However, as metaphysics is a subject much more curious than useful, the knowledge of which, like that of a sunken reef, serves chiefly to enable us to keep clear of it, I will not trouble the reader with any more Ontology at this moment. I have already been led much further into that path than I should have desired; and I have given the reader such a dose of mathematics, psychology, and all that is most abstruse, that I fear he may already have left me, and that what I am now writing is for the compositor and proof-reader exclusively.
Don't mind my more than 2 week hiatus, I've been entertaining friends from near and far, rocking out to my long-time anthem mashed into the best 54 seconds on the internet (below), wrapping up office life, planning expensive vacations that I'll never be able to take again until well into the 2020s, beach partying, festival going, picnicking, all around summering. And GRAD LIFE is still nearly two months away!
Today will be a day I will later look back on with extreme nostalgia once I begin grad life.
The work day that I had the luxury of elegantly wasting in its entirety by reading about the Amen Break and the history of different subgenres of electronic music while also reminiscing about the days of drum and bass, and then the somewhat more recent by also bygone good old days of Dogzstar.
GRAD LIFE BOOK REVIEWS: THE GLASS BEAD GAME by Hermann Hesse
If you too would like to abandon luxury and live a life not unlike that of a medieval eunich to better enable you to endlessly investigate frivial intellectual pursuits, including an elaborate game that can take weeks to play that makes absolutely no sense to anyone else, you should try out Castalia, home of the GLASS BEAD GAME (and also the famous Magister Ludi). Only students who are simultaneously highly intelligent, incredibly weak willed and possessing no desires to accomplish real, tangible goals are allowed into the province of Castilia, and you can check out any time you like but YOU CAN NEVER LEAVE. Well maybe, but that would be a SPOILER.
Back in GRAD LIFE I always relished social opportunities to interact with physics students. After the first 25 seconds of conversation when you've been forced to establish your disciplinary commitments, there is usually a somewhat awkward lull heavier than dark matter itself. I found that a way out of this was talking about the sitcom The Big Bang Theory. Turns out, with my limited sample set, this is usually a good topic of conversation with physics students because they realize that no one gives a fuck about anything they do and its the best PR they've got (that or physics dudes were just excited to talk to a girl outside of their department).
Oh, those poor physics grads, toiling away although nothing has happened in their field for so long, and all they've got to argue about is string theory (more proof that everything I know about physics I learned from aforementioned sitcom). Do a google image search for "sexy physicist" and you'll find Calista Flockhart on the first page and Stephen Hawking on the second; not much to dispel the stereotype of the tragically unattractive geek.
BUT hey, smug social science and humanity grads, with all this buzz about Higgs boson the flow of campus social capital has been irreconcilably disrupted. When is the last time you did anything that fundamentally changed our most basic understandings of the ENTIRE UNIVERSE? No, Toward an Sociology of Extraterrestrials would not count.
This shit puts the sex back in physics, hopefully to be reallocated from critical and film theory, if there is any justice in the universe. Loyal readers of TYCDIGS, go find a physicist and show your appreciation, physically. Wouldn't we all like to start here?
Although perhaps Chairlift called this sea change with their [choose your own adventure] video earlier this year about all the parallel universe in which their singer Caroline is a sexy yet charmingly doe-eyed PhD student rocking GRAD LIFE.
