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2011-01-26T00:59:00.000+01:00

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Life in Brazil so far...

2009-10-22T19:14:00.003+02:00

OK, so I'm finally settled in more or less (still waiting for my health insurance to take effect).
Physicswise, I gave my introductory talk on gauge/gravity correspondence and applications to QCD, and I'm starting to work with different people on issues like walking Technicolor, Sakai-Sugimoto models, D7-anti-D7 branes in Klebanov-Strassler backgrounds, superfluidity in D3-D7 backgrounds etc. I'm actually having fun down here.
Life however, is not as simple and laid-back as it used to be anymore. I still need to learn portuguese and make more friends. It takes a huge effort to move around in the city, traffic is messy and public transportation is, at best, chaotic. So hanging out with friends is virtually impossible, at the very least it takes very thorough planning, because I live up north (close to university) and all the nice restaurants, bars etc. are located in Zona Sul. Biking would be nice, but bikes are expensive and roads/traffic make biking a suicide mission. So instead, I'm trying to save some money (for traveling), and I try to go running or work out almost every day...
Living in one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where corruption, drug lords ruling favelas and police violence are a widespread problem is also kind of weird. The difference between rich and poor is much more pronounced than anywhere else I Have lived so far. I think it's a good experience that more people should share, but I couldn't imagine living here for a significant period of time. It's just depressing and frustrating!
on the other hand, the natural backdrop of the city is amazing. Beaches, hills, atlantic rainforest, you name it....the nature is still awesome. I will continue to explore Rio's surroundings!
So to conclude: I have a lack of social interaction and language skill but I am in a nature lover's paradise....trying to enjoy it for the one or two years I'm going to stay!

Rio de Janeiro: Erste Eindrücke

2009-08-12T05:35:00.004+02:00

Nachdem ich mir vorgenommen habe, endlich meinen Blog wiederzubeleben, bietet sich mein Umzug nach Rio an, mal wieder ein paar Zeilen zu schreiben.
Rio ist eine riesige Stadt (knapp über 6 Mio. Einwohner im eigentlichen Stadtgebiet) in Südamerika. Das sagt schon vieles. Die Luft ist in vielen Vierteln relativ schlecht, der Verkehr ist, naja, freundlich ausgedrückt, chaotisch und die Schere zwischen arm und reich geht extrem weit auseinander. Im Vergleich zu anderen südamerikanischen Städten ist Rio aber erstaunlich sauber, zumindest in den besseren Wohnvierteln bzw. den touristischen Gegenden wie Copacabana und Ipanema, wo ich gestern abend drei Stunden lang spazierengehen war. Und landschaftlich ist die Stadt mit Meer und Zuckerhüten natürlich überwältigend. Ich war heute mit Behördengängen beschäftigt, was wohl auch noch eine Weile dauern wird. Der gemeine brasilianische Verwaltungsangestellte schickt einen ganz gern mal kreuz und quer durch die Stadt. Auf diese Weise war ich heute zuerst auf der Uni (Ilha do Fundao), um ein Bankkonto zu eröffnen, was aber nur mit CPF (Personalausweis) und Schreiben der Policia Federal (Bundespolizei) möglich ist, dann am Flughafen bei besagter Bundespolizei zwecks Registrierung, dann in der Innenstadt bei der Receita Federal, um den Perso zu beantragen. Das geht natürlich nicht so einfach. Zuerst muss man sich seine Identität auf der Post bestätigen lassen, dann kann man online einen Termin bei der Behörde ausmachen (mehrere Tage Wartezeit). Morgen ganz früh muss ich wieder zum Flughafen, um den ausgefüllten und mit Bildern versehenen Registrierungsantrag abzugeben. Stress! Ausserdem haben wir heute noch einen wireless Router gekauft. Ohne meinen Mitbewohner und Kollegen Marcus wäre ich sicherlich aufgeschmissen, weil eigentlich niemand englisch oder spanisch spricht bzw. sprechen will. Also muss ich wohl oder übel schnellstens portugiesich lernen.
Am Abend sind wir im Stadtteil Barra da Tijuca vorbeigefahren, um der Rush Hour zu entgehen. Barra ist einer der reichsten Stadtteile, wirkt sehr amerikanisch, mit grossen Autos, grossen Malls und moderner Architektur. Daneben, links und rechts, die allgegenwärtigen Favelas. Krasser Unterschied!

Nachtrag: Heute habe ich 6-7 Stunden auf der Dienststelle der Bundespolizei gewartet, bis endlich jemand meinen Paß zwecks Registrierung abgestempelt hatte und meine Daten und Fingerabdrücke aufgenommen waren. Morgen muss ich dann zur Receita, um mein CPF zu beantragen, der Termin, den Marcus für mich ausgemacht hat, ist 10:18 Uhr, pünktlich, bzw. was man in Brasilien darunter versteht.
Ausserdem ist mir aufgefallen, daß Autos und Elektronik aller Art teurer sind als in USA und Europa (wegen der hohen Steuern wahrscheinlich) und daß das Lebensmittelangebot vergleichbar ist mit dem nordamerikanischen (z.B. weiches Brot).

Status update

2008-04-17T06:35:00.004+02:00

It's been a long while since my last "real" blog entry...so let me give you a little update on what's been going on. I've been trying to finish writing my dissertation, called "Topics in type IIA flux compactifications", while still keeping up with some of my research projects. Those include finding finite temperature deformations (black holes) to the solutions we found in our last paper, searching for de Sitter vacua and inflation in our toroidal IIA orientifold models. Besides that I've been applying for postdoc positions which turns out to be a long and frustrating undertaking :) I will defend my thesis on May 9th and then spend the rest of the summer trying to finish some of the above-mentioned projects and also figuring out what I'm going to do afterwards.
One option that I particularly like would be CECS Valdivia in Chile, which is beautifully located on the coast 800 km south of Santiago de Chile. I like the idea of living and working in a spanish-speaking country for a while. En route, I could pay a visit to my friends from Hannover, Alexandra de Castro and Leonardo Quevedo who are back in Caracas, Venezuela. I would also like to visit friends and family in Germany over the summer, e.g. my brother who just moved to Munich.
By the way, at the time of writing there is a SWAT team outside of RLM, the physics building, tending to an ongoing aggravated robbery on the 11th floor. Crazy! And last night, my car got broken into in front of my house and my navigator got stolen!

Bilder aus Telluride

2008-01-17T20:38:00.001+01:00

CIMG0948
Originally uploaded by msihl

Please click on the picture...

Vail & Silverthorne

2007-12-22T23:25:00.001+01:00

Vail & Silverthorne 001
Originally uploaded by nielschristisking

Hier gibts die ersten paar Bilder von mir und Niels beim Skifahren in Vail, Beaver Creek, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain und Keystone...mehr gibts demnaechst...Hier gibts schonmal was auf daenisch vom Niels sein blog (der Dativ ist dem Genitiv sein Tod!).

Long time, no post...

2007-12-08T18:55:00.000+01:00

I got a little bit lazy writing blog entries. So, let me tell y'all what's new.
Firstly, our latest paper is finally out. So, right now, we're focusing on finding deSitter vacua and/or inflation in IIA orientifold models with general fluxes (or maybe even IIB).

For Thanksgiving, we were driving to Pagosa Springs, CO, in search of some snow. Unfortunately, the conditions weren't nearly as perfect as last year, however, we received about a foot of snow while we were there.

Climbing Mt. Rainier

2007-10-09T22:17:00.001+02:00

Rainier2007 037
Originally uploaded by msihl

Here are some pictures of our trip to Mt. Rainier, WA in September 2007.
Click on the picture to get to the flickr photo set.

Perimeter Institute, August 2007

2007-08-16T05:43:00.000+02:00

First of all, my apologies for not posting in a while now. I failed to report on my Mt. Shasta trip and the various weekend trips around Austin. On top of that, I also moved in with Esther, Robert, Hilda and Riita. Our house is in the Upper Eastside Area (78723) of Austin. So far, it's been very nice, but that's mostly because the day after I moved, I took a flight to Canada and I have been there ever since. Which brings me to the main theme of this post: The PPCS 2007, namely the Perimeter Particle Physics, Cosmology and String Theory Summer School in Waterloo, Ontario. Perimeter Institute was founded in 1999, funded by a donation of C$100 million from Blackberry creator Mike Lazaridis. It is a premier institution for research in theoretical physics and probably the most modern such institution in existence (albeit not the most famous one which is without a doubt the IAS in Princeton).
It provides a very nice setting for theorists to do research, featuring blackboards and espresso machines everywhere, an impressive (and slightly expensive) cafeteria called Black Hole Bistro, quiet meeting and discussion areas and so on and so forth.
There are also two pool tables, fire places, table tennis, squash court and fitness studio available on site. Unlike many places in the US right now, they seem to have a lot of funding to spend on long- and short-term visitors, postdocs, summer schools and conferences.
As for the actual school, I have to admit that this is probably the most effective summer school I've been to so far: The lectures are (mostly) very exciting and inspiring and well-balanced between theory and experiment/observation. Here's the reason why some call it the "PI slave camp": Each lecturer assigns a number (order 10) of problems to work on in groups of eight, the solutions of which will be presented by the groups on Saturday. It's a lot of fun (and work).
For further information in spanish, see Linda Uruchurtu's blog entry.

Austin in June

2007-06-13T05:53:00.001+02:00

After finishing our latest paper, we are working hard on our other project involving new solutions that include the backreaction of flavor D5-branes in the Maldacena-Nunez background (at T=0 for now).
Also, we went canoing on the Colorado river near Webberville, TX. Some pics are available on Robert's flickr account.
Yesterday, I was listening to Manu Chao playing at Stubbs BBQ.
They are great!

