Seven Days. . .

Okay, it's really only six days until the federal election, but I came up with the title on Monday, and you gotta admit that an allusion to The Ring is gonna be a helluva lot catchier than Six Days. . .

Six days. How the hell did that happen?! I knew that there was an election going on, but. . . damn! I've been so focused on University and the American election (I was also recently rear-ended, but that's a whole other story I'd rather not get into) that I haven't had time to really consider who I will vote for.

I won't vote Conservative. I know that much. There are many reasons for this, including this one. Stephen Harper, before becoming PM, did everything he could to come across as a far-right loon-- it's only after he got elected that remodeled his image into that of a mere centrist douchebag. I worry about what he would do if he ever got a majority government. . .

But that said. . . in his latest campaign ads-- and I am truly sorry to say this, Naomi-- Stephen Harper looks surprisingly, frighteningly similar to Josh. It makes me almost able to tolerate that insipid "Stephen Harper Loves His Kids so Vote Conservative!" nonsense.

I most likely won't vote Liberal. Frankly, the only reason I would is if there was a good chance that the Liberal candidate would beat the Conservative one-- and this being Prince George, I think you know how likely it is for that little scenario to unfold.

I won't vote Bloc-- no Bloc candidate.

I'd consider voting for the Marxist-Leninist party just to make a statement! Problem is, I don't know what that statement would be.

So, in the end, I'm torn between the NDP and the Greens. The NDP have been making a lot of headway in the polls recently. There's a chance -- and, mind you, I base this on absolutely nothing other than a vague trend-- that they could beat out the Liberals to form an official opposition. Plus, my (metaphorical, I'm not British) Old Labour blood obliges me to vote for the leftist party.

On the other hand. . . all I've really heard and seen from the NDP ad's, website, and even platform are soundbites ("Man, fuck dem Eastside Boardroom table motherfuckas! I'm all about da Westside kitchen tables up in dis bitch! Ya feel me?") along with a few vague, nice-sounding ideas(Increased support for pedestrian and bicycle paths "as part of [the NDP's] commitment to sustainable transport"-- I'm not joking). To be fair, I haven't checked out the other party platforms and websites, but my feeling is that they won't be much better.

Adding to that is the fact that, well, Jack Layton seems to be a bit of a douche. I'm basing that solely on the fact that he, along with Stephane Dion, has been judged by the public to have come off a bit dickish during the English language debate (I say "appears" because I didn't watch the debate. . . Yes, I'm a terrible citizen, but I'm getting to that). Indeed, the two party leaders who came off looking the best, according to people who I have mostly never met, are Stephen Harper and Green Party leader Elizabeth May, which leads me to the other end of my conundrum. . .

The Greens. The environmentalist party. From what I've heard, they're left-leaning on social issues and environment, but right-leaning on the economy. Considering that the economic meltdown in the U.S. appears, by all accounts, to have occurred as a result of Republican emphasis on deregulation, the latter may well be a liability. On the other hand, as mentioned earlier, their leader comes off as intelligent, knowledgeable, and reasonable-- from what I hear.

That, and they support a carbon tax, while the NDP support a cap and trade system. You see, carbon tax is good, and cap and trade is bad. . . from what I hear. . . somehow.

Sigh.

If you've made it this far, you've probably come to the conclusion that I really am an ignorant slut. You may have even decided that it would probably just be a better idea for this jackass (me) not to vote in the first place.

That, you see, was be design.

If you've been clicking on the links, you've probably visited my sister's blog, wherein she expresses her anger at those who choose not to vote for reason of every party sucking. Or, as she said herself:

I'm sitting on the CFUR couch listening to some guy rant about how he's exercising his democratic right by not voting. He claims hating every party as his excuse. . . . Enough people are stupid enough to either a) vote FOR [Harper] or b) NOT vote at all? No wonder North American politics are such a joke.

I know that Naomi isn't talking about this issue specifically, but her blog entry seems to suggest that compulsive voting might be the answer to some of our democratic woes.

I've always taken issue with the idea of compulsive voting. First, I do believe that if you have the right to vote, you have the right not to vote. While I do not agree with said CFUR guy's assessment of the political landscape, I could envision a circumstance wherein all the parties would screw the public with equal intensity. In that case, what good does it do to vote? "Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos?"

