one saturday

My blog-denying roommate Zeb, our new fishtank, and the coolest $10 clock evah.  

Procrastinating

Inches away from my garden level window. If I want to procrastinate all I have to do is look outside.  

Sunday grading

This is what Sundays look like.

Aussie vs. American

I found this article very interesting. Some people might not find it PC because it's pretty much a broad generalization, but I like it. My favorite part is about how children are raised. That's absolutely true about Europe too. Kids play outside all the time, all by themselves, and don't have to report to their parents every second. There is some sort of trust that develops and then you don't have kids that either mature or party themselves to destruction when they get to college.

The right to bear arms...

You won't believe this shit . Check out some pure clean family fun for these Oklahoma rednecks. You'll get a chance to see a five year old GIRL firing a machine gun and people blowing shit up left and right. This is America, the land of the free and home of the brave.

squirrel fishing

I found this on my ex-roommates facebook. Sounds like fun.

Interior design - Romanian style

I don't know how I stumbled upon this, but it looks decent. Mom, where are you, are you reading this?

http://www.cass-design.com/portofoliu.html

Humping all the way...

This is what my Christmas present looked like. What would I do without friends? I was wondering at what Christmas store do you go and ask for "humping theme" wrapping paper, but then I found out they got it at a store in Fayetteville called Condom Sense. It all made perfect sense then. Get it?

Romania in pictures

The Peace Corps Volunteers in Romania present a very accurate tour of Romania. The pictures are breathtaking and cover all the important areas of the Romanian life. This is the first website that made me say: yeah, that's exactly how Romania is . Deffinitely worth clicking on: HERE .

P.S. It works better in Internet Explorer for some reason. Mozilla gives a funny white background.

the easy way out?

Some Iranian newspaper is going to hold a cartoon contest similar to the one the danish newspaper had a month ago. Not surprisingly, their theme will be the Holocaust. In some sort of retribution, they are trying to piss off the Jews, but I don't believe their tactic will work very well. What they don't understand is that the western society doesn't officially value Jesus, Mohammed, Shiva, or pride. Instead, we value liberty and freedom and speech. I say that Matt and Trey should make a whole episode where they make fun of God, Holocaust, and Kyle and send it in for the contest. Maybe this would be the solution for the cartoon crisis, eh?

Windows, faster, now

I found this website and I managed to reduce the startup time of my tired laptop from a whopping 305 seconds to 210. Isn't that something to write home about? It's indeed a 33% decrease but my lappie still sucks.

Bear Peak photos

Yesterday I went hiking with Zeb. We did Bear Peak here in Boulder which turned out to be more fun than I expected. I finally managed to take some pictures so I posted them on my new flickr accout:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dragos

How to make PDF's for free

I finally found a sweet program that will make PDF files from scans or any other file format for free: Pdf995

Bible meets Real World

Last night I went to the International Film Series and saw The Real Old Testament. The director and producer is a former CU student and the whole thing reminded me of how South Park started. He's going to treat more subjects with the same Real World idea: Lewis and Clark, Trojan Wars, The New Testament. Apparently God has also a video blog at www. realgodvlog.com . At the end fo the film God himself made an appearance in the Muenzinger auditorium and we had the chance to ask him a lot of funny questions. Although the movie itself has only my B, I have to admit that the whole idea has incredible potential.

My delicious links

Last year I signed up for the del.icio.us link aggregator website and this is what I have gathered so far.

Fear of Girls

No comment.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7521044027821122670

The Detroit Project

Arianna Online has on her first page three ads for "The Detroit Project", which is a campaign about reducing the fuel consumption of the average american car. I know so many smart conscious people that say: "Well, I am used to driving sitting up high and I like to be safe. I will always drive an SUV". That logic works until somebody is driving a bigger car, and then you have to upgrade yourself. And that's the way we end up consuming a ridiculous percent of world's oil reserve. There, I feel like such a Boulderite now!

Excellent live music online

The Boulder non-clearchannel radio station is quite excellent. KBCO has such a great reputation that every artist that comes to play in Boulder stops by their studio and plays live for the whole town. KBCO records the live shows and makes a CD that comes out every year around Christmas. Lines are formed early in the morning at the few local electronics stores supported by KBCO and the thousands of CD's are sold within minutes. Recently KBCO created a new online radio station, KBCO2 The Studio C Channel, that plays non-stop all the KBCO live performances. If you ask me it's the best online radio I've listened to. Sometimes I love this community driven town so much!

Home sweet home

I missed Boulder a lot. Looking at these Flatirons every morning when going to school does something to you. Which reminds me: school started, teaching continues and homework and craziness will soon take control. Such is life.

Hey, fishy fishy ...

We use our new fishtank as a TV set. Is far more relaxing.

gypsy beats

"The Balkan Beat Box" is the name of a jewish band that combines hard-rock, and techno with eastern european traditional music. I found out about them via a recent NPR story. They are so energetic and catchy that they might have a chance here in the US.

We, the Romanian people ...

While I was home for the holidays I met Gabby a Peace Corps Volunteer in my town, Piatra Neamt. We talked a lot about Romania and the way we feel about solving the problems the country faces. Recently she asked me to write a short piece about my image of Romania after five years of living in the States. In case anybody else is interested, this is what came out. Again, thanks Gabby for doing what you're doing. I know not very many Romanians see the importance of you being there, but I hope you will be able to open many minds.

Making fun of yourself is an important survival skill, and the main reason why Romanians have been around for thousands of years. One of my favorite jokes about Romania goes like this: In the third day of Genesis God created Earth and went around distributing the natural wealth and riches. At the end of the day Hungary and Bulgaria came up to God and said with an angry voice: “God, you are so unfair. Why did you give so much wealth to Romania? They have oil, natural gas, three feet deep of the blackest soil, beautiful beaches, tall mountains, and hills filled with gold. We don’t even have a tenth of the stuff that they do. Why God, why?” With his well known fatherly grave voice God replied: “My dear sons Hungary and Bulgaria, just wait until you see the Romanian people”.

Although I am a Romanian, I love this joke and I never felt offended by it. It is a paradox that all the Romanians criticize their own country and people. “Romanians are this”, “Romanians are that”, but nobody really mentions that they are themselves Romanian. And, if I may be excused for my honesty, this is the exact kind of hypocrisy I will use in this letter.

When I think about the joke I obviously realize that there must be something bad about these “Romanian people”. The first thing that comes to mind is: they must be stupid. They must have an average intelligence below that of their fellow neighbors. They are probably intellectually incapable of managing all those natural riches that God gave them for free. But when I think a little bit more I understand that stupidity can’t be the real reason. I was born, raised and educated in Romania and my family, friends, and teachers were some of the smartest people I’ve known in my life. Each year Romanian high school students top the charts at math, physics and chemistry international Olympiads. From personal experience I know that Romanian researchers and professors are well respected in the US academia. In my recent visit home I met with some of my old friends from high school and I was impressed with their knowledge of American geography and politics: “So, it’s going to be Condi vs. Hillary in 3 years. That’s something, huh?” or “So you’re in Colorado now. That’s actually a few degrees latitude lower than Romania, isn’t it? And a little more deserty, no?” It is clear now. Romanians are definitely not stupid, but rather smarter than other people in the world.

