David Guarrera's Worldsheet

New Blog!

2008-03-02T23:10:00.001-05:00

For the throngs of worldsheet fans who are still around, I now have a blog with a group of physicists, Imaginary Potential.

This Article Makes Me Angry

2007-06-11T20:53:00.000-04:00

Slate.com is usually a great place to get news and slightly unorthodox and mostly left leaning commentary. Their big shtick seems to be semi-shocking headlines designed to lure the reader in. For example, a story on the movie "Casablanca," might be titled "Casablanca is not a very good movie," and so on. All of this is rather amusing, except for when it takes place in my house.

For your consideration: this idiotic piece of science writing . The writer's (a dude named James Owen Weatherall) main point seems to be that the discovery of the Higgs is bad because apart from it, we expect no new physics until the GUT scale (very high energies that our particle accelerators won't get to anytime soon). Let's go though it part by part. The author comments on a rumor that they may have discovered the Higgs at the Tevatron (something I have not heard anything about here at TASI, a summer school filled with many of the leading students and professors, surely if there were something to this rumor we'd be abuzz (?) ). Various comments:

1. First of all, the author claims that the standard model was "put forth by John Iliopoulos in 1974." Huh? I've never heard that one. After googling this, it seems the Iliopoulous was perhaps the first to use the term "standard model," but I would, by no means say that he "put it forth". The heavy liftiing for the SM was done by Glashow, Salaam and Weinberg for the electroweak (SU(2) X U(1)) part of the theory. For QCD (the SU(3) part), the work was done by many, but Wilczek, Gross, Politzer and maybe t'Hooft deserve the most credit. Iliopoulous? (Don't get me wrong, he's no slouch, he's done many important interesting things in physics.) Maybe he was going for technical correctness in that Iliopoulos first proposed the term, but either way it's either wrong or grossly misleading. Don't journalists have to do research?

2. "...if the rumor is true and the standard model Higgs has been found at the Tevatron, the LHC is in big trouble: Immediately, its "guaranteed" success—the final particle of the standard model, not to mention a couple of Nobel Prizes for European scientists—is gone." This is actually the author's only good point. Physicists are most confident about finding the Higgs "or something like it" (Nima Arkani-Hamed's words). I wouldn't say that the LHC is in "big trouble," though. This leads us to the rest of the article...

3. "Physicists have developed such a complete description of elementary particles that, once the final piece of the theory is in place, the chances that the LHC will find anything the standard model doesn't predict are almost negligible." What?! Where is Mr. Weatherall getting his information from? It's hardly surprising that he quotes no physicists in the article. Even if the Higgs is found, there is still very good reason to expect new physics at the TeV scale (the energy range probed by the LHC). In fact, the biggist indication that there is new physics is the unnatural fine tuning of the Higgs mass. Physicists have assumed for decades that the Higgs would be found. Once you believe in the Higgs, the numbers come out such that its mass has to be incredibly fine tuned in order to account for observed physics. Nobody studying particle physics finds this physically natural. There is a loophole out of this if there is new physics at precisely the energy scales that the LHC will be investigating. Let me repeat again: Everyone expects new physics (besides the Higgs) to be found at the LHC.

4. "But what happens if the Higgs turns out to be just right? Well, then the standard model predicts that you'd need a machine roughly a quadrillion times more powerful than the LHC to find anything new. " No, no it does not. Shmuck.

5. "That's why particle physicists, and the EU member states that have spent Nepal's annual GDP to build this accelerator, are hoping that no one, in Chicago or Switzerland, finds the Higgs." Not true either, champ. In fact all particle physics expect the Higgs or something like it. I, and I think most theory graduate students and researchers would be quite overjoyed at the Higgs discovery and the final test of the standard model. But even then, all signs point to there being more than the standard model, and that we will begin to find those signs soon after.

Mr. Weatherall, shame on you. Next time, you should talk to some actual physicists. Though I've complained about science journalism on this blog before, I'd take the frothy, meaningless musings of Dennis Overbye over James Owen Weatherall's just plain wrong reporting.

Crackpot of the Week #1

2007-05-13T15:29:00.000-04:00

After a chat with various officemates today, we thought it would be amusing to highlight on a blog the various crackpot theories that make their way to our inboxes.

