Everything in woods hole is pretty good. I have been eating well (probably too much). My housemates know more about me alreayd and yesterday I made the best "that's what she said" joke I have heard in a while. Also they are now aware of how "important" race is for me. Basically they are getting to know the real me.
Nautical Science is pretty awesome. We are learning how to navigate using the stars and the sun. It is super interesting and yesterday I got to use a Sextant (yay!) for all you ignorants here is a picture of a sextant:
It is used to find the angle that the sun makes with the horizon and then this is corrected to give the angle between the center of the earth and the center of the sun. THis can then be compared to references and can give you lines of position that you can intersect to get your location on a chart. Pretty awesome indeed.
There is one thing that bothers me here though, my oceanography teacher (a grad student from stanford) does not take mathematical correctness seriously (I am not even talking about rigority in proofs) and calls "angular velocity" things that are not ang. velocity. He also gives incorrect descriptions of the cross product and basically undermines mathematical correctness. It's ok though I need to get used to this for when I leave the MIT world (i wish I could stay at that world forever).
We are visiting Salt Marshes tomorrow and then on Thursday we are going to an all day field trip to new bedford. Should be fun experiences, I will be posting some pictures for you guys tomorrow.
World Cup Update: ARGENTINA!!! Argentina has been one of the best sides so far (only second to Germany) we would have totally won at least 4-0 if it wasn't for Nigeria's keeper awesome performance. Italy and Portugal have been disappointing (screw you Cristiano Ronaldo!) and Brazil had to sweat to beat North Korea. Honduras plays tomorrow (GO CENTRAL AMERICA) and Spain makes her debut, hopefully it will be a Spain- Argentina final on the 11th and Argentina will end with its third cup title. Good news for us mariners, I talked to a dude here at SEA today and I got told that he would relay the info. of the world cup to us at sea so that we know what happens. It sucks, but at least its better than not knowing who wins for 2 weeks after the final. It also means that if Argentina wins and we all die in the ship I will die happy.
-R
Hahahaha, they're getting to know the real you, eh? Have they run far far away yet? Your Stanford grad student is disappointing me.
ReplyDeleteYesssss you brought back the terrible English; I love it! Also, your "that's what she said" about French people being process-oriented and whatnot was kind of a stretch.
ReplyDelete@ Anne: No Anne they still love me (sort of)
ReplyDelete@Ellen: Thanks Ellen!