Archive for the 'science and society' Category

Ferrous Thoughts

by
Clifford
on May 16, 2008
in Los Angeles, craft, design, film, fun, movies, personal, science and society, science fiction and science in drama
. 1 Comment

I spent an awful lot of time as a child and teenager tinkering with various projects. I’d have lots of projects on at any one time, brewing in my head for a while, and making their way to soldering iron, meter, …notebooks and scraps of paper, then to elaborate drawings showing the technical details, and ultimately to some sort of realization in the real work, some percentage of the time. In the Summer time, I would probably have one Big Project and that would occupy my thoughts for a great deal of time, and would involve a lot of hiding away doing things. Lots of these projects would involve electronics (increasingly as time went by and I Learned more and my various part time jobs could support more) and there’d be lots of tinkering with all sorts of items, and a constant feature would be the soldering iron, one not so different from the one that you see above right.

Well, one of the many things I liked about the Iron Man movie (yes, I was right there to Continue reading ‘Ferrous Thoughts’

Inside the LHC!

by
Clifford
on May 7, 2008
in science and science and society
. 0 Comments

I recommend these videos that show the inside workings of the ATLAS detector of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) using animation. They are quite stunning and simply lovely. Science aside for a moment (and you can learn about it in the posts listed below), remember that the LHC is simply the largest and most complicated device ever constructed, with the largest team of scientists assembled. It is a wonderful reminder of the international, collaborative, and cross-cultural nature of science.

Continue reading ‘Inside the LHC!’

JPL Open House!

by
Clifford
on May 3, 2008
in Los Angeles, astronomy, planets, science, science and society and science education
. 0 Comments

Oh! It is the open house for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory this weekend (both today and tomorrow)! I almost missed it since it was two weekends later last year.

JPL Open House

Image composite brazenly taken from their website.

I went last year and had a great time and so I strongly recommend it. Go along for your own interest, of course, but if you have any kids, take ‘em along*. If interested, have a look at my detailed post from last year entitled “JPL the new Disneyland?”

As I said there:

Continue reading ‘JPL Open House!’

Center For Inquiry: Chris Mooney on The War

by
Clifford
on May 1, 2008
in Los Angeles, religion, science and science and society
. 2 Comments

Well, here’s a turn up for the books. I pass the buildings of the Center for Inquiry (West) in Hollywood quite regularly on my to-ings and fro-ings, and always wondered what it was. About what were they inquiring? My inquiring mind wanted to know, but by time I got back to a computer, I’d forgotten all about intending to Google it. I was sort of expecting that it might be some, er, fringe organization, given the neighbourhood (not 1/4 of a mile away is uncle charles - center for inquirythe mother ship (or one of them) for the Scientologists, and a similar distance in the other direction is the “Scientology Celebrity Centre” too, where John, Tom, Kirstie, and others from the remarkably large movie star Scientology set presumably go and hang out and feel… celebrated).

Well, it turns out that it’s not like that after all, but a place where, as far as I can tell, serious reason-based inquiry into issues surrounding the places where, e.g., science, religion, culture and superstition intersect (such as, you know, real life) is encouraged. I like that poster of theirs I found, for example (image to the right).

They have a number of speaker series, where all sorts of interesting people come to Continue reading ‘Center For Inquiry: Chris Mooney on The War’

Phil at LHC

by
Clifford
on April 29, 2008
in science, science and society and science education
. 1 Comment

Do you listen to the CERN LHC podcasts? They can be good. Every now and again, there’s a visitor there, and Brian Cox interviews them on site at the Large Hadron Collider. (Search archives for LHC or see links to lots of posts on it below, such as this one.) The most recent visit is by Phil Plait, aka the Bad Astronomer. They chat together about various aspects of the science to be done at the (soon to be switched on!) LHC, research in basic science in general, the scare-mongering business about the black holes destroying the earth (see here and here), conspiracy theories, and - of course - Continue reading ‘Phil at LHC’

