Strategic view

Most of the waterfront views you've seen here are at sea level; but walk a few blocks uphill and you get a new perspective (photo by Michael Dagley) from atop what was once the island of Hoboken, and what is now the Stevens Institute of Technology, a school that produced 1995 Nobel Laureate Frederick Reines. I once got to interview Reines, and I read more than a dozen books on particle physics beforehand so that I could ask intelligent questions. My first question was about the possibility of proton decay, and what that might mean to the future of the universe. Reines listened patiently while I reeled off the whole thing. "Yes, but that's only a theory," he replied when I'd finished. "I'm an experimental physicist, not a theoretician." A few minutes later, he threw me out of his office, not because of the question I'd just asked him about the mysterious emissions from the binary star Cygnus X-3, but because his phone rang before he got a chance to answer, and because the caller was another reporter from the same newspaper also asking about Cygnus X-3. "You people need to communicate with each other before you come in here wasting my time!" he said.

Blogrolling, Chapter 6: Blogdex

The exciting conclusion of Blogrolling week must wait another day, as the exciting concluding blog has been down all weekend. Meanwhile, check out Blogdex, based at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, another blog of blogs. You can look inside and see how it works, if you understand that stuff, which may be at least as mysterious as what's coming out of Cygnus X-3.