Category Archives: fun

Tales From The Industry X – Wired Science

By | | , , , , ,
5 Comments

Well, there was something I could not tell you about before that I now can. There’s a new TV show called “Wired Science” about to launch. It is made by the PBS affiliate KCET, and will air on your local PBS station (on Wednesday, January 03, 2007, 8:00-9:00 pm ET). It looks like it is going to be informative and fun!

wired science banner

Here’s some of their blurb from the press release:

WIRED SCIENCE is a one-hour program that translates Wired magazine’s award-winning journalism into a fast-paced television show. WIRED SCIENCE brings Wired magazine’s cutting-edge vision, stylish design and irreverent attitude to the screen with breakout ideas, recent discoveries and the latest innovations. The pilot episode takes the viewer into the world of meteorite hunters, where space, commerce and art intersect; travels to Yellowstone National Park to harvest viruses that may hold the key to a technology revolution; and dives underwater to explore NEEMO, NASA’s extreme astronaut training program. Viewers will meet rocket-belt inventors, stem cell explorers and the developer of an electric car that goes from zero-to-60 in under four seconds. As a series, WIRED SCIENCE hopes to span the globe to uncover novel developments in biomedicine, space exploration, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, robotics and military technology.

wired_sciecne_trailerAnd you can go to the site to see stills from some of the location work they did in making the show, and some of the studio work too. You can go to this Wired blog post to see the rather nice title sequence of the show, and the teaser trailer. To the right, there’s a screen shot I made just now (click for larger).

I don’t think that they have the go ahead to make a full series yet. This is a pilot. I imagine that whether they get the full series go ahead depends upon whether it is well liked and supported by you, the viewer. I’d say support it. the people behind it really care about getting good science programming out to you.

So what’s the big deal? Why did I not tell you about it if I’ve known about it for so long? Well, nobody told me not to tell you, but it seemed the right thing to do. You see, I have a little secret. How do I put this? I’m going to get so beaten up in the playground for this. […] Click to continue reading this post →

LaTeX Holiday Fun!

By | |
10 Comments

Well, we all had so much fun the other day with the fairground ride that was the newly installed LaTeX capability of the blog -something electric about not knowing if it will work until you hit “submit”- that I thought I’d encourage some more fun, to help out on a quiet holiday weekend.

brennan_image.jpgSo here’s the mission/challenge. You must use LaTeX commands to create a Holiday-themed design. It can be an equation, or it can be a fully fledged diagram drawn with LaTeX-picture-drawing skills by those of you who are extremely clever and patient enough. Recall the impressive example from Carl Brannen that kept us on the edge of our seats? I reproduce it at the left (click for larger). You can see how he did it in the comment thread of the earlier post. (Also, mouse-hover over the image of any of the equations there and you will see the LaTeX code they used.)

So yes, if you can conjure up a Christmas tree or a Hanukkah menora, we’ll all be impressed, and you’ll probably win all our admiration… and as a prize I’ll probably single it out for special attention in a later post! So there’s some competition-style incentive, if you needed it.

Of course, equations will do too – the cleverer the better. As long as it has a “Holiday Theme”, ok?


The Rules:- You get two comment posts in the thread of this post per entry. You can […] Click to continue reading this post →

Some Things I Like About The Doo Dah Parade, II

By | | , ,
4 Comments

(Continuing from previous…)

…Then there’s the Disco drill team, which was really excellent.

doo dah disco

Their drill? Some serious synchronized Disco dancing, of course. They did the “Hustle”, along with various standard Saturday Night fever moves, and the crowd were very appreciative. Inevitably they did “YMCA”… and just as inevitably the crowd spontaneously joined in with the arm movements. (I think that this is hard-wired into a whole generation – rather like the reaction you get from all the women at a party if anyone puts on “I will Survive”.)

You know that they did not have to make those costumes… they probably sit in wardrobes (closets) every year since being retired in the late 70s, waiting for their moment in the sun once a year:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

The Sports Movie Script

By | | , ,
24 Comments

Every other time I go to the movies, there is a trailer for yet another sports movie which has exactly the same plot as all the others. Every time I sit there stunned and open-mouthed after the trailer and have a little internal rant (sparing my companion(s)), wonder to myself about what it is about the national psyche that needs this same simplistic story quite so often, and wonder why nobody else seems to notice the phenomenon. It is also noticable that it is one of the rites of passage of a famous male Hollywood star (even really good ones) to play the grizzled coach of the no-hope team….. blah blah blah…. why is that?

Well, to my delight, this morning the programme Morning Edition on NPR played a radio parody (by commentator Frank Deford) of essentially Click to continue reading this post →

Some Things I Like About The Doo Dah Parade, I

By | | , ,
5 Comments

Ah! The Doo Dah Parade! I do love it so. Why?

First of all, they began with a fly-over by three planes with pleasant coloured smoke streaming out the back.

doo dah flyover

Big deal, you say. Fair enough, but compare this to how the Rose Parade (which runs along a similar route six weeks later) starts… with a fly-by of a Stealth Bomber flanked by two Stealth Fighters. People cheered. I first saw this display in 2004 when the USA had already reached out with this power to invade Iraq, and we were all depressed about the recent re-election of the leaders who committed that crime. [Later correction: Of course, I got my date wrong… The election was to come later that year… the depressed feeling was just from the ongoing Iraq situation.] My reaction as the Stealths flew overhead? Wanting to clasp my hands over my ears and run screaming – just like the orcs and trolls of Sauron’s army do whenever the chief symbols of his air power (the winged Nazgul led by the Witch-King of Angmar) fly over the battlefield. You wield your terrible weapons and scare the crap out of your enemy and your friends – what does that say about you? So this is why I like that the Doo Dah parade starts with those less in-your-face planes.

