(no subject)

[Poll #251757]

P.S. As Barbara Boxer is running unopposed to be the Democratic nominee for the senate, I hereby announce my candidacy as a write-in option.

Top three confidence-inspiring things I've heard at work

Top three confidence-inspiring things I've heard at work

3. "You can ignore that sign that says `Industrial Water! Do Not Drink'" (as the speaker filled up the coffee maker)

2. "I'm just going to prop this door open a little bit.. we want the concentration of oxygen to remain, you know, more or less constant." (says someone who was just fiddling with the liquid nitrogen feed to some equipment and was then wandering off to do something else)

1. "Radiation never hurt anybody." (at CERN)

(no subject)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush said on Friday he had installed Alabama Attorney General William Pryor on an Atlanta appeals court, the second time this year he has bypassed Congress on a judicial selection. "I am proud to name this leading American lawyer to the appellate bench," Bush said in a statement. Pryor, an outspoken foe of abortion rights, was blocked by Democrats when Bush first nominated him 10 months ago. But the president used a "recess appointment" -- naming him while Congress was on a five-day break -- to circumvent Senate approval. — Reuters.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 20 (UPI) -- Employees of the Transportation Security Administration acted "outside the spirit of the Privacy Act," in 2002 when they facilitated the transfer of 1.5 million passenger records from the budget airline JetBlue to a defense contractor, but did not break the law, according to a report published Friday. ... The officials "acted without regard to the privacy interests of the private citizens whose data was transferred, outside the spirit of the Privacy Act of 1974," O'Conner Kelly said, especially because their "participation was essential (to project), because a number of airlines had been approached (and) all had refused because of the lack of involvement of a regulatory body with authority over the airlines." — UPI

school

I was in Birge to get some form signed (yay! I might be a legitimate student soon!) this afternoon, and there was a physics faculty meeting starting in 375 LeConte. It was funny, because it just made me realize how familiar all the profs are to me. John Clarke gave me a nod, George Smoot said "What's up, Tobin?", etc, and Alessandra Lanzara found out that my real name is not "Nicky Hamilton." (-: Renews my feeling that I should just hold out and try to get into the physics department here. (-:

I actually went to Office Hours today for more or less the first time. It was by accident. I went to get the aforementioned form signed by Bjorn Poonen (my prof for metric differential geometry), and he was having office hours, so I stayed. He was addressing a question from our first homework that I didn't find particularly interesting, but then we started talking about turning surfaces into metric spaces, and then about geodesics and gravitational lensing, which was cool.