I’ve never fully appreciated air conditioning until I spent a summer in Europe. Summer of 2004 – August – Rome. I understood the true feeling behind the phrase “I’m mellllllllting”. Although it’s not quite as hot as that, France has it’s moments. My car doesn’t have an AC, the buses don’t have it, the building I work in doesn’t have it, and my apartment doesn’t have it and it’s 97 deg F. So I decided to give my brain a rest, and went browsing through one of my favorite web comics. I remember one particular that I’d like to share:
xkcd... it tells us about life
This hits close to home since as a HEP (High Energy Physics) grad student, I do most of my work at the computer. While waiting for code to compile, and in between reading papers and sword fighting. I’ve come up with my own way to pass the time: rewriting Shakespeare. I’ll share.
Inspired by Hamlet:
To fit, or not to fit: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous divergences,
Or to take arms against a sea of parameters,
And by opposing converge them? To analyze: to plot;
No more; and by a plot to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That work is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To analyze, to plot;
To plot: perchance to present: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that analysis of plots what presentation may come
(you can guess what I was doing when inspiration struck)
Inspired by Macbeth:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps by and so we wait from day to day,
Until the first byte of recorded data;
And all our software rels. have lighted grads
The way to endless updates. Out, out, broken splice!
Work’s but a hiding particle, a deviation
That appears to be within acceptances
And then is understood no more. It is a tale
Told by a student, desperate to graduate
Signifying discovery.
Dorky, yes. Sad, maybe – but I’m a physicist in training so cut some slack. Now back to work.
-Regina
