Happy New Year!

I'm in Edinburgh. It's cold. The end.

Real Christmas in the heart of Real America

My original plans were to spend Christmas in England.  I even started preparing my dear parents for this disappointment in the early summer.  My parents are crafty though, and managed to convince me that it was my sister, not them, that wanted me to come home.

It was nice to be back home for a few days, even if it did require some marathon traveling. I was able to stock up on the American essentials (Jello, Chex Mix, cheap gummy bears, Hawaiian Punch) while playing some family board games. Let's hope that the fun was more than enough to compensate for tomorrow's travels: Columbia to St Louis by van, St. Louis to London via Chicago by air, London to Oxford by coach, Oxford to Edinburgh by train. It will be a small miracle if I manage to time my sleep cycle such that I am awake for the Edinburgh New Years.

Christmas at Cumberland Lodge

Cumberland Lodge

Cumberland Lodge on the Inside


King George III (The One We're Supposed to Hate)

Windsor Castle

More Views of Copenhagen

 

 

Last Thursday I enjoyed a few patches of blue skies as I walked off the beaten path a little.

Denmark

I came to Denmark expecting to find of people who once worshiped Oden as their god. Instead, the Danes seem to worship this man.

Hans Christian Anderson

In fact, despite being named after Oden, the town of Odense is really known as the the brithplace of Hans Christian Anderson. Hans's bust and portrait seems to be found all over the country. I was naïve enough to believe that Niels Bohr must be the most famous Dane of all time. Unfortunately, I've struggled to find a single Bohr portrait among the sea of Andersons. While Copenhagen lends its name to a major interpretation of quantum mechanics, it seems the town has not bothered to build a monument or museum to honor the feat. Children's stories apparently are a little more inspiring for sculptors and tourists.

The Little Mermaid (A H.C. Anderson story of course)

In my infinite wisdom, I failed to note that Copenhagen lies to the North of Oxford. Those who are a tad sharper than I was will immediately realize that this means Copenhagen is even colder and darker than Oxford. Luckily, Copenhagen is full of gorgeous warm churches. This church was especially pretty, but due to its poor hours, it will not be remembered for its beauty.

The-Church-Which-Was-Not-Open-When-Todd-Was-Cold

After modern theories of electronic structure, the next most Danish thing most people think of are Danishes. In this respect I was not let down. The bakeries were most excellent, and were only mildly overpriced (a major improvement over the horrendously overpriced normal food).

You Should Be Jealous

Once I had warmed up in the churches and filled up on Danishes, I was able to see some of the most important Copenhagen sights: silly little painted houses. Actually the houses are very cute, and introduce a little bit of color to the otherwise dark winter city (the sun has been setting around 3:30 pm).

Silly Little Painted Houses

After tromping around town seeing all of the stupid things Clara wanted to see, I finally directed us towards one of the real jewels of Copenhagen, Ørsted Parken. Ørsted, you'll recall, recognized that changing electric currents caused his compass needle to move. He brilliantly recognized this as an indication that electricity and magnetism are fundamentally linked. The hoodlums of Copenhagen have slightly less respect for the greatness of this discovery, but I tried my best to cover the graffiti as I paid homage.

Todd and Ørsted

Despite the cold and dark, there was one big advantage to visiting Denmark in the winter - Christmas. The Danes love Christmas festivities. Every little street in Odense and Copenhagen was decorated cheerily, in a way that seemed much more cozy and sincere than the American mega-decorations.

Danes Love Christmas

After getting bored with Copenhagen, it was time to venture outside the city a little to the Frederiksborg Castle. The 17th Century royal castle demonstrated that the old kings were really quite smart. While everyone else was worried about stupid things like getting their next meal, the kings were thinking ahead, building mansions to rake in the 21st Century tourism money.

Not the Castle. This is just a small building near the castle.

København

I've moved on to København for a few days. Aside from the fact that it is cold and there are only a few precious hours of daylight, it's quite fun. I'm staying with Masha (a friend from Caltech) in the most posh student dorms ever. On my first day in town Clara and I roamed the city on foot, checking out the city hall building, several (warm) churches, and the little mermaid. We also managed to find a traditional Danish lunch (pickled herring on rugbrød bread). I've got to run to go to a castle now, but I'll get more photos up eventually.

