Entropy Incarnate

Chaos!  Doom!  Disaster!!

Beware, world!  For I, BronchitisGirl, will conquer you with my clean-air-breathing lungs!  That is right, Ladies and Gentleman–  It has been snowing all day, as well as a little of yesterday and last Friday.  And I can breathe!  Buahahahahaha!!!!!!!

I walked to class this morning and it was wonderful.  Everyone seems really mopey about the snow, but I was so very very happy!  Yes, my feet are freezing, my hands burn as soon as I’m inside, and no one can get their cars out of the driveway, BUT I CAN BREATHE AIR AGAIN!

A lot of people who don’t live in valleys don’t quite understand the physics of an inversion, so allow me to explain:  In the winter, when it’s cold out, people will pollute, usually a bit more than in the summer.  The bummer in this is that cold air sinks–  the valley becomes a giant soup bowl (it does look like soup when viewed from the mountains above), and all of the pollution collects in it.  Sometimes, like recently, it gets so bad, that you can see the (quite yellow) smog between you and the next building.  Wind does nothing but stir the soup bowl.  The only way to clear it out is for precipitation–  the water in the air collects pollution particles as it comes down, and then all of the pollution winds up in the gutters instead of in the air!  It’s still pretty gross, but at least we can breathe, right?

I’ve been out and about all weekend.  It’s fantastic.  I was in such a good mood after class that I took a walk around upper campus (the dorms section) with my handy-dandy camera and took some fabulous pictures.  And you get to see them!

This is the bike rack outside of my building.  Some people don’t use the bike storage room downstairs or even bring their bikes into their bedroom for this weather.  Poor bikes.  🙁  [Our rooms are really quite big enough to store bikes and lots of other things.  They’re the biggest dorm rooms I’ve ever seen on my collegey travels]

Pun time!  Here are some icecicles, just hanging out!  😀
Alternately:  Here are some icecicles, just chillin’!

I crack myself up!

No one sits on this poor bench in the wintertime.  I think I understand why.  I was tempted to give it some love, but in just my jeans, I thought of my poor bottom and sadly walked away.  Also, this picture was the one that got me the most funny looks.  It’s right next to a main thoroughfair, and I was very much kneeling in the snow for most of the shot.  Good thing there’s hot chocolate in my bedroom!

This is one of my favorites.  I just love the way the trees look so poofy!  I’m not quite sure how I feel about the composition of this piece– there’s something off about it; I still just love it so much, though.  I love the person walking.  I wish they could have just stayed there so I could have played with composition more.

"I am a fire hydrant, and I wear a hat."

I love icecicles.  They are so fantastic.  There are definitely more icecicle-heavy gutters, but this one caught my attention.  I’m really happy with how I got the aperature to work for this one–  I didn’t have to bother around with image editting hardly at all for this one!

So, in short, my day has been pretty great.  I am so very thankful to be able to act like a normal person again.  I don’t even feel sick at all.  The view outside of my bedroom is fantastic.  The mountains come in and out sight as the snow blows around, and the trees are so majestic.  It’s just wonderful.

I’m going over to Bryan’s parents’ house later tonight.  Yay for real food!  I’m really excited to move out into my own place so I may cook and bake and eat breakfast whenever the hell I want.  Sometimes you just need breakfast at two (either A.M. or P.M.) and sometimes you just need to make brownies or cookies or cake or pie.

I feel the need to be educational.  Only a little, I promise.  A few months ago, Bryan was telling me about this Indian mathematician named Ramanujan.  This guy was amazing.  He grew up in rural India in the 1800s and had no formal math training.  He basically derived mathematics up to that point (and then some) on his own.  He mailed his notebooks to an English mathematician, G.H. Hardy, who at first thought that they were a joke, but then realized that the notation was just different and sent for Ramanujan to come to England immediately.

One of my favorite examples of his genius is his method of estimating pi.  Pi was (and is still) estimated with summations.  Usually it took many, many elements of the summation to get even the first three digits of pi.  This is what Ramanujan "observed":

The first term (n=0) gives the first SEVEN digits of pi.  With one term.  It converges incredibly quickly; other mathematicians used it to find the first seventeen million (MILLION) digits of pi.

He did loads of other crazy crazy math things, also, with huge advances in mathematics at the time.  He’s absolutely fantastic, and you should go read his Wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan.

Have a fantastic day, everyone!