Tales of the Invisible Ben

The Running Ben

With the end of October, it seems that autumn has finally arrived here at Old Ivy University. After nearly a full month of beautifully crisp weather, the arrival of several days of ominously gray and wet weather last week served as a signal to the local tree population to spontaneously shed their leaves and for the temperature to spontaneously drop twenty degrees. (Fortunately, unlike last year, my landlord is in the country this year, so it is likely that the heat will actually be turned on from now until at least March.) Pumpkins have arrived at my local grocery store, though I have yet to determine exactly when that transition occurred. Beyond these seasonal patterns, the Old Ivy calendar indicates that it is now fall break, which means that this week I do not have to attend any classes and can focus on other things.

Some of those things are mundane. I deal with them every week and I have learned from experience that no one really cares how many books on quantum physics or the development of electrical power grids one has read and summarized. But there have been a few interesting developments. For example, last Saturday I attended a live performance of Orson Welles' War of the Worlds. A cast of radio actors staged the event, using authentic period broadcasting equipment (ok, just microphones...) to send their voices to an array of antique receivers spread around the room. We were invited to close our eyes and immerse ourselves in the experience of a Martian invasion, all in beautiful 14 channel, mono surround sound. As a fan of old-time radio, this was a rare treat although I had secretly hoped that the sound effects would be done by a traditional foley artist rather than using a laptop. Such is life.

The next day, I took advantage of my time off to go visit my girlfriend. Between her theater work and my inertial tendency to stay in the library until a given reading was finished, we had both remained isolated in our busy little worlds, but we mutually decided that this was something with which we needed to deal...posthaste! Unfortunately, I arrived at her house late due to construction delays on the highway. But we were still able to grab a nice dinner and a 9:30 screening of Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I have never seen the first film, which my girlfriend loved, but this sequel apparently failed in a significant fashion to live up to the original. I had no idea that Francis Drake was only peripherally involved in the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Victory that day apparently went to action-hero and cliche-spinner Sir Walter Raleigh, whose character seemed closer to Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, complete with melodramatic rope swinging, than a complex historical personality.

The other significant highlight of my trip was my attempt to fix my girlfriend's MP3 player...and my subsequent destruction of said player. She had a nice 2 gigabyte iRiver Clix which for some reason refused to sync several of her mp3s. I adjusted the IDE codes, but Windows Media Player refused to allow the transfer. It was then I started trying to install a newer version of the firmware. But as I have often learned, better is truly the enemy of good. None of the firmware install files worked properly and the end result was that despite wiping off all of the songs from the player, Windows continued to believe that it was fully loaded. The only silver lining was that the FM radio still worked. Luckily for me, my girlfriend took the whole thing in stride, claiming that the machine was acting up even before I had fiddled with it. Nevertheless, we went out the next day and picked up a new machine, one which doesn't rely on Windows Media Player quite so heavily for its file transfers, so that she can listen to her favorite music while running.

Which brings us, after a rather circuitous path to the title of this post. Now I'm positive that those of you who have made it this far will be wondering what my girlfriend's interest in running has to do with me. We have already established, after all, my lack of athletic ability, at least so far as hiking is concerned. My girlfriend, however, was a cross country runner in high school and has also been known to play soccer. Teaching for a few years interrupted this routine, but since she's no longer trapped at Underwood, he decided that she needed to get some more exercise, beyond going to dance class two to three times a week. She decided to ease her way in using a program called "Couch to 5K", designed to allow anyone to gradually work their way from not running at all to running 3 miles over the course of nine weeks. She started doing it this summer, and besides a few weeks off her feet due to a dance related injury, has kept at it persistently ever since. She also persistent chided me for spending to much time in the library and suggested this program might be the way to get some exercise into my life.

I, however, was never an athlete, unless one counts an occasional game of ultimate frisbee, and remained skeptical that such a program could get someone like me, who had hated running ever since elementary school, to actually run three full miles. So I held off. Until this summer, between getting back from Germany and having my wisdom teeth removed, I decided to just try one week of this program and see how it felt. Then one week turned into two. My plan was to complete the program without telling my girlfriend and then to surprise her, to show that I had listened to her and hopefully impress her with my newfound athletic prowess. But then I had my wisdom teeth removed, and I didn't feel like doing much of anything.

