New Athletic Allegiances and the Advanced Study of Mud

It’s official, signed, sealed, and if not quite delivered, at least dropped in the mailbox: I’m off to UC Berkeley next fall for a Ph.D. from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science. Do not hesitate to fail to withold your applause!

Topics to be covered in the next 5+ years may include (in that nested list format that’s so trendy this week):

  • Mud:
    • Its squooshiness.
    • Its jiggliness.
    • Its squooshiness when jiggled:
      • On Earth.
      • On Mars.
  • Beating civil engineers over the head:
    • Sometimes simplifications are necessary for projects to proceed efficiently.
    • Sometimes they clearly haven’t been paying attention to:
      • Seismology.
      • Statistics.

I’m still working out the implications of this decision in the hypothetical case of a Stanford-Iowa State playoff. It’s a good thing I have a Division III alma mater and don’t really follow college sports at all, or my head might explode.

Comments

  1. Hugo Schwyzer wrote:

    Many many congratulations! I understand the exploding head problem. When USC plays Stanford, I am at a loss — in the old days of college football, I confess I would root for a scoreless tie marred by injuries.

  2. yami wrote:

    Thanks Hugo. That’s not a bad solution

  3. wolfangel wrote:

    Congratulations. If you would like someone to root for one side for you, while you cheer on the other, you can always get entirely disinterested observers involved. I promise to comment “yay” or “boo”, whichever is appropriate.

  4. Graham wrote:

    Congratulations, yami. Well done.

  5. yami wrote:

    Ahh. Thank you, thank you.
    Just out of curiosity, how often d’you suppose I can insist that you all cast plaudits at my feet before you start leaving in droves?

  6. des von bladet wrote:

    Hoorah for mud! When you say jiggling, is rheology a factor? Rheological models of mud, I am reliably informed, are a bitch.
    And wuhoo, of course.

  7. yami wrote:

    Potentially. Though the jiggling I’m interested in is, definitionally, intense enough to make the rheological bitchiness readily approximable by that of water. And the mud is not so much mud as wet sand and silt.
    But yes, I look forward to a career in bitchslapping!

  8. Rana wrote:

    Wooo!
    (If you can, get housing in the northern side of the Bay; the commute’s a bitch out of SF.)

  9. yami wrote:

    I’m hoping for a spot in the student co-ops. I sent in that application last week, the queue is rumored to be ungodly long so I’m crossing my fingers… otherwise, yeah, maybe Oakland, Richmond.
    Did you commute driving, or on public transit?

  10. Heading Out wrote:

    Plaudit ! Plaudit Now can I stay?

  11. yami wrote:

    Of course! As long as you continue to participate in the regular Wednesday Ego Blogging

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *

*

*