Two months ago, I decided to get my own laptop for work. My Dell Latitude 110L has served me faithfully for 4 years and I've spent many fun hours working with it. It has been with me to one conference. I've written my first paper with it. I've written two more papers. And finally, I wrote my PhD thesis with it. Actually, the thesis was the one that forced me to conclude that even as I continue with the group, there's no way I can continue using that laptop. Yes, working with a 2.5 MB .ODT file with lots of images and indexes do require a fairly good computer.

My professor lent me his Macbook Pro, running Tiger. Sorry, Apple fans, but I've tried to give the OSX UI its fair chance, and it failed. And thus I decided to return the MBP and bought my own computer: a MSI Wind U123. And as I have planned, I decided to dual boot Windows XP and a flavor of Linux in it. I really had only two contenders for this: Fedora and Ubuntu, but at the end Jaunty's Netbook Remix won me over. I love Fedora and I love the idea of having cutting-edge packages, but I decided to go with a distro that uses more mature packages because I want to see how well I can work with the Ubuntu side of the netbook. As it turned out, I do approximately 95% of my work on Ubuntu, with the occasional switch to Windows side.

Two days ago, Karmic Koala (9.10) was released, and after a test using LiveUSB drive, I decided to upgrade my Jaunty installation to Karmic yesterday. I kept in mind that there are two potentially showstopping issues in MSI Winds and Karmic: errors with webcam, and flickering due to KMS. The upgrade took over 6 hours, mostly because I was trying to download from a crowded server (and with 50 KB/s download of 1.2 GB worth of files...) But the upgrade itself was smooth and issue-free, and then it's time to reboot...

Since I've disabled the webcam, the first bug was a non-issue. The second bug hit full force as Karmic loaded for the first time and my screen flickered. I'm not epileptic, but I can see it easily triggering someone's, and seizures are bad. Luckily the flicker stopped after a minute. If I try to change the brightness afterward, it tends to flicker for a while and then stabilizes. Flicker bug hits full force when I tried with a new user.

And the major issue with the upgrade? It keeps my theme from Jaunty. This is a good thing, except that the Netbook interface has been redesigned in Karmic. In Jaunty, folders and shutdown button get their own menu on the right side of the screen. In Karmic, folders are banished to its own submenu with the rest of the applications. This makes for a less cluttered desktop. The downside? The shutdown button disappears and does not reappear elsewhere. Oops. I'm a fairly veteran GNOME user at this point, so I knew how to put the shutdown button on the panel. The theme also looked awful with the new Karmic design, so I had to make a new user to copy the theme that looked good with Karmic. As it turned out, Karmic's UNR came with a default custom theme, instead of one of the defaults.

And thus, so far my first impression with Karmic Koala in my netbook is generally unfavorable. I realize that the MSI Wind isn't the most popular netbook out there, but it is reasonably common due to the various clones around the world. To have two showstopper bugs that were known by release date and yet not having a temporary fix committed for affected models in the release is... unacceptable. To have a Jaunty upgrade of Netbook Remix completely messing up the desktop also makes it unfriendly for the average user. Now, don't get me wrong. Karmic Netbook Remix looks awesome. Its design focus (to have a reasonable UI for a small screen) is great. New theme looks slick, and I love the fact that the menu is now slightly transparent so that my desktop background actually shows! Not to mention the long overdue upgrade to Firefox 3.5, and increased power efficiency (I seem to have approached 5 hours battery life under Karmic, vs. Jaunty's 4 hours). It's a worthy upgrade (although I'd have to actually use it for the next few days to see if there are other bugs that need to be worked out). Also I note that the Netbook Remix is new to Jaunty. However, given the high hopes for Karmic and Ubuntu's commitment to fix the paper cuts, I'm very disappointed. I do not consider the upgrade user-friendly. If Canonical hopes to squash Bug #1, they really need to polish up their releases instead of releasing for the sake of releasing. Otherwise they'd be Fedora without the innovation part.

I remembered that I literally spent the whole day trying many many different solutions for my Wind's Realtek RTL8187SE wireless driver problem. The driver was experimental in Jaunty and was incapable of connecting to the school network. At the end, I mucked around so much that I considered it pure luck to have it working at all, let alone connecting to school's WPA2 network. I do not know how Karmic's upgrade will affect the wireless driver, but I suspect that I'm going to have to do another day's battle with it again.

Linux is not an easy hobby...