If they’re not dumb, then maybe they’re lazy. They don’t like to work and hence can’t use all those beautiful things God gave them. They probably just loaf around all day, doing the minimum to get by and not caring about being rich or poor. Some might partially agree with this, but I found out when I was in Romania for the holidays that this reason doesn’t stand either. Recently there has been an exodus of Romanians to Spain, Italy and France in search for jobs. They are going there to pick strawberries, tend for retired people and build roads and houses for a minimum wage. These are all hard jobs and you can’t be lazy to do them. Even the Americans agree with me. The coordinator of a work exchange program that takes skilled Eastern European teenagers to work in restaurants, camps and nursing homes in the US recently declared that the most sought after workforce are the Romanians. The American employers find the Romanians industrious, responsible and motivated. Ok, ok, I get it. Romanians are not lazy, they’re actually harder workers than the other eastern Europeans, according to these accounts.

I could go on like this for pages. Every negative attribute that I can think of is immediately neutralized by a strong counterexample. The Romanian wine makers are just at passionate and careful as the French, the cheese makers just as skilled and traditional as the Swiss, the writers, poets, and journalists just as witty and funny as Bill Maher, and the politicians as wicked and conniving as Carl Rove. However, the joke stands true like a prophecy. Romania has one of the lowest standards of living in Europe and the Romanians are officially the unhappiest people in the world. How is this possible? After living five years in the States I can bet that if one would transplant all the Romanian people in America, the vast majority of them would integrate quickly and become soon examples of the American dream. The solution is now very clear: we should move all the Romanians in the US and bring back 22 million of Americans. All the Romanian resources will be put to good use and America will benefit from all the wonderful qualities of the Romanian people.

On a more serious note, I think that two are the main reasons why this joke is unfortunately true. First reason is an acute lack of organization and planning. The leadership is lacking accountability and is generally incompetent. Romania is like a salt solution. The individual ions are very potent, charged, and reactive. But in solution, the positive and negative ions rearrange spontaneously so that the overall result is a neutral boring Saline nasal spray. I find it therefore essential to have people like the Peace Corps Volunteers to come in and bring a sense of organization to Romania.

The other reason is the existence of this joke itself. Many times I am confronted by my friends: “Don’t you have anything positive to say about Romania?” The truth is I tend to be such a Debbie Downer about my motherland not because there are not enough positive things to say about it, but because I am myself deep inside a negative Romanian. A tiny bit of self esteem and a more positive look on life would go a long way for us Romanians. That’s why I encourage any American in Romania to do what they know best: smile. One day it might rub off.

Cousin

Madalina is my super cool cousin and she has a super cool website: www.madalinaseghete.com .

Romeo, oh Romeo ...

Breaking news!! Juliet has a new partner after last year's tragedy when an uneducated coyote, a brute, had Romeo for supper. The new lover will soon be baptised, so I have to come up with a kewl name.

Flickr

I created a Flickr Pro account for my family. They needed a place to post their digital photos and I found Flickr to be the user-friendliest. Will see if I made the right decision.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/famseghete

snow and flavors

This picture is gorgeous but quite misleading. Not much snow here in Romania, not even that cold. The world just turned crazy. I haven't done anything for three weeks and I feel great. I had the most amazing meals, and I was spoiled by my family by being left alone to do a lot of nothing. That's what I call true love.

New Phone

(0114) 074 192 2479

This is my new cell phone number while here in Romania. Call me if you want to meet up. I am planning to go ski in Vatra Dornei after New Years, but I will be at home for most of the other time. I am leaving on Jan 12th, and I would love to meet some old buddies from middle school or highschool. Just call.

Romania, the land of ...

• ... change, because I just got back from the gym. A pretty nice facility, with weights, treadmills, big ass pool, tanning and massage. 16 visits for a little less than $20. Life is sweet.
• Dr. Pepper. YES, they have the infamous Dr. Pepper, who sits in my fridge right now. I will come with a pic to prove it pretty soon. Alas it's 30 cents a can, it's still DP, in Romania!!!
• supermarkets. Since last year they have opened a gazillion little super markets / grocery stores. They probably have the variety on the shelves of K-mart displayed on a tenth of shelf space. Sometimes I don't want to get something because I destroy the beautiful merchandise symmetry.
  
• cops. Radar detectors are legal, but cops know how to outsmart them. They hide the popo car in the bushes and turn the radar gun on for a few seconds just for those that look like they're speeding. The sad part of the story is that they did just that when me and my dad were driving from the airport, and now my dad is driver-licenseless. Yes, he was driving 70mph on a stretch of the road that looked exactly like any other highway, except that it had five houses on the side, hence a speed limit of 30mph. For three months he will experiment with the train system, I guess.
  

the end is near

This was outside of the chemistry building about a month ago. Now it's cold, windy and quite desolate. Finals are coming up, grading abounds and the times are just crazy. I can't wait for all this to end and to go home to Romania and hang out with my parents for a while.


More campus pictures that I don't have time to post somewhere else.

betty

Betty is my car of course, and she just passed the age of 100,000 miles. I hope she has about twice as much to go, as she is japanese breed and very healthy. Actually, I had to fix some things this week after my 2000 mile trip to Arkansas and back.

The Aristocrats

If you were never offended by a dirty joke then it's time to see the Aristocrats. The documentary is named after an improv joke that's been circling the comedy scene since the 1900's. The idea is simple: you have to say the most offensive, vial, disgusting, wrong, and downright sick things that can ever pass through your mind. Here's a version of the Aristocrats by Eric Cartman of South Park, CO. WARNING! - if you are underage or easily offended by foul language just get the fudge out.

Apparently this joke is never performed in front of the audience and it is rather used as a skill meter by comedians. In the documentary more than 100 entertainment figures put a spin on this joke. What's amazing is not the sheer number of versions of the joke but how different they are and the fact that you can see the creative juices flow right in front of your eyes. Leave your kids at home and head out to the independent film theater near you. Or, if you can wait till January when the DVD comes out, pull out your slippers, make a cup of earl grey tea, adjust your spectacles, cross your legs on the couch, turn the movie on, and be an aristocrat.

financial analysis #2

It's the end of another month so here's the breakdown:

From Jul 22nd to Sep 9th I spent $2890 as follows:

• 11.74 % food
• 1.33 % clothing
• 2.46 % entertainment
• 35.51 % utillities
• 5.18 % car insurance
• 11.09 % transportation
• 7.18% household needs
  
• 5.49 % computer
• 3.28 % education
• 1.72 % health/hygene
• 15.03 % other

By far utillities dominate my expenses. Food is not too bad this month, and transportation is a little higher because of gas prices and my trip to Canada.

personality test

Here's my personality:

ENTJ - "Field Marshall". The basic driving force and need is to lead. Tend to seek a position of responsibility and enjoys being an executive. 1.8% of total population.

Free Jung Personality Test (similar to Myers-Briggs/MBTI)

The most brilliant theater play in the world

is just 2 minutes long. I am not kidding. Listen to this episode of "This American Life" and skip to 25:30 . I am still laughing out loud by myself. Just brilliant!

"Preparing boys for girls"

I finally grabbed a copy of the series "Freaks and Geeks" and have been recently savouring each episode. For those less familiar with the greatest show on the face of the Earth, "Freaks and Geeks" reveals a deep analysis of high-school adolescence hidden under the covers of another cheesy teenage show. Don't be fooled by the apparent geekiness of the movie, but pay attention to the outstanding acting (especially Neil and Bill), excellent character building and unexpectedly good film-making.

