A lone particle

We are monkeys

2007-06-25T10:05:00.001-07:00

This video is pure gold, no additional comments on my part are necessary, just check it out.

Montreal hero

2007-04-18T18:23:00.000-07:00

This guy is a hero now in Montreal, yay for no littering! (Seriously this video has made it all the way to CBC and CTV news!)

Art

2007-04-18T18:04:00.000-07:00

I was having a beer once at this pub downtown and I noticed with amazing (at least to my liking) painting on the wall, so I decided to inquire about it when the waitress came around. I asked her if it was for sale and she said no, but then to my surprise she said that she was the artist and she gave me her business card. She has a permanent exhibition at an art gallery somewhere in downtown Montreal, and there was also a URL to her website on the card:

http://www.sharonramsay.com

I've told many friends about her work since I liked it so much but never got to show any pictures, so here is my favorite piece of hers:

For those of you who are form Montreal, that is lower Crescent St. She paints mostly 'cityscapes' and they're all of similar style, somewhat gloomy, rainy, foggy streets, I just love it. She really knows how to put the 'feeling' of the city on canvas.

Left Handedness

2007-04-17T18:52:00.000-07:00

The occurrence of left handedness in humans has always been something that I find very interesting. Why are just under ~15% of humans left handed? Why not 50/50, it seems like it should be a random phenomenon if not just strictly 100% dexterity. There doesn't seem to be extensive studies on the subject, although to date what has been established is the high likelihood of "handedness" being a genetic trait. If this is the case, then it would be interesting to try to identify the gene which encodes for "handedness", I imagine if genetic, then it must be a recessive gene? I suppose that could be an explanation for the low frequency of left handed people.

I was doing some reading on the subject and found some interesting information, I have this friend who can practically explain how every word in the English language (well it seems that way to me since I don't know much about the stuff) has derived from Germanic, Latin, etc. influences, anyhow this kind of thing is right up his alley.
So I was reading on how the meaning of the term "left handed" has derived from extremely old words and how this is an indication that the infrequent occurrence of left handed individuals is a very old phenomenon. All of these words have some direct or indirect association with clumsiness, wrongness, evilness, etc. All characteristics which historically have been associated with the usage of ones left hand for various tasks.

For example, the word 'sinistral' has been used instead of 'left handed' and it is derived form the word 'sinister' originally meaning left in Latin but eventually during the classical Latin era took upon the meaning of evil or unlucky. The German word for left is 'links' and the adjective 'link' means devious, 'linksch' also means clumsy and 'linken' means to cheat, again these are all very old words.
In Portuguese 'canhoto' is a common word for left handed and at some point in the history of the language has been used to identify the devil. 'Venstrehåndsarbeid' is an expression for left handed work in Norwegian and has the meaning 'something that is done sloppy is incorrectly'. And the list goes on.
Alternatively all the words from which the term 'right handed' derive are also very old and have the opposite meaning as those which describe left handedness, that is correctness, rightness, authority, justness ('Mano derecha' in Spanish is the 'right hand', and 'derecho' also means correct and authority).

Architecture in Barcelona

2007-04-17T16:27:00.000-07:00

Many of you may have already heard of Antoni Gaudi, a Catalan architect, and a genius in his own right. However there are many other Catalan architects who created breathtaking works of art during the Modernist era in Barcelona. Lluís Domènech i Montaner for example, he designed the 'Hospital de Sant Pau' which I think is somewhere on the outskirts of Barcelona, it looks like something out of a fairly tale! When I get old and eventually have to be hospitalized "indefinitely" I certainly will feel better about it if it's in a place that looks like that!

Odd signs

2007-04-16T19:55:00.000-07:00

I came across a collection of strange road signs and such from foreign countries, some are really funny, so here are a few of my favorites:

Ahh, of course.

I don't even know what to think here, is it mandatory to urinate before enjoying the "fresh air"?

Now that the subject has arisen, being the guy that writes those traffic notices can be a pretty amusing job...

I wonder if the price includes the removal of....ahem...stains...

Lessons don't come with an instructor.

But where is the rest of Lewis???

I'd really like to know what this actually is supposed to mean...I think it is in some Scandinavian language...

No need to proof read...

We don't require restrooms here, we have evolved past the need to use them, and well quite frankly, if you haven't then stick it up your $&#!!!

Last day of classes

2007-04-11T18:53:00.000-07:00

I must say today was a rather emotional day, the last day of my physics undergraduate lectures! *sniff, sniff*. I was overcome with both joy and sadness. On another note, I just found out today that what I thought was the expression "for all intensive purposes", is actually "for all intents and purposes". Am I the only one who has been saying this wrong my entire life? Somehow I think so...this is when that whole. "Oh, English is not my first language..." excuse comes in handy.
Anyhow, back to the subject of the last day of my classes, oh, and even more exciting I handed in my last assignment! God, you cannot imaging (unless of course you have done it) what it is like to hand in one assignment per class, per week for four years, every term, Assignment 1, Assignment 2, Assignment 3, etc, etc. I can't believe it's over! I'm ecstatic.
I even saw some people sitting on the hill today, what I refer to as "the hill" is this patch of lawn that everyone sits on, on campus, toward the end of the year when the weather starts to get nice. When you see people on it it gives you the feeling like there is still hope, that sometime in the near future you might get a taste of the freedom and joys that summer has to offer. Except it really isn't that nice out, there was actually still snow on the hill. I wont be sitting on it yet, I reserve that moment for when exams are over and one can sit on the ground without fear of getting up and finding a nice big pile of mud of you behind.

Summer 2007

2007-04-10T17:34:00.000-07:00

Well, my summer plans are finally starting to come together rather nicely. I will be starting a position as a research assistant as soon as my finals are out of the way. I'll be doing some Mossbauer spectroscopy on LiFePO4, promising electrodes for batteries. I sound like the introduction to my undergraduate final research report, which I did with the same supervisor whom I'll be working with this summer. I also got some exciting news today, I'll be able to take some time off to visit family in Spain! So the last two weeks of August will be spent in sunny Barcelona. My beloved hometown, I can't wait!

My First Post

2007-04-09T19:43:00.000-07:00

Well, well, well. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while. Just a little online, "scrapbook" of my thoughts if you will. What will I be posting? Just the odd thing that I find interesting. I imagine some sort of science related information will make it's may onto the blog, seeing as to I am a physics major. Yes, you heard me, a physics major. Surely I must be insane, and to that I must say, I am. Although my ventures into the physics world are soon coming to an end, as finals are creeping up on me, and this is my last term! I should of course be working on my last assignments right now, but I always find some way to procrastinate until the final moments are upon me. Hence the idea of a blog at 11:00pm on a Monday night. Sigh. Some things never change. I'll guess I will get to solving for the fermi pressure in a nucleus tomorrow.