where physics and life collide
biglove
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Posts by biglove
Should we be concerned?
21 year ago
I’m here today to talk about flooring. The kind people walk on. I’ve seen a lot of floors in my time, from the linoleum tile my dear old mother installed all by herself in our humble kitchen when I was a wee lad, all the way to the 2000-year old tile floor in the Vatican Museum that supports millions of visiting feet per year with nary a scratch … after being transported thousands of miles by slaves and horses, that is! I’ve walked on a lot of floors throughout the entire world, and I can say with absolute honesty that every single one of ‘em has succeeded in supporting my weight; that every last one of ‘em has remained flat and avoided caving in under my feet, thanks to the laws of gravity, strong building materials, and good workmanship. Because I say that the only thing you would ever ask a floor to do is, well, nothing at all! You would ask that floor to stay flat and motionless, and to bear your weight across it, repeatedly, for years on end. You would never ask that floor to cave in under your feet; to crumble pathetically under the weight of a hundred kilo or so; to turn to rubble in the course of nominal daily usage. That’s why floor-makers get paid; I’ll go so far as to venture that’s the only reason they get paid. I claim that the only thing required of a floor is not to cave in. Well, if you’re in agreement with that statement, then you’ll agree that the upper floor of CERN’s Restaurant 2 has utterly, abjectly failed in its incredibly simple mission. This is truly the first floor I have ever encountered that has been unable to bear the strain of human feet, and the failure of it and its builders fills me with a deep-seated disgust and enduring concern.
Towering rabbit of doom
01 year ago
by biglove
in Around town
Everyone knows that bunnies are cute and fluffy; why then do human-constructed likenesses of them turn out to be so utterly terrifying? Appearing harmless and adorable in nature, a bunny writ large is at best creepy and at worst, devastating. And yet we insist on creating ever larger monuments to the long-eared ones. It’s possible that our widespread practices of rabbit idolatry perversely reflect some deep and ancient animosity between the races; after all, a child’s first impulse, when given a small (possibly edible) bunny effigy, is to bite off its head. Like other dangerous and potentially world-ending pursuits, CERN finds itself right in the center of the ongoing human vs. bunny struggle, with rabbit flesh prominently featured as a dish on the lab’s rotating menu. Now the world’s tallest chocolate bunny has been erected a stone’s throw away from the LHC in the outskirts of Geneva. Physicists and laypersons alike were encouraged to worship at the feet of this delicious and unholy monstrosity. While other countries may claim to have constructed the most massive, I sincerely doubt anyone can beat this 5-meter tall chocolate bunny.
I fear that our overweening pride has not only threatened the destruction of the universe, but that this graven image shall reach unto the heavens as the ancient tower of Babel, its pointy ears penetrating the event horizon of some intergalactic time warp, bringing down Armageddon upon our heads.
Behind the scenes: how physics really gets done
11 year ago
As a non-physicist, you may think that physicists spend their time writing equations on chalkboards, tweaking complicated machines, or scribbling equations on chalkboards. If you read Dan Brown, you probably think they run around in white lab coats. However, hands-on work involving machines and equipment is often given to undergraduate interns and graduate students, while PhD physicists conduct their work a little differently…
- CERN physicists spend most of their work day in meetings, not in labs or their offices.
- There are so many meetings that committees have been formed to hold meetings to figure out how to reduce the number of meetings (I am not making this up).
- Physics analysis is done on laptops during meetings, because it has to get done sometime, and physicists are always in meetings.
- Nobody pays attention to the speaker because they’re submitting physics analysis jobs and creating ugly ROOT graphs on their laptops; they know they can always get the slides later from Indico, the conference management tool everybody uses to post their slides.
- The presenters know nobody is listening so instead of creating readable PowerPoint slides or learning the most basic presentation skills, they write entire blocks of fully formed text in their PowerPoint slides using miniscule font sizes and read verbatim from the slides in an often inaudible monotone. They know that if anyone wants to see their results, they’ll just read the slides on Indico later. Generally the presenter faces the screen, with his/her back to the audience.
This behavior habitual and completely ingrained. I was once in a tutorial for physicists held in a computer lab, where every seat had a desk with a dedicated computer terminal. The participants all filed into the room, sat down at their computer terminals, got out their laptops, put them in front of the computer terminals, and plugged their laptops in at the same time, blowing the room’s electrical circuits.
