I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I think Barack Obama is following me.<\/p>\n
The other day I was in Cleveland, east of the downtown area. As I left the city, heading southwest for Cincinnati, I turned on the radio. It was then that I heard it: Barack Obama was in the suburbs east of Cleveland.<\/p>\n
Huh. Weird.<\/p>\n
Today, I awoke and walked up the hill to the Geology-Physics building at the University. When I arrived in the office of one of my colleagues, to start my day before my colloquium, I found out that Obama was to be speaking in Cincinnati today.<\/p>\n
Okay, one city is coincidence, but two? I think this guy is trying to steal my spotlight.<\/p>\n
I, and 500 other researchers, worked our asses off on BaBar for all this data. We sweated and bled. Does Obama think that 485 million pairs of B mesons, or 122 million Upsilon(3S) mesons, just fall from the sky? No. It takes a decade of hard work, international collaboration, and a will to succeed in the face of overwhelming challenges.<\/p>\n
But here’s Obama, whipping through this swing state and firing up crowds with his speeches and his steady political rhetoric. How am I, a simple physicist, supposed to compete with this?<\/p>\n
It’s bad enough that the continuing resolution leaves science funding in a state of cryogenic freeze; why does this guy have to go out and personally challenge the career of a single physicist by following him around and stealing his spotlight?<\/p>\n
OK, I’m kidding. It’s goddamn sweet to be passing through a swing state. There are so many people out trying to get you vote, so many lawn signs and stickers and banners and rallies – it’s just amazing. I know that many Buckeyes think it’s bullshit that the only time they matter is when America needs them to help decide and election. It’s a valid criticism. I say: suck it up. You’re important – enjoy it. I wish California was as much in contest as Ohio.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I think Barack Obama is following me. The other day I was in Cleveland, east of the downtown area. As I left the city, heading southwest for Cincinnati, I turned on the radio. It was then that I heard it: Barack Obama was in the suburbs east of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1089","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"czr-hentry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1089"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1089\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steve.cooleysekula.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}