Category Archive for ‘academia’ at Asymptotia

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Tired

by

on May 6, 2008

in Los Angeles, academia and work

. 2 Comments

It has been rather a tiring last several days. I’ve been focusing on writing a big report on various internal matters that my committee was charged to study for the whole academic year. The issues are rather large, and the solutions I was trying to present require not just cosmetic tinkering but major changes in the way things are done. So the key thing to get right in writing it is a tone that is critical of what there currently is in place while at the same time painting a picture of what could be in its stead, while also beginning to show how to get there. If you don’t balance all three just right, there’s no chance that anything will change, since either lots of people will just be pissed off that you trashed their system, or threatened the status quo, or they’ll agree but say there’s nothing that can be done, or they’ll say you have not really thought it through. I think I’ve managed to get the balance right.

It was due on Monday. On Sunday night, I had something down, but I did not really like Continue reading ‘Tired’

Up for Air

by

on April 22, 2008

in Los Angeles, academia, flowers, food and drink, science and work

. 8 Comments

Morning cup of tea, and short reflection - coming up for air before diving back in…

It’s a bit of a mess here, time-wise. Just not enough hours in the day. Everything totally fragmented. Yesterday was grueling… here’s some of it:

Up at 5:30am, finding that I’m immediately thinking about a physics project for a bit (I fell asleep doing so, having been the whole evening in the Casbah drinking coffee and doing the same) before having to break off to get ready, get to office early to start an insanely busy day. Answer a ton of email, and deal with other online stuff, planning to ignore it for the whole rest of morning. Note that flimmaker/journalist friend B has sent me an email with a list of comments and suggested changes to my script for the Video. Got to discuss it with A, my collaborator in Chemistry on this. Whenever are we going to meet in the next few days? Sigh. (Must remember to do blog post about this new project, and how I ended up involved with the Chemistry department!)

After some dithering, decided to drive in, since the plan was to stay super-late and probably involve driving someone home.

Cold as I walk to the office from where I parked on the street. Mostly in my mind, and Continue reading ‘Up for Air’

DC Crossover

by

on February 22, 2008

in academia, black people in science, minorities in science, personal and science

. 12 Comments

I find myself in Washington DC for two and a half days, attending an interesting conference. It’s the annual meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists* (NSBP), and I’ve been invited to give a talk (which I gave a few hours ago, entitled “The Dynamics of Flavour in Gauge/Gravity duals”, with a focus on what we can learn about experiments and observations of strongly interacting nuclear systems using string theory. Post about that here). I’m here for more just the talk, however. I also want to talk - in the sense of converse. Basically, it is of interest to me to get a feeling for what’s going on with the issues of underrepresented minorities (in this case, people of African descent) in Physics. As you know, the numbers are vanishingly small, and as you also know from reading my writings, I am very interested in this issue, and of course, how to make it not an issue, by helping more people find their way into the field and have as much opportunity to do well as the next person.

(Scene from the opening banquet on Thursday night. The featured speaker (no, not on stage in photo) was 2006 Physics Nobel Laureate, John C. Mather. Click for larger.)

It has been years since I came to one of these, and I must say it is a real pleasure to be here. There seems to be a lot of contrast to how I remember things from the Continue reading ‘DC Crossover’

Women in Physics - USC Conference

by

on January 15, 2008

in Los Angeles, academia, science and women in science

. 2 Comments

This is a quick note to point you to the Women in Physics conference (aimed primarily at undergraduates) being held at USC again this year. It’s on Saturday and Sunday coming. It looks like another excellent program (see here), so well done to the organizers for keeping going what Amy and Katie started (it has also spread elsewhere - see the site for more conferences, and consider starting one in your area). Parenthetically, I’ve heard that one or two readers of the blog will be attending, so don’t hesitate to say Hi! if you see me around.

Enjoy!

-cvj

Finally

by

on December 19, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia and work

. 3 Comments

Well, it’s been a crazy week here in my corner of the universe. I’m still trying to find the time to break off from several things in order to update you on things from last week and the week before. Meanwhile, new things have this way of happening anyway, and sometimes I’d like to mention them too. So it is with teaching matters. Two Fridays ago was the last lecture of my electricity and magnetism class. We’d done magnetization, they’d waded through another couple of class worksheets I prepared for them on the topic, we’d remarked upon similarities and differences with respect to polarization in the electric case, and with a few hints about what phenomena were to come when they do electrodynamics (the second part of the course - we’d strictly been dealing with statics) a feeling of some sadness came over me as I said the last words of the class. I’d liked this group. They got it. I was going to take them out of their comfort zone and get them to work a bit harder and stretch themselves a bit harder, and the benefits (I hope) became apparent to them when they could see further, run faster, and jump higher (with respect to their abilities as physicists, I mean). (See some earlier thoughts on that here, as I prepared to start teaching the class.) They responded well by not whining about the extra effort required, but instead rolling up their sleeves and having a go, with good humour, a good sense of camaraderie, and remaining reasonably engaged and interactive right down to the very last lecture. They got it. I love it when that happens.

