Random thoughts on National Labs:
1. There are so many Russian folk in US National Labs. It's hilarious.
2. The security people take their job seriously. A little too seriously. You need ID and a National Lab pass on your person at every waking moment or else someone WILL stop and ask you what you're doing here. The hotel checkout desk will not say your hotel room number out loud for security purposes. Last night Saloni and I drove back from Chicago after attending a friend's wedding and I did not have my Argonne badge. So the Department of Energy law enforcement officer escorted me back to the hotel, checked my badge (which was in my room and which I had to bring down to show to the police) and then I was free to go. "Code XXXX, ID verified. Entry # XXXXX" via the Codec.
3. The different parts of the campus are called "Area xxx" etc.---exactly like it is in Half-Life, which is cool. Part of the reason I ever wanted to become a physicist was because of Half-Life. Played it when I was 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEgO16JaW4Y&t=162s
"Subject: Gordon Freeman, Education: PhD, MIT, Theoretical Physics, Position: Research Associate, Assignment: Anomalous Materials Laboratory, Location: Black Mesa Research Facility, Black Mesa, New Mexico". (Presumably the location is inspired by another National Lab, Los Alamos, in New Mexico. Haven't visited that place yet, unfortunately.)
Random thoughts on Chicago:
1. The city is gorgeous. I've probably talked about it before here somewhere. Architecturally, it's certainly the most impressive city in the US. All the buildings in downtown are designed to make sense and fit the impressive scale. The roads are wide so you can actually admire the buildings from where you stand on the street unlike in NYC where the roads are tiny as hell and lined with garbage. The river walk is beautiful. The lake front is wonderful. The cycling lanes are really wide. It is really a pleasure to walk around this place.
2. The South Side, I haven't explored. I haven't had the time to go driving through, and now I don't have the rental car to do it either. But from what little I did get to see of it, the poverty was stark. The roads absolutely littered with trash, houses abandoned, and you would only see primarily black people on the streets. Segregation is naked here. I did not go into the worst part: Garfield Avenue and Englewood, where you can get shot just driving around caught in gunfire exchange.
3. I've spent a large part of today figuring out from my hotel room what makes gang violence so rampant in South Chicago. There's obviously a long history to this. But what appears now is that no one wants to be a part of this yet an economy based off of drugs, lack of employment opportunities, completely broken family structure, and just the inertia of it all seems to drag everything along. These gangs are often the only kind of family these kids have ever had. "Bloody Chicago" on Youtube seems like a channel run by someone who does care about this situation and wants it to change; the comments on the channel however are full of vile hatred and absolute lack of empathy or understanding and can make you sick.
4. Someone's gotta change this. Don't know how.
1. There are so many Russian folk in US National Labs. It's hilarious.
2. The security people take their job seriously. A little too seriously. You need ID and a National Lab pass on your person at every waking moment or else someone WILL stop and ask you what you're doing here. The hotel checkout desk will not say your hotel room number out loud for security purposes. Last night Saloni and I drove back from Chicago after attending a friend's wedding and I did not have my Argonne badge. So the Department of Energy law enforcement officer escorted me back to the hotel, checked my badge (which was in my room and which I had to bring down to show to the police) and then I was free to go. "Code XXXX, ID verified. Entry # XXXXX" via the Codec.
3. The different parts of the campus are called "Area xxx" etc.---exactly like it is in Half-Life, which is cool. Part of the reason I ever wanted to become a physicist was because of Half-Life. Played it when I was 9. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEgO16JaW4Y&t=162s
"Subject: Gordon Freeman, Education: PhD, MIT, Theoretical Physics, Position: Research Associate, Assignment: Anomalous Materials Laboratory, Location: Black Mesa Research Facility, Black Mesa, New Mexico". (Presumably the location is inspired by another National Lab, Los Alamos, in New Mexico. Haven't visited that place yet, unfortunately.)
Random thoughts on Chicago:
1. The city is gorgeous. I've probably talked about it before here somewhere. Architecturally, it's certainly the most impressive city in the US. All the buildings in downtown are designed to make sense and fit the impressive scale. The roads are wide so you can actually admire the buildings from where you stand on the street unlike in NYC where the roads are tiny as hell and lined with garbage. The river walk is beautiful. The lake front is wonderful. The cycling lanes are really wide. It is really a pleasure to walk around this place.
2. The South Side, I haven't explored. I haven't had the time to go driving through, and now I don't have the rental car to do it either. But from what little I did get to see of it, the poverty was stark. The roads absolutely littered with trash, houses abandoned, and you would only see primarily black people on the streets. Segregation is naked here. I did not go into the worst part: Garfield Avenue and Englewood, where you can get shot just driving around caught in gunfire exchange.
3. I've spent a large part of today figuring out from my hotel room what makes gang violence so rampant in South Chicago. There's obviously a long history to this. But what appears now is that no one wants to be a part of this yet an economy based off of drugs, lack of employment opportunities, completely broken family structure, and just the inertia of it all seems to drag everything along. These gangs are often the only kind of family these kids have ever had. "Bloody Chicago" on Youtube seems like a channel run by someone who does care about this situation and wants it to change; the comments on the channel however are full of vile hatred and absolute lack of empathy or understanding and can make you sick.
4. Someone's gotta change this. Don't know how.
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