Secondly, as this blog post has demonstrated, I really have no fucking clue as to who I should vote for. Really, I'm just stringing together a few random facts (Polls! Arts Funding! Kyoto!) along with a few gut level associations (Harper = Bush = BAD! NDP = Left = GOOD!) to form the basis of what is really an incredibly significant civic duty. I mean, really, would you want someone like me choose who your political leader should be? If I were this ignorant about anything else. . . well, I am a physics lab instructor, but that's not the point!

The point is, I'm somebody who actually gives half a shit about politics, or at least that's what I thought. Just imagine someone who really couldn't give a damn one way or the other being forced by law (or social pressure) to participate in the voting process. They don't care one way or the other, so they may as well vote for the guy who looks like Naomi's cute boyfriend.

Next Week?

Hi A.J.

I'm going to be pretty busy next week-- I have to attend a committee meeting and give my final presentation for my Octave course. But Friday night or Saturday should be good.

Would it be cool if Naomi came as well?


Oh. . . and for you other people reading this (and A.J. as well):

YOR!

(It's over twenty minutes long, but its worth it!)

You're Welcome

Sunday

My mom contacts me to tell me that my sister, Naomi, and her band The Arbitrarys are in trouble. It was pretty much the same trouble that they were in a few days before: the transmission in their van went kaput in Merritt, and they needed another vehicle to get to their gigs. They had already borrowed a vehicle from our aunt Sandy and uncle Joe in order to go to Vancouver Island, but now they needed a new vehicle fortheir trip back north. That's where I came in. . .

Monday

I drive 730 kilometers from PG to Surrey in our Suburban, which I am to give to Naomi. I leave PG at about 10:30 and arrive at a quarter to seven. Excluding bathroom breaks, snack breaks, and lunch, that leaves roughly eight hours of actual driving time. Everyone at Sandy and Joe's is surprisingly impressed by how "fast" I got to Surrey-- I'm more impressed by the fact that I managed to do this trip on 80 litres of Diesel, about half a tank on the Suburban. It was not an especially fun drive. I was so concerned with getting to Surrey at a reasonable time that I couldn't really sit back and enjoy the view (I considered visiting Chasm, about fifty kilometers north of Clinton, but decided against it.) One thing that struck me, though, was the absence of snow caps on the mountains of the Fraser valley, something I've noticed in a mountains near PG as well. In all the years I've gone down that stretch of road, never have I seen the mountaintops so bare. Maybe there's something to this global warming thing. . . .

I arrived just in time to join the gang for dinner. My cousin George recounted how he flipped over his quad and broke his left arm, and injury that required him to have pieces of metal surgically inserted into his arm to keep the bones of his forearm in place. Apparently, this is only the latest in a series quad flipping accidents of which George has been a part. George. . . he's a character!

After dinner and conversation, me, Naomi, Josh and Robin took the Suburban on a drive to Vancouver. After visiting Stanley Park we went downtown, where we got Starbucks and ice cream. While I was waiting for everyone else, a charming older lady with a large bruise across the right side of her face asked if I would like to buy her a pint. Romance.

Owing to Naomi's shitty directions, we didn't get home until midnight. . .

Tuesday

Once we did, Sandy set up our beds for the night. I had been under the impression that I would be getting a guest room, but unfortunately, all that Sandy could manage was foamys and sleeping bags far too small for my frame. I realize Sandy was on very short notice and did her best with what she had, but that said, putting a blanket on the carpet would have done just as well as the foamy that I had been given. Of course, Naomi and Josh got the big inflatable thing. You know, they needed rest after their long day of driving a distance roughly equal to Germany.

Joe got up at five in the morning, and since I was sleeping in the living room next to the kitchen where Joe was preparing his breakfast, I did too. Sandy took me to the airport and by 10:00 in the morning I was home. Fifteen hundred kilometers in twenty-four hours.

So, yeah. You're welcome.

(Note: Naomi did thank me numerous times.)

(Also: A.J., I got you're comments, and replied to them in the same comment thread.)

Tycho Crater Imaged

Remember Selene/Kayuga, that probe Japan sent into lunar orbit? Well, using photographs and altitude measurements taken by the probe, scientists at the Japanese Space Agency have constructed a 3D map of the lunar crater Tycho.

Click here for a video. It's a big file, but it's worth it.