Photos from Odense Denmark

My Odense Host, Daniel Stolper

Good Morning from Odense

I arrived in Odense Denmark last night.  Clara and I were brilliant and didn't realize that the +45 country prefix for phone numbers actually means 0045.  Luckily we had written down our host's address, so rather than call him we just wandered to his house and knocked on his door.

Odense is a cute little town.  This morning we went to a bakery early which matched my illusions of Danish villages perfectly, down to the uber-blonde girl working there.  I'm going to continue my sightseeing, but I should have a photos to share in the next day or two.

My Turn

For the last few weeks some of my more politically minded friends have been getting excited by Obama's latest appointments. More often than not this sends me to wikipedia to figure out who the person is since I've never really heard of them. Now I think the tables are finally flipped. Steve Chu is reportedly going to be nominated to be Secretary of Energy. This is incredibly good news. He has a solid physics background and is devoted to using science (and scientists) to attack climate problems.

In more personal news, I'm flying to Copenhagen tomorrow for a brief holiday and a visit with friends. I'll try to update from Denmark.

Secret Santa

My Rhodes class had a Christmas party last night. Due to safety concerns, my generation was robbed of the excitement of chemistry sets, fortunately my secret santa managed to find a Violent Volcano kit (complete with enclosed safety glasses). It's pretty awesome!

Football (aka Rhodies Win)

I failed to post an update about the Rhodes v. Marshall football game, actually games as it turned out. There was such a great showing, that we played two 7 on 7 games simultaneously. The Rhodes Scholars were of course sportsmanlike (and quite talented I might add). I wish as much could be said for the Marshalls. Unfortunately, through some weasling, the Marshalls managed to win one game 6-4, but the Rhodies won the other game handily. Computing the point differential between the two games, it's pretty clear that the Rhodies came out as victors. Apparently this claim has made waves amongst the Marshalls, who have difficulties admitting that they're second best.

Mr Ben Carmichael (M) is stopped by Mr George Olive III (R)

Happy Thanksgiving (Two Days Late)

My mommy wasn't here to feed me this Thanksgiving, so I was lucky that she managed to teach me some basic cooking skills over the years. I was a little too lazy to make a turkey. Instead my friends and I celebrated with the second most American meal ever - pizza. Melis had the brilliant idea to make one of them Thanksgiving-inspired. It was a great meal with good friends, plus I now have leftovers.

Sweet Potato Pizza

Todd's Normal Pizza

Finished Products

Today the Marshall Scholars are meeting in Oxford to celebrate Thanksgiving. Part of their celebration includes their annual American football defeat at the hands of the more physically vigorous scholars. I'm looking forward to doing my part.

A Visitor From That Other Institute

A newly minted Marhsall Scholar from MIT, David Reshef, arrived yesterday for a visit. Even though he happens to date my friend Clara, I'm thoroughly convinced that he came to visit me, not her. We had a blast talking science and generally reveling in nerdiness. David was lucky to attend last year's TED conference. These conferences are supposed to be on "ideas worth spreading" by "the world's greatest thinkers and doers." One of the coolest aspects of the conferences (at least for a schmuck like me who doesn't get invited) is that many of the best presentations are posted online. David reminded me of one of my favorite presentations I'd watched. In it, a guy named Blaise Aguera y Arcas shows how millions of publicly shared photos online can be combined in order to reconstruct three dimensional models of major landmarks. He takes the example of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. By collecting what are essentially touristy photographs taken from different views, in different lighting conditions, and with different obstructing faces blocking out parts of the cathedral, Blaise constructs a single model of the building. It's a pretty impressive demonstration.

Annotated Panorama!

Panorama!

Oxford can be pretty

aka Hey look, it's not raining today.

