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.

I was walking down a long, straight road in Singapore when I found myself behind a young couple. They were probably returning home from some errand, packages were in hand. I was close enough to hear their silence. My mind almost began its usual random wonder when I noticed her hand. It was talking. As she strode in silence alongside her companion the outer calm was disturbed by an inner conversation, played out by her hand. First, the palm went out, her arm twisting forward, looking for empathy. “Do you understand? Do you see what I’m saying?” A pause. Then two flicks of the wrist and the fingers spread – she had made her point. The fingers curled back up into a loose fist. Within a few steps the arm began a slow back-and-forth rotation, palm forward and then backward with fingers down as she weighed the imagined response. Truth was not manifest, making the process of conversational discovery all the more important.

Suddenly, he said something to her. Imminently practical, no doubt. “How was your day?”, or “What should we fix for dinner?” Her hand went limp by her side as she turned to him and re-entered his world.