(Thanks Bad Astronomy)

Free Electron Lasers, Part 1

One of the complaints that could be made about my blog-- if I had any readers to complain in the first place-- is that I don't blog about physics. Well, that's about to change*.

This past semester I took a course in laser sensor technology, with a focus on the industrial applications of lasers. The professor of the course, Dr. Matthew Reid, has developed technology that uses photonic radiation in the terahertz spectrum to scan pieces of wood and measure their density, moisture content, fibre structure, etc.. This info can then be used to determine the quality of that wood. His work has attracted attention from companies like Boeing, as well as local and provincial media. I only mention this to give background on why the course is being offered in the first place-- though being taught by a minor celebrity is worth mentioning as well.

Anyway, one of the course requirements involved writing a report and doing a presentation on some new laser technology which can be applied to industry. I gave my presentation on Wednesday the 9th, and I won't get my mark on the presentation and report until Monday the 14th. Still, I thought I'd blog about the technology that I looked at-- the free electron laser.

The difference between a conventional laser and a free electron laser, or FEL, boils down to how each device generates light. All lasers rely on a "gain medium" to produce light. In conventional lasers, the gain medium consists of some energized material that emits photons through a process called "stimulated emission." See the picture below(Source)

Light emitted in this manner is coherent, that is, all the photons have pretty much the same frequency(the photons can never all be at one and only one frequency-- this violates the laws of quantum mechanics-- but the spread or "bandwidth" is relatively narrow). This is what differentiates laser light from normal light.

FEL's also generate coherent light, but with a process completely different from stimulated emmission. First, some backgorund. The laws of electromagnetism say that whenever a charged particle, like an electron, is accelerated, it will emit a photon. One way to accelerate an electron is to use a magnetic field. Any electron travelling through a magnetic field B with some velocity v will undergo an acceleration a(using B to refer to Magnetic fields is just one of the many useful conventions we physicists have adopted). The magnitude of the acceleration-- and hence, the frequency and intensity of light emitted-- depends both on the velocity v and the magnetic field B, as well as their relative directions(for best results, v and B should be perpendicular; it doesn't work at all if v and B are parallel). In other words, if we can control the magnetic field strength and the speed electrons, we can determine what kind of light is emitted.

One can get high intensity light when the electron speed v is very, very close to the speed of light. Light produced this way is known as "synchrotron radiation", because it is most commonly generated by synchrotron accelerators that are used to push electrons to near-light speeds. To get even higher intensities, the ultrafast electrons are forced through an insertion device, which subjects the electrons to an oscillating magnetic field. In other words, the electrons are "wiggled" to produce light. See below for a picture(soruce)


The wiggly yellow line is the electron stream. The cones coming out of the wave's peaks and troughs are the emitted photons. As I mentioned before, the light produced this way is coherent, so it can be used to produce laser light.

So why use this process in the first place? There are a few reasons.

Remember when I said that the frequency and power of the light emitted this way depends on the electron velocity and magnetic field strength? Well, the magnetic field strength of the insertion device can be controlled by outside operator. This means that the frequency of the laser can be adjusted or "tuned," along an entire spectrum, depending on the laser design. The frequency of light emitted by conventional lasers, on the other hand, depends on the material used in the gain medium, and cannot be changed. This gives the FEL a huge advantage over conventional lasers.

Using this process also allows light to be generated at frequencies that could not be reached by conventional means. For example, x-ray laser light can only be produced by FELs. This type of lasing has been demonstrated at the Spring-8 accelerator in Japan(here's the link).

As well, the laser light is very intense. The Jefferson Lab FEL, for instance, produces light at an average intensity of 15000 joules per second (here's the link to Jefferson).

Finally, FEL's are able to generate very short width laser pulses at a very high rate. What does this mean? Well, many laser applications depend on the ability to generate very brief bursts of laser light with extreme intensity, as opposed to a constant stream of photons. By using pulses instead of a continuous photon stream, one can generate huge peak power(millions to billions of joules per second(!), depending on how short the pulses are). Conventional lasers need special devices(Q-switches, mode-lockers) to generate pulses, but FELs can do this on their own. And when I say they generate "very short width" pulses, I mean pulses less than 0.000000000001 seconds long! This amount of time is so short only an incredibly silly name can describe it: "subpicosecond". By comparison, Q-Switching a conventional laser can produce pulses on the order of "only" a nanosecond (0.000000001 s).

