Whew. This was a long pair of weeks. Between the marathon travel (and the actualy marathon for Jodi), the return to CA, two days of non-stop meetings (and work?), then travel to and from DC for my friend’s wedding, Jodi and I are EXHAUSTED. In addition to exhausted, we are […]
We’re in Washington D.C., primarily for the wedding of a friend of mine from college. Secondarily, Jodi and I are using this opportunity to hit the Hill and talk to some of our elected representatives. We decided to try for appointments with three offices: Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin, Congressman David Obey, […]
This weekend was the date of Jodi’s marathon run in Milwaukee. We left early on Friday morning, bleary eyed and eager to get to our destination. After a wonderful party with friends and family on Saturday night, we awoke at 6:15 on Sunday morning to get ready. Jodi left the […]
The annual SLAC User’s Organization (SLUO) meeting is today. One of the talks was about the synchrotron light source science going on here at the laboratory. Included in that was rresearxh done to better understand the complex process of blood clotting. This is a topic embraced by Creationists and Intelligent […]
Last week was a real killer. After I spent a tough but rewarding Monday at UCSF, it seemed I didn’t get a single minute to myself. Now that the professors in my group are back at MIT, I’m trying to make sure that the students are making progress and that […]
Today I had the *immense* pleasure of a day away from SLAC. Wait a second. That sounded all wrong. You see, the pleasure was not in the separation from my laboratory; the pleasure was the company I kept while away, and the work I got to do. I got into […]
If Katrina was any indication, then we can make some predictions about tropical storm Rita. This storm, headed to the Florida Keys, is aimed straight at the heart of the warm Guld of Mexico. Katrina, a storm which ravaged Florida before entering the Gulf, soaked energy from the waters west […]
Every year, scientists from all over the United States make personal visits to their elected representatives in Washington D.C. This ability to have an individual interaction to achieve collective action is a wonderous feature of our democratic society. When I first experienced this in 2003, I shared the optimisim of […]
Katrina is projected by some to cost the United States $200 billion. That’s basically the pricetag, as it stands now, of the war in Iraq. The irony here has not been overlooked, and the contradictions in a war to prevent terrorism being matched by a disaster we saw coming have […]
My dad is a high school chem teacher in CT, and has always been a huge influence on me as a scientist and educator. I was browsing his class notes from the first week of school, and ran across the “old standard” I love to see: THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD. I […]
I had the pleasure of a long visit by one of my oldest, dearest friends. Eric arrived here from Hartford last Thursday afternoon, and it was pretty much nonstop fun until this morning, when he flew back. Eric has several weeks’ worth of vacation accrued over the past year, and […]
My colleague “Caolionn O’Connell has written a PSA for physics”:http://qd.typepad.com/13/2005/09/public_service_.html. I don’t know why, but I kept thinking about that Prairie Home Companion skit about how being an English major teaches you the life skills you need to succeed. Then again, success in physics really does prepare you to solve […]