After a few weeks of recovery, I started over again. One week rolled into the next. Week after week after week. I woke up at 7:30, even if my earliest class was at 10:00. I would go running by myself on local residential streets whose sidewalks were almost always empty, listening to public radio on my little MP3 player, jogging and walking, and eventually just jogging...and maybe even running....first for 20 minutes, then for 25, and then for 28. I could hardly believe it...maybe there was something to this exercise thing after all. Some days, my legs ached and I didn't feel like getting out of bed, but my girlfriend, who I had finally told about my secret running sessions, encouraged me to keep going out and running, so I did, partly because I don't like quitting and partly because I wanted to make her proud.

Today marks the last day of my 9 week program. Today, and two other days this week, I have run 30 minutes, a distance of almost exactly 3 miles, with no breaks or rest. I admit that I am in no way prepared to enter myself in a race of any kind and that my friends from home will still almost certainly outrun me at the next frisbee game we play. But, I am getting into better shape and have now run many times further than I ever thought possible. (Chalk this all up to my girlfriend's positive influence.) Perhaps during the summer, I'll try to expand upon this regimen and try to add an additional mile or two, but for now I'm quite satisfied with having made it this far and will attempt to keep running, even during the winter, so that I don't have to start from Week 1 again when spring eventually rolls around.

For now, I have to get to the library. I'm attending a conference this weekend in D.C. (my second one in two weeks), and I have to finish some errands and try to get some work done before tomorrow afternoon. More news on my D.C. trips and ruminations on Harry Potter, presidential politics, and academic life here at Old Ivy are all coming soon.

Until then, have a Happy Halloween, and give my regards to the Great Pumpkin...!

Sprechen Sie Deutsch?

Apparently, the answer for me is a resounding "NEIN!"
Even after a year of undergraduate study and most of a summer working either practicing German, living and studying in Germany, or translating German texts, I failed the history department's German language proficiency examination.
I haven't had the chance to examine the paper yet or discuss my failure with the professor who issued the exam this year. And it's not essential that I pass the exam, as I did pass the required two last year in Spanish and French. (FRENCH for crying out loud! A language I knew even less about than German when I started studying it!)

Nevertheless, I remain particularly bitter about the results, which basically suggest my month in Munich was a waste of time and money. (I almost wonder if future blogging about my trip will only serve to embitter me further.) And although I can retake the test in the spring, as general exams and research papers start ramping up, I will have even less time to prepare.

I don't particularly want to resign myself to failure here. Maybe my errors were purely stylistic, in which case it might be possible to pass without significant study during the winter. Otherwise, I'll just do my best to take the reading course offered here every summer since I really do want to learn German. Hopefully, I won't fail that too.

Ninety Minutes in the Fishbowl

(Reported live and on site from within the Invisible Bunker somewhere in the depths of the Old Ivy Library)

Every week, the history of science program here at Old Ivy has its weekly seminar. The basic setup is as follows. Imagine a large classroom, large enough to have its own cushy chairs and a small coffee table in addition to the larger table and chairs where approximately a dozen people regularly sit for discussion sections. Now imagine that all but three chairs are placed against the walls of the room. This is where every member of the program's faculty and affiliated graduate students come every Monday at 3:00. They sit along the walls, some in comfortable chairs, and direct their gaze up to the front of the room where the main table remains, unmoved. Behind the table are three chairs and in those chairs are three people. The first of these is the professor in charge of mediating discussion each week. The second is for the presenter and next to him is a chair for the commentator.

The procedure is relatively straightforward. The presenter submits a paper for everyone in the department to read sometime in the week before seminar. Typically, everyone gathers in the room at approximately 2:50 and then the meeting is called to order. There is a call for announcements from the floor. Most of the time that lasts a maximum of ten minutes. And then the professor passes the discussion over to the commenter who frames the presenter's work in a five to ten minute talk. And then the floor is open for questions until 4:30. Everyone is encouraged to participate, from the lowliest first year graduate student to the most experienced professor and generally the tone of discussion retains a level of civility. There have been a few nasty incidents, overly harsh critiques and the like. I have seen presenters break down to the point of tears. But on the whole, the experience is a constructive one and both presenters and audience leave the room feeling positive about the whole affair. There is a final round of applause, people shuffle out to the rest of their lives, and the cycle begins again.

