Asymptotia

One of the things I tend to do when on Walkabout is seek out pleasant public spaces in which to work. Sometimes institutions to which I might have some connection might give me access to a guest office, or something similar, but often I go “off the grid”, where the grid here refers to the network of academic connections and arrangements that produces such (generous and vital) courtesies. So every city I spend time in, I try to work build a personal network of hideouts. Sometimes, these are just favourite cafes of one sort or another (you’ve maybe seen posts on those), but at times it can also be libraries or other spaces at one sort of institution or another. Some of them are quite splendid, or simply pleasant or convenient. Among the examples for me are the Santa Monica public library, the (downtown) Los Angeles public library (yes, even close to home I like to get away from my standard offices), the Butler Library at Columbia University in New York, the New York Public Library Continue reading ‘Hideouts’

A little while ago, this season’s edition of the USC College magazine came out, and it is available online. Notably, it is featuring writers and writing, and there are several pieces in there about both faculty and students and their writing, in various forms. There are articles about superstars such as TC Boyle and Aimee Bender, as well as pieces by excellent writers such as California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes, and M. G. Lord. I recommend having a read of it.

It is with a mixture of mild amusement and embarrassment that I mention that among all that excellent writerly material is, perhaps oddly, an article on yours truly. It is about this blog, what it is about and for, and why I do it. (The blog is, of course, not to be mistaken for great writing, and so I will apologize personally to Aimee Continue reading ‘The Write Stuff’

This week’s New Yorker has an article by Dana Goodyear on Neil Gaiman. There’s also an online chat with him and Goodyear and readers here. I like a lot of Gaiman’s writing and am impressed with his imagination. It is interesting to note that such a prolific and influential talent has managed to not become a household name. This might be beginning to change. As a result I myself a bit conflicted, as I often am in this situation when someone like this, whose work I’ve followed for years (or that I’ve simply privately noted is really excellent, early on), is maybe about to break into mainstream recognition. I’m happy for them, want to share them with my friends and the world at large while at the same time being a bit worried about it having Continue reading ‘Gaiman in the New Yorker’

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”

Do you know who said that? I’ll break the post here to give you a moment to think about it. I’m not going to ask for the answer in the comments since you have Google on your side, but you can, if you like, share in the comments whether you knew or guessed it right before you moved to the rest of the post below to learn the answer. (Image above is an illustration by Walter Crane for ‘Snow White’ (1882).) Continuing…
Continue reading ‘On Art, Fairy Tales, and Creativity’

I’m puzzled. Almost everything I’ve heard from people - even otherwise thought-provoking respected film critics - is that John Hillcoat’s film of Cormac McCarthy’s wonderful novel The Road is really depressing*. I think that the problem might be that there’s a lot of looking at the obvious images on the screen (a defeated, broken, decaying landscape) and rushing to a conclusion because there is the odd perception that the first thing that comes to mind (or the first emotion that is awoken in the viewer) must be the primary content. I find this odd, since there’s so much more there, and it shows up only slightly below the surface.

In fact, I’d go as far as saying that The Road is up there as one of the top three “feel-good movies” of 2009, if that term was ever worth using. Yes. Feel-good. This is a term that is mostly used for some of the (and I am being generous) often Continue reading ‘It’s a Feel-Good Movie!’

I’ve spoken about Haruki Murakami, one of my favourite writers, here before (Image right by Elena Seibert). See my earlier post, which highlighted an essay of his. Well, I learned from The Writer’s Almanac that it is his birthday today. Since I’ve been thinking a lot about great writing recently, I thought I’d celebrate by noting it here to you on the blog. Do go over there and read a bit about what Garrison Keillor and his writers say about him. Extract:

Continue reading ‘Murakami’s Birthday!’

I’m taking a short break from it while I wait for my soup - that wonderful soup I made a huge vat of last night, using the essence of the left over carcass of a roast chicken I served on Christmas day combined with various delicious vegetables from the farmer’s market - to heat up for dinner. I need the break, as I’m mentally exhausted. Although I strongly feel like having a nice evening glass of wine, I am forbidding myself from having one since I must stay sharp for much longer this evening, despite my exhaustion. So a bit of blogging about my ongoing task will somehow serve as my relaxation. Oddly enough. Well, let’s see if it does.

