Monthly Archives: October 2009

Halloween Decisions

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So, the West Hollywood Hallowe’en Carnaval is tomorrow! I went last year and had a great time, as you may recall from my post back then. It is rare to get an event here in LA where a truly large number of people turn out in significant numbers, and where at the same time they really make the effort to get fully involved with each other, with genuine connections between people – a real spirit of street revelry abounding. The stretch of Santa Monica Boulevard between La Cienega and Doheny ends actually fills up with people so much that at points it is like being on fifth avenue in Manhattan on Christmas Eve. How often do you get crowd density like that in LA?! The vast majority of people really made an effort to wear costumes of various sorts, some of them extremely creative, and there’s lots of random chatter between people on the streets about each other’s costumes and so forth. Quite excellent, overall.

fangtasticAnyway, I think I shall go again this year, with a few friends, and I’ll do a little costuming, I think. But to what extent? Many years ago I came to accept that Halloween stopped being only about dressing in scary costumes, and just became about fancy dress in general, so it gives me more scope, I suppose. I’ve been wondering if I should do something science themed, or perhaps a superhero of some sort. Following the tradition of reflecting a movie from the year, I’ve the absolutely perfect choice that combines the two, but I don’t think that even in […] Click to continue reading this post →

Looking Forward…

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new_books…to lots of happy reading soon! My new crop of shopping (click for larger view) includes three Octavia Butler novels, two Murakami novels (I think I’ve talked about both authors here before) and a science book by Garfinkle and Garfinkle (I’ve spoken about this excellent book here before) that is a gift for a friend. I actually tend to cluster authors from time to time, meaning that I read something of theirs and then consume several more of their pieces of work immediately after. I did that with Murakami a while back and it is time to come back to him and read some more. Then it’ll be a Butler cluster.

Now… just need to read them. I can’t wait…. but I must finish the astonishingly good […] Click to continue reading this post →

Blue Skies…

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I always like an excuse to look for blue skies, and to have others look too, even in the worst of times. I had a great reason to do it today.

Early this morning before sunrise I settled down to write my ten o’clock lecture for my Electricity and Magnetism class. On Tuesday I had ended with a computation that is the essence of the reason the sky is blue, which is a nice enough thing to talk about, but today I wanted to go more in depth on the whole thing, and show that you can in a few steps show that the blueness has a particular pattern to it. I wrote out the final equations in a few steps and looked at them for a moment or two and realized that with the sun rising at that very moment, it was the perfect situation to have! So I went outside to enjoy the beautiful Autumn day and the beauty there is in seeing an equation writ large in the sky – and it really was all there.

It is particularly at times like this that one remembers why it is that it is hard not to just love Physics! (I hope you’ll forgive my unashamed love of what I do.)

Here is the sky I saw, looking toward sunrise, and directly in the opposite direction:

sunrise_scattering_1 sunrise_scattering_2

Oh, you’re wondering what I am talking about..? Why is the sky blue? What pattern in the sky? Thanks for asking! There are two things I’m looking at. First, light from the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Ask a Nobel Laureate

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mather_youtubeHere’s a fun thing to get involved with. You can ask John Mather (2006 Physics Nobel Prize) a question on YouTube! Go and submit yours!

What might you ask him? Something about physics, or something else? Religion, art, politics? His favourite colour? If you consider asking a question, and whether you go ahead and ask it or not, feel free to mention in the comments what you might ask.

This is how to proceed (from NASA education)*: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Green Elegance

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wiltern_at_angleI do love the Wiltern. It is one of my favourite classic Art Deco buildings in Los Angeles or even beyond. (Click image for larger view.) I catch glimpses of it from time to time when I am on my way from here to there, but it has been a while since I stopped and looked properly.

Yesterday I was on my way back from one place and on my way to another and I changed buses right in front of it, so lingered and admired for a while.

You can find more about the Wiltern here, among other places. […] Click to continue reading this post →

Mailbox Matters, 1

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mailbox_imageI realized just now that I spend a lot of time answering questions over email from readers of the blog, friends, readers of articles I’ve written, audiences of events I’ve appeared at, family, people I’ve met on the bus, on the subway, or in a bar, people who’ve seen me on one TV show or another, dates, former dates, colleagues, people I’m consulting for on a TV show or a movie, people in prison, artist or writer friends trying to get insight in to a scientist’s view of a particular issue or idea… and so on and so forth.

I usually send off an email response that reflects what I’m thinking at the time, that may be long or short and that may or may not be my definitive answer on some matter or other, but is at least a response that may be helpful to the person who wrote in.

I think that it might be worth occasionally posting the questions and answers here. Sometimes my answers (or the questions) are longer and maybe more interesting […] Click to continue reading this post →

Sketches while Zonked

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Once again I find myself in the position of having far more to tell you about than I have either time or energy for – and so much of it is really good!!

