Congrats to Bill Foster March 9, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in politics.add a comment
Hey — there was a special election yesterday in Illinois for Bill Hastert’s old seat — and Bill Foster, the ex particle physicist, won! How fantastic is that (this was the first campaign I ever donated money to).
Unfortunately, this was a special election - so they now have to get themselves re-elected in November! Good luck, Bill - there is a lot of work ahead, and very little time to get something done when he stands for re-election again in November!
This Would Never Happen in the USA! March 9, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in Marseille, life.1 comment so far
My sister is here visiting me in Marseille for 18 hours. We went to a couscous restaurant. My sister sat down first and I pulled out my chair, which was next to hers. It was unusually heavy — because there was a very large cat sleeping on it (a cat of unusual size — as opposed to a rodent of unusual size). The cat, a bit annoyed that I’d disturbed him, got up and walked onto Viv’s lap - and there he stayed for the whole dinner.
He did get a bit of couscous in his fur, but didn’t seem to mind too much. 
Old Marseille, New Marseille March 7, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in Marseille.add a comment
It is hard to believe that these two buildings are actually one building. The difference is the residents and store front for the left building sprung for a cleaning and the ones on the right didn’t.
This is typical Marseille. The town has a reputation for being dirty - you’ve never seen so much dog-poop on the sidewalks. But Marseille is changing. The tourists are starting to show up. Whole city blocks are being renovated and turned into relatively expensive condos. Cruise ships are now a regular sight at the main port. The gentrification I watched happen in Wicker Park in Chicago is happening here too.
I really hope that Marseille doesn’t loose its character in this process. There is something rough and tumble and alive about this city — similar to Chicago (vs., say, LA). I’m not worried - this is the Mediterranean - and there is a certain way of life that can not be gentrified away.
To really get an idea of how dirty the stone is click through to the larger photo sizes.
LHC On Blogs March 6, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in CERN, science.add a comment
LHC has shown up on some blogs in the tech-sector recently. Gizmodo has some fantastic pictures of the ATLAS detector under construction.
Scoble also got a tour of the LHC, led around by Frank Taylor, a prof from MIT I know. Scoble has a huge readership in the world of tech-blogging (one of the “a-list” bloggers).
I like these efforts - inviting non-particle physicists into our field and everything we do takes continuous work. After all, most people don’t live this science day and day out - and when we suddenly show up with a new W mass measurement… well, hard to expect people to get excited out-of-the-box. The only way it works is continuous communication - and these sorts of things are just the ticket.
McCain March 6, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in politics, science.add a comment
So, McCain is going to be the republican candidate. Now that that looks official it is time to pester him with lots of science questions. You are reporter? Ask him where a science advisor will sit in his administration? How about basic research funding? Support the increase in NSF/OOS funding that others have been talking about? How about climate change? Not a reported? Contact his campaign and ask him and his staffers!
At the very least, make it part of the conversation. I realize the economy and the war are items 1 and 2 with the public right now - but science is too important to the future of our country to be ignored!
[P.S. (can you do a PS on a blog posting!?) - Please note that I'm not talking specifically about particle physics here - I am talking about all of science with a preference for basic (or pure) research.]
I’d urge you to do the same thing with the Democrats, but there is some real sorting-out work that has to be done there - they need to concentrate on that. I guess they both need super delegates at this point - no way this won’t leave a bad taste in people’s mouths one way or the other.
On Fleecing Tourists March 5, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in CERN, travel.2 comments
I visited Lausanne last night to have dinner with some friends. I don’t have a rental car on this trip to CERN. So I had to take public transportation. Round trip that was 6 CHF for the bus/tram and 41 CHF for the train. That comes to 47 CHF - which is about $47 bucks for about 1 hour of being on public transportation (and standing at bus/tram/train stops for about 40 minutes). That is some serious money!
On the way out I ran into a friend that happens to live at CERN. She makes that commute every day - so of course she gets passes to make things cheaper: 10 CHF round trip.
The 5 bottles of wine that were consumed over dinner took some of the edge off, but that was a crazy expensive! It is cheaper to rent a car for one day - about 35 euros!!
Physics Pictures March 4, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in photography, physics life.add a comment
I’ve long been a fan pictures of things physics. Physics generates some truly spectacular images and is one way to make it more accessible! A few years ago as chair of the awards committee I ran a small photograph contest for members of the department. That was fun. But department level efforts like this are small time.
The APS is currently collecting photos of research to put on their home page. I wish they would publish a picture book of these things - and expand the selection of pictures they currently have up (a history).
BTW, if you want to see a large archive of particle physics pictures you should check out the Fermilab archive of pictures (click on the 5 blocks at the top to select the type of pictures).
What is this helicopter doing? March 3, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0.7 comments
I spotted this guy hovering behind the D0 outback building last week when I was at Fermilab. What the heck was it doing there? Practice?
Robust Trigger March 2, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in ATLAS, D0.2 comments
I’ve got to give a talk on Trigger Robustness next Tuesday (the link is protected unless you are a member of ATLAS - sorry). This is supposed to be robustness in all aspects of the word: against beam-gas events, against DAQ problems, against calibration problems, etc.
If you were attending this thing and were to hear a report from the Tevatron, what would you want to hear?
Building ROOT on Windows March 2, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in ROOT, computers.2 comments
Not so much interest to most people here…
So, on Windows, there has been the occasion that I’ve needed to build ROOT. In particular, on windows, this is because the released version of ROOT is not built against python. I also find myself doing lots of building building when buts are found in root (yeah, I know, ROOT doesn’t have bugs).
The standard way to do the build is download and install cygwin. It is a rather heavy install, however, as any of you who have installed it know. Axel, a member of the ROOT team, put together a minimal set of tools that will build ROOT using the MSVC compilers. I built a small UI on top of that along with an installer to make it easier to get onto your machine.
I found this pretty useful for getting my work done, so I thought I’d release it. Actually, it has been finished for months, I just never seemed to get around to finishing off the last bit. So, here it is. The UI is horrible, but it works…