(No, I will not update upgrade my Windows XP side to Windows 7. I'm a masochist but I'm not CRAZY.)

Thanks to Ophidian pointing out the existence of Alexandria and coupled with the fact that I now have a netbook running Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04, I decided to raid my paperback bookshelf last night and take inventory of my books. Especially I'm interested on how many books I have, and how many books I've acquired with the intention to be read later... except that I somehow never did.

In addition to the paperbacks (my small bookshelf is four-shelved (and sturdy!), but I've double or even triple-stacked the paperbacks, meaning that it can hold an astounding number of paperbacks, as I found out last night) I'm also cataloging some hardcovers and two nonfictions I have. But I still need to go through a hardcover bookshelf in the living room. So the count is not (yet) reflective of the sum total of my books. Even now I'm starting to add books that I've read but do not own.

In summary:
My paperback bookshelf contains 233 books.
Out of the 233, I have not yet read 82.

I had expected to be behind by about two dozen. Instead, I found out that not only I've been behind on reading my collection by a lot more than two dozen books, I have not even read approximately a THIRD of my collection.

Holy crap.

This... must be rectified. And soon.

Well, let's see now...

#1 is inevitable. It happens every so often. Of course we don't often strike a conversation in the men's room.

#2 is... impossible, since we're both males. However, I would like to present an alternate scenario:

#2a. The Beach.
When in Honolulu, it's pretty inevitable that at some point, we'd end up on the beach. The fact that you are both wearing only swimming pants, however, is mitigated by the fact that:
a) You know in advance that you'll be going to the same beach.
b) You're not alone. He's with his family, and you're with your colleagues.
To be fair, of course, one girl in our research group did have her initial reservations about having her advisor see her in her bathing suit. Having discovered that we really don't care about such things did wonders to loosen her up, at least.

And finally...

#3 finally happened to me this week. OK, so it's not my advisor, but a professor that I know quite well and respect quite a lot. Now, I don't exactly use the school's gym locker room when I was still going there, but recently I signed up for gym membership in a commercial gym. And while I was stowing my stuff away in a locker, he walked by in nothing but his underwear. I called out to him by reflex and suddenly realized where I was. Luckily he didn't seem to notice. Why should he? He didn't expect me to be in the same commercial gym.

Like the title said. Awwwwwwwwkwaarrrd.

OK. After getting overwhelmed with disappointment for about, oh, 4 hours since I received the rejection email, I started thinking about it with cooler head... and I realized that... hey, this is an interview I didn't expect, for a job that I don't quite qualify for. I tried to convince them of my intangibles, which were not... tangible enough for me, in face of experience of others.

Then again, this was how I justify not getting the job for last year's Interview... until reality slapped me in the face and knocked me down from the clouds, showing that I was just a poor, pitiful, deluded fool with delusions of adequacy.

But enough about that.


The letter today made me start babbling non-stop about life in general. Due to my utter failure to secure a job last year, even after my graduation, my professor graciously let me extend my graduate school experience for another year. I took over the project from a friend who unexpectedly had to quit the group for personal reasons. However, I noticed that he hasn't done a lot of things in his research either. His lab notebook was an utter mess and contained almost nothing of value. I was basically restarting the project from scratch.

It was not all his fault though. This project is a collaborative project in the sense that we are supplied the samples by another group on campus, and thus our work are utterly dependent on the ability of the other group to deliver. Shortly after I took over, it was discovered that the other group has been running into a persistent problem for the past two years that prevented them from making good quality product. No wonder my friend hasn't been able to deliver - although I'd have to say poor technique and family life didn't help matter.

Right now I'm executing the project by procuring similar samples from different sources and trying new avenues of research, essentially broadening the project's scope. The goal is to make my work as independent as possible from the other group - up to the point that they start to deliver, of course, especially given that my assignment is temporary until I can find a real job.

So I was explaining all this to another friend. I came to the point where I explained the rationale behind the expansion of the project's scope, noting that I've made inroads on 'what has to be done' for the project (at least on aspects that is independent of the other groups' capability) and started to wonder why it never occurred to my friend to do the same: that is, to make his project as independent as possible so that he has an alternate thesis just in case the project doesn't work out.

And that was when the flash of insight hit me.

Five years ago, I was a second year graduate student, much like this friend when he decided to quit. At that time, I was stuck with a project that's pretty much not going to lead to a thesis, and I had no idea where to go from there. It took me a full year to realize that there's no way out short of changing my project, and to make the decision to start over completely. In other words, I had been in the same boat. And I was no better than he did to recognize how to solve my predicament.

