Summer entertainment
Even Quantum Diarists like summer reading and movies. Caolionn O'Connell admits that she's a serious Harry Potter fan. She bought the latest book on her vacation in Bangkok, "in English and even cheaper than in the States."
Unfortunately, Gordon Watts is not fully enjoying his latest read, the physics-related novel The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. "The first thing that gets me is the science is wrong," he writes. "For example, there is no way a GPS receiver works underground. If they had enough power to do that, we'd be uncomfortable above ground!"
Peter Steinberg catches two documentaries, Rize and Murderball. The real-life dramas captured in these films leads him to reflect on the drama in his life as a physicist: It's "kind of like being in a documentary," he writes, "but the
director is still getting more footage."
Ursula Bassler suffers the unfortunate breakdown of her TV, leaving her without its "effortless company." "Like many, I would not admit to myself that I am actually pretty much into watching TV," she writes. "And not only culturally valuable programs. No, lately I mostly watch TV-series, sitcoms, even reality-shows and other crappy programs, hard to admit in public."
Finally, Stephon Alexander discovered a new kind of entertainment while in Trinidad. Called lyming, "it is an artistic and creative way of doing nothing/hanging out with friends." Now back in the States, Stephon misses lyming with the physicists in the faculty pub at the university: "We drank fine aged rum and discussed anything from quantum phase transitions to pharmaceutical research in the rainforest to local Caribbean politics."
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