Guadalupe Mountains NP and Carlsbad Caverns NP, May 19-21, 2007.

2007-05-26T00:15:00.001+02:00

IMGP1625
Originally uploaded by msihl

We ascended to the top of Texas (Guadalupe Peak, 2667 m) on May 20th. The sky was clear and the birds were crazy (strong winds!). It took us 2h30 up and 1h45 down, which is pretty good, considering the load I was carrying :), namely 60 lbs. in my backpack. After our return, we had hiked enough for the day and decided to drive to White's City to watch the bats at CCNP, which we barely managed to do due to emergent bad weather, i.e. storm and lightning. The next day we took the King's Palace guided tour, which was very interesting, and visited the Big Hall. Greg, our guide/ranger from New Zealand told us a lot about geology and that there is another, even bigger and prettier cave close by, namely Lechuguilla Cave.

Bastrop State Park

2007-04-30T23:20:00.000+02:00

Am Samstag war ich zwecks Training im Bastrop SP und bin den Lost Pines Trail gelaufen (8.5 Meilen = 13.7 km). Der Park ist sowohl für Läufer als auch für Radfahrer sehr zu empfehlen, ausserdem gibt es eine Verbindung zum Büscher State Park direkt nebenan.

Trip to Breckenridge, Arapahoe Basin, Vail 04/19-04/23/2007

2007-04-24T07:41:00.001+02:00

IMGP1566
Originally uploaded by msihl.

This past Thursday evening, I was flying into Denver (as usual with Frontier), picked up a rental car at Thrifty and drove up to Silverthorne, which is located in the middle of Summit County with access to all of the famous ski areas. I checked into my motel (Luxury Inn & Suites, cheap but very clean and nice with pool and hot tub) and drove to Breckenridge to check out the place. The next day, I went boarding at Breckenridge, but the snow was not very good and only a few lifts were open, so I decided to drive to Arapahoe Basin. A-Basin is only 15 miles or so from Breck and shares the same lift ticket, so I didn't have to pay again. Again, the snow quality wasn't that brilliant, but I can see how the famous East Wall is a lot of fun in powdery conditions. Keystone and Copper Mountain were already closed, so I couldn't go there. When I got on the lift for the second time in Breck, I dislocated my knee (first time experience), because I was talking to the lift guy, facing him, and the chair came crushing into my leg. Fortunately, it popped back in, so I was able to continue riding, although it hurt a lot for about an hour. On Saturday, I drove to Vail and boarded there for the whole day. Vail is a huge ski areas (one of the biggest in the US) and has many backcountry bowls with relatively easy access. However, the snow quality was far from optimal. But then it started to snow heavily in the afternoon and continued to snow through the night. I left Vail around 3pm to make it to Breckenridge in time for the Ky-Mani Marley show (Spring Massive Festival). I really enjoyed the show, there were a couple of hundred people at the Riverwalk Stage, it was snowing like crazy and freezing cold, but Ky-Mani rocked the crowd. His repertoire includes Reggae and Hip-Hop. The best day in terms of snowboarding was Sunday, because of the fresh snow and because the opened the Lake Chutes. They are lots of fun and the snow conditions were a lot better than the previous days. Plus, one has to hike up 160 vertical feet from the highest chair lift in North America (see pictures) to the top of Peak 8, so it wasn't too crowded. The hike is exhausting, because of the altitude of almost 4000 meters. It was totally worth it though. I did the hike 5 times and was completely beat up afterwards but happy! I ended the last day of the season in Colorado (with the exception of A-Basin) at 3pm watching some kids hitting a kicker into watery snow at the bottom of Peak 8, splashing everybody standing in line for the lift.

Big Bend NP trip 04/13-04/15/2007

2007-04-16T18:20:00.000+02:00

This weekend, I went on a camping/hiking trip to the Chisos Mountains in Big Bend National Park together with Esther, Hilda and Alex Zavarsky (from Vienna). We arrived Friday afternoon and built our base camp at the Rio Grande Village campsite after hiking the Grapevine Hills trail. The BBQ was tasty and the nightsky pretty impressive. The next morning we packed our stuff (and decided to carry only one tent) and left for the Chisos Mountains Base, where we parked our car. We then hiked the Laguna Meadows trail to the South Rim, where will stayed for the night (@ campsite SW4). We went to sleep early after eating Ravioli and watching the sun set over the Santa Elena canyon from the South Rim. Sunday morning, we got up early, packed our stuff and trash and left for the Pinnacle Trail. On our way back to Chisos Base we made a nice detour to Emory Peak which is the highest peak in Big Bend NP (2534 m). The last part, i.e the summit block, requires some mild climbing and is actually pretty exposed. However, the views from the summit are definitely worth the effort. Altogether we hiked 12.6 miles on the South Rim Trail and another 2.4 miles to the summit of Emory peak. The Chisos Base (our starting point) is at an altitude of 1660 m, so that we had almost 900 m of differnce in altitude. Pictures will follow soon.

Kurztrip nach Europa, Vortrag in Dublin

2007-03-13T21:33:00.000+01:00

Am 2. Maerz landete ich am Frankfurter Flughafen, wo mich meine Eltern abholten und nach Gochsheim fuhren. Einen Tag spaeter war dann die grosse Geburtstagsfeier meines Vaters in Schweinfurt (Hotel Ross). Bei der Gelegenheit war die Familie mal wieder komplett versammelt, was sehr interessant war. Am Montag, den 5. Maerz, gings dann weiter nach Dublin, wo ich am 8. meinen Vortrag ueber RHIC und AdS/CFT halten durfte.
Das DIAS (Dublin Institute for advanced studies) ist ein staatliches Institut fuer theoretische Physik und keltische Sprachen/Geschichte. Christian Saemann und Christian Roemelsberger sind dort momentan Postdocs, so dass es zum Wiedersehen mit den beiden kam. Dublin ist extrem teuer fuer europaeische Verhaeltnisse, obwohl es eigentlich nicht sonderlich gross ist (halbe Million Einwohner). Mein Bed & Breakfast in der Upper Leeson Street war Standard (ohne Luxus) hat aber trotzdem 60 Euro die Nacht gekostet.
Am Mittwoch waren wir am Trinity College zum Seminar. Abends waren wir in diversen Pubs, z.B. am Dienstag im International Pub, wo es Jazz gab und am Mittwoch im Temple Bar Viertel. Am Freitag gings zurueck nach Frankfurt und weiter nach Wuerzburg zu meinem Bruder. Am Samstagabend waren wir dann bei Merlin und Fonz in Bamberg, wo am Sonntag auf der wunderbaren Dachterrasse gegrillt wurde. Im Anschluss gings dann
ueber Schweinfurt und Wuerzburg per Zug weiter nach Muenchen zum Basti und von dort aus weiter nach Walchen (mit Basti und Christopher). Nach vier sehr anstrengenden Skitagen am Kitzsteinhorn gings dann mit der Bahn zurück nach Schweinfurt um zu packen. Leider stellte ich am Flughafen fest, daß sämtliche Flüge in den Nordosten der USA wegen Schneesturms abgesagt wurden. Morgen gibts dann einen neuen Versuch (Dienstag, 20. März).

Winter Park, CO 02/15-02/18/2007

2007-02-19T20:46:00.000+01:00

I spend President's Day weekend in Winter Park, CO with Rosie and part of her family (Zach and Pily,
Zach and Jessica, Sarah and Adam, and Mark). We were flying out of Austin into Denver around 6.30 am on Thursday, picked up a rental car and made it up to Winter Park just on time to start snowboarding around 9.30 am. Rosie missed out because she wanted to meet up with the other guys first and settle in. Thus, I was riding alone on Thursday, checking out the ski area. Unfortunately, Timberline lift, which goes to the top of Parsenn bowl, was closed due to wind. Since Rosie's brother was supposed to join us on Friday, I had rented a motel room downtown (America's Best Value Inn), while the others were staying at a really nice condo at the Lakota district. However, a snow storm hit us on Friday, so that Benny never showed since they closed Berthoud Pass. Also, they closed down the lifts by 10.30, so that we only got two or three runs in. Those runs were awesome though, perfect powder conditions. But the winds were too strong for the lifts to operate. The next two days (Saturday and Sunday) were pretty intense, I was riding mostly with Zach, Mark and Adam, which turned out to be really exhausting :) Also, all the interesting runs were plastered with big ass moguls. Of course there were excellent tree runs, too. The Bowl opened back up Saturday and Sunday, however, quite surpringly, the snow of the previous day had already been gone; the wind had blown it away. Saturday was a lot less busy than expected since the pass was still closed, Sunday on the other hand turned out to be one of the most crowded days of the season. Rosie only got to ride on Saturday, fell on her face and got treated to a massage by her sister on Sunday. We came back Sunday night around midnight. I highly recommend Frontier Airlines for travel to and from Colorado, they have really good deals on flights ($200 AUS-DEN-AUS).

