: Intro to Real Analysis.  Definitely my hardest class.  It goes fast: it seems I barely get my head around one concept when he moves onto the next.  We started with basic formal logic, then moved on to set theory, natural and rational numbers, and now we’re working on infinite sets, cardinalities, and the real numbers.  We’ve looked at direct proof (at least I think that’s what it’s called), case-by-case proof, proof by contradiction, and proof by induction.  The homework takes a long time, but Gao assures me that it will get better as I learn.

Well, that’s my schedule.  Math and Physics homework is due Tuesday, and CAAM homework is due Monday, so I pretty much have to keep on top of it as it’s assigned to avoid being completely swamped on Sunday and Monday nights.  It’s working out well so far.

Yay for the iPad!

I had a great break.  The New Years’ party at the Blanchards was really fun.  We played some really fun games of Mafia, and stayed up until 4:30am.  I went to a swing-dance night at Galaxy Diner where I learned the Charleston, I played Apples to Apples, telepictionary, and Cranium at the Cooks’, and I went to Hannah’s birthday party, where we played ultimate frisbee in the snow, had the biggest game of telepictionary I’ve ever seen, and did some really amazing games of Mafia.  Mostly, I loved hanging out with all my old friends and my family.  I had a great break, but I’m also really glad to be back and about to start a new semester.

Last night was fun, including Mai’s (a Vietnamese restaurant), shenanigans in Alex’s room, an amazing episode of Dr. Who (featuring the Master, Gallifrey, and a reincarnated Rassilon), and a late-night trip to IHOP.  This morning, I served as an Acolyte for the first time at Palmer.  It went well.  The climate control system in the sanctuary is being re-done, so it was rather chilly, but otherwise a fun service.  I got back just in time to catch the lunch expedition, and then tagged along on a quick trip to Target.  I also bought the last textbook I need, so all my books for this semester are either in my room or on the way.  I’ve got the books and the special registration form for the CAAM teacher to sign, and I know where all my classes are, so I think I’m all set.  Spring 2010, here I come!

I think my sisters really missed me, and I missed them too.

It’s good to be home!  It’s been two weeks since I got back, and it’ll be another week and a half or so until I leave.  It’s been nice to see everybody, homeschool friends and church friends alike.  Mostly, I’m surprised things don’t feel more different.  I went to the Blanchards’ house, and it felt just like old times.  At the Eagles’ Christmas party, it was almost as if we had never left.  Oh sure, some things are different.  My little sisters are more grown up, and everyone is really glad to see me and wants to know how my first semester of college went.  I have somewhat of a different perspective on things because of the things I learned, the experiences I’ve had, and the friends I’ve made.  But even though some things are different, the relationships have remained strong despite our divergent experiences over the past months, so I still feel very much at home.  Yet this feeling doesn’t take away from my love of Rice and all my friends there.  I have two homes, and it’s a rather weird feeling.  But it’s all part of the college experience, so I’m embracing it and having fun!

The pageant kids. Cherry is an angel on the far right, and Kathy is next to her as Mary.

Christmas was fun.  We didn’t do a whole lot of decorating this year, but we did have a tree, presents, and snow outside.  We mostly focused on the Christ part of Christmas, with Christmas carols, our daily advent devotional we do every year and, three different Christmas eve services.  My sisters were in our church’s Christmas pageant.  It was simple but cute.  Kathy got to be Mary this year.  She was so excited!  At the last minute, the verger asked me if I could step in as a lector and chalice bearer.  It is quite a feeling to help in serving communion, giving the blood of Christ to the congregation.  Repeating the words “the blood of Christ, the cup of salvation” or “the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ keep you in everlasting life”, it really hit me that I was participating in a ritual instituted by Christ himself thousands of years ago, and sharing not only with those present but with the entire body of Christ, past, present, and future, in his passion, death, and resurrection through the mystery of the Eucharist.  It was awesome.

My sister was in the choir at the 7 o’clock service, and then I served as a torchbearer (and again as a last-minute lector) for the midnight service.  Mary Anne’s descant to Silent Night was, as always, one of the highlights of the service, floating ethereal and other-worldly above the voices of the choir and congregation, the church lit only by the small candles we all held.  Though I know some people get tired of Silent Night, I never do, and it was at that moment that it really felt like Christmas.

Since then, I’ve pretty much been hanging out and having fun.  I finished Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz, a novel about a Roman patrician named Vinicius who falls in love with a Christian maiden just before the time of Nero’s persecution.  The book itself was a first edition from 1896 given to me by Briana and Alejandro (my cousin and her husband who live in Sugar Land).  It was a fun read.  I’ve also started reading the Feynman Lectures, Volume II.  Since I’ll be studying Electricity and Magnetism in Physics this coming semester, I figured I’d get a head start.  Feynman was such a great teacher and Physicist.  I’m really looking forward to PHYS 112!

