Teenage Angst Has Paid Off Well

Yesterday, I was at the reception for the Peter E. Haas Public Service Award (Congratulations Jody!) when someone tapped my shoulder and informed me that I was having a wardrobe malfunction,

"Dude there's a large hole in your pants."

"No problem" I said, "I'll just put on my coat..."

"No dude, there is a seriously large hole in your pants."

Walking home with my coat tied around my waist (my first idea was actually, where's a stapler?) and ripped pants, I couldn't help but think, "Man, this is so grunge." It must be karma related to playing too much Nirvana lately.

The problem isn't isolated to that pair of pants. I pulled the next pair of pants out of the closet, and realized I needed to sew up the bottom of the left pant leg to make them wearable, the pair after that had a hole in the pocket big enough for my wallet to fall through, etc.

It looks like I either need to buy some more flannel or a new pair of pants...

Where's my SAG card?

So, I just got back from a trip to Death Valley, complete with canyoneering, hidden petroglyphs, a land-speed record-setting attempt across a playa, and a journey from 200 feet below sea level (sleeping with the fishes) to 11,000 feet above sea level all in one day. While I was off on my vision quest, KQED (the local public television station was on a "quest" of their own.

Their quest, should they choose to accept it, was to film a special about nanotechnology at the University of California Berkeley and the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. As part of their special, they needed shots of scientists being scientisty. In the clip below you can watch the video featuring the Zettl lab's best and brightest giving one-hundred and ten percent. Look closely and you can spot yours truly opening a furnace.





And yes, those purple gloves were absolutely necessary for the task at hand, I definitely did not put them on just because they look more futuristic.