Does this make cents?

In Yeshiva University's original building there are a bunch of plaques dedicated "in honor of the perpetual supporters of Yeshiva University." The donations, from 1928, are measured in the thousands of dollars: $100,000 or $75,000 or $15,000 or $10,000 and so on. Except for one. The "Esther & Louis Tallerman Memorial Fund" donated $69,061.58.

Balderdash

Unfortunately since last Wednesday (end of the fall semester) I have entered an extremely vegetative state. I sleep to noon and pretty much do nothing all day. So I couldn’t think of anything to say. However something happened to change this. I was playing Balderdash with my parents, my aunt Malke and my uncle Sysfrog (long story don’t ask). During this game we came across the word Piggin, and since I couldn’t pass this one up I defined it as: A pagan sacrifice at which there is roast pig and pigeon served with gin. My mother ( The (mommy) Moot) defined it as: What pigs do to protest the living conditions in their pens. Now for next week I will have something a little bit more entertaining because I intend to clear my system of chlorophyll, shed the leaves I have grown and pull up my roots, to become active and to produce sustenance from things other than the couch in front of my TV. In short I plan I reactivating my brain (with electrodes if necessary).

Required Windows Updates

"this microsoft office 2003 update allows microsoft office frontpage 2003 to display the value of the Turkish LIra in both the old and the new Lira formats."
-Windows Update

Its about time Microsoft decided to update this. You see I always use frontpage as my web browser. Also, like the vast majority of US users, I often buy online from sites that only display prices in the new (not old) Turkish Lira format (it makes me feel richer).
thank you microsoft for making this new critical update "required"

And heres a picture of something I saw on the train:

Of subways and elevator buttons

In honor of the current MTA/TWU strike, this post is all about worker rights, evil capitalists, greedy workers, idiot socialists and a whole slew of the other ethical and moral issues that a transit worker strike raises. Specifically:
Has anyone noticed that people standing on a subway platform tend to look down the tracks to see when the subway is coming? What does this accomplish? It makes even less sense than pushing the elevator button after everyone has already done so. At least with elevators there is an off-chance that the first person to get there just stood there and didn't push the button (which, might I add, would be fun to do). Therefore, while pushing the button does not get the elevator arriving quicker, it at least ensures that the button is in fact pushed. With subway cars, however, no matter how hard you stare down the track the train will not arrive any quicker. So, I implore you: please stop staring down the track and do something productive -- like count lightbulbs, subway mice or homeless people -- instead.
PS: Wish me luck getting home. How long do you think it will take to walk from 186th street to 34th street?

Tis The Season to be Jolly

A recent news President George W. Bush announced that he authorized the NSA to monitor phone conversations in the United States (previously this was only done abroad), this announcement was only made after there was an illegal leak. So I say the US government should hire Santa Clauses PR people, not only does his organization (SCIA Santa Clauses Intelligence Agency) spy on you both day and night, they also have the right to flag you as naughty or nice. To make this whole thing even sicker, they then tell everyone about it. Not only there counterpart organizations, (CENSORED), but the whole world every single person. Now I personally don't mind the NSA listening to my phone calls, in fact I pity them, but I don't want the SCIA spying on me. Therefore to protect myself from disappearing in mysterious circumstances I am writing this from a secret bunker. Oh and to protect myself when I use the restroom I have all the newest technologies protecting me from every kind of surveillance, I can sell this equipment to you for the small sum of 1.98 billion dollars.

Evaluation Forms for Walking class.

So the semesters over and I they gave us teacher evaluations forms for my PE walking class (yes thats right, walking- it was a joke, not taking that again)

I had an answer for every question, here are a few:
Rate from 5-0

• Instructor's mastery of subject (my answer: 5, perfect form)
  
• Instructor's preparation for class (zero, often had shoes untied)
  
• . . . . . .
  
• . . . . . .
  
  
• Suggestions for the course:
  Make crawling a pre-requisite
  

Btw, I got a good grade on that matlab assignment but they didn't sign my waiver : (

I never win anything!

