What Happens at the Global Physics Summit Stays at the Global Physics Summit

Later this afternoon, I will be taking a train to Anaheim to go to the Global Physics Summit, where I will be participating in the March-Meeting wing of this summit. I'll only be around for about a day and a half or so, but nevertheless I will be making my triumphant return to the March Meeting (which I last attended in 2016).

Update: I ended up just taking a Lyft directly to my hotel and not bothering with the train.

Violent Origins of the Crackpot Session at the APS March Meeting

Wow. The 'crackpot session' at the American Physical Society apparently started in the afternoon of a shooting by an enraged physicist whose abstract was rejected. See this BBC article for a discussion about this.

Those wacky physicists!

(Tip of the cap to whoever does Facebook posts for Physics Today.)

Pick-Up Line of the Day

I just heard "Do you work in oxides?" used as a pick-up line. It appeared to be successful. :)

You know what 'they' say: What happens at the March Meeting stays at the March Meeting...

'Saturday Catblogging' and 'Cheerleaders at a Physics Conference?'

As promised, here is some Saturday Catblogging (which I am only posting 3 days late). Also, registration for the March Meeting opened on Sunday---while a conference for (way too) young cheerleaders was still going on. I'm pretty sure that they were just as afraid of us as we were of them.

Early contender for best talk title: Accelerated Evolution in the Death Galaxy

Here is my opening contender for best talk title at the APS March Meeting: "A27.00002: Accelerated Evolution in the Death Galaxy"

Note that this talk is not in the psychoceramics session. I'm not going to see it, as it conflicts with a 'human mobility' session (which is a complex systems session), and I'll also need to use part of that session to set up my posters.

Oh, and here is a poster on psychoceramics. And another one. Um, do you think this person is generating these abstracts algorithmically? Why were these abstracts accepted? Does anybody read the submissions? (By the way, check out the first authors for these three posters---they include variants of familiar names---of at least one person who has been dead for several years---and allusions to mathematical formulas.)

P.S. Happy Pi Day!

Another Reason That I Am "Awesome"

I find myself in the middle of what I thought was about 34 hours in Pasadena. (I had to really squeeze things tightly with flying from the UK to LA and then flying from LA to Portland for the APS March Meeting.)

As it turns out, it will actually be about 33 hours, because the clocks get sprung forward tonight due to the whole Daylight Savings Time business. (I only found out because I found a blurb about this on the APS website in the context of not being late for the Sunday tutorials. I am currently trying to figure out my plans for Sunday and Monday in terms of registration, the events I want to attend, etc.) Great; just great. I wonder if Supershuttle will screw up my 4:15 pick-up?

Thankfully, I'm flying out of Burbank airport. I have previously been to LAX the day after the clocks change, and it's significantly more of a nightmare than usual (which is saying a lot, because it's usually pretty nightmarish even at its best).

In sum, I am "awesome". (Oh, and what happens at the March Meeting stays at the March Meeting.)

Web Form Submission Amusement

I think that sometimes I am easily amused or that my mind spends occasional moments in the gutter.

I just submitted a very sweet poster for the Nonlinear Science Gallery at the 2009 APS March Meeting, and the code letter sequence to make sure that I am a human was "poopu". [[Giggle]]

On the subject of the Nonlinear Science Gallery, there is one particularly interesting rule change that occurred either for 2008 or 2009. (I'm pretty sure it was for 2008, but I didn't submit anything last year, so I can't say for sure.) Namely, all videos are now required to be silent, which means that my 2007 entry that had The Ride playing (on infinite repeat for 3 days while the exhibitor hall was open) won't be able to be duplicated. I can, however, proudly say that the published version of that video (to which I've linked in the past), which is also available on YouTube, includes the soundtrack.