I digress, losing half my audience (all seven of you) by making a Lord of the Rings reference. Should have chosen Homer. Oh well. So, remembering that the Doo Dah is the antidote to the cookie-cutter perfection of your typical Rose-type parade or Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, have a look at some things that caught my eye.
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Doo Dah! Doo Dah!

By | | ,
8 Comments

Yikes! I woke up a short while ago and realized that it is the weekend before Thanksgiving. You know what that means? The Doo Dah Parade!

[image: housing drill team]

It is the antidote to the (sometimes nauseatingly wholesome) Rose Parade that takes place at New Year’s, or the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Here is what I said in a blog post last year: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry, IX

By | | , , , , , ,
12 Comments

Friday saw me involved in the shooting of two more segments for a television show. Seems that the ones from last time did not work out too badly, so the program makers wanted to do more. Hurrah!

[image from Friday shoot]

This session was also a lot of fun, and one of the segments (especially) could end up being a particularly good example of getting a good chunk of a whole science story – showing the actual processes involved in doing science – on TV, er, depending upon how it is edited, of course. This is one reason I do this sort of thing. At least as important (in my opinion) as talking, as I also sometimes do, to the press about the fancier things we do (perhaps involving the origin of mass, and whether the universe may or may not have extra dimensions, etc) is the process of getting involved with people in the media to help them bring the cornerstones of all of science to a general audience. No fancy stuff, just the basic but ever so important connection between the physical world around them and simple scientific reasoning. This achieves some very important things, which I bet will last longer in a person’s mind and everyday life than […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Lion’s Share

By | | , ,
6 Comments

Remember the Orionids? Well, it is the turn of the Leonids. These comets are the result of us passing through the debris left by comet Tempel-Tuttle. The peak will be on the 19th November…. Viewing and other information here (Armagh Observatory), here (a NASA site), and here, from Gary W. Kronk’s site (as is the diagram below). Here’s a nice Space.com article by Joe Rao.

There is expected to be quite a spike in the viewing rate this year… enhanced by a factor of ten to maybe as many as 100 or 200 per hour. This is for the lucky viewers in Western Europe (and the British Isles 🙂 ), North Wester Africa, North Eastern USA and Eastern Canada, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Elemental

By | | , ,
3 Comments

Yesterday in Physics 100 we started a discussion of the structure of matter. This inevitably brings up the early ideas from 400 BC about atoms, from Democritus (and others) at least in the Greek line of thought. These ideas were later brushed aside by Aristotle who declared that the elements from which everything can be constructed were Earth, Air, Fire, and Water.

Of course, one is obliged to show a slide at this point. I could not resist this one: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Twelve Days of Physics

By | | ,
16 Comments

This morning I received an email from someone called “Grrrl Einstein” today which read:

I am creating a Physics Calendar for the Holiday season, and I am including twelve entities. So far I have:

  1. Newton’s Laws
  2. The Dirac equation/Schrodinger equation
  3. The Clifford Algebra defining the Dirac gamma matrices
  4. E=mc2/Einstein’s equations/postulates and/or some solution of them, such as the Schwarzschild solution
  5. The principle of least action
  6. Maxwell’s equations
  7. E=hv
  8. The Yang-Mills Lagrangian
  9. The Schwinger-Dyson equations or something else related to functional methods
  10. Stokes’ Theorem
  11. Entropy

What would be a good String Theory equation to round it out? Any things I should include/exclude?

She also says: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry, VIII

By | | , , , , ,
22 Comments

“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“So are you the Talent?”
“Uh… Yes… Maybe.”
“You’re the Physicist?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a real Physicist? Not just playing one?”
“I’m… real.”

Snippet of conversation between myself and a woman from the art department at the studio, while we stood waiting for our green tea to brew. The floor is full of tables all around, mostly occupied with various people sitting at them fiddling with Macs. (Macs everywhere, as I’ve come to expect from the people in the Industry.) There’s a serious-looking table with more senior looking people discussing something in earnest, and another serious-looking table with people editing video on more Macs. All the tables are serious, of course, but overall there is a fun atmosphere. There’s also a big situation board that is consulted regularly by groups of people. It is covered in bright yellow stick-notes covered in writing that are being moved around. There are people coming in and out with a sense of purpose, and some of the crew I am with are milling around with bits of equipment. All very exciting-looking. It is all made a bit comical by this totally out of place and thoroughly splendid trio of bright red chandeliers that are hanging down from the ceiling over what looks like the head table for the senior folk. Strange but well-appreciated quirk of decoration, for what is otherwise a high-ceilinged warehouse-type space.

The situation? Shooting some fun things about physics for a TV show. It will air on a station near you (in the USA) next year some time. Details then. We converted a corner of one of our teaching labs at USC into a mini-studio: […] Click to continue reading this post →