How you found us
01 year ago
by biglove
in Media hysteria
A fascinating aspect of writing this blog has been to sift through our web logs and see how readers find us. It shows us which topics are relevant to today’s internet. It also disturbs us to discover how twisted your minds are.
Firstly and rightfully, the most commonly used search term is…
- op vistars
Apparently we’re not the only ones who are baffled by the cryptic OP Vistars page. Next we present some ROOT-related searches, not all of which are complimentary:
- fuck you root cern
- root ugly plots
- root cern ugly
- cern root evil
- root cern sucks
- root cern design ugly
- you are the roots of all my evils
- root of all evil cern
- root of all my frustrations
- blinding data cern root
The following searches give us insight as to how the general public views CERN:
- cern and time rifts
- cern to open dimensional rift
- cern broke nov 2009
- cern diamonds
- cern dog
- cern monorail
- plumbing at cern
- cern bufet
- cern swirls
- working at cern boring
Whatever CERN may be, it sure as hell isn’t “boring” and I am disgusted that anyone would type this into Google, and that Google would lead them here. Next, the obligatory potty-related searches:
- cern swiss urine
- lavabo love
- urine and hand washing
- liquid drip when toilet
- hand washing proper sign with foot pedal type
I would really like to know what these people were looking for. On second thought, I really don’t want to know. Here are a few more miscellaneous gems:
- motombo love
- shitty geneva studio
- spiderman+physics+analysis
- how i did not find love
- throbbing eyeball
- what is love half life
- porn love.org
I am completely unable to explain or categorize this one:
- you plote
And all you faithful Spanish readers out there, we love you! if we ever translate CERN Love into other languages, Spanish will be the first:
- blog del cern en español
No smoking
1At the CERN hostel, this sign indicates that you may not smoke cigarettes, cigars or pipes. I guess it’s ok to smoke anything else.
The problem of gender
21 year ago
In the 21st century, it can sometimes be difficult to tell men and women apart. Of course, if you spend enough time with a person, you can discern their gender based on a variety of social cues. However, when it comes to toilets, it seems to me that the role of a sign maker should be to accentuate, celebrate, and make abundantly clear the differences between the male and female body, so that the reader knows exactly what is going on at first glance. The last thing any of us wants is an unwelcome intrusion of the opposite gender while we are doing our business.
The highly stylized man and woman icons shown above are apparently not clear enough for the occupants of building 40. In their typical can-do mindset, these physicists have taken matters into their own hands and added some explanatory signage.
This home-brew solution of adding signs and annotating existing ones, while effective, seems a bit overwrought. Where can we look for better answers? One shining example is to be found just outside the Main Auditorium, where the men’s room door demonstrates in no uncertain terms just which kind of human may enter, while simultaneously discouraging riff-raff from degrading the premises with anything less than a suit, bowtie and dress shoes.
Stick figures can also be identified by a more direct method of course: by drawing the genitalia. While we have not yet found it at CERN, this method is being used nearby in western Switzerland.
I would like to thank lovehurts for providing the last photograph. He took it while urinating … standing up.
CERN Document Server
CERN Document Server
2
1 year ago
by biglove
in You're doing it wrong
CERNLover lots-o-love expertly commented on one of CDS’s completely terrible web pages. Today I am reviewing a true classic: http://cds.cern.ch, none other than the CDS home page itself. I should admit that I feel a bit sheepish today; finding egregious flaws on CDS web pages is like shooting fish in a barrel. It is just so universally bad that I’m not sure where to start. Might as well start at the top.
click to see annotations
CDS stands for CERN Document Server. It’s a long and difficult acronym (no, not really), so the CDS folks have helped you out by putting that title right at the top where you can’t miss it. Twice.
Sandwiched between them is the tiny word “Home”. You’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a link; it’s not (I know you already clicked on it). Oh no, if it were a link, it would be a very slightly darker shade of blue indistinguishable to the human eye. Nope, “Home” is just a tiny word surrounded by ample whitespace, serving no purpose whatsoever. It’s true that that on other CDS pages, that space is occupied by breadcrumbs telling you your location, but on the main page it just looks dumb.
