Death, the most dreaded of evils, is therefore of no concern to us; for while we exist death is not present, and when death is present we no longer exist.

Salutations, fellow bloggers.

I'm gonna talk about Winkler for a little bit right now because he kicks ass.
Throughout the old man's lectures, he incorporates loads of demonstrations, often involving volunteers from the class. I won't try to remember all of them because that would be nigh impossible, but I can certainly recount a few from the last seven days.


Galileo's leaning tower experiment. You know what I'm talking about. Well, Winkler has a big tube that he put a feather in and sucked all the air out of. Then he dropped the feather and a bowling ball, and, of course, the feather fell at the same rate as the bowling ball. Now, this isn't amazing or anything and you all know that they would fall at the same rate, but all the same it was a pretty cool thing to see.

To demonstrate one of Newton's laws, he brought forth a small rock, roughly the size of Rich's fist or two of Rachael's fists. Now, this rock had a string tied around it and the extra string was about three feet long. So Winkler grabs the non-rock end of the string and starts swinging it around over his head, at which point nearly everyone else in the room, including myself, promptly put their hands over their heads for protection, which, if you think about it, is exceedingly logical; after all there is an excessively old man swinging a heavy object that is tied by string that could very well be loose for all we knew. And then, seemingly (but not actually) oblivious to our fear, he continues his lecture on

Look it up, everyone.

Newtonian physics with the rock still revolving above his head at the end of his string. After another minute of tense (on the part of the students) and animated (on the part of the professor) lecturing, Winkler casually asks the class what would happen, according to Newton, if he were to let go of the string. Someone, probably slightly nervous that he might do just such a thing on accident but definitely not intentionally, offered the obvious answer: the stone would fly away at great speed.
And that's exactly what happened.

You see, Winkler did let go of the string. And he did so at just the moment in its revolution that caused the rock to hurl itself directly into the middle of the class. A moment of extreme worry came over me (and I am sure everyone else, judging by the magnitude of their flinches), but quickly abated when the rock took several second to lithely glide through the room, seemingly as light as the air that carried it, and eventually landed harmlessly in an empty chair without so much as a thud or even a bounce.
So he had taken a chunk of Styrofoam, whittled it to the point where it resembled a naturally formed rock, and then spray-painted it a dark and deceptive color. And, in case you are wondering, I later spoke with (i.e. overheard) lots of other people discussing the class, and all of them were likewise deceived. The ruse had been perfectly executed.

Look it up, Nicole.

To demonstrate inertia, Winkler set a table. And he went all out. Ornate, tablecloth, vase with flowers, bottle of unknown beverage, and candle. He first filled a glass with the beverage, then set both the glass and the bottle on the table. Then he dimmed the lights, rather romantically. This, of course, was followed by the lighting of the candle. All in all, a very fine dinner setting.
And then he pulled the tablecloth out. And everything stayed exactly where it was. Definitely one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in a classroom. Wow. Okay. Moving on.

To infinity and beyond! Or something like that.

Remember that picture I put on the blog a few weeks ago that looked something like the one on the right? Yeah. The difference, of course, is that I found that other picture on Google Image search, whereas I found this one on my iPhone. This is Professor Winkler after a little joyride. You can't really tell, but he's sitting on a fire extinguisher. Yes, that is his mode of propulsion. The thing really moved, too. Every action elicits an equal and opposite reaction, and the crowd that had gathered certainly gave a good reaction . . . or some other horrible pun. That was really awful. I'm sorry you had to read that.

"Every path you have trod through, wilderness through war, has led to this road."

Also, I was walking around Bi Hall (the science building) and I saw this poster and it scared me. And it had the word "pathways" on top of it as you can see, which reminded me of a quote, which I of course typed below the picture. Who can name its speaker? Nobody? Ah, you disappoint me.

The Vermont Intercollegiate Cross Country Championship took place on Saturday, and from it I learned that there are no decent cross country teams in this state excluding Middlebury's. I also learned that the first day of October in Vermont is significantly colder than the coldest day of the year in Newport Beach. But that should come as a surprise to nobody. Suffice to say, my hands were numb to the point where, upon completion of the race, I tried to untie my shoes and failed. I am offering no exaggeration when I tell you that I would have had as much success trying to untie them with the chunk of Styrofoam that Professor Winkler threw at us twenty-three hours before. (In case you're concerned and stupid at the same time, I have since untied them; I am not still wearing them.) Anyways, the competition was light enough that we sat our top five guys and still put seven guys in the top nine in the race; in other words, if you put our JV team up against a varsity team comprised of the top runners of all the other colleges in Vermont combined, we would still crush them. Yes, I am being arrogant on the account of people other than myself. I suggest you put up with it.


That night most of the team, including myself, made its way into town. The reason? A couple of the runners are part of a band that played at a local restaurant. Definitely worth my while. Especially the last song, Piano Man. Harmonica and all. Everyone at the restaurant singing along. It's exactly how you're picturing it.

Now for a story that seems quaint, and perhaps it is. But I like it. Very much so.
Last night I spent several hours studying at Bi Hall, on the opposite side of campus from my dorm. After I finished, I stopped by Ross dining hall for a late dinner, and upon completing dinner I went over to the ice cream station. But alas! They were all out of cones. So I grabbed a glass and filled it with ice cream. Mint chocolate chip, of course. Now by this
point I had already realized that my plan to eat it on the way back to the dorm wouldn't work because I now had a glass which I had to return to the dining hall rather than a cone that I could simply consume. But there was hope yet. Proctor dining hall lies between Ross and my dorm, so I stopped by to drop off my dish. But of course, I couldn't resist taking a peak at Proctor's ice cream array, and lo and behold, they had cones. So I filled one up with soft serve vanilla and proceeded to walk back to the dorm with it. It is the small things in life, I tell you, that make it worth living. (For the record I don't agree with that statement at all.)

I feel like I had more I wanted to talk about. I think I'm going to have to just write stuff down when it seems eventful, because I know I'm forgetting some things. Oh well. I'll leave you with a couple of thoughts.

Jason, I miss your cuddly love.
Nicole, I miss the frequency of your puns.
Rich, I miss the warmth of your voice.
Rachael, I miss your audacity in all things.

As you may or may not have noticed, I have yet to give any of my posts an original title. This one's reference, to be sure, is the most obscure yet, and I would be pleasantly surprised should anyone know it before Google.

Jason probably knows this already because of his roommate circumstances, but my grandpa died last week. My mom is taking it pretty tough; she was very close to her father.
Ironically, the day he died was my dad's dad's (still alive) birthday.