I am slowly settling in the South Bend, Indiana – classes at Notre Dame start on Tuesday. While driving up with my dog (my wife and daughter flew up a few days later), I learned a few lessons about cross-country trips – something I hadn’t done since my college days.
* Cell phone coverage in Arkansas sucks – avoid long phone calls while driving there
* The price of gas in Illinois is 5% higher than in neighboring states (why?)
* Never name your dog anything that rhymes with “no” (a lesson taught to me by my friend in Pana, Ill whose disobedient dog is named Mo)
* The only place in America where you can’t get a Starbucks coffee is Pana, Illinois
* Lowell, Indiana is a very beautiful little town
* Even an old guy like me can do a long road trip – provided he has a comfortable seat, cruise control, and a long audio book (thanks, William)

Here are a couple of cool site that I have enjoyed for a while or just discovered.

When I was in college, my favorite reading was the Journal of Improbable Research. While this magazine went through several iterations, editors and sponsors, it is now called the Annals of Improbable Research (AIR). While the journal is not on-line, they do have a website with some really interesting stuff, including information on the Ig Nobel prize. www.improbable.com.

One of my regular blog readers sent me this (I guess I’m assuming that I have more than one regular reader, though I have no proof). It’s a site dedicated to the mid-seventeenth century Jesuit polymath named Athanasius Kircher, a guy who studied everything and wrote down everything he learned in massive encyclopedic works. His life’s work was “chronology”, creating a complete list of human events throughout the entire history of the world. The current blog on their site describes the world’s longest running experiments. Cool stuff. www.kirchersociety.org/blog.

Today is Belgian Independence Day, and I stand and toast my friends in Belgium, inventors of French Fries and fruit beer, with a glass of Chimay White in my hands. Cheers! Salut! Proost!

Like most Americans, I am woefully ignorant of any independence day other than my own country’s. So after some quick internet research, here’s the story behind the birth of Belgium. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, Europe was carved up by the victors with the goal of containing French imperialistic ambitions. What is now Belgium was given to the Netherlands. The French-speaking Catholic population chafed under the rule of the Dutch-speaking protestant king, and simmering tensions came to a boil in the Brussels Opera Riot of August 25, 1830. I’ve never seen an opera that made me want to riot (at least not outside of the theater), but apparently this particularly jingoistic performance excited its crowd to such a point that they left the theater shouting patriotic slogans and quickly took over several government buildings. The Dutch sent in the troops but after several bloody days of fighting in the streets of Brussels were unable to route the revolutionaries. The provisional government declared independence on October 4.

So independence day in Belgium is October 4, right? Well, sort of. The new Belgian government needed a king (don’t all European countries need a king?), and offered the job to one Leopold I, a typical European royal of the day: son of a German duke and a Russian countess, general in the Russian army fighting against Napoleon, etc. Leopold had just turned down an offer to be king of Greece the year before, but apparently the climate or the benefits (or maybe the beer) was better in Belgium. He ascended the throne on July 21, 1831. (Two weeks later the Dutch invaded again in an attempt to regain their runaway province. The French army came to the support of the new Belgians and the Dutch went back home after ten days, averting what could have been the shortest royal reign in history.)

So there are two Belgian independence days. Or one independence day and one national day. Or something like that – I’m not really sure. In any case, it is a good day to drink a fine Belgian beer, and there are many to choose from. And on October the 4th, I’ll do it again. The sacrifices one must make in the name of international solidarity…

It is Wednesday night, so I must be feeling fine. The certainty with which I can predict this mood comes from the regularity of my Wednesday afternoons: from 4 – 6pm each Wednesday I attend an important Symposium.

The word ‘symposium’ comes from the Greek symposion, “a convivial gathering of the educated” and the Latin symposium, “a drinking party”. It’s meaning comes mostly from the title of one of Plato’s dialogs, where a bunch of guys without anything better to do sit around and drink while talking philosophically.

I’ve attended a lot of symposia over the years, including the SPIE Microlithography Symposium for the last 22 years. Most of these meetings have forgotten the true essence of what a symposium means (though I have been know to wax philosophic at some of the hospitality suites at the Microlithography Symposium over the years). My regular Wednesday commitment, however, remains true to it’s Greco-Roman symposia roots. About five to ten people meet at one of my favorite Austin pubs, drink beer, and with no set agenda have fascinating and valuable conversations. The perfect combination of taste bud and brain stimulation. What could be better?

So if you want to catch me in a good mood, get in touch with me on Wednesday night. But if you want to see me on Wednesday afternoon, you had better be attending the Symposium – otherwise you’ll miss me.

My wife’s grandfather just emailed me this joke:

Two missionaries are looking down into jungle clearing at hundreds of natives gathered around a stone likeness of a huge zero.

They strain to hear what they’re all chanting, but finally make it out: “Nulll, nulll, nulll…”.

“My God!” one says quietly to the other. “Is nothing sacred?”

This is cool on many levels. First, I get emails from my 85 year-old grandfather in-law (my dad refuses to even read an email on the screen if you get it up there for him, let alone use the computer to send an email). Second, the emails he sends are most often geek-humor. Granted, he is a chemical engineer so he has earned his right to relate to Dilbert. But it just goes to show you that even if you think the hyper-fast paced internet-fueled information explosion is changing all the rules, some things about human nature remain the same: there are nerds among us, and we like nerd-jokes. There’s comfort in continuity.

