And now I understand why I’ve had trouble scheduling meetings…

It’s actually not quite as bad as this (yet), but it’s getting there…

Experimental Evidence for Synchronization to a Musical Beat in a Nonhuman Animal

This must be watched with the sound on:

Snowball™ has also been the subject of a recent Current Biology paper (check out the supplemental data!), which, nerdily enough, is how I first came across him. If only I’d known about the paper before I gave journal club a week and a half ago!

Wolfram Blog

I discovered the Wolfram Blog a couple of days ago, courtesty of the Edward Tufte’s Ask ET forum, and since then it’s occupied more of my time than I’d like to admit.

I’ve been a fan and user of Mathematica for a long time – probably the most useful class I took as an undergraduate was called something like “Computational Physics” but would have been named “How to use Mathematica to work on physics problems” – and I love, love, love that the Wolfram Blog provides the code as well as the output.

I think I enjoy the image processing and generating aspects of the Wolfram Blog the most. The image processing capabilities of Mathematica are new to me (and, I think, new to Mathematica). I’ve long used Matlab for this for image analysis, and will probably continue to do this, at least for now. I’d dearly love to move to Mathematica to image analysis in the long term – I find it much more intuitive to work with, and the documentation is excellent (and certainly much better than Matlab‘s documentation). In the mean time, I plan to download the most recent version of Mathematica and play a little.

100 x 100

Courtesy of the Very Short List, Michael Wolf’s 100 x 100 project:

From VSL:

Three years ago, Wolf persuaded 100 residents of Hong Kong’s oldest housing project to let him photograph their 100-square-foot apartments. Some lived like monks, with a bed here, a mini-fridge there, and minimal clutter. Others look as if they’re sitting in the back of a totally packed U-Haul.

In other news, the scheduling part of my brain is MIA. In the past week I’ve:

1. Reserved a hotel in room in the Yorkshire Dales from March 31 – June 5.
2. Completely forgotten about my brunch date with Jesse.
3. Booked a plane flight to California on Friday despite being sure I had booked a flight for Thursday.
4. Been absolutely sure that a regular weekly meeting was at noon when it was in fact at 1 pm.

I’m hoping that this part of my mind will recover upon graduation.

Recent forays in the kitchen

Sticky Date Pudding: Mum sent me this recipe, which she found in The Australian. I made it a few years ago, and it had languished since then. By the time I dug it out again, the fax paper it was copied onto had deteriorated to the point that it was difficult to read. This version of the recipe (made with the incomparable dates from Whole Foods) wasn’t nearly as dark as I remember the last attempt, but it was still delicious, I suspect largely because of the sauce that’s poured over at the end of baking, and again before serving. Sadly, we fed some of it to a guest who really didn’t like it that much – he told us he didn’t really like sweet things. I’m not sure we’ll be feeding him again! Everyone else seemed to like it just fine, though.

Kheer: I’ve used this recipe from Jo I-don’t-know-how-many-times, always with delicious success – I love the cardamom – but when I last tried it I ended up with something more liquid than I’ve had in the past, even after I threw in a little cornstarch. The only thing I did differently was to use non-fat rather than full-fat milk – could such a small thing make such a big difference? I noticed a similar effect when I made tapioca pudding a few months ago. Can I test this hypothesis by adding heavy cream to the next batch of kheer I make? Maybe I need to try a different recipe? Perhaps something that incorporates an egg?

Classic Buttermilk Waffles: From The King Arthur Flour Baker’s Companion. Rachel and I were both pleasantly surprised at just how good these waffles are. We didn’t have “real” buttermilk on hand, so I used the dried kind for the first time. I’m never going back! No more half full container of buttermilk in the fridge that I’m trying to find a use for, and no more running out in the middle of making something to buy a carton of buttermilk. Of course, I have no idea if the waffles would have been even better had I used the non-dehydrated variety, but I’m perfectly happy with them as they were.

Pappardelle with Mushrooms and Spring Vegetable Sauce: Another recipe from an aunt (albiet a different aunt), this is quick and easy, tastes delicious, and is vegetarian. It’s good week-night fare.

Coconut Quinoa Porridge: Mum made this for Christmas brunch and it was really delicious, although certainly not low-fat! Rachel and I made it when we got back to Boston. We may have made it slightly lower-fat by using light coconut milk, but I think it really is a loosing battle. Rachel and I also didn’t bother making the syrup – we just used maple syrup that we had on hand. It’s not nearly as heavy as you might think it would be – the quinoa keeps it light, I think – but it’s certainly filling, and keeps you going for a good portion of the day.

Completely unrelated to the kitchen:

• Seeing the Invisible: A New York times article on schlieren photography, with some very cool pictures. My favorite? The firing of an AK-47 (I’m not sure what this says about me).
• A poster for your favorite physicist.
• I went to see The Corn is Green last night, which is playing at the Huntington Theater. Not quite my favorite Huntington play of the season (I really liked Rock ‘n’ Roll) but still very good. I turned out that we were there on the night that they had sign-interpreters (which was not nearly as distracting as I thought it might be – much more distracting was the huge head in front of me), and I think that all of deaf Boston must have been at the play. At the end, when the actors acknowledged the interpreters, a huge portion of the audience raised and shook their hands to thank them. I have to admit to finding the last bit of the play to be a little over-the-top and contrived, but that’s not the fault of the Huntington Theater Company.
• I’ve been enjoying this week’s New Yorker. In memory of John Updike, there’s a huge section of excerpts of his work (including my favorite: Happiest I’ve Been), as well as some really lovely photos.