rensus

From Julia

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:07:18 GMT

According to The Big Read, the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books on their list.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy (I hated every sentence- why couldn't she just die already?)
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (Working on it... me too)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (I didn't like this one at all- I just couldn't sympathize with the main character)
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (One of my favorite books ever)
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (and Le Petit Prince)
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:25:37 GMT

So I go to WGN to watch the Cubs/Brewers game. WGN will show every other game, but when the most important series of the year comes up, they don't air it. To add insult to injury they instead show Battlefield Earth.

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:17:50 GMT

I'm in a bit of a tough spot at the moment. My adviser wants me to move into the nice air conditioned office next to our lab, but considering it would put me in the same room as the labmate from hell, who is both dismissive and condescending (as well as incredibly selfish), I am a little hesitant. Though it would be nice to to get out of the sweltering heat (from which I have been complaining somewhat throughout the summer), I would rather not subject myself to someone who already randomly accuses me of swiping his lab materials or of pointing out every little thing I do wrong. The weather should only get cooler so I am really not forced to make the move, but how do I tell my adviser? I've found that I have been able to get along with pretty much anybody with whom I have ever worked, so I'm a little annoyed at this first. Maybe he'll leave with his masters, switch lab groups, or suffer some sort of horrible accident before next summer.

Hello, I must be going...

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:41:26 GMT

Last year, I was so disgusted with the Republicans that I vowed that I wouldn't vote for a single candidate for 10 years. I figured that, given enough time, the party would throw off the neo-con influence and return to its roots as the party of Lincoln, T.R., and Eisenhower. This would be a party that I could vote for at least half of the time, being a pragmatic individual. After this week, I now realize that I could wait until California smacks into Japan, but this ain't happening. To officially eulogize Lincoln's party, I have come up with the top things that I have learned from the Bush administration:

1. A national health service is a bad idea. We should not have Big Government interfering with people's lives. Too much government oversight and regulation would only create more bueaucracy, which would be damaging to creating a competitive, first class health care system. After all, people's lives depend on this.
2. A national education system is a good idea. We should have a Big Governement agency setting national standards so that we create a competitive, first class eductation system. After all, people's lives depend on this.
3. Contrary to the Constitution and 200+ years of precedent, the office of the Vice President does not fall under the Executive branch. Excepting, of course, when one needs to invoke executive privilege.
4. State's rights must be respected, except for when it comes to number 2.
5. There are five lights.
6. The Church's teachings must be strictly followed. Except when it comes to social justice. Or helping the poor. Or feeding the hungry. Or caring for the sick. Or putting others before one's self. Or not killing. Or separating Church and state (Give to God what is God's and give to Caesar what is Caesar's). Or keeping science independent from religion. Or actually following anything the Church actually teaches, except for its stance on the seemingly all-important issue of abortion.
7. The Geneva Convention, a standard in humanitarianism that contains provisions under which (or at least used as a general justification) the U.S. has topped dictators, justified military intervention, and has tried, convicted, and executed war criminals in the past is... quaint.
8. Only the scientists with whom one agrees with are reputable. Everyone else is a quack or has an agenda.
9. If you don't do XXXXXX, you're helping the terrorists.
10. If you do YYYYY, you're helping the terrorists.
11. Any sort of disagreement whatsoever helps the terrorists.
12. Brutal dictators are bad, except for the ones we support.
13. When congress submits a bill to be signed, it is only a first draft. Only after significant revision with "signing statements" does it become worthy of a presidential signature.
14. To earn a job review of "heck of a job" apparently means one can get away with drowning a city of 500,000. Evidently something on the order of causing Atlantis to sink is needed to get a bad review.

feel free to add your own...

Samuel Pepys I Am Not

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 17:39:50 GMT

Well- what has happened to me in the past year? I am currently living in a decent area, much better than the first apartment I rented. I am working quite a lot to get ready for a conference in one month, including exclusive use of our new $400K PPMS for the past week. I've had to give up both coffee and caffeinated pop, as I've discovered that, since I weened myself off of them last lent and also lost a bit of weight, their consumption now gives me a little anxiety disorder. Who knew? I guess both items are not the healthiest things anyway, but I really enjoyed my morning coffee. I used to be able to pound back half a pot. Now just one cup and I have the shakes and feel out of control, a feeling that nobody likes to have. I'm still in Columbus for at least another year, maybe longer if I do decide to do the PhD. Who knows on that one- I've only been here for 1.3 years, so I can take my candidacy next spring, or I can complete a masters thesis before then. I feel that if I do the latter, I really will not "mastered" materials science, though. As a result, since I only have 2 more classes before the candidacy anyway, I might as well take it and see what happens. I can always bolt afterwards.

