Various

• Why do hotels provide bags for the ice bucket which never actually fit? Remember when we braved the bucket with no bag?
  
• Not bad for one year of work:
  

  
  James Simons, a 69-year-old publicity shy former math professor, uses complex computer-driven mathematical models to make bets on stocks, bonds and commodities, among other things.
  
  His earnings last year were $1.7 billion.
  

  
  
• Watch out for very large foreign transaction fees on your credit card when going overseas.
  
• I'm still utterly amazed at the corruption of this Administration. Whom to blame? The individuals who act without integrity in their position? Or the people who continue to support them? I always wonder at a system where a misanthrope like myself is at the mercy of a general populace. I don't feel a strong need to convince people of my way of thinking, but it's just hard to believe how anyone could tolerate this level of pervasive corruption.
  
• No physics yet, so let me just comment that there's at least one string theorist not helping the cause. I've seen this person give better talks, but the latest was way too technical and uninteresting. I was ready to hear about the landscape as per the abstract, but that was only discussed in the last few minutes.
  

Certain Principle: String Theory == Bush lover?

Awhile back Chad pissed off all those enamored folks of string theory (well at least some vocal ones). It was a silly joke, but he's really tossing some chum in the waters with this latest posting. Mind you, I'm not offended, I think it's hilarious and look forward to the comments. I especially liked this tweaking:

the entire history of human culture has been nothing more than a steady progression ... to the twin pinnacles of George Bush and string theory.

After all, all the Bush lovers I run into really can't get enough string theory. All the letters to the editor I see decrying how one in three aborted fetuses would have eventually cured some dreadful disease include a postscript describing their favor Calabi-Yao manifold!

What he leaves me wondering is, to which politician do experimentalists bow down? Al Sharpton, a true man of the people? No fence sitting folks!