Two more shorties

For anyone living under a rock with no access to nerd social media, Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger have finally won the Nobel Prize in Physics, for their celebrated experiments that rubbed everyone’s faces in the reality of quantum entanglement (including Bell inequality violation and quantum teleportation). I don’t personally know Aspect or Clauser, but Zeilinger extremely graciously hosted me and my wife Dana when we visited Vienna in 2012, even bringing us to the symphony (he knows the director and has front-row seats), and somehow making me feel more cultured rather than less.

As usual, the recipe for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics is this:

(1) Do something where anyone who knows about it is like, “why haven’t they given the Nobel Prize in Physics for that yet?”

(2) Live long enough.

Huge congratulations to Aspect, Clauser, and Zeilinger!

Elham Kashefi, my quantum complexity theory colleague and treasured friend for more than 20 years, brought to my attention a Statement of Solidarity with Students in Iran from the International Academic Community. Of course I was happy to sign the statement, just like I was back in 2009 when brave Iranian students similarly risked their lives and freedom for women’s rights and other Enlightenment values against the theocracy. I urge you to sign the statement as well. If enough Shtetl-Optimized readers disapprove of their brutal repression, surely the mullahs will reconsider! More seriously though: if any readers can recommend a charity that’s actually making a difference in helping Iranians participate in the modern world, I’d be happy to do another of my matching donation drives.