I am a huge fan of the Star Wars series. Even despite the rather poor quality of the prequels, I was engaged by the political and mythological exposition in the three movies. I delight in the mythology of the series, drawn from major world mythologies in human history. A lot […]
The next day was worse. Here we go! August 4, 2006 – 7 am, Moscow Time I couldn’t sleep past 7, a disease I acquired in Moscow. International travel always does that to me. I got up, showered and repacked, and then had a delicious breakfast downstairs in the hotel. […]
My time in Moscow was excellent. Getting out – that was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life. Let me break this down for you. August 3, 2006 9:30 am I arrive at Sheremetvo-2 airport in a car co-hired by myself and two colleagues from England. We part […]
The plenary sessions at ICHEP were what I was most looking forward to, but they didn’t really deliver. I expected to catch some results that I missed during the parallels in the summary talks, but there wasn’t too much “hot stuff” that I hadn’t already seen. What was very clear […]
On the last night of the parallel sessions at ICHEP, a group of us went out for dinner. We were under the leadership of one of our Russian BaBar colleagues, Dmitriy, who wanted to do something a little “touristy” and go to a tram restaurant – a restaurant on rails. […]
Time for another installment of my ICHEP Journal. I kept notes on all the parallel sessions I attended. I tried to mix it up: astrophysics, heavy quark physics, spectroscopy and new states, computing. I tried to avoid topics that are typical to BaBar, things I ought to know, unless there […]
Our trip to Soudan began in San Francisco, hours after the TSA changed the carry-on rules for domestic and international flights. The arrest of 21 (now 24) suspects in and around London, England ignited a knee-jerk blanket ban on all liquids and gels on flights. People who didn’t wake up […]
It’s vacation! Where do physicists go on vacation? Well, some go to exotic locations with lots of people. I pack up and head to my wife’s experiment. She’s currently 2600 feet below the earth, about a mile from here. I’m sitting in our room in the “Simmons House”, one of […]
I kept a paper journal during my travel to, stay in, and return from Moscow. I’ll be reporting here excerpts from that journal over the next few days and weeks. I intended this to be a report on the personal experience of international travel to a critical conference, as well […]
Before coming to Moscow, a friend of mine told me that it was quite an experience to visit the home of a Moscow resident. I’ve not had the chance to do that – to my chagrin – but the story had a theme that echos through Moscow. He said that […]
I arrived in Moscow yesterday with a bunch of other BaBarians on a Delta flight out of JFK airport. We were tired, starting to feel jet-lagged, and eager to get to our hotel. To make a long story short (I’ll post more details from my ICHEP journal later), the taxi […]
It’s the last day before I leave for Russia. In addition, we’re well into the summer heat, getting to temperatures up to 104 degrees. Even our normally cool house has been a sweatbox, and the frequent power outages make running the AC a dicey proposition. We spent much of today […]