Monthly Archives: December 2007

Transcendence

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seed december 2007 coverI noticed last week that the December issue of the magazine Seed has the short piece I mentioned I was working on a while back. I actually completely forgot about it, and just looked at it on the newsstand on the off-chance, and there it was. It is part of a larger cover story by Jonah Lehrer about science and art (which I’ve not yet read), with a number of other scientists giving their take. I was asked to contribute by picking a piece of art, and writing 100 (they said) words about how it connects to my science, Or I could talk about how a piece might have inspired me, or some combination of those sorts of things showing the intersection between science and art. It took me a while to come up with a short answer to this many-faceted and interesting issue. I actually did two completely separate pieces, before later focusing on one and polishing up the words for the magazine. and I’ll put the latter here (below), and later in the week the other will appear (probably over on Correlations). I’ll use the text I have here as I submitted it… I have not checked to see if it is identical to what appeared in the magazine yet. Go along and look at the magazine for the contributions from others. It is very interesting to see what pieces people chose, and why. What would you choose?

Tell us in the comments.

My choice:

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1485

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1485 (Click for larger view.)

Leonardo da Vinci’s pencil study stunningly illustrates for me the key parallel […]

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Painterly

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Still utterly swamped by many things (more later), including setting the final exam for my electromagnetism course which is scheduled for 8:00am tomorrow, I must delay on several planned posts a bit more. With apologies, I leave you with a view I saw on a quick hike early this morning in Griffith Park. It’s certainly not a great photo, but it is relatively unusual. There’s the city, shrouded in early morning mist from middle ground to far, and a remarkable sky.

Los Angeles City Scape […] Click to continue reading this post →

Categorically Not! – Beginnings

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Bob Miller at Categorically Not!The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday December 16th (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. (Above right: The artist Bob Miller speaking at the event entitled “Really?” on 23rd April, 2006. He died recently on Oct. 28th 2007, and this week’s event is dedicated to him.)

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

Every thing (and every body) began sometime. Even matter, space and time have a history. So do music, religion and galaxies (and along with them, musicians, religious scholars and astronomers.) Of course, how things begin determines to a large extent how they evolve and go on to influence both human culture and the universe at large. So for this month’s Categorically Not, we’ll look at beginnings from three widely (and somewhat wildly) diverse perspectives.

categorically not! Beginnings Speakers

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Gell-Mann on Fundamental Law

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Got fifteen minutes? Murray Gell-Mann spoke at TED this year. For a fifteen minute talk, he really crammed in the essentials, and with good humour too. His subject? What we do in the search for the fundamental laws of nature, why we do it, and some of the key things that make it possible: Symmetry and beauty, and nature’s tendency to re-use a good idea again and again.

Insiders, outsiders, newcomers alike, I recommend having a look at the video. While I think he overemphasizes the beauty-over-experiment point a little bit at the beginning in a way that might be a bit misleading (Einstein and some others can get away with it, but not most of us), it’s a gem of a talk – great to see one of the legendary masters in action, at a widely accessible level:

murray gell-mann at TED […] Click to continue reading this post →

Many Meetings

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I’ve had a huge number of meetings and other activities going on in the last two weeks. A great deal of it involved things I’d love to blog about. But I’ve found myself rushing off to the next thing, eventually coming home, having some time to myself, and then falling into bed before I can summon the energy to type. So what to do?

One option is to spend the morning catching up on the blogging… but that won’t happen because I’ve decided to devote the entire day to an engaging project (not physics) that’s I’ll tell you about later.

So let’s see… I’ll end this post with a trio of pictures I was probably not supposed to take a couple fo nights ago (so have a wicked shiver down your spine from handling contraband goods), and leave you to guess what the occasion was. Daily Show fans might recognize the central figure, if not the set.

root of all evil […] Click to continue reading this post →

Nerdiometer

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I am nerdier than 87% of all people. Are you a nerd? Click here to find out! Well, I don’t like this whole “nerd” business, a term that’s somewhat about marginalizing people who actually care to devote themselves to something*, but I lightened up for a while to take this test**. As you can see from the score on the left, I get to keep my membership card. I might even get to sit on some committees in the club. But I don’t think I get to chair any, and certainly won’t be president. That’s probably a good thing.

Why do it? Some of the questions are just really funny! […] Click to continue reading this post →

Political Science

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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 […] Click to continue reading this post →

Hope Comes in Yellow and Green

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I decided to do Griffith Park for my Sunday morning hike today. It’s been a while – I’ve mostly been doing Runyon. I thought it would be nice to see how things were doing up there since I last went and saw them dramatically spraying the hydromulch to protect the ground from erosion until regrowth from the fire damage (see here and here). The (very) occasional rain we’ve had in the last couple of months seem to have begun something wonderful – there are hints of green everywhere. I saw this beautiful photograph at one point – which sort of says it all – only to find that my camera (which seems to be on its last legs these last few days) had died again. So I had to take it with my camera phone, and so it is a bit below par:

griffith park hope

I think this is wonderful (blurriness aside) – it has the striking image of the burned tree […] Click to continue reading this post →

Odd Direction For Compass

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AlethiometerOn Friday after a very busy week (the last teaching week of the semester), I decided to go to a 21+ screening at the Arclight. This splendid event is held in a special part of the Arclight complex which means that you can buy a cocktail (gin and tonic in my case, made with Tanqueray No. Ten) and wander into the movie theatre with it and relax in a comfy chair and watch a movie for two hours.

Hmm… Sounds good. Was good. Why don’t I do this every Friday?

What I saw was about multiple universes and particle physics. Oh, and fighting polar bears. […] Click to continue reading this post →

Swept

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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 […] Click to continue reading this post →

Southern California Strings Seminar

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michael gutperle talking at the first SCSS at USC, Sept. 2005The next regional string meeting is a one-day one at UCLA, organized by Michael Gutperle and Per Kraus. It’s going to be full of interesting talks and conversations, as usual. Please encourage your graduate students to come, especially, since special effort is made to make sure that each talk begins with a pedagogical portion to help non-experts in that subfield navigate and see the motivation. (Photo: Michael Gutperle talking at the first SCSS at USC, Sept. 2005; click for larger view.)

The speakers are: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Cosmic Holey Moley!

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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.
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The Universe Tomorrow

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Over on Correlations, I talked a bit about the History Channel’s science show “The Universe” (as I have here), and pointed out that the new season (season two) has already begun being broadcast. Here’s hoping that it’s a good series of programmes that will be enjoyable and informative. The show’s website is here.

Well, I’ve learned that the second episode, tomorrow’s (showing at 9:00pm), is one of those that i did some shooting for over the last two months at a number of places around LA. Rather than repeat, here’s what I said:

The next one, to air on Tuesday the 4th December, is called “Cosmic Holes” (yeah, I know), and the subject matter will be right on the edge of the known and the unknown, talking about black holes, white holes, and wormholes. While we know that the first are out there, the second two, while also solutions of Einstein’s General Relativity, are still theoretical constructs (and not without problems). The show explores some of the ideas and the prospects for the ideas surrounding

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