High Table

I had my first High Table experience last night. For those who don't know, the class system is alive and well in the UK. I suspect that one of the favourite pastimes of Oxford fellows is to sit around dreaming up new ways to symbolically demonstrate their superiority. Luckily, Mason Porter (Lloyd House '98) has risen the ranks and was able to invite me to join the fellows for dinner at Somerville College. For full disclosure, I must admit that we were actually seated at "Lower High," which is physically on the same level as the commoners. Of course the true High Table is physically elevated, but it was a crowded guest night and even Mason has a few more social rungs to climb.

Catching up with Mason was good fun. Mason was back at Tech as a postdoc during my tenure there. He is an aficionado of Caltech pranks and also was research mentor to several of my best friends, so we had plenty of nerdy topics to discuss while eating chocolate in the Senior Common Room (SCR) after dinner.

My blog has become a battleground

It seems that one of my friends, Andrea DenHoed, has decided that an effective way to force me into making a website for her is to direct the other Rhodes Scholars to my blog. Of course, my Caltech readers will recognize this as a stupid strategy since they know I was a pathetic excuse for a Techer. I am hardly able to make a simple html page, much less the sort of JavaScript she desires. A normal person might be slightly upset by her feeble attempts to embarrass me, but it's hard to be upset with someone who looks as goofy as this.

Saturday Fun

I finally went out cycling with the Oxford Club. It was fun and felt good to go on a decent ride again. Cycling certainly was a good way to see some of the English countryside, even though I managed to get a flat.

After the ride Clara and I went to Port Meadow (a giant meadow of common land for grazing). Note the difference between how some people treat animals.

Miss Blättler is mean.

Mr Gingrich is nice.

The Folks Come To Visit

My parents came to visit Sunday night through Wednesday morning, which was a lot of fun. We managed to make it to wander around Oxford seeing the sights and reveling in the old buildings. I also managed to bribe some friends into joining us for formal dinners at Magdalen, Univ, and Oriel. Special thanks go to Jason Bello, Clara Blättler, Andrew Hammond, Scott Thompson, Melis Anahtar, Deep Shah, and Nadine Levin for providing the company and dispelling the nasty rumour that I'm completely antisocial.

Tuesday night gave me another chance to prove that the skeptics were wrong when they told me I was stupid for buying such a hideous tie.

Texas is blue (until they started counting the votes outside of Austin)

It's not yet clear if my promised science funding will materialize, but at least Mr Obama ushered in one instantaneous change - it's now socially acceptable for me to wear my awesome tie over here. Well perhaps not socially acceptable, but I'm not quite as scared about being thrown into a gutter now.

Finally, it seems that my metal oxide paper from Nate Lewis's group has been published. Don't everyone rush to read it at the same time, but for the sake of my most devout followers it can be found here.

Photos

New photos from London are posted on my facebook site. Even people without a facebook account can view them by clicking here.

Weekend in London

I just returned from a Weekend in London. In brief: google party, Les Mis, Michael Faraday's lab, Techers at UCL, British Museum. Photos will hopefully follow, but my parents are in town visiting. Unfortunately for my faithful blog followers (ie Ben Eidelson and his fan club) I'm going to spend some extra time with my parents at the expense of the blog.

Catech Wins

"Despite Caltech's reputation, Cal Lutheran men's soccer coach Dan Kuntz always warns his players not to take the Beavers for granted.

Kuntz warns them not to view the games as automatic wins on the schedule.

But Kuntz knew there may come a time when the message didn't get through.

That time arrived last week as the Kingsmen suffered their first loss to Caltech in school history.

Tyler Volkoff's game-winning goal with 24 seconds remaining gave Caltech a 1-0 win — its first over CLU in 35 meetings."

Good Luck Tom!

Sometimes people think I'm "hard core" because I made it through Caltech. They should meet my friend Tom. If you happen to be in Austin tomorrow then you're in luck because you actually can meet him. He's giving what's sure to be an awesome seminar. I'm pretty sure he explained this stuff to me over dinner at Burger Continental, but I can't say I understand it yet.

