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Cosmic Variance
« Arachnophobia
Mapping Skid Row’s Homeless »

A Quantum Leap

by John Conway

Just in time for St. Pat’s day, I got interviewed by Irish Public Radio, by Mary Mulvhill, the host of their science show Quantum Leap. My interview is posted as an audio file, to which I just listened, and, despite the poor audio quality of our phone at home, is fairly articulate, I think. She asked a few good questions and I gave some looooong answers, but I think I said what needed to be said.

Happy listening!

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March 18th, 2007 9:20 PM
in Miscellany | 3 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

3 Responses to “A Quantum Leap”

  1. 1.   Paul Valletta Says:
    March 19th, 2007 at 3:38 am

    Great Interview John, It remineded me of the last throes (echoes) of the collider competition that existed before LHC got the go ahead. The consensus then was that data needed to be of a certain (high) probability, to prove the existence of the Higgs Bosun. As the last runs ocuured in Europe and USA, there was a lot of publications, which potrayed the excitation of the whole particle field enterprise, if’s..maybe’s..possible’s?..all of which went into overall consensus that, bigger and better accelerators were needed, urgently.

    Nevertheless, the public pays for what is “needed”, as you stated in the interview. Even if the results dont match expectations (yet!), it is always good to relay to the public, a status report that is transparent, and as concise as is needed.

    Relavant P.S story below?

    P.S the background music to the show was by the German group Kraftwork, from the album: Man Machine.
    When I heard this album in the 70′s, I was amazed! and it was one of my fav albums. As I always had the (best music;)!), my house was always full of friends who came around to listen to my latest music (vast) collection. Anyway, I got wind of the German version of Man Machine,and purchaesed a copy.

    So without telling my mates, when I asked what they wanted to listen to?..(Kraftwork was a regular), I put on the German version of the Album, which had the monotonic lyrics spoken, by a voice synthezizer?..this act was to instigate conflict among my fiends, firstly they hated it, I actually loved it even more than the english version, so I told them a little white lie!..I explained that the album was called Man v Machine, the subtle introduction of a little letter v = versus, was sufficiant to turn around their one dimensional opinions!

    If anyone knows Kraftwork and their music, then you would know the moral of this little extra story! ;)

    Thanks again for the clarity.

  2. 2.   Paul Valletta Says:
    March 19th, 2007 at 3:52 am

    Sorry, a link needed :

    http://www.bikereader.com/contributors/thurston/kraftwerk.html

    I of course ment :KRAFTWERK!

  3. 3.   Stephen Uitti Says:
    March 19th, 2007 at 5:25 pm

    Urg. RealPlayer. My Ipod does not grok RealPlayer. My car does not have a high speed internet connection. RealPlayer is a non-starter. Is there an mp3?





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