I’ve been wandering an incredibly striking landscape, with such remarkable variety, detail, texture and hue. There are features that move me to tears at times, reduce me to fits of uncontrollable laughter at others, but mostly intense reflection throughout. I should be simply enjoying it for its own sake, drinking it in where I want to, letting it simply wash over me at times, while at others, cupping some of it in my hands and looking at it close up, before letting it flow away and moving on. But I do not have that freedom. Instead I have to look at it all with a view to ranking various features over others - putting it all into some sort of order. This is a terrible task to have to do, since so very much of it is simply wonderful in its own right, and there’s hardly any meaning to ranking some parts over the other.

What on earth am I talking about?

Well, as is so often the case with some of the things I get myself involved in, I can’t tell you much detail, since the process itself is ongoing, and rather sensitive. I’d not Continue reading ‘The Read’

There’s a physics angle to the Tiger Woods business of last week (that I’d not really been following since I was, thankfully, out of the country during the media blitz).

A physics angle? Really? Surely in my attempts to show the science angle in everyday things I’ve gone too far?

Well, actually there is. So there was some business with a car crashing and so forth, and there are photos of the interior of the car. There’s a book visible. It’s a physics book! It is John Gribbins’ Get a Grip on Physics, from 1999. It is out of print now, but apparently its Amazon (USA) sales rank shot from 396,224 to 2,268 over a short period. (For the record, before you ask about the other items in the photos (from Getty images), I’ve heard no news on whether umbrella sales also spiked. Or bottled water sales, for that matter.)

I like this story for lots of reasons, but the main one is that this shows to the Continue reading ‘A Gripping Read’

…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 Continue reading ‘Looking Forward…’

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:

Continue reading ‘A. S. Byatt’

When all is said and done (and since it is midnight and there’s nobody else here, I’ll take it that it has been and is) it was a good day at the West Hollywood Book Fair. I made it there in time to wander a bit and take in a number of the things on offer, just flitting from booth to booth and stopping to listen at various panels on various of the stages. I arrived early enough to check to see where my panel would be, double check that there were no schedule changes, and then set about to look around. Just before the panel I found a place doing a nice tasty hot sausage on a bun for lunch (plenty of fried onions and a sliver of mustard to top it all) and nibbled on that while listening to some poetry readings. (Or at least I think that is what they were.) (The picture shows the late afternoon sky with the giant chair sculpture at the Pacific Design Center across the street from the park the fair was in.)

Then I went to find my fellow panel members and we, uh, panelled away for an hour. Crucially, I found out what my panel was really about, which is good. The title “Eyeballing the Universe: Big and Small” was intended to invoke not just the act of Continue reading ‘All Went Well…’

Mark your calendar for Sunday! The West Hollywood Book Fair is on from 10 am to 6:00 pm that day, and there’s so much to see and do with readings, panels, discussions, authors, special celebrity guests, food, exhibitions, writing workshops, discount book offers, signings, swag (no doubt), and so forth. I’ve not been before, but as you know from reading here I’m a big fan of cities going gaga over books for a while, being a regular visitor to the LA Times Book Festival when it comes in the Spring. The calendar of events and much more about the event can be found at the website here.

Here’s another thing. Despite the fact there was no mention of a spankingly splendid Continue reading ‘More Book Fun!’

So what is the origin of the whole God idea anyway? Is God very old, or a relatively new invention? From where emerged that omnipotent being , that so many subscribe to, which apparently lives outside of the rules of Nature? Where did the severe rifts between science and God first come about? Were some of our greatest scientists, such as Newton, responsible for creating the modern God? What is the role of God now, and where does it/he/she sit in the landscape of our current society? (Image credit: Gerry Penny/AFP/Getty Images.)

Questions such as the above are fascinating to ponder and by now you must have gathered that I don’t subscribe to the Atheist-fundamentalist view that the matter is treated well by simply declaring that people who believe in God are stupid or otherwise broken in some way. And yelling it in their face. It’s much more interesting than that.

