My Todays.

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb.

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And being but an ear,
And I and silence some strange race,
Wrecked, solitary, here.

And then a plank in reason broke
And I dropped down and down
And hit a world at every plunge--
And finished knowing then.

[Emily Dickinson]

Job-dom

Oh, hey...there you are blog.
It's been quite a while, eh?

My world has been a whirlwind, really. Spinning vortices whipping my brain through an amalgam of decisions and pressures and worries and SPLAT! Now I'm here. Wherever "here" is anyway. "Here" is always moving and traveling along with you or alongside of you, sometimes referenced even through the end of a telephone.

I have a job, now. The kind that doesn't require my weekends or my early morning hours (the kind that run between 2-4 am). The University hired me to advise fledgling mathematicians, and they hired me full time. They even gave me the real mccoy of benefits packages. I have a doctor, a dentist and an opthamologist. Opthamologist does not equal optometrist. I learned that from the son of a doctor. It's an important distinction, he tells me.

I have a desk that needs a plant and my mind made up to figure shit out. Shit like all the what's and how's and when's....while fully recognizing the futility of such goals.

I promise to be more available to you. I sit in front of a computer now, 8-5, M-F...and if I manage to not die today, I'll probably be back tomorrow.

The Other Side

I'm done.
I'm done and I don't know what that means.
I also don't know what's to come.
But it feels so fucking good.

It's Not That

It's not that I don't want to write these days.
It's that I can't.
I can't do it.

I'm empty, and that's not a good place to be writing from. Nothing to say. Throwing sawdust every which-way and not making any sense.

I have 2 weeks minus 1 day of class left in my undergraduate career. Spanish 3, hasta la vista. Now, if I can JUST pull off an A in this bitch, I will be S-E-T!

Breaking from the norm is bound to set off some flares in my brain. Neurons firing ideas down the lines and straight out my fingertips to splatter on the screen. This isn't a promise, but an educated guess. Educated guesses are all that we really have, anyway so we might as well get used to it.

That Good Night

If ever the time comes, I want you to know that I want you to pull the plug.
If ever my life has been sucked out of me, rendering me a vegetable, a machine-prompted, breathing, shell...please, pull the plug.

Death scares me, though I am only half ashamed to admit it. It is our fear of death and our uncanny knowledge of its ceaseless advancing which makes us human. But what scares me about death is only that I will not continue. It doesn't scare me that my body will decompose, that my clothes will be given away, or that any material aspect of my life will cease. The I that I am, is what will be faced with oblivion...separated and annihilated. This happens, the moment that my neurons stop firing. hen my brain starts deteriorating rapidly, with no hope for a come-back...don't be silly about it, ok?

It isn't morbid to let a body stop breathing, because a body: arms, legs, lungs, intenstines, all those pieces serve merely as a vessel. A vessel for my Me. The person, the ME and the YOU, as it were, is what is born out of the massively dense bundle of cells covered by less than a few centimeters of bone. That's where my Person lives...that's my control center. So my person isn't really a person without my Person. I mean, right? My conscious and functioning (and, might I add, devilishly clever) mind is what makes me a Me at all.

It's just that, I don't want to be remembered in the minds of whatever family and friends and colleagues that remain to watch me go, as a body tied to machines, taped up and wiped down in a hospital bed. I don't want months of vain hoping to go by, wishing against medical science for a "miracle" to happen. I am quite sure that miracles don't exist. And that what we perceive as miracles are only highly infrequent experiences which we don't have all the information on. And in any case, the odds are not in my favor that such an infrequent experience will occur precisely when and if I find myself no longer Myself.

I am thinking of death, lately, with no signs of stopping.
And sometimes I think that it is the thinking about death that's the hardest part.

A Bittersweet Taste

(Please note: If you are reading this and thinking, "Wow, this writing is shit. What happened to Sarah?" You should know that I am kind of taking a creativity hiatus. A regrouping, of sorts. I promise, fingers crossed, that I'll be back to my dry, caustic nature in no time....I mean, as long as the hiatus works)

There is so much to write about, these days, these times, in this world. I never have enough space in my afternoon. Never enough blank lines in my planner. When will it happen? A small voice in my head, or somewhere, keeps saying, "September"....but who am I kidding? I need to get a job. J-O-B.