Snowboarding trip to New Mexico

2007-02-03T05:19:00.000+01:00

For the weekend, I was in New Mexico with Brendan. Thursday and Friday night we were staying with his friend, Liam, in Albuquerque. Friday morning, we drove up to Los Alamos to Pajarito Mountain, which is a small but very cool ski area. We had really good snow, namely several inches of powder. It was quite cold most of the day (20 degrees Fahrenheit), but at least we were almost alone on the mountain. We arrived around 10.30 am and stayed until almost 4 pm. Then we drove back to Albuquerque, where Liam had already cooked a classic (hot) New Mexican dinner for us. He hadn't been able to join us on Friday. On Saturday, we were driving up to Sipapu with Liam and his friends Jeff and Laura (who gave us a voucher for 2 free tickets for Angel Fire!). Sipapu is a small but pretty decent mountain with lots of powder and nice runs through the woods (Gamble Trees, Worm and Wormwood). They also have a nice little terrain park with boxes and kickers. After Liam and his friends headed home for Albuquerque to be able to watch the superbowl on Sunday, Brendan and I were driving north to Angel Fire. We stayed at the Econo Lodge in Eagle's Nest. After hanging out at the local bar (Lucky Lounge?) we walked home for a good night's sleep. We got up very early Sunday and arrived at Angel Fire resort at 9am to claim our free lift tickets. Angel Fire is kind of a strange resort, because it's mostly flat on one side. It took us a while to find the more challenging runs, but then we had a lot of fun. The weather was beautiful and the snow conditions very good. So we did Hari Kari, Hell's Bells, Angel's Plunge (the most fun, deep powder in the forrest) all day long. In our lunch break we watched the locals competing in the terrain park and half pipe. After a few afternoon beers, we were heading back to Albuquerque to comfort Liam whose team (the Bears) lost to the Colts.
On Monday we spent half a day at Santa Fe Ski Area before returning to the airport in Albuquerque
to catch our flight back to Austin. Santa Fe is pretty small and has only a few demanding runs. The snow conditions weren't optimal due to the sunshine, but it was good enough for a last half day in the snow.

Winter break pictures

2007-01-27T19:44:00.001+01:00

IMGP0118
Originally uploaded by msihl.

The pictures I promised are available now!

Back to the States...

2007-01-20T14:59:00.000+01:00

After almost a month in good old Europe, I'm finally heading back to US and A.
I spent Xmas at my parents' place and then drove down to Walchen, Austria for 14 days of skiing and snowboarding. Unlike Austin, we didn't have a cold winter so far. But fortunately, there's always enough snow on the glaciers at least. Due to the fairly bad snow conditions, I rediscovered my skills on skis, and I took the opportunity to buy I used paair of Atomic Supercross skis from last season. After returning from Austria, I stayed a couple of days in Gochsheim and Würzburg before leaving for CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. There, we had some interesting introductory lectures at the RTN winter school. The highlight was a visit to the construction site of the LHC's CMS detector on the French side. It's huge! LHC is the biggest technological project ever attempted by humankind. While at CERN, I avoided the biggest storm over Europe in the past 7 or 8 years, Kyrill, which took about 30 lives. As a result, several train connections in Germany were closed so that I got a free taxi ride from Frankfurt to Würzburg on my way back.
Pictures will be available soon.....

Joe Polchinski on Woit and Smolin

2006-12-07T15:57:00.000+01:00

Over at Cosmic variance, they feature an article that Polchinski wrote on the 2 books by Peter Woit (Not even wrong) and Lee Smolin (The Trouble with Physics). It's a very thorough account of where their arguments go wrong. Have fun reading!

Glider flying in Briggs, TX

2006-12-03T23:04:00.000+01:00

This Saturday, some of Laurent's friends (including me) drove north on Hwy. 183 to Briggs, TX, to enjoy a special deal that the Faultline Flyers every first Saturday: $30 flights. It's not that exciting landscapewise (duh) but you learn a lot about flying a glider and catching thermos and how to find thermo spots by looking at clouds and structure/color of the ground. Pictures and movies are available ,too.

Thanksgiving in Pagosa Springs/ Wolf Creek

2006-11-30T17:14:00.000+01:00

I had rented a nice cabin two miles outside of Pagosa Springs, CO and 24 miles away from Wolf Creek Ski Area. On Tuesday, the 21st of November, the first of two cars, with Morgann, Devin, Esther and myself, left Austin around 7.30pm for a 16 hour/839 miles drive to Colorado. Fortunately, Esther helped me out, driving for a couple of hours. We arrived Wednesday around noon, after a break in Santa Fe (in order to give Morgann a chance to send her homework to the TA). We unloaded the car, briefly talked to the management and headed for the mountain for a brief afternoon introductory snowboard lesson for Morgann, Devin and Esther. The snow was descent but not as good (i.e. powdery) as the week before, but that changed the following days after some snowfall. The same night, the other car with Brendan, Larsson, Millan and Doro arrived. They had left Austin early Wednesday morning. Thursday morning, we were all heading for Wolf Creek for some serious snowboarding/ skiing. I spent some time teaching Morgann and Devin at the beginner's (Nova) lift, while Esther took a lesson and the others were exploring the mountain.
Of course, I also got a chance to get some runs in, since Morgann and Devin were exhausted after a while :) Altogether, we spent 3 to 4 days (the other car left Sunday morning) boarding and skiing. It was a lot of fun. I especially liked the runs with Brendan, going fast through the woods and other fun terrain. I hope to repeat that soon. Morgann and Devin were suffering a little bit (and Devin got to stay with the ski patrol for one afternoon), but at the beginning it's tough for everybody, so hopefully they'll try it again soon to improve their skills. Some of us spent two evenings at the world-famous Pagosa hot springs, enjoying the warm to hot healing waters in freezing air temperatures. On top of that, we went for a brief dip into the river (it was really COLD), only to get back to 110 degrees Fahrenheit as quickly as possible. Besides the eight of us, we had a friend of Millan, Emil from Romania, stay with us for three nights. He is an experienced skier living in Albuquerque, NM, who is working for a company that is a contractor for the Air Force.
Sunday afternoon, after 3 hours on the mountain, we had to head back to Austin. We arrived Monday morning, the 27th of November, around 5.30 am, just in time to get ready for the day. I think it's safe to say that everbody enjoyed their stay and the yummy, homemade food at the Comardo house, so let's try to make it our Thanksgiving tradition for the years to come. Since my digital camera was broken and had to be repaired in Germany, I still rely on other people's pictures. I'll post a link as soon as possible.

Season opener Wolf Creek Nov 10-13, 2006

2006-11-14T20:52:00.001+01:00

1466516279_ORIG
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Howdy. I'm back from my weekend trip to Pagosa Springs, CO via Denver, CO.
Due to El Nino, there is plenty of snow already at Wolf Creek Ski Area. Therefore I took my chance and checked the place out this weekend. Pagosa Springs is a really nice and quiet little mountain town featuring world famous hot springs.
Wolf Creek opened on October 27th and has already received 90 inches of snow including 12 inches Saturday night, so that the conditions on Sunday were close to optimal. Powderalarm!!! Just take a look at the pictures.
I'll be back soon, on Thanksgiving, with the crew.

Neuigkeiten aus Texas

2006-10-25T17:35:00.000+02:00

I admit that writing blog entries has not been a priority lately. I was too busy doing other things...like getting my car fixed, organizing our snowboarding trip for Thanksgiving,
watching LOST and working on various physics projects. Our flux compactification collaboration has a new member, Daniel Robbins, who is currently a postdoc here in the Theory Group at UT Austin.
For the other project (with Elena Caceres and Lorenzo Mannelli), calculation of hydrodynamical transport coefficients in a N=1 SQCD-like theory (with dynamical quarks!), I am presently trying to learn more about gauge-invariant perturbation theory.

2006-10-13T01:49:00.000+02:00

Snowboard season 2006/2007

Since the first trip of the year is coming up soon (Thanksgiving) and everybody is getting excited, I thought I provide I little snowboard video clip for your distraction.
The YTD snowfall at Wolf Creek Ski Area is already 41 inches. Yay!
Update 2006/10/16: 49 inches = 125 cm
Update 2006/10/18: 57 inches = 144 cm

Beerfest

2006-09-08T22:48:00.000+02:00

bf1
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Yesterday we watched Beerfest at Alamo Drafthouse. I thought that
would be a great opportunity to wear my traditional Bavarian attire. I didn't really like the movie though.

News von unserem Roadtrip

2006-08-26T01:52:00.000+02:00

Ich hatte in letzter Zeit leider nicht viel Gelegenheit, mich um meinen Blog zu kümmern, da hier nicht jedes Motel wireless Internet access hat. Im Moment sind wir in Santa Barbara, CA in einem Coffee Shop und suchen nach einem Motel fü,r heute Nacht. Nachher werden wir hoffentlich auch nochmal zum Strand schauen und zum Campus der UCSB samt KITP, wofür ich evtl. nächstes Jahr ein Stipendium für ein halbes Jahr Studienaufenthalt bekommen werde (schau mer mal...). Für ausführlichere Berichterstattung kann ich den Blog vom Fonz empfehlen. Bilder gibts auf meiner Flickr Seite.

Webberville Canoe & BBQ

2006-08-14T23:08:00.000+02:00

215158311_25e7bf32e9_o
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Here are the pictures....we took our BBQ gear with us to an island in Colorado river and managed to not get it wet :) List of Participants:
Robert, Jens, Esther, Steffi, Doreen, Andreas, Laurent, Loni, Jason, Ali and myself.
Update 08/15: Mehr Bilder!!!

Camping in Colorado Bend State Park

2006-08-08T19:38:00.000+02:00

IMG_0887
Originally uploaded by msihl.

As usual, we (in this case Shaun, Sandra, Doreen, Morgann and myself) went on a short weekend trip, this time to Colorado Bend SP. We stayed overnight. The park is not very crowded because it's pretty new and relatively undeveloped with few campsites. They have spring-fed rivers that are perfect for swimming (although the water levels are low). On Sunday we joined the other group at Mansfield Dam, Lake Travis. Unfortunately, we were too late to go diving, but at least we were able to swim a little bit more.

Canoeing on the San Marcos River

2006-07-31T22:18:00.000+02:00

202547068_7f507102bc_o
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Howdy y'all, here are some of Robert's pictures of our canoe trip last Sunday. We did a 5-mile trip on the San Marcos part of the river. It was beautiful....lots of trees in the water, a nice dam, which we had to portage around, birds, flowers etc. etc. We rented our gear at TG Canoe Livery outside of San Marcos. They take their job very seriously and are very organized...highly recommended.
Afterwards, we went to Salt Lick for some BBQ.

On a different note, Lubos Motl mentioned me today on his weblog.

My third job

2006-07-26T19:15:00.000+02:00

IMG_0866
Originally uploaded by msihl.

If you happen to be a PhD student in the Theory Group, finding some money to make a living is not always an easy task...therefore I'm working a third job (the others are research and TAing), namely I'm moving lab equipment, cabinets etc. and sort/stack all kinds of nuts, bolts and washers in the Plasma Lab. My colleagues are Matt McCormick and Marcus Torres (another theorist). I can only say: Time flys when you are having fun!

Inks Lake State Park

2006-07-25T03:04:00.000+02:00

Diesen Sonntag waren wir im Inks Lake State Park zum schwimmen und chillen. Mit von der Partie waren Robert, Jens, Thomas, Katie, Morgann, Esther, Doro, Steffi und Doreen und ich. Der Park umfasst das südliche Ende des Lake Buchanan. Leider ist immer sehr viel los am Wochenende. Allerdings gibt es dort bis zu 45 ft. (ca. 15m) hohe Felsen (Devil's waterhole), von denen aus man ins Wasser springen kann (Fotos folgen!)...das sieht von unten nicht so spektakulär aus, aber wenn man dann mal oben steht (und nicht mehr zurück kann), ist es dann doch net so trivial...es ist sauglatt weil naß und man sieht nur den Felsvorsprung, über den man irgendwie drüberspringen soll :) Einzige Methode: Augen zu und durch (zum Gück hab ich wenigstens keine Höhenangst). Außer mir hat sich dann nur noch Morgann getraut zu springen...Respekt!

Kanufahren am Samstag, 15. Juli 2006

2006-07-17T05:20:00.000+02:00

191028079_9b763613fc_o
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Nachdem meine wasserfeste Kamera bei der letzten Kanuaktion ihre Wasserfestigkeit aufgegeben hat, bin ich immer noch auf Roberts Fotografierkünste angewiesen. Aber er macht det echt jut...hier also ein paar Fotos vom Samstag: Der Fluß ist der Colorado River südlich von Webberville, TX. Mit von der Partie waren Doro, Doreen, Steffi, Morgann, Esther, Michael, Robert und ich. Der aufmerkame Leser wird feststellen, daß da ein paar Namen fehlen...ich tippe mal auf zu viele Feieraktivitäten am Vorabend ;)

World Cup is over....

2006-07-14T21:33:00.000+02:00

Now that the world cup is over, there is suddenly more time again to concentrate on other things:
Besides being a TA for the Uteach Physics of Sensors class (my students are actually high school teachers with a couple of years of experience), I work a second job (in the morning, from 8-12) moving around lab equipment in Prof. Ken Gentle's Plasma lab.

Physicswise, I'm getting interested in two new topics, namely
1) Application of attractor explosions (hep-th/0605047) to Higgs phenomenology and possibly other things like neutron stars etc. (with Uday Varadarajan)
2) Using AdS/CFT to calculate transport properties of the strongly coupled quark-gluon plasma produced in RHIC collisions (with Lorenzo Mannelli)

Bilder vom denkwürdigen 4. Juli

2006-07-07T21:50:00.000+02:00

182172599_28b885b306_o
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Mein Kumpel aus Oberbayern, der Wigglers Willy, hat ein paar schöne Fotos gemacht vom Spiel gegen Italien und dem anschliessenden, verregneten BBQ (der Fußballgott war schlecht gelaunt).

MAD League upset with hero for defying laws of physics

2006-06-28T17:07:00.000+02:00

Check out Dylan and Cesar's article in the Daily Texan.

Fussball-WM

2006-06-25T19:23:00.000+02:00

n7942632_32505847_2581
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Ich versuche hier mein möglichstes, um auch hier in Austin WM-Fieber zu verbreiten....die Amerikaner beginnen langsam, von der WM Kenntnis zu nehmen, da hier ausführlich auf 3 amerikanischen Kanälen (abc, ESPN und ESPN2) davon berichtet wird. Außerdem gibts dann natürlich noch die mexikanischen Sender.
Nach dem Sieg gegen Schweden sind wir mit 2 (!) Autos komplett beflaggt durch die Innenstadt gefahren. Die Amis wussten nicht so recht, was sie davon halten sollten :) Die Mexikaner schon. Die sind jetzt übrigens alle für Deutschland....

Mansfield Dam Park

2006-06-18T20:53:00.000+02:00

Gestern waren wir nach dem letzten Fussballspiel (USA-Italien 1:1 bzw. 9:10 hehe) noch schwimmen und grillen und zwar im Mansfield Dam Park am Lake Travis. Timm und Andreas waren beim Tauchen während der Rest der Gruppe (die zwei Belgier, Maud, Cecile, Chris, Esther, Jenny, JP und ich) beim schwimmen waren. Laurent hat unterdessen unser Essen bewacht :) Später kamen dann auch noch Laetitia und Jared nach. Unser ursprünglicher Plan ist leider dem Gewitter am Morgen zum Opfer gefallen. Mal schauen, on nächstes Wochenende was geht, dummerweise :) sind ja da die Achtelfinalspiele angesetzt.

Review article on the landscape and and update on our progress

2006-06-17T01:48:00.000+02:00

Via Peter Woit, I found this review article on the string theory landscape by fellow graduate student Joseph Conlon, which is not available on the arXiv.
Also, check out Wati Taylor's talk at the Google Labs.

Meanwhile, Timm and I are still trying to construct a realistic (whatever that means) Type IIA T^6/Z_4 orientifold model with fluxes featuring standard model or MSSM-like gauge groups (or some extension, like a Pati-Salam model) on intersecting D6-branes. To this end, we are trying to include "metric fluxes" in our construction, which effectively help to get higher rank gauge groups through compensating some of the other flux contributions to the RR tadpole conditions in favor of more D6-branes.
Switching on metric fluxes is tantamount to compactifying on twisted tori (or nilmanifolds). Therefore we need to understand these constructions in detail. Another problem is to understand the spectrum of stable D-branes (BPS and non-BPS with torsion charges) in this background, in order to construct a consistent intersecting brane model. This means we have to study the twisted equivariant KR-theory (Real K-theory) for our model.

New tool for navigating the arXives

2006-06-15T19:20:00.000+02:00

There is a new tool that makes using the arXives more efficient: The IOP Eprintweb. You can create your own account and personalize it. For example, you can set up email alerts, store your favorite papers or just use the advanced search options. Very nice!

Canoeing on the Guadalupe River

2006-06-10T00:35:00.000+02:00

This past Sunday, a group of 18 (!) people gathered at Kerby Lane/ RLM to drive down to Spring Branch, TX to do some serious (haha) canoeing on the Guadalupe river near New Braunfels. (Almost) all of us had a lot of fun...I'll provide some pictures soon (as soon as I can find somebody to read out my SD card, since my waterproof camera wasn't so waterproof after all). Anyway, we rented 9 canoes from Bigfoot Canoe Rentals (see also here) to do the 5 mile trip from Specht's to Weidner's campground (?). We only did 5 miles this time because the water level was low and the river didn't really flow, so we were pretty slow.

Keep Austin weird

2006-05-30T01:01:00.000+02:00

IMGP1361
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Here in Austin they start teaching quantum field theory at a very young age. As you can see in the picture, there is a tadpole camp for 3-6 year olds at Austin Nature Center.

Also, here are, as promised, some pictures of the past two months.

Kanufahren am Samstag

2006-05-23T21:32:00.000+02:00

Vor nicht allzu langer Zeit hatte ich die Idee, mal Kanufahren zu gehen. Kurz darauf hab ich einen Artikel in der Study Breaks gelesen, der mich auf Rising Phoenix Adventures in Bastrop aufmerksam gemacht hat. Samstag morgen gings dann mit 2 Autos und 6 Leuten (Pete, Thomas, Cynthia, Jeremy, me and Cynthia's friend whose name I forget) los. Wir absolvierten die 14 Meilen Strecke auf dem Colorado River zwischen Utley (FM 969) und Bastrop (Fisherman's Park) in 5 Stunden. Das hatte hauptsächlich damit zu tun, daß wir eines der beiden Kanus geschrottet haben und zwar indem wir zuerst einen Baum und dann einen Felsen gerammt haben, um den sich das Plastikboot dann natürlich rumwickeln musste. Für den Rest der Strecke hatten wir fast keine Kontrolle mehr über das Boot und sind dementsprechend oft im (warmen) Wasser gelandet. Jedenfalls hatten wir jede Menge Spass...

Summer Employment

2006-05-18T18:37:00.000+02:00

So, jetzt hab ich also überraschenderweise doch noch eine Stelle als TA für den Sommer bekommen und zwar für folgenden Kurs:
PHY s386K, Instructors Dr. Sitz, Dr. Bengtson, and Dr. De Lozanne, TAs - Alfred Lee & Matthias Ihl
PHY s386K (Physics of Sensors) course is part of the UTeach program. The
enrollment is made up of students in a masters program for Science and Math
education.

Update

2006-05-15T18:37:00.000+02:00

The last couple of weeks have been quite turbulent, keeping me from writing up a blog entry. My parents came to town for 5 days (end of April) and I showed them some new places that I have discovered around Austin in the past year. For example, we went to Oasis on Lake Travis and to Mongolian Grille downtown. Both places are very nice. Also, we went to Lockhart to eat the best BBQ (brisket, rips and pork chops) in Texas at Kreuz Market.
I also went to see "She wants revenge" at Stubb's with Laurent and Nadege.
My next visitor was Artur Widera, who is about to finish his PhD in Mainz (working on ultracold atoms with Immanuel Bloch) and is touring the US to figure out where to do his first postdoc.
Mark Raizen of UT actually made him an offer to return to UT.

I'll try to provide some pictures soon. UPDATE: Robert has some pictures of our trip to Lockhart and my last party on his Flickr account.

On the physics front, Timm and I are trying to extend our orientifold model to include stacks of intersecting D6-branes that support phenomenologically interesting gauge groups.

Weekend camping trip to Padre Island National Seashore

2006-04-17T18:55:00.000+02:00

DSC03600
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Here are some pictures of our latest short trip to Padre Island (with Stephanie, Laurent, Robert and Elli).

New paper available on arXiv

2006-04-12T19:12:00.000+02:00

Our paper on moduli stabilization for a type IIA T^6/Z_4 orientifold model will be available soon. Have fun reading ;)

In other news, I spend last weekend camping (in Bastrop) and jet-skiing (on Lake Travis) with Stephanie....a lot of fun. I wasn't aware of the fact that you can actually reach 45 mph on a wakerunner. Impressive.

Viaje a Mexico -- Monterrey, Parque Nacional Cola de Caballo

2006-04-07T23:26:00.000+02:00

DSC03541
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Here are some pictures from our short trip to Mexico. A lot of heat, chaotic traffic, nice people, cheap but good food, great scenary...I'll be back soon!

Spring Break in Germany/Austria

2006-03-27T22:48:00.000+02:00

IMGP1202
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Schon wieder zurück von meinem Trip nach Walchen vom 9.3 bis zum 20.3.2006. Es war, wie immer, einfach genial. Wir hatten gutes Wetter und perfekten Schnee. Ich war 7 Tage mit Snowboard unterwegs und 3 Tage auf Ski. Ich bin mit nur 10 Euro in München angekommen und musste mir erstmal eine Mitfahrgelegenheit nach Walchen organisieren (Danke, Germut und Mel). Die ersten fünf Tage war ich dann mit den beiden unterwegs. Betty und Tina (a.k.a. die perfekten Gastgeberinnen) haben wir jeden Tag, nach getaner Arbeit im Krankenhaus in Mittersill, so gegen 14 Uhr auf der Piste getroffen. Nachdem Germut und Mel am Dienstag abend nach Hause gefahren sind, war ich erstmal zwei Tage lang vormittags allein unterwegs, was dank Skibus/Postbus auch kein Problem war. Donnerstag und Freitag kamen dann Bettys Eltern sowie Frank und Micha, Uta und Irina an.
Nachdem meine Eltern in Ramsau am Dachstein Urlaub gemacht haben, haben wir die Gelegenheit beim Schopf gepackt, und uns auf der Xandlalm in Hinterglemm zum Mittagessen getroffen und später nochmal auf einen Absacker in der Hecheralm.

Schade, dass es schon wieder vorbei ist und ich freu mich schon auf den nächsten Dezember ;)
Hab ich eigentlicb schon erwähnt, dass der neue Rekord aufs Naglköpfel bei 22 Minuten steht? (Ich sag nur: Schleppliftspur).

It's about time...

2006-03-03T18:46:00.000+01:00

Ruidoso6002
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Finally, here are some fresh pictures of the last two months. Most notably, I bought a car, namely a 1996 Nissan Pathfinder, which already proved its overall good shape on a weekend trip to Ruidoso, NM (with Raphael, Timm and Diana). On the physics front, I'd like to believe that our paper is finally reaching a publishable form...hopefully some time after spring break.

Sensation!

2006-01-28T16:38:00.000+01:00

IMG_6933
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Klingt komisch, is aber so: Mein Bruder aufm Naglköpfl!

It's quite cold at home.

2006-01-25T19:13:00.001+01:00

Germany experiences some of the coldest temperatures in 50 years. In some parts of Bavaria the temperature dropped to -33.3 degrees Celsius (-27.9 degrees Fahrenheit) !!!!

RTN winterschool at CERN

2006-01-21T16:17:00.000+01:00

IMGP0758
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Yesterday I came back from the school at Cern Geneva, Switzerland. It was a lot of fun, nice talks and lots of opportunities to talk to knowledgeable people. Enjoy the pictures!

Walchen, zum zweiten

2006-01-17T23:10:00.000+01:00

IMGP0355
Originally uploaded by msihl.

For the second time this year :), I spent some time snowboarding in Walchen. Betty, the friendly driver, picked me up on Thursday evening (12.1.2006) at my brother's place to hit the autobahn on our way to Austria.
We stayed until Sunday evening (15.1.2006). The weather was perfect again, it was freezing cold (-20 degrees Celsius) and we had a lot of fun (Naglköpfl, 5 times already this year). The skiing areas of choice were Saalbach, Kitzsteinhorn and Schmittenhöhe. And, surprise, surprise, I tried to ski again for the first time in almost 10 years. It went surprisingly well (somehow my body memorized all the moves...).
On the way back the highways were unusually crowded so that I missed my train to Geneve at 22:30 pm which left Würzburg without me. Therefore I took the next train at 4:30 am and arrived at CERN at around 2pm on Monday.

Weihnachten 2005 -- Walchen 2006

2006-01-12T00:37:00.000+01:00

Weihnachten 2005 178
Originally uploaded by msihl.

So, jetzt gibts endlich mal ein paar Bilder aus Europa...von Weihnachten daheim, Sylvester in Schweinfurt und vom snowboarden in Walchen (Salzburger Land).
In Österreich war ich vom 01.01.2006 bis zum 08.01.2006 (und ab heute abend wieder bis zum Sonntag). Wir haben an sieben Tagen sechs unterschiedliche Skigebiete ausgecheckt (Schmittenhöhe, Kitzbühel, Kitzsteinhorn, Zillertal Arena, Dorfgastein/Grossarl, Saalbach/Hinterglemm). An den ersten 3 Tagen hat es enorm viel geschneit, so dass wir die ganze Zeit ordentlich Tiefschnee hatten. Ausserdem waren wir dreimal auf dem Naglköpfl zum Rodeln. Der neue Rekord liegt bei ca. 35 Minuten.

Heading off to Germany

2005-12-19T03:53:00.000+01:00

The time of the year has come where it's about time to head home for Christmas. The Feuerzangenbowle on Friday has been a huge success, I think everybody liked the party and the drink :)
Right now I'm grading the quantum mechanics final which is pretty boring, so I'm taking a break to write this post. I hope that I'll get some time back home to work on my respective projects:
1) Finishing the moduli stabilization paper with Timm.
2) Start working on the gauge flux induced D-terms on D6-branes (with Chethan Krishnan and Timm)
3) Continue working on black hole solutions in the presence of a potential for the moduli (with Chethan and Uday).

Besides that, I'm looking forward to visiting all of my friends that I haven't seen for (at least) a year. Moreover, there'll be a winter school at CERN, Geneva which I'll attend from January 16-20, 2006.

Kälteeinbruch in Austin

2005-12-08T17:28:00.000+01:00

Die Uni bleibt heute zum zweiten Mal geschlossen aufgrund der unsicheren Wettersituation. Es könnte ja theoretisch frieren und dann würde hier der ganze Verkehr zusammenbrechen. Also zugegebenermaßen ist es schon gut kalt draussen (-4 Grad Celsius, gefühlte Temperatur ist -11 Grad), aber ob man die Uni gleich für zwei Tage schliessen muss, weiss ich net so genau. Alle Veranstaltungen werden jetzt auf nächste Woche Montag und Dienstag verschoben.

Back to work

2005-12-05T18:48:00.000+01:00

After having qualified last Monday, the time has come to concentrate again on working on/writing up the paper on "moduli stabilization in a T^6/Z_4 orientifold model with background fluxes" (together with Timm Wrase). I think, we are making good progress (thanks to Timm's tireless computational efforts).

BESTANDEN!!!!!

2005-11-28T21:32:00.000+01:00

Muss ich noch mehr sagen?

El dia de accion de gracias

2005-11-24T07:27:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow, for Thanksgiving, I'm gonna cook with a bunch of friends at Cesar's house. I'm going to cook Käsespätzle (Rosie's request), Cesar is in charge of the turkey and there are plenty of others (mostly international students who don't have their families in the US) who will bring food. Hopefully, cooking will prevent me from freaking out about my qualifier which is coming up NEXT MONDAY. I gave two more practice talks over the last couple of days, and I'll probably do one more on the weekend.

Probevortrag

2005-11-13T02:16:00.000+01:00

So, nach langer Zeit wieder mal ein kleines posting: Am Donnerstag hab ich im Rahmen der "Grilling Sessions" einen Probevortrag für den qualifier talk am 28. Nov. gehalten. Ist soweit ganz gut gelaufen, allerdings war er viel zu lang, nämlich anderthalb Stunden statt 45 Minuten. D.h. ich muss ihn jetzt auf die Hälfte reduzieren, viele Details weglassen und mehr Bilder malen. Dürfte aber alles machbar sein in den verbleibenden 16 Tagen.

Atmosphere

2005-10-26T21:32:00.000+02:00

Atmosphere stopped by at Emo's yesterday. They are on their "Pour me another" tour.
They played for 1 hr 45 mins, which is pretty long. Nice gig.

Houston Astros in the World Series

2005-10-20T16:45:00.000+02:00

For those of you who are interested in US sports: The Houston Astros defeated the St. Louis Cardinals (4-2) to advance to the World Series for the first time ever. Big Deal here in Texas.

Ig Nobel prize

2005-10-11T22:12:00.000+02:00

The Ig Nobel Prize 2005 in Fluid Dynamics was awarded to Victor Benno Meyer-Rochow of the International University Bremen. The award-winning article , published in Polar Biology, is about the fluid dynamics of Penguin defecation, a longstanding, open problem of arctic Penguin physiology.
The Physics prize, by the way, was awarded to "John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell of the University of Queensland, Australia, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927, in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years." Here's a link to their 1984 paper.

Robert in Austin

2005-10-07T18:29:00.000+02:00

Nach langer Zeit hats wieder mal ein Hannoveraner nach Austin geschafft: Nach Martin Wolf jetzt Robert Wimmer. Gestern hat er seinen Vortrag über "Large N integrability of N=4 SYM" gehalten, ein Projekt der drei üblichen Verdächtigen (Robert, Sebastian und Martin) aus Hannover. Hut ab, das macht schon was her, so mathematisch gesehen. Vom physikalischen her natürlich auch! :)

Austin City Limits

2005-09-23T18:39:00.000+02:00

The world famous "Austin City Limits" festival is taking place this weekend. Yesterday, the ticket prices on ebay were as low as $50 for a 3-day pass. Today, after it became clear that Hurricane Rita is not likely to influence us significantly, the ticket prices are rising again.

Update: The performances on Sunday were really awesome. I saw Kaiser Chiefs, Arcade Fire, Franz Ferdinand and Coldplay. Coldplay was interacting very well with audience, it was an amazing concert.
They did a hommage to Johnny Cash by performing "Ring of Fire" and a song about him.
I'll provide some pictures soon.

Zwischenprüfung

2005-09-20T19:02:00.000+02:00

Gestern hab ich mich mit meiner Chefin grob auf einen Termin für den Qualifier-Vortrag geeinigt und zwar Ende Oktober bzw. Anfang November. D.h. bis dahin wirds nochmal ganz schön streßig werden. Ich muss noch mein Beispiel fertig ausarbeiten und dann einen Vortrag zum Thema KKLT anhand dieses Beispiels schreiben.

German election to close to call.

2005-09-19T01:37:00.000+02:00

Unbelievable! Contrary to what the polls seemed to indicate before the elections, the CDU/CSU will not be able to form a coalition with the FDP. In fact, the race is still to close to call, the SPD might end up with the same amount of seats in the Bundestag as the CDU/CSU. Possible coalitions (decreasing probability): Grand coalition (CDU/CSU + SPD), Ampel (SPD + FDP + Grüne), Jamaica a.k.a Schwampel (CDU/CSU + FDP + Grüne), Rot-Rot-Grün.
If the Bundestag fails to elect a chancellor three times, the president may appoint the leader of the strongest party as Bundeskanzler(in). Let's see what happens...

Schillernde Regenbögen und singende Steine

2005-09-09T21:51:00.000+02:00

Auf Spiegel online gibts heute einen Artikel über die Wasserfälle von Iguazu, die ich vor 4 Wochen besucht habe. Der größte Teil befindet sich übrigens auf argentinischem Boden, allerdings hat man die beste Sicht von der brasilianischen Seite. Viel Spaß beim Lesen. Falls Bedarf besteht, mehr Fotos gibts hier.

Argentina photos

2005-09-08T18:52:00.000+02:00

In this post, I will try to collect some of the photopages I've found so far, containing photos of our trip to Argentina:

I will update this list asap.

Snowboarding trip to Portillo

2005-09-06T05:31:00.000+02:00

DSC00960
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Finally, I have uploaded some pictures of our beautiful trip to Ski Portillo in Chile. The mountains there were incredible. I'll definitely come back some time. Thanks to Cameron for providing the photos. Alternatively, you can check out Cameron's photopage. As a side remark: The Andes were the third major mountain range I snowboarded on this year, the other two being the Alps (Xmas break in Austria) and the Rocky Mountains (spring break in Ruidoso, NM).

Käsespätzle in Argentinien

2005-09-04T23:46:00.000+02:00

varias 007
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Diego hat mir dankenswerterweise ein paar Fotos vom Käsespätzlekochen am vorletzten Abend in Argentinien geschickt. Ich war fünf Stunden lang damit beschäftigt, drei Kilo Mehl und 35 Eier in Spätzle zu verwandeln. Aber es hat sich gelohnt, glaub ich. Den Argentiniern hats geschmeckt. Argentinien war übrigens das fünfte Land, in dem ich Spätzle gekocht habe: Deutschland, Österreich, Spanien, USA und Argentinien.

Der Ernst des Lebens

2005-08-27T21:31:00.000+02:00

Ok, we are back in Austin, it's as hot as it gets and my air conditioning doesn't work. The summer is almost over. I'm in the process of getting used to my daily routine of working on physics-related issues again. Fortunately, I still have some recollection of what I did before we left. Next semester is going to be a lot of work, besides being a TA I have to prepare for my oral qualifying presentation. I'm also taking Quantum Mechanics for Mathematicians...it's about time that mathematicians begin to teach some physics in a mathematically rigorous fashion (this is one of the great advantages of UT: there are plenty of mathematicians interested in mathematical physics/ applications of mathematics in physics).
I wish everybody a good start into the upcoming fall semester!

Las cataratas de Iguazu

2005-08-18T23:44:00.000+02:00

763 Iguazu
Originally uploaded by msihl.

For our last weekend trip we went to Iguazu, which is located at the border of Brasil and Argentina. It is famous for its waterfalls [las cataratas], the "biggest" in the world. I'm not exactly sure in which sense they are the biggest, but they are truly impressive. There will be more pictures soon!!
We also went to Brasil (Foz do Iguacu) and Paraguay (Ciudad del este).
UPDATE 08/22/2005: New pictures!!!

Pictures from Buenos Aires and Salta (Timm)

2005-08-09T21:05:00.000+02:00

Buenos Aires4800
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Finally, here are some pictures of Buenos Aires. For more, click on the picture to the right. Also, I just uploaded many pictures from the trip to Salta and Jujuy.

Portillo, Chile

2005-08-09T20:23:00.000+02:00

Dieses Wochenende war ich mit Cameron in Chile zum Snowboarden in Portillo, Chile. Wir sind mit dem Bus nach Mendoza gefahren und haben uns dort ein Auto gemietet, mit dem wir dann nach Chile gefahren sind. Die Grenze zwischen Argentinien und Chile liegt auf etwa 3000 Metern über dem Meeresspiegel. Die Anden in dieser Region sind absolut spektakulär. Am Freitag haben wir den ganzen Tag mit Autofahren und Bergeanschauen verbracht. Am Samstag und Sonntag waren wir dann Snowboarden, der Schnee war gut, weil neu und weil das Gebiet relativ schwer zugänglich ist, waren nur wenige Leute aufm Berg, daher gab es keine Liftschlangen. Das Gebiet ist sehr interessant, z. B. kreuzt die Piste zweimal die Paßstraße bzw. die Tunnels. Über die sind wir dann auch mal drübergesprungen (Fotos siehe später). Am Sonntag sind dann alle Lifte wegen Stromausfall ausgefallen, woraufhin wir per Anhalter auf einem Laster die Strecke zum Hotel zurückgelegt haben. Auf halber Strecke ist Cameron dann auf einen anderen Laster umgestiegen (mit zwei snowboards), ich habs (glülicherweise) nicht mehr auf den Laster geschafft, und wurde etwas später von einem Reisebus mitgenommen. Sonntag abend sind wir dann zurück nach Argentinien gefahren und haben in Los Penitentes übernachtet. Das ist ein kleines Skigebiet auf halber Strecke nach Mendoza. Dort hab ich einen Allgäuer aus Oberried bei Kempten getroffen, der dort für die Bergwacht arbeitet. War ganz nett, mal wieder den Dialekt zu hören. Die Rückfahrt am Montag war dann etwas abenteuerlich, weil der Verkehr in Argentinien (v.a. in den Bergen) chaotisch bis lebensgefährlich ist.
Die Laster überholen sich gegenseitig auf allen verfübaren Spuren, inklusive meiner, was zweimal dazu führte, daß ich auf den (sehr kleinen)Randstreifen ausweichen musste, um nicht überfahren zu werden. Der Grund für die chaotische Fahrweise ist, daß die Fahrer teilweise bis zu 2 Wochen an der Grenze warten müssen und deshalb möglichst vor den anderen oben am Berg ankommen wollen. Alles in allem war es ein sehr schöner Wochendausflug. Am Samstag haben wir übrigens in Los Andes üernachten, was ca. 60 km von Portillo entfernt liegt. Kleine Stadt, ziemlich nett und sauberes Hotel. Fotos werden hoffentlich bald nachgeliefert.

