Elevator for Access by Handicapped People

Rock climbers are more likely to be using this elevator! Take a look if you pass Metropark station on the Northeast Corridor line of NJ transit. Try not to imagine what happens to the poor bloke who wheels himself out . . . .



A closeup with the handicapped accessible sign clearly visible.

Awkward

I came across these urinals in YU. It's hard to tell from the picture, but if one of these are being used, there's really not much space for a person to stand and use the other. I have no idea what they were thinking when they built this.

Tsezar's Happy Eggs

At first I thought his eggs lookes slightly worried, or sad- poor Tsezars Eggs. Then I tilted the pan and a smile appeared on the bottom! Tsezar's eggs were very happy!

Two kittens

Almost two weeks ago, while leaving shul on Saturday night, I noticed two kittens in an alley huddled together and shivering. We couldn't leave them out there to freeze, so Stacy and I brought them home.
They were scared, cold and hungry little kittens. You'd put out food and they'd scarf it down as fast as possible, then try to hide. Fortunately, by now they've been de-flea'd, de-wormed, (more or less) litterbox-trained, and most certainly fed. So now they're friendlier and much more active.
Now the trouble is keeping them off our furniture, etc. And, after seeing some of their antics, I'm convinced that whoever coined the phrase "curiosity killed the cat" probably had a cat.
Oh, and it seems like we're keeping the little critters. The one with black in its fur is called Gravity and the other is Widget.

Intro to Drawing and RateMyProfessors.com

I am taking a course "Intro to Drawing" next semester at Rutgers Newark. I checked the professor up on RateMyProfessors.com and it appears that I'm in for a hard time (to remain un-named). For your convinience, I have highlighted the funniest part of this rating in red:

The class itself is decent, but this teacher makes it unbearable. She constantly makes unfunny jokes, and will confuse the hell out of you in class. Not only that but she is VERY ANNOYING. Take another teacher or take another class, but do NOT take her, trust me. This class is torture, it feels like it belongs in a scene from SAW. TERRIBLE TEACHER.

Lucky for me, this student did not take Intro to Drawing with this Prof. my hope is that class I'm taking will be less like Saw, and a little more like being in a scene from scary movie.

It turns out that I'm taking a section with a different professor, this one's report was a lot better:
"I couldve slept and still get an A."

Finals and Two Kittens

I have finals, and as of last Saturday night we have two kittens, so this short post will have to tide you over for now.

CAD Final Project

Sorry about this being late, youtube was being a pain.

I posted about my Advanced CAD class a little while ago, now it is time to post about the final project for the class. My team decided to modle a mechanical clock, not much more to say. Enjoy (It took me around 9 hours to set up and capture these animations.

Pointless "Use" of Resources and Potential Residences

No optical illusions here, this is approxomately 3 and a half square feet of grass enclosed by a gated fence. For the life of me I do not understand why!

Perhaps it is to prevent homeless from building a house in this corner, truth be told my current roomate (Ike) and I considered this option ourselves upon first passing this spot (well before settling in our current place).

Feed me stray cat

I recently came across a nifty program which allows you to change the "Ready" message on certian printers. So I gave it a trial run:
(The "To" following "FEED ME STRAY CAT" is the beginning of "Toner Low".)
Unfortunately, the YU library's new printing method doesn't allow you print things 0 pages long, so it didn't work there.

Explanation for the Church Notice Boards

• We clearly see the Church reaching out to the younger Instant Messanger generation
• They ran out of letters so they needed to make do with what they had
• Somebody from Newark *stole some of the letters to make their own sign
• No other letters besides "R" will be welcome, and only the letters "B" and "E" will have blessings by this church

Any other explanations R welcome, BE clever!

How hard could it really be?

I saw this in the YU library:
Are there actually people out there who need instructions for using a stapler? (Rhetorical question, you don't need to answer).

Also, update on the parody contest: Because deadlines sometimes work, please have your entries in by the end of December.

Computer Aided Design

Well it is 10:30 at night, and I am still at Rutgers doing work. So I though I would let you enjoy my work with me. I have been working on Pro-E, which is a 3D modeling software. The work I have been doing is a combination of HW and my final project in the class. The HW is the boat and the engine, for the engine I only assembled the parts and animated it. In the boat anything that is grey I made; I also made it move (the paddles row). The final project is a mechanical clock, so here is the escapement gear and the gear attached to the spring that powers the clock. As for my grammar, its late I am tiered and I have been working all day.

Leopard Slug

What is this crazy animal all about?!?!?!

I found it one evening at my doorstep in Newark! Carefull these slugs have been known to eat small babies when these Leopards escape from the zoo or venture from the african savana into suburbs . . .
Does anyone actually know about these things?

