Monthly Archive for October, 2008

Strings Everywhere?

Published
by
Clifford
on October 29, 2008
in Los Angeles, science, science education, string theory and work
. 6 Comments

Well, at some point this week I ought to get around to preparing for this. I spoke about the Center For Inquiry before, here. Well, the promised talk that I was going to give at some point is on Sunday. If you’re up for some thoughts about the universe on your Sunday morning, do come along. Details at this link. Some of their publicity is reproduced below:

Strings Everywhere?
Sunday, Nov. 2, 11 a.m.

clifford johnson String theory may become crucial to our understanding of some of the most fundamental questions in nature, such as the origin of fundamental particles, the nature of black holes, and the origins of the universe itself.

Clifford Johnson, professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at USC, will explain the ideas behind string theory, showing its promise, strengths and weaknesses.

$6, or free for Friends of the Center.

The Center for Inquiry-Los Angeles, 4773 Hollywood Blvd., CA 90027

-cvj

Source

Published
by
Clifford
on October 29, 2008
in Los Angeles and nature
. 4 Comments

warm light in the west

Looking toward the source of some of that lovely evening light I remarked upon in an earlier post. View from the grounds of the Observatory in Griffith Park, not too long after 6:00 pm.

-cvj

A Zoological Fractal

Published
by
Clifford
on October 28, 2008
in humour
. 3 Comments

farley katz cartoon of a fractal giraffeWhen I saw this back in August, I laughed in delight. I think it is a rather clever idea, well executed. (It’s by Farley Katz, and was in the New Yorker, Aug 11th ‘08. (Link is to cartoon bank where you can get it.))

Actually, it reminded me of the delicious fractal I photographed for you and that we discussed here not long ago. That one was real, this one imagined, but nevertheless rather good.

-cvj

Warmth

Published
by
Clifford
on October 27, 2008
in Los Angeles and science and society
. 2 Comments

griffith observatory at sunsetWarm evening light at Griffith, during my short evening hike last night. (Click for larger view.) The park was lovely, and of course the Griffith Observatory was looking wonderful in this warm light.

I went up to clear my head of a lot of things, and it was a good thing to do to rise up above the street level of the city for short while. I really just had the urge to storm up the hill at speed and get up there and look back over the city. Just for a little while. So it was not a hike so much as a run. I’m not a regular runner, but there are occasionally days when it suits me fine (assuming it is not on a hard flat surface).

It’s a pleasure to wander the grounds just in front of the Observatory and hear Continue reading ‘Warmth’

They’re Back!

Published
by
Clifford
on October 24, 2008
in Los Angeles, flowers, gardening and personal
. 5 Comments

Wow! Almost to the day (see last year’s post), they have returned, perhaps stronger than ever! I had two big waves of them this year, one about ten days to a fortnight ago, and another new one starting a couple of days ago. Here’s one:

flowers from my san pedro cactus 2008

Flower from my San Pedro cactus (trichocereus pachanoi). (Click for larger view.)

I love these flowers dearly for many reasons. First and foremost, they are beautiful, but there’s an additional enhancement of my love brought about by their short-lived nature. They’ll appear all of a sudden, somewhat unexpectedly, and last just one day Continue reading ‘They’re Back!’

LHC Report

Published
by
Clifford
on October 24, 2008
in science and work
. 1 Comment

I don’t know if you read the report (released on the 15th October) about the damage to the LHC that occurred during the “September 19th incident”. Just in case, it is in pdf format here. The upshot is that there’s a lot of work to do. There are of course going to be delays to the schedule, and we’ll have to wait a bit longer for new Continue reading ‘LHC Report’

Sci-Fi Science

Published
by
Clifford
on October 23, 2008
in Los Angeles, entertainment, science, science fiction, science in the media, television and work
. 2 Comments

I got this cute postcard from the people at Workaholic Productions. (Click for larger view.)sci-fi science poster You may recall a post I did some time ago about some things I was doing in a demo lab here at USC for a pilot for a new TV show. (Or, you may not. That’s what the archive is for - browse several of the Tales From The Industry” series here.) At the time I did not tell you about the show in detail, since I don’t like to reveal details of show ideas and so forth when things are still in development.