Do you want to know what I'm thinking about, blog?
On the surface, I am thinking about politics and injustice and "making a difference" and contorted lines spewed by puppets who don't really mean them....but deep down, I am thinking about mediocrity.

At some point, when the population began to spiral out of control, mediocrity took hold. Perhaps this was inevitable. Afterall, how else can this many people live so "comfortably" in one place. But then again, this isn't a deterministic gig, here. We are living in an existentialist era, the reality of the choice, the will-to-power if I may.... we decide who we are.

Sometimes we can say that this circumstance prompted this person to be this way, but really, we're talking probabilities. THERE SIMPLY ARE NO ABSOLUTES when it comes to human life. Mathematical models with an innumerable number of variables are what you should think of when you picture the natural progression of an individual's life. But at some point, we decide what to make of each experience. Not to oversimplify, but we choose to Victimize or Conquer....

And lately, now that I'm not taking math classes, I'm running into a lot more people who are opting for absolute mental mediocrity. It makes me sick that they can vote, that they can birth children, that they can own pets or drive cars. And it isn't like they "haven't had a chance to be exposed to rational thought"...these people are college seniors, who have studied abroad, "know" two-three languages, etc. etc. I don't believe that these are "good people" deep down. Being a decent human being is a choice. And when you CHOOSE to waste your professor's class time, when you CHOOSE to cheat on an exam, when you CHOOSE to be a total dumbass...

...I have to wonder if all the ailments of the world could be solved by systematically eliminating the Proverbial Freeloaders.

The definition of SOB

Remember my bitter feud with the university regarding my parking citation? I just got this response:

We have carefully reviewed your appeal as well as your feedback and information provided. The citation was issued because the permit displayed was not valid in the lot where the vehicle was parked. The vehicle was parked in Parking Lot 03 in a lot that is reserved for the use of staff and faculty permits during business hours, M – F 7:30 am – 5:00 pm. This information is posted at the entrance to the lot. Therefore, the citation was appropriately issued and we have decided to uphold the citation and the penalty amount is due in full within 21 days or additional late fees may be incurred. You may pay online by going to www.scapay.com, entering the citation number and following the instructions given. You can also pay at our office, which is located in Building 381 across from Harder Stadium. You can pay by mail as well, simply include the citation, make your check payable to UC Regents, and mail to Parking Services, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-7!
001. If you wish, you may further appeal our decision within 21 days of the date of this email by requesting an Administrative Hearing. In order to do so, you must first pay the full amount of the citation. Further information and the form for requesting a hearing are available on our website at http://tps.ucsb.edu/PDF/citehearingrequest.pdf

Did you read that part at the end, there? In order to appeal, you first have to pay them. EXCUSE ME? Are you fucking KIDDING ME? I don't think I owe you money, so I want to appeal your reasons. You "allow" me to appeal, but first I have to pay you? Am I losing my mind? Does that, or does that not sound like the most asinine thing that a person in my situation could do?

Jesus fucking Christ. Do I have to explain BASIC LOGIC to my university parking service attendants now?

Certainly Uncertain

I found this old essay in my Google docs section, wanted to delete it, but not permanently and decided that for now, I'll house it here. You might give it a read, if you like. I titled it, "Certainly Uncertain".

“I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds”. When Oppenheimer recited these famous lines, it had been done. Mankind had started an avalanche and they could never go back. The realization of the atom bomb is undoubtedly the greatest and the most terrifying achievement in the history of scientific exploration. It is a weapon to which there is no adequate defense, a weapon that took a World War to initiate, and a weapon that only one nation effectively utilized. Material want makes war, and technology makes war terrible (Kevles, 248). You have surely heard the statement that, “With great power comes great responsibility…” It is in the unleashing of the nuclear energy of the atom that mankind has found itself faced with the reality that we are collectively ill prepared to handle what great responsibility is required of us. The truth of our ill preparedness looms in the haunting images of a flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It hangs in the memories of how the Cold War drove the bravery of American citizens into storm cellars and food stockpiles, for fear of nuclear holocaust. It permeates even into our present state of affairs as many of us find ourselves trembling with each media broadcast of intelligence suspicions of North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs.

Despite attempts from each major player in the Second World War only one nation, the United States, successfully completed the building of an atomic bomb. So the question we must ask is, why did the United States and more specifically NOT Germany, develop the bomb? Why did Germany fail?