I really didn't want to talk about my questionable past-time activities on here, but today I heard on NPR a very thoughtful commentary by Gwen Macsai that relates in a odd way to the subject of "Freaks and Geeks". In "Preparing boys for girls" the commentator looks at the abysmal differences between her childern: on one side stand her two boys who have only four emotional states: happy, sad, mad, and hungry and on the other is her daughter who displays a wide range of complex drama-queen like emotions. How can a mother teach her simple four-state males about the hyper-emotional females that await them? The straight answer is: she can't, but it's still fun to listen to her blurb.

Music flavors

I just remembered that a few months ago I signed up for audioscrobbler, a program that tracks all the songs I play on Winamp and makes a webpage with the history of my music. So I guess this is the music I have been listening to lately.

Living expenses

It's a slow Saturday morning and I have nothing better to do than being nerdy. I was curious to see how much it cost me to live in Boulder for a month and a half and what did I spend my money on. I tallied everything up, I looked at my receipts and and my credit card statements and here's the conclusion:

Between June 13 and July 22 I spent a total of $1845 which was broken up as follows:

• 15.24% food
• 3.20% clothing
• 3.25% entertainment - going out, beer, movies
  
• 29.10% utilities - rent, cable, electricity
  
• 4.34% insurance - car
  
• 0.51% transportation - gas + bike expenses
  
• 18.08% household - furniture, appliances, cleaning supplies, etc.
  
• 15.10% computer - monitor, dvd, memory
  
• 0.00% education - books, texts
  
• 0.44% health - medicine, hospital visits
  
• 7.78% other
  

I surely spent too much on food, and it looks like the expenses on the household will be high until I get all the stuff that I need for my apartment. Also, the computer expenses were a little steep this month because I needed to make a serious upgrades to my 4 year old beast. Will see what happens next month.

Branding Romania

I have recently stumbled upon Branding Romania, a place where people share ideas about the most effective way to change Romania's image abroad. Being here in the States for four years I can say that most people bring up a slightly negative third world country image when they hear about Romania: ugly people with sad faces, bad teeth, russian-like brutality in language and actions, Dracula, and tiny but very serious gymnasts. Fortunately, since I have come to Boulder I saw the other side of the fence, that is an American community where people know a lot about Romania, its culture and centuries old traditions.

Last weekend, for example, the Romanian festival took place down on Pearl street. Yes, an entire festival with food, dances, clothing only from Romania was the main weekend event in Boulder. It turns out many Americans find the energetic dances and unusual Romanain songs extremely interesting. I guess it's just like bagpipe music which some native "green men" might not find that exciting, but which I love very much.

The Romanian festival was organized by the Romanian American Freedom Alliance, a handful of Romania-enthusiasts (both American and Romanian). I think that RAFA's actions are the most compelling argument in building Romania's image. I haven't seen anywhere in the US people so open and knowing so much about Romania's geographical location, its problems with joining EU or even knowing the detailed stories behind some "doina de jale" traditional Romanian songs. Now, that's changing Romania's image!

Mountainbiking trip - Sourdough trail

Markus against "Lefthand" reservoir

Like almost any other day here in Boulder, today was "active" day. This time I went mountainbiking with Markus and a couple of his buddies. We went up in Ward on the Sourdough trail. Although my bike and other equipment is not up to the highest standards I had a lot of fun going up some steep and narrow trails. This time I couldn't help taking some gorgeous pictures so if you go to my website you can check them out in the Photos section.

I finally had time to take some pictures of my new Boulder home. Check out my homepage under the Photos section. Yesterday I went climbing with Zack, Oscar and some other chemistry people and it was a blast. Today I ran 6 miles and it fealt great.


Tantra Lake - my home in Boulder

My famous hummus 

Romania living in the middle ages

Yes, I am back alive in the blog world. Boulder is awesome, summer work is enjoyable but more about that in a future post.

A recent article in the New York Times brings about a very careful analysis of the most recent case of Eastern Orthodox fanaticism. I understand that people have spiritual needs but is religion belief the grounds for killing people? Hell NO. I hope that so called priest and those nuns stay in prison for a long time to show that there is a clear separation between religion and state.

sitting right on the 40th parallel 

In the Flatirons 

Vlad cu basca 

Dragos and Vlad 

Vlad the wicked swimmer 

Vlad on the phone 

bruce, my host-dad - the ridiculous picture of the day 

the end is near

Two more days and I am done! Tomorrow I have a statistics test and on Monday at 9 a Kinetics take home is due. A's are assured in every class but kinetics, where I'll have to make sure that I pay close attention to details. I need a high A on this final take home. Today I found out that I don't have to take the final on Numerical Linear Algebra. I guess it was worth it to work on the open ended take home problem. I didn't do too hot on it, but it was enough to give me an overall A in the class. Also on Monday I am taking a math test that will assess how good the UofA math department is. I want do my best, so maybe I will open the Cal book to refresh my memory a little bit but I won't have to study or anything like that. Now back to statistics, thankyouverymuch.

freshman days 

Savor the Flavor

I just came back from the above named event that took place here in Fayetteville. AYL (some university program) gave out free tickets - worth $30 - so I couldn't miss free food. The idea was to give a sample of the dining scene here in town. 30 restaurants participated and we toured 15 of them. I had a great time and it seemed like a great idea to have the opportunity to restaurant-hop. Because my parents are coming to visit for graduation in a week I have to note down some impressions for the new restaurants that I stopped by tonight:

Ozark Mountain Smokehouse - I voted it the BEST

• incredible atmosphere, cute patio, great Sangria, and delicious meat pastry

1936 Cafe/Bistro

• great shrimp cakes, cool place

Bordino's

• yummy lasagna, weird setup in the diamond store (Why do people by diamonds anyway?I'll never be able to get married. I am so screwd.)
  
  Chloe
  
• upscale pretentious food, tasty I should add. Not the place where I would go if I was hungry.

Gelateria Scarpino

• cute edgy place, tiramisu gelatto was da bomb

Hog Haus Brewing Place

• all they had was schrimp and grits, and I don't like either. We left without trying it and the chef was offended by it. I felt bad. I wanted to try it, for courtesy, but Sarah and Jason decided to leave. And now how do I know if maybe that was the food that would have turned me into a sea-food lover, huh?

Hugo's

• they had a margarita, but the place looked very American

Jammin Java

• it looked like the place with the best atmosphere, plus they had the best coffee I've had in town

Loafin Joe's

• we go there all the time, so nothing new, except the fact that I tried a spicy chicken sandwich that I was hesitant to order before. Very gooooood.

North Korea at night

An article in Slate argues that North Korea is a big labor camp, where the standards of 1984 have long been surpassed. Here is the most compelling evidence.


North Korea at night

more files

I just finished updating my website with some more papers. Today I worked on finishing my honors thesis for good. Tomorrow I will turn it in at the Honors Office and I will submit it for the undergraduate research journal on campus. The top 3 research projects will receive $1000 each. I doubt that mine has a chance at being that high on the list, but I need the money so bad that the slightest possibility of winning the prize convinced me to submit it. I also put up some old Pchem lab reports. Some of them are weak, some are OK ... eh, they equally remind me of good sophomore times. I'll have more goodies soon.

To see what I have posted so far go to My Homepage and then Writing.

