Asymptotia

Fascinating. I am testing out a new method of posting to the blog. I replaced my ancient and frustrating ipod (I think enough time has been spent tinkering around in its innards (see e.g. here) and now I realize the hard drive itself is now damaged) and my old Palm Tungsten by one new device, an iPod Touch. It seems to work well, and is my compromise to the iPhone mania - I find the fact that you are forced by AT&T into an expensive data contract for the iPhone a bit objectionable, and I certainly don’t want to pay that much to be connected all the time, and moreover have no wish to be connected all the time, and my current phone is a really good phone that does more of what I want than the iPhone does (my phone has a radio for example - it is free and works whether you have a connection to the web or not - good old-fashioned FM) and I am not really one for getting new devices just for newness’ sake. (I’ve realized to my delight that this solution also means that I get to continue saying that I’m the last person in LA without an iPhone. )

Since I needed to replace the other things and since the Touch does have Bluetooth and wireless, this seemed like a good move. I can reliably listen to music again, and It will help with productivity too, I can do some communication on the move Continue reading ‘Testing, Testing’

Yes, it is that time of year again. It is the third birthday of this blog, Asymptotia, and once again I’d like to thank everyone for reading, commenting, emailing, and otherwise participating in building the community we have here. It continues to be Continue reading ‘Three!’

There was a 24 hour period from 3:30pm Monday to 3:30pm Tuesday where I was engaged in a seemingly insane enterprise. My original plan was to document it here as one of my “24″-style blog posts, but since about 9 hours of it involved nothing but me screaming along to various songs (there’s something marvellous about singing “Roooooxx–anne!!! You don’t have to wear that dress tonight!!!….” and repeating “Put on the Red Light! Put on the Red Light!…” while whizzing along - fast!- on a road trip. I don’t know why), and five and a half hours asleep, I’ll spare you the details of each hour.

So what was the mission? To head to Death Valley. Yes, one of the hottest places on earth at this time of year! Why? To film something for The Universe (that History channel series I sometimes appear on). After my experiences of last Monday, you’d think I’d swear off hot filming situations for a while, but there you go. The physics involved is interesting, and it was an opportunity to get across some rather fun and interesting material (that you don’t usually see on TV) and so I went for it.

So since I had an afternoon meeting at 2:00pm with a Dean and some other Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XXIX - Dune’

With about ten figs taken over a day and a half, the Great Tomato Atrocity still fresh in my mind, several chases and confrontations with yelling on both sides… It is clear. There is no other conclusion:

Fluffy must go.

After some experiments with small stealth items over the last few days, which, after some near misses (the Force is strong with Fluffy), Fluffy now routinely evades, I am deploying some heavy battlefield equipment:

Continue reading ‘The War Continues…’

I’ll blog a bit more about the significance of this scene, but right now, I hope you’ll Continue reading ‘Curves’

I’ve this delightful little pepper tree that produces petite purple peppers.

(Click for larger view.) They’re each about an inch long.

With their lovely shape and deep, rich colour, they’re such a pleasure to look at that Continue reading ‘Petite Purple Peppers’

As a follow up to my earlier moon post of the day, here’s a link to the (excellent) Police singing the excellent “Walking on the Moon”. Seems to fit somewhat with the occasion. No embedding, sadly, so you’ll have to come back here to finish your reading. Click on the picture. Enjoy!

-cvj

Well, it can’t have escaped your attention. I imagine that whatever news sources you use are full of stories about today being the 40th anniversary of the first landing on the moon. (Well, the first by human beings, anyway. )

I won’t be writing a long thoughtful piece reflecting on the matter. Right now, I can’t really think of much to say that has not been said. Perhaps it is just because it is too hot here. I’m not sure.

However, I will encourage you to find a quiet moment sometime today, stop, look Continue reading ‘40 Years Ago…’

Friday saw two satisfying discoveries that may be of interest to you if you strive to use less energy and to reuse rather than replace.

The first is that the incandescent light bulbs with the small fitting that I was despairing over being able to replace with compact fluorescent bulbs can be replaced! I found in my local hardware store that companies have now (maybe for a while?) started making CFLs with the small fitting! Hurrah! Having now found this fitting, I think most fittings, shapes and sizes of bulbs that I’ve seen (in this context) can replaced by CFLs of similar fittings, shapes and sizes.

The second is just as satisfying. I went to Staples to buy another package of ink cartridges for my printer, and while in the checkout line I noticed an odd package Continue reading ‘Footprint Thoughts’

Hmm… so this PhD Comics episode* (image left… click will take you to their site) is a really good idea, but I’m underwhelmed by the actual execution.

This might be because it is hard to do, and not because the person (people?) at PhD comics, whoever they are, aren’t smart and funny people, since there’s a lot of evidence that they are.

So I find myself thinking that this is an opportunity for some fun reader participation! Surely there are more science-tweets to be thought up? Perhaps even Continue reading ‘Your Science Tweets Here’

Well, that was a hugely tiring day indeed. I’ve just returned from a full day of shooting for an episode of the the History Channel’s The Universe, and all I can do is collapse on the sofa for a long while.

