I had a nice/brief stay in Toronto last weekend at the Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference 2008. I was trying to kill 2 birds with 1 stone and catch Madlib DJing at wrongbar too, but he cancelled. However, it turned out for the best because I met many fellow nerds. I even unknowingly stumbled upon another physics blogger! Keep up the good work Jasper, consider yourself blogrolled.

I’m not 100% sure why I went to CUPC because I presented research I did at University of Notre Dame last summer in Computational Chemistry. But some good old fashioned American chemistry never hurt anyone.

Highlights of the weekend include my museum/pub crawl attempt with some Manitobian physics students. I tried to explain that Einstein‘s, despite the name, was a pretty weak bar but I feel like failed to impress them with my Toronto-skillz as I led them on a lackluster College St. journey. Where is your cheap drinks + live music when you need it?

The next day I presented my talk “The Counterintuitive Intermolecular Interactions of Hydroxyl Radical In Silico” which was probably a counterintuitive title since it had nothing to do with Silicon. Poster presentations were at the same time as my talk, so I tried to do a little PR and told as many people as I could when my talk would be, and how mind-blowing it would be. Where is your publicist when you need him?

I missed most of the events but had the pleasure of hearing how John Polanyi (pictured above courtesy of Alan Robinson) uses a web of deception to get funding for his fundamental science research (and he’s surely not the only one). Where is your funding when you need it?

I also managed to award “Best Sneakers at CUPC” to Evan Rand from University of Guelph who presented the poster “GEANT4 Simulations of the GRIFFIN Spectrometer“. He was wearing some nice brown AF1′s which I should have got a picture of.

The “Best Illustration” award went to Todd Sierens from University of Manitoba who presented “Electron Scattering: One-Loop Contributions to Parity Violation in QED“.  The picture on his poster was of a skiing Feynman Diagram in a santa hat.

Where is your camera when you need it!?

WNYC’s Radiolab is a masterpiece of radio science. I’m a late joiner to the “Jad and Rob” party but I’ve finally caught up on season 4 during my bike rides to and from the lab. The whole series is free to download on their website and I highly recommend listening to it.

To justify this recommendation I’ve decided to post some of the great things I learned from listening to Radiolab, in reverse chronological order, to whet the knowledge appetite of the reader:

• A study of laughter found 85% of laughing is proceeded by stuff that is not a joke (Laughter)
• You can engineer an E. Coli culture can smell like Wintergreen when it’s growing, and Bananas when it’s completed growing (So-Called Life)
• People who admit to thinking about raping or being raped by an individual make worse athletes (Deception)
• Our brains produce opium (Placebo)
• Harvard professor Robert Stickgold got a cover of Science thanks to Tetris (Sleep)
• Scientists have erased memories in rats (Memory)
• Lobsters are immortal (Mortality)
• The number of the beast, 666, was once 616 (Detective Stories)
• In Mandarin, there is a single word that means mother, hemp, horse, and reproach depending on the tone it is enunciated (Musical Language)
• A study found killing 1 person by a lever to save 4 people is accepted whereas killing 1 person by pushing them off a bridge to save 4 people is not acceptable, regardless of age, gender, or education level (Morality)
• Some people have a condition where they lose all feeling within their own body (Where Am I?)
• Dr. Peter Diamandis funded the X-prize for the first private-sector manned space flight by making a 10 million dollar “bet” with an insurance company that it could be done (Space)
• It is not known how thousands of fireflies shine can in synchronization (Emergence)
• The author of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, may have had psychogenic dwarfism (Stress)
• Monkeys have no introspective consciousness (Who Am I?)
• Your brain activity to wiggle your finger spikes before you “decide” that you want to wiggle your finger (Beyond Time)
• The people of the Andaman Forests in India have a scent calendar where they tell the seasons based on the scent of various fruits and flowers (Time)

Lost is over until 2009 and Battlestar Galactica followed suit last Friday. So what the heck am I going to watch on TV for the rest of the year?

Most likely J.J. Abrams new Sci-fi series: Fringe. The 2 hour premier, leaked 2 months ahead of time, with a 2 x 5 million dollar budget, so I thought I might as well give it my 2 cents. Especially since the “Fringe” in the title refers to …FRINGE SCIENCE!

As noted on Wikipedia, fringe science is a bit classier than the pseudoscience which science bloggers love to hate. It’s supposedly “legitimate” research using the scientific method but in a context which deviates from the mainstream beliefs. Not generally a crowd you want to fall in with but you can’t argue that it makes good television, just look at the success of Heroes and X-Files!

Speaking of those shows, if you’ve watched them, then you won’t be surprised by the premise of Fringe. There’s some ___insert shady organization___ covering up ___insert controversial research___ and it’s up to ___insert protagonists here___ to unravel the mystery.

I hate to spoil anything plot-wise, but, I have yet to see a major difference between this show and your standard X-Files episode. It just seems like an updated X-files with a less likable cast. Some notable differences include:

• Weird giant floating 3D letters instead of classy typewriter-style letters.
• Introduction has words like “Dark Matter” and “Nanotechnology” instead of “Paranormal Activity”.
• Lead actress character isn’t as hot as Scully, Lead(?) actor isn’t as hot as Mulder.
• Larger special effects budget means more goriness, but less creepiness.
• Aliens replaced with mad science experiments gone wrong (just a theory).

At least they got one thing right about the stereotypical scientist, they sure love their coffee! 

Based solely on J.J. Abrams work with Lost and the words that fly by in the introduction of this show I’d say this show has some serious chemical potential energy. I’ll reserve judgement until I see the first season, but Sci-fi fans should be all over this.

Meet Walter White. Standing in front of a plume of red phosphorus gas in the middle of the desert without pants. He’s a lot like me, sitting in the middle of the Writers Guild strike, in a desert of television repeats, without pants. But that’s all about to change after the jump when I tell you about this awesome show and put on some pants!

The show is called Breaking Bad which is American Southwest slang for “challenging conventions, defying authority and to skirt the edges of the law”. Let’s start off with some more enticing facts to wet your brain appetite.

• It’s created by X-files producer Vince Gilligan
• It stars Bryan Cranston (Malcolm’s Dad in Malcolm in the Middle) as a high school chemistry teacher
• It has swearing, sex, nudity, blood and plenty of illicit substances

Just watch the opening sequence of the season premiere for an idea what to expect (Note: You have to rotate the gas mask and click inside it to start the preview).
Honestly, what would drive a mild mannered chemistry teacher to such a state? As if the question wasn’t enough of a hook, I’ll tell you flat out that this show is what Weeds should have been from the get go: edgy, morally twisted, suspenseful, and dark! It’s a shame it isn’t on HBO because I fear that it may not get the exposure it deserves on AMC.

So what about the chemistry? Well, it’s still TV aimed at the general audience, so I don’t blame them for colorizing some gases in Walter’s methamphetamine synthesis. What really attracted me to the show was his appreciation for lab safety, quality glassware, and use of Phosphine to get out of a sticky situation.

I can’t say anymore, the first two episodes have been great. Tune in to Breaking Bad next Sunday!