Have I been asleep while the following argument has sprung up among Republicans: the war on Iraq is right because the death and destruction is occuring in Iraq and not in America. Bush used this argument at least two times and after the debate I saw Giuliani make exactly the same argument.
I must have been asleep.
On another note, I was able to mimic Bush almost word for word on a few questions before he answered the questions. It’s like he’s become a song. Or maybe just a broken record.
More $ Please
Go Lazaridis, go Lazaridis, it’s your birthday, go Lazaridis:
Canadian Press
WATERLOO, Ont. — The man who co-founded Research in Motion and helped create a physics research facility in Waterloo, Ont., criticized the federal and provincial governments Monday for not having “the guts” to adequately fund scientific research.
Mike Lazaridis said the governing Liberals in Ottawa and Toronto have “turned their backs” on research.
Mr. Lazaridis donated $100-million to launch the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and $33-million to help start the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo.
The 43-year-old Mr. Lazaridis is the co-founder of RIM, which makes the popular BlackBerry device. He is also the chancellor of the University of Waterloo.
Mr. Lazaridis, who is passionate about research, says politicians are wrapped in “hot potato issues of the day” and have “just lost the guts to face the future.”
“Who are they paying the megabucks to, to tell them that research, you know, isn’t important,” Mr. Lazaridis said. “It just blows me away.”
Mr. Lazaridis made the comments just days before Prime Minister Paul Martin is to attend Friday’s official opening of the Perimeter Institute’s new building. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is scheduled to visit on Saturday.
A passionate advocate of education and research, Mr. Lazaridis likes to emphasize the importance of pure research, noting that it often leads to important and unforeseen discoveries.
New Job
Name: Dave Bacon
Occupation: Postdoctoral Fellow
Employer: Santa Fe Institute
Number of cars in SFI parking lot with personalized plates starting with the letter “Q”: 2
Beauty of the thunderstorm clouds and setting sun on my drive home after my first day of work: Priceless
So who can guess the licencse plates?
Back to Life, Back to Reality
Oh where, oh where, has the Quantum Pontiff gone? The Quantum Pontiff has gone to the glaciers:
The last few weeks have been hectic: fly from Santa Fe to Los Angeles. Then drive from Los Angeles to home in Yreka (on the Oregon, California border.) Next I drove up to Portland with my mom and sister for medical junk. Then I drove up to Missoula, Montana and then camping in Glacier and Yellowstone Parks followed by a night in Bozeman, Montana. After getting thoroughly soaked in the parks, it was off to Banff for a workshop at the Banff International Research Centre where I gave a talk and got to go hiking nearly every afternoon. Next was the long, 23 hour drive home from Banff to Santa Fe, via a night spent in the metropolis of Sheridan, Wyoming. Over 3300 miles driven, 8 states and 1 provence crossed, and I swear that if I have to drive my car again in the near future I’m going to go insane!
Happy New Year's Eve
Today is New Year’s Eve…in Ethiopia. So go out and party like it’s 1997…because according to the Julian calendar, thats what year it is. What I like best is that neither the Julian calender nor the Gregorian calendar get the date of Jesus’s birth correct according to most historians (the Gregorian calendar is off by about 7 years and the Julian calendar is even farther off.) I also like the story of the pope who said the day after October 5, 1582 was October 13, 1582. Man, those were the days when papal authority really meant something. Not like today where the pope can barely influence a presidential election.
Academic Spam
The title to the email said: “Your Manuscript in: Phys Rev Lett, 2003; 90(15):157904” so I open it. It started by congratulating me on the publication of paper and saying how much it impressed the author of the email. But my happy little chemical glow was quickly snuffed out by the realization that the whole email was a strange form of academic spam. The author of this email claims to be the editor of a medical science journal and the content of the email was basically to advertise this journal. Now I may be a doctor, but I’m not THAT kind of doctor: it looks like they mined academic journals in hopes of getting submissions. Strange tactic for a journal. They can’t be doing it for the submission fee ($65), can they? And if I was in the medical field maybe I wouldn’t even realize it was spam. But surely my article on “Bell Inequalities with Communication” isn’t even remotely appropriate for this journal.
