Well, we went from the summer of nuts, to the winter of insane, to the fast-paced late-winter of WTF. I’ve been cutting non-essential things out of my life as a result, including this blog. Oh well – last to the table, first out the door. Today, however, I’ve been forcing myself to rest more than usual. I’m between waves right now, a good time to catch some extra sleep, call friends and family, and do things that are off the core list.
Since BaBar switched from being a “B” factor to being a “b” factory, my colleagues and I have been working our asses off to catch as much good physics as possible. A whiplash change of physics program, well-motivated or not, doesn’t mean that all the hard work of the last 10 years just continues to work without intervention. Needless to say, a small change in collider energy has needed a lot of love from the collaboration to stay on the rails. So far, so good.
Last week, BaBar had it’s first “analysis school”. Students, post-docs, and faculty became lecturers to about 70 new or new-ish BaBar members, mostly students. I didn’t recognize about half the people in the room, which felt good. Event in the last year of running, and the last few years of data analysis, BaBar continues to attract the best and brightest students. Their enthusiasm held out over six days of lectures, from 9 am to 6 pm each day, with computer and physics exercises. There were great lectures on how to do an analysis, how to avoid statistics pitfalls, how to understand detector systems, and even how to do back-of-the-envelope calculations. It was great. I wish BaBar had done this 5 years ago.
Jodi’s been traveling a LOT. She’s on her way back today (see below), only to rest for a day before leaving for a big dark matter conference at UCLA on Tuesday. She and I will play plane tag for the next month; I’ll be in Washington, she’ll be in the midwest, and on and on. We’ll have a short break together at the end of March before heading hard and fast into the summer conference cycle.
Whew. I’ve taken some time today to clean up the cottage, spend time with the cats, and even reflect on the fact that I am now an uncle-in-law (and God-parent) to two newborn twin boys. I can’t wait to meet them!
This week is the Babar Collaboration meeting. So much to do!
Meanwhile, let’s keep an eye on Jodi:
