Hereby I would like to introduce a new kind of event: the MIP event. (For the non-physicists among you, the word “event” has the direct association of “collision in accelerator” to it.) (For the non-detector people among you, a MIP is also a minimum ionising particle, like a cosmic muon.) The definition of the More Important than Physics (MIP) event is highly personal and may change as a function of time.
As physics is work for me, I would like to point out that there are of course enough things that compete with physics for my attention and time. These are all fun things: My boyfriend, my friends, my horse, skiing, Amsterdam night life etc. Combining all these comes down to combinatorial trial-and-error. Sometimes I end up with a sustainable schedule. But physics is there and has a high priority in both time and brain CPU.
In the last weeks, I have assigned the MIP status to two events. The first one was not happy and I won’t go into that one, but the second was a colleague’s wedding. The party took place at the water, we danced, had a beer and drove home. Although it was on a Tuesday, the physicists probably outnumbered other people and I needed to stay sober, I did think about physics at all. Definitely a MIP event.
