Electric Josh

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass: This is even funny if you haven't written and/or graded one or two these things, even for the non-physicists among you. Back when I got stuff like this to grade I'd laugh a lot, show all my coworkers, and then give the student a really low score; most of my favorite students got C's and D's. Found here.
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We drove over to Cambridge to look at the sponge dorm, noted below. It looks reasonable as a piece of public sculpture (think park art), but pity the poor bastards who actually have to live in the place, although I'm sure, this being MIT, that there are at least a few nerdy kids there who greatly enjoy living in a building that looks like a rectangular fractal. (Even aside from the dorm, it's not the prettiest part of Cambridge.) This picture was taken standing up, so by looking at the bottom of the building for where the windows appear to form a line pointing right at the camera you can get some sense of scale; I think the building only has six or seven floors. The baby was unfazed, having fallen asleep on the way over. Then the three of us went to get Mexican in Harvard Square, which was wonderful.
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I've been playing with the HTML layout of this space and now the spacing is all messed up. I promise it will get better soon. [Update: let me know if it's not better now.]
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I had totally forgotten about the Eyesore of the Month, where ill-conceived architecture is mercilessly observed. This month gives us townhouses that prompt:

The upper stories are applique Georgian, meant to signify "historic architecture here!" The real message emanating from all this investment and effort is "no real future here." What the scene signifies is the tragic resignation of ordinary Americans to cheap falsehood in the service of an entropic economy.

February gave us a particularly tragic view of the sterile new MIT art-dorm that its residents hate, and which I've still never seen. Maybe something to visit today. Hopefully it won't scare the baby. [Update above.]
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