As George Orwell so clearly demonstrated, our language is important not just because it determines how we speak, but because it greatly influences how we think. It’s not surprising, then, that advocacy speech seeks to carefully control the use and meaning of its words, while simultaneously demeaning or muddling the words chosen by the opposition. But if you think such behavior is confined to the ungentlemanly pursuit of modern politics, think again! Consider, as a harmless example, the sport of running.

I am a runner, not a jogger. It is a sport for which I train; it is not exercise. (The difference – I compete in races, even if “winning” to me is beating my personal goal for the race.) I don’t have running clothes, it is equipment (compare running 10 miles in the Texas heat in a cotton T-shirt versus a technical shirt and you’ll know what I mean). The words and their use are all meant to convey a seriousness of purpose, something more than just having fun or getting fit.

Another common phrase among runners is the “long run”. How long does a run have to be before runners consider it long? It took me a while being around runners before I finally figured out the exact definition. Here it is: A long run is either the longest run you’ve ever done, or any run that is 20+ miles long. Thus, the first time you run ten miles you can call it a long run, but not the second time. Any time you run 20 miles or more it is a long run.

I had a long run this morning. 25 miles. My longest to date.

Aside: Speaking of long runs, my next door neighbor turned 100 years old yesterday. He still lives independently with his wife (they’ve been married for over 70 years) in the house they bought in 1942. He is my hero. Congratulations, Carroll!

Now that I have started distance running, many friends have asked me if I am enjoying a “runner’s high”, that burst of endorphins that comes from a body’s response to prolonged and inexcusable abuse. I know that my experience with various types of highs is more limited than others (I admit it – I’ve lived a boring life), but I don’t think that any part of running a very long distance can be compared with getting high. But don’t get me wrong – there is pleasure associated with running. In particular, I feel really great when I stop.

That reminds me of an old joke: A man walks into a doctor’s office, raises his arm over his head, and says, “It hurts when I do this.” Doctor: “Then stop doing that.”

But I don’t think I’m confusing a lack of pain for pleasure. The feeling is much more than that. At the end of a long run, where I really wear myself out, once I get my breath back I feel totally and completely relaxed. All the stress of the day or week has escaped the muscles that are now too tired to support it. And if I’m lucky enough to be able to spend the rest of the day on the couch with a cold drink and the Sunday paper, that stressless state can last a long time. As far as I’m concerned, that’s better than any high I can think of.

Last Saturday I attended commencement ceremonies at my alma mater, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a small science and engineering college in Terre Haute, Indiana. It is the first time I have sat through a graduation ceremony at Rose since my own graduation way back in 1982. It was a bit different this time, seeing it from the outside, so to speak. The graduating class of ‘09 was quite a bit bigger than in ’82, and as a result the ceremony quite a bit longer. The commencement speaker was a bit different as well.

I don’t remember the name of the guy who spoke at my college graduation, but I know why he was chosen. He was a Rose grad whose most famous contribution to the engineering profession was the invention of the 2 liter plastic soda bottle. And he spoke about what he knew – how he invented the process for making those bottles. Inspiring.

This year was a little different. The national reputation of Rose-Hulman has grown in the past 27 years, in large part due to ten years of being ranked #1 by US News and World Report in its category (engineering schools that don’t offer PhDs). As a result, the prominence of commencement speakers has also grown, with the governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, Jr., giving this year’s speech.

It started off as exactly the kind of commencement address one would expect, with humorous anecdotes, praise for Rose and its graduates, and calls for citizenship. But a politician with a large audience is sorely tempted, and the governor finished with a 15 minute tirade against the global warming “conspiracy”. Calling climate scientists “theologians” and their belief in global warming “a religion”, he lambasted them as graduates of “PC University” who refused to listen to honest skeptics like himself. Quoting the noted climate authority Michael Crichton (he wrote a novel on the subject, after all), he said “scientific consensus is the last refuge of scoundrels”.

Wow. I guess Governor Daniels thinks that science is too important to be left to the scientists. Fortunately, we have politicians like him to help us make sense of it all (making use, I am sure, of the well-deserved reputation of politicians for the reasoned and determined pursuit of truth regardless of the impact on personal or political gain). I feel cooler already.