Karen Armstrong writes very well about the issues I mentioned above, and recently was on NPR’s Fresh Air talking about her new book, “The Case for God”. She examines a great deal of history of the idea of God, and (among other things) reminds us that the common, often over-simplistic, personal God created in our own image (the one that probably creates the most religion problems in the world), is one Continue reading ‘Armstrong on God’

Well that was fun! I’m sitting on the bus on the way home [editorial note: I wrote most of this on Thursday afternoon], with the memory of the College Commons event that I just went to still fresh in my mind. (That and the tasty food at the end of the event.)

This event (”Discovering the World: Collections, Curiosity and Evolution”) was all about collecting and collections, from the institutional collections we have in our society today such as museums and libraries, through the “cabinets of curiosity” of earlier centuries, to the sort of obsessive collections of random stuff that sort of becomes a disease (I mentally glance over at the shelves, piles, and boxes of old New Yorkers in my house; I’ve not been able to throw away a single one since I started subscribing in the early 90s. Yes, I know, I know… I know.)

So many of these types of collections (and the resulting books and compendia which they themselves become the objects of collections and subjects of books and so on and so forth) formed the foundations of the culture, the raw material for scientific study, the inspiration for more collections and for more study, and so on…. So the event used that as a basis and dug out some wonderful articles for us to look and marvel at. The digging was done at USC’s own splendid Doheny library (original Audubon volumes, Cook’s journals, etc) the Huntington library (several illustrated tomes of natural history and an actual plate used long ago for printing Audubon illustrations which were then later hand-coloured by artists) and the Los Angeles Natural History Museum across the street. A number of my colleagues who are scholars in areas that these objects pertain to gave short, informative and Continue reading ‘Collections!’

Forgot to report on this email exchange from last semester:

From one of the staff in the physics office:

Subject: 499 Syllabus
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:01:38 -0700
From: Beverly
To: Clifford V. Johnson

I was reading the syllabus you sent over for the 499 class. I am not sure if this is a type-o but in the Extra Books section it reads “/Black *_hoes_* and Time Warps: Einstein’s outrageous Legacy/” should it read
“/Black *_holes_* and Time Warps: Einstein’s outrageous Legacy/”.

Thanks,

My response:

Continue reading ‘Oops!’

Science writer KC Cole (also a professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication) has written a biography of Frank Oppenheimer. She’s been working on it for a very long time and it has just been released, so if you look around, maybe she’s doing a reading/signing about it somewhere near you. (Some events are listed here. Los Angeles readers, she’ll be at Skylight Books tomorrow afternoon.) It is called “Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up”. She was talking about it last week with Ira Flatow on NPR’s Science Friday. You can get audio here. Or you can listen to it embedded here and read on:

Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: KC on Science Friday’

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have written a book, “Unscientific America”, with an excellent discussion about science literacy. You know from reading here that this is a favourite issue of mine (look under categories such as science and society), and by far the primary reason I blog, and do the various other activities I mention such as appearing on TV and radio shows, consulting for film, theatre, TV, etc, contribute to popular level articles, making films, and other things. It is vitally important, if we are a truly democratic society, for all to participate in the conversations we have about science - whether it be about issues to do with medicine, lifestyle, environment, energy, or just for its own sake: it is part of our culture. Sadly, science (and scientists) is still on the margins of the national conversation - people are afraid of it, giggle about how bad they were at it at school and then decouple from the conversation, mostly only pay attention to bleak or incorrect pictures of it in the media and entertainment (or for political gain), and so on and so forth.

What Sheril and Chris are doing in the book is examining the extent to which this Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Sheril on Science Friday’

Well, inexplicably I’m up at 6:00am again after getting to sleep at 1:00am. Might as well have a cup of tea and blog a bit. I’ve a treat for you!

As you know, I love some of the interviews that show up on Daily Mayo. So many interesting guests, and Simon Mayo is such an excellent interviewer as well, gently steering the conversation along. Well, he had the excellent director Guillermo del Toro on, a couple of days ago. (Who? Oh, he’s the director of the stunning Pan’s Labyrinth, or as I love to say out loud in a corny accent: El Laberinto del Fauno.) He seems to have been busy, what with co-writing a new book (for those of you into vampire-lit, here’s a new series for you, perhaps a nice contrast to the Twilight series), developing a lot of screenplays, moving to New Zealand, and… yes… you know… working on the Hobbit!