When Worlds Collide IV: The Verdict is…

by
Clifford
on April 23, 2008
in black people in science, fun, minorities in science, science and society and science in the media
. 3 Comments

casino royale shootSo you’ll recall the shoot last year, right? Casino Royale theme? Where I got all dressed up in a Tuxedo at a club in New York that was kitted out as a Casino playing blackjack and so forth (click right) and getting very cosy with Ms Moneypenny? (Wait, that last bit didn’t happen.) Along with some actual stars, from entertainment, sport, fashion, etc? You don’t recall? Well, that’ll teach you not to use the blog’s archives more during your coffee breaks…

To recap (but please read properly about the background here), it was a photo spread with short bios for an annual piece called “Coming Kings” for a men’s magazine called “King”. I’d got the call out of the blue from them, and decided to do it since it’s an opportunity to do something a little different. To put some awareness of science and scientists in places where you normally don’t find much (if any) of it, rather than only targeting the more traditional crowds. It’s all about, as I said:
Continue reading ‘When Worlds Collide IV: The Verdict is…’

No Debate on Science

by
Clifford
on April 20, 2008
in energy, energy policy, environment, politics, science, science and society, science education and science in the media
. 3 Comments

Sheril talked a little bit about the lack of a debate on Science by the presidential hopefuls, and pointed to a number of articles on the matter. Recall (from my earlier posts and many other sources) that she is one of the movers and shakers behind ScienceDebate2008. The candidates simply punted the issues.

Shame really. The Franklin Institute’s good china was all laid out and the space made ready to host the debate, and several were hoping it might really happen… But it was politics as usual on all sides, with lots of silliness, and pandering to the much more powerful “Faith” constituency.

Or, as Bob Park put it in his excellent “What’s New” column of the 11th April:

NO SCIENCE DEBATE: CANDIDATES WILL DEBATE JESUS.

Excellent title! He goes on to say:
Continue reading ‘No Debate on Science’

Frank Common Sense

by
Clifford
on April 14, 2008
in science and science and society
. 5 Comments

Did you catch the discussion on NPR’s Science Friday just past? I was particularly pleased to hear some calm, thoughtful responses from someone who definitely knows his way around the issue, on a major broadcast. What issue? Whether or not we high energy physicists are carefully endangering planet earth (or even the whole universe) by switching on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) later this year (or whenever it is due to start collisions). You’ll recall the lawsuit, since I posted on it here (with links to other thoughts), and perhaps you even recall my April Fool post on the matter.

Well, Ira Flatow was talking to Frank Wilczek! It was a good, informed chat around the issues that also gave Frank a chance to explain a little about what the machine was really constructed for (since this seems to so easily fall out of these public discussions of black holes and extra dimensions and strangelets (interesting as they are), and to plug his book that is due to come out. Since it’ll almost certainly be a really interesting Continue reading ‘Frank Common Sense’

More Trouble for LHC?

by
Clifford
on April 1, 2008
in black holes, politics, science and science and society
. 8 Comments

[Update:- NB: This was an April Fool joke. -cvj]

CMS detector - New York TimesSome breaking news for a change. I’ve only heard snippets of this and so I’ll update later with more as I get it. That silliness that was in the news about two physicists pursuing a lawsuit against the Large Hadron Collider has suddenly become serious. (Image right: the CMS detector at the LHC, taken by Valerio Mezzanotti - from a NYT article about the LHC last year.)

Recall that the issue was that there would be the possibility of the experiment creating mini black holes that could gobble up the earth and that the CERN scientists have not done enough to demonstrate that this was not a safety issue. Of course, and has already been said in several places (see e.g., Phil’s general level post about the physics and the case here), this is utterly ill-conceived and in any case certainly not the way to go about things, but it seems that the legal route can be quite damaging for science, in the right hands.

What seems to have happened is this. Since the suit was filed in Hawaii, it falls under US Federal jurisdiction, and has been taken up as an emergency issue before the Supreme Court. Somehow the litigants got a hearing on this with the help of powerful friends who have what can only be thought of as another example of the anti-science agenda we’ve a lot of in various branches of the government in recent years.

