Double Helix

emergence

PeachPit declared, "Mom, your pumpkin is strange."

We stress bunnies prefer "accurate."

perspective

The Institute for Contemporary Art (ICA) hosts Play Date on the last Saturday of most months. We went for the first time this past weekend and really enjoyed ourselves. For us, the trip involved the Green Line to Park Street, the Red Line to South Station, and the Silver Line to Courthouse.

The perspective in the first image is looking southwest, from Pier 4 towards the waterfront face of the ICA. You can see a dark mass depending from the principal overhang that forms the top of the building. This room, accessible from the top floor of the ICA, allows quite the view of the water. The second image shows the northeast view from that room, roughly facing Pier 4.

The ICA requests no photography in the galleries, so I cannot share the visual feast with you. This is just as it should be, though, since certainly a lot would be lost in translation.

pitching in

By now, the locals among you likely know about the Pine Street Inn thing. Why not make a few squares using Kureyon that I happen to have hanging around?

Ideally, making squares will use most of x skeins, where

• x = skeins in stash + (subset of) skeins at LYS.

Kureyon squares have the greatest appeal not only because I am a fool for the stuff, but also because I have the data to calculate how far I can expect the yarn to go.

• four skeins = seven 8 by 8 squares (garter stitch, US 7)
• four skeins = 7 x (8 x 8) = 448 square inches
• one skein = 112 square inches
• one 9 by 9 square = 81 square inches

# of squares	total sq. inches	skeins required
one	81	0.72
two	162	1.45
three	243	2.16
four	324	2.83
five	405	3.61
six	486	4.33
seven	567	5.06

Four squares looks like a good target, since it is realistic for the time frame (10 days hence), and will most of three skeins. I have two on hand, so you know what that means!

give it back

As you probably guessed, the problem of tottering piles of glassware in the lab never did reach an acceptable resolution. The underlying carelessness disses the technician who washes our glassware, an offensive situation which drives my largely fruitless campaign. Most current lab members have no idea what life was like before we had a crack glasswasher, and for this reason at least are insufficiently motivated.

Another phenomenon is ascendant, and has eclipsed the glassware problem.

Consider this scenario: you are in middle school and decide to engage in a little after-school baking. You are pleased with being able to fulfill your mission of toll-house cookies from scratch, and take little notice of the  splotches of sugar and flour you have left all over the counter. Mom comes home to make dinner, and is confronted with the mess. How does she react? How does she react when, on top of it all, none of the cookies are left for her?

Really, I think people are startled to discover that I take offense at chemicals being casually strewn all over the balance bench. The bottom line is that when someone leaves a mess, they are stealing my time. These same people would probably never consider rooting through my desk for loose change. But leave a mess that no self-respecting biochemist could work in? Please, take my quarters for a diet coke, but do not steal my time. It is priceless. And if you do steal my time, then turn around and have the chutzpah to ask for more, you will be in for a rude awakening.

Rant not even close to over, but I have a midnight rendezvous with Neal Stephenson.

boing

It's tricky getting my camera to tell the truth with this project:

In contrast, you can see the colors in morning light rather than twilight.

Size does not elude the camera quite so easily. The provisional cast on row was 81 stitches. So far, there are 89 pairs of rows, each 8 stitches greater than the last.

• 81 + (88 x 8) = 785 stitches on needles
• 81 + (44 x 8) = 433 stitches per row, on average
  
• 433 x 89 x 2 = 77,074 stitches so far

Given that the form of this shawl is quite regular, and I know about how much farther I need to go, I can calculate how many stitches I will end up with:

• current goal => 115 row pairs
• 81 + (114 x 8) = 993 stitches in final row
• 81 + (57 x 8) = 537 stitches per row, on average
• 537 x 115 x 2 = 123,510 stitches final

62% finished, 38% to go, not counting the edging.

second circus

Now that autumn appears to have moved in for good, this blanket seems out of place. This second Circus is heading to California, though, where the fall is a fine time for it.

The ribs flattened nicely after washing.

Second Circus specs

• 6 skeins of Kertzer Super 10, very little remaining
• US 5 needles, metal though not Addis
• 34 inches by 40 inches
• pattern: chevron motif, repeating stripe sizes but non-repeating colors

The first Circus was clearly a prototype, covering twice as great an area, comprising more colors, and sporting a crocheted edge. For simplicity, I chose a contiguous garter stitch edge for the second Circus. Ultimately, a slip stitch edging may be best, echoing as it would the wider ribs in the body of the blanket.

PeachPit was extolling the virtues of this Circus Blanket, so I may yet make one for her. While I really enjoy Kertzer, I may choose Cotton Classic for the third version, which is more widely available, and which gives more flexibility with color as the skeins are shorter.

1998

24 September - defended doctoral thesis
01 October - moved from Pasadena to Cambridge
10 October - married DH in Philadelphia
11 October - flew through Heathrow to Rome
12 October - was mistaken for being French outside the Vatican while buying roasted chesnuts on the street

zoo, too

Few video games have ever grabbed my attention and held it for more than a few seconds. (Arcade games embraced purely for flirting purposes do not count.) Games not sought as a seduction vehicle include Snood, Minesweeper, Tetris, PacMan, Asteroids, and Pong (really). There's a new online activity, however, that engrosses me in much the same way as these classics. It's called Galaxy Zoo.

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey people could use your help in classifying galaxies. Not a pro? No problem. A tutorial familiarizes participants with the classification scheme, and a quiz ensures that only those with at least moderate competency are admitted to the ranks.

I admit, this made me a little nervous at first. What if I put a galaxy in the wrong bin? Am I going to thwart the progress of science? Not a problem. The current goal of the Galaxy Zoo project is to have each of 10 million images classified twenty times. This substantial redundancy offers a lot of power. I suspect that the DSS team will sort galaxies not only according to type, but also on the degree to which classifications converge. This in turn may help the DSS team focus on images that are more difficult to assess.

Another pertinent point: will this help me get laid? Since I am married to an astronomer, you might think that classifying galaxies would further endear me to him. Not so, I think. The Galaxy Zoo classification scheme is rough compared to what professionals like my husband use. While I did get a perfect score on the quiz (hand, up, over, pat-pat-pat), I still engaged DH in checking my work. He went off the rails when I encountered a lenticular galaxy, as there was no button to click for "lenticular." I guess I will have to continue with my direct but effective methods.

This post has been brought to you by J Random Science Post, also known as Science Sunday, or Science Friday.