I’m sure there have been times when you received that message from the National Science Foundation saying that your grant application has been turned down, and in disappointment you’ve muttered something like “…bunch of W*nkers!” before taking a deep breath and moving on.
Right?
Well, now it seems it is official! See this story on MSNBC*, which starts:
The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday February 1st. 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.
The theme this month is Dark Matters. Here’s the description from K C Cole:
Today on NPR’s Morning Edition they played a piece by Madeline Brand that aired in 2007 about the Keeling curve, and the man behind the curve, Charles David Keeling. As you may know, the Keeling curve (above) is a striking demonstration of the steady increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as measured from one location (on top of Mauna Loa in Hawaii) by one very simple method over almost 50 years.
It is a lovely story of dedication and determination that resulted in a simple, striking, […] Click to continue reading this post
I almost forgot to mention that tonight marks the launch of the series of events called the College Commons here at USC. Here’s a news story about the programme. This academic year, I’ve been working on the committee working on shaping the ideas that have come up from the faculty (I had promised to tell you more about this), and we’ve announced the short Spring programme, which you can see here.
There is a featured part celebrating 1859:
Where do ideas come from, and how far do they travel? One hundred and fifty years ago, the astonishing year of 1859 saw not only the publication of Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species, but such pioneering works as John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities, Karl Marx’s Critique of Political Economy, and Richard Wagner’s first version of Tristan and Isolde. This year also marked amazing advances in travel and communications, the first battles prefiguring the Civil War and the first trapeze act performed in Paris. Can we imagine the world 150 years from now, and imagine the place our ideas will have in it? Scholars from biology, anthropology, physics, literature, history, and gender studies, as well as poets and artists, will explore these questions together this spring.
I hope there’ll be a lot of participation in the events (I’ll say more on this later). Tonight has a free movie, Master and Commander (so there’s a reason to go, right […] Click to continue reading this post
Yes, I’ve been a bit quiet of late, I know. I’ve so many things on, both professional and personal that it sometimes keeps me occupied from when I wake up just before sunrise right through to falling asleep a bit after midnight. And yes I know that means I’ve been not getting the traditional full nights of sleep, but if my body insists on getting up at 5:30am, who am I to resist? I thought it was due to jetlag from the trip a couple of weeks ago, but it seems to have taken. I don’t mind too much since watching the light change as the sun rises is a marvellous way to start the day.
Among the things I’m up to (yesterday and today so far) is a strip-down-and-redesign of a short talk for an exciting symposium that is coming up in a few weeks in Chicago. The American Association for the Advancement of Science is having their big annual shindig there (apparently the biggest science conference in the world) and there will be a number of addresses, plenary talks, and keynote speakers and the like (including Al Gore, by the way), and also several sessions of symposia and other presentations on various topics.
While slightly annoyed at the fact that one major day of the conference is on Valentine’s day (which means I’ll have to be out of town on just the day that maybe, just maybe, on the off-chance, you know – if the universe sneezes or something, somebody might want me to be their Valentine…*), I was looking at that day’s schedule and it caught my eye that there’ll be a session (with several presenters) entitled “The Science of Kissing”, and three hours long, no less:
Nobel Prize winners David Gross (physics) and Eric Kandel (physiology/medicine) made an excellent case for spending a bit of the much-discussed stimulus package on science, writing in the Financial Times a couple of weeks ago. The piece is here. I recommend a read of it. I spotted this at Dirac … Click to continue reading this post
It was Burns’ night last night, and I do love hearing his work read out loud. It is quite wonderful to read too. It’s his 250th birthday (Hmmm… something else to add to the year of celebrations of big anniversaries along with Darwin and Galileo). One of my favourites, which you possibly know, is the following (reproduced here in tribute):
A Red, Red Rose – Robert Burns. (1759–1796)O MY Luve ‘s like a red, red rose
That ‘s newly sprung in June:
O my Luve ‘s like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune!As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I:
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry:Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun;
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.And fare thee weel, my only Luve,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my Luve,
Tho’ it were ten thousand mile.
Now go to NPR and listen to Alison Jones read it out quite wonderfully, after having a […] Click to continue reading this post
(Somehow I forgot to hit “publish” on this post and the next one yesterday, and then have been distracted all day today… so apologies for the lateness…)
Wishing everyone (especially all my friends far and near who celebrate it):
Happy Chinese New Year!
Here’s a strong clue that I’m supposed to be working on writing slides for an important presentation:
Yes. I’ve been playing with photoshop. What’s the story? Well, I noticed that there is a facebook page for Aretha Franklin’s wonderful Inauguration hat. You know the one. The page has a huge number of fans already, growing at a rate of something like 200 every ten minutes (when I last looked). People are adding photos of themselves, their pets, and other objects, all wearing the hat. It’s great!
So I, rather than settling down to design those slides I’ve been meaning to get to for the last few hours, thought I’d join in the facebook fun! I could not resist sneaking […] Click to continue reading this post
Hope. This word has been used a lot in the last year or more. Sometimes it felt to me like it was overused, but now that the dust has settled, I think I’m quite sure that it is a good word to describe where we are, or what we have. Beginning early today, there will be a new President of the United States, Barack Obama. He’ll be bringing in a whole new regime that seems, given what we’ve seen so far with the work of the transition team and the various appointments to key positions, determined to do some truly good things. (See several related posts listed below.) There’ll be several huge obstacles to fulfilling the promise and potential of the new regime, some known, and some unknown. It’ll be hard to firmly move forward, but it is hugely encouraging to see the looks of delight and joy on people’s faces during these days of celebration, and to hear about their engagement with the idea that we can pull together and move forward on so many fronts on so many vital issues. We don’t know what will come to pass, but one thing we do know is that there is a marvellous window of opportunity. There is Hope.
