Blues Dancing + Engineering =

One of my classes last semester was called Modeling and Simulation of the Physical World. I've never figured out a nice way to describe that class in terms that don't include the class's name, but the very basic gist is that you use a computer to predict or otherwise analyze a real-world system. For my final project in this class, I was paired up with a friend of mine named Ndungu (pronounced dung-uh). Both of us being dancers, we decided to model a dip in blues dancing.

The absolute minimal amount of background knowledge needed to understand this is that a blues dance consists of two dancers, the lead and the follow. The lead is typically the man, and the follow is typically the woman, although that's not always the case. A dip is one of those fancy things you see on TV, where the follow generally bends backward, held up by the lead.

Like so.
Thank you to the folks at this blog I've never heard of,
as well as public domain laws.

Ndungu and I planned use our model to figure out how far and how fast a lead can dip his follow without dropping her, lest our dancers arrive at some rather... catastrophic results.

In order to get our feet on the ground, so to speak, we needed to be able to draw our physical system on paper. That way we could do all sorts of fancy trigonometry and physics in order to make our model. After a fair amount of simplification, we managed to create the following, totally accurate diagram:

The lead is on the left, the follow on the right.
The things in between them are arms.
Obviously.

A few interesting things about our model:

• The lead's front leg would grow and shrink over time, depending on how he bent his knee
• The lead's torso and back leg would always create a straight line
• The follow's shins would always be perpendicular to the ground
• The follow's torso and thighs would always create a straight line

Like I said. Totally. Accurate.

Next, we needed to take a few measurements that we would be able to plug into the program we would soon make. We collected values including Ndungu's height, the height of his shoulder, the height of his pelvis, the distance between his feet when he dips, the angle of his torso from the horizontal, and so forth.

Unfortunately, we didn't always have all the measuring equipment we wanted at all times. For example, a protractor was sometimes hard to find; but remember, we're trained professionals in training. So obviously, the natural solution was to find a picture of a protractor online, and just hold my laptop up to Ndungu's or his partner's leg. Many of our measurements were along the lines of "68... ish? I'll call it 68."

Slightly more difficult than the problem of recording an angle was that of recording weight. Ndungu and I already felt uncomfortable asking a woman to please stand on a scale for us, due to the fact that that would involve asking a woman her weight, generally considered a no-no. Once we managed to surmount that issue, though, we realized that in order to record the normal force exerted by one's leg, we would need to dance on top of the scale. This was particularly exciting when we were recording the maximum normal force that one's leg could hold before dropping the follow; this meant that we had to lay down cushions through the hallway right next to the scale, and Ndungu had to stand in just the right position with one foot on the scale while he dropped our generous dance partner time and time again, as I scrambled to record their angle with my laptop-protractor.

But these recording inaccuracies pale in comparison to the glory that was our tension force. In order to determine the force that the lead's hand exerts on the follow's back, we needed to basically put the scale on our follow's back and dance like so. Unfortunately, the scale wouldn't quite stay in place. So we resorted to iffier methods.

We needed two data points. So, data point number 1: exerting 5 pounds of force on the follow. Ndungu danced with our follow, and dipped her back until he felt like he was sort of exerting about 5 pound of force. I asked how he could possibly know that he was exerting 5 pounds of force; obviously, he had picked up a 5-pound weight the previous morning, and was just sort of gauging what felt similar. When Ndungu was at 5 pounds of tension force, I recorded the angle.

Data point number 2: threshhold. This time, Ndungu danced with our follow until he reached his threshhold, at which point she of course fell onto the cushions that we had supplied her with. Then, Ndungu quickly ran over to a doorway in the hall, and positioned the scale on the back of the door at about shoulder-height. He then struck a dancing position with the door, and exerted what felt like the same force on his new "partner." That way we were able to find his threshhold tension force.