Four main theories are proposed by able scholars to answer that question. The first maintains that German scientists were simply, incompetent and had multiple occasions of wrong turns in their scientific research. The second set of theorists claim that Germany was sabotaged by Her own. That is to say, the scientists are thought to have had a secret plot to avoid the development of the bomb. The third argument is that in the implementation of Anti-Semitism, Germany was drained of the bulk of Her theoretical physicists. Nuclear physics was then described as “Jewish physics” and there certainly wasn’t much welcome in Germany for anything Jewish. Finally, the fourth opinion is that German military confidence gave the German government no reason to finance a nuclear arms project. There was simply no practical reason for the dream.

I propose that of these arguments, the first two are completely bogus. But I will get into that later. The third and fourth aren’t too far off, but it is my opinion that the two must not be exclusive of one another. Additionally, those two must be coupled with the notion that Germany, unlike the United States of America, never intended to build a bomb.

Let’s begin with a little background, shall we? In the midst of the German invasion of Europe, “Hitler’s Uranium Club” members (German physicists) were at work on a nuclear fission program. Make no mistake about that. Also note that these workers were no second rate college graduates. These were, in fact, world class scientists. To give you a taste of who we are talking about, I’ll list a couple for you: Werner Heisenberg, Otto Hahn, Walther Gerlach, Paul Harteck, Kurt Diebner, C.F. von Weizsäcker, Karl Wirtz, Erich Bagge and Horst Korsching(Kevles). Professor Diebner lead a military team in nuclear research, and was associated with Dr. Hartneck (the developer of the gaseous uranium centrifuge). There were teams of scientists put to developing nuclear propulsion of U-Boats, under Dr. Otto Haxel. Certainly though, the most widely debated aspect of German nuclear research during World War II, was the work being done at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute under the oversight of physicist Werner Heisenberg.

As is the case in every scientific discipline, if you want something to work correctly, it usually requires the input of specific unwavering amounts of material. If you want to be a nuclear bomb that does anything but look like a 4th of July firework, you need to have a certain amount of fissile material. But how much? The best fissile material at that time, was understood to come from the two isotopes Uranium 235 and Plutonium 239.

At the onset of WWII, it was common thought that a proper nuclear reaction required TONS of U-235, in order to generate a non-firework style bomb. Certainly not an easy task. The only feasible way to do this, as they understood at the time, was to take on the task of building nuclear reactors. Hence, nuclear physicists worldwide including Werner Heisenberg, set to the task of developing nuclear reactors capable of generating such quantities.

And thus, here enters the first argument for why Germany failed to assemble the bomb. The German scientists were just plain incompetent fools. Surprisingly, this line of reasoning is advanced by a few prominent historians of science. They maintain that it is painstakingly obvious to anyone interested in building a nuclear bomb, that it is entirely essential to calculate the critical mass. The idea that Heisenberg and his fellow German scientists merely accepted Perrin’s calculation of “tons” at face value, suggested the obvious unexceptional nature of the men. Cathy Carson of the University of California Berkeley, in her historiographical account of the Heisenberg opinion, illustrates this view held by her colleague Paul Rose: “Rose's Heisenberg becomes the exemplification of the flawed German: whose nationalism and moral obtuseness, in Rose's telling, find much to welcome in Hitler; whose scientific misunderstandings, in his account, send the fission project off on the wrong track;” Michael Frayn’s non-historian opinion, also shares this analysis of Dr. Rose’s thoughts: “He believes that Heisenberg failed, in spite of his perfect readiness to serve the Nazi regime, because of his arrogance and wrong-headedness, and because he embodied various vices of the German culture in general, and of the Nazi regime in particular, whose values he had absorbed.” (Frayn, 107).

For those whose criticisms fall on the shoulders of Werner Heisenberg as the sole individual responsible for the failure, I find this quote from Frayn’s Copenhagen postscript, an adequate rebuttal.

“…the calculation of the critical mass was much harder than I’ve made it seem for Heisenberg once Bohr has suggested it to him. ‘Perrin failed to get it and his publication of a ton-size critical mass subtly misled everyone else, then Bohr and Wheeler failed, Kurchatov failed, Chadwick failed, all the other Germans and Russians and French and British and Americans missed it, even the greatest of them all for such problems, Fermi, tried but missed, everyone except Peierls…Physics is hard.’”