Eurovision

Here's an e-mail I sent to my friends Sarah and Jason because I am too lazy to write a post.

Hey Europe enthusiasts,

In case you didn’t know, Eurovision is a yearly competition between songs from each European country. It is very interesting to see how the style of music picked as best by each country matches their respective cultural, political or economical situations. For example, Ukraine has a rock/rap political song, Turkey a very traditional belly-dancing kind of tune and Sweden competes with a heavily American flashy song. I’ve randomly listened to just a few of them and I think it’s fascinating how diverse they all are. It’s stuff like this that brings admiration / uncertainty to the whole EU idea. Here’s the link if you are so bored that you want to listen to bad European music:

http://www.eurovision.tv

rock my sock

Last night I went to the Chevelle concert that happened in the Greek amphitheater here on campus. I guess I could say I had fun but, most importantly, I realized how old I am. I came to the sad conclusion that Chevelle was probably the last angry-music concert I would ever go to. The cohorts of immature highschoolers really annoyed me. I think I realized how ridiculous I was at that age and I decided that I didn't appropve of my immature self. From now on I will only listen to angry music at home, in the car, or while working out and I'll reserve my right to go out to chilled out bars.

Having to wash my tennis shoes because they were heavily stepped on sucks too.

Go Bill

Bill Gates is speaking up against the limitations imposed on the number of H1-B visas given each year (photos here). For those who don't know, H1-B are temporary working visas for about six years given to professionals with higher degrees in technical fields. One of the conditions is that the employer can show that no Americans were available to fill the job.

After 911 the H1B visa cap was reduced from 135,000 to 60,000 and the effects on the econmony are now just starting to show up. Knowledgeable, and highly motivated foreign workers make a big chunk of the American IT industry. It is also known that 60% of the entrepreneurships and job creating companies are started by immigrants that come to America with a dream.

Another effect of 911 and the craze for security is a drop by 30% in the enrollment of international graduate students in the sciences. The universities are especially griping about this one because grad students function as the big workhorse for science departments: teaching, grading, research. If I recall correctly, the new policy of the government regarding international grad students in the tech fields is "Secure borders, open doors", which translates into: "If you have all your papers, we'll give you the visa." I know people who a few years ago were rejected a student visa even though they had full financial aid offers from Ivy League schools.

Asia is starting to seriously threaten America's lead in innovation and technology. And globally, the technology gap is getting smaller and smaller. It is no secret to anybody that the level of basic education in the States is not that great. If America stops being a brain magnet things will go down a slippery slope and become very hard to correct. Far from being biased, I hope that the government will open up the job market and if not encourage, at least allow employment of highly qualified internationals.

Yesterday I successfully defended my thesis. I think the profs liked the work, but I was not fully content with my presentation. Now I am contemplating modifying the paper and submitting it to Inquiry, a journal of undergraduate research. If it gets selected they pay $1000, which I desperately need. Also, both Dr. Pulay and Dr. Vicic begged me to do a little more work on it and try to publish something in an inorganic chemistry journal. It would deffinitely be nice to have a publication before I move on to grad school.

Also on the list:

• make poster for Thursday
• e-mail Colorado people
  
• reformat and update paper for Inquiry
• Numerical Analysis homework and programming
• Kinetics notes
• Statistics homework
  

ornament for Honors Day 

the face of America

Most of the people form their opinions about America from indirect sources. Some learn about the US from commercial movies, some look at the decisions of an illiterate president, others just read the news. Sometimes I feel so frustrated because all these sources depict an average reality. I know that a common view in Europe is that Americans are just a bunch of TV watching, burger eating, ignorance breeding arrogants. I agree. You can find many Americans to fit that image, but few know about the people on the other side of the scale. Since I came here four years ago I have always been amazed by the compassion, love and openness a lot of Americans guide their life with.

Here is an example of people volunteering to come to Romania and help raise children in an orphanage. They pay about $2000 out of their pocket, pause their life for a couple of months and travel to a place where they are total strangers. All this just so they can save the life of a child. I know that the common Romanian mentality is: nah, you're so naive. It can't be true, they are up to something. It's really sad that doing good things has become suspicious. Believe it or not, there are still people in this world that truly believe that helping others is the right thing to do.

Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD)

Here is the recording (.asx format) of a radio show with Karen Buechler, president and chief technology officer of the ALD Nanosolutions Colorado-based company. Dr. Steven George, the co-founder of the company, who I will be working with for my Ph.D. is one of the inventors of ALD, which was named one of last year's best innovations by R&D Magazine.

social embeddedness and economic governance

That is the title of a paper (pdf) by Dr. Raja Kali, an economics professor at University of Arkansas. I just came back from his talk in the lecture series Why Math, our math club Pi Mu Epsilon organizes this semester. The talk pointed out some fascinating aspects about how social interraction affect the success of an economy. The main idea was that applying random graph theory to the social interractions between individuals, a society can fit in two models.
1. A relational model, where individuals cluster up and have a few connections. The best example would be a system where each point of a graph can reach at the maximum length of 2. A real life example would be Afghanistan or most of the 3rd world societies where there is trade only within each social, ethnical or religious cluster. In fact Dr Kali said that there is a strong correlation between underdeveloped countries and a relational model of social interaction.
2.A small world model, where a few points are randomly connected to other points that are far away. It turns out that this is the predominant model for most of the succesful economies. It also applies to systems like the internet, oil pipelines, electricity grids, telecommunications, etc. Small world refers to the fact that any two points on this kind of graph, or individuals in a world, are connected to one another in very few steps.

The next step was to graft on top of this model the idea of the prisoner's dillema, one of the basic concepts in game theory. This comes as no surprise because economical interraction and any kind of business decision can be looked at as a game. It turns out that the main deterrent from having a long distance (outside of the comfort circle) business relation is the possibility of being cheated. In a modern society, the legal system is very well put in place and therefore electronic commerce, or global businesses are a viable thing to do. This increases the interconnectedness of the system, it makes it a "smaller world" and this leads to a better economy altogether.

But how can a relational economy be transformed into complex, small-world economy? If we want to transform Afghanistan, a country with no infrastracture and a lot of social tension into an American model, where in similar conditions, very different ethnic groups decided to collaborate and develop a complex economy, what should the first and most effective step be? Should we start with creating institutions like police, administration and judicial system to make sure that long distance connections are not too high of a risk? Or maybe we should pay more attention to the institutions of information, like schools, that promote the formation of such long distance relationships. Applying the mathematical model, Kali's result is that if the starting material is a very backward relational society, then creating police is the best thing to start with. If we want to improve an already rather complex system then investing in information is the way to go.

If you had the patience to read all the way to here it may seem obvious how this can be related to the Romanian economy. I have my theory that what ex-communist countries lack the most is effective communication. People are not open to each other and don't know how to send their ideas around concisely. Also there is a serious lack of trust, because 45 years of repression made you think twice whether to trust your next door neighbor or not. So now it is clear and mathematically proven: for the Romanian economy to get out of the hole, the first step is to strenghten the legal system and the police. I assume that this is what the new administration is set on doing anyway, so maybe things are not so bad after all.

Goodbye MIT ..... weeps

Dear Mrs. Brighton,

Thank you and the entire chemistry department for the Ph.D. offer I received from MIT. Unfortunately, I decided to accept the offer from University of Colorado at Boulder, where I will be working with Dr. Steven George in atomic layer deposition. My decision was between MIT, Colorado, UT Austin, and U of Illinois Urbana Champaign.

