Map of the Universe

A group (Gott et al.) has just published a map of the Universe. I saw the title in the astro-ph listings, and thought, “well, that sounds ambitious.” The map is done on a such a logarithmic scale so that they were able to get small features — like the solar system — all the way up to the cosmological features on the same map.

Check out the full map, or the paper.

Ares

I just realized that I’ve had Ares for just about 7 years. I no longer remember the exact day that he came into my life, but I do remember that it was the Thursday before “49ers” — Tech’s equivalent of homecoming. (It used to be a drinking fest, with a keg on a truck, but that was before my time. In recent times has toned down quite a bit.)

I’d been living at Bob’s house since January, and my dorm-roommate from my first semester at Tech was living in the dorm again (after being out for a semester). She had been given a kitten by her boyfriend. Yeah, that was thoughtful — especially considering she was living in the dorm again, where pets were taboo. She was going home for the weekend, and wanted to find a home for her kitten before leaving. I was worried that she might leave him at a shelter, so I took him home with me. (Later that year, she left town with my microwave and cube refrigerator, never to be heard from, by me at least, again. I suppose she saw Aries as payment for the appliances she took. Of course, I’d never trade him back, but I missed my microwave when I moved out on my own to Maryland!)

Bob wasn’t too happy having another cat in the house. He already had three of his own (Little Cat, Daisy, and Evil Cat (a.k.a. Milinka)), and was hoping to reduce the number of cats in the house. But the new little bundle of black fur was cute, and soon won Bob over. (Melissa didn’t need winning over — she liked the little guy from the beginning.)

At first, I thought Ares was a girl, based on the word of my ex-roommate, so I named him Eris after the goddess of discord. When he went to the vet the first time, I renamed him Ares, which sounds a lot like Eris, so the little guy wouldn’t get too confused.

He’s been a bit of a handful after he went through puberty. He started marking because I got him fixed just a bit too late…sigh. I was convinced that I would never find anyone who would put up with this behavior, but Andrew and I seem to be coping. Fortunately, Ares has seemed to claim the basement as his territory, and doesn’t really mark the rest of the house. That means that the basement is questionable on any given day, but at least we only have to clean up one floor.

Fortunately, his good qualities far outweigh his bad one. He’s fluffy (not exactly long-haired, but not short-haired either). He likes to cuddle on cool days. He purrs a lot! He loves to be in the bathroom with me when I shower in the mornings, and frequently I’ll hear him purring on the other side of the shower curtain when I turn off the water. He’s a talker — meowing even as he purrs. He likes to have his tummy petted (rare in a cat). He loves to have his fur petted in all directions (even more rare in a cat).

Sigh. I love my little guy. I can’t believe he’s 7 years old, though. Sometimes he still seems like a tiny kitten to me.

Writing Class – Class #1

Damn. I got a migraine tonight, and had to skip the first class. I was so looking forward to getting back into the writing groove again. It’s been too, too long.

Lesson 10/22/03

These past two weeks, I worked on a few of the duets in the new book Fred had be buy last time. I ended up (not entirely on purpose) working on three “seasons” pieces by Bender — Winter, Spring and Autumn.

Winter was the piece that I stumbled on last time trying to sight read it, so I wanted to work it through this week.

Spring was a fun, up-beat piece that I need to work on a bit more. One of my problems is that I tend to cut longer notes off short. So in Spring, I’m supposed to hold a note for a full count (fast 6/8 time), but I cut it short, so Fred has to play catch-up a bit.

Autumn was actually fairly easy — I picked it merely because I was already doing the other two seasonal pieces. When Fred and I played it, I started to notice that we seemed to be slowing the tempo down as the song wore on. By the end, it almost sounded like a dirge.

I’m having a make-up lesson on Saturday to make up for last Wednesday. Goodness! That means I’ll actually have to practice tomorrow and Friday!

Name Change??

Salon had an article on the whole name-change question:
Mrs. Femininst by Lynn Harris

Here’s my version of Harris’ first “doodles”

Barbara Jo Mattson-Kuchling
Barbara Jo Mattson Kuchling
Barbara Mattson Kuchling
Barbara Jo Kuchling

Mr. and Dr. Kuchling (looking ahead a few years 🙂
Mr. and Dr. Mattson-Kuchling
Barbara and Andrew Kuchling
Barbara and Andrew Mattsling
Barbara Mattson and Andrew Kuchling
Mr. Kuchling and Dr. Mattson

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t torn. I think one of the interviewees in the article expressed my reasons for wanting to take Andrew’s name farily well:

“I don’t care less about feminism than I did before [deciding to take her husband’s name], but I’m still a little defensive about my decision to change my name,” says Tydlaska, who was a women’s studies major in college. “I would have kept my own name [alone], but there’s a symbolism to me that says ‘family’ when you have the same last name — not for the sake of ‘the children,’ because we aren’t sure we want them, but for ourselves.”

It’s not that I want to belong to Andrew, but rather that I want to belong with Andrew, and vice versa.