An update on what’s going on with me: I have recently accepted a position as the Melchor Visiting Chair Professor at the University of Notre Dame for the Fall 2006 semester. It is a one semester appointment with the electrical engineering department, where I will teach two classes: Semiconductor Microlithography and Data Analysis and Modeling. I love to teach, and Notre Dame is great school, so it should be fun. Besides, they threw in football season tickets. Hard to beat that deal, eh? And besides, if my wife still loves me after 4 months in South Bend, Indiana, we’ll know that our marriage is secure.

I’m visiting my wife’s hometown for a few days as a part of the requisite “show off the baby” tour. While here, we went to Leslie Grove Park, drove past the local high school emblazoned with its mascot “the Bombers” and a mushroom cloud logo, and visited the Atomic Ale brewpub, where the Atomic Ale is middling, Plutonium Porter is good, and Oppenheimer Oatmeal Stout is memorable. So what kind of town is this?

This is Richland, Washington – a small town on the Columbian river whose basin would look like the desert it is if it weren’t for massive irrigation. Richland would be just one of many small agricultural towns in this area but for the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. Established during World War II, Hanford generated the plutonium used in the second and last nuclear weapon used in war and much of the plutonium found in the US nuclear arsenal today. With the likely exception of Los Alamos, there are probably more nuclear physicists per capita in this town than anywhere else in the world, though most of them are now involved in cleaning up the mess made from 50 years of cold war productivity. Suffice it to say, this is not your typical American small town.

By the way, the high school got its name, the Bombers, after the entire town donated one day’s pay during World War II to buy a bomber to help with the war effort. The attachment of the mushroom cloud logo occurred much later in a misguided show of pride in Hanford’s cold war mission. I think the town should be more proud of how it originally earned that moniker, but what do I know? I’m just a tourist on baby duty, enjoying an Oppenheimer Stout.

My wife gave me “locals directions” today. It’s not the kind of thing she would normally do – but visiting the town you grew up in has a tendency to dull the brain.

Locals directions are directions that only locals would understand. I was sent out to buy socks for our daughter, and midway through the directions she said “turn left where the Pay Less used to be.” Let’s skip the fact that she hasn’t lived here for 20 years and she can still remember where the Pay less used to be, let alone that turning left there sent you to a source for baby socks. Despite these obvious signs of superior intelligence, it only took two days for her brain to settle into the familiar small-town pattern of her childhood, with all of its comfortable limits and easy neglect. Kind of nice, actually. At least when you’re on vacation.

I found the socks without much problem. It seems that small towns don’t have too many corners that could have once held a Pay Less.

Bless me readers, for I have sinned. It’s been five weeks since my last blog.

In the world of blogging, that’s an eternity, and the sin is unforgivable. After all, the purpose of blogging is the capture, and retain, somebody’s (anybody’s) attention. And nobody’s attention span lasts five weeks. “But what if I don’t have anything to say,” you ask. Posh. That’s not the point. Blogging is about reducing the barrier between what you think and what you say. And everyone has something to think. Even me.

And yet I’m old school. I have trouble writing something I wouldn’t want to read myself. I have just not been motivated lately to put any effort into it. What’s wrong with me? Am I just lazy? Actually, I think I’m sick. I have diagnosed myself with motivational deficiency disorder (MoDeD). You probably think I just made that up. No! I didn’t make it up – scientists made it up. It’s in the April 1 issue of the British Medical Journal (http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/extract/332/7544/745-a). According to neuroscientist and lead researcher Leth Argos, the disease is characterized by “overwhelming and debilitating apathy” and can, in severe cases, be fatal. Sounds like me, doesn’t it?

But I’ve got program to help cure myself. I’m undergoing motivational rehabilitation, using tools and techniques available at www.despair.com. I think I’m making progress, but don’t count on frequent blogs. After all, relapses are extremely common for suffers of MoDeD.

Forget the price of tea in China. I want useful information – what is the price of beer in Singapore? One can only answer with a question: What time is it?

I have to admit to a very bad habit. I often buy things without looking at the price. It’s certainly laziness on my part, but also an assumption that the prices of certain standard items don’t vary much from place to place, and the differences in price are small enough to fall into the “don’t care” range. I found out in Singapore how wrong that assumption can be.

I was ordering a beer during my third or fourth visit to a brewpub on the Clarke Quay when I finally looked at the prices. I couldn’t believe it. The price of a beer varied by almost a factor of 4 depending on the time of day! From noon till 3pm, a beer costs $2.25 (US). It rises to $4 till 6pm, then $5.50 until 8pm. From 8pm till close, a beer costs $8.00! Variable demand-based pricing. Charge more when the bar is most crowded. Of course, we’ve seen happy-hour pricing before, but this raises the bar (and the price) on how to fine-tune charges to cope with demand.

Is this the future of consumer pricing? I can see what’s next. An automated counter looks at the number of patrons in the bar (coupled with constantly updated current and historical buying data) and adjusts the price of a beer in real time. A stock market-like ticker displays the current price on various walls of the place for all to see. Astute drinkers may notice a trend towards bigger crowds and higher prices and order several beers now in anticipation of higher prices momentarily (a strategy hampered only by the inevitable beer-warming factor). Of course, the better brews, with higher demand, will cost more. Novices will watch the moves of veteran buyers hoping to pick up on the latest beer-tips. It’s brilliant! A Harvard MBA’s dream come true. Except for one thing. I didn’t come to the bar to buy beer. I came to relax. And there is nothing relaxing about being constantly on guard against the latest business theory of how best to empty my wallet. Ah well. There is bar just down the street run by a dinosaur of the business world – he has only one price for beer. I think I’ll go there.