Daily Archives: November 23, 2006

Nuclear Guy Goes Nuclear

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star rhic goldFollowing on from her earlier post (with Stefan) on the research effort to understand Brookhaven’s RHIC physics with string theory, Bee reports some things she heard about a nuclear physics conference in Shanghai (Quark Matter ’06). Apparently Larry McLerran -who is at Brookhaven- did a 20 minute anti-string (and anti-Brian Greene) rant. You can see some slides etc, over there.

(Note for the non-expert:- RHIC means “Relativisitc Heavy Ion Collider”. Picture on right (click for larger): Tracks from collision of two beams of gold nuclei -the heavy ions- recorded by the STAR detector at the RHIC experiment. More here. In a sense, a new form of matter is formed in these conditions – the issue is how to understand its properties.)

This sort of thing is rather funny, so far (apparently Brian Greene was given a “Pinocchio award” in the talk?! ). Let’s hope it does not turn into something serious.

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Some Things I Like About The Doo Dah Parade, II

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(Continuing from previous…)

…Then there’s the Disco drill team, which was really excellent.

doo dah disco

Their drill? Some serious synchronized Disco dancing, of course. They did the “Hustle”, along with various standard Saturday Night fever moves, and the crowd were very appreciative. Inevitably they did “YMCA”… and just as inevitably the crowd spontaneously joined in with the arm movements. (I think that this is hard-wired into a whole generation – rather like the reaction you get from all the women at a party if anyone puts on “I will Survive”.)

You know that they did not have to make those costumes… they probably sit in wardrobes (closets) every year since being retired in the late 70s, waiting for their moment in the sun once a year:

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