I’ve been cooking again, and I love it.  The servery food is pretty good, but after a whole semester it all starts to taste the same.  I made a few old favorites over the past several nights, but after tonight I’ll be letting my parents cook again, so they don’t have to get used to cooking for themselves all over again when I leave.

Tonight is the Blanchards’ Christmas Eve party!  I’m so excited!  It’ll be so much fun!

Thanks for reading, everyone, and have a happy and blessed 2010!

Lobby Decorations, courtesy of Laura, a Sophomore Econ/Asian Studies major.

Merry Christmas!  That’s what our lobby wall says right now.  Everybody’s starting to get into the Christmas spirit.  With decorations in the lobbies, holiday parties with lots of good food, good company, and a gift exchange, and other similar holiday happenings, Christmas is definitely on its way.

It snowed on Friday!  In Houston!  It was genuine snow too, not just a few small icy flakes but large, fluffy flakes that fell slowly and blew around in the wind currents.  It even stuck to the grass.  Frankly, I was impressed.  Of course, there’s apparently about 2 feet of snow back home.  But still, snow doesn’t happen in Houston very often.  The weather has been really weird; on Tuesday it got up to 70!  Now today it’s chilly again (mid 40s).  Oh well.  At least we got some snow.  It snowed last year too, apparently.  Snow in Houston two years in a row.  Some have been predicting the end of the world.

Snow in the Academic Quad. Click to see more pictures of the snow.

The Society of Women Engineers sponsored a Gingerbread House event. This made it back to our lobby.

I went to the Memorial City Mall the day after Black Friday.  I got some stuff at Target, then went to the Apple Store to have them look at my iTouch (the external speakers weren’t working).  At the Apple Store, I made an appointment at the Genius Bar.  Then I had 2 hours or so to kill.  I didn’t impulse on anything. (except Chick-fil-A, and that doesn’t count!)  The crowd was pretty impressive.  When my appointment came up, they took a look at it, checked the headphone plug for obstructions, and asked if I had tried a few routine fixes.  I said I had.  ”OK, I won’t waste your time.”  He went in back and brought out a new one!  I was out the door with a replacement iPod in less than 10 minutes.  It was pretty awesome.  Yet another reason I love Apple!

The Vermonster: Twenty scoops of ice cream, 4 bananas, hot fudge, chocolate syrup, Whipped cream, M&Ms, Marshmallows, 2 cookies, and 1 brownie. In all, 14,000 calories and 500 grams of fat! Disgustingly delicious!

On Saturday, a group of us went to Hooters for dinner, and those of us who had time went to Ben & Jerry’s afterwards for dessert.  There were 6 of us: Alex, Caitlin, Helen H-M, Hannah, and Hermione.  We split a VerMonster!!  After we got back, stuffed and slightly nauseous, we found that the Sophomore girls on 3rd had all made baked treats.  I managed to eat a slice of key lime pie and a cupcake before the night was done.

Helen drank the melted ice cream at the bottom of the bowl.

Back at Jones : Key Lime Pie, Cupcakes, mint cookies, saltine brittle, and pumpkin bread.

And speaking of Chrsitmas, I went to see the Nutcracker on Sunday.  It was really fun: the costumes and scenery were absolutely incredible!  They went all out, and it was quite the spectacle.  Since I had been there before (for Elements), I was able to help a couple other Jonesians find there way to the theater from the light rail, and then back again.  Parts of downtown Houston look really interesting: I’d like to just walk around with a big group sometime and check out the little shops and restaurants tucked under and between the giant skyscrapers.  It would be a lot of fun.

Finals are done!!!!!!   Well, not technically.  I still have a Physics take-home test, but that can be taken at my liesure some time before Wednesday.  It’s great!  It’s a whole month until the next time I have to show up at a classroom.  The Calculus final went very well, I think.  The Econ final was strange.  Some of the questions were very different than those we’ve been getting on the homework and the tests.  Others were exactly like questions a lot of people had gotten wrong on the midterms, just with the numbers changed up.  Oh well.  I think I’ll get a good grade, at least, and I am glad to be done with that class.

It’s sad that I’ll be leaving everybody behind, particularly Cat who’s graduating this semester.  I can hardly believe I’ve done a whole semester of college.  I’m already an eighth of the way through!

In one week, I’ll be on my way to Flagstaff.  I’m really looking forward to seeing everybody back home.  I’ll have so much to talk about!  It will also be great to be around little kids again.  It’s amazing how much children change your perspective on life.  If everyone always spent at least 10 minutes or so around children each day, the world would be a much better place.