Scientists surely make mistakes. But I’d be hard pressed to find anyone (who didn’t have an ax to grind), that would say that Heisenberg missing a calculation would render him an incompetent scientist and full of “elementary moral stupidity” as Paul Rose suggests (Frayn, 107).

Another camp suggests that the “missing” of the critical mass calculation, was an “oversight” meant as Heisenberg’s intentional jab at the radical dictatorship that was destroying Deutscheland. Support for this opinion stems from the transcripts of Farm Hall during Operation Epsilon, as well as Heisenberg’s very explicit stance against nuclear power, after the war was over. To quote Heisenberg directly from the transcripts, he says, “I would say that I was absolutely convinced of the possibility of our making a uranium engine [nuclear reactor], but I never thought we would make a bomb, and at the bottom of my heart I was really glad that it was to be an engine and not a bomb. I must admit that.”

I think the tendency here is to assume that this translates into Heisenberg’s deliberate sabotage of the German nuclear project. However, I believe that this is incorrect. Since when does, “I was really glad it didn’t happen” translate into, “I intentionally directed the circumstances in order for that outcome to not occur”? The two are not necessarily interchangeable. I think that Heisenberg was in the terribly uncomfortable position of trying to defend his nationalism while trying to keep his science pure. Let us not forget the classic attack waged on Heisenberg and his Uncertainty Principle by Johannes Stark. Let us also not forget the months of being called a “White Jew” by his countrymen.

At any rate, it seems as though calling Heisenberg’s statements an admittance of sabotage, is jumping the gun a bit. Rather it seems that Heisenberg was communicating that he did not believe (“I didn’t believe that we would build a bomb”) that they would generate the necessary solution to their critical mass problem.

The third opinion of the arguments surrounding Germany’s failed fission project, is that German scientific capacity decreased significantly with the massive emigration of Jews from German occupied territories into the Allied safe zones. Some of the heavy hitters who left fascist countries during the war include Albert Einstein, Enrico Fermi (left fascist Italy) and Leo Szilard. In the military world, the Nazis were concerned with domination and in the scientific world they were concerned with classicism. The nuclear physics required to develop the atom bomb, simply wasn’t given the regard that it was due.

This scientific anti-Semitism comes directly from the nationalist movement of “Deutsche Physik”. The creed, introduced and popularized by Philipp Lenard and Johannes Stark had the strict intention of going against the work of Albert Einstein and the quantum. It was characterized by experiment, visualization and all things classical. There was very little science involved in the movement at all. In fact, it seemed much more reactionary in tactic, and void of much scientific clout with which to genuinely change the direction of the science.

To me, it appears very logical that this notion might be one of the many compounding agents that contributed to the downfall of the German fission attempt. It goes without saying that a government that doesn’t respect a science, doesn’t fund a science. And nuclear science without funding, is just dreaming.

Finally comes this notion of intent. Historians have proposed that, perhaps, Germany didn’t build a nuclear weapon because they never intended too. I think that Frayn is dead on when he says, “One thing, though, seems to me to emerge quite clearly: for all practical purposes German thinking had stopped at a reactor, and there had been no eagerness at all to look beyond this to the possibility of weapons.”

It should not be ignored that the German government was not entirely interested in funding the nuclear bomb research. David Cassidy, in his review of Michael Frayn’s play Copenhagen, highlights a necessary chain of events pertaining to the apathy of the German government: “Just three months later [after October, 1941], the Army decided to abandon its fission project on the recommendation of its closest advisors, choosing to concentrate instead on rockets and jet aircraft. It was the beginning of the end of any German hopes for sweeping success in fission research.”

If you track the timeline of the bomb projects compared to their war status (winning or losing) in both Germany and the United States, it can be seen that Germany was in no need of nuclear weaponry through 1943. Why, you might ask? Simply put, they were winning. There was no practical reason for the German government to commit the necessary finances and man power to a multi-year project focused on one weapon. The Germans had U-boats to perfect and aircraft to refine. There was an obvious need for rockets and missiles, but no obvious need for a nuclear bomb.