My cousin Rick was married this spring in what was a great ceremony. I guess there won't be any more weddings for a while, at least none of which I have heard. I was thinking about organizing some sort of get together here for the OSU/MSU football game this fall. If anyone is interested, let me know. I guess thats all- I'm just a boring grad student, after all. Maybe I'll devote some later entries to a hobby or something so that I have something to talk about that is more substantiative.

so its been a year... sue me.

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 19:10:21 GMT

Go to IMDB.com and look up 15 of your favorite films.
• Post three official IMDB "Plot Keywords" for these 15 picks.
• Have your friends guess the movie titles.

1. Wilhelm Scream, Babe Scientist, Library (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade- Cosmic Muffin)

2. Macguffin, Milkshake, Biblical (Pulp Fiction- Cosmic Muffin)

3. Piano, Fez, Doomed Romance (Casablanca- Cosmic Muffin)

4. Golf, American Football, Scene Based on Painting, Korean War [MASH]

5. Toll Booth, Wedding, Horse (The Godfather- Cosmic Muffin)

6. Martial arts, Heinz 57, Solitaire, Political Convention [The Manchurian Candidate-ORIGINAL]

7. Rowboat, Hitler, Blanket (The Producers- Cosmic Muffin)

8. Interrogation, Heist, Urination Scene, Criminal Mastermind [The Usual Suspects]

9. Airplane, Motorcycle, Tunnel, Prisoner of War [The Great Escape]

10. Macguffin, Cornfield, United Nations (North By Northwest-Scissors247)

11. Trolley, Femme Fatale, Electric shock, Cartoon Reality Crossover (Who Framed Roger Rabbit- queenofconnacht)

12. Stabbed in the shoulder, Invisibility, Rocket, Superhero Team [The Incredibles]

13. Heavy accent, Mole, Text Messaging, Double Life [The Departed]

14. Mistaken Identity, Clock, Skateboard (Back to the Future-PiccoloPiccolo)

15. Concert, Nun, neo nazi (The Blues Brothers-Andrew O.)

Cosmic Muffin wins

Raise your glass to the good and the evil, lets drink to the salt of the earth

Wed, 26 Jul 2006 02:01:33 GMT

Andrew and Aimee's wedding was a great time. The food, the music, and the drinks were all great. It was wonderful to see everyone again. Hopefully it won't be a year between visits in the future, but I'm going to be realistic.

My paper for the conference at the end of August is coming along. Granted it is coming along slowly, but a few days of hard work should reveal a complete draft in one week's time (hopefully). After the conference I plan on returning home for a week. If anybody wishes to look me up in the Chicagoland region September 3-10, let me know.

So if you meet me, have some courtesy Have some sympathy, and some taste

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 01:06:07 GMT

My goodness it's been a long time. I'm excited about attending Andrew and Aimee's wedding this next weekend. I actually couldn't imagine a more perfect couple- I don't think I've ever even seen them argue... about anything. It's really uncanny. It will be good to see everyone again. It has been almost a year. I'm trying to keep up with my correspondence, but I truthfully suck at it. I'm about five years behind, so if I don't get to you for a while, don't feel too bad- just wait until 2011.

My lab work is progressing nicely. I'm attending a conference in Seattle at the end of August that should be exciting. I'm enjoying learning about magnesium diboride superconductors. The only problem is that so much is published on the topic that it is hard to sift through it all. I believe that something like 3000 papers have been published since 2001. Its a little daunting at first, but then you learn to sift through the irrelevant publications.

My first quarter as a graduate student was fun yet challenging. I really enjoyed my class on glasses. It was fun, informative, and practical. Solid state diffusion, on the other hand, is a topic that I hope never to see again for the rest of my life. Of the 2-3 core classes I'll probably take to get my master's, this one will definitely be the hardest. At least it's over with now.