The upshot is that the Supreme Court has announced today that they are requiring all Continue reading ‘More Trouble for LHC?’

Tales From The Industry XIX - Black Comedy

by
Clifford
on March 11, 2008
in Los Angeles, fun, humour, science and society, science in the media and television
. 4 Comments

Wow, a lot of time has passed since I thought I’d get around to posting about this. You’ll recall that I went to take part in the taping of a segment for Comedy Central some time ago. Well, later on I went to the taping of the full show in which it will appear, and it was an amusing and interesting experience.

Lewis Black on set of Root of All Evil

The show? Comedy Central, and in particular, Daily Show fans will be pleased to learn that Lewis Black finally has a show of his own, and it is called “The Root of All Evil”. The format is that he presides as a judge over a case examining which of two popular Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XIX - Black Comedy’

All Too Familiar

by
Clifford
on February 22, 2008
in minorities in science, science and society, women in science and work
. 21 Comments


xkcd 'How It Works' cartoon
xkcd: “How It Works”

Continue reading ‘All Too Familiar’

Stellar Basketball Physics

by
Clifford
on February 15, 2008
in humour, science and science and society
. 2 Comments

shaq on supernovae (from the onion)So the Onion’s gone and mixed some astrophysics with basketball. Headline:

“Shaq Terrified Of Phoenix Suns After Reading About Supernovas”

(Image on right also from the Onion.)
You can tell how it’s going to go from the title, although it’s rather amusing just how much stellar astrophysics they pour into the article (not even trying to disguise it much). Extract:

…new Phoenix Suns center Shaquille O’Neal admitted Monday that, upon reading about the phenomenon of massive stellar explosions popularly known as supernovas, he is now terrified of the entire organization.

(Wow… Shaq isn’t in LA any more? Huh. I’m so out of it. Update: Oh, yeah, I remember now. He went to Miami in 2004. Evidently I don’t follow the NBA.)

…and further:

Continue reading ‘Stellar Basketball Physics’

Science Debate 2008 - Closer to Reality

by
Clifford
on February 11, 2008
in energy, energy policy, environment, global warming, politics, science, science and society, science education and science in the media
. 4 Comments

So Chris and Sheril have announced the next step in the journey to a real debate about science issues of note that intersect with the current political sphere. And they’ve come a long way in a short time! Here’s some of what they said in a recent post:

ScienceDebate2008 is now co-sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academies, and the Council on Competitiveness. We were looking at venues, and finally settled on an offer from the Philadelphia-based Franklin Institute–named, of course, after one of this country’s first and greatest scientists. We can’t think of a more appropriate venue.

And guess what?! They’ve actually invited the candidates: Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Barack Obama.

So the next step is to get the event (they suggest April 18, 2008) taken seriously by Continue reading ‘Science Debate 2008 - Closer to Reality’

The Reply

by
Clifford
on January 31, 2008
in radio, science, science and society and space
. 2 Comments

Explorer 1 SpacecraftToday is the 50th anniversary of the day the USA replied to the world-changing Sputnik launch by the USSR almost four months earlier (see my post), as well as Sputnik 2 (carrying the dog Laika) a month after. In some sense, the space race began in earnest with this launch of the craft called Explorer.

A great thing about the Explorer 1 craft was that it even did some groundbreaking Continue reading ‘The Reply’

Science Communication

by
Clifford
on January 29, 2008
in politics, science, science and society, science education and science in the media
. 0 Comments

At the Science Blogging conference earlier this month, there was a very interesting discussion about communication of science, science and the media, and science in politics. It was led by Jennifer Jacquet of Shifting Baselines, and Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney (both of The Intersection), who each did a mini-presentation (Sheril and Chris doing a sort of tag-team double act, starting off with discussing Sciencedebate 2008, and moving into discussions of “framing” science, the separation of the cultures, and so forth - and of course, opportunities for bloggers). Happily there was a video made, and I’ve embedded it below (the quality is mixed, but overall Continue reading ‘Science Communication’

Planck Meets Fleming

by
Clifford
on January 25, 2008
in black people in science, entertainment, film, fun, movies, science and society, science in drama and science in the media
. 11 Comments

So yesterday at Pinewood Studios they announced the name of the upcoming second James Bond film in the new series that (excellently, in my opinion) re-envisions the Bond movie universe. Last year’s first one was “Casino Royale”, you may recall. Did you hear what the next one will be called?

