Monthly Archives: September 2015

Moon Line

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(Click for larger view.) This was a heartening reminder that people still care about what’s going on in the sky far above. This is a snap I took of a very long line of people (along the block and then around the corner and then some more) waiting for the shuttle bus to the Griffith Observatory to take part in the moon viewing activities up there tonight. (I took it at about 6:00pm, so I hope they all made it up in time!) The full moon is at close approach, and there was a total lunar eclipse as well. Knowing the people at the Observatory, I imagine they had arranged for lots of telescopes to be out on the lawn in front of the Observatory itself, as well as plenty of people on hand to explain things to curious visitors.

I hope you got to see some of the eclipse! (It is just coming off peak now as I type…)

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Rearrangements

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office_musings_2 Just thought I’d share with you a snapshot (click for larger view) of my thinking process concerning my office move. I’ve been in the same tiny box of an office for 12 years, and quite happy too. For various reasons (mostly to do with one large window with lots of light), over the years I’ve turned down offers to move to nicer digs… but recently I’ve decided to make a change (giving up some of the light) and so after much to-ing and fro-ing, it seems that we’ve settled on where I’m going to go.

Part of the process involved me walking over there (it’s an old lab space from several decades ago, hence the sink, which I want to stay) with a tape measure one day and making some notes in my notebook about the basic dimensions of some of the key things, including some of the existing […] Click to continue reading this post →

Face the Morning…

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expo_line_lady_11_sept_15With the new semester and a return to the routine of campus life comes taking the subway train regularly in the morning again, which I’m pleased to return to. It means odd characters, snippets of all sort of conversations, and – if I get a seat and a good look – the opportunity to practice a bit of quick sketching of faces. I’m slow and rusty from no recent regular practice, so I imagine that it was mostly luck that helped me get a reasonable likeness […] Click to continue reading this post →

MacArthur’s Balls

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macarthur_balls_cvjYou should go and see them! (Click image for larger view.) Nobody seems to be talking much about this – or I’m utterly out of touch these days since I’ve not seen a thing about this and nobody I asked seems to know either – but there’s a wonderful thing to see down at MacArthur Park. (No, it is most definitely not a cake left out in the rain, since… you know… no rain.) There are about 2500 spheres floating in the lake, and looking quite splendid, I might add. I love this highly neglected park, and so am glad that someone feels the same way and got (I read after gingerly googling “balls macarthur park” and finding this article) about 10,000 volunteers to help paint and launch these balls in an art project aimed at bringing the park back into people’s minds, at least for a while.

The panorama (click for larger view) does not do it justice, since it flattens and shrinks, by necessity, so I recommend going along and getting up close and having a look (as I ought to have done, but was on my way home in a rush and […] Click to continue reading this post →

Naked!

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negative_mass_thoughtsSnapshot of my doodles done while talking on the phone to a BBC producer about perhaps appearing in a film discussing anti-gravity*. I explained lots of things, including why General Relativity does not seem to like negative mass, partly because they have something called a “naked singularity”, which is a big problem. Only after the call ended did I recall that in 1999 I co-authored a paper in which we discovered […] Click to continue reading this post →

PBS Shoot Fun

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pbs_shoot_selfieMore adventures in communicating the awesomeness of physics! Yesterday I spent a gruelling seven hours in the sun talking about the development of various ideas in physics over the centuries for a new show (to air next year) on PBS. Interestingly, we did all of this at a spot that, in less dry times, would have been underwater. It was up at lake Piru, which, due to the drought, is far below capacity. You can see this by going to google maps, looking at the representation of its shape on the map, and then clicking the satellite picture overlay to see the much changed (and reduced) shape in recent times.

There’s an impressive dam at one end of the lake/reservoir, and I will admit that I did not resist the temptation to pull over, look at a nice view of it from the road on the way home, and say out loud “daaayuum”. An offering to the god Pun, you see.

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Turns out that there’s a wide range of wildlife, large and small, trudging around on the […] Click to continue reading this post →