After a while, he does indeed get around to talking about the Hobbit films, and although I much prefer to know nothing at all about these banner projects before I walk into the theatre (as I did with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings), I listened to the whole thing. (Even though I thought that the latter half of Hellboy II was a mess, I still trust him to do a good job on the Hobbit movies. Or, as he joked, the Hobbitses. (He said “Hobbitses” to pluralize… he gets it!))

There are several reassuring things. Several. One is that they seem to have Continue reading ‘Guillermo del Toro on Mayo’

[Update: It is Sunday night, not tonight. See upcoming post.] If you’re a fan of the Da Vinci Code and interested in the new film Angels and Demons (or even if you’re not), do check back here tomorrow (Friday) for some news of something on TV tomorrow night about it. Apparently there is actual physics playing a role in the film/book. (I play a small role in this film about the movie, which will be aired tomorrow.) But I am way too tired now to blog it (and the shooting thereof), and so will do so tomorrow. So check back.

-cvj

Don’t forget this weekend’s LA Times Festival of Books! It is always a pleasure to wander the huge festival and see what’s on offer, and simply be part of an enormous gathering of people in LA on the usually lovely weekend days. - Gathering in the name of books! How excellent that is!

Some bad news this year. You’ll recall that I’ve reported (here and here) on the Oscar-like awards ceremony for the book prizes, complete with fancy after-party. (With chocolate fountains, and ice sculptures with embedded typewriters, no less!) Well, they’re not doing it this year. I imagine its the hard financial times. You see… now it’s hitting home to me that there’s a crisis out there - no awards gala, and no chocolate fountains. However will I survive?

Well, the good news is that the awards continue (actually there is a private ceremony at the LA Times building… yes, for all I know if it is the usual affair, and perhaps they just don’t want the riff-raff any more) and the short lists are interesting once again. You can Continue reading ‘Literary Festivities’

The LA Times Festival of Books is coming up this weekend (see my upcoming post). In memory of the fun time I had at the first time I went to the accompanying awards ceremony in 2006, I’m reprinting a post I did over on CV that year, in which I reported on it. (Timestamp: April 30th, 2006 3:45 am.)

Well, I’m recovering from an excellent hike up Mount Wilson with the USC Neurobiologists earlier today, so while I do that, I’ll tell you about last night. Recall that the LA Times Book Festival is happening this weekend.

I came closer to seeing a realization of one of those topsy-turvy scenarios I often fantasize about, where more “academic” pursuits, or at least those more associated with the life of the mind, are celebrated in full Hollywood fashion. (I envision it in the context of science and scientists….imagine an Oscar-Like awards ceremony for the year’s best science papers, watched by millions on TV in prime time… but this will do for a start.)

Yes, I went to my first LA Awards ceremony, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, and although I joked about Oscar analogies in a previous post, it actually was Continue reading ‘I See Book People’

Well, today (depending upon how you count*) is a big day. Major day. Are you as excited and worried as I am?

Continue reading ‘The Big Day!’

(Yes, I know it is not Summer (here), but I love the idea of Summer reading lists so much that I will continue to discuss some books under this series title, whatever the time of year.)

I just heard a piece by Robert Krulwich on NPR about the book “Falling for Science: Objects in Mind”, which is a collection of essays with an introduction by Sherry Turkle, who’s a social sciences professor at MIT. Krulwich says:

“…written by senior scientists (artificial intelligence pioneer Seymour Papert, MIT president and neuroanatomist Susan Hockfield, and architect Moshe Safdie, for example) and by students who passed through her classes at MIT over the past 25 years. They were all asked the same question: “Was there an object you met during childhood or adolescence that had an influence on your path into science?”

And after a tidal wave of Legos (7 different essays), computer games and broken radios, I found a few wonderful surprises. One MIT student reported how she couldn’t stop braiding her My Little Pony’s tail, weaving the hairs into endlessly repeating patterns (a clue, perhaps, to her fascination with mathematics)….[...]“

He goes on to interview software designer Joseph Calzaretta about his childhood encounter with stop signs. It’s a really nice story. The whole radio piece is here, with audio and transcript. (There’s another version here with the excellent “Eggs in a Basket” story emphasized instead.)

