Is the world really that dumb?

I ask this question, because in my mind anyway, there's no way I'm really that smart.

I've decided I can't pay too close attention to world news because it just makes me upset, and I'm trying to be a better person and when I run into people being stupid, I have a tendency to let them know they're being stupid and why. It never really goes that well.

On the other hand, I'm always amazed at how stupid I can be sometimes. I had a math teacher in high school (seriously, I only had one for all three years, and no I did not repeat the same class over and over till he passed me out of pity, at least not that I'm willing to admit to) that forbid the words 'dumb' and 'stupid' to be said in his class. We came up with what we thought were clever ways to get around this by discovering words like torpid, insipid, etc. If you did happen to say either stupid or dumb in his class he would go over to this dusty chalk board, cover a section with chalk, erase it with an even older and dustier eraser and he would then take aim and chuck it at you. Most students just sat there cringing waiting for the eraser to pelt them and cover them with chalk dust. I quickly figured out that I didn't have to sit still for him and could ever deflect the eraser. I didn't always win these matches, but I did become quite skilled at eraser blocking. I also learned a good amount of math and that's where my love of mathy things started was from that teacher who took the time to explain derivatives and calculus to a poor confused teenager.

There are few things more maddening than projection operators. Sure they sound all cuddly and friendly and like they'll be really easy to work with and make your life soooo much easier. They are none of the above and they definitely don't make your life easier, at least until you finally figure them out and can get a good handle on them. Sure they're just matrices and blah blah blah, but what if it's not a matrix, but it's a TENSOR??? What then smarty pants? Tensors kill people, or they at least have the capacity to kill people, if we ever get a spaceship that can leave our solar system and happens to fly just a little too close to a black hole. That's right, they'll end up being forced tot watch the movie Event Horizon. Sure, it's got the guy from Jurassic Park in it (I am a child of the 80's and 90's) and he still is wicked awesome in that movie, but the only thing that could have made that movie worse was if Pauly Shore had shown up. Actually that would have made it down right terrifying and put it squarely in the jaws of the horror movie genre. Tensors, they will kill you in the end. That's been the last bit of my conundrumming lately. My ears are pounding and my head aches from it. It's not as hard as I thought it was, and was making it, now I just have to make sure I don't mess up the coding....c'est la guerr.

If all of the rain drops were lemon drops and gum drops

We'd all have teeth like the British, that's what would happen. Unless of course they were sugar free lemon drops and gum drops, in which case, our teeth might be okay. Did you know that drinking diet drinks actually increases your chances of contracting type II diabetes? That's right, but cutting our sugar from your diet, you're actually making things worse, but only because you're replacing it with something else, that in all actuality is still a sugar, just one your body doesn't process the same way. I always laugh when something is 'sugar free' but contains glucose, sucralose, wood, etc. because they're all just sugars. The main difference between sugars and alcohol? More OH groups. I like sugar.

You know how you're working on a project and you get all excited and happy because you think you're done after all that labor, pain, sweat, blood, and vomit, and you know it wasn't all yours? That's the worse part, and you can't even remember where the extra bodily fluids came from or who they belong to. After all of that you find out....you're not done. You're far from done. In fact you're so far from being done you feel like you've been undone, and very dumb. I am currently riding the small bus. I need to try and figure out how to project the eigenvectors on specific subspaces of the problem I'm working with. It sounds simple. It sounds so simple you should be able to have a first grader do it. I'm sure the first grader could sit down and whip the problem out in a matter of minutes. Being a graduate student, it's going to take me considerably longer. Stupid first graders. I knew there was a reason I didn't like them. Some times life is good. Other times, it comes up and when you're not looking smashes you upside the head and then jumps up and down on your special place all while laughing like a mad man at your pain and anguish.

Where the buffalo chips roam

There are few things more satisfying than finally getting a project to work. Eating the unborn is one of them, unless they're raw, then that's just gross and wrong.

And now for something completely the same, but different:

Apparently when you solve a non-Hermitian eigenvalue problem, and especially when there are degeneracies in the eigenvalues, it turns into a really ugly mess. I don't really understand too much of it yet, but I'm starting to look at locating conical intersections and the seams that are defined by the g- and h-vectors using coupled cluster theory. You would think that because coupled cluster methods do such an amazing job at describing the many-electron wave function that they would also do a kick butt job for finding conical intersections/seams, more particularly, those methods that are able to handle quasi- and near degeneracies of electronic states. In some cases it seems to be true, and they work really well, but in others, not so much. This is a new area for me, so I'm looking forward to digging into this a little more and learning something new.

I learned something else that was new to me today. The stairs next to my office will not take me to the sub-basement floor, but rather to a mysterious floor beneath the sub-basement that is locked up tighter than a nunnery on valentines day, but looks very interesting (mostly because I can't go in there). If curiosity killed the cat, I'm in trouble, but then so are most scientists and elementary school kids (amazing what we have in common with them).

Good posture is bad for your gas mileage

It's true, especially if you ride a scooter. I have a scooter that I ride to work when it's not too cold (when it's 50 degrees, in stupid units, outside and you're riding on a scooter at 25-30 mph it feels like it's about 20 degrees-again, in stupid units) and I love it, for the most part. True, my lawn mower has more horsepower than my scooter, and going uphill is a bit of a challenge, but you can't really beat 100 miles/gallon and mostly free parking in most places here. If I want to get really good gas mileage though, I have to hunch myself forward on my scooter and try to make myself more aerodynamic. If I sit up straight, like I've been taught since I was a kid, it will not only make me go slower, but it also kills my gas mileage and I only get about 90 miles/gallon. I know, I know, that's still pretty good, but it just goes to show that what they teach you as a child isn't always correct...all the time.

I GOT IT WORKING!!!!!!!

For those who read these short blurbs, thank you first of all (I'm a bit surprised people look at this, honestly, so seriously, thank you), and secondly, you'll know what I'm talking about (maybe).

It came down to units and then to using a numerically stable algorithm to diagonalize the matrix, otherwise I was getting complex eigenvalues, which was a bad thing for what I am testing this on. It amazes me how two algorithms, which in the end are supposed to give you the exact same solutions, and which to the unlearned computer science person (i.e., me) don't really appear to have any significant differences. The timings are about the same, they both put the matrix into the same form before diagonalizing it, etc. etc. etc. But there are some huge differences when you compare the results. The first, which is not numerically stable, can give large variations in the results just from small changes in the input, and when you're doing something like numerical differentiation, there's always going to be small variations in the inputs you give the program. A lesson learned...and probably forgotten before I get to something like this again.