Monthly Archives: March 2009

Pit Stop

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saber toothed catI’m going to another interesting College Commons event today. It’s an away mission. We’re off on a specially arranged tour of the La Brea Tar Pits! This is part of the 1859 celebration series, and of course Darwin is the focus here to some extent. We’re going to be taken around the famous Pit 91. I shall try to take some pictures and report later. The image on the left is a painting of the saber toothed cat, by John C. Dawson. (It is in the LA Natural History Museum.) (By the way – yes, the “Los Angeles 20059 B.C.” on […] Click to continue reading this post →

Chess Tic?

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So, lovely idea to use the floor in this way, but what’s wrong with the picture?

chess_set_wrong

I spotted it while going past (downstairs in Doheny library last Tuesday), and could not let it go. In the end I had to go and figure out who was in charge of the exhibition and politely point out that there was a mistake. Apparently, people have been using it to play games and it might be that it is players who leave it improperly set up. My goodness.

Anyway, they said I should feel free to change it back to the right configuration. So I did. Some days later I went by and it was wrong again. I changed it back. Now I am thinking that I simply should not pass by that part of the building anymore to preserve my sanity…

It might seem a little nuts, but this is one of the campus flagship buildings that people visiting USC come through, looking at the building itself, and the exhibits down in the parts where this chess set is. Looks bad if we don’t know how to set up a chess set, doesn’t it? Well, I don’t know, maybe that’s silly… Also, I realized a bit later that maybe I am nuts, because… this has happened before.

I was in a Pottery Barn, maybe about two years ago, browsing through some of the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Periodically Fun!

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This is just great. I don’t know what it is good for, except amusement and nostalgia, but that’s a good portion of the balance sheet of the good things in life, so that’s good enough for me. It is a periodic table of elements that you can click on to find a selection of early comic book references to it. It is by some of my old neighbours – members of the Chemistry department at the University of Kentucky (F. James Holler and John P.Selegue) – and I’ve no idea how old this project is (1996, perhaps?), but it’s new to me. Click on the table to go to their site:

periodic_table_comics
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Back to the Lab

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Well, the transformation continues apace. As of last year, North of the USC campus now has the wonderful Bacaro, and as of three weeks ago, we now have The Lab on the Eastern edge of campus. It’s a gastropub (it is quite charming to hear that quaint term from early 90s London being bandied about as new and hip over here out West now), done up with the feeling of a laboratory of sorts. I think it works rather well, and I entirely approve of the science theme.

the lab gastropub at USCThe good news is that it actually does seem to be trying to do food somewhat a cut above the sort you get at your generic college campus dive. It succeeds with plenty of room to spare. I can see it as another place where both students and faculty can feel at home and find something on the menu that they like. There’s a surprisingly good selection of beers (no Duvel, Hoegaarden or Leffe, but I did spot a Chimay, so they pass) and several wines (did not explore the list on this first visit).

My risotto was pleasantly fresh tasting, with ingredients (including several different […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Spiritual Life of Plants

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cvj sowing seedsGiven all the gardening I’ve been doing over the last week or so (there’s some seed-sowing action going on to the right – more later), it may be fitting to go and sit and participate in the event coming up today. It is another of the College Commons events I’ve been mentioning here.

It’ll be a round table discussion and workshop to kick off a series, and here’s the summary:

“The Spiritual Life of Plants” series, arranged by Natania Meeker and Antónia Szabari of French and comparative literature, aims to reunite urgent contemporary conversations around ecology and the built environment with an early modern past — a past in which plants existed both at the limits of being and at the frontier of new forms of knowledge. What might these animated plants have to tell us about the ways in which humans experience, regulate, and are transformed by the non-human beings that surround them? How can we carry these conversations forward into the present and the future?

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Finale Thoughts

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Well, some of the best writing on television (irrespective of genre) came to an end recently, and since I raved about it back at its height some time ago (and maybe even encouraged some of you to watch it) I feel I ought to comment a little, now that the series – Battlestar Galactica – has ended. If you’ve not seen the finale (or even several of the episodes leading up to it), please do not read any further if you don’t want to know plot details.
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Two Johns on the War

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Last week, John Stewart and John Oliver were hilarious about the Bush administration’s War on Science, and the Obama administration’s continuing efforts to undo some of the damage done. The rest of the content aside, John Oliver’s terrible Bush impression is worth seeing.

Enjoy: […] Click to continue reading this post →

One Million!

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millionHmmm. With all of the current bandying about of “Billions” and “Trillions” in the news (at least over here in the USA – referring to dollars, and economic stimulus packages and so forth), every single day, “One Million” sounds decidedly underwhelming doesn’t it? Perhaps I should instead write [tex]10^6[/tex]. Does that help?

Why am I focusing on this number? Well, while I’ve been in hermit mode the last week (uh… yes, that’s where I was and I’ve got the beard to prove it – was resetting my head over Spring break – more later) the sitemeter counter continued ticking away and sometime today passed the One Millionth Visitor To Asymptotia mark! So we have a landmark of sorts. One worth noting. So…

Hurrah!

I’d planned to note carefully that visitor’s data (you can tell roughly what part of the […] Click to continue reading this post →