I was impressed by the chemistry department at MIT. The visitation weekend was helpful in offering me the opportunity to meet with the faculty I was interested in working with. My final decision was based mostly on finding a good research and personality match with an advisor, and Colorado turned out to have the best offer for me.

I am honored to have received the acceptance and great financial offer from the mighty MIT. I hope that somewhere along the way my scientific career will meet again with that of your institution.

Sincerely,

Dragos Seghete

Did I just fix the Hello problem on my desktop? 

Improv everywhere

Last week's This American Life is just brilliant. Act II is about the troup Improv everywhere. They create unrealistic improvised situations in daily life situations. In one of the skits they had a group of 12 volunteers looping a sequence of events in a Starbucks. One guy would spill the water, dry it off, go to the bathroom and the repeat. A couple would come in, get in an argument and leave. Some other guy would just go through the store listening to a boombox. And so on. Each actor would repeat the sequence over and over, until customers in the shop realized what was going on. After a few loops the crowd started to predict the future, call relatives to let them know about the "Groundhog day" experience. They have a lot more stories and they get even better (or worse). Absolutely brilliant !!!

Victory

Done. Kaput. Gata. I finished writing the first version of my honors thesis. It's not the best of my work but the result is pretty interesting. It shows that I have done my work and allows me to move on.

DOC version here. PDF version here, thanks to PDFonline.com

Agora 

aiming to the sky 

My molecule

I am testing Hello on my laptop computer because I can't make it run on my desktop. I am in the lab so the first picture that came in handy was my molecule. Let's see if it works...

optimized molecule - after 272 cycles

creativity test

This test has been coming up in a number of blogs lately. I took it and scored 72, with high scores on curiosity and complexity of ideas.

Romania in the press

A lot of people here in the US talk about Prague and Budapest as the best places to go visit in Europe. However, nobody's heard of Romania yet, and that's probably because the touristic infrastructure is still lacking. These are the first articles I have found that talk about Romania as a touristic destination.

Tourism in Romania
Ceausescu's monster palace - second biggest building in the world

math seminar, kinetics .... check!

I am done with these two culprits. I just finished posting the math paper on my website. I promissed to my uncle I would do that so I decided to create a Writing section on my website. I plan to put some of my lab reports and papers for display on there. Actually I've always wanted to post some of my writings just so people get an idea of what I am doing here, but I was never determined enough to act on it.

Tomorrow is thesis time. I am running a last calculation and it looks like it's still running but every once in a while just stops in the middle of a SCF step. Just weird.

more dough

I received two more scholarships from the chemistry department yesterday. That would help ALOT! The total amount is 900 which bring me up to about ... 900. :)

I still haven't started my Kinetics take home which is due Friday and takes about 10-15 hours of work. I haven't started writing my thesis which is scheduled to defend for Monday April 25th at 2:30pm. I have a homework and a program for Num Lin Alg. A paper for the Colloquium, a test coming up Stat (what a joke) and a poster to present for thesis. I am getting worried.

Let Colorado be my home

I have decided. I will get my Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from University of Colorado at Boulder. I will be working with Dr. Steven George on research involving Atomic Layer Deposition. I don't have time to justify my decision here, but it took me a while to reach it. I am so excited about this and I can't wait to get out there and start it all over again. If life has ups and downs, this is deffinitely a transition state on my PES.

Photos from Boston

I posted some pictures from my trip to MIT. Here.

Best news from Romania

This is going to be a weird post, but I must talk about it. Let's face it, I like to be up to date with the news and spend probably too much time browsing the net in search of cool news. What I am about to write here is by far the most positive piece of news I have heard since the recent elections in Romania.

My story's main characther is the cop Nistor Carbunaru from my hometown Piatra Neamt, who came out a few years ago and revealed the corruption and utter lack of professionalism that infused the state police. After making public his criticism to the press and to his superiors, instead of starting an investigation the Department of Interior sacked him. He was deposed of his ranking and assigned some dirty ground work although his qualification was penal investigation. He was moved to a different unit in a different town and prosecuted under military law for some b.s. charges. After a few legal terms he won in the regional appelate courts, the police appealed and the trial moved to the Supreme Court. After two years of trials, in December 2004 he won his job and rank back, giving a severe blow to the entire corrupt system that believed his resistence was futile and naive.

The story gets even better. After the centrist alliance D.A. won the Romanian elections last fall, the newly elected president Basescu vowed that fight against corruption would be number one on his priority list. Sure enough, the new governement fired all the state police heads and organized professional job applications with interviews, computer and English language tests and required a portfolio with a project proposal for reforming the state police system. The GREAT news is that yesterday Mr. Nistor Carbunaru passed all the tests and won the position of state police head. YES, he is now the boss of his old "friends" who sacked him for denouncing their acts of corruption. It sounds cliche, almost cheesy, but for Romania this is unheard of. I will be looking forward to his first actions.

December news. Yesterday's news.

Last chunk of the school year - somebody inject the nitro boost!

I finally finished my programming assignment. As I am in the process of writing a piece of code I hate programming with my entire soul. When I am done I feel a little beeter. The hate part is because after I come up with a brilliant idea I have to figure out ways to translate it into the programming language. Not having much experience in the field makes me discover how stupid I am every time I program I and it really hurts. I seriously put too much time in this homework and it's so demoralizing. I think the result is pretty cool, but I rather not have to deal with it. I am so glad I decided to get away from computational chemistry in grad school.

Talking about grad-school, I had some gut feelings today that I want to go to CU Boulder. It's just that I am excited about working there: the people, the place, the weather, the healthy environment are all so exciting. I am a little skeptical because CU is another big state university with frattards and sorostitutes, not that big of a name (compared to MIT), and probably too expensive for its worth. I am seriously thinking about dropping my visit to Illinois and just accept the Colorado's offer. Should I wait and reason it out till the very end or just go with my feelings?

Off the topic: A civil group called MinuteMan Project will deploy volunteers at the U.S. Mexican border in Arizona equipped with night vision, radios and light aircraft to monitor the rampant illegal immigration. Apparently the project has a lot of volunteers and they had to turn people down because some of them were too nuts (white supremacists). The official border patrol is against this because they fear that the civil militia will either abuse the immigrants or will get into dangerous situations with the mexican 'vigilantes'. After Bush's recent visit to Mexico it is very clear to me that there is no intention of securing the Mexican border. A big chunk of the American economy is feeding off the illegally cheap labor of illegal immigrants. Bush was governor in Texas and there's no doubt he knows this problem very well. Here's the original BBC news piece.

saturday night fever

So for the past day and a half I have been working on my Numerical Linear Algebra homework. I just couldn't understand what the problem was really asking. As I was getting ready to give up and e-mail the prof to whine about my stupidity I realized that the assignment had changed since I printed it off. I was actually working on a wrong problem. Oh man, how much I hate stuff like this. I hope tomorrow I'll get this done asap and start a new calculation for my senior thesis. Good night for now.

