Large Fluctuations and Collective Behavior in Solids is an overlapping workshop going on in parallel with the LHC stuff at the Aspen Center for Physics, while down the road the Republican Governors' meet at the Aspen Institute and Romney is down the valley while his peeps meet with the super PACs over lunch.
The kickoff colloquium for the Collective Behaviour crowd is from Bouchard on Fracture Physics.
Nice reminder that much of physics is not about Higgs bosons or speculations on supersymmetry. Also good reminder that superficially applied problems have deep issues of universality and scaling and come with their own sophisticated techniques.
Nice summary on fracture physics and failure from SRI
Interesting application: cyanobacteria in shocked rock from impact crater. From Cavendish Lab
The ultimate application, theoretically, is, of course, in making more realistic ultraviolent videos games...