This is actually an issue that fascinates me, and I don’t think that the question should be quite as narrow as above - focusing only on people who went into science. I think that -especially as children- we are all scientists, exploring the world around us, Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Falling For Science’

I’ve been meaning to tell you more about Michael Pollan. I’ve been planning a post or two about Summer reading, and was going to discuss the books of Michael Pollan to kick off a possible series. That plan was hatched in the late Summer of 2007… then the Fall came, and then the Winter and Spring… then Summer of 2008… never got around to it. Drat. (Checking back, I see that I started the series by talking about Haruki Murakami, here. So I’ll call this part of the series too, even though it is not really Summer.)

Anyway, the good news is that Pollan was on Fresh Air (NPR) yesterday, and as usual he was excellent:

In an open letter to the next president, author Michael Pollan writes about the waning health of America’s food systems — and warns that “the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.”

The future president’s food policies, says Pollan, will have a large impact on a wide range of issues, including national security, climate change, energy independence and health care.

Here’s the link to the audio. Before you rush off to that, let me continue what I was going to say, at least in brief.

Pollan has risen to prominence, justifiably, mostly as a result of his excellent book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals”. It is a delightful examination of the food industry, charting the route of much of the food that you eat Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Fresh Air From Pollan’

Well, back to teaching issues. Textbooks. I know the following is illegal, but I will admit to being hopeful that this will supply a much needed kick in the rear end for the “textbook industry”. (The very term makes me a bit ill sometimes.) In teaching the big courses at freshman or sophomore level to classes that have a couple of hundred students (broken into sections - we don’t like super huge classes here at USC) enrolled, it is hard not to notice that there’s something slightly insidious about aspects of the textbook game. Despite the fact that we are teaching subjects (Newtonian physics, thermodynamics and a brief bit of “modern physics” that is mostly from no later than 1905) at levels that have not significantly changed for over a century (in some parts, several centuries), the Industry (shall we call it “Big Textbook”?) keeps finding new excuses to come up with new editions. These editions get more and more expensive, and heavier and heavier to carry around. I don’t know why this is necessary, except to force new students to buy the books all over again.

Additionally, the new hook is to combine the book with an access code for further Continue reading ‘One in the eye for Big Textbook?’

Ah. I see that it’s been three days since my last confession. Gosh.

Well, it’s been a quiet weekend here in, er, my part of the universe. Good time for reflection and rest. I had a couple of posts I was going to do but in the end decided to break the pattern and change up my Saturday and Sunday, and the “change up” did not include the blog. So sorry about that.

I’m taking a break between an interesting meeting (that I will tell you about) and my office hour. The sun’s shining outside and it is not oppressively hot, surprisingly, so I’ll keep this short and poke my head out there again before my Physics 151 visitors arrive.

Some of the things on my mind:

Continue reading ‘Thoughts During Break Time’

Not long ago, science writer Carl Zimmer spoke at the Zócalo series. He was talking about the subject of his new book, E. Coli, and wove a lovely story of how the E. Coli have taught us so much about life over the years, and how they continue to do so. So much of what we know about the workings of DNA, for example, came down to studies of a very clear model system, and E.Coli was the system chosen by Biologists (and Physicists interested in fundamental issues surrounding the nature of life, DNA, etc.) (Image left from foodpoisonblog.)

The talk, for a general audience, is highly informative. It is only about an hour long, and worth your time. It was broadcast last night, and I found it rather good indeed. I Continue reading ‘E.Coli Stories’

Somehow, I only learned about this today, and it is already standby tickets only, but you never know. If you’re in LA and interested in a different kind of conversation, consider taking in the event (part of the Aloud series) at the downtown Los Angeles Central Library tomorrow night at 7:00pm. It’s between two friends and colleagues of mine, the science writer K C Cole and the scientist Lenny Susskind! The event is entitled, “The Black Hole War: My Battle with Stephen Hawking to Make the World Safe for Quantum Mechanics”, and presumably will be about Lenny’s reflections on some of the exciting squabbles over various important issues in black hole physics that took place (and still take place) in our field of physics. The above turns out to be (I just learned from a Google search) the title of a book he’s written, so you might be interested in it for your Summer (or other) reading.