A week later

It's been a very long week. It seems like I am not made for this blog thing. Whenever I am tired, frustrated or simply not in the mood of writing I just don't. Briefly, here's what happened since the last post:

1. I visited Boston and the mighty MIT. I had a great time visiting with my good friends, Elena, Immanu and Prisu although due to my cold physically I felt horrible. Boston as a city didn't do it for me, maybe because it was cold and dirty and the people were sometimes not as friendly as I wanted. MIT as a school was also a little cold. I could feel some of the infamous MIT pressure, and the people in the chemistry department were deffinitely not vibrant. I didn't click with any of the faculty, but I could see myself working for Dr. Nocera. No matter how many disadvantages I might come up with, it's friggin MIT we're talking about here. The only thing I am sure is that my grad school decision got even tougher.
   
2. Wednesday and Thursday I went on a fishing trip with my host family. It was some of the best I've had in a long time and all I can do is let the pictures talk.
   
3. I am trying to get back on top of the ball, get my homework done and start writing for my thesis. Ugghh.
   

MIT here I come

Tomorrow I am leaving for MIT at 5 in the morning. Needless to say, Thomas is not that happy about me dragging his ass out of bed so I can get to the airport. As about the visit itself, I am probably more excited to meet my old friends from Romania that go to school there than visiting the chemistry department. Dr. Swager who I really wanted to talk to is in sabbatical so I guess I will have to investigate his lab by myself.

I still don't know how I am going to do my homework for Numerical Linear Algebra, which is due tomorrow. Btw, the test was OK, I think I did a lot better than the amount of work I put into it. Today I also turned in a first draft for the paper in my senior math class.

As soon as I come back from MIT I will jump right into SPRING BREAK. Yoohoo! Not so fast, it's not really a break. I have to make myself do some work on the chemistry senior thesis. I am sooo behind and realistically I don't know if I will have the strength to pull that one through. We'll see. Oh, Wednesday I'll go fishing with my hostdad, "uncle" Tim and their offsprings. It will be a lot of fun to play with little kids and enjoy the outdoors. That is actually my real break. (I love the outdoors... do you see a pattern pointing to Colorado...hmm)

more than I can write

A lot happened since the last post and I won't even try to fit it all in here. I visited Colorado and that was amazing. The town, the chemistry department, the students, Dr. George, the mountains, everything was just amazing. The only problem is that the financial offer is the weakest of all schools. I am already tired of four years without having a car and always begging for money left and right and I was hoping to get a breath of fresh air with grad school. The life as a Ph.D. is not the best, but I was hoping to be able to gain some freedom. Despite all its amazing qualities, it looks like Boulder has steep housing expenses and affording anything but the bare minimum would not be possible.

Today I gave my presentation about the Brouwer Fixed Point Theorem in my math senior seminar. I think I did OK, although I messed up the proofs and the guys in the class were not paying any attention to what I was doing passed the 20 minute mark. At least I got it over with.

Today we've written 2650 digits of PI on a huge roll of paper, as a tribute to PI day, 14th of march. Of course we ate PIes and almost got kicked out by some university administrators because we didn't organize the event according to their stupid policies. The few people that stopped by were truly amazed by our nerdiness.

Tomorrow I have the second Numerical Linear Algebra exam and I need to secure a solid A in there. I probably need to spend the entire night to put myself up to speed in manipulating matrices easily in my head and imagining each step in the LU factorization algorithm. Something that doesn't help is the fact that I caught the flu from another prospective student that was visiting Boulder. I am having some fever right now, cold sweat and no apethite for anything. I still have to finish the entire 10 page paper for the Math Seminar for Thursday and to finish my homework and program for N. Lin Alg before I leave for MIT. Not to mention that I need to START my senior thesis paper with the little data (and lack of) that I have. Woohoo! Somehow I'll get them done, I just know it.

Romanian president meets Bush

Basescu, the former sea captain and now president of Romania met with G.W. Here is a link to a video stream of the press conference that followed their meeting. I must say, for living most of his life in communist Romania, Basescu's English was not that bad. His grammar was terrible, but the pronunciation was half decent. I don't even dare compare it to Iliescu's Russenglish. I didn't quite get Basescu's remark "It was a sign of destiny" referred to Bush's comment that the rainbow shone when he gave the speech in Romania, in the same place where Ceausescu gave his last speech. I am sure he hinted to the superstition that the rainbow is a sign of good fortune. Basescu misused the word "destiny" and it sounds like he compares the destinies of Bush and Ceausescu. I hope I am the only one to get this weird interpretation.

Radio Romania vs. NPR

I found a pertinent article comparing the Romanian Public Radio and NPR. What they don't say is that most likely NPR journalists are better prepared professionaly than their Romanian counterparts. And that's not anybody's fault because independent, concise and sharp journalism was born 15 years ago and it's growing up right now.

MIT

I couldn't believe it. It came in a regular small envelope and it said YES. I have been accepted to MIT and I will go visit next weekend. Now my decision gets a lot more complicated. I am visiting Colorado this weekend and I can't wait to ask all the questions that cross my mind with no intentions of being polite. This game is now about getting the most accurate description of the department as possible. No matter what happens, I can at least say that I refused MIT. Sweet life.



The link abocve is for helping somebody who's life depends on a $35,000 surgery. It might sound nothing for the US, but in Romania that's a lot of money and this guy has a few weeks left. Unfortunately donations can be made only from Romania. I wish Romania would enter the civilized world some day and be a secure place to do e-payments. If you are by any chance reading this from Romania do what is right.

G'day

Literally, although it rained and it was pretty cold, today was good to me. In my numerical lin algebra class Dr. Arnold had a good story about the beginning of computing when a today's 512 Meg thumbsize flash was equated by 7 tons of punchcards, or a stack 1 mile high.

I've started working on my math paper, and I guess I should go back before the motivation runs out...

lazy, scared, tennis

I have been feeling very lazy lately. I just pretty much wasted my weekend, although I had big plans in mind. Sometimes stuff like this happens and I don't know why. I feel like I am missing something. It's like when you crave for some food or drink and can't say what that food would be. It just kills me. I bet it's loneliness or homesickness but I can't tell. Arghhh...

Dear world, how can I get my motivation back? Help... All I have been thinking of is my trip to Colorado and my grad school decision. At the same time, the pressing deadlines for my two projects are making me so nervous that I don't want to deal with them yet. Weird, I know. It's like when being so afraid of the dentist you unconciously forget about the appointment.

On a lighter note, how can you recognize a French veteran?

Sunburned armpits.

The Romanian tennis team qualified in the Davis cup quarterfinal after coming back from 2-1 to win 3-2 against Belarus. Everybody thought that they would come play the US in the semis, but the US team lost tonight against Croatia. Roddick couldn't handle a 5 set match. Oh, Andy, you meathead. Your baseball-style 200mph serves work most of the time, but some finesse would help every once in a while.

Briefly

Very very cool experiment - The most beautiful experiment in physics, according to a poll of Physics World readers, is the interference of single electrons in a Young's double slit. A few days ago European and American researchers performed a novel version of the double-slit quantum-interference experiment with single electrons, except that the double slits are separated in time, not space.

Postsecret - It is an experiment/art project consisting of postcards sent in by anonymous people...revealing secrets they've never told anyone. The best idea I've seen in a while. I think this website should be used for the definition of human nature.

Rules of Engagement

This was a night of intense documentary watching. I usually do that on Saturdays, but I didn't feel like doing any work tonight so I used the time for a good cause. One of the news headlines today was that the Italian journalist that was just released earlier today by the insurgents in Iraq, was shot and injured, and her bodyguard killed, by an American soldier at a checkpoint. Apparently the car driven by the Italian undercover cop was speeding towards the checkpoint and didn't follow the rules of engagement.