Let’s move on to the proud proclamation of how many records CDS has. Actually there are two such statements, about a centimeter apart on my screen … and they don’t match. Just when you thought 900,000 was an impossibly large number, well GUESS WHAT, 1,017,486 is even bigger! I guess we can never really know just how many records CDS has, but rest assured, it’s a gigantic number! A large portion of these records are “fulltext“, a term I (a native English speaker) and my English-speaking friends have never heard in our lives. I’m certainly ready to believe that it is some computer science or librarian term, but I question whether any users actually know or care what it means. Apparently it’s pretty damned impressive though for archives to be sporting fulltext, because it deserves its own sentence. As soon as I find out what the fuck fulltext is I’m going to convert all the documents on my computer to it.
Search or browse? You decide! It’s not clear from first glance what the difference is. I know what “browse” usually means on a website (basically looking through categories instead of text search), but not here. Go ahead, type in a word, click “Browse” and see if you can figure out what the fuck is going on.
Not entering any search or browse terms today? Then perhaps CDS can interest you in two incredibly dense columns filled with terms nobody understands, but by God, every single one of them is a hyperlink pointing somewhere. These columns are labeled “Narrow by collection” and “Focus on“. Every time I read these two labels, my brain grinds to an infuriated halt. Don’t those mean the same thing?! Is there a discernable reason that there are 5 checkboxes next to the left column but not the right? Oh God I am so confused. Those checkboxes and underlining under every single word are making me all misty-eyed remembering my first day learning HTML. Seriously though, the point here is to be impressed by the sheer number of subjects CDS has in its archive. You’re not supposed to be actually reading those, you idiot!
If you do attempt to read the headache-inducing arrangement of subjects, you’ll find some oddities that will make you completely lose whatever faith you may have had in CDS up to this point. For example, there are both “videos” and “videotapes”. I have to admit I don’t understand the difference here. And if you click on “General Talks”, you get a list of … videos.
A truly baffling item at the end of the second column is the heading “Archives”. Holy hell! Do you mean that up until now I haven’t been looking at archives? I thought CDS was by definition an archive! And by the way, CERN Archives apparently make up a subset of Archives, even though I thought the C in CDS stood for CERN. Actually I’m certain it does.
Finally, at the bottom of the page, far, far away from the search box, are some more search options. If you are lucky enough to know what the hell these things are (KISS, anyone?), you might want to include them in your search (after you’ve already done searches that didn’t work, I suppose). That’s kind of like Google saying way at the bottom of their page “Didn’t find what you were looking for? Would you like to search the WHOLE internet? Because up until now we’ve just been fucking with you. Step right up and click a bunch of checkboxes, and we’ll be on our way!”
Amazingly, I only have one suggestion that will fix everything at once with one stroke. Just change the word “site” at the bottom to “shite”.
I would like to apologize to the CDS developers for ridiculing their life’s work …. but, damn. You would think they would care a little bit more about their public image.
Happy Valentine’s Day from CERN Love
11 year ago
by biglove
in E-mail adventures
There are a lot of things to celebrate today, including Chinese New Year, the winter Olympics, and the America’s Cup, but Valentine’s Day holds a special place in our hearts, because it is so closely associated with CERN Love core values, including love, hearts, ridicule, loneliness and depression. We would like to take this moment to thank you, our readers, with a special poem.
Roses are red,
Dipoles are blue,
All you lonely physics groupies, remember,
CERN Love loves you!
We’d like to share an email that was sent to the ATLAS Collaboration and intercepted by our electonic intelligence division. You might expect the ATLAS lost and found to be full of pocket protectors, graphing calculators and dosimeters, but it’s not. We’re not sure what this says about ATLAS physicists.
Email from the ATLAS Secretariat regarding the Lost and Found
Dripping liquid on head after urinating: Toilet Design Awards 2010
02 years ago
Recently I “drained the dragon” in one of CERN’s plumbing-oriented establishments, choosing a urinal as my preferred receptacle of the day. As I looked down, flushed, and set about the generally onerous task of negotiating my considerably out-sized family jewels back into their boxers, I felt liquid dripping onto the back of my head. Leaping back, I looked up in shock and terror to see that
- each urinal has its own tank (I’m told this is called a cistern),
- each cistern is mounted on the wall directly above the urinal,
- there is apparently no cover for the cisterns, allowing what I hope to God is clean water to slosh out.
