RyanHarne.com

As I have pushed through the semesters, my academic motivation has inflected a number of times. The last 2 semesters were a rough road of dissatisfaction with my effort - even though I found the topics interesting, there wasn’t a significant amount of inner drive propelling me from lecture to assignment to project and back again. It was hard to rev my academic engine with the fuel of creative endeavor and engineering discovery.

From this first week of this semester’s work, I have focused on recovering that energy. In the near future, I will be on an entirely different academic spectrum that requires an uncommon focus and determination. I can’t get there on easy street. I’d inevitably crash and burn on the altar of graduate education.

This morning was set aside for some acoustics derivations, originally performed in the 1950s, but due for my class - just 7 students - this coming Monday afternoon. After an hour of painful coffee-bingeing in hopes of mathematical epiphanies, a point was reached when my understanding of the math materialized and rapidly multiplied. Then, the lightbulb moment.

As an engineering student, you aren’t taught to have lightbulb moments. You’re taught to develop an uncanny pattern recognition, finely tuned for ideal problems but poorly focused for the real world, and even less adept at innovation. My very first talk to my professor about graduate work was met with his encouraging devil’s advocacy, warning me that graduate students were nothing like undergraduates. They possessed a spirit not openly marketed but manifest when the round peg doesn’t immediately fall into the square hole. My professor inspired me to start reading a variety of scientific literature and pursuing anything academic not simply to buffer my future schooling prowess but also for a well-rounded perspective with which to view problems.

Having followed his advice for a time, I then slumped into a terrible academic depression when non-engineering topics interested me the most, save for those periods when my acoustics research absorbed me. Perhaps today’s lightbulb moment is a sign of things to come. If anything, the adrenaline resulting from such an epiphany is enough to cruise with until my next breakthrough. I expect small steps, but the big leaps are helpful after a long depression.

After writing all of this, I don’t feel like doing much more work tonight, if any. It has already been a long day. Plus, it’s rather cold outside. This is a prime time for sweats, a novel, and a comfortable chair. We work hard but we play hard.

As an American male, having been raised in the pseudo-Southern culture, having a childhood of video games involving fighting or death, having the subliminal messages of female inferiority sent to me from numerous outlets, and with a mind to realize what environment I’ve truly been raised to encourage and support, the fascination with destruction is hard to resist. Even when it masked under the pretense of “engineering discovery”, destruction encourages a strange, testosterone-linked high which has cultural ramifications.

Though I would have been complacent with taking apart an electronic device when I was a kid, just to see what was inside, in recent years the act is not complete until I can reassemble the pieces into a working whole. That may sound rather insignificant, but consider the subversive indoctrination, from childbirth, that American males receive regarding the wonders of explosions and tearing things apart and it may be clear that I am now casting off the instinctive mode for destruction and am pursuing something more enlightening.

And what an intro that was. Taking all of the components off of a bike is amazing; but, it remains a mess until you get it all back on and Newton-metered correctly. Then, you need to make sure nothing - absolutely nothing - is amiss, otherwise you’re in for an unsafe ride. The task of rebuilding is more complicated in other areas of our lives, but it is worth the effort. Allowing nuts & bolts and cogs & gears to sit in a heap is prime for dust to collect and good intentions to turn sour.

American has a few rebuilding projects to get moving: New Orleans; a new presidency, to name just two. Having the capacity to create is something that most bureaucracies are lacking. Creation and production happens on smaller scales - decision-making is not effectively accomplished by the mob or by large-organized endeavors which naturally tow around vested interests. Those that can magnify the plans that work well on small scales, or for individual users, into the realm of the people are a scarce bunch. Technology companies seem to have the greatest success of turning small-scale ideas, concepts that work well for a few people, and resulting in production that benefits most everyone. A congressional group has little hope; they’re likely to tear apart the bike in hopes of finding the cure, throw away the bike, and tax citizens for a new and better one.

The TED Talks this week that have absolutely blown me away are both about building. Tearing apart is dated, our society has reached the point where consumption is no longer viable, and clever production and ideas are required for any sort of sustainability. Not only are these 2 TED Talks great, but they are in my personal top 3 favorites. Watch & Learn.

As the semester has begun, I’ve had less opportunity to think than usual. The past 10 days have required much rescheduling, leaving my typically-thoughtful self in a state of rush-hour focus. Most of my moments of daily zen now seem to take place with dinner when I watch one or two TED Talks. Even my cycling has been on the decline; although, the sub-freezing weather hasn’t helped my initiative. A break in the cold today was what I needed to warm up both my body and brain.

What was initially a chance to be a grader again for an engineering course has now become an opportunity to lead help sessions. Given that it’s the second week of school and the difficulty of material hasn’t yet begun its massive acceleration, the help sessions are probably going to be fairly slow. Like right now. No one’s here. But me. And that’s fine.

The course is System Dynamics, ME 3514 for those of us Virginia Tech people. I took the course several years ago and loved it; however, System Dynamics tends to be one of the most-complained-about courses in the entire Mechanical Engineering curricula. I can understand that, too - it’s the first, truly difficult course. Equations of motion in statics & dynamics are fairly straightforward, but for harmonic systems the solutions are much more painful (and therefore much more fulfilling for us serious geeks). Anyways, I look forward to fielding the whines and moans of sophomore and junior ME students.