In the world of the more mundane, I'm moving in a month. I'll be a little further from campus, but in a quieter area. I've got packing down to an art by now. I counted it and it turns out that I have moved 12 times in the past five years. Some of my older boxes are even beginning to show wear.

I'm just trying to do my jig-saw puzzle before it rains any more

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 23:38:14 GMT

Well its been a little while. Then again, I've been awfully busy. Needless to say, the cable guy did come and grant me access to the world of television. Its too bad that I watch, at the very most, eight channels. Aside from the History Channel, the Discovery Channel, AMC, TCM, ESPN, and a couple of the networks I really do not see the need for so mant stations. If only one could just pay a fixed amount per month for the stations that were wanted rather than paying a lot more for channels that simply act as filler. Oh well.

I am liking my new research position very well. The magnesium diboride superconductors with which I am working grow more interesting the more I learn about them. Today I attended a dissertation overview by a member of my lab group and I see that what is known about this material is outweighed tenfold by what needs to be discovered. It is encouraging to be entering a field that only has room for growth. Speaking of research, I am going to Seattle this August to present at a conference. I only hope that the research I perform in the interim is up to snuff. Also, in a few months our post-doc will be leaving us. This will make me the only person in our lab with Labview experience. I never thought I would have to see this program again after CEM 435, but I guess I owe Dr. Bruening a thank you.

I am getting along in Columbus reasonably well. Columbus is certainly more urban than what I am used to. East lansing is almost idyllic in comparison. Most of the building near campus are student slums which are not at all kept up. For my part I'll take the draconian East Lansing government any day of the week over the mess that can be found here. Aside from these blighted areas, Columbus isn't too bad. It seems like developers have an aversion to the interior of the city, so one has to travel 6-10 miles to get to a Best Buy, Home Depot, Circuit City, or even a Wal Mart. Maybe when I get a vehicle that doesn't smell like gas this probably won't seem so bad. I'm also adjusting well to Kroger instead of my familiar Meijer.

As for my apartment, I could be a little happier. The idiots living below me were pounding their bass at 3am the second week I was here. Keep in mind that these are the same people who walked up to my father and I while we were moving in and made it a point to tell us how much noise we were making. Since the bass incident, my neighbors and I have come to an understanding. This detente is, I'm quite sure, a direct result of my vacuuming my apartment at 10 am the morning after their little shindig- I took the greatest pleasure in ignoring their pleas for me to stop. But, like I said, I haven't really had any problems since then. As of late august, these thin walls will no longer be a problem- I'm moving to a cheaper apartment that is nicer, newer, and in a better area.

Hopefully I'll be getting a new car soon. I'm just waiting on getting the settlement from my accident last year. I was thinking of the Honda Civic, the Toyota Corolla, or the Hyundai Elantra. If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. Notice what isn't in my list. Its the same thing also not present in Consumer report's top 10 list this year. I shall never buy an American P.O.S. my entire life. The cars are inferior in every way. Before crying to me about supporting the domestic car industry, think of this- the foreign car companies have established assembly and manufacturing plants in the U.S. while the Big Three have been moving manufacturing to Mexico and Canada, among other places. I'm paying a better price for a superior product while still supporting domestic jobs. The only real difference is that somebody in Japan becomes richer instead of Bill Ford. I think I can handle that.

And I think it's been be a long long time...

Wed, 18 Jan 2006 03:41:11 GMT

Sorry about that. I may or may not have neglected the journal for quite some time. In a way, I never really started it. Initially, this was for the simple reason that there was nothing really to report except for the mundane. And the last thing I wanted was to be the author of another boring, whiny diary that no one would care to read. Of course, when things finally started to become a little more exciting, I really didn't have time to write down my thoughts or adventures. It has only been due to the insistent and repetitive prompting of a friend (you know who you are) that I shall now commence my live journal.