Ever notice how when people win a contest, or a lotto, or something on a radio station their first response is often an excited, "I never win anything!"? As if there is a group of ten to fifteen people out there who win all the contests, and only occasionally some lucky normal person slips by. In any case, I won something. A brand new iPod Nano. I got an email informing me of that fact. Now, I'm sure all of you have gotten an email, or a popup informing you that you have also won an iPod. The difference with the one I got was, that there was no need to complete an offer, rather, and I quote:

And the iPod goes to
Ticket # 7646148
#7646018
#7646086
Please stop by the Advising Center to present your ticket and redeem your
prize.
Congratulations!

Amazingly, I had Ticket #7646148 (try and make it out in the picture). In a "blatent attempt" to get people to sign up for academic advising, the YU Advising Center gave out raffle tickets to whoever signed up to meet with their advisor. So I scheduled a meeting with my advisor ("Yes, Eli, you should take all those physics and math courses"), and got my ticket. And won.
Unfortunately, I need a new computer to use my new Nano. Maybe the Advising Center will raffle off a computer next semester...

#include <aryeh.h>

I was watching Triple X State of The Union the other day, and in one scene there is this stereotypical college guy wearing a sweater and tie (in general looking like the kind of guy who spent most of his freshman year upside down in a garbage can, toilet or any other assorted place he probably didn’t want his head) who is hacking into the Department of Defenses database. They scroll though all the lovely screens of computers that look like they are doing very impressive stuff, and I thought I saw on one of these screens some C code and since I learnt C this year in school I decided to pause it and go back. Well looks good so far it has the necessary stdio.h library and then what’s this a function definition before a there is a function prototype, and why is there a space in the name of that function, also where are alls those variables coming from. Well the story is if I think that scene was funny I wonder what real hackers think about it.

To finish I will leave you with a joke (specifically programmed for programmers)

#include
main ( ) /*gcc compiler doesn’t demand the voids*/
{
printf(“A programmer and his wife come out of a supermarket\n”); /*shocking no bars involved*/
printf(“OUCH!!!”);
printf(“His wife realizes that she forgot to buy something and tells her husband \n”
“to watch the nine bags in their cart. When she comes back out she discovers\nhim messing around with the bags taking them out of the basket then putting\n\ them back in. She asks him what he is doing and he told her that he lost one\nof their bags, he then proceeded to count them 0,1,2,3…”);
}

/*This program was written by Aryeh Lansey on 12/13/2005 and is copyrighted and all that other legal stuff, so if you steal it we will have to kill you!!!*/

My Bike was Stolen

Coming home one day I get on an express train and pull out my laptop. I graph a couple population curves then the battery dies. For some reason, people are always fascinated by me changing the battery. The lady next to me asks curiously if I ran out of memory. I keep a straight face and kindly say "no, just changing the battery; with dell, all the parts look the same."

Anyway my bike was stolen from the train station. When a police officer stopped by to file a report I came *this close to offering him some Dunkin Donuts (left overs from an NJIT Hillel event).

Anyway, you should all call the number on this page, then tell your friends to do the same:
http://spam-spam.blogspot.com really, its the least we can do to fight spam

Hickory dickory dock

I was innocently sitting at my computer the other night when out of the corner of my eye I saw a brown blur. A really fast brown blur. For some reason my brain told me: Mouse. But I didn't believe it -- C'mon, a mouse on the 6th floor of a concrete walled building? On top of which, I really only thought I saw the blur out of the corner of my eye, right?
Then I heard the chewing coming from inside my desk. When I pulled out the bottom drawer a cute little mouse darted out, and dove under my backpack. I lifted up my backpack and the little guy went zipping (and skidding) across the floor and squeezed himself under my closet, which, needless to say, I could not lift. Later it ran across the room, and I think is now hiding under my roomate's bed.
So here's the question: How would you try to catch the mouse (ideally with something that may be lying around in a [my] dorm room) without killing it?

For a Special Treat: 2 for The Price of 1

I wasn't going to post today, but I came across a hillarious qoute in a news article about new information regarding the sinking of the titanic. At the end of the article it mentioned that Robert Ballard (he found the titanic wreck) had been unimpressed with his find and to qoute
"They found a fragment, big deal, am I surprised? No. When you go down there, there's stuff all over the place. It hit an iceberg and it sank. Get over it."