Some of you may recall her really great conversation with Alan Alda that took place at USC earlier this year. I reported on it here. K C tends to run these sorts of Continue reading ‘Black Hole Battles’

One great thing to do when it is super-hot outside is to sit in an air-conditioned movie theatre. Yes, and watch a movie. And when its really hot, do it for a really long time. How about seven hours?!

Over the last two nights I watched something wonderful on screen, at the Bing Theatre at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). A rare gem, in fact*. Sergei Bondarchuk’s film of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, (Voyna i mir) released (USA) in 1968, and in four parts (matching those of the book), each a full movie. I went with three friends (M, R, and R), since movie marathons are fun in company. The full print, in Russian and French with English subtitles, is seven hours long. This is not to be mistaken for the relatively paltry dubbed version cut down to a fleeting six hours duration. This is (closer to) the proper original version. It is rare…apparently not shown in the USA for a very long time, and apparently not available on DVD. (Arguably, it shouldn’t be seen on DVD on a screen that is inappropriate to the task, and without good company. This is a movie theatre movie if there ever was one.) It’s a national treasure, and frankly I have no clue how they made it so well.

The cinematography, set/production design, art direction, and - of course - direction Continue reading ‘Seven Hours of Wonder’

The artist and musician Libby Lavella, in her presentation about ambiguity in art and music on Sunday night at the Santa Monica Art Studios (in the Categorically Not! series - see my description here), ended by reading a lovely extract from some writing of Salman Rushdie. It really resonated with me, and so I thought it would share it with you. I found out from her where it was from. It’s from his novel “The Ground Beneath Her Feet”. You can see a longer extract in January Magazine here, but I’ll place here the part that she read:

Continue reading ‘Salman Rushdie on Song’

I’m a big fan of Haruki Murakami’s writing. (Photo right by Elena Seibert). A huge fan, even though I’m only on a second book by him.

I read “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” last year and am on “Kafka on the Shore” right now. In each case, I read the opening paragraph and was immediately sucked right into the book.

The writing is, quite simply, wonderfully stirring, with stunning light, chilling darkness and everything in between (including, notably, a great sense of humour). The light and darkness are to be found in the interior worlds of the characters that are explored in the writing and how they connect to the rest of the world as they move through it. A person’s place in the world, relationship to the world, and how they affect the world Continue reading ‘Summer Reading: Distance Writing’

Don’t forget - The LA Times Festival of Books is on this weekend. As I said earlier:

It’s a Los Angeles celebration of the written word, done in wonderful sunshine, with hundreds of marvellous events in three days for young and old - Yes, it is the LA Times Festival of Books, coming up the weekend starting April 25th. The main daytime proceedings take place on the 26th and 27th (Saturday and Sunday) and I recommend them to you if you’ve not been. Mark your calendar. (Once you’re over there on Sunday, stay for the Categorically Not! event in the evening (entitled “Loops”), which will involve among others, science writer Dava Sobel!!) (Above right: One of the 2008 theme images from the Festival’s website. More here.)

Enjoy!

-cvj

The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday April 27th (upcoming). The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series - started and run by science writer K. C. Cole - of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area. Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events.

The theme this month is Loops Here’s the description from K C Cole:

When you come right down to it, just about everything is loopy: planets, proteins or life stories, things have a way of coming around again, always with a slightly different spin. This month’s Categorically Not! was conceived as a tribute to Douglas Hofstadter’s new book, I am a Strange Loop, which uses Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Loops’

This was not the time to break my over a decade long run of not flying American Airlines. I pretty much only fly United when doing most travel, but I had no choice for this trip from LA to Amarillo, Texas. It was a quick hop there and back in about 36 hours to take part in a rather important event - Andrew Chamblin (a friend and colleague who, you may know, died tragically in 2006) was being inducted into the Hall of Fame of his old High School and so I went along to take part in the ceremony with his family and some of his friends, and address (briefly) the assembled student body (it was such an honour to be asked Continue reading ‘Head in the Clouds’

It’s a bit more than a month away. It’s always fun every year. It’s a Los Angeles celebration of the written word, done in wonderful sunshine, with hundreds of marvellous events in three days for young and old - Yes, it is the LA Times Festival of Books, coming up the weekend starting April 25th. The main daytime proceedings take place on the 26th and 27th (Saturday and Sunday) and I recommend them to you if you’ve not been. Mark your calendar. (Once you’re over there on Sunday, stay for the Categorically Not! event in the evening (entitled “Loops”), which will involve among others, science writer Dava Sobel!!) (Above right: One of the 2008 theme images from the Festival’s website. More here.)