Speaking of whines, I’d like for the bitter cold of Blacksburg to thaw just slightly - even 40 degF everyday would be alright - so that I can get some more road cycling in. If you do that for me, I’ll never touch a disposable battery again and will swap out a few of our neighbors’ ever-on lightbulbs with compact fluorescents. Ok, deal.

During my few days in Lynchburg at Christmas, I was sure to stop by the Bookshop on the Avenue for whatever random texts seemed to call my name. I always hope that a classic or two will manifest itself, but perhaps I have reached the threshold where I must rely on recommendations for the classics since I have read so many of them. (so, recommendations welcome, particularly the lesser-known titles from the great authors). Anyways, I found no unread classic that I had ever heard of, let alone recognized the author of.

Anyways, by the time I walked upstairs to the not-so-fiction area, I was moderately distraught for having found only one book that caught my eye. Maybe due to my recent exhaustion of fiction works, particularly those about the Grail, when I arrived in the non-fiction room (the Bookshop is actually an old house) I was overwhelmed with a huge selection of attractive titles. One of the books, the Friedman’s Free To Choose, had an interesting title and tag, “The classic inquiry into the relationship between freedom and economics”. The ever-accelerating proliferation of political conversations and images with this impending election somewhat unconsciously urged me to grab the book. And I did.

At first, I felt like an idiot. Most engineering curricula cover economics to the extent that you understand how much to put away for retirement, often ignoring inflationary effects for linear simplicity. So, the first few chapters of this book were more of a kick in the pants than anything remotely fulfilling. Yet, knowing the popularity of Milton Friedman (a Nobel winner, after all), I was able to persist, page-by-page until I understood the state of late 1970s, American economics.

The result of this is that I now know where my fiscal policy sympathies lay. This election year currently has a bunch of loser candidates seeking popularity and eventual electoral votes. It’s fairly clear what my social policy beliefs are (probably the same for most people) but I was just about as familiar with my fiscal beliefs as with modern Arabic authors. The last few weeks I’ve spent offhandedly mentioning that I would start considering the presidential candidates once election day was imminent. However, now that I’ve begun defining my fiscal beliefs, I can assess the candidates’ rhetoric for pieces that I am looking for, amidst their myriad wild promises.

This is a frontier for me, a huge expanse of understanding I hadn’t yet considered embarking towards nor even considered worth indirectly exploring. The slightest inspiration from a Nobel Laureate economist was enough to encourage me off the pier and into an expeditionary spirit. It’s a satisfying feeling.

The Blacksburg winter is here again. My desire to ride outdoors, apart from to&fro campus, has vanished. I tried to do a slow, peaceful, bike trail ride last night and returned 20 minutes later with numb fingers and a disheartened spirit. Winter - arctic, rather - cycling gear helps to a point but I have to acquiesce to nature’s ways since my body can withstand only so much frostbite. Trying to do road riding in this weather, and adding to the existing wind chill with that from the fast-moving bike, is a path to destruction.

I’m not yet sure how to handle this total change of weather - forecasts say this 20-30 ºF weather will last for far more than a week, with wind chills to encourage polar bears to seek shelter. To keep myself in shape, I will need to do a certain amount of heavy riding, but even doing rollers on the porch is painful. Plus, stupid New Year’s resolutions have filled the campus gyms to capacity. Oh, get real, people: that waist isn’t going anywhere soon.

Frankly, I’m more frustrated at myself for looking at so many warm weather cycling photos on flickr than I am at the weather or the packed gyms. Maybe I just need to occupy my time better. My current schedule allows for 3 hours of whining per day. I could take up watercolors or possibly pilates to fill that daily slot. Alas, Jack Frost.

While doing my regular check on the latest TED Talks, I came across this one by someone unknown to me. J.J. Abrams, the head writer of Lost, who is also likely on strike at the moment, speaks of pursuing infinite possibilities in relation to his writing while embracing any open-ended chances that may manifest themselves. In effect, he provides a glimpse of the enthusiastic results of creative pursuit, himself smiling wildly (and talking rapidly) when he divulges some of his writing anecdotes not otherwise mentioned outside of general cocktail party conversations.

I am always excited when someone I am talking to speaks of their expertise and stories from their field which results in huge smiles on their faces. Exuberance is inspiring and, fortunately, contagious. I really enjoy talking about physics and, particularly, acoustics. It’s easy for me to interpret my surroundings as the product of an infinite number of vibration particles all interacting, producing sound, yet not vibrating far enough so as to tear structures (or our bodies) apart. In fact, I considered this while biking through the Parkway this morning and could imagine trees vibrating in my mind, the air all around me vibrating very dynamically since I was racing through the air at a fast rate resulting in vortices and small vacuums, the road surface acting like a physically rigid surface yet giving way just a bit to be partly elastic as it should… oh, it was wonderful.

If you’re not already watching the TED Talks, then do so. And don’t tell me you are frustrated by the 15-18 minute lengths - that’s no reason to pass up such encouraging speakers. To start you off, of course with Abrams’ above, watch Sir Ken Robinson’s and Carolyn Porco’s talks. Then, get hooked.