Continue reading ‘Planck Meets Fleming’

Categorically Not! - Science Goes Hollywood

by
Clifford
on January 25, 2008
in Los Angeles, film, fun, humour, movies, science, science and society, science education, science in drama, science in the media and television
. 0 Comments

Reza Aslan at Categorically Not!The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday January 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 Reza Aslan at Categorically Not! - 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. (Above right and left: Reza Aslan speaking on the origin of various ideas in Religion at the event entitled “Beginnings” on 16th December, 2007. Click right one for larger view.)

The theme this month is Science Goes Hollywood. Here’s the description from K C Cole:

Despite our prejudices to the contrary, Hollywood and Science have a lot to say to each other. Take special effects: Nothing Disney dreams up can Continue reading ‘Categorically Not! - Science Goes Hollywood’

Put Yourself In Their Shoes

by
Clifford
on January 19, 2008
in Los Angeles, science and society and science in the media
. 2 Comments

alan alda and kc cole

Excellent evening on Wednesday night. As I expected, KC worked her magic and steered the conversation in many interesting directions, with Alan Alda turning out to be - not unexpectedly - quite the character. I suspect that it was recorded (on video) and so I will update this post or do a later post with a pointer to it later. Alda was swamped by people buying his book and getting is signed and so forth at the reception. It was great to see such a good attendance at this USC Visions and Voices event all about science and the arts - very much in the spirit of what this is all supposed to be about*.

  alan alda and kc cole  alan alda and kc cole  alan alda and kc cole

Among the many things of note that were said, one thing I liked a lot was the telling by Continue reading ‘Put Yourself In Their Shoes’

Alan Alda Chats With KC Cole

by
Clifford
on January 15, 2008
in Los Angeles, art, science, science and society, science in drama and science in the media
. 2 Comments

kc colealan alda scientific american frontiersTomorrow afternoon at 4:00pm there’s be an interesting conversation on campus for sure. It’ll be between the science writer and journalist KC Cole and the actor Alan Alda. He’s such an interesting person, and (among other things) currently presents Scientific American Frontiers.

KC’s always so good at steering these conversations, so while I’ve no idea what they’ll be talking Continue reading ‘Alan Alda Chats With KC Cole’

Physics and Whiskey

by
Clifford
on January 11, 2008
in food and drink, fun, humour, radio, science and society and science in the media
. 9 Comments

jameson irish whiskeyBeing a loyal fan of Scottish single malt whisky, I never thought I’d be blogging about Irish whiskey, but this is why we get out of bed in the morning - we seek the stuff we can’t guess*.

So I was going to point out to you an amusing distraction. The series of radio ads for Jameson Irish Whiskey that you can listen to here. There’s one featuring a physicist, you see, and a friend of mine sent me the link for that reason**. There’s the idea of attraction, and so gravity is brought in by the ad man trying to use the concept to sell the product, and the physicist is obviously not having it… a short bit of fun play between segments of some program on some station somewhere or another. I can see that they’d work rather well. Have a listen.

That was going to be it, until I found another - real - physics connection. Turns out that Guglielmo Marconi - he of the use of electromagnetic waves for telegraph communication, Nobel prize, and so forth - is the the key to the connection. Do you know what it is?