Plato's Dangerous Metaphors

Aryeh asked me to cover for him today. Hence, a very short post. This was part of my essay answer on an English midterm I took recently:

Plato feels that imitation of an imitation of Truth will lead man astray, leave him in the dark, and potentially even other, more dangerous metaphors.

Legal Stuff

We had a computer assignment due for math class- they made us sign our names to some legal sounding statement basically saying that we didn't cheat.

I decided to make fun of them by putting a legal statement of my own for them to sign (courtesy of Yahoo terms of service) basically saying they can't sue me if they get seizures while grading the assignment. I took a picture before I handed it in for all you blog-readers to see.


And about my last post- I was talking about planar projections with Eli when these ducks volunteered to hold the book's cover (a plane) at a certain angle for us. Thank you!

What are you up to?

On one of the few occasions when I took an elevator in my dorm building, some random person who I don't think I had ever spoken to before asked me, "So, what are you up to?"

To which I answered, "Two... .... ...Three... ... ...Four... ... ...Five... ... ...Six." And then the door opened on my floor and I left the elevator.

Foot The Meaning of Life

While bored in physics class I was scrawling in the margins of my notes and I produced Try and figure out what the answer to my question is, and while you are at it can you tell me where all my marbles are, the meaning of life, or why someone was going to build a huge aircraft carrier out of wood pulp and ice (even if it has amazing properties).

Sitting ducks

I've been getting way too much spam recently so I put up a filter. To send me e-mail now you need to fill the subject line with "Online Pharmaceutical"

Okay, you guys did really well by the slide rule, now give this a shot: I was explaining something to Eli with this setup- the picture should just ask for comments. (everybody should read Avi's)

I see London, I see France...

...I see a wonderful example of exponential decay! For reasons that I can't remember, I decided to record the number of cars burned in France during each night of their recent riot season in an Excel spreadsheet. When plotted, I discovered that this number dropped exponentially each day. And, before I found which day the number of burnt cars reached the "near-normal" amount of 93, I was able to predict when it would happen! Here is the approximating equation (note that it only holds true for the range of days starting Nov. 11 and ending when the number of cars burned returns to normal), and the plot (click on the image for a clearer picture):If I get around to it, I will see if I can derive a theoretical reason for this plot, which might yield an equation which allows for the ~93 cars burned regularly, and might show us just how good the French cops are. Stay tuned...

Incedentally, another potential case of exponential decay was cut short by Xanga. David Ludwig, who murdered his girlfriend's parents, had a blog hosted by Xanga. The day that the address for his blog was posted by various news sources, his SiteMeter log showed that his page visits spiked to 95,000. After that, the number of visits each day started dropping exponentially, until Xanga shut it down.

In any case, one can't help but marvel at the function whose wonderful properties can be expressed succinctly (ignoring arbitrary constants) as:

10 Ways to Know That It Is Getting Cold Out

You know that it’s getting cold outside…
1. When you go outside your ears fall off.
2. That strange shiny stuff inside that weird glass tube with the little lines on it shrinks.
3. While biking you have to dodge icebergs (NOT ICE CUBES) or risk going down like the Titanic (or at least like a 200 pound enraged lump).
4. You notice strange multicolored parasites have infested the human population and control the humans by attaching to their head, hands and torso.
5. All the fuzzy animals go to Florida (just as a side point, did you every notice that old people tend to be fuzzy around the edges, must be because they’ve lost their grip on reality and are starting to break up).
6. People with signs the say “The End of The World is Coming!!!” start standing on street corners (obviously they missed out on the fact that the end of the world was last Wednesday).
7. Human start strapping sticks to their feet and then hurl themselves down frozen mountains.
8. All your neighbors start calling your mother to get you to clear that toxic white stuff of their driveways.
9. Angels start falling from the sky and then have to walk back to heaven but before they do they leave tracks in that white stuff (I have been studying these tracks and determined that all Angels are the size of children).
10. When the change in Enthalpy (H) of the Northern Hemispherical system becomes positive, due to change in Heat (q) being negative.