Now some of you may be wondering why I bother now, after having attended more than a year of these why I am writing about it now. The answer is simple. Today, I make that critical transition from audience member to contributing author. Today, in a little under an hour, I am going to be presenting my first research paper, the product of almost a full year's worth of work, for the rest of my department to scrutinize and dissect. Based on past experience, it should be an intellectually rewarding experience. My hope is that this will finally confirm to the doubters (including myself) that I actually belong in this program and that my admission to graduate school was not the result of an unfortunate computer error. My fear is that now that I'm the one being put inside the fishbowl, rather than watching discussion from the outside, I will discover that it is filled with piranhas.

Unfortunately, there's no way to be certain how things will turn out in advance. I am relatively confident that having worked on this paper for so long, my knowledge of the material is relatively solid. So that's good. On the other hand, that knowledge is remarkably limited in scope, and therefore open to historical attacks from theoretical positions that one typically heres only in vague whispers from the shadowy corners of the faculty lounge.

Ah well, time is ticking away and I must get going. It would not be deemed polite to miss my appointment in the fishbowl. After all, if there's one thing liable to make piranhas even grumpier, it's a late supper...


UPDATE: Several hours after the fact, I will merely state for the record that I am still alive, though my paper, in its original form, was figuratively shredded by the crowd. The general consensus from those veteran participants with whom I spoke afterwards was that the large number of comments and critiques (nearly everyone in the room contributed) should be construed as a reflection of my topic's potential for a dissertation. Nevertheless, I found it dismaying that in 90 minutes, almost a full year's worth of work has fallen by the wayside. After investing so much time and energy into the project, it was an extremely draining process on an emotional level. One wonders how to lessen the blow with future assignments. Given the time and energy expended, an emotional investment in such work seems inevitable, but if critiques of each of my dissertation chapters prove as daunting as this first research paper, I fear I may go insane before I get my degree... Still, better to learn this now, I suppose, especially as I begin brainstorming my next research paper topic...

Postscript: I actually did write the above material on Monday, October 8th rather than the 7th as listed. This discrepancy was the result of poor planning on my part and should be ignored.

Bleeping Two Foot Tin Ball Threatens World

It was fifty years ago today that the Soviet Union launched the most terrifying threat to national security the United States had ever known...a beeping metal sphere. Up until then, Americans had confidently assumed that they had no rivals in the realm of scientific or technological innovation. They were certain that even if the Russians had the bomb, there was no possible way it could be delivered across an ocean. They obviously were not familiar with the term hubris.

And so, in 1957 when Khrushchev announced that the Soviet Union intended to launch a satellite into Earth orbit in connection with the International Geophysical Year, no one seriously took them seriously.

Until they heard the news on October 4. Until they heard this sound on their radios and saw this picture on every news stand in America.






























Ok...maybe not that exact picture...but something like it. Needless to say, the results were dramatic. Panicked at their sudden deficiency in math and science, Congress went to work and within the next year had passed a bevy of legislation intended to address the issue. Among other things, the National Aeronautics and Space Act was signed, creating NASA, and the U.S. entered the space race with Project Mercury. Other side benefits of this rush to catch up with the Communists?: DARPA, the Polaris Missile Program, and America's public schools who were suddenly given the money they needed to build state of the art labs and update their mathematic curricula.

Ultimately, the U.S. "won" the Space Race, as much as it could be won, by fulfilling President Kennedy's call to send an American to the moon and back before the end of the 1960s. DARPA remains well funded to this day, and our Polaris Missiles are still armed and ready for deployment. Sadly, our schools' math and science programs have dwindled over the years...but at least we got Tom Lehrer's "New Math" out of the deal.

In any event, it was 50 years ago that the world suddenly grew a lot smaller and the future loomed a lot larger...all because of a 2 foot wide spherical transmitter.