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 […]
It seems that I cannot watch the Independent Lens program, “The Atom Smashers” [1], on my local PBS stations. Help! I really want to see this program. If you know of a (legit) way to get it on the internet, let me know. Maybe it’ll appear on the website, maybe […]
In order to get some work done today, free from the pressures of an open-office-door policy, Jodi has escaped to an undisclosed location (with me in tow, happy to also get work done). She and at least one of her colleagues will be here today, and then we’ll eventually shuffle […]
For those of us who experienced high school in the nineties, especially high school in suburbs or more rural parts of America, there is a certain experience one had with those around you. I was a nerd, not very sociable, and that made me uninterested in parties. But it made […]
For those of you trying to find news about the fatal car accident in front of SLAC this morning, the accident report has started to make rounds in the local news: http://www.almanacnews.com/news/show_story.php?id=2849
This is the last leg of the flight back to San Jose. It’s about 5 pm CA time, and we’re mercifully on time tonight. I know I always say this, but it’s hard for me to believe that I woke up in Lafayette, IN this morning and am now lurking […]
Yesterday, I hit the road from Bloomington and headed north to West Lafayette, and Purdue University. Purdue is a place I knew little about before I arrived, but the many posters on the walls of the physics department told the tale. From detector fabrication (CDF hadron calorimeter, CLEO silicon detector, […]
What is a Hoosier? I never realized until last night how long I’ve wondered that, but never bothered to just go and look up the answer. This is an amazingly simple question with, it turns out, no simple answer. According to the bits on Wikipedia [1], the exact origin of […]
Tomorrow, I am heading back to the Midwest for a brief round of seminars. My travels will take me to Indiana University and then Purdue. I am really looking forward to this, as there are people I respect greatly at both locations. I’m even looking forward to the plane ride; […]
Millie thought back to the time she’d messed around with that Duke kid, the one that strutted around like he was king of the penthouse but he was really just a thieving piece of shit who slept around for homework. It still wasn’t quite as disconcerting as this e-mail. She […]