An open letter to the author of Stone Soup

Jan,
I'm glad you are now expert after googling Meleva, you should really have googled Einstein instead- that Nobel prize money that went to a divorce settlement- he won it for the photoelectric effect, not relativity.
Even so, a few controversial people say "the ideas may have been Albert's, but Mileva did the mathematics." I guess then we should call them the Milelva transformations instead of . . . the Lorenz transformations! See Einstein is not known for being a mathematician because it was his ideas that were revolutionary, not the math behind them.
The bottom line is that even if it was true then I say Big Whoop. Stop belittling female scientist by trying to claim the most famous scientific discovery of the 20th century.
Give Jan a piece of your mind here.
PS: NJIT made an official press release about me and a friend last week, Press Release
Classic media, messed the story up a bit, see the real deal here on my website.

Gremlins on the Volga River?

Like many people, I occasionally watched Bug Bunny cartoons while growing up. One that I always remembered was called "Russian Rhapsody," where little Russian gremlins chop up Hitler's plane, all the while singing "We are gremlins from the Kremlin..." in a rather catchy tune.

Over the summer, I was watching a British TV show called "Ray Mears' Extreme Survival" where this guy named, surprisingly, Ray Mears shows how to survive in random places around the world without any real tools, food and so on. One of these episodes was on how to survive in the Belarus forests. Along the way, he told the story of a group of Jewish partisans who fought the Nazis in those forests. At some point in the show, I noticed that the background music was the tune of "Gremlins from the Kremlin," in choral form!!! I couldn't imagine why the BBC would want to use a Loony Tunes tune in a serious pseudo-documentary about the partisans. So I figured that Carl W. Stalling, the music person for Russian Rhapsody, must have made use of an already existing song. But what song was it?

After much Google searching, I discovered that the Gremlins are singing a song that is based off of a combination of two Russian folk songs: "Song of the Volga Boatmen" and "Dark Eyes."

Now, for your listening pleasure this blog is proud to present, in convenient MP3 form (please right click and save the files to your computer):
Gremlins from the Kremlin (6.04 MB)
Ray Mears' Version of Song of the Volga Boatmen (1.74 MB)
Red Star Army Chorus' Version of Song of the Volga Boatmen (3.49 MB)
Red Star Army Chorus' Version of Dark Eyes (4.2 MB)

And, for your viewing pleasure, in convenient (104.2 MB) .mov form [thanks to Area 77]:
Russian Rhapsody

Finally, I would like to point out that the Song of the Volga Boatmen works well for Lecha Dodi.

What is the shortest distance from point A to point B in New York City

I am a firm believer that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, however people look at me strange when there are things in the way.

The day I got on the wrong train

I took the wrong train one day last week . . . on purpose. The regular homeless were particularly delusional and my train was coming late, so I hopped on a Bayhead train passing the Airport station. When I showed the conductor my Edison ticket he said “you’re on the wrong train, switch at the Airport”
I lied “I was afraid of that” and happily got off.
As I sat in the cool breeze, I thought of other less adventurous commuters waiting in the dark smokey tunnel that is Penn station, the land of crumbling concrete. I was sitting in the sun on a clean bench that must be 50 years newer than those antiques at Penn. There were a few travelers around, but no crazy people (some nuts occasionally turn up, but they are quickly booked for the next flight to California). It was so nice, and even quiet, I thought about coming to study sometime. Then a loud airplane (flaps and wheels down, ready for landing) reminded me where I was. No loss really, because I don’t study anyway; I do like watching low flying airplanes though, so I plan to go back the next time my train is late.

Shooting the bull

Princeton professor emeritus of philosophy Harry G. Frankfurt has written a book entitled, "On Bullshit." The Princeton University Press website is kind enough host a video interview with Dr. Frankfurt, where he steps in intriguing and philosophically slippery topics such as, "What is bullshit? [Dial-up]" (leave it to a philosopher to ignore the obvious answer) and "Can anything be done about bullshit? [Dial-up]". In any case, I find this to be highly ironic since much, if not most of philosophy is, in fact, bullsh*t.

Sally Saves the Seashells by the Sea Shore!!!

Stop using chalkboards. Everytime you do, you are killing inoccent sea creatures millions of years ago. You and your "Calcium Carbonate," Shell Killers. Buy Whiteboards, and save the shells and afterwards, if you are in the mood, save the whales, and the condor, and the pengiun on the telly, and the ostriches and the...

