This year's Peace Prize goes to the IAEA and its director general Mohamed ElBaradei. I read about him being a favourite for the prize a few days ago, but these statements are usually bogus (at least in the other Nobel categories). I am not into the subject enough to be able to give a qualified comment on the Laureate, but I definitely agree that the justification touches very important topics: "for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way"

It is always shocking to hear that one particular country is putting lots of money into developping mini-nukes that will lower inhibitions to start using nuclear weapons again, instead of complying with nuclear disarmament treaties.

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has just been announced. From the little information that is given, it seems that the laureate's research is in Quantum Optics. During their stay in Stockholm to recieve the prize on December 10, the laureates usually come to Uppsala as well, to give a lecture just downstairs from here. Very practical.

The Dag Hammarskjöld Lecture will be given on Monday, Sep 19th, in the University Hall here in Uppsala, Sweden. This lecture is given once a year in memory of Dag Hammarskjöld, the former UN Secretary-General that originated from Uppsala. This year's lecture is held by Hans Blix who is from Uppsala as well. He was in the news frequently until 2003 as head of the United Nations Inspection Commission that investigated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. In case you don't remember: they found none, the American government did not believe it and used it as an excuse to invade Iraq, they still have not found any.

Of course, I intend to go to the lecture.

Hier sind die gesammelten Bilder von Olga und Stefans Hochzeit:

• Der Junggesellenabend am 22. Juni: Es gibt Bilder von Erik, André und mir.
• Die Trauung auf dem Standesamt Würzburg am 24. Juni.
• Die kirchliche Hochzeit mit anschliessender Feier am 25. Juni: Bilder von André und mir.
• Die Hochzeitszeitung (PDF-Datei, 13 MB).

(Wer seine Bilder hier noch verlinkt sehen möchte oder auch, dass ich sie hier bereitstelle, kontaktiere mich bitte.)

Yesterday when I came home, I realised that some of the trees (only the cherry trees, I think) looked really strange, like some funny guy had sprayed artificial snow onto them. A closer look revealed the culprit: millions of small grubs had "releaved" the tree from its leaves and spun it into a thick cobweb-like silk-surface. It rained grubs from those trees and everything standing under them got spun in, too. I took pictures.

Till alla som vill se korten från Margarethas 50års-fest, de finns här.