You might not know it, but there is a suprisingly large group of sociologically interesting people who think that while they have no formal training in math or science that they have discovered the next theory of everything in physics. These people (known by those in the biz as "crackpots") frequently try to contact actual scientists and even us graduate students to try and convince us of their crazy theories. They do not usually listen to reason. There are way more of these people than you'd might expect. Every year at the CTP, security has to actually escort a number of them from the building. Some of my favorite crackpot related resources on the web are:

John Baez's crackpot index
Great "This American Life" where crackpotisim is discussed. In particular the program follows around some dude who, while mostly sane, seems to think Einstein is all wrong (he has no formal training in physics). He seems to think that E=mc, not E=mc^2 (my favorite quote is "It's not that big a deal, Einstein wasn't too far off").

Anyway, I hope to, from now on highlight some of the crazy ass theories that we get here in our email. Now, some readers might question the taste of me posting crackpot theories in order to make fun of them. Those readers might have a point. However, some of these theories are quite funny, and their humor deserves not to be lost.

Our first crackpot of the week is the author of the new and groundbreaking gravity-spheres theory, which, as far as I can tell, depends on the very intimate relationship between gravity and spheres. In contrary to the old, dogmatic belief that the gravity of an object exists everywhere, the author informs us that, in fact, it only exists within (you guessed it) spheres. In fact, "The structure of the [gravitational] force field is simple: a bubble within a bubble within a bubble… Spheres." Niiiiice. This simple idea, evidently, also "answers just about ALL questions in astronomy and all relating questions in astrophysics, clearly and unambiguously." Sweet. For example, it answers why there are rings around Saturn. because "If you spin an object on a string, you will notice that the object and the string form a flat circle and that the object tends to remain in the plane of that circle called the plane of rotation. What happened around Saturn is something similar – with the debris as the object and Saturn’s gravity as the string."

Also, the author seems to have a vendetta against LIGO (the ground based aparatus for detecting gravitational waves that will be coming online soon). Though he conceeds the existence of gravitational waves, he thinks it exceedingly obvious that the waves won't radiate to us. Of course, instead, they will stay in their spheres!

Oh, and also Einstein was horribly wrong and the special and the general relativity are incorrect.

TASI

2007-03-28T19:39:00.000-04:00

I found out yesterday that I was admitted to the TASI 2007 summer school in Boulder, Colorado. That was quite a pleasant surprised, I was not expecting to be admitted as there were a lot of MIT applicants. I'm excited, the topic this year is "string universe" (it is interesting I was admitted, as I know little to no string theory). The lecturers and topics can be found here . I am most excited about (the) Intriligator's lecture on SUSY breaking, and about David Tong's lectures on solitons and low dimesional gauge theories. MIT locals Barton Zwiebach and Hong Liu will also be speaking and they are always crowd pleasers (and the are 2/3 of my exam committee, so let's hope they read this complement).

Old Sick Lady

2007-03-21T15:44:00.000-04:00

Dear Old Sick Lady,

Please leave the library. Why must you continue to cough absurdly loudly while I try to learn about pions? Why is it that you sound like you are possibly about to die, like your bronchial tubes are so full of phelgm that you have trouble sucking in air? See a doctor old sick lady. Also please leave. I am pretty sure you are going to give me a staph infection, whatever that is. Also, why must you systematically use every computer in the library, covering each with the germs that you almost certainly are spewing every time you open that foul mouth of yours to radiate your cough of death?

I am looking at you now as I type this. Don't you have places to be sick lady? How can you spend your entire day on various library computers. Don't you have young, healthy children or possibly grandchildren that can shower you with love, instead of you showering me with bacteria? Perhaps they died of a staph infection.

Open House

2007-03-19T21:01:00.000-04:00

Well, the open house is over (finished on friday), and I took the weekend to recover and sleep (and of course, not to study). All in all, despite an unplanned blizzard, I think it went pretty well. The events started wednesday night at the Asgard with drinks and dinner with the prospectives. Not too many prospectives showed up, but more than enough currents did, I think giving the impression that we are a social bunch.

Thursday I gave a short welcome spiel which I think went alright. Then I tried to get some work done with the remainder of the day.