Working Dynamical Systems: A geometric viewpoint of quantum mechanics and the semiclassical limit

by Tom Mainiero (UT Austin ) in RLM 10.176
4:00 pm Wednesday, October 29, 2008

We present a viewpoint of quantum mechanics that reveals its underlying geometry and renders it (in some sense) a special case of classical mechanics. Using this viewpoint we describe the semiclassical limit and the resulting fiber bundle structure. This construction allows us to "imbed" the classical phase space into our quantum system, shows the semiclassical limit may not be global, and presents us with a picture of how certain quantum symmetries can "break" and lead to chaotic classical dynamics.

Revelation of the Day

Umbrellas are not just for wimps. They are also for gentlemen and scholars.

Calculus of Variations

First I suppose I should mention that the Rhodes "Coming Up Dinner" was this past Friday. It's a fancy (black tie) event to celebrate the new class. Naturally it was quite fun, and I got another chance to practice my bow tying skills.

Now to the fun stuff. After dinner with some Rhodies tonight I went to grab desert with Melis Anahtar and Shayak Sarkar. They humoured me by intently watching as I scrawled out (on a napkin, of course) a very rushed and incomplete description of the Brachistochrone Problem and the Calculus of Variations. I went on to describe basic classical mechanics. By this point I was quite excited. It almost felt like I was back at Tech! Then we left, but not without agreeing to discuss this stuff another time. I definitely have to show them the analogies between classical Poisson Brackets and Quantum Mechanical commutators.

Mobile

It's hard to believe that getting a mobile phone is such a hassle, but I have finally acquired one. The American Rhodies were quite stupid in how we went about it, but that's all moot now. In the UK you basically have three options: pay as you go, monthly contracts, and 18 month contracts. Monthly is preferred by people like me because you get close to contract rates (pay as you go is quite expensive) but you can cancel your contract with just 30 days notice. The difficulty is that US credit history does not translate to the UK, so with my bank card came a brand new undefined credit history. Now of course I wasn't buying my phone plan on credit, but some genius over here decided that it is reasonable to run credit checks on each potential new customer. I'd have been more than happy to just pay 6 months up front, in cash even, but that's not an option. So after having my credit rejected about 4 times by several companies (which surely isn't helping the credit rating any), I finally ended up getting vodafone (with help from Rhodes House) to let me sign up for a £15/month plan. They had to take a refundable £100 deposit and I had to pay another £25 for the phone, but at least I can now make a few phone calls ... once my mom buys me some friends to call.

Harry Potter Dining Hall!

Last night I dined at Christ Church. Christ Church is of course best known for being the college of Prof. Niles Pierce. It turns out that some little-known film series called Harry Potter was also filmed there.



Today I was thrilled to discover that British people are correctly proportioned. I went to Marks and Spencer and found that 14.5" neck size shirts are in fact common here. What's more is that the standard sleeve length for such shirts is exactly my size. As if that wasn't enough, the shirts were reasonably priced (four new shirts for just £34). Now that I have some fruity patterned shirts with spread collars I can blend in perfectly with the Brits.

Matriculation

Today was matriculation (starting at 8 am!). The event is quite bizarre, involving costumes with silly gowns and a Latin speech. I suppose these things are prerequisites for studying theoretical chemistry.




Loads of photos are now posted on my facebook site (not just matriculation photos). Follow this link if you don't have a facebook account.

Also, I got a new bike yesterday. Riding on the left side of the road is fun.

The Union

I went to a debate at the Oxford Union tonight. The Union is an exorbitantly expensive student debating club (£99 for a year or ~£170 for life) with a bunch of future politicians trying to act like MPs. Luckily, in an attempt to entice new members, the Union is free for the first two weeks. The speeches were quite amusing, and the big shots were really quite good. The debate tonight was (unsurprisingly) over whether or not there should be confidence in her Majesty's government. Five MPs were present to debate, making the experience the closest to a House of Parliament debate as I am likely to come.

Soccer

I'm out of shape and Brits are good at soccer. I think my soreness this morning indicates that I'd be better off with the cycling club.

Shankar

On Sunday I'm trying out for Univ's football (read soccer) team. My hope is to be able to make the B or C team so that I can play for fun but not practice too much. We'll see if my 8th grade skills are still with me. Also, I may have progress on the cycling front. I've located a cycle of interest and have heard rumours of a secret Univ storage place for nice cycles.

