Personal

that gray hairs could start appearing when one was merely in one’s very early 40’s, barely even starting one’s mature years.

That’s not change we can believe in, my friends.

… unless you have a white board to doodle on.

Jennifer has the scoop. If you look closely, you’ll see not only bits about entropy and Einstein’s equation (twice), but some hurricanes, stem cells, allusion to a recent blog post, and a clever design for a lunar lander.

Andrew Olmsted was a U.S. soldier who occasionally posted at Obsidian Wings as G’Kar. He was killed yesterday in Iraq. Andrew (who I didn’t know personally) had written a piece with the specific intention of having it posted only in the event of his death. It was posted today by hilzoy.

I write this in part, admittedly, because I would like to think that there’s at least a little something out there to remember me by. Granted, this site will eventually vanish, being ephemeral in a very real sense of the word, but at least for a time it can serve as a tiny record of my contributions to the world. But on a larger scale, for those who knew me well enough to be saddened by my death, especially for those who haven’t known anyone else lost to this war, perhaps my death can serve as a small reminder of the costs of war. Regardless of the merits of this war, or of any war, I think that many of us in America have forgotten that war means death and suffering in wholesale lots. A decision that for most of us in America was academic, whether or not to go to war in Iraq, had very real consequences for hundreds of thousands of people. Yet I was as guilty as anyone of minimizing those very real consequences in lieu of a cold discussion of theoretical merits of war and peace. Now I’m facing some very real consequences of that decision; who says life doesn’t have a sense of humor?

I don’t think the war in Iraq was a good idea. But I have enormous respect and admiration for the people who volunteer and put their lives on the line to serve in the military; they’re not the ones who decide what wars to get into. My heart goes out to Andrew’s friends, colleagues, and family.

Very sad to report that Sidney Coleman passed away yesterday. Sidney, a professor at Harvard, was one of the greatest theoretical physicists of recent times. He doesn’t share the name recognition among the general public that some of his contemporaries have — he was always more interested in the deep underlying principles of quantum field theory than in any particular model of the universe — but no student of high-energy physics could help but be deeply influenced by his thinking, both through his research and his famous Erice lectures. He was an invaluable resource when I was a grad student at Harvard, both through his quantum field theory course and through many hours spent in his office pestering him with specific questions. At my wedding just a couple of months ago, some of the happy-memory-sharing involved trading our favorite Sidney quotes; “Modesty forbids me but honesty compels me” was my personal choice.

Sidney’s papers were not like anyone else’s. One of his classic quotes, from a paper with de Luccia on “Gravitational Effects on and of Vacuum Decay“:

The possibility that we are living in a false vacuum has never been a cheering one to contemplate. Vacuum decay is the ultimate ecological catastrophe; in the new vacuum there are new constants of nature; after vacuum decay, not only is life as we know it impossible, so is chemistry as we know it. However, one could always draw stoic comfort from the possibility that perhaps in the course of time the new vacuum would sustain, if not life as we know it, at least some structures capable of knowing joy. This possibility has now been eliminated.

Plenty of people aspire to be profound and playful at the same time; Sidney could pull it off, and had the technical chops to back it up.

Sidney had been sick for the last few years. In 2005 there was a conference in his honor, which arguably featured the greatest concentration of physics talent in recent memory; I wasn’t there, but Jacques Distler blogged a bit about it.

Physics will be a little bit duller without him.

We’re back! Jennifer and I, that is, having successfully gotten married and then immediately swanning off for the honeymoon. Nobody got hurt, as far as I know, and all in all I highly recommend the experience. No pics of the actual event yet, sorry about that.

The ceremony was beautiful. It was held at Marvimon, a reconstructed 1920’s auto showroom north of Downtown LA, now owned by artist couple Sherry Walsh and Miguel Nelson, who rent it out for private parties. Let me just say that Sherry and Miguel were enormously useful in pointing us to good people to help with all of the stuff that goes into throwing a smashing wedding. Most of all they introduced us to our caterers, Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo, a/k/a the Food Dudes, who whipped up some of the best bacon-wrapped dates and corn chowder and mac-and-cheese you’re ever likely to find. We hired them just in time, too — next week they have a show debuting on the Food Network, Two Dudes Catering, and pretty soon we won’t be able to afford them.

Our ceremony was performed by Rev. Mark Trodden, newly ordained by the Progressive Universal Life Church just for the occasion. (Although apparently you get a parking sticker, so there are benefits.) We wrote our own vows, based on the following algorithm: start with the Form for the Solemnization of Matrimony from the Book of Common Prayer, then remove from it all the references to God and anything too clunkily archaic (we crossed out the bit about “carnal lusts and appetites, like brute beasts that have no understanding”). You’re left with not much text, but a nice outline. Then insert into that some nice secular meditations on the meaning of love and marriage; we used W.H. Auden,

Rejoice, dear love, in Love’s peremptory word;
All chance, all love, all logic, you and I,
Exist by grace of the Absurd,
And without conscious artifice we die:

So, lest we manufacture in our flesh
The lie of our divinity afresh,
Describe round our chaotic malice now,
The arbitrary circle of a vow.

and Rainer Maria Rilke,

We must trust in what is difficult. It is good to be solitary, for solitude is difficult. It is also good to love, because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is mere preparation…. Love consists in this: that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other.

Season with some interpolating phrases featuring a bit of levity, and you’re done.

Not that I would know, but I suspect that getting married when you’re 40-ish is a substantially different experience than when your 25-ish. Not that either is intrinsically better or worse, but it’s helpful to have some experience with other parties and weddings, and a sufficiently matured sense of taste that you both know exactly what you want. And it’s extremely nice to bring together people who have meant so much to you over various different phases of your life, and collect them in one place to celebrate the beginning of the next phase with the person you love.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled bloodless-academic-sciencey blogging.