Dec 20 2009
In the movie, “The Time Traveler’s Wife,” author Audrey Niffenegger explores the relationship between a husband, who unpredictably travels through time, and his wife, who must deal with his disappearances and harrowing experiences. But what if it was the wife whose life had become unpredictable, and the husband who had to cope?
In some small way, [...]
Oct 31 2009
The past two days have been full of discussions about the B-Factories Legacy Book. This book, targeted for publication in 2012, will contain a coherent record of the work of the two B-factories: Belle and BaBar. As a member of the BaBar collaboration, I am keenly interested in seeing a digested picture of the flavor [...]
Oct 25 2009
We are enjoying a quiet Sunday morning. This month has been extremely busy, and for at least a little while this weekend we can return to something resembling quiet. Jodi is making pumpkin waffles. “Car Talk” is on the Stevo (my MythTV box), to be followed by “Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me”; this sequence recreates [...]
Oct 17 2009
Today I learned of the death of a former mentor of mine, Richard (Dick) Yamamoto [1]. I thought I would share some memories of Dick, memories which to this day still shape my own behavior as a physicist. What I have often found intriguing about my own life is that it is the short moments, [...]
Aug 04 2009
Just about one year ago, the Large Hadron Collider had a very well-intentioned opening ceremony. It was globally advertised, and along with the opening came a number of strange controversies over how the LHC would destroy the earth. It all soon passed when the reality of a complex frontier physics experiment set in: an accident [...]
Jun 27 2009
After some false starts trying to write this post yesterday, here we go. SLAC was treated to a visit by Secretary Chu, the U.S. Energy Secretary. Unlike previous people in his position, who showered the crowd with dumbed-down bureacro-babble and errant platitudes cobbled together from a patchwork misunderstanding of SLAC’s history, Chu engaged the audience [...]
Jun 19 2009
I’ve spent the last three days of this week in an “undisclosed location”, and now that I’m returning home in preparation for my trip to Spain I’m happy to disclose my little vacation spot. I’ve been at Caltech with Jodi, who has been commuting here for a month now for CDMS “analysis fests”. These are [...]
Jun 13 2009
This summer was always going to be busy. Between executing my normal post-doctoral responsibilities, starting the ramp up on the ATLAS experiment, and getting ready to move to Dallas, I wasn’t expecting a whole lot of down time. This only reminds me that I should have taken a vacation when I (sort of) had the [...]
May 18 2009
Between the heroin addict and the beat cop with the concussion, pale and leaning over a bucket, Professor Erwin Biggle was immensely uncomfortable. The Discovery Channel was droning in the corner, airing some reality TV show about a bunch of surly fisherman gutting tuna or some other horrible thing. The heroin addict was rubbing his [...]
May 13 2009
Jodi and I were catching up on TV shows tonight; she’s recovering from yet another cold, plus some inexplicable abdominal pain that put her in the ER earlier this week, and I’m catching up on all the rest I lost worrying about her. We were really pleased to see that Tom Hanks was on last [...]
Chirp, a microblog Going Up Alleys The Perils of the Ice Queen
