Electric Josh

This space's earliest prehistoric precursor, now at least ten years old and gone from the web, pointed to the US Naval Observatory, where They keep The Time. It drifts 100 ps per day; a nanosecond is 1,000 picoseconds, but you already knew that. At any rate, I spent several of those ten years having fun sweating over and occasionally retooling a pretty crazy optical bench—it had wiggly mirrors and scary laser beams pointing backwards into microscopes and stuff—but after looking at this optical cooling setup that powers a cesium fountain clock (crazy quantum mechanics, kids!) let's just share one of those quiet prayers of thanks that I'm not an experimental physicist anymore.
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Man, Jon Stewart needs to be on more shows more often. (Of course, that would mean having to watch more TV.) "It's not so much that [Crossfire] is bad, as that it's hurting America." Update: It turns out that a ton of other nerds with websites are excited about this, too. Good. Update: Here's an mp3 of the segment.
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