And thus, we have a team of nuclear physicists and nuclear chemists, who lacked the national financial backing necessary to rigorously pursue the design of a nuclear bomb. Not to mention that there is a possibility that the whole team wasn’t entirely thrilled by the idea of putting a nuclear weapon into the hands of Hitler. And the outcome? Logically (and historically I might add) no bomb was produced.

When the wind finally did change, and lucky for the rest of the world it did, the Germans found their moment of opportunity gone. It would be only two years until the United States would have assembled their bomb. The Third Reich would be surrendered, shocked and awed by the realization that they had been beat to the punch, in a very explosive way.

As a scientist caught up amongst the extremes that accompany deep-routed nationalism when it is coupled with international war, Heisenberg found himself caught between a Reich and a nuclear bomb. Whatever seeds of discontent or ethical objections he and his colleagues might have housed, I believe they were never called upon to make such reservations manifest. Their nation was unconvinced of the validity of their science, and thus, holistically overlooked the opportunity (if we can call it opportunity), to furnish nuclear weaponry. The Anti-Semitism bred irrational nationalism straight into physics textbooks, and so, if the idea is to find someone to pin the blame on, point the finger at the scientists leading the march for Aryan Physics. Johannes Stark and Philipp Lenard.

But I am inclined to note that the myriad of complexities surrounding the German nuclear fission project is just that, complex. Despite the obvious furious efforts of renowned historians in the collection of evidence, knowledge of the German nuclear failure might be modeled in the behavior of the familiar function y = 1/x. When we take “x” to be the time passed, and “y” to be the level of uncertainty, I can comfortably suggest that as the limit of “x” approaches infinity, "y" approaches zero. But it must be noted that “y” never lands on zero. That is to say, zero uncertainty can never be attained. The evidence presented on all fronts can be impressively persuasive from one day to the next, and one reading to the next. But of one thing that I am convinced of: nuclear power is great power, and with great power comes exceedingly great responsibility. Mankind can be grateful that the responsibility to steward the power of nuclear fission, for whatever reason, never landed in the hands of Adolf Hitler. Whether the hands in which it currently lies are worthy, is another story entirely.

15 Fifteen Fif-teen

Fifteen books which have impacted my life, in no particular order aside from the order which they become clear in my mind (which may, in fact, have an order, but then again, may not):

1. god is not Great [Hitchens]
2. Man without a country [Vonnegut]
3. 1984 [Orwell]
4. Nausea [Sartre]
5. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ [Saramago]
6. On the Road [Kerouac]
7. Farewell to Arms [Hemingway]
8. End of Faith [Harris]
9. Tales of Ordinary Madness [Bukowski]
10. Brave New World [Huxley]
11. The Fountainhead [Rand]
12. Breakfast of Champions [Vonnegut]
13. Thus Spoke Zarathustra [Nietzsche]
14. The Art of Loving [Fromm]
15. The Bible [various mystics & politicians of times passed]

Bus Me, Bill Me, Pay Me, Slay Me

I have my routines. I wake up, check my email, waste time on facebook, read the news. I make my breakfast, take my shower, start my day.

The goal of my breakfast, energy throughout the day. The goal of my day, be as productive as possible. If I have a headache, I take an Advil and drink more water. I cannot lose time.

Isn't it strange how the things which are so popular these days are the very things which foster productivity above mental realization? We drink coffee like water, shake our fingers at drugs, scowl at the weekend revelers. We frown upon epiphanies, tell people that they can't "find themselves" in intoxication. We give 2 weeks off, but get angry when the time is asked for. We feign sickness to have time to regroup. Our weekends are full of to-do lists and appointments and shopping lists. Our vacations, packed to the brim with activities meant to make one feel as though they are really living, in the midst of slavery.

I never just leave time for myself. I take yoga, meet up with friends, go dancing, get drinks, have dinners, do research, learn languages, force myself to write. I use my time off from being busy, to be busy doing things I can't do when I'm busy. We all do. I am so backwards, so persuaded about why I ought to accept all the expectations for my life, verbalized or implied...that I make myself sick, spiraling around in the depths of my psyche. Combating feelings of perceived failure, self-doubt, disappointment in my inability to rise above the standard.

But what standard? Or, perhaps the more appropriate question, whose standard?

Sometimes I think it's mine. And sometimes I think nothing is mine.

I am in the midst of an existential crisis...and I'm not sure I even really know how to talk about it.

No Subject

They're coming today.
Get ready.