Despite my silence, I’m still here. The MCM is over. The first half was great, the second was quite frustrating. We have a fantastic model and a horrible paper.
Tuesday I got to hear Brian Greene (world renowned string theorist) speak at the Athenaeum (sp?). It was fantastic! We have a reception at 5:30 with cheese and crackers. So I go, and I’m hanging out with people, and there he is, hanging out too. I introduce myself to him, shake his hand, and talk with him for a bit. It was pretty cool! Then there was a dinner at 6:00, and at 7:00, he gave a talk. Nothing you can’t find in his PBS miniseries or his books. However, in the books and the miniseries, he seemed like a nice, quiet, fireside-chat sort of person. In this talk, he was very enthousiastic, with fervor and practically a fire-and-brimstone air about him at points. Wow! What a surprise. After the talk, he had a book signing, and I got my copy of The Elegant Universe autographed. Nifty!
Finally, what post would be complete without more news? The Bush administration has once again altered scientific claims to fit their agenda, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. It’s kind of scary – of the people at the Fish and Wildlife Service who responded to the survey, more than half of them said that they had been instructed to change their findings to go along with the politics. This sort of thing incenses me. Argh!