Anyway, the show is done. It’s a pilot, and so with your support, they may well get the go ahead to make more. So if you’re inclined, go and have a look. What is it about? Well, the idea is to start off with some standard (pulp) sci-fi scenario (alien invasion in this case) that you might see in a movie or tv show, and then through the course of the show examine aspects of what you see to investigate the science behind it. They have actual scientists (and engineers, since a lot of can be really about technology) come on and discuss things, explain science, do demonstrations, and so on and so forth.

This particular show, the pilot, has a lot of the standard alien invasion combat weaponry on display - shooting of ray guns, casting of lightning-bolt-like bursts of Continue reading ‘Sci-Fi Science’

Summer Reading: Fresh Air From Pollan

Published
by
Clifford
on October 22, 2008
in books, craft, design, environment, food and drink, gardening, radio, science and words
. 2 Comments

I’ve been meaning to tell you more about Michael Pollan. I’ve been planning a post or two about Summer reading, and was going to discuss the books of Michael Pollan to kick off a possible series. That plan was hatched in the late Summer of 2007… then the Fall came, and then the Winter and Spring… then Summer of 2008… never got around to it. Drat. (Checking back, I see that I started the series by talking about Haruki Murakami, here. So I’ll call this part of the series too, even though it is not really Summer.)

Anyway, the good news is that Pollan was on Fresh Air (NPR) yesterday, and as usual he was excellent:

In an open letter to the next president, author Michael Pollan writes about the waning health of America’s food systems — and warns that “the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.”

The future president’s food policies, says Pollan, will have a large impact on a wide range of issues, including national security, climate change, energy independence and health care.

Here’s the link to the audio. Before you rush off to that, let me continue what I was going to say, at least in brief.

Pollan has risen to prominence, justifiably, mostly as a result of his excellent book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals”. It is a delightful examination of the food industry, charting the route of much of the food that you eat Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Fresh Air From Pollan’

Still Here

Published
by
Clifford
on October 21, 2008
in asymptotia and personal
. 0 Comments

Yes. I am. Still here.

Several of you, noticing a gap in my posting, got in contact to ask what’s up, and I appreciate that you care. The story is that I’ve been somewhat frazzled over the last several days, mostly due to an intense combination of work and social engagements of various sorts. The resulting lack of time (and lack of sleep) took its toll on my blogging routine. Sorry about that. Well, I’ve a few posts lined up for you with bits of news, and some thoughts here and there. They’ll start coming right up very soon. I hope you like them.

-cvj

Categorically Not! - Entanglement

Published
by
Clifford
on October 18, 2008
in Los Angeles, art, fun, literature, science and work
. 0 Comments

The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday October 19th (tomorrow!). The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). Stirling Johnson at Categorically Not! September 14th 2008It’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. (Image on left is of bubble master Stirling Johnson, in action during the September 14th 2008 event on Bubbles.)

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

Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Entanglement’

In Da House

Published
by
Clifford
on October 18, 2008
in humour and politics
. 2 Comments

Click on the image to go over to a site* that examines the nature of a Palin Presidency. You’ll laugh and shudder at the same time. Once there (not here) be sure to drag your mouse all over the image, clicking when you can, and revisit some of them (like the door) since more than one thing can be found in some parts. Enjoy! (Notice what’s in the trash can…)

The Horror of Palin as President!

(Don’t forget, she’s such a great debater…)

-cvj

(*Thanks Samantha!)

Chris Jordon on Our Cultural Anesthesia

Published
by
Clifford
on October 16, 2008
in art, environment and science and society
. 2 Comments

chris jordan at TED You may have noticed some of Chris Jordan’s work before, maybe not realizing what he’s up to. His work often looks like one thing (a rather beautiful abstract textured painting or photo), only to become something else entirely upon closer examination (the tiny elements making up the texture are paper cups, or mobile phones, for example), depicting some aspect of the vast quantities of some item or substance that we discard. His idea is to try to make Continue reading ‘Chris Jordon on Our Cultural Anesthesia’

Tracking Your Investments

Published
by
Clifford
on October 14, 2008
in mathematics, science and society and science in the media
. 0 Comments

I like David Bacon’s musings about the sorts of arithmetic being thrown around a lot in the turbulent financial news these days. He starts out:

I wonder how many people this week realized that “ten percent down” followed by “ten percent up” does not equal “no change.” [...]

