Daniel John Andelin

I'm a sucker for competition. I love sports, games, Survivor, and basically anything else that involves winners and losers. I sometimes think that's why I'm so interested in politics. During the primaries earlier this year, I had my little scoreboard on Excel, and I kept track of delegates for both politcal parties and had a grand old time doing it. This went on until Mitt Romney suspended his campaign, and suddenly my team was eliminated from the playoffs. Consequently, my interest subsided to the normal, mild interest that I have when two teams I don't care about duke it out for the championship.

But I digress. My pathological need to turn everything into a contest seeps over and infects my movie-going experience as well. Every year, I have to choose the one movie that I saw in the theater that gets to reign over all movies as my favorite that year. Last year it was Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. (Although if I had remembered that Breach came out in 2007, it very well might have one. Chalk one up for a better time slot.) In 2008, the film currently in the lead is Iron Man, which needs no review. It's just awesome, that's all. But last night I went to see a movie that really gave indestructible metal suits with smart missiles a run for their money.

Prince Caspian is the second volume in C.S. Lewis's acclaimed series, The Chronicles of Narnia. It takes place a year after the end of its precursor, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, according to our reckoning of time, but hundreds of years later to Narnia. In that time, the Narnians feel that their Kings and Queens (aka the Pemberley siblings) have abandoned them, and with them, the great lion protector, Aslan. Actually, the Pemberleys accidentally stumbled back to England at the end of the last movie, and have since return to their normal lives as jolly, English school children who say things like, "By jove!" (Okay, so they don't actually talk like that in the movie. But they do in the book, and it makes me giddy to read.) A well-timed blast on Susan's magic horn from a bloke in trouble summons the four back to Narnia, and the standard fantasy battle between good and evil ensues.

The story line of Prince Caspian is exciting. It involves intrigue, murder, ambition, courage, and a kick-tail freedom-fighting mouse, who pleasingly enough ends up not very annoying. (Disney tries to throw a love story in there somewhere, but that part was kind of stupid.) But to me, the story is almost background. What makes Narnia great for me is that in this age of moral relativism, where the lessons taught through entertainment are often either watered-down, preachy, or sometimes flat-out against what I view to be good values, we have a series of movies about good versus evil. There is no thinly veiled moral that gets revealed at the end through the movie's over-quoted catch phrase. It's simply good people fighting to protect a nation against evil men.

Ironically, because there is no catch-phrase moral, the movie is able to teach an abundance of moral lessons through subtle dialogue or cinematography. I'm not a film expert, so I'm not qualified to speak on the artistic merit of the filming. But when Edmund frees a faith-struggling Peter from falling into a fate worse than death, and steps out of the screen to reveal a stone carving of Aslan behind him, I got all inspired.

To really appreciate the Narnia movies, you have to remember that Aslan is a Christ figure. He isn't just Messianic in his purpose, Aslan represents Jesus Christ. And since Prince Caspian takes place centuries after the allegorical sacrifice of Aslan, the lessons and parallels are, in many ways, even more powerful than in the first movie.

Prince Caspian is rated PG for fantasy violence. As a reference, it is about as violent as The Adventure of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn, and a little less scary than The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or as another reference, I would feel comfortable recommending this movie to my mom or the Leavitts.

As part of a pseudo New Year's Resolution I wrote in my journal tonight. Ordinarily, I just write whatever comes to mind in a journal, with very little editing or forethought. But tonight, I found myself taking great pains to write in a manner that would reflect well on my intelligence. Considering that I'm the only one who has access to my journal, and I never reread what I've written, that may seem like a silly thing to be concerned about. The problem is, whenever I write in my journal, I imagine my descendants lovely pulling an old, leather bound book from the shelves (never mind that my journal is just an ordinary, not-leather-bound sketchbook) and becoming enthralled with the adventures and adversities that Great Grandpa Daniel Andelin went through. What an inspiration he was to us all! Also, I'm always wearing pioneer clothes and walking across Wyoming in my imagination when my grandchildren read about me.

Usually, this tricking my grandkids into being inspired by me doesn't present much of a problem. But today is January 1--the first day of a brand new year. (Actually, as I write this, today has officially turned into January 2nd, which means I'm starting off the year in grand style by staying up too late again.) And with the beginning of the new year, if I am to write, I feel obligated to write about the new year.

Have you ever tried to write anything on or about New Year's without resorting to tired cliches that are so old, they make Great Grandpa Daniel look like a hip, young dude by comparison? (Are "dude" and "hip" still part of the youth lexicon? I'm starting to think they're not.) It's nearly impossible! I had to stop myself every other sentence from saying things like "new beginnings" or "a time to reflect" or "Dick Clark". I mean think about it. This is 2008--over two thousand years since we started counting that way. If Adam and Eve lived about 4,000 years before that, we have over six thousand New Year's Eve celebrations to make up new things to say. Sooner or later, you're just going to run out.

