I came to Wisconsin to escape the annoyances of daily life and enjoy an actual Christmas break, something that the Federal government robbed me of last year. I’ve been having a great time. But today, some of the old humdrum kicked me in the teeth. One of my aunts (in-law) […]
As I go into the holidays, with lots of traveling and interrupted internet and phone service, I wanted to reward my faithful readers with my tech pick favorites for 2008. I think these are the things that you should check out in the new year. These are not things that […]
One year ago yesterday, the U.S. Congress passed the FY08 omnibus spending bill. This marked a moment of significant destruction to the particle physics programs in the U.S. Investment in future accelerator projects was cut or zeroed out. The B-factory program at SLAC was put on the chopping block, a […]
I became enamored with physics in high school. I remember exactly the moment it happened. The moment it happened was after watching the documentary, “The Origin of the Universe”, hosted by science writer Tim Ferris. Four forces, binding the universe together, uniting at a colossal energy scale the first glimpses […]
What a week. It started at SFO, in a way, and it’s ending here too. SFO is all decked out in holiday cheer – candy cane light posts, snowflakes projected on the big glass wall of the international terminal, a mock-up of the Golden Gate Bridge done in red lights […]
It became official today (at least, all the news agencies seem to be treating it this way): Dr. Stephen Chu, director or Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), is President-elect Obama’s pick for the Secretary of Energy [1]. Chu shared the 1997 Nobel prize in physics for experiments in cooling and […]
Last night, Jodi and I attended a farewell dinner for one of the students I work with on BaBar. I’ve begun to realize that a lot of the students I’ve come to know in the last year are defending their theses and moving on to better positions in the field. […]
I injured my ankle on an over-aggressive run back in late August or early September. Since then, I haven’t been able to run more than about a mile before inviting shooting pain. However, I’ve still needed a stress outlet, so I dusted off my road bike and started taking rides […]
With the help of a friend of mine, I was finally able to watch the Independent Lens program “The Atom Smashers”. The thoughts of this friend, Joe, are available on his blog [1]. Jodi and I watched the program together. We both felt the same thing – that the amazing […]
On my seminar tour, I took the opportunity to ask about the status of the LHC. I knew, by the end of my first group of seminars, that the damage to the accelerator was extensive in one section and that a lot of work was needed to repair it. I […]
Does anybody else remember Galeon? Galeon was a very light-weight web browser that appeared in 2000 and which I quickly adopted as my favorite browser. In contrast with the things available to linux at the time – Mozilla and Netscape – this was a dream. It was fast, delivered only […]
As President Obama chooses those with whom he will surround himself in the executive branch, one choice jumped out at me these past few weeks. That person is Larry Summers, who is famous for two reasons: his service to the Clinton administration as a high-ranking official, and his moment of […]