R. wins 357-303

No bingos tonight, but Renae cleaned up with the Z, J, K, X, S (3 of them) and a blank.

I was at a gathering of physics teachers earlier this week and the teaching of modern physics at the high school level came up a few times during the meeting.  It was really cool to see that there are high school physics teachers who are able to cover topics like the photoelectric effect, Compton scattering, and of course, the meaning of E=mc².

In conversation with a few teachers the topic of antimatter came up.  I've always been fascinated with the existence of antimatter (thank you, Star Trek) and the means of producing antimatter.

One of the ways of producing antimatter is through a process called pair production.  The pair production process is the transformation of a photon into a positron (the antimatter complement to the electron) and an electron.  The positron has the mass of an electron, but has a positive charge. The production of a positron-electron pair from a photon requires a minimum energy of 1.022 MeV be involved in the reaction.  The mass of the electron and positron are each 0.511 MeV/c². So if all the of the energy carried by a photon is converted into the mass of the two particles, the required energy is just 2mc², where m is the mass of the electron (remember the positron has the same mass).  If the energy involved in the pair production process is just at that threshold energy, then the electron and positron would be produced at rest.

Scientists (and especially physicists) love conservation relationships.  The pair production process conserves charge, since the photon is not charged and the electron-positron pair is oppositely charged. Energy is conserved as I was discussing above.  The real issue with pair production is the conservation of momentum.

I don't want to get into the math of the momentum conservation right now. But, if you think about our hypothetic case where the pair are produced at rest, there is a problem which should be obvious: before the production the photon had momentum, but if the pair is produced at rest, then they have no momentum.  This is BAD, since momentum conservation is a fundamental principle of physics.

The teachers and I were standing around talking about pair production and the conservation of momentum when one of the teachers said that he explained to his class that two photons were required to  produces an electron-positron pair.  The collision of two photons with opposing momenta satisfies the momentum conservation law.  Then another teach piped up and said that he had read a paper saying that in face FIVE photons were required.  I tried to explain that I was under the impression that the typical observation of pair production was done in the presence of a heavy nucleus which would account for the momentum conservation.

None of the teachers really seemed to believe my explanation and they probably didn't think that I was going to be swayed by their reasonings, either.  The next day I flipped through some textbooks to see if I could make sense of what we were talking about.   I only found the type of pair production that I was familiar with, and the question of photon-photon (or multi-photon) interactions was never brought up in any of the books I had with me.

So I went to google and did some digging.

The first thing I found was an astrophysics book which discussed photon-photon interaction leading to pair production. The relevant part of the text is on pages 127-8 of that book.  It turns out that photon-photon collisions leading to pair production provide a means of screening high energy gamma rays in some cosmic environments. (Gould & Schreder PRL 1966)

But I had to figure out if the five photon interaction claimed by the other teacher had any basis in reality. What I found was a paper by Burke et. al. in PRL from 1997. (If you aren't reading this from a place where you can see the full text of the article, I apologize.)  I haven't fully digested this article, but the relevant quote says:

"...the multiphoton Breit-Wheeler reaction  

becomes accessible for n ≥ 4 laser photons of wavelength 527 nm colliding with a photon of energy 29 GeV."

Whoa!  That's cool!  The point of that article was to show that while in cosmic sources, two photon collisions can produce electron-positron pairs, it has not been observed in a lab.  But, using one high energy photon and four (or more) photons from a laser, the pair production can be done in the lab.

What I learned was that all three of us standing around were right in what we each understood, but that our individual understanding of the topic was incomplete.  I'm so glad that I went and had that discussion with the teachers!

(The prediction of the existence of antimatter was a surprising result of the unification of Einstein's relativity theory with the burgeoning field of quantum mechanics in the earth 20th century.  This prediction was made by Dirac, a brilliant and eccentric theoretical physicist.  There was a book recently published on Dirac which I have not had a chance to read, but I'm linking to below.) 

Roundup of iPad review roundups

So there is a new device from Apple called an iPad.  If you want an opinion on what the iPad could do for you, you could either try to read Apple's marketing material on it, or you could look for reviews by people who have actually tried the device out.

Most of the people who have actually tried the device out and written about it are journalists (or really lucky geeks), but there are some journalists out there who have not had the opportunity to try out the iPad and write a review on it.

The next best thing to actually writing a review is to go out and review other people's reviews.  But, you don't actually critique the reviews.  You make a "roundup" which is a fancy way of saying a list of reviews.

