March Meeting, further thoughts

I had to cut my March Meeting a bit short this year, to get back to Rice in time for the dedication of our new Brockman Hall for Physics.  Still, a few more thoughts from the APS meeting:

• Michelle Simmons gave a terrific talk summarizing the work, over more than a decade, of her group at the University of New South Wales on their progress toward their eventual goal of building a quantum computer based on P donors in Si (the Kane approach).  I knew of the work, but I'd never seen it all laid out like that, and it was impressive.  There are very few people out there in the CM community with the fortitude to plan out and pursue steadily a coherent, goal-directed research program over a dozen years.
• I also saw something I hadn't observed in a number of years:  a speaker completely blowing off the 10 minute time limit on a contributed talk.  When the yellow warning light clicked on, it was clear that the speaker was nowhere near the end.  When the red light clicked on and started to blink, still no conclusion.  The session chair stood up and loomed intimidatingly.  No dice.  Finally the speaker ended after a total of about 16 minutes.  That takes nerve (and a lack of consideration for the others in the session....).
• I chaired two sessions this year (note to self:  only chair one session....), and in contrast to the previous point, really didn't have any bad talks at all in there.  Very pleasant, generally.  Most interestingly, the metal-insulator transition in vanadium oxide session was 100% experimental talks!  Perhaps theorists have given up?  (kidding.)