Monday of this week was really the end - they had their final exam (see photo above - Continue reading ‘Finally’

Talk Talk

by

on October 16, 2007

in academia, research, science and string theory

. 6 Comments

[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

dbranes Two Thursdays ago I went up to Santa Barbara to give a seminar. I had a great time, and it reminded me why it can be so much fun to go somewhere and visit for even a short time and do that. I got to catch up with several old friends, including Santa Barbara itself, where I lived for a number of years in the 90’s when I was a postdoc. I spent time chatting with the various people there before (at lunch) and after (individually) the seminar, learning about some of the research they’re doing, and also talking about other matters physics-wise and gossip-wise. I wish I’d had more time to talk since I did not get to talk to everyone I wanted to talk to, and not at as much length as I would have liked. (This was partly due to the fact that I spent the morning in my hotel room writing some of the slides for my talk. - I had a presentation the day before to focus on, along with a departmental visitor to host, and the day before I was also occupied. Don’t ask about any earlier than that - I never prepare new material that much in advance. Not because I don’t want to, but it just never happens… if I have more than a day or two, I will find that there’s other stuff I have to do.)

Anyway, a good time was had by all (I think). I can even post a picture of some of us at dinner in the evening after the talk. (Will update later with that, since it was downloaded to computer that’s not here.) We went to an old haunt of mine in downtown Santa Barbara - Roy’s. I’m pleased and surprised that it is still there and going strong, since it is the sort of highly individual restaurant that - since it is also reasonably priced - you’d expect to vanish from such a high value spot in town.

What was I talking about? Well, with three students (Tameem Albash, Veselin Filev, and Arnab Kundu), I’ve been involved in some fun work on some of the physics concerning Continue reading ‘Talk Talk’

Not Following the Script

by

on October 8, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia, mathematics, science and science and society

. 3 Comments

Well, it was a weekend of an unexpected character. Fantastic outside, but I did not see as much of it as I’d have liked. I was working on a script, you see. It needed to be worked on immediately and at the last minute because the work of turning it into the final product that will get seen started this weekend, and so I wanted to make as many comments and suggestions as I could before it was too late. It’s science - don’t worry. Also, it is rare to get to work on something that I know will get made (most things get shelved and never see the light of day), so that was sort of fun. I won’t tell you what it is (sorry) since I’m not actually a writer on the project, but I got the chance to look at the whole thing and make a lot of comments and suggestions, rephrasings, alternative lines, and so forth. All in a good cause. I think it will be out next year.

Yes, I know. “I was working on a script…” Sounds rather like I’ve finally caved in and succumbed to living in Los Angeles completely, working on a script like everyone else Continue reading ‘Not Following the Script’

Some of What Matters

by

on October 4, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia, black people in science, environment, gardening, minorities in science, personal, science, science and society, science education, science in the media, women in science and work

. 9 Comments

Below I’ve reproduced the text of the approximately 20 minutes of that which I presented at the What Matters to Me and Why event on Wednesday. I mentioned my preparations for it in a previous post. The event was well attended, in an excellent setting (a hidden campus cafe I’d somehow not known about before, Ground Zero). There were students, faculty, staff, alumni, and several others. I chose to give a structured address to start so as to make sure that I did not go on for too long, as I might in a more off-the-cuff delivery. I very much wanted to leave plenty of time to interact with the audience through their observations and questions. I delivered it partly from memory and partly from reading, and wanted it to have a bit of a feel of being read a story, rather than a formal speech. I don’t know how successful that was, but it was fun for me. I think I might try that approach again some time.

[Update: - Audio of the event here.]

Overall, I think the event worked well, and I had a great time. A number of people (kindly) said at the end that they had a good time, and I hope everyone else did too!

___________________________________________________________________________________
Hello Everyone.

First let me say that it is an honour to be here. I’d like to thank everyone concerned for inviting me to speak in this series. I imagine that everyone starts their piece by saying that they struggled to find a way of saying What Matters to them and Why in a short time. So I won’t dwell on that, except to say that it’s especially hard when, the day before preparing, you realize that it’s not going to be that hour long presentation you were expecting to squeeze your essence into, but 20 minutes!

Some time ago, when people started mentioning that they’d seen that I was a guest in this event, and that they were looking forward to hearing what I will say (!), I’d respond that I too was curious about what I was going to say, and would also try to show up and find out. This was actually true. The other thing that I (half-)joked was Continue reading ‘Some of What Matters’

What Matters?

by

on October 2, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia, black people in science, environment, film, gardening, minorities in science, miscellany, movies, nature, personal, science, science and society, science education, science in drama, science in the media, television and women in science

. 6 Comments

I’ll let you know.