Disclaimer: The following will not make sense to people who have not studied physics at the University level. I've really just included it to impress Jon Arnold, Matt Grau, and a few other Caltech nerds.

Wow, I met Shankar's daughter (a 2nd year Rhodie) tonight at Balliol college's bop! By Shankar I mean the Shankar. Luckily she wasn't too taken aback by my awe. She must be used to meeting a bunch of lame physicists who look up to her father.

Dress Like Your National Stereotype Bop

Since our markets are sucking, I figure it's up to me to remind people that America is freedom, even if it leads to an international catastrophe. As part of my America day, I enjoyed a £4.99 all-you-can-eat Pizza Hut lunch buffet followed closely by a food coma and nap. After a dinner with my fellow Americans I represented the US of A at the "Dress Like Your National Sterotype Bop" (what Oxonians call a party).

Repping Missouri

Today I decided to wear my obnoxiously bright yellow Missouri sweatshirt. I figure that Missouri's football excellence, entitles me to represent the school abroad. As I walked down High Street, two groups of Americans stopped me to comment on the shirt. It was amusing to see how many midwesterns are actually crawling around this place.

Tonight was a formal graduate student dinner in the main dining hall. I've been eating in the hall this whole week for lunch and dinner, but my meals have been cafeteria style until tonight. Tonight was actually a fully waited (Harry Potter style) meal. We naturally had to dress smart, and the master got up and gave a Dumbledorean welcome address before the meal. It was quite fun, so I'm going to have to sign up this Sunday's formal hall too.

I suppose the biggest news of the day is that I have finally made myself look respectable again. After my wreck I was unable to shave for quite some time. It was rather amusing watching people I met restrain their impulses to call me a slob.



Luckily, the scar cleared up enough that I felt comfortable shaving before the formal dinner. Now I look like my dapper old self.

Thank you Dr. Croll

Not Much to Report

I have met with the folks in the Theoretical Chemistry Group, and it looks like everything is planned out nicely. My first lecture will be next Tuesday. After seeing the Quantum syllabus I was kicking myself for not shipping Cohen-Tannoudji over, but alas I have discovered a wonderful consequence of the horribly inefficient redundancy of the college system. Each college has its own library, each of which has several copies of the classics. Univ's library had 5 copies of both Volumes 1 and 2 waiting for me. The Physics and Chemistry selections were actually quite impressive because there were so many available copies of the classic texts. I'm used to a system in which the library would only own ~3 copies of the classics, and would put these on reserve. Looks like mom and dad won't have to ship any books over after all.

Last night the Univ grad freshers (first years) had a barbecue at the college boathouse, which is a very impressive building on the river. The old boat house was unremarkable, but some animal rights protesters burned it down several years ago. Univ has finally rebuilt a new one, and decided to put people in it as protection. Surely animal rights people will respect the rights of the humans living there, right?

Every Wednesday we have tea at Rhodes House along with cake supplied by Sheila and John (Rhodes House employees). Apparently they have a little contest over whose cake is superior. I suppose I need to be careful to not take sides and just eat some of each.

Boxes and Trivia Night

This morning my boxes were finally delivered! Everyone will be pleased to know that I will have clean underwear tomorrow and didn't even have to do the last minute laundry I thought might be necessary. Most of my stuff is unpacked, so it's starting to feel a little more like home. When picking up my stuff from the porter's lodge, Bob (the porter) called me by name. I was shocked and impressed that he's memorized faces and names so quickly. Perhaps he just watches me on the CCTV's.

Before


After

I suppose I ought to share one or two (ok, three to be exact) more shots from outside my room, as they are slightly more photogenic. The following were taken inside Univ (colloquially known as Todd's castle).





Tonight was Trivia Night in the MCR. Naturally I formed an all star team of a Brit, an Aussie, a Kiwi, a Greek, and two Americans. Unsurprisingly, the American influence led us to victory, scoring me a sweet University College tote bag and some chocolates. Tomorrow is my first meeting with Prof Logan, so I can start thinking about adding some work to my fun.