Continue reading ‘Physics and Whiskey’

Tales From The Industry XVI - Correlations Meetup and More

by
Clifford
on January 8, 2008
in Los Angeles, correlations, science, science and society, science education, science in the media and television
. 2 Comments

It all began over dinner on Thursday night, before the rains began. Some of us met up at Ciudad (a favourite place of mine to eat in downtown Los Angeles, primarily for the mojitos) and the began to get to know each other in person, as opposed to online. I’m talking about the Correlations bloggers, and members of the team who work on the entire Wired Science website (which is excellent, by the way) with which Correlations is embedded. I met most of the latter group at various KCET events (the first screening of episode 1, the wrap party a few weeks ago I never got around to blogging, etc). This however, was the first time I got to meet Sheril Kirshenbaum, although we’d got to know each other so well online I have to say that it sort of felt as though we’d already met. Co-blogger (and show producer) Damon Gambuto arrived a bit later - I’d met him before at the party. The other bloggers coming from out of town to the meeting, Tara Smith and Michael Tobis, I would meet the next day since Michael’s flight was coming in late, and Tara was not feeling well. Tamsin Gray, being stationed in Antarctica, was not going to attend. Of the show host co-bloggers, Chris Hardwick (who I’d already met at the wrap party) would be there next day too. Ziya Tong was away.

Here’s a shot of some of us chatting at dinner (see also Sheril’s thoughts on this here):

correlations meetup dinner

Damon Gambuto is second from left, and there’s Sheril Kirshenbaum and cvj on the right - click for larger view. There’s also Liz on the left, and Philip Dunn in the centre, both from New Media.

The main purpose of all of this from the bloggers perspective was simply to meet and Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XVI - Correlations Meetup and More’

Reflection

by
Clifford
on December 31, 2007
in science, science and society and science in the media
. 3 Comments

It’s time to do that other thing that people do at this time of year: Reflect upon the year that is coming to an end. People start doing highlight programs on the radio and tv, surveying the year of blog posts on blogs, and so forth. Also, various science editors start doing their “top science stories” of the year. They are usually smart enough not to try to rank them, but even so, I do find myself wondering about what makes it to the lists and what does not. I’m particularly curious as to the nature of the discussions that must have taken place in order to compile the list.

Of course, science does not work to a tidy calendar (even though that would be rather nice and neat for our funding agencies), and - more significantly - it is often very hard Continue reading ‘Reflection’

NSBP and NSHP

by
Clifford
on December 21, 2007
in black people in science, minorities in science, science, science and society and science education
. 2 Comments

nsbp and nshp conference logoI learned from Chanda Prescod-Weinstein* (an occasional commenter here) that it is time to register for the joint NSBP and NSHP (National Society of Black Physicists and National Society of Hispanic Physicists) conference. It’ll be in Washington DC, February 20th-24th. (Actually, it has been time to register, for some time, but I’m late to the party, as usual.)

Chanda’s been working on some of the organization, and she says on her blog (go there for more):

This year’s conference will feature a plenary on Cosmology and Quantum Gravity, organized by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and starring Abhay Ashtekar (Penn State), Lenny Susskind (Stanford), and Meg Urry (Yale).

Continue reading ‘NSBP and NSHP’

Political Science

by
Clifford
on December 10, 2007
in energy policy, environment, global warming, politics, science, science and society and science in the media
. 7 Comments

Ok, a sidestep into politics for a short, but important moment.

With all that’s going on with all the presidential debates and press conferences and other appearances, has anything struck you as a major topic (or class of topics) that is simply missing from the national discussion? A topic that affects our lives in so many ways, and helps shape our futures in a most profound manner?

I’m thinking of science. I’m thinking of it in all the forms in which it intersects with politics - where decisions made by the president involve policy directly related to science (climate change and stem cell research are two of the most obvious), scientific research (both basic and applied), safety and security issues (consider the EPA, Katrina and other natural disasters), resources (the ongoing and coming battles about water sources, for example, pollution and air quality go here too, as well as under other headings), and energy (well, take your pick of example issues there). There’s also science education, on which there ought to be coherent effort for many reasons Continue reading ‘Political Science’

Swept

by
Clifford
on December 6, 2007
in minorities in science, science, science and society, science education and women in science
. 20 Comments

Not a big surprise, but a notable event nonetheless - the top Siemens Mathematics, Science and Technology annual prizes were all taken by girls this year. From the New York Times*:

Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, both 17 and seniors at Plainview-Old Bethpage John F. Kennedy High School on Long Island, split the first prize — a $100,000 scholarship — in the team category for creating a molecule that helps block the reproduction of drug-resistant tuberculosis bacteria.