The Absent-minded Professor

I am taking a course with a rather absent-minded professor, which can be equally frustrating and amusing. This professor hands out photocopied notes on a regular basis. These notes were written somewhere between the 1970's and mid 1980's, and have been copied and handed out to students since then. In the midst of notes discussing the equivalence principle in quantum mechanics (i.e. quantum mechanics should behave like classical mechanics in certain limits) there was this rather magnificent doodle (keep in mind, this doodle has been handed out to over two decades worth of students...):

Anyway, some of you may recall that some time ago I argued that Dr. Suess had a Ph.D. in physics. Now I think he may have had a ghost writer...
In any case, I decided to color in the professor's illustration:

Oh, and Happy Turkey-Day to everyone.

Doublet, Source or Sink

Warning geekiness will follow, if not interested just skip to next section. Source or sink? Well as it turns out a doublet it both. It is where you have a source at –B and a sink at B then you let B → 0. So basically you have a source (radial flow outward) and a sink (radial flow inward) in the same place, the flow resembles a dipoles field lines. Why do I mention this, well as it happens if you have a doublet and put it in a uniform flow (a flow at constant speed) the system mathematically models a cylinder in a uniform flow. Now the cool thing that arises from this is what is called the D’Alembert’s Paradox, which is if you solve for the net force acting on the “cylinder” it works out to be zero which can’t be right since the constant flow should apply a force. This was solved by Ludwig Prandtl who introduced the concept of boundary layers, this allowed for there to be a force. Now the really cool geeky thing about this is that if you can make a doublet and use a superfluid for your fluid you can theoretically get no net force on the cylinder in a uniform flow.

Now on to the fun for everyone part. Based upon the stuff above (which you don’t need to read) if you add a vortex to the system, that is take a spinning cylinder in a flow you get a lift force acting perpendicular to the initial flow, this is called the Magnus Effect. From all this you get Anton Flettner who invented the Flettner Rotor Ship.


This actually crossed the Atlantic. He also invented a rotor mill (which I can't find a good picture of), which used the same principle as the ship; it was a windmill that for the paddles had spinning cylinders.

Sorry about the massive amount of technical geeky stuff in this post.

Debris Free Zone

In the cellar of the engineering building at City College there's a hallway which has this sign hanging at regular intervals:
They are clearly very serious about this: not even any cardboard!
But then again, maybe they aren't so serious:
It is like this along the entire hallway.

Turbulent Flow

Sorry that I forgot to post yesterday. So for today I will post some cool pictures I took a couple of months ago.

I just found this amazingly cool, the flow started out as a laminar (smooth, steady) flow, and then became a turbulent flow.

On Fancyness of Garbage Cans

A trash can in Newark NJ



A trash can in Calais France


A Rubbish Bin in Birmingham England

Who wins??

Pointless

I was recently flipping through a Hebrew-English dictionary and came across the following thing:
For those who can't read Hebrew, the middle word word is actually pronounced haredi (with a gutteral h). So basically, they translate the word by giving its transliteration. How helpful.
(I know, there are other translations as well, but why give the transliteration of only haredi? It's not like haredi is an English word.)

Welcome To Winter

Well winter is finaly here and with it exams, I have had a test or quiz every week for the past six weeks and for another two weeks. So, pretty much nothing has been happening for a while. However things should pick up in the near future. In the meantime please enjoy this comic I found.

Candy Stacking

For those of you who don't know, I'm living in Newark these days, and my mom has supplied us with some candy. Naturally we don't just eat the candy . . . this particular tower was stacked by the prodigy Ariel.



The view outside my apartment

Well, which is it?

In honor of our 3rd year of blogging, we decided to hold . . . a contest!!! We figured it would be fun if other people wrote posts in our style, parodying us, etc. So, people should email us blog posts in the style of Eli, Yoni, Aryeh and Stacy. The best posts will be posted to the blog for all to see. You can email 'em to one of the addresses below:

Now, on to the regularly scheduled blog post:
I recently received an email about the Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowships. These fellowships attempt "to blah blah blah diversity of the blah blah blah by blah blah blah ethnic and racial diversity, to blah blah blah diversity, and to blah blah blah diversity blah blah blah." The details, as you can tell, are not so important.
In the eligibility information for these fellowships they state that eligibility is limited to "all citizens or nationals of the United States regardless of race, national origin, religion, gender..." OK, that's good - anyone is eligible, no matter what their race, etc. is.
But then I noticed the "positive factors" towards "choosing a successful candidate". Along with stuff like good grades (bleh), promise for future achievement, and blah blah blah loves diversity, was the following line:
"Membership in one or more of the following groups whose underrepresentation in the American professoriate has been severe and longstanding..."
And here I thought that this fellowship was open to everyone, "regardless of race" and "national origin." Silly me.
Anyway, since male Jews are certainly not underrepresented in the American professoriate, I marked the email as spam.