Huh? Today, I’ve to think about two things I have to talk about over the next couple of days. I’ve to give a physics seminar on Thursday at UCSB, but more urgently, I have to think about What Matters To Me and Why. Why? This is because in the Spring I agreed to be one of the presenters of the four-times-a-semester USC event of the same title, hosted by the Center for Religious Life. This excellent series is run by Rabbi Susan Laemmle, the Dean of Religious Life, with a committee of students. Here’s how it is supposed to work (extract from their site):

At each WMMW session, the featured guest spends about twenty minutes addressing the topic “What Matters to Me and Why,” and then the floor is opened to informal dialogue for the remainder of the hour. Just as there is no one way to address the topic, so there will be no one direction in which dialogue will proceed. The student contact from the WMMW committee introduces the speaker and makes sure that the session goes forward in a professional yet friendly manner. An indirect purpose of WMMW is to maintain an arena in which people can talk about important, personally charged questions in an open, mutually respectful way.

A typical session is described here. This is going to be a tough one. Not because nothing matters to me but because everything seems to matter, and I cannot effectively rank these things to say what matters most in any way. I only learned yesterday that I only have about 20 minutes to say what it is that matters. This either makes things harder or easier, I can’t decide yet. Probably harder. Now I really have to think.

I jokingly thought a few months ago that I ought to just look at my last few blog posts the day before and just talk about what’s in those. What can I see… Well, there’s public transport, community and the environment, composting and gardening, science and television (and scientific honesty). Not bad. (Good thing I did not do that post on dating. Probably not a good topic for WMMW…) I can probably weave something out of those. Do I blog about those things by accident, or because there are some themes there that are being brought out? What are the big themes in those then? Random scattered thoughts follow….
Continue reading ‘What Matters?’

MacArthur Mashup

by

on September 25, 2007

in academia, art, literature, music, science and words

. 12 Comments

The MacArthur Fellowships were announced today. These are particularly great, as it’s awarded across so many different fields, and I always learn about interesting work going on by reading the synopses at the website. Congratulations to all recipients!! Before I point to the list, I’d like to make a plea that will, of course, go unheeded.

Please please, people of the media, stop calling them “genius grants”. Just stop. By way of explanation, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the term just seems to strike the wrong tone about what these things should be about. It seems to me to push the recipients away as being “other” rather than encouraging us all to embrace the qualities that they are being encouraged to show by getting the fellowships. Ok, that’s the end of my plea.

Here’s a reminder of what the Fellowship is about (extract from their site):

Continue reading ‘MacArthur Mashup’

New Installation

by

on September 25, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia and work

. 3 Comments

Yesterday we saw the official “installation” of Howard Gillman the new Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. I find this term amusing in this context, as it sounds a bit like putting in a new lightbulb, or perhaps a new operating system (the latter is, I guess is closer to the truth). I sort of had to go since it represents the outcome of a lot of work I did last year on the search committee* that advised the Provost and President on their choices, and of course I have an interest in it as an ordinary faculty member of the College and of USC in general - The LAS is truly the core of USC, and we need the new Dean to do a good job of steering it forward in this (happily) continuing period USC’s steady and rapid progress on all fronts. So a good opening speech is seen as a good sign. It was good - much more than good actually - and everybody seemed to have genuinely good things to say afterwards (as we munched on the always excellent food served at these events - the other reason we go to them).

Right: Not the most representative photo (click to enlarge), but you can see him mid-speech, with President Sample seated listening. Assembled is a lot of the faculty, mostly seated. All the other Deans from all the other units were present, as well as various vice-Presidents and so forth. They all precessed into the room, and members of USC Thornton School of Music’s choir sang the USC song, which was… quite a bit more pomp and circumstance than I was expecting. What you can’t see is that the room is about twice as big as the part you can see, there’s lots of faculty standing around in that part, with several tables of very tasty food and wine for all.

For the record, the fact that I thought that it was a good speech has nothing to do with Continue reading ‘New Installation’

ScienceWoman’s New Digs

by

on September 24, 2007

in academia, biology, science and women in science

. 0 Comments

Just thought I’d let you know that the blog of ScienceWoman (that I talked about in an earlier post) has now moved. Her blogging about her day to day experiences and thoughts as an early career woman scientist will be getting a whole lot more attention now that it is under the ScienceBlogs umbrella. Go and have a look at her new digs. She’s already started off nicely with a post asking readers to name their favourite woman scientist, with the resulting interesting contributions and discussions you’d expect in the comments. Go and add your two cents.

While I was over at ScienceBlogs (haven’t been in a long while) I spotted a rather Continue reading ‘ScienceWoman’s New Digs’

Still So Far To Go

by

on August 29, 2007

in academia, black people in science, minorities in science and women in science

. 116 Comments

Sometimes one deludes oneself into thinking that progress has been made on some important social issue, and then out of the blue, there’s a reminder of just how far things still have to go. Check out this post - supposedly a report on the contents of a physics seminar given by a woman - on the blog “A Quantum Diaries Survivor”, and get a reminder of what women in physics are up against. Near the beginning of the post he spends one of the longest paragraphs of the piece talking about how her hair was done, how fit and attractive he thinks she looks, wondering whether she works out…(!) It’s so completely awful to do this sort of thing and he does it so spectacularly completely that I actually thought it was meant to be a parody of some sort! From his comments in response to people pointing out the inappropriateness of it, it turns out that he really does not get it at all. Not a bit.