I always thought that, even if they are clean (and I’m not convinced of that), toilet-related liquids should be kept inside pipes, and under lids, as close to the ground, and as far away from my head as possible. Just another preconceived notion smashed by CERN plumbing innovation.
CERN conversations: on rollercoasters
02 years ago
by biglove
in CERN conversations
On a warm day in the late Summer, two physicists sat on the R1 veranda and engaged in a conversation about rollercoasters. We present an excerpt below.
(hearty laughter)
That’s really cool except I imagine the lines for that are long, because they can’t run… two
Two of them! Yeeah, that’s true, the lines are a little bit longer I think, but they go really fast.
Unfortunately I guess that means you know the ride…
ride is fast
ride is fast, yeeah.
But it’s definitely worth doing once or twice.
There’s … There’s Runaway Mountain, which I assume is… everywhere; like that’s the rollercoaster in the dark.
OK.
That’s a lot of fun
Um … there’s….. ahh, there’s Flashback, which is the first one I ever went on that… that goes upside down
OK.
The Shockwave is a bigger one that goes upside down.
Oh and the… the Titan! That is… so that’s supposedly the world’s biggest rollercoaster, yup.
And I assume that; I assume it’s the same one that you went on, like just a diferent edition of it
Yeah.
the same, the same struct… That was spec-tac-u-lar. There’s, There’s one part in it, I’ve ridden in it a few times.There’s one part where you go like, under this thing. On like, So it, it takes you like around on the side a couple times…?
OK. yeah, I don’t, I don’t remember enough details but I…
Oh OK. And it sort of goes and plunges down, and … and there’s like a, you go under an awn… like a little awning. And … you know, I’ve got my hands up, I always kinda shah-ha-hake bah-hack (laughter while speaking) down, cause I’m like, that really looks like I’m about to hit tha-ha-ha-ha-hah! (laughter)
Well they’ve designed it, You know. They’ve designed it to do this…
There’s like, I mean… I don’t think, I don’t think Dikembe Mutombo could touch that thing if he tri-ha-ha-ha-hied
Yeah.
(hearty laughter)
John Bradley of course would lose his hands
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA (very enthusiastic laughter), ri-ha-ha-ha-hight
Yeah.
Like in the West Wing?
Yes.
When the president always ducks every time he gets into a helicopter?
Yup.
He’s like: You don’t think those blades could chop off your head? I don’t think those blades could chop off Dikembe Mutombo’s head!
heheheheheheh
Yeah.
…some moments of silence…
Well thanks for coming out
OK.
HOT AIR 160° C FOOD HOSE
02 years ago
My 2010 New Year’s resolution is to eat/drink/inhale all my food/liquid/oxygen through this HOT AIR 160° C FOOD HOSE.
Busfucked: eyeball punched by God and no help from the TPG
02 years ago
by biglove
in Around town
Friday morning I was woken out of sleep by a fist punch to my right eyeball. My eyeball was punched hard enough that I saw a flash of white light behind my closed eyelids, in the dark room. It was my own fist, apparently directed by the hand of God. There was no dream that prompted this punch, and no immediate obvious explanation comes to mind, which is how I know it was God. Thanks dude.
I was pretty sure I was going to go blind, so I thought I’d try to maximize the remaining life out of my throbbing eyeball by heading to work. I headed to the tram stop where I heard some announcement being broadcast loudly but I couldn’t make out what it was saying. After waiting a little too long for the tram (I prefer sleek, quiet and smooth transport options over dirty, loud and bouncy) I gave up and jumped on a bus, the most crowded bus ever in the history of my career working at CERN. Eventually it became clear that the trams weren’t running at all because of a student demonstration obstructing the tram tracks, and they didn’t really call in extra replacement buses. OK. Note to self: student demonstration = “manifestation des étudiants.” Thanks, étudiants.
Then it was time to transfer to bus number 56 at Avanchet, which is the last time I will ever have to do that, incidentally. I waited for like 20 minutes (WAY TOO LONG, SOMETHING IS WRONG) and watched multiple 29′s go by until I realized the 56 ain’t coming. So I decided to hop on the next 29 and hike the rest of the way to CERN from P+R Planche. As I had walked just far enough that it wasn’t possible to turn back to catch any more buses, guess who rolled up?! BUS 56!! Followed about one minute later by another bus 56!! Thanks, Transports Publics Genevois.
FFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU…..
A very sturdy projector stand
02 years ago
by biglove
in On the grounds
Let’s have our next physics meeting in the CMS assembly building. All we need is lots of PowerPoint slides, a 10 000 lumen projector, and a five-ton concrete block to set it on. Have some grad students carry it over here.
Room numbers: more is better
02 years ago
In case you were distracted by some obscure technical ramblings about “beams” and “collisions”, you may have missed our hugely important announcement regarding CERN building numbers. If your mind has not been blown by CERN’s building numbering system, well, you better sit down, because the numbering going on inside buildings is about to get a lot more amazing.
Let’s take a look at buildings 593 and 572, home of the technical training classrooms. The classrooms are spread across these two adjacent buildings, attached by a short corridor.
Rooms at CERN are labeled with three numbers: building, floor, and room number. This actually makes sense. For example, the meeting room on the first floor of building 160 is labeled 160 1-009. Fair enough.
But CERN’s elite Technical Training team layers its own advanced numbering system on top of this, in an attempt to bring more choice to the customer. According to economists, more choice is always a good thing. For example, you can choose to refer to the auditorium as room 10 or room 11. Your choice. Room 10 means the auditorium. Room 11 means the auditorium. Room 10 also means a totally different room. And room 11 also means yet another different room. So many choices! I feel liberated, from my sanity, that is.
Building numbers revealed!
12 years ago
If you have ever been to CERN you know that the building numbers here don’t make a damn bit of sense. If they do follow any kind of scheme, it’s not a scheme that helps you find buildings.
Building 3 is adjacent to 4, but connecting them is building … 58! About one km away is building 57. And no, it’s not chronological, because the most recent one built was 41, whereas certain older buildings are labeled in the 800′s.
Well today is a big day in my life, for I’ve just discovered, after seven years of bafflement, that there is a method behind the madness! The method, it turns out, is stupid as hell. It is revealed by this single-slide PowerPoint presentation:
building numbering revealed
We are eternally grateful to M. Fabrice Chapuis for finally bringing this to light.
I’d like to highlight some features of this numbering scheme:
- Buildings 400-499 are reserved for “Roads, Car Parks, Storage Zones”. Wait, what? Buildings ≠ Roads.
- Buildings 1000-1099 are reserved for “Roads, Car Parks, Storage Zones”. Buildings ≠ Roads.
- Almost every building at CERN could be called an office building, because they almost all have mostly offices in them.
- There are three CERN Hostel buildings, a budget onsite hotel for visitors. Two of these, 38 and 41, are rare examples of buildings with no offices whatsoever. Yet they are classified under “Offices and Laboratories.”
- Why use such limited number ranges? For example, we’re already up to 188 out of 199 under “Workshops, Warehouses and Garages.” And by the way, 188 is mostly an office building.
- Why is there a gap between 549 and 860? This will slowly drive me insane, if I’m not already.
I guess I’m glad to finally know the secret, but I think my head is going to explode anyway.
Favorite Places: Building 553
32 years ago
Much has been made of the lofty scientific forays undertaken at CERN, and the lives of the people who embark on these adventures of fundamental research and discovery. But do not the spaces these scientists inhabit deserve their equal measure of fame? After all, it is the roofs of CERN that protect us from the elements, the walls of CERN that hide our secret ambitions from the malicious eyes of our competitors, the soaring atria of CERN that inspire our creativity, and the very bricks and mortar of CERN that greet our eyes, day after day after motherfucking day.
In a word, it is the architecture of CERN that shall be unveiled and adored today. And what better candidate than building 553.
This timeless structure was specially commissioned by the Director General’s office and designed by the firm Merde Bâtiments. We are reminded that while in principle every type of material has its proper place and function, there is still room for an element of surprise and playfulness. Shingles need not only sit atop roofs; corrugated fiberglass is allowed to keep the rain off our heads; peeling paint is paint with character, and gray is, quite simply, beautiful. Take a deep breath and let us take you on a virtual tour of building 553.