Friday a few of us gave a grad student info session. My presentation there went very well, though I am told that when I talk my face turns all red (this also happens when I drink, when it's cold, when I exercise, and most tuesdays). Also, the fly on my pants kept coming down, I hope that wasn't noticed. After that was the grad student poster session, then dinner at the local pool hall, flat top johnny's. Most prospectives turned up for a few beers, some conversation and pool, and, despite the blizzard most ventured out towards the grad student house party planned afterwards for them (what else were they going to do at 7:30 pm?). The party went expertly; tons showed up and many had a good play on my nintendo wii. There were even a few girls at the party.

Speaking of which there were two (dare I say cute?) prospective women for the CTP. Man, I hope they come. Our current total at the CTP will soon be two. I talked to one for a while. She had some reservations about coming to MIT such as "It seems like there are no girls here, while there are lots at Harvard." I couldn't really argue with that except to say that 1. That's why we need you, and 2. err, harvard sucks.

Crazy

2007-03-13T23:09:00.000-04:00

I'm about to explode. The physics open house starts tomorrow, there is also a cookie hour that needs to be executed, plus possibly work that needs to get done (I spent all day uselessly (and not succesfully) tracking down minus signs and symmetry factors). PGSC also has an invited colloquim speaker, Bill Bialek, which would be cool were it not to fall next week, right in the midst of everything else. Evidently I'm meant to organize meetings between him and professors he wants to chat with. I just got his list of people he wants to meet and its huge! He also said he'd like to be surprised. I should set him up with one of the CTP crackpots.

I'd like to say that there are more interesting things going on, but that would be untrue. Until tomorrow...

Exam Time Set

2007-03-12T18:26:00.000-04:00

We got our exam dates today and mine is the seemingly far away April 27th, six weeks from this friday. It seems like a lot of time, but if I plan on getting even epsilon research done and learning the entire standard model in that time, it'll fly by. Unfortunately my time slot coincides with the CTP lunch club so the venue has been changed from the seminar room to one of the examiners offices. Strangely, I have the notion that this change of venue could hurt me. I somehow think that the closer, more claustraphobic quarters is more conducive to the examiners ripping me apart.

Also, I was hoping to really get the studying off the ground this week, but it's also the graduate open house for prospective students from weds-friday and the PGSC (of which I am the president) is planning lots of the events. This means I will probably get little to no work done (negative effect, I spent all day today begging people to make posters) and that free food will abound (positive effect). I'm going to go take a walk now; it's nice out.

Gonna Fly Now

2007-03-08T21:39:00.000-05:00

Well, it's begun. I've started to go semi-hardcore studying at night. I also find myself whistling parts of the Rocky soundtrack throughout the day. Though I am getting mentally pumped, not as much studying is going on as I'd like. I have bought extremely large index cards along with an extremely large box to hold these index cards. I plan on putting many a mathematical formula on these and drilling myself, but so far I've made two cards and not done any drilling.

We also recieved our part III topics today (for the uninformed the structure of the exam is that you give a mini-presentation about a predesignated topic to three brilliant and intimidating professors, and the remainder of the time is taken up by them asking you pretty much anything they want and you trying not to break out weeping). My question to talk about is: "In the standard model CP violation is encoded in the CKM matrix. What are the experimentally observed examples of CP violation? How are the experimental observations related to the theoretical parameterization?" It's nice because its a topic about which there is tons of literarture. On the flip side, this also means they could have hundreds of questions which I wouldn't have covered while studying. One thing I do know is my presentation with definitely include the mighty unitarity triangle! I've been punished during many a colloquia by having to see this ubiquitous 3 sided polygon and now others will feel my pain.

On another note, I've begun hanging out in the library. I've decided that the bathroom in the basement is pretty much the scariest place ever. There's no lighting, it's constantly dirty and everything is colored this odd seventies pastel. Also, its got lewd graffiti all over the walls of the stalls which leads one to question exactly what kind of MIT student still thinks its funny to draw, in magic marker, a large anthropmorphic penis with a smiley face.

Let the Part III studying begin

2007-03-06T19:30:00.000-05:00

I guess it's been a while since I last posted because when I just tried to sign on I was informed that I had to switch my account to something called "new blogger". Appearently all "new blogger" means is that google bought blogger. Anyway, tonight will be the first night that I study for part III (a very large oral qualifying examination that's coming up in about a month and a half), so I figured it'd be a good time to start blogging. From here on in, I resolve that I will post each day until Part III. It'll give me a welcome distraction from all of this. ugh (and I haven't even started yet). Let it begin.