It is really sad. It is so embarrassing too, when anyone female shows up in a physics context and guys just start behaving like they’ve never seen a woman before. That silliness alone is simply embarrassing, but this is quite a bit worse I would say, since it is damaging to the cause of women in the field.

I really shouldn’t go on, and I will risk sounding preachy and self-righteous (and I’ll just get yelled at and nobody will learn anything) but it’s important, so I will try some words:

Of course there are contexts in which we can discuss things about each other that take note of (even celebrate) our differences in gender, race, and so forth. I’ll be so bold Continue reading ‘Still So Far To Go’

Switching

by

on August 27, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia, personal and work

. 7 Comments

Back in LA, and down at the USC campus. Good to be back! Click below for larger view.

Well, it is the first day of the new academic year’s teaching cycle. I’m here in my office at 7:30am (the power of jet-lag) and somehow have to switch my mind back firmly onto teaching and other matters. It’s always tough to do this, since there are always lots of intensely interesting research issues that continue on my mind from the Summer, and I know that some of those will gradually begin to fade (if I am not careful) as my other duties take up so much of my day to day. My first class (part one of the upper level electromagnetism course) is at 10:00am, and I want to plan out the structure for the whole semester, and write a syllabus to hand out and discuss. As well as the first lecture, of course. I’ve not taught this part of the cycle before, and so I’ll have to be writing new lecture notes.

I want to try some new things this year. In particular, I’ve become increasingly Continue reading ‘Switching’

More Than A Hint Of The Old Days, II

by

on July 26, 2007

in academia, cosmology, dark energy, science and work

. 17 Comments

A strange but satisfying aspect of my time here (I’m at the Aspen Center for Physics, recall) has been the fact that due to some odd serendipity, there’s a ton of people from the “old days”. Which ones? My Princeton years, in the early 90s, as a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study (and later at Princeton University). These are not all people doing what I do, but in a wide range of fields such as high energy physics, astrophysics, condensed matter physics. Several of us were postdocs together. I’ve been chatting with people I’ve not seen for a while, sometimes not since those days, or they are people I met back then, and with whom I have a pool of shared memories from those days. So it has put me in mind of those times somewhat.

A quick example. Soon after I arrived last week, I was walking along, chatting with Petr HoÅ™ava (Berkeley) about various things, and we got on to reminiscing a bit about our time together as postdocs in Princeton. And then minutes later, as though conjured from the very substance of our conversation, who should walk by but one of the Gods/Legends of the field (then and now), Princeton’s Alexander Polyakov. He walked by in exactly the same sort of way he would back then, either coming from or going to a walk along the river or canal, perhaps to give us a lecture. Petr and I looked at each other, and continued our walk and talk.

The great news for me last week was that Polyakov then gave a talk. I’ll admit to being a big fan of his physics. When he gives a talk nearby, I show up, no matter how confused I might end up at the end. There’s going to be good stuff in there - it’s only a matter of time before it sorts itself out in your head. Often years. Decades. Several of us sat in on his graduate class back in Princeton in the early 90s just to try to catch the pearls of wisdom which we’d pick up as he lectured on….. Well, I’ve no idea to this day what the class was really about. He would show up (probably fresh from a walk), with no notes or anything, and just pick up a piece of chalk, stare out the window for a few seconds, and then start writing stuff. Essentially, he was randomly jumping around the subject matter in his widely under-read book “Gauge Fields and Strings”. He was all over the book. It was not always a simple and coherent path through the subject matter, and it seemed that he was largely exploring whatever took his mood in the moment, but I suspect that was largely my ignorant young mind’s impression.

A. M. Polyakov in the middle of giving what for me was an excellent and intriguing seminar at the Aspen Center for Physics. Click for larger view.

Sadly, it is the type of course that these days would score close to zero in most Continue reading ‘More Than A Hint Of The Old Days, II’

Science Woman

by

on July 1, 2007

in academia and women in science

. 5 Comments

I don’t know if you read ScienceWoman’s posts at the blog “On being a scientist and a woman”, but if you don’t, go over there from time to time. The same thing can be said for the blog “Female Science Professor”. They are both very internal sorts of blogs. You won’t find overly-opinionated rants and pontifications about various things nearly as often as you’ll read thoughtful anecdotes and internal debates about what it is like to be a scientist (who also happens to be a woman) in a science department somewhere in America*. They are both anonymous, which allows them to speak more freely, and probably makes them more interesting blogs - especially when they talk about the difficulties of being both a scientist and a woman in their job.

Here’s a simple but poignant post from Science Woman that should motivate you: It is entitled “I will not be a foregone conclusion.” I thought it was great, and so that’s why I thought I’d point you to it.

-cvj

(*This is a good thing, from my point of view… ranty and/or overly-opinionated blogs have their place, but I find that they can tire me out… and very easily these days. So I tend to look at other types of blog in my downtime.)