So who am I to judge? How do I expect that my five-year-ago self to do better than my friend did in facing his situation? Heck, for that matter, the eye for research and overcoming obstacles is something that I obtained fairly recently, maybe as recently as less than two years ago. I was lucky to have been brought up in an intellectually stimulating and nurturing environment for the past four years.

Of course, that's the crucial difference between myself and my friend.

My friend was brought up in the same environment that nurtured me for the past four years. However, he has a family and later on, a little boy. Faced with a stagnating research topic, he opted to take his MS degree and get a job, despite the current tough economic situation. Much kudos to him, and I wish him all the luck in the world.

I was brought up in a fairly intellectually infertile environment for my first three years. Unlike my friend, I had time and no family to feed. Faced with a stagnating research topic and an option to take my MS degree and get a job, I decided to somehow pursue my PhD somewhere else more conducive, and obtained it... right when job market is at its worse in God knows how many years and unable to find a real job to save my skin, opting to stay in a protective bubble until... some time.

Sometimes I wonder whether that was really the smart thing to do.

A few more leads coming, but I'm still unable to score a goal during site interviews.

From Wikipedia:

Frequently living outdoors, although preferring warm climates and considered "cold intolerant," they (ed: cockroaches) are resilient enough to survive occasional freezing temperatures.


How intolerant, anyway?

I found a cockroach two weekends ago in the lab. It was not really running away, I guess it might've been weakened. I hate roaches, but I don't want to stomp on this one. So I looked around to see if I can grant it a quick death.

And I found a 1 L dewar used for liquid nitrogen.

Now, mind, it has no liquid nitrogen; however, it was recently holding liquid nitrogen (boiling point: -196 degrees Celsius) so it probably has some (gaseous) nitrogen inside, and it's still quite cold. So I took the dewar and poured it over the roach, who flipped over and started to struggle. So much for quick death.

Wikipedia also states:

Some can go without air for 45 minutes or slow down their heart rate. In one experiment, cockroaches were able to recover from being submerged underwater for half an hour.[20]

My initial theory was asyxphiation ashyxpiation LACK OF OXYGEN but I'm not sure... I suppose that vapor might be a bit cold for that roach. The roach stopped struggling soon after, and a week later it's still there, quite dead.

With all the talk of roaches surviving a fallout after we blow ourselves to bits with our NUKULAR WEPONZ, it's reassuring that the upcoming Ice Age that results from said fallout will ensure that even these little buggers won't survive and develop intelligence and take over the world... I'd nominate polar bears for that, instead.

So, how cold intolerant? Let's say "cold nitrogen vapor" is kinda too much for a roach...

Congress is NOT the opposite of progress, this time. So quit being such whiny sour losers already. There are some of us out here who don't live in a bubble and need better health care, and you just don't give a FUCK.

Flood of posts today... I'm on a roll. Or maybe just bored while waiting for consolidation.

Ever since I played Guitar Hero II in a New Years Eve party, I've always wanted to wail away on a plastic guitar to de-stress. That happened finally because of three things:
1. Dad found a stack of DVDs abandoned by a tenant. While most of the stuff are movies, there was a Guitar Hero 3 for PC game in the stack.
2. A plastic guitar for Xbox 360 sold by Toys'R'Us online for $7.99 with free shipping made front page deal one day.
3. My aging desktop died and I was forced to shop at Fry's for a new beast: AMD Phenom II X3 720 BE with 4 GB RAM, but otherwise everything was integrated (including AMD 760G with Radeon 3000). While not a serious gaming machine, it is *just* powerful enough to meet the recommended requirement of GH3.

So at last I had my plastic guitar!

GH3 is a resource-hungry game. I failed the first song on Easy (!) because nothing I played 1) correspond to the song, and 2) match with what was displayed on screen. I ended up turning all graphics down to a minimum (including eliminating the crowd) and recalibrating the guitar so that it matches up reasonably well. This is very much a console game.

But once I got the hang of it, I discovered that like during that GH2 session in the party, I had to start on Medium because Easy was too boring.. and surprisingly I tend not to do very well when the notes don't match up with what is displayed on screen (I had to sight read and ignore the music on Cliffs of Dover because the table was nothing like Eric Johnson's wailing!) I quickly discovered that Medium presented no significant resistance and blew through the entire playlist.