I am mentioning this because I watched 2 documentaries on PBS Frontline tonight. One of them is A Company of Soldiers. It follows the daily life of the Dog Company at the outskirts of Baghdad for a month during the operation on Fallujah last November. It is a must see, like any other FRONTLINE documentary. I don't know how much stuff they couldn't show, but what I have seen gave a pretty good indication of the situation on the ground. They have a scene exactly like the one in the news today: a car is approaching a roadblock, and the soldier has to make a split second decision. He fires a few shots in the air, and then his commander yells at him that the car crossed the friendly line, and so the guy opens up on the car that luckily stops abruptly. Now the car was beyond the line, so according to the rules of engagement the soldiers are supposed to anihilate it. Luckily the car backs up slowly.

The general feeling that I got about Iraq is that a handfull of bad guys are ruining everything for everybody. If the Americans are building a market the insurgent attacks start and they have to run after the bad guys, so the projects stop. Slowly though, I think the situation is moving in the right direction. Is it worth the life, blood, or tears of so many American kids, Iraqis and orphaned children? I think so, but who am I to decide on something this big...

The other documentary was The Soldier's Heart , which was the name given to post stress syndrome during WWII. This film is about soldiers who during or after deployment go through very intense emotions of fear, anger, or self-denial. The documentary looks at a few cases, one being about a soldier who hanged himself after coming back from Iraq. Apparently, 1 in every 6 soldiers suffers of this, but very few acknowledge it because they are ashamed of being called a "pussy" by their commanders. Although it has programs to "handle" the problem, the military doesn't even want to acknowledge it as being a problem. The military is about strength and the fact that service is voluntary leaves very little space of maneuvre for a poor soldier. Suffering of a panick attack when he shoots a peaceful women that looks like his mom is not OK. The purpose of the military is to win, and they do that by killing the enemy. By accepting that killing is not OK for some of the soldiers the military would defy it's own purpose: win the battle at any cost. It just sounds like a freezing cold argument but I have to agree with it. Unfortunately, when we talk about war, when life is on the line, there is not enough attention left for PTSD. Unless you are the awesome FRONTLINE.

Hungarian-filled Bavarian croissants

I just came back from a poetry slam at the University coffee shop. I've always wanted to see one, and I guess tonight I had the oportunity to taste the best of the best. RZ's featuered the twice poetry slam world champion Buddy Wakefield. The show is a combination of poetry and acting. I felt somewhat uneasy at first because the words were coming out of his mouth at a machine gun pace, but I was soon amazed by how powerful those words turned out to be. What I liked the best was that using just words he was able to induce in me a dream-like state. Here are a few of his latest verses from his journal that are pretty indicative

Revisionist history relationship trading cards
Interactive slow moving quick fix
Open hearted surgery blindfolds
Middle finger applicator with wings
Chicken breast strokes
Hungarian-filled Bavarian croissants
Selective memory commemorative plates
Jet fuel

A few weeks ago we went to Arsaga's and saw a guy with a guitar and an amazing voice. We liked him and after a careful scrutiny of our empty college student pockets we decided to buy his CD. His name is Nick Pagliari, and he is the singer of a Nashville band called Fairfax. They play southern rock, with country influences (the good kind of country). Anyway, they sound really good and are worth a click. Apparently their album is also available on iTunes. So far my favorite songs are Swell and The Intervention.

Today I've restarted my trips to the gym. Two weeks ago I stepped in a pothole during the ultimate winter league and sprained my ankle pretty bad. It was swollen for more than a week and it still hurts when I try to rotate my foot. Well, today I did a decent ab routine and ran for 3 miles at a deliberately slow pace to protect my poor ankle. It feels so good to be an active animal again!

success

taxes - DONE
laundry - DONE
room cleanup - DONE
colloquium paper - DONE

BAM!

Yahoo is 10 years old and Baskin Robbins is giving out at free scoop of icecream for this anniversary. Yum!

FAQ

Dragos, what kind of name is that? Where are you from?
Romania

Wow, your English is not too shabby. For how long have you been here?
This is just my fourth year in the States. Thanks to my parents, I started taking English classes when I was in first grade.

How did you end up in Arkansas?
In a series of fortunate events I received a Chancellor's scholarship at the University of Arkansas. Such an offer was hard to pass up.

Are these really frequently asked questions, or you're just making them up to show off?
Yes and no. Yes, I show off, but these questions get asked a lot.

So how do you like it here?
I like it a lot. The people are nice and there are a lot of opportunies if you really want to accomplish something. Oh, and I shouldn't forget the good live music that abounds.

So you're graduating this year, what are you gonna do next?
I am in the process of choosing a Ph.D. program in Chemistry, more specifically Physical or Materials Chemistry. So far I am looking at UTexas, UColorado Boulder, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, South Carolina, and U California Riverside. I just visited UT Austin a few weeks ago.

Why are you keeping this blog? Nobody is reading it anyway...
I know. It helps clear up my mind and get to terms with myself. Let's say that I find something outrageous on the news. I could keep it in and feel the anger and frustration all day or I could write about it in the blog and move on. I also use it as a self motivator or just as a public notepad.

Self-coercion

Maybe that writing down what all needs to get done will help me do it asap. Here I go:

Numerical Linear Algebra Program 100% - DONE
Colloquium Paper 10% - Due Wed.
Kinetics Take Home 75% - Due Wed.
Laundry 0% - 3 pairs of underwear left...
Taxes 0% - Due April 15th
Math Presentation 5% - Due March 22
Senior Thesis Intro 0% - Due earlier than it seems
Vacuum the room - almost aggravating

P.S. I love "The Hero Factor". Me and my roommate decided to order their two CD's. The second one is coming out tomorrow. Their live stuff from the first album sounds unbelievable. So far this is my favorite song.

The Hero Factor

Let's face it. I am musically challenged. Despite this minor detail, I am a big fan of music and I am easily impressed by any noise making, beat keeping, heart soothing kind of music. So I enjoy music, but because I don't fully understand it, it takes a lot to get me addicted to some song. Well, last weekend in Austin I happened to stumble upon a band that it has become almost addicting. They are called The Hero Factor and they are really good. The live sound is incredible, the songs are very catchy, and the lead singer's voice is one of the best I have heard so far. (in an alternative/rock/pop band, at least) They have a new album coming out in March and they posted a few songs on their myspace.com page. Get addicted!

Fresh, fresh Austin

So yeah, I am in the hotel in Austin. I figured I should make myself write something about this visit while it's still fresh, so I won't end up the last school I visit. So how's Austin, you might ask?

Well, first of all it's a city. I thought I'd never want to go back to a real city, with traffic, beggars, tall but crappy buildings, parking problems, etc. Austin however, seems to have a bunch of other things to compensate these urban disadvantages. The social life of this city is just amazing. I can't believe it's a southern city, not to mention that it's the capital of Texas. How does that work, anyway? It seems like every night there are a gagillion bands playing, theater plays or dance shows running. The number of restaurants and options for food is also quite remarkable. The interesting part is that the city was planned to have a technological boom about 10 years ago, so a lot of development took place: apartments, restaurants, bars, office buildings. It turns out that the boom in population never actually happened but the development itself created a greater offer than demand so a lot o people decided to come over here for the affordable living and awesome social life.