Suffice to say, we had a difficult time creating our actual model on the computer. A bunch of arm-waving went into many of our graphs ("Well, the normal force on the front leg sorta feels like this kind of graph... let's call it that"), which we later simplified down. At one point, I tested our model for a theoretical one-minute dip: obviously longer than any realistic dip would take, but if our model worked then there shouldn't have been a problem. Unfortunately, according to our model, over the course of one minute, our highly impressive lead managed to perform a 3,500,000-degree dip. That's right, 3.5 megadegrees, a unit which I never hope to use again.

After fixing up our model a little more, we were faced with the difficult problem of finding the equation of a parabola. We had the vertex and two other points on the parabola. This was the kind of math that we had been doing since seventh grade, and here were at one of the top engineering schools in the country, unable to perform this sort of witchcraft. We asked anyone who happened to walk through the room for help, and it took us at least five or six lifelines until we finally found someone with the mathematical sagacity to help us. There is no explaining how much difficulty we had with this problem.

Finally, we had a working model which produced reasonable results. Ndungu and I had realized somewhere along the line that we could just plug in different values for the lead's height, weight, and normal threshhold, and would thus be able to compare two different leads and their maximum dip time and angle. The only thing to do after making that kind of realization was to compare the two of us, and figure out whom, mathematically, was the superior dancer.

Upon further thought, we realized that we could feasibly put this on our presentation poster. It was sort of like doing useful work with our model, after all. Sorta ish. The prize for the victor: that the loser would have to be the one to announce the winner during presentation, essentially admitting his inferiority in front of our professors.

We devoted a quarter of our poster to our competition, under the heading "GREG VS. NDUNGU: Who's the better dancer?", with a nice little graphic to showcase our competition:

Let's just say it's not important who won anyway; it's all in the sport of the thing anyway, and really, it was more about the learning than it was about the competition, so what does it matter who won? But that having been said, I did a fair amount of announcing the victor the day of our presentations.

Thus ended the least scientifically accurate study ever conducted by would-be engineers.

GOMAD

Several weeks ago, I started working out in preparation for the Tough Mudder event in May. I figured, while I was at it, I may as well go whole-hog and get actually healthy. I had never in my life particularly cared about what went into my body, and certainly never thought about the long-term consequences of my nutritious habits. So if I was going to get fit, I may as well actually get fit.

The obvious first step to my healthifying: I needed to put on some weight. At this time, I weighed 129 pounds. 130 is the bottom of the healthy body weight range for my height. I had been grossly underweight for as long as I could remember. (However, it should be noted that I was born at 10 pounds, 4 ounces, which is kind of disgustingly huge; thus, the mean value theorem dictates that at some point in time, I was a healthy body weight.) If I put on some muscle weight, great; but I needed some fat-pounds, too, because I was sorely lacking.

In my internet-research-studies, I discovered a program called GOMAD, or Gallon of Milk a Day. Under GOMAD, shockingly enough, you drink a gallon of milk a day. This is apparently a pretty good program recommended for some underweight people who are starting training. The weight that you put on from GOMAD is also sustainable, because it "teaches" you how to eat more, allowing you to keep your weight after you've stopped the program. I wasn't 100% done researching the topic, but I figured I would get a head-start, and if it turned out that it wasn't for me, then I surely wouldn't die from what I'd had by then.

I found out about this program at about 2:00 in the afternoon. I had already missed two meals' worth of opportunities to drink milk. So I had to hustle. I made a beeline for my campus's dining hall, and got to work.

Next problem. I find milk rather unappealing. I just don't enjoy drinking milk. I eat my cereal dry. Fortunately, my school's dining hall also happened to have an endless supply of chocolate syrup. So my GOMAD was more accurately going to be GOCMAD: Gallon of Chocolate Milk a Day.

After some inquiry of the dining hall staff, I learned that one of our paper cups could hold 12 fluid ounces. After some subsequent inquiry of Wolfram Alpha, I learned that one gallon was equal to 128 fluid ounces. So I was going to need roughly 11 cups of chocolate milk throughout the day. No matter how I sliced that, that was HUGE.