SciTalks

by

on June 26, 2007

in academia, science and technology

. 7 Comments

I learned from Jonathan Shock and Sara Tompson about SciTalks. In Jonathan’s words (from a comment on another post):

Thereâ€™s now a site where people can link to, review and rate scientific videos online. This is a great step as there are so many wonderful lectures online but currently theyâ€™re spread all over the web and itâ€™s always hard to tell the quality and level that a lecture is going to be.

Jonathan has also done posts about online resources in theoretical high energy physics, including a recent one where he discussed SciTalks a bit more.

jennifer goldbeck on the semantic web This got me thinking a bit about where we are going with all these resources, how useful they are, and -very importantly- how easy it all is to find, and then to search through. (Imagine there are 10 hour long talks broadly on your favourite topic. Assuming there are no accompanying files, how can you search them to find a specific fact that they might mention, without sitting through ten hours worth of material?) Well, ironically, one of the first things that caught my eye on SciTalks was a rather nice talk by Jennifer Golbeck (given at FermiLab last year) entitled “Social Networks, the Semantic Web, and the Future of Online Scientific Collaboration”. She’s quite interesting about this very topic… She describes online collaboration, data sharing, social networks, etc, all in the context of helping us do science (not just physics by the way!). She also illustrates her subject matter -still staying on topic- using examples of data sets from Facebook, Myspace, Friendster, Continue reading ‘SciTalks’

Is there a Perfect Pitch?

by

on June 21, 2007

in academia, minorities in science, women in science and work

. 24 Comments

And the immediate followup question is “Should there be?” I’m referring to the story on NPR’s Marketplace the other day about the effects that some women’s voices have on whether they are taken seriously in the workplace. The audio is here, along with a transcript. The article, entitled “Professional women? With little-girl voices?”, is by Ashley Milne-Tyte.

The piece begins with a clip from the recent news, of Monica Goodling (Former Justice Department White House liaison) speaking in her defense during the hearings over the Justice Department firings. She has a noticeably “little-girl”-pitched voice. (I’m sure you remember hearing her during the news or the live broadcasts, and possibly your first instinct was to ask yourself why - in the political feeding frenzy aimed at bringing down Alberto Gonzales from the Attorney General position - the Congressional Democrats were now rounding up and grilling small children. (Or at least that was how it was for me for a split second since I mostly don’t watch television news - I find it too slow and otherwise annoying - and so I heard her on the radio.) It was then announced in the news piece who it was and I thought nothing more of it at the time…)

My own take on this is that it does not matter. You just learn, and move on. Since coming to the USA long ago, I adjusted my expectations about what are considered Continue reading ‘Is there a Perfect Pitch?’

The Two-Body Problem

by

on June 21, 2007

in academia, personal and work

. 11 Comments

Ah, the two-body problem. On NPR’s Marketplace last week, Kai Ryssdal had a piece entitled “Studying ways to help 2-career couples”, covering a “Dual Careers Conference” at Cornell. The audio is here, along with a transcript.

It’s an important issue, (which I’m not going to spend a huge amount of time on here, since I’ve been blogging too much this morning so far), and I’d no idea that there were conferences devoted to it.

From the point of view of academia, there’s one aspect of it which still has not penetrated very far in the minds of many, in my mind. It is one I tried to emphasize when this issue came up during various advisory committees I’ve served on with relevance to matters of hiring, diversity, etc. What’s on my mind is that the two-body problem (as it is jokingly referred to by some) is not always to be thought of as a “problem” from the point of view of potential employers. In fact, if you can work with a potential employee to find employment for their spouse at your or a neighbouring institution, it actually can strengthen your faculty roster in many ways. Aside from the obvious ones, there are the benefits of having happier employees who are committed to setting down roots, rather than an employee who is spending a lot of time travelling to or calling their spouse in another city, wondering every day whether their job is really worth that strain. Retention is a huge issue in managing your faculty. The value of settled employees cannot be overstated if you take the long view for your organization.

Anyway, have a listen to the article (or read the transcript). There’s the usual interview with members of couples who are academics and struggling with the issue, and it’s interesting if you’re not familiar with the matter, or perhaps if you’re in academia, early in your career and wondering about what the job market holds for you. And if you’re currently wondering whether to date other academics or not, don’t be put off (at least not by this issue!). Things are getting better. Employers are getting smarter Continue reading ‘The Two-Body Problem’

Penguin Opportunity?

by

on May 14, 2007

in academia, entertainment, fun and science

. 9 Comments

So I don’t know whether you’ve noticed or not, but there’s been an awful lot of penguin movies (or movies with a big penguin component) recently. There’s yet another one to come out soon about surfing penguins. I’m slightly annoyed by it already, and I can’t really tell you why. It could turn out to be good, I suppose…

So I got to thinking that this could be theoretical physics’ big break! We can pitch our own penguin movie, since we have up our collective sleeve…

The penguin diagram!

penguin diagram

This is a type of “Feynman diagram” describing how various particles interact with each other in a specific process. (More on Feynman diagrams here, for example.) What does it have to do with Penguins? Well, this picture I got from Wikipedia might help:

Apparently, John Ellis is responsible for their appearance in the literature, pushed along by Melissa Franklin. The usual suspects were involved too (drinks, a pub, darts, etc…) From the Wikipedia article here is the story, in (we’re told) John’s words:

Continue reading ‘Penguin Opportunity?’

