long long sigh.

This double coincidence of wants thing is terribly difficult.

New York, I Love You by LCD Soundsystem

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

Like a rat in a cage
Pulling minimum wage

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

New York, you're safer
And you're wasting my time

Our records all show
You are filthy but fine

But they shuttered your stores
When you opened the doors
To the cops who were bored
Once they'd run out of crime

New York, you're perfect
Don't please don't change a thing

Your mild billionaire mayor's
Now convinced he's a king

So the boring collect
I mean all disrespect

In the neighborhood bars
I'd once dreamt I would drink

New York, I Love You
But you're freaking me out

There's a ton of the twist
But we're fresh out of shout

Like a death in the hall
That you hear through your wall

New York, I Love You
But you're freaking me out

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

New York, I Love You
But you're bringing me down

Like a death of the heart
Jesus, where do I start?

But you're still the one pool
Where I'd happily drown

And oh.. Take me off your mailing list
For kids that think it still exists
Yes, for those who think it still exists

Maybe I'm wrong
And maybe you're right
Maybe I'm wrong
And myabe you're right

Maybe you're right
Maybe I'm wrong
And just maybe you're right

And Oh..
Maybe mother told you true
And they're always be something there for you
And you'll never be alone

But maybe she's wrong
And maybe I'm right
And just maybe she's wrong

Maybe she's wrong
And maybe I'm right
And if so, is there?

Replace "New York" with "Harvard" and it's exactly how I feel about college right now. This whole summer apps business (PRISE, CARAT, OIP, HSS, internships, recommendations....ga ga ga ga) reminds me an awful lot of senior fall. Except worse -- at least I had some confidence in my college apps. Here, I such feel dumb and mediocre. I've reached a crest in my stress levels and a trough in my happiness ones, which, defying the physical properties of waves, do not cancel out but amplify into a mini nervous breakdown. Breath. It'll all be over in two weeks. And you'll always have Moscow!

Prince Rupert's Drop

Read this:

Prince Rupert's Drops are a glass curiosity created by dripping hot molten glass into cold water. The glass cools into a tadpole-shaped droplet with a long, thin, tail. The water rapidly cools the molten glass on the outside of the drop, while the inner portion of the drop remains significantly hotter. When the glass on the inside eventually cools, it contracts inside the already-solid outer part. This contraction sets up very large compressive stresses on the surface, while the interior of the glass is placed under tension. It can be said to be a kind of tempered glass.

The very high stress within the drop gives rise to unusual qualities, such as the ability to withstand a blow from a hammer on the bulbous end without breaking, while the drops will disintegrate explosively if the tail end is even slightly damaged. When this happens, the large amount of potential energy stored in the drop's crystalline structure is released, causing fractures to propagate through the material at very high speed.

Watch this:


Read this:

It's brilliant. It's a tear you can stand a car
on, the hard eye of a chandelier
ready to break down and cry like a baby, a rare
birth, cooled before its time. It's an ear
of glass accidentally sown in the coldest of water,
that sheer drop, rock solid except for the tail
or neck which will snap like sugar, kick like a mortar
under the surefire touch of your fingernail.

It's the pearl in a will-o'-the-wisp, the lantern asleep
in the ice, the light of St Elmo's fire in your eyes.
It's the roulette burst of a necklace, the snap
of bones in an icicle's finger, the snip of your pliers
at the neck of my heart, the fingertip working the spot
which says 'you are here' until you are suddenly not.

- Jane Draycott

A Theory on Valentine's Day (Several Days Late)

Finding a significant other entails a double coincidence of wants. If this is difficult when you're trading apples and oranges, it surely becomes even more complicated when every person out there is in the worlds is his or her unique individual (so they say). So instead, we create "money," we quantify it. How many carats? How many dozens of roses? How much money in the bank account?

Deutsch.

If dinosaurs spoke a language, it would be German.

(Stolen from someone, but so damn true.)

Economics of Procrastination.

I've realized that procrastination makes perfectly rational economic sense. After all, we always discount the future.

Edit: Sadly, there is a flaw in my logic because we're maximizing utility, not leisure. Since utility is a function of consumption and labor, that means the optimal values of labor is not likely to be zero except in very very extreme circumstances that do not exist in real life. Darn.

Kurse

German Bab -- This class singularly responsible for my much improved sleeping habits. Not only do I have 9 am class every single day, but I have 8 am section on Monday mornings. Yay for sleeping early! More than half the class is grad/business/law students, many of whom can already read German, and somehow it didn't quite register with my brain until now that an intensive language course would be intense. Despite feeling stupid most of the time, I still really enjoy it.

Freshman Seminar: The Book from Gutenburg to the Internet -- A seminar. With Darnton. Fucking fantastic. It seems like a lot more work (readings, presentations, 20 pg research paper) than my last seminar, though I'm sure it will be worth it.

Econ 1011b - Does no one in the econ department speak English? One professor is Eastern European, and I can't decide whether he's a big Belorussian teddy bear or ex-KGD operative. The other is French, daffy in a particularly Parisian way. I can imagine him running around l'école Normale Superiore gesticulating wildly and shouting, "Les économiques! Les économiques!" His accent is so thick that I actually understand him better if I think about what he says in French rather than English. Apparently, they also don't really talk to each other because they have no idea what the other one is doing. Grrr. My TF is....just no. All he does is copy the lecture notes or the textbook on the blackboard. I still haven't quite figured out why I'm taking this class - as a badge of honor?

MCB 80 - I hope this class is easy. I hope this class is easy. I hope this class is easy. I hope this class is easy. Yet something tells me neurobiology will not be easy.

Gosh are we full of ourselves.

From The Harvard Crimson, February 8, 2008. "Clinton, McCain Carry Primaries." Front page, lead story.

Super Tuesday was not kind to Harvard graduates.

The presidential ambitions of former Mass. Gov. and dual Harvard degree holder Mitt Romney were hanging by a thread early this morning after his chief rival for the Republican nomination, Senator John McCain of Arizona, racked up big wins in nominating contests on both coasts.

In the race for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York edged Illinois Senator and Law School alumnus Barack Obama in the crucial northeastern states of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, while also capturing the biggest prize of all: California.

(Meta)physics

"Fate is less a force of nature than a Rube Goldberg device, an endless chain of tricky coincidences whose final result is utterly beyond prediction."