But there are SO MANY roundups of iPad reviews!  Where to start?!  Never fear, I have a list roundup of iPad review roundups for you:

First is Macworld:

With the iPad a few days away, now begins one of the great rituals of the release of a new Apple product: the posting of the reviews from the lucky few journalists who were given a week to play with the product.

Here are the reviews we’ve found so far:

They then go on to quote 8 reviews. The infamous Stephen Fry gets a link, but no quote.

Then there is Buzzfeed:

Howdy, pardners, it's iPad review day! And all the tech cowboys out there are a hootin' and a hollerin'.

They got Fry's quote, but only a total of 5 reviews.  Photos from the reviews does not make up for the low numbers.  Slackers.

The Wall Street Journal's Digits blog has a roundup:

The reviews are in on Apple’s new iPad, and the consensus is no surprise:

I'm not going to ruin the surprise for you.  You can click the link and read their roundup.  It's a little excessive for the WSJ to have a roundup, since they were one of the news outlets to get a review unit.

Zatznotfunny has a roundup:

Yeah, there will be a disproportionate amount of iPad coverage this week. However, we promise not to run a single April Fools Day post. Fair enough?

Zatz not going to hide the fact that you only linked to five reviews as well.  Even a youtube clip at the top won't make up for your laziness.

Looking across the pond, the Telegraph has a roundup:

Here is what the critics had to say about the latest offering from Apple:

What a perfunctorily and typically British way to introduce a round up.  Where's the zazz!?!  No surprise, the Limeys link to Fry's review first.  Again, they could only dig up five reviews to include in their round up.  Lame.

So anyway, there's a bunch more roundups out there, but these are the ones that were at the top of my google search, so they are the only ones I actually skimmed.

Happy roundup reading!

How about some free music?

I was playing around on Amazon last night, and I found these free mp3 album downloads.  You can preview the tracks before deciding to download or not.  There were some other free mp3 albums that I came across which I did not download because I didn't really care for the tunes on preview.  Here's what I downloaded:



This morning I found some more recently released free mp3 albums that I have yet to download and listen to, but here they are:



Happy listening!

This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://blog.drewsday.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://blog.drewsday.com/feeds/posts/default.

A. wins 365-267

How powerful is a physics professor, anyway?

Over at Dot Physics, Rhett has been explaining the inaccurate calculation of power on a TV show that I have never heard of or had the chance to see. He posted a video of himself pulling the family minivan with the family inside. He even posted a video of his 6-year old pulling the vehicle!

I assume that in a future post, he'll be giving the right way to calculate the power, but I couldn't resist trying out video analysis in Logger Pro with his video.

I analyzed the first 3.5 seconds after the van starts to move by clicking on the same point on the van every few frames. I used the wheel base of the 2007 Mazda 5 as a guess for the scale calibration.

I was pretty surprised that on my first attempt, the position-time data had a nice parabolic shape. I could have probably spent a little more time making sure that I always clicked on the exact same spot on the van, but for quick and dirty analysis, I'm pretty happy. Logger Pro defaults to motion to the left as having negative velocity. I didn't really try to reset this, as I only care about the magnitude of the rate of velocity change (i.e. the acceleration).

The acceleration is the slope of the velocity-time graph, so let's look at that:

Okay, so Rhett either wasn't applying a constant force over the 3.5 seconds, or my measurement uncertainties are starting to show up. Either way, the average acceleration can be estimated by looking at the slope of the best fit line. Logger Pro says that the average acceleration was 0.15 m/s².

So, using Rhett's free body diagram, we can apply Newton's second law:

The friction force in this case is rolling friction, so we need a coefficient of rolling resistance. The friction force is equal to the coefficient of rolling resistance times the normal force. The normal force (on the level ground) is just the mass of the vehicle multiplied by the acceleration due to gravity.

Rearrange to solve for the applied force:


I googled around a bit and found that a typical auto on concrete has a coefficient of rolling resistance between 0.010 and 0.015, so I ballparked it at 0.012. Rhett gave the mass of the car in pounds, so I converted to kilograms.

Finally:


I didn't carry out the video analysis the whole way through the entire movie. The van moves for about 9 seconds, and I know its acceleration was not constant, since the brakes were applied at the end. However, I'm sure that our physics professor could sustain the constant 300 N applied force if he wanted to all the way through the 5 yards (strange units they use in LA; we'll call it 4.57 meters). At the constant acceleration we measured, it should take him 7.8 seconds to pull the van that far.

