Sketches while Zonked

Once again I find myself in the position of having far more to tell you about than I have either time or energy for – and so much of it is really good!!

I was supposed to tell you about the first of the Nobel Prize lunches that I helped put on last Thursday… Never got to blogging it, and now the second one finished an hour ago. The whole business was quite a success, I am happy to say. I’ll maybe come back to say some more… But I’m zonked right now with tiredness. Super-long day that started early, and I sort of started off tired to begin with. I’m sitting on the bus letting it drag me toward home… From the bus stop I will wheel the bike home because it has an inexplicable medium-slow puncture, and I’m too tired to ride anyway.

What other things have I not told you about?

Well, on Friday I went along to another wonderful event. The Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities had Josh Kuhn give a talk in their fortnightly luncheon at the USC campus. It was about Mexican music in Los Angeles. It was a wonderful and eye-opening window into that world that is hidden to so many Angelenos while being right in our midst… and being so much of the future (and in terms of popularity, it is already a larger force than the so-called mainstream music). As Josh put it, it is just thought of as “gardener music” by many. He gave a marvellous talk on the raw culture, the history, the current, the politics, the border issues, the social statements, the radio stations, the communication between family members on either side of the border, the commerce, and of course… the music itself, both the good and the bad. Didn’t blog that either. Check out this site that talks about his excellent work in the Popular Music Project.

Then there was the showing of the film of A. S. Byatt’s Angels and Insects (the Wednesday night) that was in the College Commons series, and what I thought of it (excellent!)…

Then there was A. S. Byatt herself, talking on Monday just past, and telling you how much I really enjoyed that! She was really wonderful and engaging, in fact. So much was said that was so wonderful… I will not do it justice if I try to describe the details. Should I try? Not sure… Perhaps I will at least mention some snippets later…

There was the visit (Tuesday into Wednesday) of one of my favourite physicists working today – Joe Polchinski, one of my key mentors from my postdoc years – to have dinner and give a seminar (in that order)… Have not blogged that…

Then there was today’s College Commons event, the second of the Nobel Prize lunches… Excellent.

Then there’s last week’s midterm for my graduate Electromagnetism class. I should maybe blog about why everybody failed it (essentially) and what I was trying to do there… And why I would set it the same way all over again – It was a wake up call to a smart and fun group of students to get them to reach higher, beyond their comfort zone. (They probably just hate me as a result. Oh well.)

There was the Coen brothers movie “A Serious Man” and what I thought of that (just plain brilliant – and it was great to see what I’ve been asking a lot on the blog and elsewhere to see more of: a film where a character being a scientist is almost entirely incidental (just as for other careers in characters), and not a major plot point) …and so on and so forth.

But I am tired and my bus stop is here and I think I am just going to go and get a fro-yo at Pinkberry before walking home…

-cvj

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