Mysteries of the water tower
12 years ago
Dearest CERN Lovers,
Today I would like to share a few mysteries surrounding the CERN water tower that have confounded me for years, as well as partial explanations I’ve heard that sound plausible but may or may not be true. I am a seeker, always striving to know and to comprehend, so if you have heard other explanations, I invite you to share them.
- Why did CERN originally build a water tower?
An Explanation: to cool one of the experiments (heard this from a well-known physicist). - What is it used for today?
An Explanation: drinking water - Why was it painted yellow?
An Explanation: Because a bright yellow eyesore is better than a concrete-colored eyesore. - Why was it only partially painted yellow?
An Explanation: an Italian firm was taking so long to paint it and increasing their price as they went that CERN management got fed up and called it off before it was finished (heard this from a crazy person). - Why does a water tower need a viewing room at the top surrounded by windows?
No known explanation
Any help you can offer to resolve these mysteries would be much appreciated!
Sincerely,
Biglove
Pipe in a box
02 years ago
metal box with pipe sticking out
Once upon a time, near the vineyards, past a parking lot, where the grass and flowers grow, at the farthest southeast corner of CERN, lived a metal box. This box sat alone and wore a hat. It was also a naughty box and had such a massive erection that a custom-made frame was required to support it. The box did not live near any buildings at all.There was nothing around the box but a few parked cars and grassy fields.
All day long, the box sat and ejaculated warm air and wet drops of some unidentified liquid out into the sunny Swiss air.
Lecture Belt
0CERN Adventure Outfitters have created a new advanced utility belt specifically designed for the punishing environments of today’s physics lecture circuit.
Lecture Belt (TM)
Lecture Belt (TM) combines style with function. Never again be caught in the middle of a public lecture without your laser pointer, cell phone, Leatherman (TM) utility knife, camera, canteen, first aid kit and massive skeleton keys. The “keynote speaker” model comes with a carabiner for those hard-to-attach jangle-tastic belongings that happen to have a loop attached.
Forget pesky backpacks and briefcases! Attach everything to your waist, for best access.
CAUTION: Lecture Belt (TM) wearers may experience difficulty sitting down. Using urinals while wearing Lecture Belt (TM) is not recommended.
CERN’s new water conservation initiative
12 years ago
Working at a world-class institution like CERN is tremendously exciting. As you might assume, not only does CERN lead the world in particle physics, its general infrastructure is also top-notch and maintained by a tireless team of highly dedicated individuals. On a daily basis, you see the same incredible human ingenuity and generous financial resources used to probe the building blocks of matter also being put to use for more mundane things like plumbing. On a recent trip to the toilet, I discovered a bold new water conservation initiative apparently underway. And boy, does it work!
I ... think I'm done washing now.
First I should tell you a dirty little secret about myself. I can be a bit of a glutton, and sometimes this gluttony gets into the realm of wastefulness. One of the forbidden pleasures I allow myself is the use of warm water for hand-washing. Please don’t think I’m such a bad person, it just feels so warm and comfy, and when nobody is watching I just love it. Well, the CERN water engineers are far too clever for reprobates like me! They’ve installed a system whereby the warm water starts out clear but slowly turns yellow, until it is the color of unhealthy urine. Well let me tell you, I shut that hot water faucet off pretty quick! Some people like me never learn, but when your hands are covered in what is probably urine, you start to catch on! Although, I’ll be honest with you – and this is kind of embarrassing – the urine-based warning system has been in full production for several months and yet I still fall back to my old ways.
cutting-edge water conservation system
The story is not over though, because I hadn’t learned my lesson yet. I turned on the cold water and went right back to enjoying myself, getting all that soap off my hands, and I’ll admit, basking a little too long in the cooling water massage. I was so focused on my own pleasure that I didn’t immediately notice the warning signal, in the form of a splashing sound over and above the normal splashing from the sink. Well, I ignored that warning and I finally got the punishment I deserved. I suddenly realized my feet were soaking wet and my gorgeous Italian leather shoes were ruined. Because, get this, the water was going straight out through the drain onto the floor! Brilliant! This time I finally got the message.
I shut that water off immediately and will think very seriously about how often I wash my hands from now on. I can’t begin to imagine the level of sophisticated Swiss engineering needed to implement such an advanced water-conservation system, but CERN is obviously willing to shell out some big money to make it happen. Kudos to them! Hopefully I can be a better world citizen and steward of our precious natural resources from now on.
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