Indeed, Continue reading ‘Tracking Your Investments’

Monsters, Etc

Published
by
Clifford
on October 13, 2008
in Los Angeles, art, craft and personal
. 2 Comments

Well, it was quite a fascinating and fun Sunday afternoon, all in the spirit of art and community. And the story has a twist or two before the end.

Where do I start? Well, it was the second LA area Monster Drawing Rally (organized on LA by the Outpost for Contemporary Art), held over in Altadena. A friend of mine, artist and playwright Nancy Keystone, told me about it. Over four hours, many artists (Nancy included) would draw, in hour-long shifts, and then the results would be sold at $75 each. There’d be people looking on, general fun, food, beer, wine, and so forth. Of course I’d go! (As a bonus, there was even belly-dancing at one point. Go figure.)

It was rather excellent. There were artists of all sorts, doing a wide variety of things under the banner “drawing”, and lots of people to chat with and things to chat about. Nancy drew faces in brushed ink on pages of the phone book, which I thought was a lovely idea (unfortunately, I missed getting a shot of her in action), and there were people cutting up bits of paper and gluing, blowing things, measuring and calculating things. More on that latter later. (Click for larger views.)

scenes from the monster drawing rally 2008 scenes from the monster drawing rally 2008

It was another great community event, and I recognized faces of friends and strangers from other things I go to around the city, such as the farmer’s market, Categorically Not! events like this recent one, and the wonderful Urban Homestead Speakeasy organized by Christine Louise Berry that I reported on not long ago. My friends Marc Kamionkowski (Caltech) and Robert Caldwell (Dartmouth) (cosmologists/astrophysicists) showed up at some point, and it was great to see them and catch up a bit.

Every hour the artists changed over, finishing their work and another set of artists seat themselves and get to work. So it was quite a dynamic event. As the 5:00pm session Continue reading ‘Monsters, Etc’

Saturday Calm

Published
by
Clifford
on October 11, 2008
in Los Angeles, craft, design, flowers, personal, science and work
. 1 Comment

october rosesWell, another super-busy week has gone by. Work has been crazy, life has been crazy, and so forth. It is so good to be able to sit here for a while on a sunny Saturday morning and reflect. I thought I’d take you with me on some of the reflections.

The Nobel prizes seemed to come up so much faster this year, and go by even more quickly. I’ve not had as much time to contemplate them as I’d have liked. It was certainly really good to see that the physics one was a celebration of some of the key ideas in my field (see here), of course, but I’d have liked to have had more chatter about all of them, as I usually try to do. It is good to learn more about other things - get out of one’s comfort zone. Two years ago while I was departmental colloquium organizer, I set aside one date to be a colloquium where the three science prizes were highlighted - “Who, What, Why?” There’s always going to be local Continue reading ‘Saturday Calm’

Prize Watch

Published
by
Clifford
on October 8, 2008
in biology, literature and science
. 5 Comments

Don’t forget to be looking out for the other Nobel Prizes announced this week. Monday saw the Physiology or Medicine Prize go to Harald zur Hausen for work on the human papilloma viruses (which cause cervical cancer), and to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for work on the human immunodeficiency virus. Announcement and more details here. Meanwhile, today’s Chemistry Prize was to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP. Details here.

No, no, no. The Chemistry prize was not for the discovery of a substance that’s just pretty and sparkly-glowy. (Although, you know… maybe that is a good reason on its Continue reading ‘Prize Watch’

The 2008 Physics Nobel Prize

Published
by
Clifford
on October 7, 2008
in science
. 3 Comments

The announcement has been made. It’s for spontaneously broken symmetry in particle physics and it is to Nambu (1/2 - “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”) and Kobayashi (1/4) and Maskawa (1/4) (- “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature”). It’s all about what might be better termed “hidden symmetries” in Nature, showing that the world (the structure of fundamental particle physics, specifically) is in fact much simpler if looked at in the right way. It is a powerful technique that does not just propose what the hidden patterns (symmetries) are, but tells you what the consequences of those patterns are in the form of predictions such that physicists can go out and measure those predictions and verify the existence of those symmetries. In some sense, this type of approach is the driving force behind a lot of fundamental particle physics these days - finding the hidden, simpler structure that lurks under the surface.