So the work done by our professor is equal to the force applied (300 N) multiplied by the distance through which the force acted (4.57 m). His power output during the pull is the work done divided by the time:

300 N * 4.57 m / 7.8 s = 176 W

That's a mighty bright light bulb, but it's just under twice the power radiated (on average) by a human that is just standing around doing nothing.

I know he was pulling at an angle, so his applied force is larger by the cosine of the angle, which I guesstimated to by 15 degrees, so make the applied force 310 N and the power 182 W if you want to be nitpicky about it...

Two in a series of past travel exploits.

This is another blast from our past travels that I'm posting photos now only because of the Metafilter postcard exchange.

Sometime in 2005, my good friend from grad school invited (or I otherwise wrangled an invitation from him) Renae and me to come to his family's cabin in the French Alps for New Year's Eve that year. We planned an entire Paris/London/Alps trip around his invitation.

We flew from Chicago to Paris, spent about 2 days there, then took a train to the southern French Alps. Our friend picked us up and drove us to his family's cabin up in the mountains! Our first stop was at a small hut where everyone in his family was gathered to bake bread in a wood-fired oven. It was incredible!

The New Year's Eve celebration was outstanding! There was a multi-course meal, with oysters, foie gras, and many other delicious dishes. We started eating at 8:00 pm, and didn't stop until the champagne flowed at midnight. It was so, so, so cool!!!

Everyone in the family was so incredible hospitable and kind to us. We spoke not a lick of French, and they went out of their way to make us feel welcome. It truly was the best part of the trip.

I think we were planning to leave on the 3rd, but because of the holiday and because we had not booked a return train ticket to Paris, we had to leave on the 2nd. It was our fault for not booking a ticket, but we were used to traveling in 1996 on trains where you could always ride on trains as standing-passengers. I guess times had changed. So we stayed overnight at a hotel in Grenoble, then went back to Paris to catch the Eurostar to London.

Somewhere in Paris, Renae got sick (actually, hadn't been 100% well in the Alps) and probably got a bit of food poisoning from a weird fish pizza that she ordered at a cafe. She hadn't slept the night before we were supposed to catch the first train out in the morning, so we were bracing for a crummy ride from Paris to London.

We had bought our Eurostar tickets online a few months ahead of time. When I ordered the tickets, I bought coach seats ($65 each, I think) for the return from London to Paris. But the Paris to London trip, all the coach seats were sold out. All the First Class tickets were around $500 or more, which was way more than I wanted to pay. After poking around on their website, I had found some middle class ticket that was something like "Business Economy" or something similar. From all I could tell, it was going to be a coach seat for $30 extra. Having no other options, though, we bought them.

When we finally got to the train platform and were directed to our seats, it turned out we were in First Class. In fact, the Eurostar only has First Class and coach. An in our car, there was only a family of four sharing the entire car with us. The seats were comfortable; there was a real table for us to use; and the breakfast was simple, but refreshing. We got toast with jam, which was the perfect meal for Renae's stomach.

London was great, but knowing that we'd have to cram a lot into a little bit of time, we chose to do only highlights. We spent a lot of time running around to some of the major sites. We paid for an all-city bus tour that allowed us to hop onto and off of any bus run by a popular bus tour company. We saw the Mousetrap. We shopped at Herrod's. We wandered through one of the residences of one of the Royals. We did not hang around for the changing of the guard.

After a few days in London, it was the Eurostar back to Paris. Coach was like riding in a plane on Southwest Airlines. It wasn't too cramped, but we weren't exactly comfortable. And no one brought us toast.

We had another night in Paris, then flew home.

Somewhere in this post, I should have pointed out that right about the time the plane took off from Chicago to Paris, I looked at Renae and realized that having been married for five and half years, it was the first actual vacation travel we had taken that did not involve a physics conference in any way.

One in a series of past travel exploits.

			July 15 to 19 New York City

As part of the Metafilter postcard exchange, I decided to send out a bunch of old postcards that I have collected from past travels, but never got the chance to send out.

I wanted to do something extra as a part of the exchange, so I thought I'd post some photos from my trips and include the links on the postcards.

This trip to New York City was in the Summer of 2008. This was the last year for old Yankee Stadium and for Shea Stadium. Sometime during the early Spring or late Winter of that year it was announced that Billy Joel would play a concert at Shea. The concert was billed as "The Last Play at Shea". I'm a huge Billy Joel fan, and had seen him in concert several times before 2008. But, my wife had never seen him in concert, so I asked if she wanted to go. She said she would only go if my brother would go with us. We called him and he said he was totally in. That Saturday, we called for tickets and I was able to get through before they were all sold out.

