Shortly after learning of the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter, I learned of its poetry. I'd been eating lunch with a fellow QI student at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. Perimeter's faculty includes Daniel Gottesman, who earned his PhD at what became Caltech's IQIM. Perhaps as Daniel passed our table, I wondered whether [...]
A dark-haired man leans over a marble balustrade. In the ballroom below, his assistants tinker with animatronic elephants that trumpet and with potions for improving black-and-white photographs. The man is an inventor near the turn of the 20th century. Cape swirling about him, he watches technology wed fantasy. Welcome to the steampunk genre. A stew [...]
The night before defending my Masters thesis, I ran out of shampoo. I ran out late enough that I wouldn’t defend from beneath a mop like Jack Sparrow’s; but, belonging to the Luxuriant Flowing-Hair Club for Scientists (technically, if not officially), I’d have to visit Shopper’s Drug Mart. The author’s unofficially Luxuriant [...]
I'd come to Barnes and Noble to study and to submerse in the bustle. I needed reminding that humans other than those on my history exam existed. When I ran out of tea and of names to review, I stood, stretched, and browsed the shelves. A blue-bound book caught my eye: Don't Sweat the Small [...]
``Settle thy studies.'' Alone in his workroom, a student contemplates his future. Piles of books teeter next to him. Boxes line the walls; and glass vials, the boxes. Sunbeams that struggle through the stained-glass window illuminate dust. The student's name is Faust. I met him during my last winter in college, while complementing Physics 42: [...]