How To Ruin Your Career, Part II

2006-08-31T11:21:00.000-04:00

Alright, so the blog is back (for all those who were waiting with bated breath--mostly my grandma and Michael Zoldessy ). This semester is going to be fairly hectic, but I swear I will try and commit myself to a once a day or two posting.

Evidently even in my absence, there has been activity on the blog. I refer you to this former post, where, in confused anger, I bemoaned not understanding Joe Polchinski's String Theory book. Now look at the last comment, left today by Dr. Polchinski. Evidently he found my website by googling "Polchinski," where, quite astonishingly, my blog is the 9th hit (ever since learning how to use AOL, my grandma's emails have been very frequent, I can only imagine that she also likes pressing reload on my blog).

I must say, I am quite embarrased, though it's nice that I can add a "Part II," on the continuing series of amusing ways I am ruining my career (though I was prescient enough to append a "part I" to the original in the series ). For those who do not know, Dr. Polchinski is a giant in high energy physics and is probably better off not knowning that some dumbass grad student is rather publicly complaining about his book. I humbly apologize. Do not be dismayed that I am confused by your book. I haven't made it very far in Joyce's "Ulysees," despite a few attempts, but I hear that it's a pretty darn good book.

Pushpinder

2006-03-16T19:16:00.000-05:00

I was recently clued into an amazing catering system that goes on around MIT. It goes like this; there is some man named Pushpinder. You email Pushpinder, asking him to deliver you Indian food for however many days during the week. At noon sharp, this man, pushpinder, leaves indian food for you in a designated place at MIT. It consists of a delicious vegitarian meal, along with heaps of rice and bread.

I have never met Pushpinder. I have not yet paid Pushpinder. Yet this anonymous man continues to bring me incredible food that incapacitates my work afternoon.

Apparently this system is not unique to MIT (an article about such delivery systems has reached #1 most emailed at nytimes.com. I am happy to be tapping into this rich cultural tapestry.

In thanks of this amazing man who I have not yet met, I will suggest that all mit readers email pushpinder at guruthecaterer@gmail.com asking him for food. He will bring it.

Dennis Overbye, you've done better

2006-03-14T23:33:00.000-05:00

Much better . He sticks it to "What the bleep". He ends with a bit too much of a flourish, but it makes a solid point.

On a sadder note, Jon Stewart just invoked "that Heisenberg principle" in a ridiculous way.

A list

2006-02-03T00:32:00.000-05:00

Alright, I've been tagged by rupedog, and so I will do this. But I will not be happy about it. Here it is, a list.

Four Jobs I have had:

1. Secretary at a hebrew school. I still have not figured out how to transfer calls.

2. Phototechnician at my buddy Mikey's dad's store. The best day was when Mikey and I found negatives of amorous fat people in the store basement and secretly developed them.

3. Research assistant for a linguistics professor. This was my short lived (about two weeks) work/study job in college. I was meant to listen to audio tapes and transcribe them. I decided it was stupid and didn't want to do it. I didn't tell the professor, though, and kept all of her research tapes.

4. Research assistant for my father. He was doing a study for his Ph.D. dissertation about end of life decision making. A few times I had to go up to the cancer ward and ask people to turn their attention away from dying towards a survey about dying.

four Movies I could watch over and over:

1. Airplane!
2. Searching for Bobby Fisher
3. Double Indemnity
4. The Godfather

Four Places I've Lived

1. Roslyn Heights, NY
2. Evanston, IL
3. Cambridge, MA
4. Cambridge, UK

Four TV shows I love to watch:

1. The Sopranos..pehaps the best tv show ever made
2. The Twilight Zone. A close second.
3. The Daily Show
4. Twin Peaks

Four Places I've Been on Vacation

1. Morocco
2. Israel
3. Hot Springs, AK
4. Sicily

Four of my favorite foods

1. Cannoli. I challenge anyone not to love this delicious dessert.
2. Muffaletta. Sad to say, when Katrina hit, a part of me was most worried about all of my favorite New Orleans Restaurant. I am thankful that Central Grocery, with its delicious sandwich, survived.
3. Chips and Salsa
4. That superb fish that I've gotten from The Elephant Walk twice now. It's called something Malaysian like "Po Bam Pi Bok" or something. Whatever it is, its amazing. You must go eat this piece of fish. Now.