Blank Template

… and we are back. Last week I had an exam in Thermodynamics. One of the problems asked if the problem could occur adiabatically. I answered because the vessel is made in the USA and therefore very well insulated so heat transfer would not occur. To explain why this is funny, every time we had a problem in class involving no heat transfer the professor would say it was because the system was made in the US. I got the problem wrong because I didn’t explain about in fact it was because I didn’t say or some other stuff which you are probably not interested in (the fact that the TA graded it probably didn’t help.

It's been nearly two years...

and over 300 posts ... so we decided we needed a short vacation from our (more or less) regular posting schedule. This month is particularly busy for us, because of all the Jewish holidays and classes we're missing. However, don't run away just yet! We'll be back on Tuesday, Oct 30 for the two year anniversary extravaganza! And, who knows? Maybe one of us will post something in the intervening time, anyway!
If you feel that without regular posts you might forget to check back, we recommend subscribing to get our blog posts via email (you'll only get blog posts, no unwanted spam) or with our RSS feed. See the subscription options on the right sidebar.
And see you back at the end of October!

More ID cards and email addresses

My status as a graduate student is somewhat complicated. I'm a student at the City University of New York's doctoral granting school The Graduate Center (GC). But in the CUNY system, if you're getting a Ph.D. in a science, you take many of the intro-level classes and do your research at a specific CUNY school. In my case, that's City College (CCNY). What this means is that I'm officially a student of The GC. As such, I register, get library access, a student ID, email address, etc. through them. However, I get advised, take some classes, etc. through CCNY. Although my GC ID works at CCNY, they prefer that I get a CCNY ID and email address. So I did.
However, my research will be done out of the Benjamin Levich Institute. This is a joint research thingy between the physics and chemical engineering departments at CCNY, Columbia University and a couple other schools. To make a rather long story short (maybe I'll write about it another time), because of this, I'm taking a class on polymers and soft materials at Columbia. This means another ID and email address.Careful readers will note that my CCNY ID has me listed under the Levich Institute. In principle I can get yet another ID with me listed under the physics department, but I haven't had time for that yet.

Mysterious Military Mover

This vehicle is sometimes parked in front of a house in my neighborhood. I can’t figure out what it is, and the real shock is that neither can any of my friends. It is clearly a really cool armored vehicle (although I would hate to see the gas mileage it gets), probably military, that has somehow been purchased by a civilian. If any of you know what it is I would like to know.

Zwetschgenkuchen!

I was supposed to blog for Yoni yesterday but, that didn’t happen. So I’ll blog today instead. I am including some pictures from the production of this year’s first batch of Zwetschgenkuchen! Mmmmm, my favorite, and either Eli’s family is a bunch of really good fakers or they really liked it too.


If you really want to make these, let me know and I'll give you the needed modifications to the linked recipe as per Oma.

Li’Shana Tova Umituka

I would like to start this post with a moment of silence in memory of all those who perished in the 911 attack. It’s the sixth anniversary but feels like only yesterday.

I would like to wish all our readers a happy and health new year (whether you are Jewish or not). Also, I would like to say Happy Anniversary Eli and Stacy. Additionally, I remind you that Eli will not be posting this Thursday due to Rosh Hashana.

Joshua Tree National Park

I've been back in NJ for a bit now, but still haven't blogged about the excitement of my Joshua Tree camping trip. We rented a economy car but they upgraded us to a pickup truck- much more convenient for 4 wheel drive roads. We went during the meteor shower, I would recommend watching such showers in desserts by the way, no clouds.


Pickups are kind of usefull actually- I biked to the rental place then just threw it in the back of the pickup, no problems.

A blast from the past

I recently discovered an interesting vending machine in the CCNY library. But before I tell you about it, let me show you a modern vending machine:
This machine vends iPods and iPod accessories. It's super-fancy: It takes credit cards, has a touch screen, etc. Pretty cool.

Anyway, here is CCNY's (functioning!) vending machine:
But they are slowly picking up on new technologies. They're selling 256MB jump drives for around $60.

Where The Wild Things Are

My family’s’ yard is known for being host to a large variety of wildlife. Up until this point the list included rabbits, groundhogs, chipmunks, mice, fox, turkey, and deer, however I can now add to the list of animals some kind of hawk and the really cool new one coyote. Yep, that’s right we have now had a coyote in the backyard.

I would like to say that this is most probably a very ill coyote. It was acting very strange, additionaly its very scrawny. Also, I saw it walk right past a rabbit that couldn't have been more than 10 feet away.