I bought the Carcassone Big Box for my birthday: the original game plus all 5 expansions. Here's a finished map with the Traders and Builders expansion.

It’s now Thanksgiving, and the end of the semester is approaching fast.  I’m returning to Flagstaff on Thursday, December 17th.  It’s crazy how fast the time has gone by.  So much has happened.  The days seem really long, but the weeks and months just rush past.  College is the shortest four years, but the longest 1461 days, of your life.

The second round of midterms is done, having finished up with the late Econ test on Tuesday.  Next week is the last week of classes, so final assignments and tests for those classes without finals are due then.  History has a take-home test due at the end of next week, and Philosophy has a paper due next week, as well as an in-class test.  After that, finals week is December 9th-16th, and then I’m going home!

My birthday was fun.  It wasn’t a very big deal, but I did get thrown in the fountain!  It’s a Jones tradition for a group of your friends to pick you up bodily and throw you in the fountain on your birthday.  The night before, I was in the lobby playing Carcassone.  We finished the game and Mario looked at his watch.  “Guess what, it’s 12:30.  Happy birthday Michael!”  It was a pretty warm night out, so it wasn’t uncomfortable, and it was a really fun experience.  It wasn’t a big deal or anything, but I definitely felt remembered and loved by my family and friends, which is all that you need for a fantastic birthday.

My job is over for the holidays, and has been for a couple weeks now.  It went out with a bang, though: my last day was Saturday the 14th, when I helped out with a high-school teachers’ conference from 7am to 4pm.  That was homecoming weekend, and there was also a large girl-scout gathering on campus.  It was pretty crazy!

The Bells at St. Paul's. The one on the right is the Tenor, the largest bell in the ring.

Now that work is finished, though, my Monday nights are free.  Last week, I was able to attend the weekly meeting of the Houston change-ringers.  There are only three towers in Houston: Palmer, St. Paul’s United Methodist (across from the Museum of Fine Arts) and St. Thomas (in Myerland).  The meetings rotate among these towers.  St. Thomas is out of my range on a bike, but both the others are within easy distance.  I went to St. Paul’s.  They have a really nice ringing room, and their bells are a lot more accessible than Palmer’s.  I was able to go up and take a look.  They’re really impressive!  I’m getting better at “handling” the bells, and so I had my first experience ringing in a group.  We were just doing “rounds” (ringing the bells in order from treble to tenor over and over), and my tempo was very erratic, but it’s a start.

An interesting piece of trivia about change-ringing bells: they are generally weighed in hundredweight (cwt).  A traditional hundredweight (or long hundredweight) is 112 lb, and change-ringing bells are pretty much the only things this unit is used for anymore.  St. Paul’s tower is an 8, 11-0-3.  This means that there are 8 bells, and the tenor (the largest) weighs 11 cwt, 0 quarters (1 quarter=28 lb), and 3 stone (1 stone=14 lb), for a total of 1274 lb.

The steep spiral staircase up the bell tower at St. Paul's.

Ringing a peal at St. Paul's.

On Friday, I went with Agape to the campus-wide Christian fellowship event: Broomball!  I really enjoyed broomball in O-week, and it was even cooler a second time.  Broomball is basically field hockey played on ice in tennis shoes.  It sounds a lot slipperier and a lot more dangerous than it really is.  It was a lot of fun, and nobody got seriously injured.  We went to Whataburger afterwards.

The Gyroscope.

Alex and I completed our final Physics lab for 111 on Tuesday.  We got to play with gyroscopes.  We took videos, but I’m at my grandparents now and I don’t have my camera cord with me, so I can’t upload them at the moment.  But I’ll post them soon.  Basically, we had a ball with a rod which was suspended by a cushion of air, which we then spun around very fast using a little air-jet.  To figure out how fast it was going, we had a strobe light, and adjusted the frequency until the ball looked like it was not rotating, because it was caught by the strobe at the exact same place on its rotation each time around.  We did the experiment, making qualitative observations and then checking quantitative predictions about what happens when we vary the speed of rotation, add mass, etc.  Then we decided to have fun.  So we brought over two more air pumps from adjacent setups and used them all to get the gyroscope spinning even faster.  We successfully got it up to and above 8000 rpm, the fastest frequency our strobe light could flash at.  We calculated that it had about 45 Joules of rotational kinetic energy at that point, about the same kinetic energy as it would have if it were going 30 miles per hour.  That was so much fun!!!  I really enjoyed myself.  We kept at it through dinner, so we went to Willy’s for pizza to celebrate an awesome final lab.

