13 November 2008

I should be sitting in class right now, listening to a lecture on inverse Compton scattering, which is... well, um I guess I could tell you if I were there. I'm sure that wikipedia will tell me shortly after this post. This week has been one filled with shortcomings of some sort or another; missing class, or so it seems, falls in order with the failure motif of the week. Maybe it was the kidney infection, but maybe not. I spent all Saturday and Sunday working on a longshot of a grant proposal and again on Monday, until about 430 cst, when it was submitted. Somewhere in the frenzy that was Monday, the first failure occurred.

I forgot to take the last Cipro of the bottle. Now this seems as though it is a matter of little significance, in part because it is, but the first of anything (kiss, day of class, pancake you make) is always special, no matter how completely unimportant it is; thus the first mistake in an ever ongoing error-filled week must be mentioned.

1 comment:

Johnny Banana said...

Inverse Compton scattering is generally when CMB photons scatter off of relativistic electrons. This steals energy from the electrons, and boosts the CMB photons up from microwaves to X-rays.

Generally, it's the default explanation for "OMG X-rays we don't understand? IT MUST BE INVERSE COMPTON!"