I’m on the road. I gave a seminar at the University of Michigan yesterday, and spent the working day chatting with various physicists at the department there, exchanging ideas, catching up on what people are up to, etc. The seminar itself went ok. I’ve been talking about extended gravitational thermodynamics, the subject of all my papers so far this year. I think I paced things a bit poorly (trying to squeeze in results from two papers while at the same time being pedagogical about the basic material since it is not familiar to most), so had to rush at the end, but I got the main points in. Lots of good questions.
At the end of the day, I was pleasantly surprised by the offer of whiskey in the break room. Apparently it is a Friday tradition. I began to wonder, and made some inquiries and found out to my delight that it is a direct decendant of a tradition that I (co-) started back in the mid-90s in Santa Barbara!
It was a long time ago, so I am hazy on who the core people were who regularly kept it going with me, but I think it was perhaps Andrew Chamblin and Leon Balents, and it continued after I left (maybe continuing to this day?) A strand of it got transplanted over to U. Mich., apparently by Aki Hashimoto. What a pleasant surprise! And I strongly approve of the Ardberg being part of the mix. A good alternative to the Lagavulin I regularly poured in the old days.
Ok, it is back to LA for me this morning.
-cvj
It may have! Andrew Chamblin may have brought it over after his time at SB.
Hope all is well for you there!
-cvj
We also have an occasional Friday Whisky Tasting* here, not sure if it is descended from Santa Barbara’s or not. Ardbeg featured prominently in our most recent one, as did a few Japanese whiskys.
* For large values of “tasting”.
Fantastic! Thanks for helping spread the tradition!
-cvj
The Santa Barbara Whiskey Friday (aka “postdoc tea”) was still very much alive in 2009 and as far as I hear is still going on. I started a Stony Brook version of it in 2010. It’s nice to see that they have it in Ann Arbor too!