The Friday evening will see the book prizes given out, kicking off the festival as usual. I remembered this just now because I found myself curious about the shortlist of books in the Science and Technology category. I wondered if there was something on Continue reading ‘Festival of Books’

Oh, yeah baby. Right up my alley:

More of the full spreads can be seen over at The Nonist. They come from a collection Continue reading ‘Hot Library Smut’

Well, actually it sounds like a really lovely book, and the louse to the right (among other creatures) features quite a bit. (Photo by Louis de Vos.) I read about it in a splendid little article in LA Weekly today on the bus home on a wonderfully rainy afternoon here in LA. The book’s all about the common creatures in our homes - “bugs” of various sorts, and the LA Weekly article by Gendy Alimurung is mostly an interview with the authors, Joshua Abarbanel and Jeff Swimmer. The book is called “A Continue reading ‘Lousy Book’

Over on Correlations, my co-blogger Damon Gambuto has started a new series: “Science Fiction Friday”, and guess who is featured for the first one? Greg Bear!

I’ve really enjoyed his writing over many years, starting with the first books of his I read in quick succession (”Legacy”, and “Forge of God”, along with their follow-up works), right up to the very good “Darwin’s Radio”. I’ve not read anything more recent of his yet.

Anyway, the interview (which will be in several parts) looks really good and interesting Continue reading ‘Greg Bear on Correlations’

This was originally posted on Cosmic Variance on May 3rd 2006. It was a report on the Categorically Not! event that took place on 23rd April 2006, entitled “Really?”. I’ve decided to reproduce it here as a happy memory of the wonder that Artist and Educator Bob Miller brought into the lives of many. (See next post.) It was a marvellous event overall (probably my favourite Cat Not! event), with several excellent presentations, and so I’ll reproduce the post in its entirety (with slight corrections) to give you a sense of the evening. -cvj

Well, apologies to all concerned for taking so long to post this, but here it is. The Categorically Not! two Sundays ago was -as usual- extremely enjoyable and informative. This one was all about Illusion, in some sense, the theme being “Really?”.

We started out with a few opening remarks by Bob Miller, who specialises in what some might call “light art”. He’s well known for creating a large number of wonderful works using light and shadow, several of them forming the cornerstone of exhibitions in the Exploratorium in San Francisco, for example. Have a look at the “lightwalk”, linked here.

Bob did not talk much, because he wanted everyone to just play, learning from getting involved. And play they did. He’d been up all night preparing (with KC Cole’s help) various fun things for people to do (see the table in the picture above, for example). All simple, and all with a little printed explanation about what to do, and the operation of the thing they were playing with or effect they were seeing.

Continue reading ‘Really Excellent’

Last night’s Categorically Not! - Inside Out event was just great. The three topics contrasted really nicely, were very well presented as individual topics in their own right, and there were resonances between the different topics through the main umbrella theme - “Inside Out”.

Science writers Sandy Blakeslee and her son Matt Blakeslee did a sort of tag team presentation, taking turns to build up several aspects of the subject (covered in their new book “The Body Has a Mind of Its Own”) of one’s sense of self and that all-so-important division between inside (ourself) and outside (the rest of the universe) that we make with our minds. It’s very dynamic, of course - you extend it a lot when you use tools, from a fork when eating to the car you’re driving in (everyone grunted in recognition when Sandy mentioned how you have the instinct to duck when driving under a low ceiling in a parking garage….). One of the things that I think resonated most with the audience is the description of the work on showing how many celebrated “out of body” experiences that people get have a foundation in Continue reading ‘Inside Out from the Inside’