What's Been and What's Ben

in Saudi Arabia

Archive for March, 2009

A Stimulating Idea

Monday, March 30th, 2009

I think we need a bigger stimulus package. Why? Because I don’t know of single example of a country that did too much to save their economy. I think Obama is planning a reconciliation budget (50 not 60 percent required in senate) that will do many of the things he wants to do. Might as [...]

state of mind: spring break, reverse polish notation, New Zealand, and Wall Street

Monday, March 30th, 2009

I realized recently that the only thing that can make you think better is to think about how you think. This can lead to an infinitely cascaded set of reasoning that usually ends up with me contemplating if all this proton/neutron/electron stuff that I supposedly made of is real or not. Lost (brief mention) has [...]

a methaphor, maybe to english majors

Monday, March 30th, 2009

I have not personally implemented Keynesian economics to my life. I go through strong booms and busts when it comes to adopting music. The cycle goes like this. I get a that song stuck in my head I get that song, then album, then artist discography I start exploring new music through stuff people advise [...]

Silver Screened Ending

Monday, March 30th, 2009

I have two ideas for good stories. One is a movie called Math Model and the other is an episode of House. Math Model – The movie opens at a fashion show. Why? TnA. Two wallsteet business men are there with arms full of hot chicks living it up watching the fashion show of a [...]

why squirrels hate us

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Squirrels hate people. North America was once covered in a forest. Sure there are the “great plains” that mighty buffalo once roamed. Science has indicated that Native Americans effectively cultivated the North American “plains” to heard buffalo. Either way, squirrels once were able to go from Florida to Maine without touching the ground. Humans burst [...]

A Tale of Two Interviews

Friday, March 20th, 2009

Last night was two good interviews: Stewart with Springsteen and Leno with Obama. I kinda like Bruce Springsteen after I gave him a chance after Stewart gave an emotional interview with him. Leno gave Obama a half-hour interview. It was great. The Special Olympics thing was funny and true. It wasn’t the best thing to [...]

Ladybug Graveyard

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Currently I am sitting at a computer in an otherwise empty public computer lab in the upstairs of the Library here at Rose-Hulman. To my side is a floor to ceiling window less than a foot wide. Ramzi often jokes (but kinda serious) that were (when) zombies invade this would be the place to fight [...]

Seeds of Revolution

Tuesday, March 17th, 2009

Jon Stewart holds a special place in my heart. I have been watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report since high school. It has been a religion for me since at least 2003, six years now, or since we invaded Iraq. For a good chunk of my conscious life I have been watching these [...]

think tank

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Q-switching for plants – some lasers do this thing where they only are on for a short pulse every very small time interval in order to take full advantage of the gain medium (stuff that does the lasing) and I think plants could do the same thing. This summer I want to try growing lots [...]

Boul Me Over: a life in the mountains

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Ramzi got back from UC: Boulder and it sounds great. I want to go there for a PhD now! I think MEMS based optical computing would be a good set of skills for the future. Me and Ramzi see ourselves as the equivalent of 1930′s era electrical engineers. I kinda hate “god’s country” out there, [...]

on a sunday / pin 7, again / TLC5940 redux

Monday, March 16th, 2009

All the scientist’s studies can not change being an idiot. The TLC5940 LED driver chip – the bane of my existence – works now. That would have been useful last quarter when I really could have used them working for my senior design project instead of having microcontrollers (little computer on a chip) power the [...]

The Real Deal with Bill McNeal

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

The democrats have no idea if the stimulus package will work out. It seems more like an excuse for the democrats to spend money – which I am all for. Sure it could help the economy, but I am a bit suspicious of Keynesian economics. We didn’t really get out of the Great Depression by [...]

IP will kill the green revolution

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Intellectual property rights will kill off or at least greatly hamper the green revolution which to put in mellow terms will decide on a large scale the fate of humanity. To sum it up in an example, let us say that I am an inventor of a new process for creating solar thin-film panels more [...]

Windows 7

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Everyone likes to hate microsoft. Why? because they represent a large impersonal corporation that controls the market for operating systems. Because they release software that seems behind the times. Because everyone has been frustrated by the blue screen of death telling them that run-time error x3810233 has occurred. Let me tell you why to love [...]

The Cure is Worse Than the Disease

Monday, March 9th, 2009

I am taking a literature of madness (RH471) class where the professor starts out telling the class, “most students think I’m an asshole.” Which made me happy in some screwed up way that someone being that honest is surprisingly refreshing. He talked about sophomore medical student syndrome where med students think that they have all [...]