Imagine this.
Now imagine eleven of it.
Now imagine that every day.
Yeah.

In my first sitting, I got through three cups, and was feeling full to bursting, not to mention a little grossed out. I figured I'd come back later for the rest of today's gallon.

Dinner was my second sitting. I got through two more cups, bringing me to almost halfway through for the day. I was ready to call it a day. I wish there were more to the story of my actual drinking, but that's about it - I drank 60 fluid ounces of chocolate milk that day, and it was really gross, and so I stopped.

Back to the wonderful world of Wolfram Alpha, I checked out the nutrition facts for the chocolate milk I had drunk that day. (This was, mind you, in addition to my three meals.) That day, in chocolate milk alone, I had consumed 1440 calories (which, mind you, is as much as some people will eat in an entire day); I had had  122% the recommended daily value of saturated fat; 119% the RDV of protein; 225% the RDV of calcium; 229% the RDV of Vitamin D105% the RDV of Vitamin B12; 183% the RDV of phosphorous; and 304% the RDV of riboflavin, whatever that is. And those are just the ones over 100% - almost everything else was above 50% at least. All in all, I had consumed over 4 pound of chocolate milk that day, which was over 3% of my body weight. I weighed myself again - I was now over 132 pounds, a whopping 3 pounds more than I had weighed not even a day ago.

And I had planned on doing double this. Every day.

16-5-5

It was about a month into my first semester of college. So we're talking a fair ways back. The night of October 3rd, specifically. I was approached by the rather-silly Charley Goddard at a little after 2:00 in the morning: "Greg, you seem like the kind of man who would be interested in eating things at silly hours. Might I interest you in a 5-5-5?" Goddard could not have been more correct; 2 AM was the prime time for some eating.

I asked for a little more detail, unfamiliar to the whole 5-5-5 concept. I had never ordered pizza on my own before. Apparently, Dominos is open into the wee hours of the morning, and they have this sweet deal where you can order three medium pizzas for $5 apiece. Pretty sweet deal. I asked if I could get toppings on my $5 pizza; Goddard said of course.

What he said: I would get a $5 pizza, and if I wanted to, I could buy toppings for it.

What I heard: I would pay $5, and receive a pizza with however many toppings I wanted.

To me, this didn't sound like much of a question at all. If I'm paying a flat fee of $5, I may as well get my money's worth and order as many toppings as I possibly can, right? So I navigated over to the Dominos website and started planning.

After a significant amount of thought, here was the pizza that I had planned:

• Sliced Italian sausage
• Philly steak (light, left)
• Ham (light, left)
• Feta cheese
• Shredded Parmesan Asiago
• Shredded provolone
• Garlic (light, right)
• Mushrooms (light, right)
• Pineapple (extra)
• Onions
• Roasted peppers (right)
• Diced tomatoes (light, left)

This was going to be the ideal pizza. It was like two meals in one. Like, I could have a 2 AM pizza dinner, and also I could have a 2AM meat-and-other-fix-ins feast, and also I could do both of those things at the same time. What could possibly go wrong?

Goddard placed the order: three medium pizzas. The first pizza would have light sausage. The second would have no sauce; just dough and cheese. The third would have sausage, steak, ham, feta cheese, Parmesan, provolone, garlic, mushrooms, pineapple, onions, peppers, and diced tomatoes.

My $5 pizza cost $16.

As in, my pizza alone cost more than a typical 5-5-5.

Turns out, they charge for toppings.

The guy actually called us back a minute later to make sure that we were sure we ordered what we wanted. Apparently, it's a little funny to order a pizza without sauce. My pizza was totally fine and normal; one of the others just seemed a little quirky.

Time passed; the pizzas arrived. I could finally taste the glory that was twelve different toppings. $16 totally well spent.

I sold two of the slices to friends at $2 apiece to make myself feel better about wasting $16. Overall, delicious, but not worth $16.

