J. Michael Andresen

This year, the Major Leage Baseball season started with a pair of regular season games (not just exhibition games) in Japan. The two teams featured are the Oakland Athletics and my favorite Boston Red Sox. Japan is 14 hours ahead of Minneapolis, so the night games in Tokyo started at 5 a.m. yesterday and today local time. Fanatic that I am for the Red Sox, I set the alarm yesterday for 4:30 so I could get in to work in time to listen to the live feed of the game starting at 5. I was running a bit late, but luckily so were the Sox. I sprinted from my parking place to lab and just got the computer booted in time to connect to the live feed at 5:10 and hear the first pitch of the new season. Yesterday's game was thrilling. I was down in the mouse room for most of it. We fell behind, but tied the game in the ninth inning and then won the game in the tenth. What a great way to start the season! Sadly, this morning's game ended in a loss. I feel partly responsible because I didn'...

Yesterday, on the first full day of spring, we had a big snowstorm. I went for a walk and was inspired to write a haiku. By callow brick walls, snow falls on insouciant trees, as timeless as I. I was struck with the confluence in time of the snow (ancient), the trees (more recent), the buildings (even more recent), and me (most recent of all, but imbued with consciousness that gives me the illusion of being more important than all the rest - which makes me the most callow and perhaps the most insouciant as well).

Before I start, I would like to thank Beth Kelly for giving me her copy of this book. I had seen it on her bookshelf and (recognizing that it was on my list) asked to borrow it. "You can not only borrow it, you can keep it," she said, with what seemed like inexplicable glee. She explained that an ex-boyfriend had given her the book and that she no longer had any use for it. On the Road is an autobiographical book with the names changed, perhaps to protect the innocent. Jack and his "beat generation" friends crisscross the country in the late 1940s, doing a variety of drugs, and stealing gasoline and groceries (and even cars) when they run low on money. They disrespect and mistreat women ranging from Mexican prostitutes to their own mothers and aunts. Why do I care? I did, however, get caught up in Kerouac's desultory idylls describing his drives across the continent. I've driven across the country numerous times, and for me it's always been highly memor...

A friend of Katie's (Sara) is a high school librarian, and runs a wonderful program as part of that. It's a "Breakfast Book Club" where the students meet on a purely voluntary basis to get together once a month to discuss a book. It was covered recently in a local news broadcast . Sara is the one in the clip asking the students if Muhammad Yunus (microcredit pioneer) deserved his Nobel Prize in Economics. I really think it's a great program. Too often I think students slip into viewing school in a negative light because it's mandatory. An engaging but voluntary scholarly activity such as your book club is a wonderful reminder that learning is fun. It empowers students to think, "Hey, I enjoy learning so much that I'm doing it without it being required!" I've fallen prey to that type of thinking in the past, too. When I played football in high school, I hated the gruelling practices. For some reason, though, I always went to the one optional ...

Today is an important day for me, being my 10th leap day. My first February 29th was when I was a month old in 1972. I found out today that February 29 is not the ultimate in leap day-ness. Once (and once only in human history) February 29 gave way to February 30. That was in Sweden in 1712. It's a strange but interesting story . I was reading a bit about Sweden in The Economist today, as well. In 2006, Sweden accepted 90% of refugees from Iraq that applied for asylum. Compare that to 12% for Britain, 2% for Denmark, and 0% for Greece. Overall, Sweden has accepted 90,000 Iraqi refugees into their total population of 9 million. It seems like a friendly country. It also tops The Economist's list as the world's most free democracy, trouncing the U.S., which is far behind in 17th place. One of Katie's law school friends (Jenny) is from Sweden and tells stories about her home, noting that although Swedish society is very politically free, peer pressure and other social pr...

This is sad in a different way than my first Valentine's Day story . The lab I work in is eleven people, split into three "bays." Mine is the middle bay and is comprised of Kristin, Sam, and Shaojuan in addition to myself. Someone was distributing white carnations on Valentine's Day this year (I'm still a bit confused as to who it was or for what purpose), and both Kristin and Shaojuan ended up with one. Somehow the conversation turned to what dorky science projects one could perform using white carnations. We decided to perform a demonstration of capillary action and carnation physiology. Here are the two carnations. The one on the left (in the graduated cylinder) is in a dilute solution of Orange G, while the flower on the right (in the Erlenmeyer flask) is in a solution of Bromphenyl Blue: Here are the same two carnations after three days: And here are the same flowers after two weeks: The blue flower is my favorite. Here's a close-up so you can see the vei...

And the Oscar goes to . . . No Country for Old Men . Katie and I saw this on Friday with Laura, and I was certainly impressed (though Katie and Laura absolutely hated it). I found myself pulling for it to win, even though I voted for Atonement like a naif. (I'm not going to believe Golden Globe results anymore.) Seven people picked the best picture Oscar correctly: Ekrem, Matthew B., Jeff, Chris, Grant, Oraldo, and Megan. They join Liz and Missy with a score of 1 to everyone else's zero. No one has a score of two yet. A few internecine rivalries are almost certainly forming amongst the leaders. The most rancorous will undoubtedly be Liz and Jeff, who live together and thus have ample opportunity to talk trash with each other now that Jeff has pulled even with Liz. But don't discount the heated battles likely arising amongst my wedding party (Missy and Ekrem), from Epsilon Theta, my MIT fraternity (Chris, Grant, and Ekrem), or from attendees of Eric's New Year Event, wh...