Oh So Boring…

I’m not sure how long this offer will last, but the current issue of Contemporary Physics is being offered for free, free, FREE!  That means you don’t have to pay some gazillions of dollars for access.  (Or work at a research institution with a subscription.)

And if there was ever an issue of Contemp Phys to read this is the one.  It’s the 50th Anniversary Issue.

For those who’ve never read Contemp Phys, it’s a journal which is dedicated to making current, sometimes bleeding-edge, physics intelligible to a wider audience.  That often includes other physicists and, quite often, one certain theoretical chemist.

In this issue, you’ll find works by many of the big names of physics.  No, wait, this is Physics.  Names like Salam, Peierls, Hawking, and Chandrasekhar. But many of the articles are written by names just as big, just not as well known.  No matter what, though, ALL of the papers in this Issue are uniformly great.

That said, I was happy to see that one of my all-time favorite papers was included.  This is Otto Frisch’s famous “Take a photon…” paper. In this paper, Frisch presents a series of Gedankenexperiment (thought experiments) as a dialogue between various characters in regards to the interference of a single photon.  If you love great quantum physics, this is the paper for you.  If you love the freakiness of quantum mechanics, this is for you.  Heck, if you are interested in the quantum computing and information, one of modern physics’ big fields, this is a paper for you.

But, really, all of the papers in this issue (and remember there is a second page of papers…which isn’t quite apparent on InformaWorld’s site) are for you.  Read them all.  You will learn something in one of them. Probably in all of them.

I was flipping around Bloglines a bit randomly today and I saw this article about an English professor taking the English GRE.

First thoughts? I really don’t know much about English literature. I can recognize, say, 50% of the authors in that.  Maybe.

Do English majors really have to know all that?  Wow.

Sorry this isn’t a more interesting post…but I was just amazed!

I figure the best way to inaugurate (hey, I am in DC…ish) a new blog is a post about food.  Mmm…foooooood.  And yesterday had that in spades.  After spending the afternoon with someone I truly care for, we went up to Pacifica Cafe in Gaithersburg for some Chinese.

This all started with a post on DonRockwell.com about someone wanting to try this place’s signature dish: Eight Treasure Duck.  As you can imagine, this is a duck stuffed with eight treasures rice.  Sounds simple, right?  Well, this one you have to order 24 hours in advance.  It comes out wrapped in lotus leaves and…mmm…

But, now, the carte d’food.  In the order I sort of think things came out.  And realize that there were 10 people, so I didn’t order this all myself.

Oh, and I should state that other than the Eight Treasure Duck, we just asked the owner of the place to recommend food.  No American-Chinese or anything, but food he would like.  So, here it is, the board of fare, served with rose tea:

1. Wontons in spicy peanut sauce. This was good.  Really good.  The wontons, yeah, yummy, but that sauce…  It had just the right amount of spiciness. Not overwhelming, but not bland.
2. Eight Treasure Duck. A whole roast duck, deboned, then stuffed with glutinous rice, 2 kinds of Chinese sausage, 3 kinds of nuts, mushrooms, goodness, &c.  Really, really good.  And big.  And DENSE.  But good.
3. Seaweed Infused Fish. Slices of fresh flounder breaded with a seaweed-infused batter and deep fried. So good.  Really.  Amazing.
4. Salty Egg Shrimp. Shrimp battered with a salty egg sauce and fried golden. Folks, I don’t like shrimp.  Really.  It’s not bad, but I don’t seek it out.  This dish?  This dish I would order again and just eat up.  It was that good.
5. Yellow Bird. Bean curd skin stuffed with mushrooms and assorted vegetables, steamed, with a sauce. Very good.  Light, savory, filling.  Good.
6. Lemongrass Chicken.  Another hit.  And not what you might imagine. When it came out I–and others–thought it was pork or something. It was that dark, deep, red color you associate with char siu or the like. But, nope, it was chicken with a very good lemongrass flavor.  Mmm…
7. Spinach with Fried Tofu. Just what you’d think. And good.  Again, I know everything sounds superlative…and it was.
8. Giant Hot Pot. At this point, we were full…and then came this.  Giant is indeed right.  Imagine a, oh, gallon-and-a-half size hotpot filled with cabbage, mushrooms, shrimp, chicken, mini lions head meatballs, tofu all in an amazing broth.  We were all stuffed and yet this ending dish was consumed just as quickly. A very good ending to the meal.

So, there you go. Eight courses of what might be some of the best Chinese I’ve ever had.  What style of Chinese was it? I don’t know.  I think it’s “Owner of Pacifica Cafe’s Favorite Dishes” style.

And the kicker?  All this food, all this… $18 a person.  Yeah, we were all just as surprised by this.  Yum.