Physics Invades Croatia-England Game

Cosmic Variance
By Mark Trodden
Sep 11, 2008 12:04 AMNov 5, 2019 8:17 AM

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So I'm sitting in my office doing physics, with part of me distracted by the LHC, and another part keeping an eye on the Guardian's live coverage of the football match between Croatia and England. This involves a team of commentators who occasionally bring up the contents of some of the emails they receive during the match. To get quoted, one usually needs to be funny, wacky, or both. During the first half there was some banter about old computers, such as the Commodore 64 and the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. At half time, the following is reported:

Showing Off About Stuff dept: "All this talk of ZX Spectrums," begins Steve Carbert, "reminds me of the time I wrote this really advanced basic program modelling the effects of superposed quantum states in a randomly fluctuating Hilbert Space and accidentally saved it on an old Barry Manilow cassette. Or was it the Troggs? But we digress. Can you give me more of a feel for how hostile the crowd is?" Yep, they're quite quiet. Now can you tell me what the hell you are going on about? Fluctuating what? Eh? HALF TIME: Croatia 0-1 England. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is that for the half. "Your commentary seems to be lacking any mention of Frank Lampard," writes Kyle S. Karinen. Yes, it does, doesn't it.

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