Hard provided a tough challenge - I failed Slow Ride (again) when trying it on Hard the first time. But I got the hang of it finally... and once I got it into my head that yes, you have five buttons on that guitar... I pretty much stormed through the playlist to the next tier... then the next... until Guitar Battle with Slash (fifth tier) stopped me. After literally the seventh try, I got through to sixth tier where I was again stopped cold by "The Metal" (Tenacious D). Took a while for me to scrape through, and then into seventh tier where I am currently facing the brick wall named "Knights of Cydonia" (Muse).

Guitar background definitely helped me in the game, as well as good sense and ear for music... but ultimately, practice and familiarity is essential to succeed.

I haven't played GH3 in two weeks now, but that was because my last attempt to pass Knights of Cydonia and practice the hard part gave me RSI and I'm still too timid to touch the plastic guitar again. Well, at least I've passed two Expert songs now.

GH3 is a fun game to play when you're stressed... but I tend to play too much and get RSI. The game is fairly hard on you, and right now my limit is fast strumming and fast playing rather than "getting" the songs. GH3 is so far the only title in the series to have a PC port... and for good reason. Also, it's a social game... playing alone gets old pretty fast.

So... let's see if I can defeat Knights of Cydonia anytime soon.

Note to self...

Even printed certificates from the internet (that says "Certificate of Appreciation" or "Certificate of Completion" and has blank spaces that you have to pencil your name in) means a lot to a high school student when you take time to pencil your name in (preferably with good quality pen). I'm generally reluctant to put "PhD" behind my name unless I'm ordering name cards (for interviews) or having to impress the professional societies that yes, that's "Dr" to you... but in a certificate given to a high school student, that title proves to be handily impressive.



Also, figured out how to use the Soave-Redlich-Kwong equation of state properly in a spreadsheet. That was painful. I think I need to learn how spreadsheet macros work or I'll be goalseeking all day next week...

Early this year, I decided to buy a 1 TB Samsung HD because I anticipated that I'd be moving soon after getting a job. So much for getting the job part, and this week I've been very much feeling like a loser left out in life. But this post is not about that. I've collected some anime over the years in various CDs and DVDs and it'd be NICE to put the scattered one into this HD.

My previous desktop (before it died and I was forced to get a new, MODERN one) was old enough that it peered into my 1 TB HD (stuffed in an external enclosure) and went "OMG brain kaplooie". It keeps failing to transfer my data. I ended up having to enlist the help of three lab computers to read my stuff and copy it over to the HD. Incidentally, this was probably a good thing... some of those media are more than 5 years old and were not very well recorded, so read errors were common. Some files were lost irreparably, but thankfully there aren't too many of those. I went through the whole shelf and at the end the 931 GiB HD (damn those HD manufacturers and their metric count) was only 178 GB full.

However, I knew that I was missing a few stuff that I have not consolidated.

Tonight, I found them hiding behind a stack of books. They're also still in fairly good condition too, just very dusty.

So glad that optical media hold up. In the process I discover that spindles are probably about the best place they could be, as opposed to individually-wrapped entities in my shelf. Some of them get accidentally opened and exposed to the varnish fumes... or something. Those are the ones that have visible oily smudges that have to be scrubbed by isopropyl alcohol.

Ah, the perils of digital life...

Here's hoping the 1 TB drive won't crash on me :o

It has been two years since I last discovered this fact painfully, and today it came back. When you're doing an outreach program to let high school kids play around in the lab, remember:
1. They have attention span of 10 +/- 5 seconds.
2. They only think when you tell them to.
3. You really have to budget more time than you think you need if you want them to do SOMETHING.
4. Candy and sweets are acceptable, even highly effective, bribes.

The poor guy has to do a short presentation of his short work that would've taken about 5-10 minutes of talk. It took me an hour to give a pep talk and explanation yesterday before he knows what he is expected to do. Even then, he couldn't start his presentation and I had to walk him through all the slides that he should be doing. The fact that he's hearing-impaired and needs an ASL translator to stand by didn't help.

Well, tomorrow morning I see the fruits of his work. Gah. Let's hope he does alright.

OK, it wasn't quite a kaboom, but I woke up last night at around 4:30 am to a fairly loud crash. Apparently it woke up the whole house too, because mom immediately shouted to make sure grandma didn't fall and break her hip (she didn't). I wandered around a bit but finally decided that the house was not on fire, I didn't feel a draft so it's unlikely it's a meteorite burning a hole through our roof. I also didn't see anything suspicious. It must be safe to get back to sleep.