That's the basics of the FEL. I'll post up a blog entry on the FEL's applications sometime next whenever-the-hell-I-fell-like-it. For now, I'll close with a video of the Jefferson FEL burning a hole through a slab of plexiglas. Enjoy!

*Hear that sound? That's the sound of critics being silenced!


(OtnqJUXZLjM)

Blog Surfing

Whenever I sign into Blogger to write another one of my incredibly insightful blog posts, I notice a sort rolling list of blogs which have been updated within the past minute of my logging on, give or take. So I decided to click through some of these random blogs. This is what I found:

Turkish Anti-Israel Islamic Terrorists!

(After thinking about it, I decided not to post the link. I don't wanna endorse these guys. . . or look to whomever is watching like I endorse these guys.)


Some family by the name of Shakespear.

http://theshakespearpeople.blogspot.com/


Ceramics and Violinists.

http://digitalliz.blogspot.com/


Russians.

http://kabinetist.blogspot.com/


Either a news blog or a porn porn blog.

http://mlm-riset321.blogspot.com/


English language site of someone who appears to a Chinese business student.

http://haohan888.blogspot.com/


The Negro Diaries?

http://lilulandia.blogspot.com/


A picture a day.

http://veggiewannabe.blogspot.com/


A site called "Oscar Video" that seems to just link to a streaming video site.

http://osnewsboargin.blogspot.com/


Scandinavian!

http://morslillaolle.blogspot.com/


Liberta-- That's Spanish. That's all I can tell.

http://futurovegetariano.blogspot.com/


A porn site.

No link. I'm not linking there. It's boring anyway.


Movie News. In English AND Spanish! They seem to be really interested in a Neil Armstrong movie.

http://novidadescinema.blogspot.com/


Cancer.

http://mesothelioma23.blogspot.com/


A Swedish(?) website with an English title: Dancing in an Ocean of Roses!

http://kiimbeerly.blogspot.com/


That's MISTER Forex!

http://misterforex.blogspot.com/


Thai.

http://downmerngc.blogspot.com/


Someone who wonders why he's not a failure.

http://viewfromvantucky.blogspot.com/


Chinese site, English Language.

http://lovetheworld999.blogspot.com/


Virginia Real Estate. No, really.

http://estate.focusfinal.com/virginiarealestate/index.html


Pharmaceuticals!

http://viafrailaellis.blogspot.com/


His Mobile Blog.

http://toybet187.blogspot.com/


Another turkish one, but this time not radical Islamists.

http://yelkencilerlokali.blogspot.com/


Someone from Israel.

http://ferociouspixie.blogspot.com/


David Lindsay.

http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.com/


Alright. Enough is enough. I think we can all agree that I have officially wasted your time.

Greatest Assignment Evarz!1!

One of my duties as a grad student is to mark undergraduate physics assignments. This is usually a pain in the ass, but every so often I get an assignment that not only sucks, but is actually entertaining.

In this case, it was a doodle in one of my Phys 111 assignments. It shows two situations, one in which two boys are writing on a chalkboard, and one in which one boy and one girl are writing on a chalkboard. In the first case, one of the boys has claimed that the indefinite integral of x^2 is Pi (it's not, just so you know). The other boy then says "Wow, you suck at math!"

In the other case, the girl has written the exact same thing. The boy in that case says "Wow, girls suck at math!"

Simple. Beautiful. And with logic perfectly applicable to many other situations.

For example:

#1

MAN HOLDING BIBLE KICKS PUPPY.

MAN #2: You're an asshole!

#2

MAN HOLDING THE GOD DELUSION KICKS PUPPY.

MAN #2: Atheists are assholes!

(Note: Replace "The God Delusion" with "The Koran", "Atheists" with "Muslims" and, if you like, "Assholes" with "Terrorists" and it works just as well)

Or how about:

#1

WHITE MAN ROBS BANK.

OLD WOMAN: What a horrid fellow!

#2

BLACK MAN ROBS BANK.

OLD WOMAN: Oh, those Negroes.

OLD WOMAN CHCUCKLES.

#3

ASIAN MAN ROBS BANK.

OLD WOMAN: INTERN HIM!!!

Don't you just love it when your entire worldview comes in "Fill-in-the-Blank" form?