The flip side is that I will already have two referred journal articles in scientific journals as Barbara Mattson. It’s not that I couldn’t make people understand that my name changed, but I would have to list myself as an author under two names.

I don’t like the idea of hyphenating, because neither of our names is exactly short (though not long, either), so the hyphenated name, Mattson-Kuchling, is kind of a monstrosity. I’ve considered taking Mattson as a second middle name, and using Kuchling as my “official” last name. That way I could still write scientific papers under Barbara Mattson, but have mail correctly addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Kuchling.

The Second Summer of the Sisterhood

by Ann Brashares

This is the sequel to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants , which I enjoyed. In the first book, Carmen, Lena, Bridget, and Tibby found a pair of “magic” jeans that flattered each of their diverse figures. They passed it around during their first summer spent apart during their 15 years of friendship (i.e. their whole lives). Each experienced profound and life-changing events in the jeans.

This book chronicles their second summer. Lena and Carmen stay home in Bethesda — Lena working in a clothing store full of beige clothes her mother loves, and Carmen babysitting. Tibby heads off to a summer film program at a University a few hours’ drive away. At the last minute, Bridget decides to run off to Alabama to try to reconnect with her grandmother, and her summers as a child (before her mother died). At first, the pants seem to be failing the girls, but then their magic starts to kick in.

As with the first book, the girls face real-world problems, and in the end start to pull the pieces of their lives together — mending broken relationships, healing broken hearts and finding their old selves again. Brashares handles these real-world situations with sensitivity and a bit of humor. Once again, she has produced a compelling, sincere book for and about teenaged girls and their friendships.

Craft Sale

I nearly fell over when Andrew said that he wanted to go to the craft show with Stef and me. I figured he’d be bored out of his mind, but he did want to look for a magazine basket for our living room, and thought he’d keep an eye out for gifts for his mom. So, Stef, Andrew and I went off to the Craftsmen Classic Craft Sale at the Dulles Expo Center this weekend. I spent way too much money, and only came home with one gift (unless you count the rest as a gift for myself).

Stef and I mostly led the way, with Andrew trying to keep track of the both of us. Stef was looking at pottery, natural wood items, and jewelry. I jumped from jewelry sites to wood furniture and painted items to anything that caught my eye. I hoped to find a cute outfit for my niece, since her birthday is in a couple weeks, but the lady I’ve bought from in the past was not at this sale — I think she might be at the one next month, so I can get a Christmas present.

The most fun item I found was a CD rack painted with stars and moons, by Sassafras Designs. This, I thought, would be the perfect thing to keep my data CDs in for my thesis. After traversing the rest of the sale, I dragged Andrew back, and we picked it up. He also got me a clock there, which was what had drawn me to the booth in the first place.

In the end, I don’t think Andrew was too bored, and I walked out with a fun haul. Andrew also found a nice basket and some hazelnut hot chocolate. Stef bought a few things, too, but I forgot to make her show me everything….oops, what kind of girl friend am I??

Here’s a picture of the CD rack, complete with my data CDs:

Paper! First Author! Pre-Print!

I found out last week that a paper I worked on has been accepted to the Astrophysical Journal! And I’m the first author! Now I’m doing the happy astrophysicist dance (if you’ve never seen it, be thankful 🙂

This paper is based on work I did for my second year research requirement for my master’s degree. I analyzed time-separated observations of MCG -5-23-16, a Seyfert 2 galaxy. Seyfert galaxies are a class of active galactic nuclei, which are galaxies with a central region that put out so much energy that the rest of the galaxy can rarely be seen (there’s a more technical definition, of course, but that gives you the general idea). The energy that they put out comes from all parts of the electromagnetic spectrum — radio, optical, X-rays. My study was in X-rays. It is believed that these nuclei are powered by a super massive black hole with an accretion disk, and possibly another torus of material further out. In order to study the distribution of matter, I studied the changes over time of the X-ray spectrum. Our basic results were that the material that was “reprocessing” the X-rays (i.e. absorbing light from the central engine and reemitting them in another waveband) was not dominated by a nearby accretion disk. Instead it came from somewhere between 1 light day and 1 light year from the central engine.

Check out a preprint on astro-ph:
RXTE and BeppoSAX Observations of MCG -5-23-16: Reflection From Distant Cold Material (astro-ph/0310468)

Andrew’s Birthday!

Today was Andrew’s 31st birthday, so now for ten days he and I are the same age.

We celebrated by going to Natta Thai, a small Thai restaurant in Vienna that we quite like, but rarely go to. Then we went home and had cake (German chocolate which I made — not pretty to look at, but very tasty) and he opened his presents. All in all, a nice, quiet evening with my honey.

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?

I took the Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You? quiz.

Apparently I’m Galadriel —

At Andrew’s suggestion, I went through and answered the quiz with the exact opposite answers to find my archenemy. That turned out to be Darth Maul:

Yeah. That makes sense.