Norman Albers

A Berrism I just heard: I don't like forecasting, especially when it involves the future...

In Greece, yogurt. Nice clock. I was delighted to hear a radio columnist reading his list of 10 oxymorons for 2007. Numbers eight and seven were, "Republican Ethics Committee", and "Democratic Leadership Committee". GONNGGG. . . . A Christian, a Jew, and a Muslim walk into a bar together, but then don't say anything. There's a writers' strike.

Ah, thanks, I shall.

I have done quite a lot of mathematics supposing inhomogeneous response characteristics of the vacuum. I continue because my success has surprised me. My professionally experienced brother encouraged me to try to come up with something to measure. As of last February I have spent much time exchanging with solidspin, whose knowledge and feeling for mathematics awes me. We have a mutual appreciate of each other's talents and skills, and if you could combine our two minds it would make quite an intellect: we are working at this. His work is in NMR and he thinks he sees the path to make measurement of some aspect of the quantum vacuum. This is as per my dream.

Fermi messed with a 4-lepton construction. A man I know, Charles Southwood, has done a "brilliant naive" study. He just, out of his head, assumed that [math]\epsilon_0[/math] got dense inside. Turns out this is what I am looking at. I do not think you may hang on to classical pictures, however. In the hydrogen atom ground state, or positronium for that matter (my topic du jour with solidspin), there is zero orbital angular momentum. Bolero, not.

It's cool if you can lasso idiots into the number we got played on us after two weeks of Boy Scout camp. Convinced we were chanting important words of Native American masters, the first-year guys got in a row in front of the campfire on their knees, holding up their hands in supplication, and repeated after the leader, slowly at first: "Oh wah... tagu... siam. Oh wah... and then speeding up, to a sudden profound realization...

There was a good Dilbert cartoon where he is in an utter panic about having to address a convention audience. He wigs out completely, thinking, "I'll pretend I am from Sweden and speak only Swedish." At the microphone he says, "Morna, lorna, corna, dorna." Es brillig war. Die schlichte Toven Wirrten and wimmelten in Waben; Und aller-mu'msige Borggoven Die mohmen Ra'th' ausgraben. (I hope to learn umlauts and upside-down question-marks.)

Pardon me, YT, I thought you were talking white-nose sunblock. OK, Phi, perhaps real life trumps: this is a true story, and my brother met the astronaut who created it, working at JPL. It seems this astronaut was clear on what he wanted to be as a youth. One day when he was 11 years old, he heard his neighbor and wife arguing loudly with the window open, the Gorski's. The wife screamed, "I'll give you <oral sex> when that kid goes to the moon." When he actually stepped out onto the lunar surface, he exclaimed, "Good luck, Mr. Gorski". The CIA was in an uproar but he would not tell anyone who "Mr Gorski" was.

Two of the funniest moments I know in all of cinema, aside from W.C.Fields trying to aim his pool cuestick, involve little old white-haired grannies. The first you may remember from Airplane, when the two Afro dudes are conversing (every tenth word is sheeeeet) and people are searching desperately for a pilot. The little old lady walks up and announces, "I speak jive" and proceeds to tear the place up with the brothers. The other scene that I doubt you have seen is in, I think, a Czechoslovakian film. Key here is the slow pace of the camera, taking in half-minute vignettes of conversations at a cocktail party as things get rolling. Two people saying this and that, then a small group; then the view moves to the center of the long sofa, and there is room behind it to walk. White-haired Granny strolls into view behind the sofa, and stops. She lifts her glass of wine, and chugs it down. She then takes one step forward and falls backward completely out of sight below the couch. Now the camera pans slowly to the couple at the end of the sofa who are in conversation. They observe briefly, and simply resume their conversation!!! Damn, these people party. Fred, Bewahre doch vor Jammerwoch! Die Za'hne knirschen, Krallen kratzen!

The Lone Ranger got into a tight situation, surrounded by angry Indians. Turning to address Tonto, his faithful sidekick, he says, "We're surrounded by Indians, Tonto!" Smiling, Tonto replies, "We, Kimosabe?"

Two atoms are walking down the street and one falls down and loses an electron. It gets back up and the other one asks, "Are you OK?" "Yes, I'm positive."

I noted last year that the chicken crossed the road to show the possum that it could be done. Tonight my point involves the zoo/aquarium at the coast featuring both lions and porpoises, the latter being known for their unembarrassed sexual cavorting. The lions were well fed and so laid around most of the day, grabbing an occasional seagull venturing too close. An ambitious keeper started killing seagulls to feed to the porpoises, since they were a major attraction. Eventually she was arrested for transporting gulls across staid lions for immoral porpoises.

The other point where I laughed reading The God Particle was where Lederman needed a collimator for particle output, and scored a scrap 20 ft. Navy destroyer gun barrel. It had rifling on the inside which had to be cut down, and a graduate student of relatively slight build was just able to go inside and grind. After an hour or two of this, the student crawled out, and told him where he could put this job. Lederman quipped, "Oh my, where will I find another student of your caliber!"

Ringo Starr of the Beatles played for years on the same set of Ludwig drums, to where the letters were mostly worn away. George Harrison shared the story that Paul McCartney would introduce Ringo saying, "And on the Lu, folks, we have Ringo Starr!"

We consider the physics of nowhere in particular, with or without anything in particular. Would you buy something from people like this???

L.Lederman's book The God Particle left me wanting to punch his lights out for his stupid attitude toward theoretics, except for the humanity I can appreciate where he says, the Nobel is cool because now people laugh at my jokes!!!

Some Western writer in a second marriage said, "I treat holidays with the same due respect I give rattlesnakes."

Great study, FrankM. That is a substantial amount of current at this scale. I don't know much else about the situation other than that you are grounding current into the local earth. I had wondered about surface/air changes in electric field but this discussion speaks to response from "creatures of length" to lateral distributions.

I stuttered fairly badly in the first decades of my life, so I cracked up at this, my first stuttering joke, from columnist Calvin Trillin: A Jewish boy goes seeking a job at the local radio station. Returning home dejected, he is asked by his father, "Why do you think you did not get the job, son?" Answers the boy, "A-A-Anti S-S-S-Semmmmatism. "

PHI FOR ALL must have thought nobody would see, but a couple of nights ago he strode absolutely naked across the approach to the physics building and in to his office. He was obviously in a state of excitement and proceeded to work for an hour and a half at his desk. I recall a cute scene in the movie "The Piano Player" where the brown man is practicing naked. Now personnaly I am one of the more tolerant beings around when it comes to such things, but dude, you are going to have to face the policy kept firmly by authorities around here of NO NUDE PHYSICS!

INHOUSE INVECTIVES: So-and-so has the levity of a uranium hexafluoride blimp.

Homosexuals have been demonstrating by the thousands lately in Paris. I say we must all now come OUT OF THE INHOMOGENEOUS CLOSET!!! All colors are welcome in the REV. NORM'S UNIFICATION CHURCH.

Is there a monument to Thomas Crapper?

Cast your bread upon the waters, and get soggy bread. A great bumper sticker in town: Born OK the first time, thanks.

Picture this: All the people in the gate area came to a complete standstill when they looked up and saw the pilot walk off the plane with a Seeing Eye dog! The pilot was even wearing sunglasses. People scattered. They not only tried to change planes, but they were trying to change airlines! True story.... Have a great day and remember... THINGS AREN'T ALWAYS AS THEY APPEAR