When we got to NYC we were supposed to meet my brother somewhere in midtown. It turned out that the spot we were supposed to meet at took us right to the Major League Baseball All-Star parade. The photo above is of Ryan Dempster, who was in the game that year. The All-Star game was playing that year at Yankee Stadium.

We did lots of things on that trip, including walking from Central Park to Battery Park. We took pictures of our panda in various spots, including on the Staten Island ferry and in the terminal.

One of the places we wanted to go was to a place called Peanut Butter and Co. They sell unique peanut butter, which my wife had given to me one year for our anniversary. But they also have a restaurant that you can go to and get different gourmet peanut butter sandwiches. At the restaurant, I picked up some postcards, and these are some that I am sending out to the Mefites.

(The link below the photo will take you to a small gallery of photos from this trip.)

Since my last update on the 2-for-1 project in my room I have made some more progress. I've been able to clear off the table that does not have the computer on it. It was nice to be able to do a little grading on the table. I set up my roll of butcher paper on the top of the table and have been using that to take notes on as I'm working at the table.

Here's the latest stuff to leave the room:

• A handful of tools went to the garage

• 2 collector mugs (still in their boxes) went to the basement and will probably go out of the house this summer.
  

• 2 boxes of random projects and parts went to the basement where I'm putting all my current and future projects until I have time to work on them.

• A craft kit that I haven't had a chance to try out yet went to the basement.

• 2 stacks of papers/magazines/journals were properly filed, a lot of which went out with the weekly trash.

• My shop light for that I use for photography is going to live in the garage even though all my other photography gear lives in my room.

• 3 comic books that I discovered I had duplicates of were sent to a friend.

• Another paperbackswap book (a biography of William Randolph Hearst) was mailed out a week ago.
  

Also, an update to a few of the other things that I posted about previously: my firewire adapter that I put up for sale on ebay was sold but the data cable for an old phone did not sell on craigslist. I'll try relisting it either on ebay or craigslist again and if it doesn't sell, it will go to Goodwill.

Things that have come into the room:

• Stack of Christmas presents including a farkel game, a small poster, a toy robot and a CD. These have mostly been put away.
  
• A book I bought at a used bookstore.
• A power strip
• An Ikea tin for storing little things that tend to collect on the desk in the room.

Total items out for the year:

38

Total items in for the year:

13

Apple didn't like my homage to Nate Dogg

This is a screenshot of the podcast customer review page in the iTunes Store for one of the podcasts I listen to regularly. If you go read the reviews in iTunes right now, you won't see my review. It was removed, probably by Apple, most likely because of the critical comment I made about how someone at Apple did not like my full review of the podcast that I had tried to post before the one in the screenshot was posted.

When you write a podcast review on iTunes, you are presented with five "Tips for writing a great review":

• Keep them short and to the point. Average iTunes customer reviews are about 200 words.

  Mine clocks in at 238 words. Granted, it is formatted a little differently and looks longer, but it's no significantly longer than what Apple calls average.
  

• Praise podcasts on their own terms, not at the expense of other podcasts or the audience of other podcasts or genres.

  My review is nothing but praise, and says nothing about other podcasts or audiences of other podcasts.
  

• Take the time to copy edit your work so that you avoid embarrassing typos or grammatical errors.

  Good advice. Done.
  

• Do not use profanity or overtly sexual language.

  No problem here!
  

• Do not use language that can be construed as hateful, especially in regards to lifestyle, religion, or race.

  Nothing in my review has anything to do with religion or race, so that's a non-issue. With respect to lifestyle, I suppose you could make a case about the numerous references to drunks, but if you know anything about the podcast I'm reviewing, you know that the topic of alcohol and drunks comes up frequently in the podcast itself. In fact, it is often in the titles and descriptions of the podcasts as posted to iTunes. And, my review is not "hateful" with regard to any lifestyle, so I don't really see it as going against this tip, either.
  
  At the very bottom after you write your review (not to exceed 6000 characters, mine clocks in at 1200 characters) there is one more line:
  
  

  If a review is deemed inappropriate, it will not be posted to the iTunes Store.

  
  
  I did some searching online to see if there were other people who had their reviews rejected from the iTunes Store. The only relevant information I could find came from a FAQ for Podcast Makers on Apple's site:
  
  

  Can I have a review removed?

  iTunes does not remove reviews for editorial purposes. Reviews with profanity, hate speech, explicit/pornographic content, or commentary that is completely off topic are prohibited. To request removal of a review, click on Report a Concern for that review.