So, I did my best to be fresh and original, although I think I just ended up being short. So, while I may not have sounded profound and deep, at least I was concise about it. And that's got to count for something. Right, grandkids?

For the record, I have the utmost respect for Dick Clark and his long career in the entertainment industry. He really has become an integral part of the American New Year's celebration, and it saddens me to see the health of the "eternal teenager" finally starting to catch up to his true age.

Note: I'm back in the USA now. I had originally planned to document every week of my trip to Europe, but yeah, that didn't happen. I returned at the beginning of October and have been in Charlottesville, working on thesis research ever since.

I would generally consider myself a social person, eager to engage in conversation and interested to know what's going on around me. That's probably a nice way of saying "Butt out, mister!" but nonetheless, it's true. Since my job doesn't really involve a lot of talking to people about interesting things, I get my fix by listening to talk radio. During the day it's Rush Limbaugh, in the evening it's Sean Hannity, and on my way to work I listen to "Mike and Mike in the Morning," which is basically ESPN radio's version of "Good Morning, America."

Unfortunately, my timing is usually such that I listen to more ads on ESPN radio than I do Mikes. Seriously, the transcript of what I listen to in a typical morning would go something like this:

Car radio turned on to hear the sound of two Mikes laughing almost to the point of tears.

MIKE GOLIC: (panting) "Oh, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard!"

MIKE GREENBERG: "But seriously folks, we have a story you won't believe. One of baseball's greatest legends will be coming out of retirement to play for his old high school team! We'll have the exclusive story next on Mike an Mike in the Morning."

MIKE GOLIC: "ESPN Radio."

MIKE CORNICK: "Vote for Mitt Romney!"

Cut to twenty minutes of the same ads that I've heard every morning for the past year.

By the time the program returns, I'm at school and I never do find out who is coming out of retirement.

Actually, missing the news story (which I promptly forget about as soon as I'm out of the car) is less annoying to me that to have my intelligence insulted by the kinds of radio commercials they play on sports radio. For example, the UVA Bookstore is currently running a holiday themed ad, taking advantage of a less-than-brilliant wordplay on the Virginia athletics team, the Cavaliers, or colloquially, the Wahoos. "This year," they proclaim, "you'll be hearing 'Hoo Hoo Hoo!'" And then they add, "As well as 'Ho Ho Ho'," as if somehow the play on words is so subtle that they have to quickly explain it so we actually listen to the ad, instead of spending the whole time scratching our heads thinking, "Why would I hear 'Hoo Hoo Hoo'?" Is that what the University Bookstore thinks of its patrons, the vast majority of which constitute the student body? If so, I'm not sure that graduating from Virginia is the "honor of honors" it claims to be.

Another one I heard this morning started out by yanking the ol' heartstrings and reminding the listener of  the "good old days":
 
"Remember how the family used to gather together around a board game? Remember how much fun it was to bring them closer together?"

I'm a big fan of board games, myself. Jill and I have about eight different versions of Monopoly, and I grew up playing war strategy games with my brothers and cousins. But those of us who actually do like board games know that fun board games don't actually bring a family together, unless of course that "family" consists only of a bunch of teenage boys with too much acne and not enough social life. They simply take too long and have too complicated of rules. Games like Candy Land and Hi Ho Cherry-O can be good ways to force you to play with your kids, but to label them as "fun" is a bit of a stretch. (When the big twist of a game is that you have to stay stuck in the Molasses Swamp until a random card turns up red...I'm just sayin'.)

Now, as one who believes in the family, I don't want to knock anyone who's promoting the strengthening of those ties. But this ad just smacked of insincerity. And sure enough, the next line was all about how you can relive those days by buying a home entertainment center! Just think of how wonderful it will be to gather the family once again to watch your new flat plasma screen. You'll enjoy it so much more knowing with whom you're sharing it! Clearly this person never had a family.

Again, I have no problem with entertainment centers, large TVs, or any of those types of luxuries. But to try to trick me into buying myself a really cool toy because it will bring the family together is insulting to both my intelligence and my sense of decency. It's akin to telling me that if I skip work and school and read comics all day, Jill will love me more because, hey, reading is good for you!

I know that in a capitalistic society, we need marketing and advertisements and all that. I get it. But are people at large really that dumb and/or gullible? I dunno, but whatever they're selling, I'm not buying.

I went to a French grocery store (Hyper Champion) to pick up some toothpaste and dental floss. I noticed that there were all kinds of denture adhesives to choose from at great bargains, but only one tiny little display of overly priced dental floss. And I couldn't help but think, you know, if you flossed a little more often, maybe you wouldn't need the denture adhesive. That's all I'm saying.