The next morning dad explained what happened. Unlike me, his curiosity got the better of him and he actually waited until something happened. Police came. Apparently the crash was a drunk driver. I surveyed the scene of the carnage briefly. The driver was riding a fairly big car (dad didn't say what, could be a small truck). I traced him tracking across our lawn (again! and with record heat, I reckon those grass prolly won't grow back anytime soon...), then tracks across opposite side's neighbor's lawn, before swerving back to cross the main road and hitting a pair of cars across the street. One SUV remained in the morning, severely dented. The other one was a small car and apparently was unlucky enough to take the brunt of the impact. The police must've cleared it out last night.

Times like these that I give thanks that we have a proper, working garage.

Too much excitement though, here's hoping tonight it won't happen again. Must get up early tomorrow morning...

I got introduced to Mystery Case Files from the beginning of the series: MCF:Huntsville. Finding objects was fun, and thus I decided to get MCF:Ravenhearst during a Half Price Books sale.

Ravenhearst was as bit as fun as its predecessor. What I really enjoyed are the door puzzles, which makes for a very nice break from finding hidden objects... although I can easily see the novelty of the door locks waning with subsequent replays. The Crime Computer at the end, which marks the end of every level (in this case, the diary entry), is basically a jigsaw puzzle and I did enjoy doing them immensely.

The atmosphere is definitely different from Huntsville. Huntsville is light-hearted and funny; Ravenhearst is creepy and ominous. The only source of amusement for me is, for a mansion supposedly abandoned in the 1890s, there are some oddly modern items like machine guns, remote controls, bowling balls, and even an entire surveillance room (which, incidentally, is the creepiest room in the house in my opinion).

I won't spoil the end, but it was a nice ending for the game, if not for the fainthearted. I also liked the fact that you're never rushed in the game as the game gives you plenty of time to find the objects, unlike Huntsville. It is apparent at the final level where in Huntsville, you have 5 minutes to find objects in a room you've never seen before and to scramble the puzzle at the end, which required some time for me to be able to beat it. Ravenhearst's final level can be fairly easy or fairly hard, depending on how observant you've been throughout the game, but you never feel like you're really pressed for time.

Overall, a very fun casual game which I recommend, with very high replay value.

I have this self-corrective mechanism, it seems. Every time I get too much out of shape, and level of activity (and thus stress) goes down, something kicks on and urges me to do something about it.

The exercise plan has been going on for a week and a half now. So far it's an alternating trip between the gym (data with elliptical machine and/or weights) and the pool. Today I ate too much snacks and got too sluggish. Evil snacks. I will have to exercise portion control.

But I've forgotten how much I've enjoyed swimming.

I now have two options: neighborhood pool or municipal pool.

Neighborhood pool, despite having one lap lane, rarely has people who uses that lane. It's also free and close by. However, it closes at 7 PM. It also has a barbaric lap length: 25 yards. Having been used to metric-length pools, I feel shortchanged :P

The municipal pool has a small charge, but it has four lanes. It is also a lot busier than yesterday I was forced to swim outside the lap lanes, avoiding kids and inconsiderate fat bastards who launched themselves on my path. It also closes later (9 PM) and I *think* uses metric. :)

Well, we'll see how far we can keep up. Target: lose 5-10 kg in 10 months. Doable, if I keep at it.

1. Neighboring mosques with adhan. Okay, well, lots less Muslims back home, but you won't find mosques with really loud speakers aimed directly at your house (they'd get slapped with noise violation quick), proclaiming the first call for prayers at around 4 AM. Especially if said mosque is like next door (maybe about 10 meters out?) It never ever failed to wake me up. The occupants of the house here got used to it. I never could.

2. Crappy junk food. I haven't tried McDonald's here, but A&W ("American-style restaurant") serves fish fillet sandwich and curly fries that are insulting to the very definition of 'junk food'. Fries are soggy and the sandwich tastes like sandpaper. And they cost considerably more than the much tastier local food.

3. Clogged drainage. Not a problem where I am now, but in Jakarta the problem is so bad that it's prime breeding ground for mosquitoes. It merely adds to the misery of the heat induced by smog (pollution).

Still, there are reasons why I love Indonesia so much ;) I read yesterday that President Obama did look forward to coming back to Jakarta, mainly for the f00d. I must admit that f00d in general is the main highlight of my trip... aside from the obvious :)

I'm in Japan. On transit, of course, but it's a long overnight transit.