Servus aus Buenos Aires

2005-08-01T02:41:00.000+02:00

Servus. Ich sitze hier gerade in einem Internetcafé in Buenos Aires und warte auf meinen Bus zurück nach Córdoba. Bs As ist eine beeindruckende Stadt, die drittgrößte in Südamerika. Wir haben natürlich in drei Tagen nicht sonderlich viel anschauen können, aber ein paar wichtige Sehenswürdigkeiten haben wir zum Glück geschafft: Teatro Cólon, Plaza de Mayo [con las abuelas y las madres de los desaparecidos], Museum für moderne Kunst, la flor, Avenida 9 de Julio (angeblich die breiteste Straße der Welt) mit Obelisk, la Republica Popular de la Boca samt Fußballstadion, San Telmo, das Grab von Evita Perón etc. Am Freitag haben wir eine Stadtrundfahrt gemacht. Abends waren wir dann im "Siga de la vaca", dort gab es all-you-can-eat BBQ [el asado, diente libre] inklusive Wein und Nachspeise für unglaubliche € 7,50. Jetzt hab ich wieder mal genug Fleisch für ein Jahr gegessen, aber das wars wirklich wert. Selbst die fleichverrückten Amis meinten, es wäre das beste Fleisch, das sie jemals gegessen hätten. Am Samstag haben wir ein paar Argentinierinnen in einer Kneipe getroffen, die uns dann zu einer Privatparty eingeladen haben. Die war in einem der gehobenen Viertel in Buenos Aires in einem schwerbewachtem Hochhaus. Das Apartment war zweistöckig mit grossem Balkon und allen Extras. Getränke waren jedenfalls die ganze Nacht umsonst.

Genug für heute...demnächst gibts dann wieder Fotos (hoffentlich auch bald von Las Leñas). Bis bald.

office at FAMAF, UNC

2005-07-28T18:44:00.000+02:00

Yesterday we met with some physicists of FAMAF here at the UNC. They provided us with a computer account and the key to one of their seminar rooms, where we can sit down and work. Argentinian physicists are very relaxed and laid back [todo el tiempo estan charlando y toman maté, me parecen muy amables]. It's about time that we get some time to breath and work on our respective physics projects. I'm still working on moduli stabilization for the IIA T^6/Z_4 orientifold, together with Timm, who is also interested in this kind of problem.
This weekend we are heading to Buenos Aires (the air in Bs As apparently doesn't necessarily
live up to its name). This city is huge with 13 million inhabitants (conservative estimate). That's roughly one third of the population of Argentina.

Snowboarding in Las Leñas

2005-07-26T19:55:00.000+02:00

This weekend, I went snowboarding with some of my buddies (Charlie, Conor, Chealsey, Jennifer, Valery, Katie, David, Bryan and Ben). I was organizing the trip, meaning that I spent approximately 10 hours in the travel agency last week. We left Córdoba at 20:30 on Thursday and arrived in Las Leñas midday Friday, just in time for the half-day lift tickets. We had to switch buses once in San Rafael, Mendoza. The trip by bus was less than comfortable, due to the fact that it was reaaallllyyyy cold in the bus (the windows were not isolated). Fortunately, I had my snowboard gear with me, so I wasn't freezing much. Our hotel was located in Los Molles, a small village in the Andes close to the Chilean border. Life there is still pretty simple, e.g., there are no proper streets and the infrastructure is limited to some basics like one small shop. The hotel was cheap and basic, too, but the people were really nice to us (muchas gracias Andres) and tried to provide a comfortable environment. The smell in one of our quadruplets was pretty bad, though.
Back to the mountains. The views from the highest point (3430 m) were truely spectacular. I will upload photos as soon as I get them; unfortunately I still don't own a digital camera again after the last one was stolen in Las Cruces, New Mexico last year. I also shot some video footage with Jennifer's camera. Anyway, I went snowboarding for two and a half days, which was a lot of fun. After the Alps and the Rocky Mountains, the Andes are the third major mountain range I have snowboarded or skied on. Unfortunately, there was no new snow, so that the slopes were pretty icy most of the time. Otherwise the experience would have been unreal. The return trip was much better since we switched the bus company (TAC -> Andesmar). We had a 2h lay-over in Mendoza, where we met some of the other guys from our group who spent their entire weekend in Mendoza. They went on a day trip to Los Penitentes, where I will probably go three weeks from now. Los Penitentes is only 30 km from Chile and there is another ski area, Portillo, on the other side of the border.
In the next couple of days, I will provide photos as they come in. Lacking other photos, I uploaded some of Timm's trip to Mendoza. The Andes in the background are more or less the same :)

Fotos de Córdoba, parte dos

2005-07-17T01:33:00.000+02:00

Argentinien13-144566
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Ahora les presento unas fotos de nuestra clase de tango. Timm y yo son los mejores bailarines del mundo :)
En la foto, estoy muy dedicado.

The days here are pretty packed, I have classes from 9:00 to 12:50. After lunch I usually go to a cafe and work on some physics related issues. Oftentimes there is some kind of cultural event in the evening, if not, we spend our time with the host family to improve our spanish.
Moreover, Timm and I meet quite often with our respective speaking partners.
UPDATE: Ich hab noch ein paar Fotos vom Wochenende (kleine Familienfeier am Freitag) ins Netz gestellt.

Fotos de Córdoba, parte uno

2005-07-14T23:02:00.000+02:00

Cordoba6-104476
Originally uploaded by msihl.

¿Cómo andán, chicos? Ahora les presento a ustedes unas fotos de los primeros dias acá...me alegra mucho la ciudad y la gente. Desafortunadamente, faltaban las chicas de este ciudad que son
relindisimas (una palabra cordobesa).
Todas las fotos son la responsabilidad de Timm (muchas gracias, Timm). Para más, haga clic en la foto.

Endlich Neuigkeiten aus Argentinien.

2005-07-13T19:27:00.000+02:00

Hier kommen endlich mal ein paar Nachrichten von mir aus Argentinien.
Alles ist ziemlich genial. Wir hatten die ersten vier Tage ein
paar Einführungsveranstaltungen und einen Ausflug zu einer
"Estancia Jesuitica", einer Jesuitensiedlung, in Alta Gracia, dem
Geburtsort von Che Guevara. Unser Hotel in Cordoba war für argentinische
Verhältnisse absolute Oberklasse mit wireless internet, Fitnessraum,
Schwimmbecken auf dem Dach und zwei whirlpools.
Der Argentinier an sich ißt gerne und viel Fleisch (daß die Steaks in
Argentinien gut schmecken hat sich, glaub ich, auch schon in Europa
herumgesprochen). Wenn man sagt, daß man Vegetarier ist
[soy vegetariano], wird erst mal nachgefragt, ob man Hähnchen ißt
und bekommt dann automatisch Fisch (was für mich in Ordnung geht,
manche "richtigen" Vegetarier aber stören dürfte).
Am Sonntag wurden wir dann unseren Gastfamilien vorgestellt.
Timm und ich wohnen bei derselben Familie. Unsere "Gasteltern" heißen Luciana und Federico, allerdings ist Federico erst 25 und deswegen jünger als wir beide
:) Aber das ist auch gut so. Luciana hat eine siebenjährige Tochter, Federica,
und die geht ab wie die Wutz wenn wir zwei da sind. Kleine Kinder eignen sich echt gut zum Sprachen lernen, weil sie z.B. die Sachen in ihren Bilderbüchern auf spanisch erklärt.
Ich habe vormittags zwei Vorlesungen und dann den Nachmittag frei. Den versuche ich mir zum Physikmachen freizuhalten. Abends treffe ich mich dann oft (hoffentlich) mit meiner
Sprechpartnerin. Die ist zwanzig und studiert im fünften Jahr Englisch. Sinn und Zweck ist, daß ich mit ihr mein Spanisch üben kann und sie umgekehrt mit mir ihr Englisch.
Das Wetter ist im Moment ein Traum, nachts ist es relativ kalt aber tagsüber ist es sehr angrehm bei 20 bis 25 Grad. Wir wohnen in einem der gehobenen Wohnviertel in Cordoba. Fast alle anderen Austauschstudenten wohnen hier in der Näe. Mit deutschen Standards ist das Leben hier erwartungsgemäß nicht zu vergleichen, aber schön ist es hier trotzdem.
Man kann halt auch mit weniger Geld ein angenehmes Leben führen. Ich sitze hier gerade in einem Internetcafe in der Innenstadt und dummerweise funktioniert mein Netzteil nicht. Für Europäer und Nordamerikaner hier alles spottgünstig. Die Preise für Lebensmittel etc. sind vom Betrag her in etwa gleich wie die in USA oder Europa, allerdings ist der argentinische Peso nur 0.25 Euro wert.
Hab ich schon erwähnt, daß die Frauen hier der absolute Hammer sind? Selbst die Häßlichen sind hier noch vergleichsweise hübsch und dicke Frauen gibts hier überhaupt nicht. Seit meiner Ankunft hab ich vielleicht zwei gesehen.

Fotos werden dann sobald als möglich nachgeliefert.

Argentina Farewell Party

2005-07-04T06:30:00.000+02:00

a709
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Some pictures of the Argentina Farewell Party are online (thanks, Maxi!). Click on the picture to get to the whole set.
We all gathered at Rosie's house (thanks Rosie!) to celebrate the fact that Timm and I are going to be in Argentina for the next couple of weeks (meaning we're not in Austin, so we can't bother people ;)). I'm looking forward to the repeat event that's scheduled soon after our return.

Essensmangel?

2005-07-01T19:40:00.000+02:00

IMG_0941
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Vielleicht sollte ich wieder mal mehr essen. Irgendwie seh ich auf dem Foto net so glücklich aus. Könnte aber auch an der Nadege liegen :)

Hook 'em Horns!

2005-06-28T19:02:00.000+02:00

UT Tower 27. Juni 2005
Originally uploaded by msihl.