Since the election result on the night of 4th November 2008, with all that had been achieved and overcome still fresh in the air, right up until today, there’s actually been a rather fitting song ringing in my head when I think about all of this. I find the chorus from the song “I Live In Hope”, by a musician friend of mine, Libby Lavella (you may recall her from posts here and here) extremely evocative of the mood. With […] Click to continue reading this post
For some reason I don’t understand, I occasionally get a copy of some random (as far as I can tell) issue the International Journal of Modern Physics A in the post. It just arrives. The people at World Scientific are presumably hoping I’ll get hooked by it and take out a personal subscription or something. Not sure. Well, it has not happened yet (just as it did not with the unsolicited regular arrivals of Angeleno a while back). But you never know.
Anyway, before putting the one that arrived recently on to my shelf (I can’t easily throw things like that away… it’s a problem, I know) I glanced through the contents to see if there were clues as to why this one was sent to me. I found no obvious ones, but the very first article caught my eye. It was a rather good essay by Steven Weinberg (1979 Nobel Prize in Physics) on BCS (J Bardeen, L N Cooper and J R Schrieffer – No, nothing to do with College Football’s BCS.) theory of superconductivity and the importance of the idea of spontaneously broken symmetry in condensed matter physics and then in particle physics (see last year’s Physics Nobel, by the way). I thought I’d point it out to you, since it is rather nicely written and very instructive (whether or not you’re already familiar with the phenomenon/idea).
He begins with some overstatement, however. He expounds upon the difference between particle physicists and condensed matter physicists and although it is amusingly written in parts (I assume intentionally) he really over-eggs the pudding, in my opinion. Look at this: […] Click to continue reading this post
I’m back home in Los Angeles now, after four days in Cambridge (UK) trying to pay attention to several interesting talks and meetings while being eight hours out of sync with my sleep. It has been interesting, but it is good to be back and getting on with the business of starting the new semester. I gave my first class of the season yesterday (upper division electromagnetism), and it looks to be a good group of students. I expect we’ll have fun! Additionally, two research meetings with graduate students meant for a nicely balanced first day back.
It’s (of course) 5:18am, and so while I sit here, wide awake, I’ll tell you about something I saw earlier in the week. 
While wandering around for a bit in Cambridge on Monday, I stumbled across the Corpus Clock and the Chronophage. It’d been mentioned to me about half an hour before by a friend, and I made a mental note to ask about it, but did not realize I’d stumble upon it so easily. Did you hear about it last year? I must confess that all the fuss about it totally passed me by. There’s been a lot of silly stuff said about it, including the usual sensational things about time and so forth, but at the core, the whole thing is quite marvellous. I’ve an old-fashioned streak to me, as you know by now, and so that it is essentially a traditional mechanical clock (despite the presence of LEDs to show the time – they are not controlled electronically, but are on all the time and the mechanical works moves slits to make them appear to go on and off) appeals to me immensely. The whole effect of using modern technology to […] Click to continue reading this post
This year is not all about Darwin. There’s even more fun to be had. It is the International Year of Astronomy. It is 400 years since Galileo Galilei looked at the night sky using a telescope, and this is regarded by some as the birth of modern astronomy. There’ll be lots of celebratory events and discussions taking place under this banner, and of course it is a wonderful opportunity to highlight and kindle interest in Astronomy, so keep your eye out for lots of such events. The theme is “The Universe: Yours To Discover”, which I think is rather good, don’t you? See the official website of IYA2009 for more information. Here’s a BBC World service piece about it, in the form of an interview with Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees. (That same page has an audio visit to the Vatican’s Observatory, Castel Gandolfo (a facility previously mentioned on the blog here), which might be of interest.)
I wonder whether you’ve heard of the Galileoscope. It is one of the “cornerstone […] Click to continue reading this post
So where am I and what am I doing? I’m in chilly Cambridge. The one in the UK. It is super cold over here. When we landed in Heathrow at lunchtime yesterday it was below freezing, and the thick cloud of the London sky was right down to the tops of the airport terminals. Everybody seemed to be talking about how cold it was. My wandering in central London for a few hours dragging my suitcase (before heading to Kings Cross and the train to Cambridge) was quite a bit uncomfortable – at least until I realized that a key mission should be to find on Oxford Street a branch of Marks and Spencer’s (now called M&S it seems… interestingly across the street from an H&M, and not so far from where the doomed C&A store used to be…) and buy some long thermal underwear. A bit elderly, perhaps, but very snug and warm against the icy winds and snow flurries, so I don’t care. (Yes, that probably falls under the category of “oversharing”, one of the words of the year 2008….)
One of the various governance boards I managed to accept to be on last year (despite trying hard to try to say “no” more last year) was that of ICAM, the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter. For the first time in ICAM’s ten year history, its […] Click to continue reading this post
I just have to say…Slumdog Millionaire is indeed a fantastic film. In case you were wondering if you should go…. just go. It is well written, acted, and beautifully photographed and directed. I’m pleasantly surprised that Danny Boyle could make a film that feels quite so authentic (while at the same time being essentially a fairy tale) as an Indian film. Quite splendid.
Speaking of excellent films of 2008, and turning to a more academic context, I’d like to urge you to take a second look at The Visitor, if you’ve not yet seen it. It’s nice, from time to time, to see films where the principal characters are academics, and this one does a very good job at having a good feel to it – in the sense that the lead (played wonderfully by Richard Jenkins) felt believable as a professor going through a strange time in his life, and then finding himself increasingly falling into an unfamiliar world. It is one of my favourite films of the year, and it seems that few people I know have even heard of it.
While on the subject of 2008 films featuring academics, I’d like to mention Smart People. I really did not like it at all. It is not that most of the principal characters […] Click to continue reading this post