My New Toolbox

So I got a crimper the other day because I needed to use it. I've touched one maybe twice in my life and now I own one!
Anyway, I had nowhere to put it so I bought a toolbox. Now my new toolbox looked kind of empty so I decided to put in all my tools.
Why don't you leave a comment about what you think is in the long leather case.

I stay up all night wondering if there's a dog.

Am I the only one who saw this Yahoo News headline and read "Researchers may have DI'd dyslexia gene"?

High Speed Chase, Wait A Second We Are In A Blimp!!!

While biking to school the other day I came across an interesting spectacle: two blimps in a line, one behind the other. I was thinking, "Wow! That’s the first time I have every seen two blimps at the same time," and then I thought, "Cool! An intense blimp chase." I could just see James Bond hanging out of the windows and firing at the other blimp, and then I thought, "Wow, what a stupid high-speed getaway vehicle." But of course, what if you have a ton of slow speed aircrafts just waiting to get picked off by enemies who hardly have to aim (missing a blimp is like missing a shot at the wall of a barn from inside the barn). But than again you always come across the great brainchild of some idiotic person and then you get this:

Am I missing something here? This just looks to stupid, and to make it even dumber I came across a lovely piece of information.

And here it is:

Army buys $12M in blimps for Iraq

WASHINGTON, July 5 (UPI) -- The U.S. Army is buying 16 tactical blimps for use in Iraq from a Columbia, Md., company, TCOM, L.P. announced Tuesday.

The deal is worth $12 million, and the unmanned, tethered blimps will be built in Elizabeth City, N.C.

The Tactical Aerostat System operates at about 1,000 feet, providing surveillance and a communications relay system aloft for up to a week at a time.

The contract award is part of the Rapid Aerostat Initial Development system contract the Army has with Raytheon.

The airship's use was demonstrated last fall over Washington, when an A-170 manned blimp hovered over the city for 24 hours. The helium-based blimp can fly for hours even if pierced by small arms fire, according to the Army.

TCOM blimps are also being used by the Marine Airborne Re-Transmission System, a program developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to extend Marine radio communication beyond line-of-sight in Iraq.

The blimp provides an airborne relay for UHF, VHF, SINCGARS and EPLPRS radios, in addition to standard analog radios. The actual relays are contained in a ground system. If the aerostat were shot down, the radios would not be compromised.

I even found a picture of a concept blimp that is being tested now that has been designed to move 500 tons 12,000 miles in less than 7 days, and do you know that they call it (pause for dramatic effect)…The Walrus:
Wow the pig on the side really adds to the intense fear I feel when I look at this. In fact I think I need to go put on a change of pants, so if you will excuse me.

Unofficial Official Intro Post

What? A Blog of course.

Who? The three Lansey brothers: Eli, Yoni/Jonathan and Aryeh.

Why? Because lots of interesting stuff goes on around us, often unnoticed. We'd like to share it with the world.

Where? In collections of oriented magnetic regions on metal plates, which can be accessed at: lanseybrothers.blogspot.com

When? Yoni/Jonathan on Sundays, Aryeh on Tuesdays and Eli on Thursdays (in height order). That's 3 times a week, so you can come back every other day for something new and potentially exciting.

In convenient table form:

Sundays: Yoni/Jonathan Tuesdays: Aryeh Thursdays: Eli

Product placement with a twist

And now an important announcement from our sponsors:

(Please note that all unimportant, idiotic, and pointless, waste of words, or anything actually about our sponsor has been censored and replaced with the word “Blah”)

The Blah Blah has important Blah Blah PHYSICS Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah. Blah Blah Blah this Blah is Blah a Blah Blah MATH Blah. Blah Blah somtimes Blah Blah subliminal Blah message Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah fish go splat Blah Blah. Blah BOOKS Blah Blah Blah ENGINEERING Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah a Blah Blah artichoke Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah SCIENCE Blah Zork Blah Blah Blah Blah COMPUTERS Blah Blah Blah Blah!!!
Thank you,
BLAAAHHHHHH!!!!!

And now for something completely different!!!