Isha Himani Jain, 16, a senior at Freedom High School in Bethlehem, Pa., placed first in the individual category for her studies of bone growth in zebra fish, whose tail fins grow in spurts, similar to the way children’s bones do. She will get a $100,000 scholarship.

Congratulations to them - and all the winners and finalists, male or female - for their achievements!!

On another note, I was reading the project descriptions of the rather well-resourced Continue reading ‘Swept’

Cosmic Holey Moley!

by
Clifford
on December 5, 2007
in science and society, science education, science in the media and television
. 2 Comments

A quick note of interest, particularly to those interested in these science outreach matters:

Last night’s “Cosmic Holes” episode on the History Channel (part of their new science series “The Universe” - see here and here) apparently had an unusually huge audience. Word must be getting around that the History Channel’s got this fun and informative new series, and it is spreading beyond their standard viewers it seems. Apparently the episode’s first showing at 9:00pm got well over a million viewers, which I’ve heard the Channel was rather pleased about.

Continue reading ‘Cosmic Holey Moley!’

Stem Cell Timeline

by
Clifford
on November 20, 2007
in biology, politics, science and science and society
. 0 Comments

wisconsin-madison image skin cellsNot surprisingly, there’s been a lot of interesting chatter about the recently announced stem cell research results I blogged about earlier. I did a longer blog post over on Correlations that might interest you (I managed to think of the pun for the title that I knew was in there somewhere, but could not manage it this morning over here). (Right: an image from the Wisconsin-Madison group. These are human skin cells.)

Mentioned there are two more NPR items I thought were of note:

Continue reading ‘Stem Cell Timeline’

Fourth IPCC Report

by
Clifford
on November 17, 2007
in energy, energy policy, environment, global warming, politics, science and science and society
. 0 Comments

Don’t forget to look at the latest IPCC report released today! Full details including helpful digests and summaries can be found here.

News reports and discussions can be found all over the place. (Update: there’s an NPR report, with audio, here.) A report on the BBC by Richard Black begins:

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has challenged governments to act on the findings of a major new report on climate change.

Launching the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he said real and affordable ways to deal with the problem existed.

The IPCC states that climate change is “unequivocal” and may bring “abrupt and irreversible” impacts.

Mr Ban urged politicians to respond at a UN climate change conference in Bali.

“Today the world’s scientists have spoken clearly and with one voice,” he said. “In Bali I expect the world’s policymakers to do the same.”

Continue reading ‘Fourth IPCC Report’

Climate Matters

by
Clifford
on November 15, 2007
in correlations, environment, global warming and science and society
. 1 Comment

There’s been some really excellent material over on Correlations. I recommend having a look. Among that, there’s been some very interesting posts about climate. The most urgent one is by Sheril, in which she reminds us about the behemoth, Cyclone Sidr, which is bearing down on Bangladesh right now, with potential human cost well beyond that of Katrina. One to watch.

The other posts I wanted to point to is the growing series of posts by Michael about climate science. People largely think of climate science in terms of the global warming arguments, but there’s a lot more to it than that. Michael’s trying to build an informative Continue reading ‘Climate Matters’

Tales From The Industry, XV - Coincident Science Bloggers

by
Clifford
on November 13, 2007
in Los Angeles, film, fun and science and society
. 12 Comments

Well, that was a bit of an odd day. Let me explain.

hollywood center studios

An email and then a call with a producer at Comedy Central last week led me to the (historic) Hollywood Center Studios today. I was to do an appearance in a little comedy “bit” that will be part of a show to air next year. They wanted scientists for a fun piece, but I won’t say what they were doing with us since I don’t know if they’d like it revealed before airing (probably not). It’s a new show too, with some very well known and smart comedians on it. I’ll tell you more when I can. All I can say is that it looks as Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry, XV - Coincident Science Bloggers’