Die Baseball-Mannschaft von UT ist mal wieder nationaler Meister geworden. Jedes Mal, wenn eine UT Mannschaft Meister wird,
leuchtet der Tower abends rot mit einer 1 in der Mitte. Das wollte ich schon immer mal fotografieren, bin aber nie dazu gekommen bzw. immer zu faul gewesen :)
Gestern hats endlich geklappt. Laurent und ich sind einmal um den Tower rumgelaufen, um die besten Plätze zum fotografieren zu finden. Unter anderem waren wir auch auf dem Dach vom Physikgebäude (für weitere Fotos siehe Bilderfenster in der rechten Spalte).

Was die Physik angeht, versuche ich gerade (zusammen mit Timm) ein konkretes Modell im IIA Fall zu verstehen, um darin konkret das KKLT Programm zu implementieren. Dabei handelt es sich um einen Typ IIA T^6/Z_4 Orientifold, der im Gegensatz zu den bisher betrachteten (hep-th/0505160) auch Moduln für die komplexe Struktur beinhaltet und somit eventuell ganz interessant sein dürfte.

Witten on CNN.com

2005-06-28T14:09:00.000+02:00

Here is an interesting link to a CNN article about Edward Witten. He is the most cited physicist ever and the most influential person in our field (and many others). There is a link to a poll on whether or not we'll find a "Theory of Everything". Looks promising :)

Video footage from Solvay 1927

2005-06-21T23:56:00.000+02:00

Via P.P Cook, I discovered this link, providing a "home video" of some of the participants of the 1927 Solvay conference in Brussels. Physicists, or anybody who ever studied modern physics, will recognize some of the most eminent characters of 20th century physics.

Cosmic Strings update

2005-06-21T04:26:00.000+02:00

In case someone has missed the post over at Lubos' blog: He points to a recent paper which trys to explain the excess 511 keV radiation coming from the galactic center by superconducting strings, whose tension is near the TeV scale, producing positrons by electromagnetic induction. This seems like a weird idea to me, but who knows, maybe it works...

Cosmic strings are still a hot topic for many string inspired cosmologists (see e.g. recent post by Jacques Distler). I think it would be worthwhile to study these issues in the IIA framework that was established a while ago by DeWolfe, Kachru, Giryavets and Taylor, along with many other aspects that have not been studied in this setup yet.

Audi A3

2005-06-16T17:45:00.000+02:00

The Audi A3 is finally to make an appearance on the American market in 2006. The 2006 model looks pretty nice. I guess the elevated gas prizes, $2.20 (and up) per gallon (which sounds like a joke to Europeans, by the way) make Americans want to buy smaller cars with better gas-mileage. Finally. Even the beloved Hummer comes in a smaller version now, the H3.
I think this indicates that raising gas prizes works when it comes to helping to preserve our environment.

Apple :)

2005-06-14T19:14:00.000+02:00

I heard some rumors that Apple, after announcing to switch to INTEL processors, is currently looking into the possiblity of replacing Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger by an enhanced version of Microsoft Windows XP.
Maybe that's not such a bad idea because Windows and Intel are probably a better match than Tiger and Intel. Any comments?

Lisa Randall's warped passages

2005-06-13T22:30:00.000+02:00

Lisa Randall is currently in England promoting her new book `Warped Passages'. Lubos Motl, over at his blog, has an interesting link to a BBC radio show featuring Lisa Randall (amongst others, some of them apparently crackpots).
By the way, I wonder what happened to her plans of starting her own blog. Does anybody know?

Auger update

2005-06-10T22:39:00.000+02:00

A while ago, I was blogging about the Auger project in Argentina. Over at the
Preposterous Universe, Sean Carroll has an update on the northern hemisphere part of the project. Apparently, it's not going to be Utah, but Colorado instead.

Birth defects haunt Amish people

2005-06-09T03:36:00.000+02:00

Over the past couple of days, I've watched or read several accounts (CBS 60 minutes, "Gottes Wille", 06/08/2005) on the increasing number of birth defects that occur within the communities of Old Order Amish [Amische der alten Ordnung], see here, here and here. The reason seems pretty obvious, namely inbreeding/intermarriage, since all of the Amish (more than 100,000) are descendants of only about 500 people or so. Interestingly, autism seems to be almost absent. Also, I haven't heard/read anything about the Hutterites [Hutterer], which is surprising since they descend from essentially 5-10 families (mostly from Kärnten, by the way, therefore they speak Kärntner Dialekt) with family names Kleinsasser, Müller, Wurz, Waldner, Hofer, and Glanzer. Probably I'm just not well informed enough, but if my impression is correct, this would be very counterintuitive. I would expect them, the Hutterites, to have encountered these problems much earlier.
Of course, it turns out to be almost impossible to explain the situation to these people. They believe it to be "Gottes Wille" [God's will] and refuse to think seriously about ways out of this crisis.

Würzburger Kosmologen in den Schlagzeilen

2005-06-09T00:25:00.000+02:00

Einem Spiegel-Artikel zufolge haben zwei Würzburger Kosmologen, namentlich Prof. Karl Mannheim und sein Diplomand Dominik Elsässer, aus alten Gammastrahlungshintergrundmessdaten des Comptonsatelliten potentiell sensationelle Ergebnisse gewonnen. Offenbar kann ein erst jetzt bemerktes Detail im Spektrum der extragalaktischen Strahlung sehr gut durch Vernichtungsprozesse in Halos aus Dunkler Materie erklärt werden. Damit könnten die Würzburger auf den ersten konkreten Nachweis für Dunkle Materie gestoßen sein. Mögliche Kandidaten werden auch gleich mitgeliefert: MSSM Neutralinos mit einer Masse von 520 GeV (siehe paper).
Bleibt abzuwarten, ob sich das bewahrheiten wird. Hoffen wir das beste.
Nachtrag: Auf den zweiten Blick ist das paper dann doch schon etwas älter (siehe hier). Wahrscheinlich haben die beim Spiegel einen Wissenschaftsredakteur, der die Fachzeitschriften durchschaut, aber anscheinend noch nichts vom ArXiv gehört hat.

Over at Robert Helling's blog, there is an english version of what I just explained in german.

what's the buzz?

2005-06-09T00:04:00.000+02:00

I've added an interesting little gadget to the sidebar:
(the following is a description provided on their website)
BUZZTRACKING
Buzztracker is software that visualizes frequencies and relationships between locations in the Google world news directory.
Buzztracker tries to show you how interconnected the world is: big events in one area ripple to other areas across the globe. Connections between cities thousands of miles apart become apparent at a glance.
Buzztracker currently only tracks English-language news sources.

Hope y'all have fun.

Es ist vollbracht.

2005-06-07T21:46:00.000+02:00

Christian und ich haben heute unser neues paper ins Netz gestellt: hep-th/0506057.
Leider ist uns der Boris Zupnik einen Tag zuvorgekommen (hep-th/0506043). Der Inhalt überschneidet sich zwar nicht wesentlich, allerdings ist der Titel fast derselbe. Tja, kann man nichts machen. Dumm gelaufen.

alpha-prime corrections to Kähler potential

2005-06-06T18:59:00.000+02:00

It's been a while that I posted about physics. Right now, I'm trying to understand how the higher derivative corrections to the Kähler potential (BBHL, hep-th/0204254) influence the stabilization of the Kähler moduli in type IIB orientifold compactifications.
Quevedo et al. (hep-th/0502058, hep-th/0505076) argue that these corrections have to be included in generic KKLT like scenarios. The original discussion which included only nonperturbative corrections to the superpotential is only valid for a very small range of parameters and is therefore highly non-generic. Moreover, the authors claim that in a large class of models, for which h^(2,1)>h^(1,1)>1, so that the Euler characteristic of the CY3 is negative, one can prove the existence of a non-supersymmetric AdS vacuum at large volume and moderate values of the flux-induced superpotential W_0 of order 10.
However, I have some trouble verifying some of the claims so there is a lot more work waiting for me right now.

Latvia ratifies constitution

2005-06-02T23:50:00.000+02:00

The ratification process in Europe goes on as planned. Today, Latvia ratified the contract with 71 votes to 5.
In other european countries, nationalists think they can exploit the current situation to demand a return to the middle ages. In Italy, the minister for social affairs, Roberto Maroni, wants to reintroduce the Lira. In Switzerland, the right rallies against acceptance of the Schengen treaty.
The percentage of likely "NO" voters increases in those countries which will hold referendums soon. I find it hard to argue that this development is based on better informed judgements by the voters. Rather it seems to be a trend set by the French and Dutch, boosted by a hysterical media. This is irresponsible and unacceptable. To ensure a fair outcome of the referenda, all of them should have been held on the same day.

There is an article in the "Süddeutsche Zeitung" [in german] that pretty much reflects my opinion.

The Netherlands follow France's example

2005-06-01T21:17:00.000+02:00

The Dutch have voted down the european constitution with approximately 63% of the voters against the contract. However the outcome is non-binding to the Dutch parliament and over 80% of lawmakers are for the contract. But the major parties have already said that they will respect the vote of the people if the turn-out is higher than 30%, which it actually is (approx. 50%).

For those who are interested, you may want to follow the discussion between Lubos Motl and myself over at his blog.

French vote against the EU constitution

2005-05-30T06:17:00.000+02:00

Qui: 43.86%, Non: 56,14%!! This sucks. I'm not really sure what the consequences are. Apparently this was primarily a vote against Chirac and his domestic policies. I don't quite understand the logic of voting down the european constitution for such reasons. A united Europe is a great historic chance with which we shouldn't mess. Now the British are even more likely to vote against it, too. That's why I don't think a popular referendum is such a great idea. Obviously the people are not always capable of differentiating between different unrelated issues and judging them appropriately.