Four Places I'd rather be right now:
1. Cambridge, UK
2. Skiing
3. Southern Italy
4. Some Caribbean island.

Four Sites I visit daily:
1. Cosmic Variance
2. Slate.com
3. The arXiv
4. The New York Times

Four Bloggers I am tagging: None. It ends here.

The Blog is Back!

2006-01-19T21:21:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the protracted absence, but I took a few weeks off. I did some skiing/sledding in traveling in Switzerland with my girlfriend and others, then returned with her to Cambridge England for much reading, rest, relaxation, and rekindling of old squash rivalries.

Now that I'm back in town, I'm having a brief period of productivity (which will soon be spoiled by next weeks Center for Theoretical Physics ski retreat, and then my parents coming). I've decided that I want to go to this conference . I think I can get the funding (even though I have nothing at all to contribute to the conference) and both my academic and research advisors appear to be speaking. I use the term "research advisor" rather loosely, as we've had one meeting where he said "read this paper, then come back to me," but I am still hopeful. I plan on meeting him tomorrow about the paper, but I wonder if it's appropriate, right before I ask him my long list of stupid questions about the paper, if I ask him if he can take me to Brazil with him.

CTP Friday Lunch Club Seminars Online!

2005-12-02T17:16:00.000-05:00

Can you not get enough of the Center For Theoretical Physics friday lunch clubs? Do you immediately salivate at the whiff of greasy mediocre bacon pizza? Suffer no more! Because of an initiatve by yours truly (with much help from Ambar Jain, Charles Suggs, and various guest graduate student cameramen), the graduate seminars are beggining to be put online . So far, talks by Can Kilic and Brian Wecht are online, but there are four more waiting to be transfered. Enjoy!

How to Ruin Your Career, Part I

2005-11-21T17:15:00.000-05:00

The post is "part I" because, I suspect, there will be many more to come. I seem to have a particular knack for getting myself in embarrasing situations, especially around those I am trying to impress the most. I tend to accidentally insult those mentors in the academic world who deserve the most reverence. Some examples:

1. I went to Israel one summer in a group that included this chick named "Abe". She had short, black hair, and looked vaguely like a math TA that I had; one particular math TA who happened to be dating (and is now married to) my advisor at Northwestern. One day, I'm passing by someone who I think is Abe. "What's up Abe," I utter. I see a look of horror and confusion flash across this woman's face. Five minutes later I realize it's my advisor's girlfriend and that the "p" of "up" has surely been perceived as a slurred p/b sound such that my advisor's girlfriend thinks that I have called her "babe". Intense embarrasement results. I apologize to my advisor for about a month. I still doubt he believes me. It sounds like the lamest excuse story ever.

2. Two weeks ago Very Promient and Famous Physicist From Havard (VPFPFH) comes to give a talk at MIT. He/she is hanging out in the tea room. I decide I could use a mid-afternoon pick me up. Unbeknownst to me, some bastard has replaced the normal, insulating tea cups, with super thin waxy cups. I pour the hot water in, pick up the cup. It's hot, I fumble with it, spilling water all over myself and saying "ow ow ow" in front of VPFPFH. I panic, throw the scalding water and unused teabag into the garbage, and run out the room.

3. Last week I emailed Extremely Important Professor Who Invented Much of Quantum Field Theory (EIPWIMQFT), asking for a meeting as I am considering asking him for a research project in the future. He has not responded to my email. I have been acting awkwardly in halls around him. Today, on the way back from class, some friends and I are talking animatedly. I am telling a story or something, and as I do, a man exits from a nearby bank onto the street in front of us. At this part in the story I am telling, I yell "Hey you!," and point down the street (I get into my stories). The man from the bank turns around. It is EIPWIMQFT. Ugh.

Riemannian Geometry and Tensor Calculus

2005-11-20T18:54:00.000-05:00

Tired of computing curvature tensors and Christoffel symbols (I'm looking at you Tom Jackson ). Use the "Riemmanian Geometry and Tensor Calculus," notebook for mathematica. It's wonderful, you plug in the metric and it calculates all curvature tensors (including Einstein), and the Christoffel symbols. It doesn't do exterior calculus, but its incredible for its very specific function. It was sort of hard to track down on the internet, so its located here . Just copy the text and save it into a Mathematica notebook.