  Again, if you know anything about the podcast I was reviewing, you would know that every line in my review was completely ON topic for their show.
  
  My guess is that Apple doesn't want their Customer Reviews to become like the ones you see on Amazon. (e.g. The Story about Ping, Tuscan Whole Milk) Which is a shame. Because if fans of podcasts (or any content on iTunes) can't have fun to promote their favorite artists, everyone sort of loses an opportunity to discover something new.
  
  Anyway, the full podcast review that I wanted to post is here. My apologies to Warren G and Nate Dogg...
  
  [Andy:]
  Podcasters
  we podcast any speaking of his mind
  and we download em
  But you can't be any geek off the street,
  gotta be out of your parents basement, if you know what I mean, earn your keep!
  PODCASTERRS!!! MOUNT UP!
  
  [Broham:]
  It was a clear black night, a clear white moon
  Nick D was in the seat, trying to consume
  some talk in the eve, chattin' with a drunk
  I'm rollin in my ride, beers are in the trunk
  
  [Andy:]
  Just hit the Northside on the Kennedy
  on a mission tryin' to find Mr. Nicky D.
  Got a 'dog with fries and I need to chew
  all you drunks know what's up with 312
  
  So I hooks a left on Addison and Clark
  The Cubs are out of town so I said "Let's park."
  I jumped out the ride, and started to cough
  Nick went on a rant and my pants fell off!
  
  [Nick D:]
  Since Andy's tweetin' me I'ma check my phone
  Laughin' so hard that I start to moan
  Won'tcha load up your ipod with The Nick D Show
  You can do it right now or at your leisure, bro!
  
  [Andy:]
  He's speaking
  about a previous era
  Nick fans,
  Brew and view,
  I dare ya.
  Drunks
  Are in the News
  
  [Nick D:]
  Wisconsin's where they're from and the "winner"'s gonna lose
  
  
  Movies
  Music
  We brings
  Culture
  D-Funk
  where Chicago is home
  and home is Chicago

In with the new

Now that I've started taking things out of my room, I can start bringing things into my room. One of the projects I've been working on in the garage (for way too long) was the bookshelf in the photo here. This was the first major woodworking project I finished here at our place in Montgomery. Before we left for our Christmas road trip, I had applied a coat of polyurethane and had intended to do a light sanding and apply another coat. But, the temperature in the garage has dropped enough that I don't really think I should work on finishing any more for the winter. So, I brought it inside. It should help with organizing some of the stuff that stays in the room.

I took the cash that I got for the monitor I sold and spent it on a new USB headset for making skype calls, podcasts, and videos for class. I removed a microphone I got at American Science and Surplus to the basement.

Also coming into the room are 4 books I received for Christmas. Even though I have room in my 2-for-1 ratio to bring in the books without anything else going out, I thought it would be good to try to get rid of some books. Tomorrow I am mailing out a book that was requested of me via Paperback Swap. We really like this site for getting books that we'd like to read without paying cover price. You send a book you don't want to someone who does want the book, and in exchange you get a credit that can be spent to request a book you do want to read from another member. In essence, you end up getting books you want for the cost of mailing your books (about $2.25) to other people. In addition to the book I'm sending out, I found 7 physics journals scattered around the room that are heading to the basement.

Other things removed today: a Rubbermaid tub of physics stuff that belongs in the basement, an old computer plus keyboard and KVM switch, a box of photos, some broken glass from a photo frame
empty cups that I use to keep spare change in, 2 kick-disk hovercrafts (physics demo) and my stereo unit from college. I figured since I am sort of using fuzzy accounting to count the physics journals as books, I will make up for it by counting the computer, keyboard, and switch as one thing. So in total for the year I have:

Total items out:

25

Total items in:

6

Out with the old...

I've made a bit of progress on the great 2-for-1 exchange program in my room. In the photo are some of the things that have left my room, most permanently. I'm keeping track of the stuff going out and coming in so that I can adhere to my rule. I've been getting rid of the stuff in different ways:

Put away

I decided to put my backpack that normally lives in my room in the hallway closet. The backpack only really gets used for biking, and I don't see any bike rides in the next few months.

My old laptop is essentially dead, but I need to remove the hard drive before I can get rid of it. So it is going to the basement for now.

I'm also putting away (in the basement) some boxes that have been taking up space in the room. One is empty (it had our digital photo frame in it) and the other is half-full of some of my stuff that I moved from Bloomington.