Today was fun.  Rice was still officially running, but many professors cancel class, and many students leave.  None of my professors canceled, but each class had only about 1/3 of its usual attendance.  As a result, today’s classes were not on material that’s directly important for the course, but on related topics of interest.  In Physics, Dr. Hannon went over a few paradoxes in Special Relativity, including the Twin paradox and the train robber paradox.  In Math, Sevak went over complex numbers, and solving equations with complex coefficients.  Then he used Taylor series to show why e^iπ+1=0, the relationship between cosh and cos, sinh and sin, and how cosine can be bigger than 1.  Now I’m looking forward to complex analysis.   In History, we talked about drawing broader connections among all the books we’ve read this semester, and about the advantages and limitations to the “Atlantic” perspective on history.  Then we talked about to what extent, if any, the people within history saw themselves as part of the groups, trends, or localities that we put them into today.  Today’s classes have probably been some of my favorite all semester.

Next week is General Relativity!  We’re supposed to read Feynman’s lecture on curved space-time (he passed out photocopies) in preparation.

I really have a lot to be thankful for.  Happy Thanksgiving!

EDIT: Blog titles can’t handle subscripts: an means a_n.  Thanks to Mike Schwartz for pointing this out.

Anyway, last time I was about to have a big weekend.  So I’ll start with how that went, and then go from there.

Jenna and me at Dances with Owls

October 31 was the 2009 Dances with Owls Competition, which took place from 10-6.  There were about 2-3 hours of smooth standard & ballroom (Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango), then a lunch break, then 2-3 hours of Latin & Rhythm (Cha-cha, Rumba, Samba), and finally about an hour and a half of “fun dances” (Lindy Hop, Polka, Back-to-Back Rumba, Same Sex Samba).  I was Jenna’s partner for the Smooth dances and Jive (which is basically Swing).  We won 3rd place in Silver American Foxtrot, Bronze and Silver Jive, and Open East Coast Swing.  It was a unique environment and a fun experience.

After Dances with Owls was Baker 13 defense.  On the 13th and 31st of every month, a bunch of people run around campus around 9 o’clock wearing nothing but shaving cream and sneakers and generally making a shaving cream mess.  Jones South traditionally mounts a defense, consisting of water balloons thrown from the knuckle onto the runners below.  The Halloween run is the biggest run of the fall semester, so we (naturally) mount the biggest defense.  This year, there were about 75 runners.  Our defense consisted of water balloons thrown from the 3rd & 4th floor knuckles, as well as from all 8 bathroom windows from the bathrooms on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th, hoses from the guys’ bathroom on 2nd, 3rd and 4th, and two large trash cans full of water dumped from the 2nd floor knuckle (which has a grating preventing water balloon throwing).  It was pretty epic.

The left-over water balloons from the 3rd South Guys Bathroom after Baker 13. We had a lot of water balloons.

The view of Jones South from the 3rd floor knuckle. The Baker 13 route runs right along that path.

After Baker 13 was NOD security.  NOD is Night of Decadence, a huge party hosted by Wiess college, with over 1,000 attendees every year.  I helped with ticketing, running pizza & drinks to the other security people, and guarding a blocked-off entrance to make sure nobody tried to come in that way.  It was pretty cold: I felt bad for all the people who were scantily clad for the party.  Overall, I’m glad I did security, so I know what the party’s like, but I have no desire to go to NOD next year.  I’ll probably check out NOI (Night of Innocence) or NODgeball.

Last weekend was Laura’s birthday.  (Laura is a Sophomore on 3rd South).  On Saturday a bunch of us went out to the Black Walnut Cafe to celebrate.  Alex, Vasu, and I had a really interesting discussion about possible power-sources for a blood-glucose-measuring device implanted in the body.  I love college!  At midnight, once it got to be her actual birthday, we threw her in the fountain.  This is a traditional birthday practice.  My birthday is coming up, so I’m making plans.  >:->

Collision Lab in Physics. We took videos of collsions, both elastic & inelastic, on an air hockey table. We analyzed linear momentum, angular momentum, and kinetic energy, both before and after the collision.

Classes are going pretty well.  We’re starting Relativity in Physics (woohoo!)  Physics labs have been really fun, and I’m feeling pretty good about the take-home test I’m doing this weekend.  I’m getting better at understanding my Econ teacher, and this last Econ homework was actually fairly interesting.  As I mentioned earlier, Friday is the second Calc II midterm, and Sevak has done some really solid in-class review.  In Philosophy, we’ve just gotten our paper assignments for Aristotle.  In History, we just finished a fascinating book about the transition between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, particularly focusing on the Economic aspects.  We’re now starting our last book: Avengers of the New World about the Haitian Revolution.