Significant Calculations

by
Clifford
on November 13, 2007
in Los Angeles, science and society, science in drama and theatre
. 2 Comments

apollo - liberation

This is a scene from a play I just returned from seeing. It is a work in progress by Continue reading ‘Significant Calculations’

Tales From The Industry XIV - MANswers

by
Clifford
on November 11, 2007
in Los Angeles, entertainment, humour, science and society, science education, science in the media and television
. 17 Comments

Ok, ok. Since more than a few people have spotted it, I think it is best to (as they used to say in Hill Street Blues back in the 90s) “get out in front of this thing”.

You’ll recall (see list of related posts) many of the good things that I’ve talked about concerning the work various program makers are doing for the History Channel’s The Universe, and KCET is doing for PBS’ WIRED Science, Discovery’s Science Channel, and other science shows I’ve mentioned (and there are more I’ve not yet mentioned). I’ve shared with you some details about some of my own small role in some of these sorts of things so that you can see some of how these programmes come to be, including various shoots I’ve mentioned here and there, various behind-the-scenes activities, and my optimism about what seems to be a general renewed interest by program makers on various channels in making more and better science programs, working more closely with scientists in the process.

From all this you’ll be of the expectation that within a year or two, my dream that everybody on the street will be chatting about science topics/culture just as often as any other topic in our culture might be realized. Well, of course, that’s a bit hasty. The vast majority of stuff out there is just as it always was, and some efforts go rather wrong. Here’s an example:

You’ll remember a couple of fun shoots I did last year. I blogged them here and here. I had high hopes that they’d turn out to be part of something promising. I was (and am) willing to try to bring a little science flavouring to places where it is not normally found, to audiences who don’t normally seek out science programming. Who knows where that can lead? But… the show turned out to be, how shall I put it? Low on science and high on… other stuff, shall we say.

The show I’m talking about is on Spike TV and it is called MANswers. I always knew it was going to be close to the mark, but was willing to take the risk just in case it got a few people thinking about science for a second or two or more. My reasons? No Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XIV - MANswers’

’T Ain’t Natural

by
Clifford
on October 27, 2007
in Los Angeles, fun, music, science and society and television
. 3 Comments

Josh Ritter ConcertThe photos record scenes from an excellent use of the Los Angeles Natural History Museum’s large exhibition halls after hours: Live music. (They’re not super-great - I only had my phone with me.)

A friend took me as a guest to a filming of Josh Ritter and his band for a TV show. Lots of Lovely Bones everywhere*, stuffed animals, loud (but not too loud) good music (I’d not really listened to Ritter before - hey, not bad at all), and free martinis on tap (surprisingly not watered down!) from Grey Goose. How could I not go?

(You can see the exhibit hall (North American Mammals, I think) with the activity in the distance between the bones of Mr/Ms Triceratops here.)

If you’ve never been the the Natural History Museum here before and you are in LA, please go along. It’s really very good indeed. As an incentive, you can go to the new spider pavillion and wander around with live spiders everywhere. (What’s that? That’s not an incentive? I see…Well, there’s lots to see besides rubbing shoulders with spiders, from dinosaurs, mammals and birds to wonderful gemstones and minerals…) I’m thinking of going to check it out some time, and maybe report back here on the blog about it some time.

