Big Bear Lake Solar Observatory

Now for a bit of NJIT propoganda. We operate a Solar Observatory in California . . . how could I not visit my NJIT friend and get a tour. Special note should be taken of the awesome road my KGI friends let me drive both ways on (meaning I drove well enough the first time).

The Observatory Website


How cool!


Spotted this on the hike.

Non-post

According to the BNL directory, I am a "Non-Employee." I'm not a "Summer Intern" or "Grunt Work Specialist." I'm this mysterious "Non-Employee" creature. Anyway, this didn't stop them from giving me an ID card with some pretty impressive legal wording on the back:I wonder if blogging constitutes "misuse."

Also, even though Aryeh beat me to it, here's a picture of our newly tovelled lab glassware (disclaimer: fear ye not, some of the pieces in the picture have not yet been dunked, and hence can still sport their price tags):What Aryeh failed to mention was that these things cost 99 cents a each, while they typically go for much more. And, for all similarly crazy people, you can find them (while they last) at Amazing Savings.

The Quest For The Perfect Dihydrogen Monoxide Storage Utensil

For those of you who don't know, I have my own personal Dihydrogen Monoxide bottle for drinking Dihydrogen Monoxide out of. Now I finally have two brand new Dihydrogen Monoxide bottles purchased specifically for me to use as Dihydrogen Monoxide bottles. They are two lovely 1000 mL volumetric Flask. Eli and Stacy also got two, however they also managed to get three 500 mL graduated cylinders. I can say that we where probably the first people to every tovel lab ware in a kaylim Mikvah, but not the first people to use toveled kaylim as lab ware.

O' Gazoods of Wiggling Piles!

It has come to my attention that there is a pile of 3 words that are each far under-used, sometimes even used incorrectly,

I list the words here with their proper meaning:

• piles (describes/replaces any object)
• wiggle (replaces any verb) [wiggling wiggled . . .]
• gazood (abnormally large amount) [plural: gazoods]

Now I'm not sure why were picking on such a serious and well though out speech to wiggle about on this blog (with gazoods of material out there); but here is a short example of proper usage by the great linguist Abraham Lincoln:

Gazoods of years ago our fathers wiggled on this continent, a pile of states, wiggled in Liberty, and wiggling to the proposition that all piles of men wiggle equally.

Now we are wiggling in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any pile so conceived and so dedicated, can long wiggle. We are wiggling on a great pile of that war. We have come to wiggle gazoods of that field, as a pile for those . . .

And as long as were talking about language: the word "prominent" should never ever be used to describe a person.

Beware of flying crows

My current bank is Wachovia which has about a billion branches and ATMs near my house. However, this summer I am in the middle of nowhere. When I used Wachovia's online branch finder (why else?) to find the nearest branch to Brookhaven National Laboratory it came up with a result 26.85 miles away:

University of Bridgeport
221 University Avenue
Bridgeport, CT 06604

First of all, note that the nearest bank branch is over twenty-six miles away!
Second, for those of you unfamiliar with the geography of the area, here is a map:I live by the red arrow (note the particle accelerator ring), and Bridgeport (green arrow) is across Long Island Sound. Granted, I could take the Port Jefferson ferry, but still, 102 miles on roads is a bit much.
Fortunately, I was able to find a bank branch that didn't involve such a trek.

Golf Statistics

According to statistics one out of every two golfers will suffer some kind off injury on the course in a year. Out of the about 30 golf campers I have had, only one has been hit by a golf ball (in the face) and he came back to camp the following day. So we can see that I am better than statistics involving silly pants.

San Fran Panoramas

You should know the Panoramic mode of Cannon digital cameras is really awesome.
The pictures here are a bit small for some reason but I think you get the effect.




Sunset as the fog rolled in.


I think it makes the redwoods look taller.


The Bay area.

17th of Tammuz

Today is the 17th of Tammuz. So today's post will not be funny.
If you've been reading the news recently, you know that Israel is on the brink of war. Again. On this day the walls of Jerusalem were breached by the Romans, leading to the destruction of the Second Temple. Once again, our walls have been breached.
Today is a fast day. Hopefully our prayers and actions today will lead to a different outcome than that of 1936 years ago.
And let us merit to see the time that Zechariah spoke of, when "the fast of the fourth month [17 Tammuz] and the fast of the fifth month [9 Av]...will be to the house of Judah [days of] joy and happiness and good occasions" (3:19).

כה אמר יהוה צבאות, צום הרביעי וצום החמישי וצום השביעי וצום העשירי יהיה לבית יהודה לששון ולשמחה, ולמעדים טובים...
זכריה ג:יט

Mirror, Mirror, on The Wall

A small post for a late post. I started teaching Karate Camp this week. It takes place in a dance room. The room is square with two walls of the room covered in mirrors. I noticed that wherever I stood in the room I had a reflection at the point where to two mirrored walls met.

San Fransisco

I went to san fransisco last week, here are some photos:


This is me standing on some artistic Arrow thing. I was impressed. Thanks Garwin for taking a great picture.


I used to think that pyramid building didn't exist since I only saw it in those Bank Ads.


Next week I'll post a panorama shot of the bay area.


They just happened to be doing a Lion Dance when we visited chinatown, no fireworks but they set off a 30 ft chain of firecrackers (notice the smoke).


Redwoods are amazing.



Next week I'll post some Redwood panoramics.


this cop was nice enough to pose for me with his dorky club.




We went to the top of some tall Hotel and I asked this guard if we could see a view. He takes us to this restricted roof area. Moral: It doesn't hurt to ask.


The farmers market near the capital building.

My computer is cooler than your computer

Some time ago I wrote about the near death of my old desktop computer. Aryeh miscalculated the total hard disk space that Rutgers needed for its students as around 4.8 petabytes while it is, in reality, only 0.009 PB.
But the computer system I am using this summer beats the socks off any others that I've used.
I am using the RCF (RHIC [Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider] Computing Facility). This system "provides the bulk of the dedicated computer processing, storage and analysis resources." It's a pretty darn impressive system:
It has 8 petabyes of storage space (8,388,608 GB) as well as a 14 TFLOPS processing farm (over 4000 processors). That means it's roughly 14,000 times faster than any current desktop computer and has over 9,300 times the storage space of my computer.
You can check out some cool pictures and more information about the system here.

Ready, Aim, Fire, Fail, Miss, and the Works

On this lovely day 230 years ago the USA declared its independence. Today North Korea tested four short-medium range missiles, all four turned into Fourth of July fireworks. The moral of the story North Korea likes fireworks as much as us. They however where disappointed when Discovery had a successful launch, they will have to wait until later tonight for the real fireworks. Happy Fourth of July to all you Americans out there, and the required HA, HA to all our English friends.

Free California Food

(Yoni had some text here, which I accidentally deleted. This is a poor attempt to reconstruct it:)Some fruits are not ripe yet, but the tomatoes are.