First Day of the Rest of Their Lives

by

on May 12, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia and work

. 4 Comments

ClichÃ©, I know, but I presume that is what calling it “Commencement Day” is all about. Is that not right?

(Commencement Day at USC: Part of the crowd of graduates, family, and friends assembled in front of the grand stage set up in front of the Doheny library.)

Yesterday was both a happy and slightly sad day for me, because I’m a bit of a softy when it comes down to it. Quite a number of the students I taught over the last few years graduated yesterday. While I was so pleased to see them all happy and looking forward to moving on, and meet their parents and siblings, I was also a bit sad, since I won’t be seeing them around the USC campus any more. I feel like I’m losing a number of good friends, which seems like an odd thing to say given that I don’t really know them all as friends in the usual sense…. But I got accustomed to seeing them around, spending time with them talking, laughing, worrying, puzzling… getting coffee, milkshakes… They became a real part of my life for a while… Now they are off to take on the world. I feel a bit like a parent… perhaps I’m getting broody?

The campus was lovely yesterday, even more than it usually is. The ground staff Continue reading ‘First Day of the Rest of Their Lives’

Endings and Beginnings

by

on May 8, 2007

in academia and work

. 4 Comments

Well, an hour ago my Electromagnetism class finished the final exam I set them. Hurrah! There was no immediate sign that it was a total disaster, so that’s good news. Except for the matter of producing final grades and such things, this marks the end of the (standard) undergraduate teaching period for me for the academic year. Nothing until late August.

So you are wondering: - What will he do now? Head for the beach? (Well, it is over 90 degrees F outside, after all. The Jacaranda blooms’ arrival (click left for larger) always signal for me the beginning of those intensely relaxed Los Angeles Summer stretches… Hmmmm….)

Continue reading ‘Endings and Beginnings’

Point of View, II - The Event

by

on April 25, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia, art and science

. 3 Comments

Thursday 12th’s “Point of View, II” event was a huge success. See here for the blurb on what was coming up. Below I intersperse that with a little about what actually took place, and give you a link to video of the event.

One of the great things about the format is that we’ve no clear idea what each presenter is going to do, where they will take things in their examination of the theme, so it adds somewhat to the excitement of the events. Do come along to some of the Categorically Not! events (of the same type) which happen every month at Santa Monica airport. Web link here.

Don Marolf of UCSB will tell us what Einsteinâ€™s relativity REALLY means to the physicists who study our world. Different observersâ€™ perceptions of space, and even of time itself can give different answers. How do we make sense of that, and what are the consequences?

We started with Don Marolf (click image on left for larger view), who did a really great job of telling the audience about what the theme “Point of View” meant to physicists, in the context of Relativity. He had some great computer slides, but in addition he produced various items from his pockets during the talk to use as props to illustrate things. Don is an excellent presenter with a huge amount of charm and energy and an infectious laugh and so gave us a great start to the evening.

Poet and author Michael Datcher, who teaches literary nonfiction and poetry at Loyola Marymount University, will talk about the role of the writer as a witness and also his newly launched journal of literary nonfiction, The Truth about the Fact.

We then went in a very different direction with Michael Datcher Continue reading ‘Point of View, II - The Event’

Married to the Physics?

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on March 27, 2007

in academia, personal, science and science and society

. 8 Comments

Well, it starts out:

When physicists marry physicists, the beginning may be a ‘big bang,’ but issues of life, love, and family gravitate toward the universal.

Ok. Stop there. That’s way too many physics puns and double entendre in one sentence. It’s a nice article by Mike Perricone in Symmetry magazine about physics couples. Physicists who marry physicists.

Physics, families, careers, children… it’s all in there. Have a read.

Best of all, perhaps, there’s this wedding cake to the left, which is just - Wow! (Click for larger view. More in the article itself.) I wonder what my mum will think of this? She makes cakes - wonderful ones, and can decorate them with flowers and leaves made of sugar. But I’m pretty sure that she has not tried equations of any sort.

-cvj

(Thanks Sara T!)

When Worlds Collide, II

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on March 9, 2007

in academia, black people in science, fun, minorities in science, personal, science, science and society, science in the media and travel

. 14 Comments

I think I ought to explain, as promised, why I am in New York. The first thing to mention is that I wrote the previous post in this miniseries (it was written on a flight to Dublin, and finally posted when I returned) before I knew about any of what I’m about to tell you, so it is rather funny to me…

The week that I returned from Dublin I noticed a phone message from an editor of a magazine asking me to return their call. A couple of days later I learned what it was about. It’s a magazine that largely focuses on buzz about people and projects in the entertainment and fashion industry - Music (R&B, Hip Hop mostly), Movies and TV, etc., as far as I can tell, along with some coverage of parts of the business world. Its readership is mostly younger African American males, I think. As far as I can tell, the intention is not to be about those things in particular, but it is largely reflecting the interests of the readership it is targeted at. It’s a major product, jumping out at you immediately when you are in the magazine store (the striking picture of a woman on the front helps it grab your attention, of course).

