Disclaimer: any errors on this website are in fact an attempt to transcend the reality circumscribed by the limits of language.
Hi, I'm Drew Pendergrass. My artisanally-crafted, GMO-free, organic website is lovingly built from whatever I decide to post online. It hosts a variety of projects, resources, and ephemera made over the years, including a book, video games, open-source software for assimilating satellite observations of pollution, environmental datasets, my writing, experimental music, a fake startup that sells logs on wheels, as well as my research papers and conference presentations in atmospheric science and related fields.
Currently, I am a doctoral student in Environmental Engineering at Harvard University, studying under Daniel Jacob, and I freelance on the side for publications including Harper's and The Guardian. More importantly, to my knowledge, there is no portrait of me that ages in my place, I am not to my knowledge a victim of a mummy's curse, and I have no trouble distinguishing my right from my left.
I can be reached at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com, or at the academic address in my CV.
The latest science!
Pendergrass, D. C., S. Zhai, J. Kim, J-H. Koo, S. Lee, M. Bae, S. Kim, H. Liao, and D. J. Jacob. (2022). Continuous mapping of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air quality in East Asia at daily 6x6 km2 resolution by application of a random forest algorithm to 2011-2019 GOCI geostationary satellite data. Atmospheric Measurement Techniques, 15, 1075–1091. PDF. Publisher's version (open access). Associated dataset available from Dataverse. Video of 15-minute oral presentation at AGU.
Figure: Daily PM2.5 concentrations during a pollution event in the North China Plain, around Beijing (December 16-21, 2016). Predictions from the random forest algorithm (background, on 6x6 km2 grid scale) are compared to observations made on the ground (circles). We see that the model is able to reproduce even this extreme level of pollution.
You can learn more about my research on the projects page, or you can read through all of our scientific papers and presentations on their respective pages.
Order our book here!
Writing spotlight
My feature on dirt, and the scientists who study it, for the June 2020 issue of Harper's Magazine: "Ground Control."
A Brief Q&A
Q. Who are you?
A. Well, to start off, I accept the axiom of choice, I have never traveled to an exoplanet, my mind's eye exists only in a figurative sense, you cannot prove I have sympathies for the former state of Burgundy, and I hold no world records. If you for some strange reason would like to know something substantial about me, you can check out my projects page or my CV.
Q. How can I contact you?
A. You can follow/DM me on Twitter, but I'm trying to stop using it so much, so it's best to email me at drew [at] drewpendergrass [dot] com (or the academic address in my CV). However, if your email is unpleasant, you should direct it to grievances@drewpendergrass.com, an inbox I definitely read.
Q. Why does this page keep changing?
A. This page is randomly generated by the server on each load. Most of the page's contents are not displayed on one particular load, so for the full experience reload a bunch of times.
Q. Why don't you just host this crap on Github like a normal person?
A. Github only allows static websites. I wanted my website to be different for every visitor. DrewPendergrass.com, like life itself, must always be in flux. You could say I'm an artist.
This website proudly supports Otto Neurath and the ISOTYPE picture language
Please represent all social facts pictorially in your correspondence with the owner and proprietor of this website. Do your part to help build a pluralistic and anti-metaphysical theory of knowledge.
Some true statements
A Moving, and Random, Quotation
We are all of us more mystics than we believe or choose to believe – life is complicated enough as it is, after all. We have seen more than we let on, even to ourselves.
Through some moment of beauty or pain, some sudden turning of our lives, we catch glimmers at least of what the saints are blinded by; only then, unlike the saints, we tend to go on as though nothing has happened. To go on as though something has happened, even though we are not sure what it was or just where we are supposed to go with it, is to enter the dimension of life that religion is a word for.
-Frederick Buechner
Read more here.
Play Alchemy!
"So fun you won't even need friends!"
Bonus Content Zone!
Three Cryptic Messages Regarding Matters of Supreme Importance
- It is necessary for you to corrupt your beliefs before they eliminate your enemies.
- All dreams have been reviewed. It is time to vandalize the slogans.
- The regulations will be vandalized.
One randomly-generated sorting algorithm, please!
Do you have an unsorted list of N natural numbers? Do you just hate it when programs are guaranteed to terminate? Do you get angry when algorithms do better than factorial time? Then you're in luck! The following algorithm has been generated just for you:
- Begin with a gaslighting strategy. Insist to everyone that the list is already in order, even if it is not. If they give up arguing with you, terminate the program. If they insist that you actually sort the list, proceed to the next step.
- Uh oh! You've triggered a penalty step. Before you proceed, you must perform a task. Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is 109 pages long. Assuming each page contains roughly 2000 characters, the text can be encoded in order 1,000,000 bits. Generate this number of bits and check to see if they prove Fermat's Last Theorem. If they do not, repeat this step. If they do, proceed! You've paid the penalty. (This step was defined in collaboration with Mirac Suzgun).
- You turn to mathematical ecology for inspiration. For each number in your list, generate a population of rabbits proportional to the number and a population of wolves inversely proportional to the number. Wait for each system to equilibrate. Read off the equilibrium population of rabbits in order of population size, printing the number corresponding to each. (My lab partner Jackson Wagner points out that this is not a true sorting algorithm, since you still have to sort the population sizes. To Jackson, I reply that this is the least of our worries.)
Congratulations! Your list is now sorted. You can find a permalink to this particular algorithm here.
Facts about Robert Bork or facts about Björk?
Click the line you think is about Robert Bork!
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Score: 0 • Streak: 0
All facts lovingly taken from Wikipedia.