I'm a physicist who is very much into the foundational questions surrounding consciousness, and I have to say that I think that GEB is genius, and very much worth reading. In fact in a lot of ways, it is one of the books I've gotten the most out of, and I have always been annoyed by those who 'don't get it.' You just can't expect a book that tackles what GEB does to do so in a linear manner -- that would be like giving up on a zen koan because it makes no sense. Heck, even in the introduction to a recent copy Hofstadter basically laments the fact that most people 'don't get it.' I, for one, think the book is absolutely brilliant and beyond its time, and not because it cutely weaves together so many interesting subjects, but because it communicates deep and compelling insights into the nature of consciousness that few other books have come close to.

They are saying that the top quark is being produced one at a time, rather than in pairs (IAAP). It's actually subtle -- what had been observed before were 2 top quarks emerging from a gluon. Now they have observed one top quark (and another quark) emerging from a W-boson. Basically. This is not a major discovery, but it is another important showing off of the 'standard model' working very well at the energies we have so far probed.

Oh, and about isolating quarks. You cannot isolate a quark outside a hadron, but you can 'detect' the quark by observing the hadrons and leptons that it decays into, since they leave a distinct signature. The top quark is special because it decays before it even forms a hadron with other quarks.

I'm really surprised by the comments here, because I haven't seen anyone mention the writing. What killed this movie for me was the dialog; by the end of the movie I was blushing in embarrassment at how bad some of it was. Anyone else feel this way? I found the first 20 minutes of the movie extremely compelling (the visuals, the aesthetic, the editing, the cinematography were all fantastic), but as it went on I grew less and less enthused. I followed the plot fine, and although I enjoyed the 'watchmen' universe, I found the plot line that was mainly present in the second half of the movie pretty poor, by movie standards. Another thing I haven't heard anyone mention negatively was the sex scene. I honestly couldn't tell if it was meant to be serious or not -- it seemed so over the top to me that I thought it might be a joke. Overall I give the movie a B+.