Particle physicists like to think of themselves as living on the cutting edge of science--the very frontier of knowledge. And in many respects, that's true. Now more than ever, CERN is a really exciting place to be, as the Large Hadron Collider--the large particle accelerator in the world--is being constructed, and along with it the many particle detectors that will be used to see what goes on inside the accelerator. I've remarked several times that it's like the Golden Age of Exploration, and that, while I may not be Columbus, I'm working on his ship.

The reason this work is so significant is that according to the Standard Model of particle physics, there has to be some kind of basic, yet exotic particle that acts in such a way as to give every other massive particle its mass. In fact, the whole theory depends on the existence of such a particle, so detecting it would verify that scientists have been doing something right for the past 50 years. On the other hand, if it can be definitively proven to not exist, then the whole theory crumbles and scientists have a job for the next 50 years trying to start over from scratch. The problem is, this holy grail of particle physics, known as the Higgs boson, is just too energetic to be seen with current accelerators. The LHC, on the other hand, will not only be strong enough to find the Higgs, it will be so strong that if we don't find it, that will be considered proof enough to abandon the theory.

So, what do I do? What is my job at CERN to help get the boat ready to sail to the New World? Well, a few different things, actually. There are so many people working on each detector that the whole process of building it sometimes seems a little like piecing together a sort of Frankenstein machine. I don't know if any one person really understands the detector in its entirety, but there are an awful lot of experts working hard on a lot of different individual components.

The part of the detector that I help out with is called the electromagnetic calorimeter, or ECAL for short. The ECAL is essentially a collection of thousands of lead-tungstate bricks in crystalline form so they are clear as glass. These crystals light up whenever certain particles (those that interact via the electromagnetic force) pass through them, so we arrange them in a cylindrical shape and connect each crystal to a set of electronics that can read out just how much energy was deposited in each crystal at a given time, with the idea that certain patterns of light are indicative of certain particles passing through with a given energy. So, in addition to making sure the crystals are arranged in the proper way, we also have to make sure the electronics work and that the software to reconstruct particles from raw data is accurate. (Microsoft hasn't put out a good particle reconstruction package yet, so we have to write it all ourselves.)

Of course, even within just the ECAL, there are dozens of institutions and maybe hundreds of people involved from all over the world. (I don't know exact numbers, so "dozens" may be anywhere from four to thirty, and "hundreds" may only be fifty or sixty. The point is, a lot of people are working on this.) My particular responsibilities are pretty limited in their scope, but they are also varied and sundry. They include the following:

* Testing super crystals in the Crystal Palace:

The Crystal Palace is not nearly as beautiful or majestic as it sounds. It is, in fact, a large, open, makeshift building within another building at CERN where crystals are arranged in five-by-five bundles to be mounted onto the endcaps of the ECAL by a crew of chain-smoking Russians. Technically the Crystal Palace is a non-smoking area, but the building that houses it is not. So, every fifteen minutes or so, a cloud of cigarette smoke wafts its way in through the open roof, prompting to me look and see at least one Russian sitting outside the "palace" (but inside the building) blowing smoke into the air. But, I digress...

Each bundle (or super crystal), which weighs about 100 lbs. and costs more than Mercedes Benz, needs to undergo a series of electronic tests to make sure everything is functioning properly before it is mounted. Because the "jigs" that hold the super crystals during the testing process are limited in number and reused, this needs to be done every work day so that the Russians can assemble more crystals. It's actually a pretty fun job, and now that Sasha Ledovskoy has taught me some of the finer points of "debugging" when a test fails, it's one that I can do almost completely autonomously. In addition, it's something that needs to get done for work on the detector to continue forward, which gives a certain sense of satisfaction. This is definitely my favorite task here.

* Mapping electronics

Elementary particles are too small and too radioactive to see with the naked eye. In fact, the radiation is such that we have to put the whole detector in a large, isolated cavern underground, so we can't even watch the detector itself to see what's going on. (Even if we could, it wouldn't be very useful anyway.) Instead, we rely on complex electronics to read out the data in a digital format, which will then be stored for analysis at the physicists' leisure. Of course, if the electronics are connected or labeled wrong, it messes up all the data. Each wire is labeled, and there are many, many files documenting which cable goes where and which set of wires is connected to which super crystal, but we're all human (and worse, a lot of us are students) so things occasionally get either connected wrong, recorded wrong, or both. One of the tasks that I was assigned was to go through and check a bunch of connections to be sure that the documentation was correct. Turns out, the documented mapping (i.e. the list of which channel corresponds to what) was way off, so I came away feeling like I had made a pretty significant contribution that day.

