The second of the Point of View campus events in the Visions and Voices series is on Thursday. It is at 7:00pm at the Gin Wong conference center (which is near Fine Arts and Architecture, by the way.) See the bottom of this post for some earlier events of this type, and this post for the background on Visions and Voices.
This time we’ll have a Poet, a Dancer, and a Physicist! Here’s some blurb that KC Cole (my co-conspirator in this business) wrote about who is appearing and what they’ll be saying:
For the second USC Point of View program, we continue to add perspectives. Relativist (yes, there is such a thing) Don Marolf of UCSB will tell us what Einstein’s relativity REALLY means to the physicists who study our world. Different observers’ perceptions of space, and even of time itself can give different answers. How do we make sense of that, and what are the consequences? Poet and author Michael Datcher, who teaches literary nonfiction and poetry at Loyola Marymount University, will talk about the role of the writer as a witness and also his newly launched journal of literary nonfiction, The Truth about the Fact. Datcher is the author of the memoir Raising Fences. From a dance perspective, L.A.-based choreographer Rosanna Gamson will show and tell us about her work, “Grand, Hope, Flower,” which pretends to be a lecture on quantum electrodynamics, but is actually about L.A. The piece was part of the Einstein exhibit at the Skirball Center.
Come along and bring or tell friends! There’ll be discussion and refreshments afterwards.
For more events of this type, see the Categorically Not! website.
Pingback: Point of View, II - The Event - Asymptotia
Another event to make me wish I could zip out to the West Coast now and then.
But I’ve discovered something closer to home. Just a couple of links away (found via K. C. Cole’s site) is Roald Hoffmann’s Entertaining Science, which does similar things in New York City. Wouldn’t have found it without this post, so thanks, Clifford!
Thanks for the link to the Categorically Not! I loved their slogan: The worst disease afflicting humankind is hardening of the categories.
I loved it because removing the hardened categories inevitably leads to new discoveries.
Unfortunately academia is the bad cholesterol of science because most hardened categories occur in the academia leading to death of science.
As you may have noticed, nature is divided into neat sections which can be taught in 4 years. This may also prove the anthropocentric principle. If nature weren’t naturally divided into academic sections humans would never be able to study nature.
I personally believe in the unity of things.
The second paragraph of this essay may also be related to the topic of the immutability of the academic categories.
Thanks again, and the program looks very nice too.
Sounds interesting (says a voice from the north), say hi to Don!