whirlwind tour

The latest intallment of "where's that hottie?!" took me from Geneva, back to the Hague, and out to the San Francisco Bay Area, and back (to the Hague again). (Go frequent flier miles!) I had 5 surprisingly jam-packed days -- two in Berkeley, three in Palo Alto -- to determine the location of my impending continuing education plans. Homesickness made the decision harder than you might think, particularly after a tasty lunch, multiple rounds of house-made lemon-mint soda, and a run-in with my favorite crook-tailed orange cat, Pony Boy. (OK, I didn't actually see Pony Boy on this trip... I saw my dissertation adviser. She's less furry.) Anyway, addled by the scent of Berkeley in full spring bloom (and probably by jet lag) I was highly biased against my other option by the time I got back down to Palo Alto. And yet... and yet. With the cards on the table Berkeley just couldn't beat Stanford where it counts.



(Uh, that would be the financial aid package. and the generous joint-degree offerings that will give me credit for finishing my dissertation. and the incredibly with-it staff. and the high ranking. and ... you get the idea.)



Oh, and the classrooms have these chairs. Oh, yes. :)

my new friend Alice, aka the Doomsday Machine

I went to visit Alice on Sunday. There was a big special open house day that apparently 50,000 other people took part in too. See, there's this 27 km tunnel -- you might have heard of it recently because some people think its going to destroy the earth, or at least Hawaii -- because the LHC particle accelerator in the tunnel is used to speed particles up to just below the speed of light, and crash them into each other. Then there are these big "detectors" at the crash sites, which measure for different things. Alice is one of them, and hopes to measure the smashing of large ions (hence the name... A Large Ion Collision Experiment) i.e. lead nuclei and to be able to recreate quark-gluon plasma. Quark-gluon plasma (not to be confused with quark-gluon plasma, which is probably much tastier) is what existed in the tiny fractions-of-a-second before matter was created after the big bang. So, according to the German CERN intern who was ahead of us in line to get tickets, if anything is going to create a black hole (or a dragon, see article) it's going to be the Alice experiment.

Neat, huh?

A Large Ion Collider Experiment

(Why would it create a black hole? Well, you see, when a star dies, its matter cools and condenses, becoming smaller. It has such a huge amount of gravity that all the atoms get squished closer together than normal and occasionally the atoms collapse into each other and the protons and the electrons start to touch and cancel each other out and then you get a neutrons-only playground but then those keep collapsing and you get ... "nothing" -- mostly because the gravitational pull is so strong, that you can't figure out what's in there and come back out and tell NASA. So... some people think maybe if you crash two nuclei together at just below the speed of light then conditions would be right to create a black hole, though ... it's only two nuclei, not an entire star's worth and, you know, we're still on earth and not in space and it would be subject to earth's conditions, so see, it's all very unlikely.)

SCIENCE!

new year, new look, new locale

One of these years I will start blogging again and be in the exact same place I was when I left off. No such luck this time. :) Where did we leave off, Milwaukee? Well, we made it to California and stayed there all fall, enjoying our favorite enclaves and walks, sunny days, the vegetable market, and even braving the fish monger's and a new pizza place. But, as is in our nature, as soon as the weather turns cold, we go and fly off somewhere colder. To the Netherlands, this time. Oh sure, you might think of tulips and wooden shoes, but let me remind you about a little something called...

THE NORTH SEA.

That's right, frosty, frothy waves slapping against giant metal fishing trawlers, the wind wailing through the rigging of the ships at harbor, kicking sand up into your face and hair as you walk along the dead empty sand-grassy dunes where rusted green German bunkers squat -- oh yeah, THAT North Sea.

Of course, now it's April, so it's more like the North Sea with the row of summer-only beach clubs, bungee jumping, casinos, ice cream stands, windsurfing and para-sailing. But everyone is still wearing coats.