Watched 007: Quantum of Solace during the flight. I should rant about fuel cell house in this entry, on the difficulty of logistics and the sheer stupidity of running a freaking HOUSE on fuel cell, but no. I'll do it later when I'm not in an internet cafe.

It was a 10 hours flight, so I started watching 20th Century Boys Part One. I got halfway through Part Two too before the stupid movie broke.

Arrived late afternoon and was whisked to Nikko Narita Hotel, a nice hotel about 1 km on the outskirts of the airport. Room was small but it was of perfect size for me, actually. By this time I was sleepy since I had little sleep in the plane, but if I sleep then, my sleep schedule would've been messed up. So I forced myself to take the hotel shuttle to town. In retrospect, I was glad I did because it rained the following morning. It also helped to normalize my sleep schedule quickly.

I only know a few key Japanese words thanks to my anime habit. It wasn't enough, but I expected that. Pretty much the only words I spoke during the jaunt out to town were こんばんわ,すみません、and 度主有賀とございます (I hope I got them right - I abused the JP layout keyboard and hope that they're written as suggested). At least I pronounced them well enough that they didn't stop and laugh at me. Or maybe they're just too polite to do so.

Anyway, what I was saying... I actually assumed that knowing hiragana was enough to allow me to wander around and knowing things (not that I actually have mastered them - I hope to begin learning at some point). I was wrong. I guess that 2000-kanji requirement was not baseless.

It was around 8 PM, stores were starting to close and people were hurrying to get home from the JR and the Keisei. A few schoolkids were loitering around. There were very few tourists, and even those that remained seemed to know what they were doing. I was pretty much the only one who wondered around looking very clueless, not being able to read anything, not knowing anything that doesn't have English on them, trying to find an automated money changer that actually spoke English (and failed). I was pretty much penniless (got a few US bucks in my pocket but no local currency) and thirsty, tired as hell, just trying to burn time before the shuttle returned me to the hotel.

Bringing cup ramen to Japan was the smartest suggestion that was made by dad for me. Although food in Japan didn't cost as much as dad threatened (￥1000? No, I managed to read enough that I could've had a ￥540 teriyaki chickie bowl if I wanted to during my jaunt to Narita city) it definitely would've forced me to find a money changer - and the hotel will rip you off with very, VERY unfavorable exchange rate (￥85 to a dollar when the rate was ￥92.95 to a dollar in the airport). I had instant ramen for dinner, breakfast, and lunch. I'm hoping not to be forced to have instant ramen for the next few days, because yes, I am actually getting rather sick of it.

I'd definitely be back to Japan someday for a longer visit, but when I do, I think I shall be better prepared.



On a side note, I saw Angela Aki's new album on sale for a cheap, 'cheap' ￥3,040. A Death Note special edition DVD vol 9 cost about ￥4,000. Digital media in Japan is definitely NOT cheap. On the other hand, a few random manga (Clannad, Naruto) I pulled off the shelf cost just north of ￥500, so if I ever got stuck in Japan I'd probably be a manga junkie and get my anime fix from late night broadcasts. And no, I didn't stay up long enough to watch those broadcasts last night, all the pity.

I suppose I should feel relief that a story arc is now drawing to a close in my life. However, it's not quite a big relief yet. How should I say this? Instead of entering into another story arc in my life ("professional life") I am now entering filler heck ("jobhunting").

So. Earned my degree. Now what?

The Nightline Face Off was advertised on TV tonight. The premise of the debate was interesting: does Satan exist? I originally just half-listened to it. The "Yes" side was introduced: Pastor Mark Driscoll and partner Annie Lobert (founder of Hookers for Jesus). Evangelical, fundamentalist preacher and converted prostitute certainly would be an apt choice for this side. On the other side... and this was where my interest perked up... was Bishop Carlton Pearson.

Bishop Pearson came to my attention by way of Slacktivist. He was a former Pentecostal minister (who drives out demons and such) who announced at some point that he no longer believes in Hell and Satan... at least, not in the form more traditionally known by evangelicals by way of Dante. (Please read that link for full argument, it was argued there better than what I could've said.) As a man who came to see that point of view, he is certainly a very apt, very interesting choice for the "No" camp.

And then the teammate was announced: Deepak Chopra.

