Advanced Material Chemistry + Poem = !Warning! May cause brain hemorrhage!

For my Advanced Materials Chemistry course we were assigned to write a poem from a choice of three researches. I wrote mine on Geoff Ozin, Canada Research Chair and University Professor at the University of Toronto.

I tried to maintain an approximation of iambic pentameter, and I think I did a decent job considering how hideously clunky the technical terms are. Seriously, try getting the idea 'nanocomposites created by the combination of organic and inorganic subunits into a hierarchical structure' to fit in the frame of poetry. I dare you. Anyways, here it is.

Paean to a Canada Research Chair

“There's room at the top!” Geoff Ozin exclaims

Not just at the bottom as Feynman once claimed

By building at all scales using tiny blocks

He's given the world a new tool for its box:

This self-assembly has Geoff won great acclaim.

As a fascinating letter to Nature related,

Photonic bandgaps of silicon were created.

By storing information with light.

We'll bid electronics goodnight

In the computing revolution he instigated.

One grand challenge is not enough for this man

Chemical nanomachines are part of his plans

To seek and destroy nasty pollution

Nanobots will whiz around in solution

Or sail on the surface like a catamaran.

His articles make him among the top in citation

Which he can attribute to much innovation.

By ordering units into a hierarchical whole

Over structural properties he's gained much control

With an astounding range of potential applications.

Schrödinger's Blog

I've always believed I publish online so that my writing would be enjoyed by my friends as well as subject to criticism. By writing, I am forced to choose a position and be able to defend it. Unless I write, I will strongly hold beliefs without good reasons, and I find I'm forced to agree with every contrary opinion I come across, which is quite painful.

I've always thought that, so long as I write, I should post it online for others to see. As a result, my blog is like Schrödinger's Cat, except closer to dead than alive. You can visit my page and determine whether my blog is still alive, but one update is no guarantee that others will follow. But after months of not updating, I'll post something and show that it's not really dead.

I don't like the zombie-status of my blog. I've realized that I don't really care that people be able to criticize what I write, because there have only been a few constructive comments from strangers. I'd like my friends to read my blog, but I suspect you're all bored of it. So, my friends, if you're actually still interested in my opinions, let me know and I'll post them online. Until then, I'll be writing for myself.

What? A Blog Post?! About B.C. Elections? Never Mind...

Well, this is my first post of 2009. I expect that you are less interested than the death penalty or the future of my blog than B.C. politics. I'm writing those later so that they appear first.

The provincial elections were on May 12, 2009. I left on April 30, and voting in advance was less of a priority than moving to Mississauga. I'd hoped to vote in support of the electoral system I previously discussed, Single Transferable Vote. I don't want to rehash the details of the system, but I find the politics interesting, and maybe more broadly applicable.

Essentially, STV promises a more proportional and local system to elect politicians. Electoral reform was a campaign promise of the governing party, the Liberals, and the particular system was chosen by a Citizen's Assembly which I believe was chosen to be geographically representative. The vote has failed in two referenda, and I doubt it will be proposed again in 2013.

What puzzles me is why the Liberals promised to reform the electoral system to being with. They haven't always been in power, but they are the dominant party in BC, so they have the most to gain from an unrepresentative system. I have a couple of ideas. One is that districts would have been combined, leading to less representation of rural areas, which tend to favour the opposing party, the NDP. The other is that the Liberals would still dominate under STV, but election results would fluctuate less. If the Liberals feel they can build coalitions more easily than the NDP, they might not lose much power under STV. Finally, they might have just wanted to take this idea away from the NDP, and make it their issue.

Hey! If you skipped over the previous paragraphs that were all blah blah BC blah blah elections, you might as well read this paragraph. What struck me, and led me to write this post, is that I had never considered the Liberals' ulterior motives for reforming the system. But politics is all about spinning ulterior motives into common principles. That doesn't make STV a worse system than FPTP, but it's important not to be deluded.

I hope you enjoy that I am writing again. Now that I work and have free evenings, I have time to think and write, so I expect new posts will appear.