It’s been a few days since I returned from Sweden. The flight back was uneventful, and I highly recommend Scandinavian Airlines for traveling to northern Europe. They were very nice, generous with food and alcohol, and nice planes. Not bad for cross-Atlantic coach! Today, I checked the workshop website and […]
This is my last full day in Uppsala, a chance to finish out the workshop and then pound the pavement looking at museums, parks, and palaces. This has been an extraordinary trip, both in terms of the wonder of Sweden and the breadth of physics covered at this workshop. My […]
“Are you here for business or personal?” “Business,” I replied. “Sekula . . . is that Finnish?” “Lithuanian,” I said, “Sekulavich”. “Oh ya, that makes sense.” And with that, the passport control officer at Swedish customs waved me through. I found it interesting that my time in Sweden began with […]
I’ve been taking a vacation from vacation. After returning from the Minnesota-Wisconsin-Illinois extravaganza, which was itself a recovery from Moscow, I spend the past few weeks recovering from vacation. At first, I was absolutely unmotivated to do anything. Writing the two talks, one for ICHEP and a much longer one […]
When I lived in Boston, I fell in love with TechTV. This coincided with the decline of TV for me and Jodi – we grew to realize that we liked, less and less, the crap you’re forced to buy on cable. In an era of “on demand” content, podcasts, and […]
Well, the ants are back. In the house, that is. Jodi discovered them sneaking in through a crack in the foundation, using a gap in the bathroom baseboard as an entrance. I sealed the crack as best I could, but it was clear that we needed to draw them elsewhere. […]
It was inevitable. Agree or not with what our administration does in Iraq, it was a done deal that eventually the fight would be compared to World War II. On a day when the President is speaking to a large veterans’ association, I see in his speech a gross mischaracterization […]
Language has always fascinated me. It really began when I took Latin in high-school (a love for which was recently rekindled by a “edutainment” program packaged with the KDE desktop manager: KLatin). The way that so much meaning could be hidden in a few words, a few well-chosen endings on […]
Well, I am back in California. After a very pleasant two week trek through the upper Midwest (driving a total of 2300 miles from Minneapolis, to Soudan, to Park Falls, Oshkosh, Milwaukee, Madison, Fermilab, Milwaukee, Park Falls, and then Minneapolis), I am picking up my life here at SLAC. But, […]
Earlier in this vacation, I said that I was excited about getting rain, thunderstorms, and maybe even a tornado. I argued as follows: I didn’t travel 2000 miles for weather I can get for free in California. Last night, I got my wish. Jodi fell asleep around 10, and I […]
I haven’t been back to Naperville since I last attended a Braidwood collaboration meeting, a few months before the project was canceled by the Department of Energy without peer review. Yeah, I’m still harping on that, but it’s a point worth making (over and over). I’m here now to present […]
Yesterday, Jodi and I spent the day in Madison, WI. This is where, about three years ago, we graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with our degrees in physics. We took this opportunity not only to seek out our old haunts, but also to catch up with the groups that […]