Daily Archive for October 27th, 2007

’T Ain’t Natural

Published on October 27, 2007 in fun, Los Angeles, music, science and society and television. 3 Comments

Josh Ritter ConcertThe photos record scenes from an excellent use of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum’s large exhibition halls after hours: Live music. (They’re not super-great – I only had my phone with me.)

A friend took me as a guest to a filming of Josh Ritter and his band for a TV show. Lots of Lovely Bones everywhere*, stuffed animals, loud (but not too loud) good music (I’d not really listened to Ritter before – hey, not bad at all), and free martinis on tap (surprisingly not watered down!) from Grey Goose. How could I not go?

(You can see the exhibit hall (North American Mammals, I think) with the activity in the distance between the bones of Mr/Ms Triceratops here.)

If you’ve never been the the Natural History Museum here before and you are in LA, please go along. It’s really very good indeed. As an incentive, you can go to the new spider pavillion and wander around with live spiders everywhere. (What’s that? That’s not an incentive? I see…Well, there’s lots to see besides rubbing shoulders with spiders, from dinosaurs, mammals and birds to wonderful gemstones and minerals…) I’m thinking of going to check it out some time, and maybe report back here on the blog about it some time.

Josh Ritter Concert

This event is sort of typical of LA, in both good and bad ways. There are all these Continue reading ‘’T Ain’t Natural’

Inside Out

Published on October 27, 2007 in mathematics. 3 Comments

Part of K C Cole’s teaser for tomorrow’s Categorically Not! – Inside Out said:

Sometimes the results are surprising: circles in the plane can’t be turned inside out, but spheres in 3-dimensional space can be.

This is all the license I need to show you* this wonderful 21 minute video showing exactly that (and explaining some rather beautiful mathematics along the way):



Direct link to the Google Video (for larger viewing) here.

Continue reading ‘Inside Out’

Categorically Not! – Inside Out

Published on October 27, 2007 in art, biology, Los Angeles, mathematics, science and theatre. 0 Comments

Paul Stein of Los Angeles PhilharmonicThe next Categorically Not! is a Blue* one! It’s on Sunday October 28th (tomorrow). The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series – started and run by science writer K. C. Cole – of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area.

Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events. (Above right: The Los Angeles Philharmonic’s Paul Stein demonstrating “small differences” on the violin, in the event with that theme.)

The theme this month is Inside Out. Here’s the description from K C Cole:

Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! – Inside Out’