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!