For any serious basketball fan, the NCAA tournament of 1979 has to stand out as possibly the best one ever, with the final match arguably the best college basketball game ever played. Indiana State University and Larry Bird went undefeated that season until they were finally bested by Michigan State and Magic Johnson, 75-64. Being that game’s 30 year anniversary, and with Michigan State once again making it to the National Championship, there has been much talk lately of that great contest of March 26, 1979. I’d like to share my recollections, not of the game, but of its aftermath.

Indiana State University (ISU) is located in Terre Haute, a town that is most impressive in being completely unimpressive. So when its equally unimpressive state university began winning basketball games, the town took notice. I was a freshman that year at a small college on the other side of town, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. Basketball was the last thing on my mind – surviving my first year of chemistry, physics and calculus consumed all of my mental energy (and most of my sleep). Still, it was hard to escape the basketball excitement that was engulfing the town that spring. When ISU made it to the National Championship game, Terre Haute knew it would be an historic event for the city. A victory parade down Wabash Avenue was planned for the evening after the big game, and my roommates and I decided that studying could wait that night.

We drove into town soon after the ISU loss (I didn’t even watch the game), hearing on the radio that the “victory” parade would go on as planned. The parade went on, but it was anything but “as planned”. We parked a few blocks off the main drag and lined up along Wabash Ave. to watch. Within minutes of the start of the parade, things went completely crazy. The lone police car in the parade was soon covered with people and the cop inside wisely fled the scene as his car bobbed up and down under the feet of a dozen people jumping in unison. Street signs and traffic lights started toppling and windows started breaking. A bonfire was lit in the middle of the road as a van from the local radio station blared rock music to the crowd. I was witnessing a full-fledged riot.

My friends and I were in complete disbelief (none of us were serious basketball fans, so we didn’t get what all the fuss was about). As at the scene of an accident, however, we couldn’t turn away. I noticed people breaking into a bar on the corner. Like an especially virulent virus, word of free liquor spread quickly and a huge crowd began to form at the bar. I then witnessed a truly amazing scene. Self-appointed bouncers soon appeared at the entrances, deciding who would be allowed to enter and who would not. When turned away, the less fortunate revealers meekly accepted their status as not being part of the “in” crowd and moved on. I watched this for more than half an hour as impromptu class divisions and a “first-come-first-stolen” hierarchy spontaneously developed. Even in the middle of a riot, society must have its rules.

It seemed like I watched my first riot for at least two hours, though it is quite possible that my sense of time was completely distorted by the strangeness of the events. I then watched how a riot ends, at least in small-town Indiana. I didn’t see them drive up, park, or get out of their cars and vans. I didn’t notice them getting into formation. I just saw as they finally approached the riotous crowd on Wabash Avenue: a neat row of 15 or 20 state police officers, each holding a snarling German Sheppard on a tight leash. They moved slowly up the street like a wall of fleshy teeth, and the crowd simply melted away. As fast as the riot started, it was over. I guess when the purpose of your mass destruction is the loss of a basketball dream, it doesn’t seem worth tangling with a vicious animal over.

So there you have it – my first riot. I too quickly left the scene when the dogs arrived. Is this how most towns deal with the loss of a major sporting event? I don’t think so. I guess Terre Haute is a special place after all.

It is funny how arbitrary numbers (usually round ones) can take on undue significance in a sport like running. When I began running half marathons, I became fixated on the goal of finishing in less than 2 hours. While the number is arbitrary (would my performance have been a failure if I’d have run the race in 2 hours and 10 seconds?), setting a goal and striving for it is an extremely valuable motivational tool that keeps me pushing and, ultimately, succeeding.

Now that half-marathon season is over, I decided to run in the Capital 10K race in Austin on March 29. But what goal to set? My first race ever was a 10K last August, and my time was a disappointing 64 minutes (granted, it was my first race and it was 95 F at the start of the race). My best 10K split during a half marathon was 55 minutes, so I decided that a goal of 50 minutes made sense. That would mean that I would have to trim my half-marathon pace of 9 minutes/mile by about 1 min/mile – not an easy task.

With the goal set, I began to train for that goal. Then, my father-in-law had to make his opinion known (something he is very good at): “You know, anyone over forty should be able to run a 10K in their age in minutes.” I was perfectly happy with my 50 minute goal, but this new challenge kept haunting me: I would need to run the race in 48:54 min (yes, I counted the days/seconds). Only about a 1 minute difference, but that can mean a lot when you are running at your limits.