Each year, the magazine does a special issue featuring a group of individuals who are doing “major things” in the industries I mentioned above. It is a combination of a focus on new talent that’s about to become more widely known, or just bringing to readers’ attention the existence of some of the people who are making significant impact in what they’re doing.

Somehow - I do not know how - they got my name. It turns out that they spent some time reading some of things I’ve written here at Asymptotia too. Now normally, you’d expect things to stop at that point, but in fact it did not. They decided to broaden things out a bit and include me (if I was willing) in this year’s feature issue.

I thought about it for a day. It is quite an honour to be approached, and I’m also impressed that the magazine’s editors are being creative in this way (it would be easy Continue reading ‘When Worlds Collide, II’

Thoughts from Above, II

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on March 7, 2007

in academia, travel and work

. 4 Comments

[Written a few hours ago on a plane. Later uploaded for your consumption.]

So I’m continuing my thoughts about plans for the Summer. You probably ought to read part I first. This post is also a bit of a ramble. I was thinking a bit more about Spring/Summer travel, you see. There’s a thing I ought to do one of these days which nobody in the field seems to ever do as a Summer travel option:

Why not go back to school?

Students and young postdocs in my field often go to long schools where there are lecture courses in various aspects of a particular topic or selections of topics. Somehow, faculty don’t seem to go to these, and I don’t know why (unless they are lecturing part of the school and sit in on some other lectures, which I’ve done, and it’s always instructive). It is as though there’s some sort of stigma - perhaps we are all supposed to pretend that we know all that stuff and so can’t be seen sitting in a classroom taking notes. But these lecture courses -when done right- are a perfect combination of the basic techniques and the most contemporary results, which can be rare material, and I know of nobody in the field who can honestly claim to be fully in Continue reading ‘Thoughts from Above, II’

Thoughts from Above, I

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on March 7, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia, travel and work

. 7 Comments

[Written a few hours ago on a plane. Later uploaded for your consumption.]

I find myself on a plane to New York (sort of) all of a sudden. I’ll explain later what it’s all about, since I do not yet know to what extent I’m allowed to blog about the details. Let’s just say that it involves dusting off the tuxedo (I can’t recall what we called them in England..dinner suit?) that I bought a couple of years ago. I’ll leave you to guess, if you like, what on earth could involve being thus attired during the daylight hours.

About the tuxedo: I’d decided back then, while preparing to be one of the blushing recipients at an award ceremony, that I’d buy a decent one and get it tailored to fit properly rather than continually rent ones that don’t quite fit right. I decided to gamble that - given the town I live in, where the cold Winter Season is replaced by an Awards Season- it makes sense to own one, especially since my suit measurements have not really changed for the last 20 years or so¹.

This blog post is not about anything in particular. It’s really just some random thoughts passing through my head as I fly over the… Oh. well, it was desert last time I looked. But now it’s just cloud, so I’ve no idea what I’m over. A cloud-covered bit of desert, I expect.

Travel Planning

While engaged in this unexpected travel, I’ve realized that it is high time to start planning Spring and Summer travel. Already the spectrum of possibilities is somewhat Continue reading ‘Thoughts from Above, I’

On Language in Science and Beyond

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on March 1, 2007

in academia, science, science and society and science in the media

. 10 Comments

In Physics Today last month, Helen Quinn wrote rather well about the issue of language in science and in common (non-scientific) usage, with a focus on when the two collide. I recommend the article, which you can read here.

There are cases in our own teaching where confusions arise, which mostly get resolved as the students learn the concepts associated to specific words….

A few words in elementary physicsâ€” force, work, momentum, and energyâ€”have carefully defined physics meanings. Their much broader everyday usage causes students a great deal of confusion until they learn the precise physics concepts.

…but she’s much more interested in the cases where some words -often powerful ones, commonly invoked- contribute to “considerable public misunderstanding of science”:

belief, hypothesis, theory, and knowledge.

None of these words has a unique physics meaning, but their meanings as we use them among ourselves and as non-scientists hear them are very different. We need to be much more careful how and when we use them in talking to the public.

She goes on to discuss them in turn. I recommend reading it in full. One of the things I like most about the article is that she talks not only about the process of using those Continue reading ‘On Language in Science and Beyond’

Show and Tell

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on February 27, 2007

in academia, black people in science, minorities in science and science

. 6 Comments

Well, it is almost the last day of Black History Month and I am behind on answering the traditional emails I receive at this time of year. As I said last year (with a few modifications):

Pretty soon after February starts, the deluge of email I get every day gets enhanced a bit by emails from students from all over America. I become part of an assignment, you see. It seems that these students are instructed to find a black scientist and write something about them and do a presentation to their class about them¹.