It looks like I won’t be able to do a Physics/Math double-major after all.  Math only offers a BA, so to get one degree in Physics & Math, it would have to be a BA, which won’t help me get into Physics Grad school.  I could get two separate degrees, but that would involve another year’s worth of semester hours, which is just not feasible.  It makes me wish I had taken more AP tests, so I could have had lots of credit hours coming in.  Oh well!  The adviser I talked with suggested that I could still take the requirements for Math, and basically get a note on my transcript that says, “also completed the requirements for a BA in Math”.  That way I take Math classes that I enjoy, and the note & transcript will help if I ever want to do stuff that’s specifically math.  I’m also hoping to take Political Science, Art History, and Fencing next semester.  Greg (another 3rd South Sophomore) is taking fencing this semester and enjoying it.  Apparently our fencing teacher was the coach for the US Olympic fencing team!

Lately I’ve been thinking about the meaning, function, and importance of science.  What is science?  Why does it have the status it does in our culture?  What is the “scientific worldview”?  What are the limitations of science?  This ties together Feynman, whom I’ve been reading for Physics, some of the stuff that’s been going on in Philosophy, and also Economics as a pseudoscience.  It’s a fascinating subject, and I’d just like to put down some of my initial thoughts.

All of science rests on the idea of using experimentation to discover and verify how the world works.  When Aristotle claimed that heavier things fall faster than lighter things, or that the natural state of all physical objects is to be at rest, nobody actually tested what he said by direct experiment.  Claims about how the world works were just based on how they seem to work, or even how it seems they ought to work, not how they actually work as measured in rigorous, repeatable experiment.  Since all of scientific truth is based on experimentation, all of scientific truth is subject to and could be overturned by experimentation.  Doubt is thus an integral part of science; it’s important to doubt what you’ve learned, because it could be wrong, and your experiment could lead to a better understanding of the world.

Feynman believes that doubt is the most important part of the “scientific worldview”, and this is where Feynman sees the conflict between Science and religion: science asks you for doubt, whereas religion asks you for faith: accepting certain premises as true without evidence (“Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” – Hebrews 11:1).  He says that a scientific man can never have the sort of unqualified faith that religion demands of its adherents.  I don’t think this is right.  A Christian does not have to be “certain” in this sense of the truths of the faith.  You cannot be “certain” in an absolute sense unless you have absolute knowledge.  It would be ridiculous for God to require us to be absolutely certain about anything, when we have very incomplete knowledge of that thing.  Faith is not an intellectual assent to a set of premises.  It’s an act of the will.  Faith is trusting God in spite of your doubts, relying on Him despite the fact that you cannot be absolutely certain.  In fact, if you could be absolutely certain, there would be no room for faith.  Sure, you don’t rely on faith while doing science, and faith has no place in science, but this does not mean that a scientist cannot act in faith.

This leads naturally into the fact that science is not everything.  This is an important fact to remember, and one that our culture tends to forget.  Often, calling something “unscientific” is just another way of calling it bad.  This should not the case.  Early in the semester, I wrote a short paper for Philosophy about Socrates’ views on science and philosophy, in which I described the limits of scientific inquiry.  In 96a of the Phaedo, Socrates says, “When I was a young man, I was wonderfully keen on that wisdom which they call natural science, for I thought it splendid to know the causes of everything, why it comes to be, why it perishes, and why it exists.”  Yet Socrates ultimately rejects science and turns to Philosophy.  Why?  Because science cannot provide the ultimate answers he is seeking.  Even if science were complete, even if we knew everything there is to know about the workings of the universe and could explain every physical interaction, it’s clear that some very basic questions about the universe would still remain unanswered. What is its purpose? Does it even have a purpose? How did it come to exist in the first place? Science can’t tell you everything.

I love college!  The whole point of college is to think about and learn about questions like this, to get a degree so you can make money, and to have lots of fun.  Life is so varied and interesting and enjoyable.  It’s a great place to be.

Jones 4th South and friends, a picture for the yearbook. I'm tagged in this photo on Facebook, and you can find peoples' names there. I don't know everybody on 4th, but I hang out there occasionally, as do a lot of my friends.

College theater is getting into gear.  I saw the Importance of Being Earnest a few weeks ago.  It had been a long time since I had seen the play, and I really enjoyed it.  Rent and Guys & Dolls are both coming up, and I’m looking forward to seeing them.  The Shepherd School Opera is having a performance soon as well: I plan to go, and expect it will be good.

