Dec 31 2008
Nickname
Stephen “Cooley” Sekula [1]. Heh. Hilarious.
[1] http://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=2015066&postcount=2
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Archive for December, 2008
Dec 30 2008
When Darwin set out to sea
On December 27th, 1831, the HMS Beagle set sail on a five year voyage. Accompanying the crew, acting as the ship’s naturalist, was a young Charles Darwin. The implications of the discoveries made during this voyage would only become clear to Darwin over a period of decades, and would change our view of the universe [...]
Dec 28 2008
Last sunset in Wisconsin . . . 2008
The first half of our travels are nearly over. We set out from northern Wisconsin a little later than planned, but that was fine. We arrive in Milwaukee later than expected, but that’s also fine; we saw our last sunset in Wisconsin on this trip. Last one for 2008, in fact. Every time I come [...]
Dec 26 2008
Getting screwed by Vista for Christmas
I came to Wisconsin to escape the annoyances of daily life and enjoy an actual Christmas break, something that the Federal government robbed me of last year. I’ve been having a great time. But today, some of the old humdrum kicked me in the teeth.
One of my aunts (in-law) gave me a DVD of pictures [...]
Dec 22 2008
Holiday Tech Picks
As I go into the holidays, with lots of traveling and interrupted internet and phone service, I wanted to reward my faithful readers with my tech pick favorites for 2008. I think these are the things that you should check out in the new year. These are not things that were deployed in 2008 (not [...]
Dec 18 2008
Remember, remember, the 17th of December
One year ago yesterday, the U.S. Congress passed the FY08 omnibus spending bill. This marked a moment of significant destruction to the particle physics programs in the U.S. Investment in future accelerator projects was cut or zeroed out. The B-factory program at SLAC was put on the chopping block, a situation that we managed to [...]
Dec 16 2008
Gravity, in daylight
I became enamored with physics in high school. I remember exactly the moment it happened. The moment it happened was after watching the documentary, “The Origin of the Universe”, hosted by science writer Tim Ferris. Four forces, binding the universe together, uniting at a colossal energy scale the first glimpses of which (Electroweak Unification) we [...]
Dec 12 2008
Ending the week at SFO
What a week. It started at SFO, in a way, and it’s ending here too. SFO is all decked out in holiday cheer – candy cane light posts, snowflakes projected on the big glass wall of the international terminal, a mock-up of the Golden Gate Bridge done in red lights – and oddly quiet now [...]
Dec 11 2008
A physicist in the inner circle
It became official today (at least, all the news agencies seem to be treating it this way): Dr. Stephen Chu, director or Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), is President-elect Obama’s pick for the Secretary of Energy [1]. Chu shared the 1997 Nobel prize in physics for experiments in cooling and trapping atoms, a practice which [...]
Dec 06 2008
Saying goodbye to too many crazy physics nerds
Last night, Jodi and I attended a farewell dinner for one of the students I work with on BaBar. I’ve begun to realize that a lot of the students I’ve come to know in the last year are defending their theses and moving on to better positions in the field. It’s the natural course of [...]