The final disturbing part of the email was where it claimed that certain select authors (like, potentially, myself) who review papers for the journal would have priority publishing with the journal. Can anyone think of a reason why this is reasonable?
Portland
Portland is a city of young beer drinkers who like to bike and read books (but, so far, not at the same time.)
Castle Crags
Yesterday I visited a childhood friend of my dad’s in Dunsmuir, CA (just south of Mt. Shasta), Alan Berry, who told me a nice fish story involving my dad and gave me a copy of his bigfoot recordings. When I was growing up, I devoured all of the books in the UFO/bigfoot/pyramids section of our library. Strange way to start off on a scientific career, you ask. Maybe. On the other hand, I learned to tools and trade of being a skeptic by reading these books. And to this day I love to read crazy speculations. I think it may help loosen up my neurons. But perhaps my neurons are so lose they have turned to goo?
Anyway, on to the hiking. By popular request, here are a picture of my new trail running shoes.
Ha! You asked for it, and you got it! The shoes have pretty good grip and are Gortex, so they should be pretty good in wet conditions.
Well, my shoes and I, we went for a run yesterday in the Castle Crags. We started out just off I-5 at the Pacific Crest trailhead. From this trailhead, there is an initial steep climb followed by a stead grade up to the base of the Crags. Then it gets a little steep and running is not as easy. But bounding over boulders can be quite fun (if exhausting!) Here is a picture of the Dome and Mt. Shasta in the background
I had about two hours round trip, so I ran up about 1:10 minutes and just made it to the dome before I had to turn around. Then, going down I made a wrong turn. This led to the embarrassing situation of passing two groups I had just passed running down the mountain. The first group shouted “You’re crazy!” to which I said, “Thank you!” The second group, when I had first seen them one had asked me whether anything was chasing me, and I replied “A big bear!” When I passed this bear group again, I told them, “I keep trying to lure the bear toward you, but he won’t come.” Such is life, running on trails.
Mt. Eddy
On Friday, September 3, 2004 I ran up Mt. Eddy and tested out my new trail running shoes (spiffy black and red.) Mt. Eddy (9025 ft) is west of Mt. Shasta and offers some spectacular views of Shasta. I ran in from the Parks Creek summit(6850 ft) to the Deadfall lakes and then up to the top of Mt. Eddy. The run into the lakes was quite pleasant and I could keep a real good pace (considering that I always take too much water and so my hip pack was bouncing up and down quite amusingly.) The route up to the top was a bit more demanding and I couldn’t really run, but I was moving pretty fast. Also at this point the wind was absolutely furocious. Here is a picture of Mt. Eddy from upper Deadfall lake:
And here is a picture of me (taken by myself, tricky, eh?) and Mt. Eddy
On the way up it was very cold. In fact, amazingly, it had recently snowed. The evidence for this event in early September was not on the ground but in the trees:
Here is the top of Mt. Eddy.
Not so spectacular, eh? But the view! Mt. Shasta, the Trinity Alps, the Marble Mountains, Castle Crags are all very spectacular from the top. Here is Mt. Shasta from the summit
On the way down, one of the people I passed asked if I was “training for something.” “Nope. Just having fun!” Whoop!
Days Off
Well I have a bit of free time until I start my new job at the Santa Fe Institute on September 27. Lets recap the action so far.
August 31: Flew from Santa Fe, NM to Los Angeles, CA via Las Vegas, NV. Saw a lady in Las Vegas wearing a shirt which said, on the front, “Body Piercing Saved My Life,” and on the back there was a picture of two hands with nails through the hands. A young girl inquired about the shirt after reading the front, and the lady promptly turned around to show the back and asked, “Get It?” I got it.
September 1: Left Los Angeles at 5 a.m. This is how I will remember leaving L.A.
Then I had lunch at Harris Ranch with a hot rodding group who made me feel very small. I tried to get them to vote for Kerry, but to the T they were all in W’s camp. And then it occurred to me that they were all from California. No harm, no foul.
Next I had lunch with my grandma
in Sacramento, where we saw some turkeys on our way to lunch.
At lunch, I avoided the turkey melt.