If I couldn't visit the other schools (Boulder and Illinois) I say that I would chose Austin, just because it seems like the perfect balance between work and fun.

Hotel Rwanda

I am shaken. I hurts to even start thinking about what to write in here.

I have just watched Hotel Rwanda. I cried. I knew about the massacre that took place between the Hutu's and the Tutsi's but being immersed in it, picture and sound for 2 hours, was very emotional. In less than 100 days 800,000 Tutsi and Hutu moderates were killed by the Hutu militia. Young and uneducated Hutus were manipulated in this fabricated ethnic conflict to kill their neighbours and friends using machetes and clubs in probably the most gruesome human slaughter. More than 10% of the population was killed. This genocide was carefully organized and instigated using the national public radio. The UN troops on the ground informed their superiors about what was going to happen. The UN Canadian general had the location of the machete chaches but his hands were tied. The only response from the western "civilization" was to call all whites and UN troops out and let the poor bastards die.

I felt a personal shame at the end of this movie. I am ashamed of being a part of this "civilization" that goes around the world, fucks things over and then closes it's eyes, turns away, like nothing happened. In this respect, US is one to be condoned because it many times accepted its responsability as world leader and helped more than anybody else. But Europe... oh... I have no words. A bunch of cowards that will never learn from history, and that's why I feel so ashamed.

I will be sorry for writing such a pessimistic post.

Travel, money, metaphysics and math

So far, today has been a very eclectic day. I have received my flight schedule from UT Austin. I leave Friday morning and come back on Sunday evening (Feb18-20). I can't wait to see the campus everybody is raving about, and more importantly to meet the chemistry professors and see what they have to offer.

Today I have also received the confirmation of being offered one of the Honors College research grant. Finally.!!!! It comes with $1200 for me and $1000 for Dr. Pulay. It's a little weird because Dr. Pulay requested $0 and expressely told me not to put anything down for him. I was getting worried that I wouldn't have enough money to subsist this semester with all the travelling I am supposed to do, but in the end it looks like it all turned out well.

The discussion in the Quantum Chemistry colloquium was very upsetting for me today . I guess that I am a little skeptical and not yet convinced that pure information can influence a system. Information is not immaterial, like we defined in class. When he hear something, the sound waves interact with our ear membranes, which create neurological impulses that are passed down chemically to the brain, usw. The same thing happens with any other senses, so we cannot obtain information in any other way but through physical interaction. The thinking process itself exists within our brain, so it's embedded in the physical world. We talked about information affecting the outcome of an experiment, but what should be said is that our attempt to get the information perturbs the system and changes the outcome of the experiment. The Heisenberg principle is very clear. I don't know why we have to make it more complicated than it is. Anywhoo, it's the kind of philosophical clash that doesn't produce anything useful but mind exercise and enjoyment for the winner.

In the math seminar we discussed a paper by Halmos about what Mathematics really is. Especially here in the US, regular but rather educated people put a big equal sign between high school remedial algebra and mathematics. It's like equating turkey carving with being a surgeon. Halmos splits up math in Mathology and Mathophysics and argues that the first is done for no immediate purpose. It's one of the two original academic endeavors and it's done just for the fun of Mathologists themselves, just like Philosophy. His main point is that Mathematicians are some of the most creative people and Math is actually a creative art. Or black voodoo magic if you want, as one of my favorite teachers said. Next time you see some mathematician, please don't think of adding numbers, x's, y's, log's or square roots. It's an insult. Think of somebody who can think in a very different and hard to pick up language. Think of somebody who is very rigorous and creative in what he's doing. Most of the scientists use Mathematician as an insult anyway, so don't insult them again, pphhlease.

Toga man.

I felt like doing nothing today. Some days are just like this and I don't know why.

I just got back from a lecture about clothing in the Roman world. More speciffically, the lecture was about togas, and of course, the spiel was given by the toga man. Here are some pictures from the lecture. He was quite a character and reminded me perfectly of my grandpa: had a grandeur in his speech, was very articulate and didn't hide from being offensive and funny. I found the lecture very healthy for me because I realized how many of the roman traditions are still present in Europe, and how Americans are a little sheltered from this spartan culture.

The toga man was talking about how Romans took pride in being disciplined because they considered it to differentiate them from animals. They had to bear cold, heat, hunger, or any physical discomfort without even acknowledging it. You couldn't afford to be called a whiner or a sissy by saying: oh, my balls are cold, let me get another cloth around my waist. In a similar sense the education that people experience in Romania, and from my knowledge everywhere in Europe (especially spartan places like Germany or Britain) says that being spoiled is bad. You wouldn't see anybody whine about how bad the food at the cafeteria is, or how cold the Swedish winters are, or how empty the pockets are. Kids endure playing soccer on concrete and getting their knee caps crushed, or playing rugby without any padding. (Notice, I didn't include the French and the Italians here. They are a total different breed)

Here in the US people are taught to be spoiled. Choice is the foundation of the American society. You have to be spoiled, because as an individual you are a customer in all aspects of life and so you can make any decisions that concern you. Discipline is not an American value. Discipline can actually have a negative conotation, falling in the category of abuse. Kids can do whatever they want and parents can't have any control over them since they have no way of punishment available. This can have a very positive impact on people, helping them become very individual, but in a weird kind of way. What I mean is that people are individual, but becuase they don't have the discipline to rationalize what their options are, they fall into the smallest traps. Everybody dresses the same, but voluntarily. Everybody gets fat, but voluntarily. Everbody buys stuff that they absolutely don't need, just because they can and they want to be individual. Everbody does these things so everybody ends up being IDENTICAL.

I remember clearly how my mom use to educate me by making the same comparisons used by the Romans. In everything we do we should ask ourselves if we are acting as animals or as humans. There is a certain pride in being a human, this biped animal, very cocky and vertical. And how else can we match this pride, other than acting as a vertical being: with verticality. If we're giving in to the smallest discomforts, pleasures and gimmiks laid out in front of us, we might as well go back crawling on four limbs like animals. Sounds pretty radical to me, but I believe it to some extent, and it served me well so far.

My lazy ass roommate just got up, so I guess it's time to do something useful now.

What's happening...

New posts on this blog come in lumps, just like anything in our life. So here's a brief update with what's news for me:

• I got the offer I wanted from UC Boulder. I don't know the financial details yet, but I am really excited about this oportunity. I can't wait to visit and meet the people.
• I started working on my research project. I haven't done any calculations yet, but I found some good starting points. I hope it will all come together before the deadline.
• I looked into my math senior project and I think it's going to be a lot of fun. I am doing the Brouwer fixed point theorem, although I haven't had a topology class, so I am going to learn along the way the concepts needed for the proof.
• Traian Basescu, the Romanian president, has been excelent so far. This guy really looks like he has a vision and his message and actions so far have been very clear. In a month of presidency he visited Brussels, Moldova, and Great Britain and "shook hands" with all the Romanian public institutions giving them at the same time clear warnings for not doing their jobs.
• The Romanian Academic Society analyzed the Romanian society, government, economy and foreign policy and produced some sort of prognosis for 2005. It's a very well written document with many pertinent arguments. Here's a link to the pdf. Unfortunately it's only in Romanian for now, but they might have the English version soon on this page.