This and That

Some random things that caught my attention recently:

• If you like PhD comics, they're working on a movie: Trailer here.


• The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf set a new world record for magnetic fields with 91.4 teslas.


• You have 1 week left to work out some detail of the 100 year spaceship and send in an abstract for the public symposium Sep 30 - Oct 2nd in Orlando "intended to seed creative energy to “kick-start” the long term research goals." It's for sentences like this that you hire PR people.


• Partly related, I learned the other day from SciAm that the new buzzword after "synergy" and "horizontal integration" is now "convergence." So let's converge on something then.


• Also, the new-name creationists have switched from iIng everything from iKnow to iDontcare and are now replacing spaces with dots, following the ICANN's decision to allow customizable URL suffixes. Ironically though, Google seems to replace the dot with a space if you search for a tag. Anyway, I see huge potential for the arXiv. No more SUSY or MSSM, it's now mond.4u and beyond.higgs. Leave your physics-themed suggestions in the comments!


• Something to look at: Camouflage art.


• And something else to look at: Dear Photograph


• If you like the comic series Asterix and Obelix, you'll love this Study of traumatic brain injuries. To quote from the conclusions "Roman nationality, hypoglossal paresis, lost helmet, and ingestion of the magic potion were significantly correlated with severe initial impairment of consciousness (p ≤ 0.05)."