love of science detected

What's science have to do with it?


A story of love and science without any lab coats but lots of high energy physics.

from Dave's blog

 
Take these ingredients:

• Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider lab
• Maintenance period downtime on the STAR detector
• A creative romantic
• A helpful physicist
• An engagement ring

You get the nerdiest marriage proposal ever.

Kendra, science writer, was tricked into coming over to the STAR detector for a possible story about a rare crystalline deposit discovered there.
 
The STAR detector (pic above) specializes in tracking the thousands of particles produced by ion collisions at RHIC. Weighing 1,200 tons and as large as a house, STAR is a massive detector.
 
That rare crystalline deposit turned out to be a diamond already mounted in a ring.  Nature is full of surprises.

Click over here for the whole story from Dave, the creative romantic himself.

things dumb and dumber

Just in case you forgot this is a blog and of course the following is my opinion. You can express your opinion in the comments and if you are respectful (most everyone is) I’ll leave your opinion up here.

Today I heard about a few dumb things and thought you might want to know about them.

These ideas are candidates for my a-few-clowns-short-of-a-circus hall of fame which I have not started yet but should real soon.

Whisky in a can.

I don’t know if it is on the shelves at my local liquor store yet but I will skip past it. I don’t think beer should be in can. Certainly 12 ounces of whisky makes little sense in a pop-open can.

Most people drink whisky in a mix. If you do drink shots you still should use a shot glass. Hey did you notice, I just wrote “glass”. Whisky belongs in a glass that you can reseal.

(the link for more)

Having your wedding at a funeral home

I could write many a post (note to self another to-do item) on the wasted money related to weddings. So don’t misunderstand, I am all for saving some money. There are other ways to save on wedding costs than booking your reception in a funeral home. Really.

A bizarre reception like this could run into problems. Most funeral homes I have visited have multiple rooms. What if there was a wake going on at the same time as your wedding reception? Weddings tend to be much louder than wakes.  You can't wake up the dead but you sure could bother their family.

"At first, when I pulled up and saw it was a funeral home, it did concern me," she admitted. "But when we walked in and saw everything, it was overwhelming. I fell in love and thought it was the perfect place. It was breathtaking ..."

Yeah that corpse in the next room isn't taking a breath.

Maybe you could get a great deal on slightly used flowers?

(the link for more)

Finally - don’t text while walking in the mall

Look what can happen
(update 1/24/2011 - looks like youtube took the video down) 

worried about screwing up

If you are a regular reader/follower (if not I hope you consider becoming one) you might recall a few pictures from Puerto Rico posted a few weeks ago.

Well I didn't mention it at the time but there was a very special reason I was in Puerto Rico in addition to rum tasting.

I was father of the bride.

I did OK.

It truly is a wonderful honor to perform.

I've done it before and every time is special and unique, just like the child involved.

Here's our daughter at her first wedding:

She did think she got married that day.  But I understand the confusion.  She wore a beautiful dress, walked down the aisle and held hands with a dapper young man.

Thinking about holding her little hand through the years brings tears of happy memories.  Now she has another man's hand to help her along the journey.

So the beach in Puerto Rico will now hold a special new memory for us.

A Wedding with Llamas

A recent comment (of course I read all the comments, who doesn't) suggested that I post  more about our trip to Peru.  The trip took place during the summer of 2008.

The internet is a wild place and you never know who is going to read (or copy) your stuff.  As a blogger I hope as many people as possible to read my stuff.  But no one want some criminal mind to misuse information you post.  After joining Facebook, I would suspect anyone looking to collect info would go there but you never know.  I only bring this up, to explain why real names will be missing from this story.  I wouldn't want any family members reading (they usually don't) to think I have a second family on the side or something.  Unlike that infamous Governor's trip, this was a trip to Peru, not Argentina. 

Our Peru trip was centered around a wedding.  Our daughter, Maggie, married a great guy, Bart.  Bart's mom is from Peru (a coastal town).  His parents met when his dad was in the Peace Corps down in Peru.  Bart was born and raised in the states but has visited Peru many times.  Both Maggie and Bart are world travelers.

The priest was Irish and looked like he could have been my twin brother.

It's a long flight down there from Chicago, but it's only one hour difference in time zones, so Chicagoans don't have that jet lag problem.  But check your globe, this is south of the equator.  We had a connections in Maimi FL, and Lima before we landed in Cusco.  Anyone heading for Machu Picchu mostly likely will travel through Cusco which is a wonderful ancient city.

One warning about Cusco - altitude.  Unless you're from some mountain area, you probably are going to suffer some altitude effects.  Cusco is higher (11,000 ft) than Machu Picchu (8000 ft).  If I were to plan a return trip I would head to the Sacred Valley first and then visit Cusco.

I believe all of the first time visitors in our group suffered some degree of altitude sickness.  However, we still enjoyed seeing the sites around the city.  Bart's mom did some extensive planning and arranging for the whole event.  Maggie and Bart had a bus waiting for us at the Cusco airport.  Tours were setup in advance.  All the arrangements worked out great.

Because of the common altitude problem the tourists experience, our hotel (most do) offer their guests free herbal Coca tea (leaves contain small amounts of cocaine).  I believe the tea helped.  But I wouldn't want to take a drug test soon after a trip there.

A very graphic religious statue in the hotel lobby (holding a severed head).

There was a mobile phone store close to our hotel.  It appears that sex sells in Peru too.

After Cusco we took a bus down into the Sacred Valley.  The Urubamba river flows through the valley and we stayed at two very nice hotels near the town of Urubamba.  It was just outside of that town where Maggie and Bart tied the knot.

Colorful marketplace in Pisac.

Celebration parade (just for us??) in Ollantaytambo.

One very unusual place was Moray where we climbed down into this enormous terraced circular hole.

  

Here's a satellite view from Google maps (you might need to zoom in):

View Larger Map

Climbing around Machu Picchu.

A laugh you could marry

More than the normal number of weddings for us this year.



We just joined in the celebration of my niece's big day this weekend. She had an outdoor one in a beautiful garden next to a greenhouse. If the weather didn't cooperate then it would have been inside the greenhouse. Fortunately, it was nice weather and the ceremony went quicker than the sun heating my dark suit.

One thing that comes with the outside and flowers - bees and other insects.

As the lovely couple joined hands, a flying insect (bee I believe) decided to join their joyful union. So their quick moving gestures and laughter help make the event even more memorable.


However, my niece did not laugh as loud as this bride in this clip below. I just found this clip today and it will make you laugh. I'm very glad this bride was willing to share this on the internet. Laughter helps break the nervousness.