I’m always willing to help with this sort of thing (see the footnote for why), and so I usually send some links: to my personal webpage (here), or one of two profile pages for me at USC here and here (the latter by Katherine Yungmee Kim), a Daily Trojan news story by Diya Chacko here, or the departmental page on me (here), and a list of publications, and I hope that this is all of some use.

As to the standard “what is your date of birth?” question that is usually asked too, I don’t pass out that information over the web, but if you’re an interested student, you can email me for a bit more information if you wish, although I will not give out the exact date.

For a bit of biographical narrative, students can look on the “My Hero Project” Continue reading ‘Show and Tell’

That Feeling

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on February 18, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia, science, science and society and work

. 57 Comments

It is on the list of my top five all-time favourite feelings. But I know of no word for it in English that properly captures it. This is strange, since so much of our society relies on things that probably came about in accompaniment with this feeling. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Sometimes it come on so strongly that it feels like a switch has been flicked inside my head, with an almost audible “click”, often accompanied by a smile, an oral exclamation, or even a moan. Why can I not think of a word for it? Perhaps my vocabulary is failing me, but if there is not such a word, then we should set about forging a new one, since it is so important.

What am I talking about?

Continue reading ‘That Feeling’

The Mission

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on February 2, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia and work

. 12 Comments

All very mysterious. Can’t tell you anything about it until it is all over. Maybe not even then. Lots of meetings to take place at a hotel or hotels. Locations undisclosed until the last minute. Got the call to pick up my instructions and briefing data from an office. Large white sealed package with just my name on….

Continue reading ‘The Mission’

Sabine Hossenfelder: My Inspiration

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on January 31, 2007

in academia, minorities in science, science and women in science

. 27 Comments

Today, a guest post. I’m excited, because it’s from one of my favourite bloggers, Sabine Hossenfelder, or “Bee” as you may know her from her comments here, and of course her blog Backreaction.

Bee giving a guest post here on Asymptotia originated in a suggestion I made in the comments of an earlier post of mine. Bee had asked me to do a post on her blog as part of her excellent series of guest posts about what made her guest choose to go into physics. Pressed for time, and not sure whether I’d really have anything new or interesting to say about myself, I stalled for time (I thought) by saying I’d do it in exchange for her doing a post here on a similar subject. She rapidly came up with the post. And of course it’s a great one. I’m so on the spot now.

Anyway, here’s Bee! -cvj
___________________________________________________________________________________

I just sat down with the best intention to write a lengthy blah on Cliffordâ€™s question what inspires me. Now that I sit here, hands above the keyboard, I am facing a problem. Itâ€™s not that the question is too difficult, itâ€™s too easy to answer. I get inspiration everywhere. Reading books, seeing movies, taking a walk - ah yes, also from scrolling through blogs. Most of all by talking to my friends and colleagues. The problem is now that Iâ€™m too inspired not to shamelessly use the opportunity of writing a guest post for Clifford So let me redirect the question to your opportunity to use your inspiration.

Had you been born some thousand years ago, your life would have been pretty much determined by where and when you were born, and whether you happened to be a man or a woman. Youâ€™d have spent most of your time striving to survive. Undoubtedly, youâ€™d have considered your generation very progressive, still youâ€™d have worked hard to make a better future for those coming after you. And of course our generation says since then weâ€™ve made a lot of progress! But what is it? Is it a 6 lane highway, 50 different Jelly Bean flavors, the size of a 2 GB USB stick, a life expectation of 80 years, plastic surgery, weblogs for everybody?

In my opinion, a societyâ€™s maturity is measured not by the development (alias shrinking) of more and more technological gadgets, but by its ability to let (wo)men follow their passion. Progress is what makes our life easier. It is what gives us more time, more freedom. It is our understanding of nature that has allowed us to spend less time on the struggle to survive, and given us the opportunity to live. It has given us the freedom to follow all the stray thoughts that came with the evolution of the homo sapiensâ€™ large brain: the everlasting wish to find and understand our place in the universe that we are part of.

A search that everybody of us undergoes in his or her own way. Some find their place Continue reading ‘Sabine Hossenfelder: My Inspiration’

Talk about the Talk

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on January 30, 2007

in Los Angeles, academia and biology

. 8 Comments

Chuck Stevens’ visit went very well indeed. The talk was excellent, and well attended by faculty and students from both Physics and Astronomy Department, and the Neurosciences Research Institute. I’ll tell you a bit more about what he said in a subsequent post, along with pointing to video and slides from the talk, I hope. (Click on left for larger view.)

By the way, when I got to the Steve Reich concert venue, there was a huge line of people waiting to get in. They eventually turned a lot of us (myself included) away due to lack of space.

So I got on my bike and cycled rapidly up Figueroa Street to downtown and found the restaurant where some of my colleagues had taken the guest for dinner. Excellent conversation instead of excellent music. A good trade.

Here’s something I passed on the way to the restaurant. Took a picture while waiting Continue reading ‘Talk about the Talk’

New Einstein Letters

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on January 29, 2007