So on race day, I ended up with two goals, the “official” one and the more aggressive one that I couldn’t get out of my mind. The final result? I finished the race in 49:42, for a pace of exactly 8:00 min/mile. I was very happy with the result (after all, it was a 15 minute improvement over my last 10K), though I didn’t meet the “run the race in your age” goal. Maybe next year.

Yesterday I ran in the Austin 3M Half Marathon and set a personal record (not hard to do considering this was only my second race). My time for the 13.1 miles was 1:56:25 (h:m:s – and yes, I worry about the seconds), for a pace of 8:53 per mile. My goal was to beat 9 minutes per mile, so I’m happy with the result. I’m also happy to say that the morning after the second race is not nearly as painful as the morning after the first race was. Thanks to Dave Gerold for cheering me on at mile ten as I ran through his neighborhood.

Ten years ago this week I turned in my dissertation and received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin. Entitled Modeling Solvent Effects in Optical Lithography, the thesis is available for download on my website. There is a good chance, however, that it has remained unread now for one decade, since I doubt that many people are motivated to wade through the dense details of my modeling of solvent diffusion through polymers.

So, in honor of this anniversary, and to make the topic of this work more accessible to the average time-constrained scientist/engineer, I have rendered my thesis as a Haiku. I hope you will enjoy it.

When heat is applied
Solvent flows through polymer.
Your model is wrong.

For pretty much my entire life, I never understood the appeal of running. Sure, I ran when I played soccer or tennis, or to catch a bus or my deceptively fast three-year-old daughter, but running for its own sake? Why bother. Boring and painful – a combination that could only appeal to the masochistic (or possibly to those for whom an immensely dreary and marginally painful activity would be an improvement over the alternatives in their life). But then, a funny thing happened to me this year…

I’ve always enjoyed staying active, but I have to admit that by the time my second child was born last year I had quit going to the gym and playing sports. And it was beginning to show. My wife, on the other hand, had gotten hooked on triathlons as a way to recover from the physical trauma of pregnancy. She trained hard and began to compete. I dutifully loaded up the kids and some lawn chairs and showed up to her races to watch. After her third race this summer I began to feel less than athletically adequate. All these people, no different from me except for motivation, were working and sweating and accomplishing goals (arbitrary goals, I know, but not worthless ones). I, on the other hand, had become a couch potato. Something had to change.

I knew I wasn’t up for triathlons yet, so I picked one sport to start with – running. My wife suggested training for a half-marathon. A half-marathon? Thirteen point one miles? It was obvious that all of her training and physical activity had affected her powers of reasoning (or at least her sense of distance). But, by this time my physical ego was so downtrodden that I agreed rather than admit that such a goal seemed to me both unrealistic and unreasonable. She found a training program for me, and a new runner was born.

It was July (not the best time to start running in Austin), and after two weeks of sweating on my own I could meet the three-mile minimum requirement for the Galloway training program. I then discovered something very interesting. Running is not boring when you run with a group. It can be fun. And as I watched my endurance improve (and my weight drop), I actually came to like it. I also saw my heart rate decrease for the same level of activity (I run with a heart-rate monitor), convincing me even further of the long-term benefits. And since I had specifically joined a training program that emphasized injury avoidance (don’t overtrain!), I was beginning to feel like a half-marathon might be possible.

And so yesterday I ran the San Antonio Rock ‘n’ Roll Half-Marathon. Not only did I accomplish my primary goal (cross the finish line vertically), but I also accomplished my secondary goal of running it in under 2 hours. My time was 1:59:36 (no need to over do it), which amazingly put me in the top 1/3 of male finishers (there were a total of 33,000 participants in both the marathon and the half-marathon, with over 17,000 half-marathon finishers). And this from someone who had never run as a sport until this past July. It was great running with my coach, Bob, who pushed me at the end when I was ready, willing and able to slow down (“We didn’t train to give up at the end!”).

Oh, and if it makes any difference, I’m 48. If I can do it, anyone can.

As even a cursory look at the posts will show, this blog is anything but political in nature. But after a long, long campaign and an election that everyone describes as historic, let me just say this:

Woooohoooo!!!!

Last week my next-door neighbor, Carroll, had a birthday. He turned 99 years old. He is an absolute inspiration. When I asked him what it felt like to turn 99, he said “It’s better than the alternative”. His goal is to break the age reacord in his family (102).

Carroll has lived in his house with his wife, Martha (age 94), since 1942. They still live independently (with a little help from friends a family) and enjoy the good life. I’m looking forward to the party next year.