I’ve heard more (good, mostly American) jazz as background music in shops and cafes over the last three months in Japan than the previous fifty years in the US and UK.
Hard work is good work.
Somewhere between stupefaction and fury.
Seen earlier on a slide:
We are in the Golden Age of Theoretical Particle Physics, free from any experimental hints that would restrict free thinking.
Hmmmm… I see some possible problems with this approach.
The bars weren’t open this morning
They must’ve been voting for a new president or something
…
Honest to goodness, the tears have been falling
All over this country’s face
It was better before, before they voted for What’s-His-Name
This was supposed to be the new world
—X, “The New World” (1983)
I voted… in San Francisco (my last US residence),… from Japan (where I am on sabbatical),… by fax.
No one is completely normal for the same reason you don’t have any Monte Carlo samples near the peak of a multivariate probability distribution.
Two views of Mount Fuji, famous or otherwise.
Nobel prize in physics for the development of machine learning techniques. Interesting choice — incredibly consequential (it lies behind large language models like ChatGPT etc), but arguably not “physics”.
From Ninomiya House, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan.
R.I.P. UC Berkeley Professor Paul Richards, a pioneer of designing experiments to measure the cosmic microwave background, including MAXIMA, on which I had the honor of collaborating in the late 90s.
Giants vs Dragons, live from Tokyo.
The only gaijin in the onsen.
I’ve arrived at QUP (full name: International Center for Quantum-field Measurement Systems for Studies of the Universe and Particles) at the KEK lab in Tsukuba, Japan, for the start of my sabbatical. I’ll be here through December.
Travelling in Japan as Typhoon no. 10 (Shanshan) approaches. We were staying near a town, Beppu, and received an emergency alert recommending the evacuation of the elderly. At only 58, I was instead able to leave on my own terms.
After years of planning, we’re in Japan, where I’ll be travelling to the KEK lab in Tsukuba in a couple of weeks, for the official start of my sabbatical.
We’re on a supposedly fast (tourist-filled) boat from Gili islands to Sanur on Bali. Rough water, and engine has cut out nine or ten times so far. 🤞 (Update: we made it — late, fume-sodden and queasy…)
Today’s travel highlights include drinking Indonesian civet coffee at Kopi Loewak Mataram and choreographed dancing to Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting” with a group of Malaysian tourists at the Borobudur Buddhist Temple in Java (as one does).
More cosmic topology from the Compact Collaboration: we show that the global structure of space can induce parity violation in cosmological observables — which usually requires small-scale parity-violating particle (micro-) physics.
Paul Krugman correctly pins the blame for the Tory disaster on austerity, and worries that “Labour’s stated plans lack any ambition to reverse austerity.” (They always bought the false narrative of necessary cuts rather than bold spending even with low interest rates.)
R.I.P. John J Quenby, emeritus professor of Physics at Imperial College. John had a wide-ranging career at the intersection of particle physics and astrophysics, with interests from cosmic rays to dark matter and gravitational waves, and served as one of the first heads of Astrophysics at Imperial.
Remember, not everyone has the same cultural background: Today, I explained that I was going on “sabbatical” to my Chinese grad student. Which, of course, required discussing the sabbath, and then the Bible, the Abrahamic religions, the book of Genesis, and the 10 commandments…
An unanticipated downside of large British electrical plugs is that a slug can crawl up inside and electrocute itself, as I have just learned from experience. Do not ask about the sizzling and crackling noise.
It’s the summer solstice so time for my annual reminiscence of seeing Sun Ra and Don Cherry celebrate the rising sun from Battery Park in Manhattan with @disquiet in 1989.
I still haven’t made it to Stonehenge for the celebrations, but Lisa has (more on this later).
Just off the “phone” (well, zoom) with the Naked Scientists podcast/radio show (don’t worry — audio only) talking about cosmic topology.
Swan school (Barnes, London, UK)