On to more spiritual matters.  John Trujillo, one of my O-Week advisers, has become a really great friend and spiritual mentor.  He’s a strong Christian and a really cool guy.  I’ve been going to Agape’s regular Friday night Bible study for guys at Jones.  I’ve also been getting involved with the Canterbury group at Palmer: I don’t always go to the Sunday afternoon service, but I do go occasionally.  Last weekend, I led the psalm as a cantor.  That was fun!  During part of Fall break, I went to Galveston with the Canterbury group.  We stayed in a house on Pirate Beach, with an address on Ghost Crab Lane.  We saw a street artist who was making some pretty incredible paintings using nothing but spray paint.  We ate at some neat restaurants, explored the strand & marveled at the high-water-mark, and did some Yoga that was somehow both stimulating and relaxing at the same time.  It was a fun trip.

Palmer is a great church.  I absolutely love their 11:00 service, and Father Nutter gave a really amazing, rock-solid sermon the other week.  He took Mark 10:45 as his primary text: “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”  He took the opportunity to discuss the doctrine of atonement: Jesus as a ransom for many.  He expounded and neatly avoided both legalism and antinomianism, emphasizing the unity and interdependence of faith and works.  After talking about the importance of faith, he said, “it almost seems like I should end this sermon with an altar call.  So I will.  In fact, I’ll end it with the same altar call we issue every week.  Come to communion.”  And he wrapped up with a brilliant summary of the importance of the sacraments in the plan of salvation!  I’ve got to say, that was the best sermon I’ve heard in a long time.

I still think I might have the best student job on campus.  Driving the golf cart never gets old, and I get to hear snippets of some very interesting classes, or more if I want to stay and listen.  The hours are just about perfect, and the pay is quite good.  Also, now that I have a regular income, I’ve started a Roth IRA.  Yay for LifeSmarts!

My classes are also going well.  Physics is definitely my favorite class: I’ve learned so much this year.  The pacing is perfect, and Dr. Hannon’s teaching is phenomenal.  I also have a pretty good grade so far, so I’m happy.  Math is solid, and I like Sevak a lot.  We’re just starting Taylor series.  I’m thoroughly enjoying History as well: Dr. Byrd is very friendly and likable, and he manages to be generous with his grading while maintaining high expectations.  The books are sometimes dry, but generally interesting, and the in-class discussions are a lot of fun.  In Philosophy we’re covering Aristotle.  It’s cool to see how the ideas of Ancient Greek philosophy influenced so much Christian theological thought, and conversely, how much the truth of God is present in Greek philosophy because of common grace.  I know were Dante was coming from with his idea of “limbo” filled with “virtuous pagans”.  I’m a little annoyed with Dr. Morrison’s grading (I signed up for the option to take it on a pass/fail basis, so that it won’t hurt my GPA if he doesn’t like my final paper), but otherwise I’m very happy with this class as well.

My least favorite class is Economics.  There are a lot of interesting things in Econ, and it provides a very useful framework for thinking about how things work.  But the professor is frankly not particularly good at teaching.  He’s probably a great economist and all, but his lecture slides and handouts are full of errors, and the lectures themselves are often difficult to learn from.  I think his main problem is time allocation: he spends half the class on anecdotes of marginal or no relevance, then rushes through the material in the rest of the lecture.  He also talks a lot about how you need to understand the concepts and not just memorize stuff, but it’s difficult to get the concepts from his lectures.  However, the book is good, the material is interesting once you learn it, and the assignments are fairly easy, so it could definitely be worse.

I’ve pretty much decided what classes to register for next semester.  Of course I’ll take Physics 112, E&M.  I’m also planning to take Differential Equations and “Concepts in Undergraduate Mathematics”, a proofs class.  Some of the distribution classes I’m looking at are American Government, The History of Modern Europe, and Art History.    Next year, I plan to take Honors Calculus III and IV, and probably Complex Analysis.  I’m excited: Dr. Frank Jones teaches Calc III/IV, and everyone says he’s an amazing teacher.  He wrote the book himself, and he’s been teaching the course for a very long time.  Dr. Blecher (my parents’ friend from UH) recommended I get to know him as a strong Christian and a great teacher.  He gave an interesting and inspiring talk on Job 23:12 at an Agape meeting recently.  I’ve talked to him in person twice now, and he seems like a wonderful guy.  I’m excited to be taking his class next year.

This is a big weekend.  Dancing with Owls, the annual Rice dance competition, is on Saturday.  The welcome dance is tonight starting at 8.  Then tomorrow, I have the dance from 10am-6pm.  Miscellaneous other campus events will keep me up until 2.  And daylight savings time ends during that time, so there’s an extra hour in there.  Wow, it’s going to be exhausting!  At least it’s not as bad as last weekend’s Laser Tag game organized by Juniors that were on 3rd south last year.  It went from midnight to 7am!  A couple of the people involved had to go to MOB practice the next day at 8am, and then play at a football game at 2:30!  That’s just crazy!

