Peter’s Blog

Gonzague de Gélis, perhaps my oldest friend, got married yesterday. Congratulations Gonzague and Laury-Anne!

From the latest email to University of Chicago alumni:

Yoichiro Nambu, the Harry Pratt Judson Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Physics and the Enrico Fermi Institute, has been awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics.

…

Professor Nambu joins 81 other Nobel laureates who have been affiliated with the University, including 27 prior recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics.

We rock!

Overheard this morning:

A random guy hops into the kitchen on one foot. He’s in nothing but his boxers and his left ankle is pretty swollen.
Finn: Last night was Operation Jägermeister! I was so drunk I fell down the stairs of the bar and twisted my ankle.
Non-Finn: Ouch.
Finn: Jussi offered to carry me home to his place. He was carrying me like a backpack when I fell all the way forward and went face first into the pavement! That’s why I have this scar on my forehead!

I’ve never seen such childish delight in recounting one’s drunken antics. A few minutes later…

Finn: Esra, come quick, I need you!
Non-Finn: Yes?
Finn: Do you know what time of year it is? It’s a very special time of the year!
Non-Finn: Oh really?
Finn: Yes, the NHL season started last night!

A few minutes later I find several barely clothed Finns sitting around the television watching some wacky dog show. Turns out there wasn’t much in the way of hockey replays to watch at 11 am.

As you may have gathered, I was in Helsinki the last few days. I took a bunch of pictures.

The IHT profiles Brussels’ EU stagiaires. It almost makes me miss the place!

Artifacts from the Future: Bumper Stickers of 2018

Had a great time at Picnic today. Met tons of great people, including the head of a top ad agency in Russia, a cinematographer for Survivor and just about the whole Dopplr team. Awesome! Tomorrow I’m part of the Hot100 program.

As the saying goes, God made the world but the Dutch made the Netherlands. Of course, no landscape is untouched: walk through the British countryside and what seems to be untouched forests and hills turn out be forests planted several centuries ago and hills continuously molded over the past millenia by human activity. On the road from Haarlem to Schipol I once saw a grass-covered ziggurat-shaped hill with an incredibly straight alley of trees running by it. Rather than pretending that their environment isn’t man-made – the British aren’t the only offenders at maintaining such an illusion though I think they’re some of the worst – the Dutch celebrate the artificialness of their landscape. Building on that thought, there’s a great piece in the Herald Tribune about an MIT professor encouraging a polluted region in Italy to embrace man-made nature.

From Geen Stijl.

Another classic from R Stevens.

I never made it to Jimmy’s (I was 20 when I graduated from the UofC) but, all the same, it’s fun to see a NY Times profile on Jimmy’s this weekend.