Maybe if they didn't forget the pineapple it would have been better.

Greg Edelston, Wanted Arsonist

Last night at around 3:30 AM, I decided that I wanted some ramen noodles. I had been hanging out on the second floor with four others; the kitchen was on the first floor. I went downstairs and put some water on the stove. I briefly considered whether it would be dangerous to leave the stove unattended. I had, of course, been taught to never leave a stove alone; but it was just a pot of water. It wasn't like the kitchen was going to catch on fire. So I left.

Obviously, the kitchen caught on fire.

I returned ten minutes later, Cup Noodles in hand. I opened the door and took two steps in, at which point I realized that the entire pot was engulfed in flames. I put down my noodles on the sink counter next to me, and my 3:40 AM brain started turning its gears. My first thought was: There's a fire. It's caused by the stove. I should turn the stove off. Fortunately, I soon realized that that was a TERRIBLE idea, and that I would likely burn my arm off trying to reach the dial. Instead, I fled for help.

I realized that I needed a fire extinguisher. I ran back upstairs to ask my friends where I might find one; however, they were highly likely to think that I was making a joke of some sort. Thus, I had to clarify and reiterate that I was not making a joke. After a few rounds of "I need a fire extinguisher. Where are they? I am not joking." "What?" "The stove is on fire. Like, for actual. Where's a fire extinguisher?" etc., they finally followed me downstairs.

Apparently when I said that the stove was on fire, they were imagining a flame the size of perhaps a birthday candle. When I showed them through the window of the door that the flames went twice as high as the pot itself, it was go-time.

At that point, this lumbering intimidating Russian fellow by the name of Nikolay went into action mode. He ran off into another hall and quickly returned with a fire extinguisher, and then removed his jacket ("I like thees jacket too much."), took a deep breath, and ran in.

It was impossible to see into the kitchen through all the smoke, but you could vaguely see Nick's silhouette extinguishing the fire like a boss, opening a window, and returning back from the abyss. The literal problem was solved.

In the meantime, I was calling the R2-on-call (the phone that gets passed around the resident resources in case there's ever a problem). Unfortunately, it was about 3:45 AM, so the conversation went roughly as follows:

R2: Hey, this is the R2-on-call phone. This is Kate. What's up?

Me: Um. Hello. This is Greg. Uh, Edelston. So, I'm just totally lit the stove on fire.

R2: What? 

Me: In the West Hall 1st-floor kitchen, there is a pot of water on the stove, and it is on fire. Well, it just was. Nick just got the fire extinguisher and put it out. So I guess the actual danger is gone, but the room is still full of smoke. But like, we opened a window, so I dunno, it just seemed like it would be a good idea to call you and let you know?

R2: Oh, yeah. Well, uh, if the fire's out, then I guess the best I can tell you is to try not to light it on fire again.

Me: Okay. I wasn't planning on it. Thanks, and sorry for waking you up.

R2: No, no. It's okay. Thanks for telling me. Good night.

She told me the next morning that she was still in 3:45-AM-mode, and thus the words "fire extinguisher" didn't click for her; she assumed it was just a little burner fire or something. I could probably have communicated that a little better, in retrospect.

We wanted to go inspect the damage and figure out how the hell I managed to catch a pot of water on fire, but the room was still too smokey, so we couldn't walk in. We instead waited around for half an hour for the smoke to clear up, with me kvetching the entire time about how I left my noodles in there.

Finally, the smoke cleared up enough for us to inspect the damage. It was disgusting. Everything was coated in soot from the smoke. Everything. You could run your finger along any surface and watch it turn ten shades darker before your eyes. You would tread footprints wherever you walked. Worse yet, there were three large trays of what had been chocolate truffles-to-be sitting out on the table, now completely covered in a yellow dust, with a sign that read "DO NOT TOUCH. There will be consequences. I will destroy like 25% of the things that you hold dear." The truffles were supposed to take two days to make. They were no more.

