Why they pay me

Today, a student comes into my office. This is one of the physics summer students who are here as a result of a nation-wide selection for the brightest. Here's the exchange: "I can't run GIMP on the server." "Did you try typing 'gimp' on the command line?" "I did, and it didn't work." I sigh, and start…

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Mojo follow-up

In my previous post, I mentioned that I was working on a talk about the history of Nevis. I presented that talk yesterday. I'd been worried about how the talk would be received. I focused more on the history of the Nevis estate and on the construction of the Nevis synchrocyclotron than the research we've done in…

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Playing with the Mojo

I recently picked up Playing at the World by Jon Peterson. This book is a history of the game Dungeon & Dragons.

Since many of my readers are Wiccan, I’ll use an analogy that will make sense to them: Playing at the World does for D&D what Ronald Hutton’s Triumph of the Moon did for Wicca. It explores the different elements and influences that resulted in D&D, and follows the chain of influence forward as D&D affected the world around it. [1] [2]

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Two addenda

Two additional items about my previous post: - It looks like power will probably not be restored at work until Tuesday afternoon at the earliest. Keep those cards and letters going to my g-mail address. - It was not a woodchuck that got into the transformer. It was a raccoon. Mrs. Bucktooth is relieved and overjoyed, but…

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For anyone trying to reach me by e-mail

My work e-mail address isn't working. Please use one of my g-mail addresses (William, then a dot, then Seligman) or the Acorn Garden one (again, with a dot). The reason why the work e-mail address is down is that power is out at the lab. There was a serious transformer breakdown because a woodchuck crawled inside. Funeral…

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It was a nice decade while it lasted.

Once every two years, the Particle Data Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories publishes their Review of Particle Physics. This is both a web site and thick magazine, about the size of the New York telephone directory. The production issues associated with such a volume are so complex that, even though it’s only published biennially, publication is distributed among several physics journal publishers; in 2010 it was published by Journal of Physics; this year it was published by Physical Review D.

In other words, it’s a big deal.

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