Throw away

This one sort of breaks my heart, a little. I threw away a tiny USB laptop mouse. I think R. got it for me as a gift and I really liked it. But, it eventually wore out and stopped working reliably. I kept it to try to repair it or figure out something to do with it. I wasn't able to repair it and never came up with a great idea for it. I don't like the thought of this ending up in a land fill, but I wouldn't feel right with someone else getting frustrated by it like I did.

Give away

One of the things to leave my room is a first generation DVD-recorder. It works, but it does not always read the DVDs properly when you first put one in the machine. I took it apart and put it back together hoping I had cleaned it up enough to make it work better but no go. I'm going to list this on Freecycle and hope someone can make use of it so that it doesn't end up in the trash. Otherwise, I'll have to find an electronics recycling event to take it to.

Sell away

The other three things that are leaving the room are things that I'm trying to sell. I found out that eBay has a promotion where you can list 5 things every 30 days with no insertion fee. So, I put up for auction a USB/Firewire adapter that I had tried using for a project. We ended up using a different adapter for the project, so I no longer need this one.

I listed on craigslist a monitor that I had purchased at a thrift store. I had fixed up the monitor and used it for about a year before getting my new computer last month and no longer needing the monitor. The monitor sold almost immediately after listing it.

The other item I listed on craigslist is a data cable for my old cellular phone. I used it a few times, but I have a new phone and no longer need it. It's still for sale, make me an offer! ;)

Total items out

8

Total items in

0

The disaster that is my man cave.

These out of focus photos reflect the horror that is my room. I have a plan to get the room under control. It is the 2-for-1 plan. For every one item that comes into the room as a new (or new-to-me) item, two items must be removed from the room. This plan will continue until no more items can be removed, or the room is just how I like it.

Some of the ground rules I've set for myself include:

• A box of stuff counts as a single item. I can't count all the items in the box.
  
  
• I can't count things like dishes or clothes that end up here. Those things have a place; they need to get there.
  
  
• I should try to get the things that leave the room out of the house, but if I don't want to get rid of them, they have to go in the basement or the garage.
  
  
• If something belongs in the room and I take it out, I can bring it back in without getting rid of two other things. For example, my laptop bag that I take to school everyday gets to come back into the room everyday.
  
  

I'd like to figure out a cool way to track all the stuff that is going out (and coming in) but for now, I guess I'll just list what I've done here in the blog.

R. wins 292-270

R. wins 292-270
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

At Molly's Cupcakes on a Friday afternoon. Renae had the bingo: gropers

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

R. wins 301-300

R. wins 301-300
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

R. wins again. Didn't hurt that she started the game with a bingo: braised. One point at the end was the difference.

This message has been sent using the picture and Video service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, Quicktime@ 6.5 or higher is required.

R. wins 358-304

R. wins 358-304
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

One bingo: painter, but didn't help me in the end.

It's not Scrabble it's Scrabapple! (R. wins)

It's not Scrabble it's Scrabapple! (R. wins)
Originally uploaded by achmorrison.

Scrabble Apple at Graham's 318.

Venn diagram of my day

The Girlfriends Got Dumped

Yesterday, I was syncing my ipod with freshly downloaded podcasts when I noticed that one of the WGN Kathy and Judy Show uncut podcasts was titled "The Final Kathy and Judy Show". BWAH?! K & J had been on WGN radio (AM 720) for 20 years, and both R. and I enjoyed listening to them. I never completely agreed with their opinions, and sometimes they were overly catty, but in general they were really good radio. They always had interesting discussion topics, even if sometimes the directions they took the topics were kinda loopy. You could tell that they let their show evolve naturally, never forcing anything.

I have been reading some of the blog posts and articles covering the cancellation. What was more interesting than the articles are the comments about the programming on WGN. I understand that not everyone who listens to a talk radio station will like every on-air personality on the radio station. Example: we don't go out of our way to listen to Steve Cochran. What surprised me was how vocal people can be about not liking whichever host they happen to not like.

I'm surprised at the number of comments by people who don't like John Williams. I'm surprised there aren't more comments by people disliking Steve Cochran. Can you tell which ways my opinion tends to sway? What I learned is how varied opinions can be on the various shows.

And this change to the morning line-up is just the latest in recent changes to the programming, thanks to "Pig Virus" programming director Kevin Metheny.

So, I don't want to get all mad and huffy and threaten to never listen to WGN again, but I'm seriously going to look for other radio entertainment while the Cubs are not on the radio.