I’ve grabbed the essentials (a nice cold Leffe, some tasty corn chips, a cup of tea - I made it before I got the Leffe idea - , some books I’m reading, etc) to have within easy reach so that I need not get up for a while. I simply don’t want to.

It was tiring mostly because it was so terribly hot for most of it. The first half of the Continue reading ‘Heat Exhaustion…’

Here’s an interview that I missed when it first came out back in April. It is with Edward Witten, the single most influential person in my area of theoretical physics for quite some time now. This is for no other reason than his off-scale abilities in every key area of theoretical physics. He was my mentor back in the early ’90s, and the Continue reading ‘Witten Interview’

When I’m feeling muddled or somewhat low, one of the things that reliably helps me find my foundation is going out into the garden and doing some work here and there, or simply checking on how various plants or fruits and vegetables are coming along. The work, the sounds and smells, the surroundings, and the cycles of renewal that are all over the garden are wonderfully uplifting to me.

So imagine how I felt yesterday when, feeling down for one reason or another, I went out into the garden and discovered that the six or seven wonderful tomatoes (of various types) - that I was giving just another day or two to become perfect - had all been taken! Continue reading ‘The Battle is Joined’

On the BBC’s Daily Mayo the other day there was a science focus!

Scientists Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw joined Simon to talk about their new book Why Does ? that looks at Einstein’s famous equation which explores the principles of physics through everyday life. Commander Lee Archambault, currently on a tour of the UK, joined them and spoke about Space Shuttle Mission 119’s recent trip to the International Space Station.

One of the interesting things was that there was a lot of amiable chatter around the science, but hardly any actual explanations. This was particularly marked when Simon tried to get them to explain , and I perked up since it sounded like there was going to be a very clever quick radio soundbite of Relativity and a snappy thought experiment to nail the concept, and I was all ready to be super-impressed by Continue reading ‘Science and Space on Mayo’

(Click for larger view.) Spotted down at LACMA. It is huge, maybe 15 feet in height? Continue reading ‘Perforated Colours’

It was a routine Wednesday night down at the Edison bar, downtown Los Angeles, last week. This means: Fun with Acrobats!! It is part of their weekly “Incandescence: the Dark Side of Light” series, where throughout the night there are performers all over the floor of the bar, more set piece things on the stage, and rather splendid feats being performed from various points of the ceiling. The theatre group is called AiRealistic.

I thought I’d make a little film for you, of what (come to think of it) might make Continue reading ‘Acrobatic Angular Momentum’

Well, I bet you have not read any articles connecting Michael Jackson and research in string theory before. No, even though I spend a lot of time and effort trying to bring science into everyday conversations people have about the broader culture, I cannot claim credit for this one. I was reading an excellent article* in the Village Voice written by Greg Tate, and to my surprise, there it was. It is by far the most thoughtful and insightful of any of the articles on Michael Jackson that I’ve read, and I’d already concluded that before noticing any mention of physics. I strongly recommend it, especially if you don’t know what all the fuss is about, or if you think that the fuss is only about some pop music.

Tate examines not just the impact of Jackson on the culture, and where he sits in the pantheon of black people who have made such impact (he’s mostly focusing on America), but also the role of adversity and struggle in focusing talent in a way that produces people who create at such a high level and which such seismic effect. He Continue reading ‘Michael Jackson and D-Branes’

One of the words I dislike most in my field - or more accurately, a common usage thereof - is “fundamental”. This is because it is usually used as a weapon, very often by people in my area of physics (largely concerned with particle physics, high energy physics, origins questions and so forth), to dismiss the work of others as somehow uninteresting or irrelevant. I don’t like this. Never have. Not only is it often allied to a great deal of arrogance and misplaced swagger, it is often just plain short-sighted, since you never know where good ideas and techniques will come from. A glance at the history of physics shows just how much cross-pollination there is between fields in terms of ideas and techniques. You never know for sure where valuable insights into certain kinds of problems may come from.

Fundamental physics is a term I used to hear used a lot to refer to particle physics (also called high energy physics a lot more these days). This was especially true some years back when I was an undergraduate in the UK, and it persisted in graduate school too, and is still in use today, although I think it is declining a bit in favour of less loaded terms. Somehow, a lot of particle physics is regarded as being all about the “what is everything made of at the very smallest scales” sort of question, first discussing atoms, and then atoms being made of electrons surrounding a nucleus, and the nucleus being made of protons and neutrons, and those in turn being made of quarks, and so on, in this was arriving at a list of “fundamental” particles. There’s the parallel discussion about the “fundamental” forces (e.g., electromagnetism and the nuclear forces) being described in terms of exchanges of particles like photons, gluons, and W and Z particles and so forth. There’s no real harm in the use of the term fundamental in this context, but this is about where the word gets elevated beyond its usefulness and starts becoming a hurdle to progress, and then a barrier. Somehow, “fundamental”, meaning “building block” gets turned, oddly, into “most important”. The issue of what the smallest building blocks are gets elevated to the most important quest, when it is in reality only a component of the story. It is rather like saying that the most important things about the Taj Mahal are the beautiful stones, tiles, and other components from which it is constructed.

Perspectives have evolved a bit since my salad days, with the rise of wider Continue reading ‘News From The Front, VII: What is Fundamental, Anyway?’