Sorry, Nightline. That was just a total mismatch. And I was proven right. Chopra didn't come from an evangelical background, and he wasn't even a Christian. The whole point the debate was supposed to be interesting, to me, was to see two Christian camps debating on Hell, the Devil, and the role of the antagonist on Christian life. Instead, thanks to the smug, condescending "believe in yourself!" Chopra, the debate quickly degenerated into attacks on personal beliefs.

Nightline only showed juicy segments on air, which was a real shame,,, or blessing, depending on your point of view. I'm not inclined to stream from the website for one hour of potentially same tired old debate. If I am going to stream anything, it better be The Bible's Buried Secrets instead.

I personally believed that the debate would've been much more entertaining if it had been Presidential-style Debate with just Driscoll and Pearson. Lobert adds an emotional side of "I feel the devil whispering to me, he exists." Uh, basic rules of debate: you gotta be able to justify your personal beliefs more than just "I hear voices in my head." Chopra, likewise, skeptically wondered if one can be just as better served as to give oneself credit. Thing is, Chopra's belief is so much different than the other three people involved in the debate that it really was a mismatch - a good debate happens when people have more common grounds.

What I really want to hear more about:
- Driscoll talked about free will in response of why, if God is love, that he creates the Devil. Angels, too, are God's creation and thus possesses free will. "For there to be virtue, there must be the possibility of vice and that's what distinguishes those of us, people and angels, from other forms of creation, trees, animals and the like," he said. "I think if you don't allow choice, the theologians will say you don't have love." (and then Chopra had to reply immediately that it went counter to his knowledge of the Big Bang. Ohnoes, ignorant science vs. religion comment. Shut up, please. You were cutting out a good argument there!)
- Pearson talked about Bible literalism when responding on the mention of the Devil in the Gospel. "The Bible is a several-thousand-year-old document and we have none of the original letters, none of the original manuscripts," he said. "And I do not believe it is the inspired word of God as much as I believe the inspired word of man about God as best as man can perceive." (and then Chopra had to say that belief is a cover-up for insecurity. See a pattern here? Shut up, Deepak.)
- An audience asked Driscoll if it is possible to believe in Jesus but not Satan. Driscoll responded that for there is to be good, there must be evil. I'd like to see him (and Pearson) elaborate more on Good and Evil.

In other words, what I really wanted to hear was Driscoll and Pearson, as Christians who happened to disagree on the concept of Hell and the Devil, go into sound theological debate. But of course, this being Nightline Face Off, that wasn't happenin'.

Chopra did have one argument I liked, though. He pointedly asked why God has to be male, and Driscoll said "Jesus was male!". Chopra then proceeded to point out that once you put God as this old man with beard sitting on a throne, you have defined the infinite, and as he rightly pointed out, any human attempt to perceive God as a whole, by definition, would be incomplete. It would be akin to an ant on an elephant trying to describe the whole elephant to another ant living on the same elephant.

I don't know if there are more of substance about the rest of the debate, but judging from the audience's sometimes emotional response ("Jesus wants you to be saved, Deepak!"), I don't think the real meat of the argument was even debated... on whether Satan exists. At the end, Driscoll may be right about one thing: Satan's greatest feat is to convince people that he doesn't exist. After all, there's no way you can prove a negative.

I attended a poster session for a free lunch (it's related to the research group anyway, so I do not feel the shame). While there I was invited for a free dinner, too. BBQ! Lunch was build-your-own-sandwiches and so it can be made quite tasty. BBQ dinner was also a tasty affair.

So whee. Free food is always the best kind of food a graduate student should strive to have all the time.

Monday: Nervous wreck, on the edge of sanity and emotional breakdown (and crossed the threshold at least twice), working 15 hours and severely sleep-deprived, with no job leads and facing the prospect of long unemployment.

Tuesday: Started the day sleepy and tired, got caffeinated. Found out huge cost savings when considering dissertation binding price (I may be able to get four copies of nicely bound dissertation, locally, for half the price of three dissertations that someone got!). Helped graduated co-worker with her paper and noted with amusement that she's panicking because her error bar calculations were wrong for her paper - and by extension, her thesis, which was submitted to the graduate school on the same day.

But probably the highlight of the day... a potential post-doc opportunity that's just waiting to be grabbed, with good pay and good benefits in a field that the potential boss and I knew that I could make a huge immediate contribution. The only weakness is the location, which gives me significant pause. I would have to think about it.

Interesting contrast, what.