My Time at the 2017 APS March Meeting

This is just a quick update from my graduate studies. In the middle of March, I was able to attend the 2017 APS March Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana; this is the first conference that I have attended in any capacity. I had a ton of fun being able to travel there and meet with old friends, collaborators whom I had not yet met in person, and other people that I didn't know but who have been working on similar things to me; it was great being able to discuss interesting potential project ideas with them. Going to many talks was also cool, giving me a good sense of the state of my field and the sort of work that other people are doing, though in many respects, I honestly feel like I learned more just from talking with people at length in more informal settings. Finally, the highlight for me was getting to present my own work and seeing the interest that many people took in it: I was presenting a semiclassical electromagnetics approach to van der Waals interactions between molecules and larger bodies in a session dominated by density functional and atomistic long-range many-body approaches to van der Waals interactions solely in [large] molecular systems, so I was truly gratified to see that members of the audience saw value and significance in what I've been doing, especially given how different my talk was from those that came before and after it in that session. Overall, I had an amazing time, and I hope to be able to attend other conferences, both similar to this as well as more specific to my research, during my remaining time in graduate school.

2010 February 8: Rahm Emanuel and the Super Bowl

This is an update to the previous story on Rahm Emanuel's use of the word "retarded" to describe certain liberal groups.
He has since apologized and signed a pledge to end the use of this word. I applaud him for this, though he shouldn't have made the comment in the first place.
Also, Sarah Palin's outrage showed a rift in the conservative base. Many (though certainly not all) conservatives are opposed to being overly politically correct. Palin has made reference to this before as well. However, as this directly insulted her son, she felt the need to defend political correctness and in the process blast Rush Limbaugh for not supporting her. I'm not taking sides in this particular dispute; I just thought it's an interesting thing to see.

Also, the New Orleans Saints won Super Bowl XLIV! New Orleans really needed this one.