I'm in the SF Chronicle!!!

What does it feel to see your name in the newspaper? Weird.

15 minutes

When's the last time I got interviewed by a reporter from a major newspaper? Oh....let me thi.... Never. So how could I turn it down when C.W. Nevius asked me about helping him with a piece on the physics of Superman?
"Hi this is Chuck Nevius from the Chronicle..."
"Excuse me, who is this again?" I didn't say that I only read NYTimes online, and occasionally CNN. I = stupid.
On the drive home, my mind was racing faster than the traffic on 101 S (ummm...ok). Physics of Superman, I better not say something grotesquely wrong and end up being ridiculed by my peers. Stories of publicly derided scientists trickled into the cracks in my skull. Now that I think about it, I had nothing to worry about. Not only is Chuck a great guy to talk to and that I (nervously) enjoyed every minute of our conversation, I remembered that I wasn't even that great of a physics student, so what reputation do I have to uphold?!
Some highlights of my contribution, or rather, what still remains in my mental flash memory (emphasis on flash):

• Physicists are once again playing with the anti-gravity term that Einstein erroneously put into his equations, maybe the Kryptonians worked that out already and incorporated into their biology, allowing them to fly so freely.
• If gravity was stronger on Krypton, so that Kryptonians just developed insanely strong muscles, then we should've sent the U.S. soccer team to Krypton.
  
• Clark Kent was only a 2nd class Superman since he picked up buses over his head horizontally, thus allowing for easier balance. The 1st class Superpeople picked them up vertically over their head in a less energetically stable arrangement.
• In order for his X-Ray vision to work, Superman had to radiate X-Ray on the target and then run behind them to capture the resultant image, thus if you slow the movie down frame by frame, in some frames he should not be there because he's on the other side.
  
• If Superman actually traveled at the speed of light around the Earth and then came back, not only would Lois still be dead, but the entire world would've disappeared due to time dilation.
  
• The legacy of Superman is alive and well as part of the U.S. Air Force's "Superman Drill" tradition.
  

I can't believe we kept a straight face while seriously talking about the physics of Superman. Anyway, the piece comes out on newsstands tomorrow, and Chuck wanted to read my review of the movie after I see it today. Imagine my excitement. I can hardly breathe, and I'm still on Earth.

Culmination

Six years. That's 1/4 of my life. And so it came and went, with all the laughs and tears and late night stomach aches from too much caffeine. Finally, I'm a Stanford student no more. Right now, I honestly can't say that my Stanford years have been the best years of my life or that I'll miss this campus that much, but along the way, roads were paved and razed and paved again, so I'd say the journey was more fulfilling than the destination.
June 15-18 was the culmination of so many things: 4 years of service to the Air Force's up-and-coming, 2 years of fighting Matlab, a 6-year-old fairytale. It was nice to have most of the family and some friends around, though not always soothing or convenient. I'll let the pictures tell the stories, but just remember that in front of cameras, everyone smiles.