Two unrelated posts

2005-11-17T13:35:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been a while, and I have no excuse except for laziness. Two things:

1. I recently joined the physics IM Ice Hockey team. That's right, be impressed, we actually field an ice hockey team. We're even in the D+ league. Our first game was two weeks ago or so, and we played Hillel. Before the game, I consoled myself with the old adage "Jews don't play ice hockey." While still true, it turns out there is another truism I forgot, "Physicists don't play ice hockey." Even more so, these combine exponentially to suggest "David doesn't play ice hockey, but somehow chases the puck, never touching it, mostly crashing at high speed into the boards." We got walloped by the Jews. This past tuesday we got walloped by some more jews, my own fraternity AEPi. Our team name is the "Annihilation Operators." That's right. Our jersey is an "a" with two superscripted bloody daggers.

2. I'm fed up with so called "popular" physics books. Mostly I'm fed up with this monstrosity of a book "The Road to Reality," by Roger Penrose. I joined a study group on this book (comprised of students and faculty from a few different departments), and we are going through it slowly. If you haven't seen it, it's 1000 pages, and tries to encompass all of scientific knowledge to date. It's unclear who the demographic for the book is. Nonscientists? No. There is no godly way that a nonscientist could understand this book. Scientists? Well, not really. It's hardly rigorous enough for a typical mathematician/physicist. One recent passage that pissed me off was when he was talking casually about the "floppiness" of symplectic manifolds. What?! It took many references to "mathworld" and to some differential geometry books to finally understand what the hell he was talking about. I finally have come to the conclusion that the target audience is people who know all of this stuff already (err, namely Penrose I guess) or small study groups comprised of graduate students and faculty. It's a little bit galling to think of the many fans of popular science who shelled out forty bucks for this thing and who are able to get very little from it. It's the like time that I bought "The Bell Curve," and never got page 5.

A Typical Day at Work

2005-10-30T00:12:00.000-04:00

Dear Dr. Polchinski

2005-10-29T17:07:00.000-04:00

Your book is very, very confusing. I do not understand it at all. I look forward to a day that may come, where I might refer back to it, finally understanding everything you are saying. That day is not now. That day is not anytime soon.

For Shame, CNN

2005-10-23T00:34:00.000-04:00

Browsed tonight on tv: Ashlee Simpson being interviewed on Larry King Live. If that weren't bad enough, the sit in for Larry was Ryan Seacrest. The world is ending.

Two Cool Things about Topology

2005-10-16T19:48:00.000-04:00

1. On the earth's surface, there are at least two points with the same temperature and air pressure.

2. If I make a sandwich with a piece of ham, a piece of cheese, and two slices of bread, no matter where I place them in the sandwich, and how big the pieces are, I can always cut each piece in two with one straight wack of the knife.

HIlarious!

2005-10-12T18:06:00.000-04:00

From the Onion:

Philandering String Theorist Can Explain Everything
October 12, 2005 Issue 41•41
BATAVIA, IL—Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory physicist Laird Karmann, a noted string theorist and accused philanderer, said Monday that he can "explain everything" if his wife Elizabeth will just give him a chance. "Surely, anyone can see that, mathematically, the universe is composed of Riemann surfaces, having positive-definite metrics, across which the attached 'loops' or free 'strings' have a (1+1) dynamic topology," Karmann said. "But string behaviors are Lorentzian, meaning that they—like me—need an intense dual-phase Wick rotation now and then just to stay in rational space. I mean, it was just a blowjob." Elizabeth refused to accept her husband's theory, suggesting that he study the transformational loop dynamics implicit in her hurled wedding ring.

MIT Mutants

2005-10-12T12:11:00.000-04:00

I'm having quite a tough time with this algebraic topology class, it dominates my schedule. Yeserday, as usual, I was working on the problem set (which remained very incomplete) until about two in the morning. Working with me were a college freshman, two sophmores, and a college senior. What's more, they were way better at math then I was. Two of them had effectively skipped high school, and one of them claimed that he had seen quotient groups in the fourth grade. I don't know that I had seen quotients in the fourth grade. These people are mutants.

Sometimes, walking around MIT's concrete excuse for a campus, and witnessing the complete lack of regard for humanities around here, and the absurdly long hours required for undergraduates, I wonder "Who in their right mind would come to such a place for college?" It's these mutant people. They are a scary, scary army of wunderkind dorks. I want to go back to where there are just regular smart people.