Scholarly reconstruction of a lost Dr. Seuss manuscript

Jonathan and Yoni (both of his multiple personalities) claim to have too much schoolwork, and are therefore unable to post today. Since I go to Yeshiva University, which has and will have off for most of this month, I am filling in for them.

However, since I am lazy, and it's not really my "turn," here's the final paper I turned in for a Modern Physics course taught by Dr. Gabriel Cwilich which I took in Fall 2004.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It is well known that Seuss had a PhD. What is not as well known is that his PhD was in physics. His renowned children’s classic, One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, was actually originally intended to introduce a few concepts of physics to children. Yet, Dr. Seuss’s publisher made some changes before publishing the final version. I managed to uncover an original manuscript, and I am glad to present a few pieces from Dr. Seuss’s magnificent work:

One Shift, Two Shift, Red Shift, Blue Shift
One shift, two shift, red shift, blue shift.
Black shift?! Blue shift! Old shift, new shift.
This one’s from a little star.
This one’s from a little far.
Say, what a lot of shifts there are.

Yes.
Some are red.
And some are blue.
Some are old.
And some are new.

Newton’s sad.
And Einstein’s glad.
And Einstein dressed in stripes and plaid!
Why are they sad and glad and plaid?
I do not know.
Go ask your dad.
Some are thin (those traveling fast).
And some are fat (those traveling slow).
The fat one has a yellow hat.
From there to here,
From here to there,
Funny physics things are everywhere.

Here are neutrinos who like to run.
They run for fun in the hot, hot sun.
Oh me! Oh my!
Oh me! Oh my!
What a lot of funny things go by.
Some have two peaks and some have four.
Some have six peaks and some have more.
Where do they come from?
Einstein wouldn’t say.
But I bet Schrödinger might shout “Hurray!”
We see some come up fast.
We see some move down slow.
Some are strange.
And some, charm, show.
Some at the top so high.
And some at the bottom, so low.
Not one of them is like another.
Don't ask us why.
Go ask your mother.

Say!
Look at his energies!
One, two, three ...
How many quanta do I see?
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.
He has eleven!
Eleven!
This is something new.
I wish I had eleven too!
My Hat is old. (Big Bang)
My teeth are Au. (Various elements form)
I have a bird I like to hold. (Life on earth)
My shoe is off. (Half-life of radioactive shoes)
My foot is cold. (Sun runs out of energy)
My shoe is off. (Big Crunch… ↓)
My foot is cold.
I have a bird I like to hold.
My hat is old.
My teeth are gold.
And my story is all told.

I like to box.
How I like to box!
So, everyday, I box a Gox.
In yellow socks I box my Gox.
I box in yellow Gox box socks.
And in this box, the Gox accepts limited energy blocs.
Due to de Broglie wavelength locks.
Hop! Hop! Hop!
I am an energized ElectronYop.
All I like to do is hop from atomic radius top to atomic radius top.
I hop from left to right and then...
Hop! Hop!
I drop right back again.
I like to hop all day and night,
From right to left and left to right
Why do I like to hop, hop, hop?
I do not know.
Go ask Bohr’s pop.

Who am I?
My name is Ish.
On my hand I have a dish.
I have this dish to help me wish.
When I wish to make a wish.
I wave my hand with a big swish swish.
Then I say, “I wish for a fish!”
And I get (E=mc²) fish right on my dish.
So … if you wish to wish a wish,
You may swish for fish with my Ish wish dish

Did you ever fly a kite in bed (and calculate the forces acting on the kite)?
Did you ever walk with ten cats on your head (to show how balancing torques can create systems in equilibrium)?
Did you ever milk this kind of cow? (Clearly a metaphor for Modern Physics [see chapter one of S. Weinberg’s The First Three Minutes])
Well, we can do it.
We know how.
If you never did, you should.
Physics is fun
And fun is good.

And now good night.
It is time to sleep.
So we will sleep with our pet Zeep.
Today is gone.
Today was fun
Tomorrow is another one.
Every day, from here to there,
Funny physics things are everywhere!

According to Google Earth, the eye of Hurricane Wilma is currently 1,589.77 miles (or 1,503,400.14 smoots, which is 5,595,989.41 cubits) from our sukkah.