Blog of Bermanism

As of 1:30am last night, I’m no longer just a father, I’m also an uncle and Rachel is an aunt, and Sasha has a younger cousin. My younger brother’s wife gave birth to a little girl last night, after 18 hours of labor. Her name is Maya Nicole Berman. She is 6lbs 10oz, and 19.5″ long. We’re so excited for them, as parenthood has been a remarkably rewarding experience for Rachel and I. I can’t wait to meet her and to introduce her to her older cousin. Here’s the cell phone picture that was sent this morning:

Maya Nicole Berman

I came across this quote today:

“Life is a comedy for those who think… and a tragedy for those who feel.” – Horace Walpole

My question is this: what happens to those caught in the middle of thinking and feeling like me? Is life a tragic comedy?

I woke up yesterday morning after having a really odd dream. I was standing in some mythical location that looked a lot like the bay area, except that there was a lot less city, the surroundings were a lot more tropical, and there were way more craggy rocks around the Golden Gate. Oh, and there wasn’t a bridge there. Anyway, I was standing on the shore opposite the Golden Gate (essentially in Oakland) with Rachel and Sasha and we were looking out over the water towards the ocean. The sun was setting, it was beautiful. Out of nowhere, the space shuttle took off from the middle of the bay and started to climb up in the air. After a few seconds of climbing into the air, the shuttle unfurled a number of old Spanish armada-style sails out of the top of its hull. This all seemed perfectly normal to me. It made perfect sense that the launching space shuttle, which was launching straight off of the water in the middle of a bay that doesn’t exist, would unfurl some sails to help it on its way into orbit. Obviously.

After a few more seconds of sail powered vertical ascent, something very bad happened with the shuttle. It started to tilt in the direction of the sails (downdrafts?), and then the massive plume of fire and smoke coming from its thrusters shut off all together. The shuttle then dropped like a lead brick back to Earth and exploded the instant it came into contact with the water, sending out this massive shockwave that moved very quickly towards us. I had just enough time to throw Rachel and Sasha to the ground before I felt the shockwave approaching and promptly woke up.

Once again, my personal blog time has been reduced to zero. This has mainly been due to the fact that my postdoctoral fellowship is drawing to an end on Nov 1. As such, I’m frantically looking for a new job, something that is always difficult to do in science, and something that is especially difficult right now under our current economic condition.

Anyway, I decided to start a more professional blog, both to improve my professional visibility online and because the maintenance of the new blog will help me in a lot of ways and will provide a unique place on the web for multi-discplinary science discussion. The name of the blog is Newton’s Concussion. As I alluded to, I plan to review a new scientific article or finding every week and to have a discussion on the topic at hand in the comments of the blog. Since the blog will cover a wide range of scientific disciplines, each review will be very basic and will have ample background information so that most people can follow the review. I’m really excited about it, and I hope others will enjoy the content. So, whether you’re a closet science geek, or just want to learn something new, go check it out at http://www.newtonsconcussion.com. Please register so that you can comment on the articles. I really want a good discussion to come from each article. Enjoy!