Evolocution.

WHEN MY PROTOCOL WORKS THE VERY FIRST TIME

CAN’T STOP FIDGETING

WHY AM I NOT BETTER AT TWIRLING MY PEN

Isn’t staring at the computer screen all day supposed to wreck your concentration? - COME ON MACBOOK, MAKE IT HURT SO GOOD.

I think my PI has confused me with a software engineer.

devidsketchbook:

Photographs of ice structures by Jessica Rosenkrantz

(via freshphotons)

Going into the garage where I work, and trying to do my work and trying not to think about, “Oh, what does this reviewer from The New York Times say,” to find myself preoccupied and distracted by all kinds of what are really petty and immature and vain distractions is very educational. It may be that the only way in America to produce pure art would be to remove oneself from the public sphere and produce that art only as gifts, where there’s no money involved and no attempt at publicity or publication involved. The problem is that if everyone does that, then there is no public arts here. So it all becomes really a paradox that I’ve spent a lot of the last years thinking about, and I don’t have an answer.

David Foster Wallace

staceythinx:

Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism by Josiah McElheny

About the piece:

Deploying the most sophisticated and virtuoso glass-working techniques combined with a conceptual rigor, McElheny creates sculptures and installations that explore crucial moments in the development of modernity, its visual and theoretical undercurrents. Over the past four years, McElheny has produced a series of works based on a conversation between sculptor Isamu Noguchi and designer/architect Buckminster Fuller that took place in 1929 during which they discussed a world of form without shadow; totally reflective forms inhabiting a totally reflective environment that would be totally self-enclosed - the perfect utopian environment. ‘Endlessly Repeating Twentieth Century Modernism’ presents the viewer with a seemingly infinite repetition of reflections of modernist design (decanters, vases, boxes, and bottles based on designs from Scandinavia, Italy, the former Czechoslovakia, and Austria from c. 1910 -1990) that attempts to depict the capitalist notion that all objects are eternally repeatable, that everything can be remanufactured endlessly without regard to era, geography, or culture. McElheny has stated that he aims to explore how “the act of looking at a reflective object could be connected to the mental act of reflecting on an idea.”

(via freshphotons)

Spending binge.

I meant to drop a couple hundred bucks on shoes, a fleece to replace the ugly black NorthFace I’ve been wearing for the past three years, and some jeans without holes in them. Normally this isn’t a problem. This time, however, I have bought books. Non-technical, bona fide literary books. First time in years this has happened. I feel like I’m rebelling against something. Maybe the soul-crushingly technical drabness of my existence. Or just the fact that it’s sunny outside and I’m inside writing Matlab code. (Which, incidentally, I don’t mind writing, but which begs a return to things like breathing after a while.)

Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
The Broom of the System - David Foster Wallace
Consider the Lobster - David Foster Wallace
A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again - David Foster Wallace
Breakfast of Champions - Kurt Vonnegut
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - Rebecca Skloot
The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene

I’m looking at another $200 - $300 for a bookshelf. There go my shoes.

That being said, I’m looking forward to spending some sunny weekends reading these and forgetting I give a flying fuck about anything else. And, apparently, not reading technical papers for once.

And so goes life in the ivory tower of academic research.

Riboswitch, how do I love thee!

But soft! The romance of the kissing loop is least authentic when faked as a pseudoknot.

Nothing like 9AM biophysics to finally peel me off of California time.

Piled Higher and Deeper. >:)