The Question now is... where do I begin? Ostensibly the purpose of a live journal is to describe my life. By describing, I don't mean making a laundry list of things I have done. Any troglodyte with a crayon could do that. I mean, how hard is it to say that I went to the store, visited some relatives, played a video game, or went to a movie. That's four sentences without any real meaning. My purpose should be, of course, to describe how events in my life make me feel and how they contribute to the overall story of my life. Naturally, I have never been one to be really free with my feelings, so only expect the occasional yet substantive update. Now... the story of my life. The problem is where to begin. I could start describing my childhood, but that would take too long. Should I then skip a few years and move ahead to my high school and college experiences? Of course I should. As a matter of a fact I'm going to also skip those and fast forward ahead to this last Christmas. Earlier in the summer I had filled out graduate school applications for various colleges to enroll for the fall 2006 term. I had decided to wait a year because at the time graduate school applications were due for the fall 2005 term, I was undecided as to what I wanted to study. I graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry and initially considered some sort of chemistry grad program. I was also considering varying types of engineering. I figured that I would work for a year, make some money, and figure out what I wanted to study. After finding a job (what an ordeal that was), I discovered from the veteran employees at my place of work that the chemistry opportunities were becoming harder to come by. After some research I discovered that one field that I did have interest in was growing exponentially- materials science. Hence the switch. Not really that much of a switch, really. Sort of like a monk becoming a priest (Mark Soppet's joke was that either way, I'm going to have harder luck with the ladies).

Anyway, I sent out a bunch of applications, including some for January 2006 on the off chance that I would get accepted. Honestly, I was just testing the waters and never really expected to be accepted in the winter. However, I found out on Festivus (December 23rd) that I did indeed get accepted at Ohio State. That was the good news. The bad news was that I had 2 weeks to get everything in order, packed, moved, and settled.

The apartment hunt was 5 of the more interesting hours of my life. Let me say this right off the bat- If you ever live in Columbus do not, I repeat this for emphasis-DO NOT rent from Buckeye rentals. The first place my dad and I were shown was horrible. Let me paint a picture. Imagine the worst tenements described in a Fyodor Dostoevsky, Upton Sinclair, Richard Wright, or Charles Dickens novel. It was worse than any apartment any of those authors has described. The entrance to the building reeked of cat piss. The stairs were cracked and falling apart. As one entered the actual flat the first thing smelled was the pungent odor of natural gas and old cigarettes. The gas could be explained by the stove's pilot light going out. The cigarettes could be explained by the 500 or so butts lying in and around the sink. Garbage was strewn all about the apartment. Due to concrete settling and about six decades worth of weeds, the driveway was completely unusable. Buckeye later showed us more apartments that were palaces in comparison, but still dumps. Next door to Buckeye was Pella real estate. Their apartments were clean, spacious, cheap, and in better locations. I now rent a nice two bedroom flat with free internet.

As of today I've been in Columbus for 1.5 weeks and am enjoying my research. I am currently studying MgB2 superconductors (and by currently, I mean for four more years). I really enjoy this field, especially the practical aspects of it. Unlike chemistry, I get to work with my hands more. I can take some interesting classes later on too. For example, there is a foundry class I can take towards my degree- how cool is that? Can you imagine me working with oven that are at temperatures in the 1000s of degrees? The Labview software that I learned senior year is coming in handy too. I need to catch up on some aspects of the field, but I think I'll do alright.

If I get around to it I'll post some pictures of my apartment soon. If you can't tell, I obviously don't have television at the moment. That problem should, by the Grace of God, be fixed tomorrow. Maybe I'll even write of the incompetence of Time Warner cable- its a funny yet extremely sad story.

I always did want a fedora

Sat, 05 Nov 2005 22:07:58 GMT

You scored as Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones is an archaeologist/adventurer with an unquenchable love for danger and excitement. He travels the globe in search of historical relics. He loves travel, excitement, and a good archaeological discovery. He hates Nazis and snakes, perhaps to the same degree. He always brings along his trusty whip and fedora. He's tough, cool, and dedicated. He relies on both brains and brawn to get him out of trouble and into it.

</td>

Indiana Jones

71%

Maximus

71%

Lara Croft

67%

Batman, the Dark Knight

58%

William Wallace

58%

James Bond, Agent 007

54%

Captain Jack Sparrow

50%

El Zorro

50%

Neo, the "One"

50%

The Terminator

38%

The Amazing Spider-Man

38%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 15:45:14 GMT

You are a
Social Liberal
(61% permissive)

and an...
Economic Liberal
(13% permissive)

You are best described as a:

Socialist

Link: The Politics Test on OkCupid Free Online Dating
Also: The OkCupid Dating Persona Test

Who knew?