Jodi and I are in Connecticut with my parents now, getting ready for the new year. We went to Northampton, MA last night with my good pal Eric and several of his friends. We had the pleasure of a fine dinner and great music at the “Iron Horse Music Hall”:http://www.iheg.com/iron_horse_main.asp, […]
Life
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The vacation is half over. Christmas is done, and now Jodi and I are getting ready to leave Wisconsin and head to Connecticut. Today, we decided to divert to Madison to relax for one night. This is a great chance to just hit some of our old haunts, spend some […]
This was just about the strangest Chistmas ever. We didn’t open presents, or have a nice sitdown dinner as a family. Nope. Instead, we awoke rather late for Christmas, pastor’s Eve-service message still ringing in our ears, and piled in the car to drive to Green Bay. That’s right – […]
This was, from the public perspective, a difficult year for evolution. I am not saying this because it was challenged by a potentially new theory of biological diversity, nor because it made predictions that were contradicted in the lab or in nature. “In fact, scientifically this has been hailed as […]
The BaBar Collaboration meeting is over, and it was as exhausting and fulfilling as I had hoped. Despite the necessary shutdown to address the safety culture at SLAC (which occurred just over a year ago), we have bounced back with enthusiasm and science. The upcoming winter conferences will be a […]
When I hit the 190s for the number of blog entries I’d made so far, I really had it in my mind to make some notable remarks at entry 200. However, I was so excited about the Alaska cyclotron story I totally missed 200. So, here’s to entry number 201, […]
I’ve been silent the last week, but that was primarily due to the intervention of the Thanksgiving holiday. Those three days right before the holiday’s start were filled with meetings to finalize or start reviews of several projects, a code freeze for the Braidwood experiment, and my initiation of an […]
I just got off the phone with Jodi, and she said it’s snowing in Minnesota. I WANT SNOW!!! Right now, this is the best I can manage:
Now that we’re off daylight savings time, I leave work only to be greeting by a world cloaked, a thin veil of bright sky clinging to the ridgeline of the Santa Cruz mountains. Tonight, however, was just a little bit different. While we’ve been enjoying some cool, cloudly days this […]
It’s a good day, and a miserable day, all at once. This day is like a simultaneous quantum superposition that, once collapsed, remained in a state of indefinite distinction. I awoke this morning a little after 6 so that Jodi and I could hit the polls before she boarded her […]
For many years, there has been a raging argument between engineers, scientists and the general public. This debate doesn’t center over whether humans and monkeys share a common ancestor. The brouhaha has nothing to do with whether God kicked the universe off in a big bang, or even whether God […]
In California, this is the week before the November special election to vote on seven ballot measures, several of which modify the state constitution. Trying to revisit my performance from last November as a “good citizen”, I am reviewing the actual text (I hate TV ads and I hate nearly […]