Saturday, March 24, 2007

This and That

  • Several visitors ended up on this blog searching for 'Denzel Washington's marital status', for which we are the first Google hit. The reason you find in the footer, where I've put a quotation from the movie 'Deja vu': I asked you to explain it to me, not to talk science. In case you haven't seen the movie, it's kind of a weird wormhole-timetravel-romance with several closed loops. I was a bit disappointed by the ending because the story breaks its own inner logic for a more dramatic rescue scenario. Anyway. The quotation has to go, sorry. And I don't know whether he's married.


  • Next weekend, I will give PI's public lecture for the Black Hole Session:

    Frontiers of our Knowledge
    Presented by Sabine Hossenfelder, Perimeter Institute
    Summary: Theoretical and experimental physics work hand in hand to broaden our understanding about the universe that we live in and man's place in the world. In the 21st century, nature has given us quite some puzzles to solve, in the microscopic (particle physics) as well as in the macroscopic (cosmology) range. These open questions at the threshold of the unknown have lead theoretical physicists to formulate possible solutions whose experimental tests are awaited soon. I will talk about these current limits to our knowledge, and about the insights that new experiments like the Large Hadron Collider can provide us with. A central point will be the possibility of large extra dimensions and black hole production at the LHC.
    LOCATION: Bob room, 4th floor, Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics


    I am particularly proud of this maximally vague abstract. The problem is currently that besides the summary, I have no idea what I'm going to tell the people. In case you are around, drop in, I assure you it's going to be entertaining.




  • Some days ago, Jonathan Shock from Jon's Travel Adventures nominated us for the thinking blogger award.

    It turned out this is part of a meme, and I am supposed to nominate 5 further people who I think are worth the award. Though I find the idea of the award itself nice, I am 'thinking blogger' enough to realize that 'awarding' it through a meme it completely nonsensical, especially if the number of people awarded is (ideally) supposed to inflate exponentially. I don't know who started this, but this is a dead end and I'm not going to award anybody.

    Many thanks to Jonathan anyhow.


  • The funniest thing I've read in a while: stupid things people said in court. I'm not sure whether these are all confirmed quotations, but it's funny anyhow. If you ever thought you asked a stupid question, you can't top these:
    • Q: How many times have you committed suicide?
    • Q: Were you present when your picture was taken?
    • Q: How far apart were the vehicles at the time of the collision?

    For more, see this website. My favorite is this one:

    Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
    A: No.
    Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
    A: No.
    Q: Did you check for breathing?
    A: No.
    Q: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began
    the autopsy?
    A: No.
    Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
    A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
    Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
    A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere.


  • And the say of the week:

      "Reason will not lead to solution
      I will end up lost in confusion"

    ~The Cardigans


A nice weekend to all of you!

11 comments:

  1. Bee: I see that we share similar senses of humor. See if any of these tickle your funny bone.

    Have a good weekend too, and don't forget to dance!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Bee,

    would you please again take a look at the comments for "filtering Gravity"..

    Bitte..?

    sorry for being a nag..
    Dir auf den Keks gehen.

    http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keks

    best
    Klaus

    ReplyDelete
  3. Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
    A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
    Q: But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?
    A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere

    Bee, it is worth noting that whilst we can travel back in Time in our minds, and search for memories of our childhood or our first love or our first car, gosh even our first 'crash' if you like

    There is growing evidence that yesterday no longer EXISTS, it was replaced by Today, and Today will soon be replaced >>>>

    History and archeology do not take us back to the past, but look at what has passed (the past).

    Have a Nice Day, Everyday!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Amara, pity the sound is missing from the spanish dancer in Granada

    First time I've seen someone do the dance on a 'tablau'
    which looks like a hover board!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Quasar9: It was Spring break for the country's universities, and Granada was full of young people and Spanish tourists and occassional troupes of hippie street performers. Do you see these drummers ? There's our dancer, who was usually wearing a pair of clunky Doc Marten-like boots as her troupe of drummers travelled from plaza to plaza, performing for the tourists and asking for money. The girl was the star of the 'show', however. At some point in the middle of the drumming, she puts on her dancing shoes, lays the wooden board on the ground and cleans it off, steps on the board, and proceeds to dance to the drums. It was a marvelous transformation. She transfixed her audience.

    I am still learning this little camera and haven't tried out yet the video and sound option. I think that I captured her energy, though, don't you think?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hi Bee,

    not sure that this meme wouldn't work... Certainly it won't inflate exponentially, because people will tend to nominate the same bloggers over and over again. If every nominated only nominates 5 others once then you might very well end up with a representative poll (at least for this very special basic population).


    Gruesse aus dem sonnig-fruehlingshaften Frankfurt,

    Andreas

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hi Amara,

    thanks :-)

    Hi Klaus,

    will do,

    Hi Quasar,

    what do you mean with yesterday no longer 'exists'?

    Hi Andi,

    yes, that's what I also thought, but you'd have to tell people they can nominate others several times, and these people should count nominations. And what would be the point in them nominating 5 people again and again? One way or the other, it would be better to just have a poll with nominations.

    Best,

    B.

    ReplyDelete
  8. By some funny coincidence I've learned on the radio today that Denzel Washington has a son, John David, who plays American football here in Germany in the team of the Hamburg Sea Devils...

    ReplyDelete
  9. Hi Amara, you certainly captured the energy ...

    I expected her to be accompanied by spanish guitars and 'clapping'

    but drums can provide the rythm and beat just as well

    Love Granada & Seville, too
    Full of mixed Culture & History!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Holes in liquids

    Deja vu that sensation of having been here (or somewhere) before, like caught in a loop or Groundhog Day

    So Bee, where is Yesterday?

    ReplyDelete
  11. Can you take me high enough
    Can you fly me over
    yesterday
    Can you take me high enough
    Its never over,
    yesterday
    's just a memory
    away

    ~ Styx, High Enough

    ReplyDelete

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