I was supposed to tell you about the first of the Nobel Prize lunches that I helped put on last Thursday… Never got to blogging it, and now the second one finished an hour ago. The whole business was quite a success, I am happy to say. I’ll maybe come back to say some more… But I’m zonked right now with tiredness. Super-long day that started early, and I sort of started off tired to begin with. I’m sitting on the bus letting it drag me toward home… From the bus stop I will wheel the bike home because it has an inexplicable medium-slow puncture, and I’m too tired to ride anyway.

What other things have I not told you about?

Well, on Friday I went along to another wonderful event. The Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities had Josh Kuhn give a talk in their fortnightly luncheon at the USC campus. It was about Mexican music in Los Angeles. It was a wonderful and […] Click to continue reading this post →

Bcycle

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bcycleHey! B all you can B and look at the Bcycle site and then go to the bit that says “I want it more” and add your city and zip and click that box that says tell your mayor.

This is *exactly* what I was wishing for a couple of years ago in an earlier post or two*. (See here and here.) Also fits nicely with a more limited plan a friend is working on that I’m hoping to help push forward… Will tell you more when I get permission to do so.

This is Excellent!!!! Let’s join in to […] Click to continue reading this post →

Don’t Forget the Orionids!

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The Orionids peak today. Well, actually, they peaked a few hours ago, but I imagine there’ll still be some excellent viewing of this meteor shower the next night or two. If you’re up late or very early and out for a walk (in the pre-dawn hours), look up, stay steady for a while, and see what you can see. skymap_north_bigYou’re looking just above Orion’s shoulder (you know Orion since I am sure you are often struck by those three equidistant stars in his belt…see the diagram on right from NASA’s site) for the apparent source of these fragments of Halley’s comet’s tail that we happen to be passing through. It is these chunks of comet-tail that enter our atmosphere and produce what we see as meteors. […] Click to continue reading this post →

A. S. Byatt

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Following hot on the heels of Margaret Atwood coming to town last week (over at UCLA), we have A. S. Byatt over at USC today! Very exciting. It is actually partly one of our College Commons events as well, and last week as a College Commons event (with a Darwin tinge) we had a viewing of the film of her book Angels and Insects, which I thought was really excellent!

Her lecture is entitled: “The Novel as Natural History”, (and will resonate with some of the themes I talked about in my report on the CC event about Collections) and I expect it is going to be quite wonderful. Details here, and the blurb goes:
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

They Couldn’t Car Less

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As you know (maybe), for environmental (both local and global) and other reasons I’m not a fan of routine unnecessary car trips, and so I walk, bike, and use public transport a lot. My car is mostly only used on the weekend. This sort of declaration usually results in blank stares, subsequent treatment as a leper (or worse, in many LA circles, – poor!!), serious inquiries as to whether I was convicted of DUI, comments that this is impossible in LA, admissions from locals who’ve lived here for umpteen years that they’d no idea that there was a subway (that has changed slightly in the lastmelba_thorn_by_diane_meyer few years… now at least they know, but typically they’ve no idea where the stops are), and so on and so forth. I will admit to getting annoyed when I see announcements for events and locations that go to lots of trouble to give driving and parking instructions and never mention the subway stop or bus lines that might work for some as well. (Right: Artist Melba Thorn, photo by Diane Meyer for an exhibition on the issue, to be discussed below. Ironically, (at the time of writing) the exhibiting gallery also only gives driving and parking directions on their site. Isn’t that rich?)

Anyway…. you know all this from reading the blog. Check the archives for posts and discussions on a variety of aspects. Here’s part of the executive summary of my main point, and then information about a new exhibit follows after: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Saturday Shopping in Bed

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buying_in_bedYes. Really. I got up early as usual and decided after to go back to bed with a cup of tea. Then I made a cup of coffee and retired again. I’ve decided to be a bit decadent this morning and try to take it slow and spend some quality time with my laptop doing some long overdue things such as replying to a number of emails, and….. shopping!

No, I’m not buying lots of shiny toys. It’s plane tickets and train tickets. For work travel. Three separate trips. Lots of planning, poking about on the calendar, hunting for good slots for flights, anticipating delays and building in appropriate lag times, coordinating various errands and meetings here and there… Basically, looking into the future and squeezing parts of it into some sort of shape. A scaffolding, as it were, for draping the details onto later.

One annoyance and one delight:

(1) Why do airlines insist on assuming that people prefer aisle seats over window […] Click to continue reading this post →

Dawkins, Atwood and More – On Darwin!

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As you may know I’m a Margaret Atwood fan (read my immoderately breathless account here), and I also think that Richard Dawkins is an excellent scientist and science communicator. On the other hand, as you also know from earlier discussions, I don’t think that his take-no-prisoners approach to the science and religion discussion is the best way forward. Anyway, I found this marvelous Newsnight special from last month. A celebration of Darwin and his work. It has lots of discussion about Darwin then and now, cultural and scientific impact, the ongoing debates, a new staging of a play, a recent film, and participating is Atwood, Dawkins, and the Rev. Richard Coles and the poet Ruth Padel (who is also a descendant of Darwin.) It is in four parts and […] Click to continue reading this post →