Well, I’m sorry I haven’t been posting more regularly, and sorry it’s not more interesting.  I do enjoy blogging, though, so thanks for reading!

An aisle in Fondren, where the stacks stretch off to infinity.

It’s been pretty busy around here: it’s Midterm time!  All of my classes have had some sort of test (Philosophy had a big paper, and there’s a quiz next week as we finish up Plato and move on to Aristotle.)  The Physics exam was actually pretty fun: it definitely made me think, but I figured out how to set up each problem, so I think I probably got a pretty good score.  The test was 3 hours and 15 minutes plus 30 minutes of break time.  The study rooms at the library are reserved for 4 hours.  I love it when the professor takes the logistics of student life into account.  So anyway, I reserved a room in Fondren to take the test.  It’s pretty cool up there among the stacks of books: you can feel the accumulated wisdom of the ages all around you.

On Friday, I went to the Houston Ballet.  It was Jenna’s birthday, so a group of us went with her as a birthday trip.  There were three pieces.  The first was a strange modern dance piece called Fallen Angels.  It was accompanied purely by percussion and had some very unusual movements.  We got there late, so we had to wait in the nosebleed seats until the intermission.  Now I know why they’re called nosebleed seats: we were on the 6th floor!  And the stairs up to the seats from the 6th floor were really steep: I felt like I was going to fall off the balcony to my death at any moment.  But Fallen Angels was interesting to watch from above, so it could have been worse.  The next piece was called “Elements”, and I liked it a lot.  It was a new production done in classical ballet style.  After the performance, one of the guys explained how the dance was about the elements of earth, water, air, and fire.  It all fit and made so much sense!  That was really cool.  The final piece was In the Upper Room.  Some of the dancers were in sneakers: I was really impressed at how well they were able to dance in them.  The music was by Phillip Glass, and it was OK except for the ridiculous deceptive cadence he repeated verbatim in different instrumentation for the last 10 minutes of the piece.  But he did eventually resolve it at the end, so I’m placated.  The dancing was really, really well done, though, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.  The light rail was stopped for construction north of the downtown transfer center, so we had to take a bus up to the theater and then back to the transfer center, but that was OK.  Overall, it was a very fun outing.

Dance has been going well too.  Our Salsa teacher is great: we’ve been learning lots of fun moves.  We’ve also had a wonderful teacher from one of the local dance studios teaching the Advanced RSDS classes.  I’m keeping my hand in, learning some new stuff, and having fun.

This picture links to a great article if you want to learn more.

My change-ringing is progressing apace.  It’s already fascinating, and I haven’t even gotten to the interesting part yet.  In change-ringing, the bells basically ring out a series of permutations.  The patterns get very intricate, and there is a lot of math behind it.  Right now, I’m just working on the mechanics of ringing.  You start by “ringing the bell up”, making it swing around until it’s mouth up.  It then uses the “stays” to keep it slightly off balance.  When you pull on the rope (the handstroke), the bell swings around and the clapper hits the bell.  It then swings all the way around, and pulls up most of the rope.  The object is to catch it after it passes the balance point but before it hits the stay.  Then you pull again (the backstroke), and then catch it again after the balance before it hits the stay, and hold it ready for the Handstroke.  The bells are really heavy (the biggest bell at Palmer is about 700 pounds), but it doesn’t need a lot of strength, you just need to ring with finesse and good technique.  Once the individual ringing is down, you get a sense of when in the pull cycle the clapper hits the bell, and then you can work with others to do a peal.

The ringing chamber at Palmer

One of the ropes, going up into the belfry.

I went with Ana to “The Importance of Being Earnest” by the Rice Players today.  It’s an absolutely hilarious play, and it was very well done.  Reading the cast bios made me feel a little homesick for Flagstaff Youth Theater, and I spent some time reminiscing about the good old days at FYT.  It was disconcerting after the play was over to see the cast as actors, not as their characters.  I guess that means they did a good job.

I’m really surprised about how much I’m enjoying my job.  It reminds me somewhat of being any acolyte, but I get to do it with technology, I get to drive a golf cart around campus, and I get paid $100 a week.  I find myself looking forward to my shifts.  Cool!  I hope I can find a job I enjoy this much in real life.

I’m also loving Physics 111.  It’s hard at times, but I approve of the way Dr. Hannon is teaching Physics.  The problems are mostly the type of problems that I like, and when they involve tedium, I understand his reasons.  Ultimately, this course is going to be a really good foundation in Physics.