Here’s the announcement:

Continue reading ‘The 2008 Physics Nobel Prize’

An Accurate Summary

Published
by
Clifford
on October 4, 2008
in politics
. 10 Comments

I am, as you have noticed, somewhat averse to writing the political rants you find on a number of the science-oriented blogs you might frequent. As I’ve said before, I try to maintain a place you can visit to get away from the shouty nonsense (or the naive I-drunk-the-KoolAid hero-varnishing for that matter)… but this is hard to resist. Basically, I find myself a bit depressed that things have fallen so far in terms of presidential level politics in this country that a candidate for vice-president, in maybe the most watched debate of the season, can (a) avoid answering questions, (b) explicitly tell the moderator that they are not going to answer the questions, (c) dissolve into obviously prepared talking points when faced with difficult questions, (d) wink repulsively at the TV camera in an obvious attempt to appear likeable, and (e) make up random stuff so as to get their opponent to waste time denying it, and be declared by everyone as having done well in the debate. I did not think that we could sink lower than Bush the Younger in terms of appallingly bad candidates (who nevertheless do well in this climate), but I think I was wrong. Ok. That’s all I’m saying. I was pleased to see* a precise summary of my thoughts on Sarah Palin’s performance and so I’ll leave you with it, for your amusement (see a post accompanying it here):

Continue reading ‘An Accurate Summary’

Tales From The Industry XXIV - Equation Wrangler

Published
by
Clifford
on October 3, 2008
in Los Angeles, fun, science, science and society, science in the media and work
. 2 Comments

I’m sitting in one of my favourite cafes (Groundwork at Cahuenga) after a couple of hours work with some filmmakers. I’ve mentioned them to you before, you may recall. Eric Salat and Philip Shane are making what is gearing up to be a really fantastic documentary. I’m still not sure whether I’m supposed to talk about the content just yet, and so I won’t be to specific. As I mentioned before they are really trying to tell the science story in some depth. They’re illustrating the development of an idea, the wrong turns, the frustrations, the moments of elation, depression, and everything that goes into the process of doing the sort of work we do. And here, “everything” includes the confrontation of the ideas with the elation of seeing the success of a long struggle to understand Nature. I’ve spent some time chatting with Eric and Phil about the physics ideas, as have other scientists, and I have a good sense that they are so keen to tell the story well, and give the science and the scientific process a chance to shine - something that can often get neglected in some of these shows.

What was I doing today? Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XXIV - Equation Wrangler’

The Beet Goes On…

Published
by
Clifford
on October 2, 2008
in Los Angeles and food and drink
. 4 Comments

Tomorrow I’ll be doing something a bit unusual, I’ve heard. I’ll be writing lots of equations (so far so normal), but I’ll be doing it on a stage and will be filmed doing it. Should be fun. It’s for an educational TV show that’ll be out some time soon. Will tell you more when I know more. My task later on is to figure out which equations they’d like on camera. It’s been a long day, so I thought I’d sit here with some camomile tea and blog a bit first.

It’s been a while since we’ve been to the kitchen together, hasn’t it? Let me tell you about Monday’s special dish. I was invited by a friend to go to their house and join some others for a Rosh Hashanah gathering. The instruction was to “bring a side dish of your choosing”. Excellent. Well, I’m out of figs now (the main tree has run out of them after a remarkable season), and so could not rely on that. The big problem was really that on Monday I teach until 7:00pm (ugh), and I’d have to go home first to get the food. I certainly could not rely on being able to cook a meal and take it immediately since I’d have about 15 minutes to make everything and get it to my friend’s place. So I needed something good, but something simple and fast.

For some reason I decided on oranges. I don’t really know why. I thought I might do something with oranges, sliced, and then maybe some fresh mint from my garden Continue reading ‘The Beet Goes On…’