Catch Up

Catching up with places I’ve been.

Caltech.

Steve Chu to be Caltech’s commencement speaker. Caltech has found an upgraded mascot. I once wore the old mascot uniform when we were playing Life Bible college. Nothing like signs saying “Darwin was right!” to inflame some sporting events. Who was the person who decided to send out an email to alumni for a survey where the link led to an MIT web address? That’s a good way to get a Techer’s suspicions up (even the Boston version of the Techer might catch that.)

Berkeley

Berkeley physics now webcasts their physics colloquium. They also scored a big NIST grant to fund a high precision/quantum measurement lab. George Smoot was on Big Bang Theory.

Santa Fe Institute

Melanie Mitchell has a new book out: Complexity: A Guided Tour.

UW

Budget mess.  The senate: 14 percent tuition increase, 23 percent budget decrease. The house:10 percent tuition increase, 30 percent budget decrease. Why does the house hate education so? UW TechTransfer kickin’ butt and taking names, but the Life Science Discovery Fund is on the brink of disaster.