Message to the Physics Community, Monday, April 13, 2020

Posted on by

Dear Physics Community,

Reread Joan Didion essay from the 1970’s and found some resonance. I also looked at stuff here, which always brings a smile.

Physics Events

  • Wednesday, April 15, 4-5 pm, Undergraduate Office Hour
  • Thursday, April 16, 2020, 4-5:50 pm – Colloquium – Mina Arvanitaki
  • Thursday, April 16, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – “Grading and Exam Guidelines for the Spring Term”, Nergis Mavalvala and “Research Restart”, Peter Fisher
  • Thursday, April 23, 2020, 12-1:30 pm – Nikta Fakhri

Special Tuesday Lunch Talk Series

  • Tuesday April 14, 12 pm noon, https://mit.zoom.us/j/632177654 BYOL
  • Steven Silverberg – “Peter Pan” Disks: Long-lived Accretion Disks Around Young M Stars, and How Citizen Science Found Them
  • Jinghui Liu “Vortices, space-time braids and loops in the membrane of a living cell”.

If you’d like to give one, contact Anna.

Physics Department

UROPs – the situation is evolving.  Cathy, Nergis and I will send a message later in the week.  The dates I gave were not right, but I believe there will be UROPs this summer. Stay tuned.  We can also talk about them in the Undergraduate Office Hours on Wednesday.

MC Escher – new exhibit in Trieste, Italy reminded me of the cool paper explaining the math behind his drawings.

Academic Continuity Meeting

Advisories

Medical support facility – open on campus in Johnson Ice Rink, place for members of the MIT community who have tested positive and need observation.  Not walk-in, need to be referred by a local hospital.  Observation and support only.  Burton-Conner serves this purpose for students.  EC used for healthy essential city personnel.

CP* – this coming weekend

Summer Travel: Different options under discussion probably essential research travel for graduate students only decided on a  case-by-case basis, decision probably this week. For faculty, a decision will be made May 15.

On-campus summer programs – no on-campus programs in June.  Options range from canceling everything to allowing MIT housing to be used.  Whether to cancel or not decided this week.  If not canceled, a decision about the use of housing for summer programs in May.

Los Endos

These days are tough – there is so much uncertainty, yet we have to go to classes, meetings, social events, all on zoom and act “normal”.  You can talk about how bad things are, but not too much and, at least for me, a lot of accumulated emotion gets stored up and has to be let out somewhere.

I don’t have good advice about what to do.  I read, run, cook with my family, do my job as well as I can most of the time.  I try to limit contact with problematic people and keep in touch with people I care about.  I try not to pretend that everything is or will be okay, without dwelling on what could happen (NB: Alain de Botton and the Stoics do not agree with this approach.)

Peter

P.S. I am posting these messages in my blog roll here. Thanks to Physics Council, Cathy Modica, Vicky Metternich and Christina Andujar for input and comments on these messages.