Apparently, the pot that I decided to use had a rubber bottom. Why anyone though it was a good idea to put rubber on the bottom of a metal pot is beyond me, but I'm guessing it has some use beyond starting fires. Either way, the rubber caught on fire and started melting, which completely ruined one of the burners. I am still impressed by my own ability to light a pot of water on fire.

But don't worry. I wound up eating noodles that night.

UPDATE: I now know why the pot had rubber on the bottom. It was actually my friend's electric kettle. I'm just stupid.

The Snake-Woman

So, night #3 of college. My class is ridiculously small (87 students), and we've gotten to the point by now that most of us are pretty good friends. Only the freshman class has arrived so far, other than the R2s (Resident Resources). The 87 of us plus most of the ten R2s all live in one building.

Anyway. Night #3. It was probably 11:30 or so. Many of us had finished watching Tangled not too long ago, and a few of us were left sitting around in the antelounge. (Like a lounge but less comfortable. The lounge on our floor had been used to play Mafia, and we didn't want to get up.)

Six-ish of us remained antelounging: five gents and a lady. Myself, Brooks, Evan, Kevin, Chaz, and Diana. One way or another, we gents, excepting only Chaz, wound up sitting on a bench, arm in arm, with an obscenely comfortable body pillow behind us and a blanket atop. We were the Bro Bench, or the Brench, for short. We were excitedly planning for future plans of the Brench's 11 AM meals (the Brench Brunch), and in particular the meal of the bro next to me (Brooks' Brench Brunch). Chaz and Diana were sitting off-sides.

Unexpectedly, Diana announced that she was going to test whether I was ticklish, and proceeded to test. I withstood it for a while, but in due time I succumbed, broke from the Brench, and launched a counterattack. Entirely unfazed, Diana, without missing a beat, stood up, grabbed our body pillow, and dashed out of the room.

The chase was on. The Brench reorganized itself, and we hobbled off into the actual lounge. The game of Mafia had long ended, and there were now only a few loungers remaining. Diana was nowhere to be seen, and the loungers evidently were on Diana's side. Somehow, she had used her feminine wiles to win them onto her side in the fifteen second advantage she held. This wasn't just a chase: it was a war.

We broke off and all ran in different directions. I ran down a hallway on the same floor in attempt to find the elusive Diana, only to find that I was followed by three of Diana's cronies. They grabbed me and took me to the ground. One took my blanket and ran; the other two tried to keep me in place. After a fair while I dashed back off to resume the chase.

After several minutes of stair-climbing, hall-running exercise, I returned to the lounge to see if any of her goonies would spill Diana's or the pillow's whereabouts. As it happened, one was a mole: I was advised to check the stairwell at the end of the hall.

I ran in and clambered up the stairs to find the rest of the Brench, detaining the fiend. Evidently, they were collectively catching their breath, but the Brench was clearly in control. I assisted in holding her down, but just as we began to interrogate her, she somehow slipped through our fingers and escaped. The Snake-Woman was off once more.

Running and stair-climbing abound. We were all working up a sweat by this point. Several minutes later, we got her at the back of another hallway, but this time, she was cornered. She was literally at the end of a hallway with a third-story window behind her and a wall to her side; on her other two sides, Brench Bros. The nearest stairwell was guarded by another Bro: she had no escape. The pillow was to be ours.

Suddenly, the Snake jumped up once more and continued her run. We chased her, only to find another goonie at the end of the hall, blocking our path. We overpowered him relatively quickly, and saw our prey climbing down the stairs back into the lounge whence we came. She stopped running and extended her olive branch: if we legitimately wanted the pillow back, it was ours. Evan, the pillow's owner, submitted, thus ending the chase. She showed us the pillow, which was in a little nook beside the hall past which I had run at least three times. (My blanket's captor was nowhere to be found, although he later returned to me my prize.) Even from that very night, legends were told of the elusive Snake-Woman who could escape from even the tightest hold.