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September 07, 2004
Vorticity Day
The title for this post comes because MWACS (Monash Weather & Climate Society) had a guest speaker today, Dr Greg Holland from Aerosonde and the National Centre for Atmospheric Research, come and talk about vorticity, in an event that MWACS had dubbed "Vorticity Day." Vorticity is a rather complicated subject, so I won't go into much detail about it here, other than to say that it's a property of fluids that is related to circulation and rotation (although a rotating fluid need not necessarily have vorticity). Simply put, vorticity is the curl of the velocity field. I know that statement just lost most of you, but that's why I'm not gonna be talking any more about the nuts and bolts of it. Anyways, the talk was really interesting, and afterwards there was a bit of a Q&A session in the maths building, where I sussed out from him things like why he chose to go to Colorado State University for his Ph.D. in meteorology. Among other cool things, he also told us some stories from when he was stationed in Darwin as a forecaster and Tropical Cyclone Tracy struck and devastated the city on Christmas Eve 1974. After that there was some wine & cheese too. Gotta love Australia! Wine & cheese at an academic club meeting, that's just awesome.
Then this evening I went to the usual Christian Union Tuesday evening stuff for awhile. I'm still really liking CU, it's quite valuable for me.
My cough seems to have gotten worse today. I've been coughing so much that my chest has really hurt for the last few hours, to the point where it's not exactly comfortable to breathe and I really can't cough very hard, even though I feel like I need to. A very very unpleasant and rather painful feeling to say the least.
And I also shaved off my goatee this morning, which will make some people back at Gustavus like Heidi and Sara rather pleased. I just kinda decided it was time for a change, I'd had it for a year and three months anyway. If I decide I want it back, it'd only take a couple weeks anyway. But since the weather's due to start warming up soon, let's just say it'd be preferable not to have one. The reaction down here was rather positive too (after the initial double-takes), most people said I look a few years younger now. Let me know what you think, whether the goatee should stay gone, or make a comeback after a little while? (Note my shameless ploy to get comments on my blog, I haven't had any in two weeks!)
Time to crawl into bed and try to sleep away the pain...
Posted by Jared at September 7, 2004 11:01 PM