If I had to pick one thing I’ve enjoyed the most, it’s hanging out with other people around 3rd South.  Settlers of Catan has been really fun.  All agreements are legally enforceable, so we go all out: we trade futures, the use of a port, the placement of a robber, space in your hand to avoid the robber, etc…  It’s a lot of fun.  From plans for an epic tournament of Riskopoly, to the “senior seminar” up the hall, to deep philosophical discussions in the lobby, to study sessions which devolve into a twitching mass of horrendous jokes liberally sprinkled with that’s-what-she-said, I’m having a blast.

Well, tomorrow is the start of a long weekend.  I’ve done everything for tomorrow, so I don’t have anything due until Wednesday!  I’m going down to Galveston over Friday night and most of Saturday with the Canterbury group from Palmer.  It should be a fun trip.  The rest of the weekend back at Rice will be pretty awesome as well.

Well, this blog post is now almost long enough to be my philosophy paper.  It’s funny how I put off writing a blog post, then I have so much to say when I finally get to it.  Oh well, such is life.  Hey, I’m almost to 1,200 words.  That was the minimum for my recent Philosophy paper.  I will fill space until I get there.  Filling space is actually rather easy if you put your mind to it.  Hey look, I’m almost there!  I really really love dynamic word counts.  Yippee!

First, I’ll mention a few notable things that have happened this weekend.  I had a calculus test on Friday, which I felt was fairly easy.  I think I got all the questions right, and anticipate a good grade.  I also got back an A+ on my first test, which was from HIST 188.  The teacher said he was going to be picky, so I guess I did really well.  I have a 3 hour 15 minute Physics test coming up this week, but it will be open-book , open-notes and self-scheduled, so I should be OK.  The Econ exam should be easy.  I’m a bit worried about my 5-page Philosophy paper, but I’m sure I’ll be able to turn out something acceptable in time.

This has been parents’ weekend.  It’s been fun to see other peoples’ parents.  It’s interesting to see generational resemblances.  It reminds me of a comment Mr. Blecher made earlier: he said that I had a lot of my dad’s mannerisms.  Anyway, the partying this weekend was a lot tamer because the parents were on-campus (except for the Will Rice tradition of blasting porn on parents’ weekend), and we had the first Rice football game of the season against Vanderbilt.

I don’t normally watch football, but I went to the game.  There are several reasons.  First, I have several friends in the MOB, and I wanted to hear their first performance.  They were very good; I particularly enjoyed the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean.  They also lived up to their reputation for irreverent humor.  The band leader had a bubble-machine on her hat, and so was emitting a trail of bubbles throughout the first half of the game.  They all wear fedoras with pinstripe pants and vests, and they never march: only scatter.  The ties were really funny too (one guy wore a Dilbert tie: classic).  The other reason I went to the game was to be “patriotic”, and get into the Rice spirit.  Unfortunately, we lost dismally.  But that’s OK: it was still a fun experience.

After the game, I went to the Harvest Moon Ball.  It is a swing-dominated dance party put on by the Houston Social Dance Society.  There was some pretty impressive Lindy on the floor, and I had a lot of fun dancing too.  I wore a suit. 

This Sunday, I expressed interest in getting involved with the change ringing at Palmer.  I know a little about Campanology from Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Taylors and research sparked by that novel, and I would really love to get involved in change ringing.  It’s a really old and very rich tradition with lots of interesting mathematics behind it.  Schedule is (as always) an issue, but I hope this will work out.

Anyway, on to the pictures!

Looking from the 3rd South Knuckles toward the masters' house and the new colleges, Duncan and McMutrtry

The other side of the view, with Jones South on the right, Central on the Left, looking toward Brown.

Jones South

The Jones washing machines

The Jones Dryers

Somebody rearranged the furniture in the 3rd South Lobby.

The new Rec center opened on Friday. The big Olympic-size pool is not open yet, but the smaller one is.

Fountains and wading pools.

They have exercize bikes with video games built in. You move your guy by pedaling.

The Rec center has a dance room, with mirrors on three sides and a big window on the fourth. It's pretty cool!

The view from the second story of the rec center, along the row of palms to the pool.

Helen, an OC 4th South-er holding Ollie in Lisa B.'s office.

Ollie's real name is Oliver.

Ollie was abandoned and rescued. He now belongs to Lisa Bryan, our college coordinator.

When it rains, the water doesn't soak into the ground. It makes puddles. Here is a typical puddle just outside of Jones.

This Pringles can has a depressed lid. I have never seen such a thing before in my life. I've only ever seen Pringles cans with their tops puffed up. Trivial? Perhaps, but very striking.

Depressions have been worn into the stone steps in Herzstein by generations of students. There are two "lanes" on the right and the left, and a middle area which is not worn down.