* Test Beam shifts

This is actually the main reason they sent me out to CERN--to take my turn running test beam shifts. Essentially, the test beam is when we place the partially completed detector inside an already existing particle beam (borrowed from another accelerator at CERN) to see if it works right. This summer, we had two test beam runs scheduled. Unfortunately, this is a project run by physicists so things kept breaking. In addition, we're in Europe, so many of the key technicians and safety inspectors took long holidays right in the middle of our preparation, setting us back even further. In the end, we lost all but one graveyard shift of our month long scheduled beam time.

Consequently, I don't really know what a test beam shift entails, other than staying up all night when you have the graveyard shift. Run 2 starts in mid-September, so I guess I'll find out then.

* Software development

I'm so not a computer geek, but working with brand new, buggy software is unavoidable in high energy physics. Plus, my adviser is one of those computer geniuses that is always running the newest version of Linux and seems to have a hard time comprehending that his students may not be quite as tech-savvy as he is. And finally, building the detector is important, but if you don't have the tools to do physics with it, then it's a pretty expensive waste of time.

So, I spend a certain amount of time sitting in front of a computer wishing I understood what exactly I'm supposed to be doing with this. In essence, I'm trying to figure out whether it will work to employ a particular method (thought up by my friend and colleague Michael Balazs) that uses similar techniques as a digital camera to "take a picture" of the particles using data from the ECAL crystals.The big question at this point is will the "picture" be able to distinguish between different types of particles that behave similarly. It's a nifty idea, but obviously it needs to be tested before we write it into the software.

* Gopher

And of course, there are always little odd jobs that need to be done. Whether they need someone to scrounge around and find electronic equipment or drive into Geneva and pick up someone from the airport, I'm always up for a quick and dirty little job that needs to get done. A lot of people may hate being a gopher. Personally, if it gets me away from staring at a computer screen with my mind a complete blank, I'm all for it.

A unique thing about being a graduate student is that at some point, you will inseparably weld your life to a single faculty member. It is not only inevitable, but required in order to get anywhere. And it's different for each student. "Oh, you're Dinko's student?" "Yeah, I'm P.Q.'s student." "How do you like Cates as an adviser?" It's like this bizarre, archaic feudal system, where the lords and ladies with tenured positions in the university acquire these graduate student serfs who will do their bidding in return for academic sustenance and the right to remain on the manor. I think once in awhile a grad student gets fed to a dragon for the amusement of bored theorists, but I haven't been able to prove it yet.

The other weird thing about the student-adviser dynamic, is that no matter how cool or nice your adviser is, you know that he has all power over you. Consequently, he becomes the scariest being imaginable, regardless of how they appear to the outside world. Seriously, if Mr. Rogers or The Care Bears had graduate students working under them, a typical conversation between the two serfs would go something like this:

Serf 1: "Oh, man! My adviser is really putting the pressure on! He keeps telling me to be his neighbor. Can't he just let me work in peace?"

Serf 2: "Oh, Rogers is a nice guy! You should try working under the Care Bear Stare!"

My adviser is one Bob Hirosky. He is definitely a cool guy (which is partially why I wanted to work for him), but he still can get you to sweat bullets when times call for it. He's one of those computer uber-geniuses that is always up on the latest version of Linux and could program his cell phone to hack into the Pentagon. I, on the other hand, am one of those guys who still writes letters by hand and whose idea of advanced programing is using a switch statement instead of if/else. (It's a geek reference--don't ask.) But, he's my adviser, so I try to put on airs like I'm a computer dude, too, so he thinks I'm cool. Most of our interaction involves Bob using a lot of techno-babble and me nodding my head expressively, while inside I think "What the heck is he even talking about?"

So, when I found out that Bob was going to be moving into the chalet with us, it send a wave a nauseous fear across me. It's one thing to work in close quarters with your boss--at least you can go home at the end of the day and detox yourself from Linux commands. But to live with the guy?

It turned out that home Bob was really very cool. Living with him was like living with a beatnik roommate in college, but without the marijuana. He kept trying to expose us to the very large, very eclectic collection of international music that he has amassed on his laptop, and he had a particular fondness for trying weird European cheeses. He also actively encouraged us all to watch Dr. Who every night and filled us in on the back stories of the various characters dating clear back into the sixties. And the best part of it was, even though he would ask about my projects at home, he knew how to leave Adviser Bob at CERN and turn into Roommate Bob in the chalet. It really turned out to be a lot of fun to have him around.

Bob only stayed for a couple of weeks. Once he left and I felt much less scrutinized, I took the opportunity to take a long weekend and travel to Spain with a couple of friends from Virginia who are now working at the Paul Scherrer Institute near Zurich. It was really a lot of fun. Out of the three cities, Barcelona is probably my favorite, but the whole trip was just really nice. Keep checking in, as I will be adding pictures of the Spain trip soon.

I have pictures, but the server is making it difficult to post many at one time. Please keep checking as I painstakingly add them...a few at a time.

~DJA