Josh Ritter Concert

This event is sort of typical of LA, in both good and bad ways. There are all these Continue reading ‘’T Ain’t Natural’

Tales From The Industry XIII - Magnetic Moments

by
Clifford
on October 23, 2007
in Los Angeles, cosmology, fun, science, science and society, science education, science in the media and television
. 3 Comments

[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

magnetism shoot

The strange object pictured above is a rather nice demonstration of the “field lines” around a bar magnet. It is not a great photo (all my fault), but the demo is great. The designers suspended the tiny bits of iron in oil, inside a sealed chamber, forming a block. There’s a little cylindrical hole through the centre of the block (but still outside the chamber) that allows you to put a bar magnet in. This makes for a demo far more exciting than any shake-it-up snow scene: You shake block and the iron filings are all over the oil in three dimensions, randomly arranged. You then insert the magnet. They slowly but determinedly arrange themselves into the familiar pattern, in three dimensions. It’s great. (Why didn’t they have these when I was growing up?! I might have gone into science… Oh, wait…)

I was looking around one of our demo labs last week for things to use to demonstrate some of the principal effects of magnetism. The above demonstration was one of the Continue reading ‘Tales From The Industry XIII - Magnetic Moments’

A Peace Prize for Science

by
Clifford
on October 12, 2007
in environment, politics, science and science and society
. 5 Comments

[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

This is just great!

From the Norwegian Nobel Committee (remember, this prize does not come from the Swedish Academy):

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2007 is to be shared, in two equal parts, between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Albert Arnold (Al) Gore Jr. for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change.

This is simply fantastic, since I see it as a major step that a peace prize has been given for work on a scientific issue that affects our lives so profoundly. The IPCC was tasked with sifting through all the science on the matter, and present a thoughtful set of reports to guide governments, other organisations and individuals on the issue. This is a huge and important task that has been deservedly recognised by the committee. (My Correlations colleague Michael Tobis has more thoughts here.)

It could not stop there though. We live in a society where it is not enough to make a scientific case, since there are people and organizations that will try to confuse the issue for their own personal gains, and -most dismayingly- the vast majority of people are not going to be swayed by scientific arguments that they will never read, or take the time to understand, or consider as not personally relevant to their lives. This is where Al Gore (and others) comes in. You can read some of my recent thoughts about Al Gore’s role in all this in an earlier post entitled The Man of Tomorrow?, and so I won’t repeat all of that here, but here are some extracts:

[…] I’ve been very heartened by the pace of change that has happened in a short time with regards to people talking about the environment, and (some) people beginning to do something about it. Not become activists of the sack-cloth wearing sort, but merely thinking about the small things that individuals can do here and there that correspond to large changes when you add up the effort of millions. To begin thinking about changes to lifestyle and business practices that might make a real difference.

[…] So what is responsible for this pleasant change, this marked increase in awareness in the populace? At least in the USA (the environment’s worst offender - although it is being challenged for this dubious position by China), whether you like it or not we must point to Al Gore as being one of the principal messengers who has got the debate going on the street and in people’s households. It would be nice to think that it was all (or mostly) about people -under their own steam- stopping and weighing the arguments from scientists and other thinkers that were already out there for many years, but that’s largely a fantasy. A lot of it has to do Continue reading ‘A Peace Prize for Science’

Too Many Events Today

by
Clifford
on October 8, 2007
in Los Angeles, science, science and society and science in the media
. 3 Comments

annenberg panelIn my fog of too many things to do, I forgot to tell you about this event, which happens today at 5:30. I only remembered this morning as I dug a slightly better than normal shirt (for the event) out of the laundry pile and started to iron it:

At USC’s Annenberg School of Communication:

“Does Science Get A Fair Shake in the Media?”

USC Annenberg’s School of Journalism and Scientific American presents a discussion with leading journalists and scholars to “examine all the elements that go into informing the public about the latest scientific discoveries and the challenges the media faces in getting the science right for a story. Guests include author and journalism professor K.C. Cole, astronomy and physics professor Clifford Johnson, biological sciences professor Michael Quick, Reuters biotechnology reporter Lisa Baertlein, and author and environmental journalist Marla Cone. Scientific American editor in chief John Rennie will moderate.

Reception follows discussion.

So that’s going to be great. I recommend it. Location and travel information here.
(I borrowed the picture above from their publicity site.)

I have a dilemma. On the one hand, we have an interesting colloquium today in the Continue reading ‘Too Many Events Today’

Not Following the Script

by
Clifford
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 i