A science conference

I can tell that this fellow, quoted in Wired, has been to a few conferences...

Brian Alexander, in his recent book Rapture: How Biotech Became the New Religion, aptly describes the ennui potentially engendered by scientific sessions:

"The talks almost always take place in the dark," he writes. "During the first 10 minutes, the scientist-presenter fumbles with a bulky laptop computer in an effort to get the PowerPoint program to work. During the next 30 minutes, the scientist, who has never been trained in the art of public speaking, explains, often through a very thick Chinese, German, French or Italian accent, why the mass of pinkish cells on the right is the surprising and highly significant result of the procedure performed on the almost identical mass of pinkish cells on the left. Line graphs are shown.

"The final five minutes is taken up by a question period. Colleagues stand at a microphone in the middle of the aisle and, using the polite code phrases of science, ask the presenter if he has considered the possibility that his head has unaccountably become entangled in his ass."

We don't look at cells in physics, but we do look at interminable plots of histograms comparing data and monte carlo--frequently not very similar . . .