Monthly Archives: November 2009

Help from the Bugs

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On NPR ’s morning edition the other day there was an interesting piece by Nell Greenfieldboyce about a lovely piece of research on the effects of various cultures of microbial organisms in our stomachs on how we extract nutrients from food. The key point is that what lives in our stomachs and how it interacts with what we eat is a key consideration in worrying about issues like nutrition, obesity, and other issues. I recommend listening to the audio of the piece, which you can find (along with a transcript if you prefer) here. (Actually, while searching for the audio for the story I found a related story by Robert Krulwich from almost exactly a year earlier. You can listen to that here.)

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

The Universe: Cool Cars, Hot Sand, and Fast Balls

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flows in death valleyYou may recall my mentioning a desert trip to shoot something for TV, some time back. One done at precisely the wrong time of year. And to Death Valley, one of the hottest places on earth, to boot. Well, I meant to mention that the episode of the History Channel’s The Universe that the shoot was for aired a week or two ago and it was really excellent. It was entitled “Liquid Universe” and it was a rather beautiful and thoroughly pleasant episode exploring the role of liquids in our universe, a matter not often raised in questions of astronomy except when it comes to matters of water from time to time. This was not about water per se, but rather the whole matter of material that flows and the role it plays in diverse areas of the solar system and perhaps the universe at large. I was using sand to demonstrate how sometimes there are surprising places where you can find fluid/liquid behaviour, and mentioned some of the new phases of matter found in the context, for example, of quarks and gluons at RHIC. (I’ve spoken about that here a number of times in the context of some of my research. See the archives.)

It was an excellent episode and another example of how one can take a topic under the “The Universe” heading and showcase lots of exciting science quite accessibly […] Click to continue reading this post →

Gloomy Sunday

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vancouver_boatsDespite the title, which is also the title of an utterly depressing but wonderful song that I love, which starts out: “Sunday is gloomy/my hours are slumberless/dearest the shadows/I live with are numberless/…” and wallows in further and darker gloom for the rest of the song until near the end, I mean gloomy here in a neutral way.

It applies not to my mood but to the skies over Vancouver on the Saturday and Sunday set aside for wandering and exploring. I actually found a lot of it quite refreshing (recall that we’ve not had much rain in LA all year) and managed to see several beautiful scenes made all the more lovely for the shades of grey provided by the rain and clouds. The scene with the boats above left is an example. Overall I had a great time exploring, and was shown some nice parts of the city by my hosts, Moshe Rozali and his family (thanks guys!).

The trip was a success, in that I had a lot of great conversations with various people about physics research matters, and also in terms of the main point of the trip which […] Click to continue reading this post →

Slaughter at the Podium

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debate_on_catholic_church1I simply insist that you take the time out to watch this video*. It is of a debate that took place on BBC television, the motion being “Is the Catholic church a force for good in the world?”. It was between Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry on one side (against) and Anne Widdecombe and Archbishop John Onaiyekan on the other (for). Dogma vs Reason, when it comes down to it. Now, it is one thing for the side that is in favour of the motion to be a bit lame compared to the duo they are up against, but it is really unfortunate that Anne Widdecombe was put up as the defender of the church as she has been so utterly arrogant and unpleasant in every appearance I have ever heard or seen her in, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Time Bandit

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dining_at_vijs_3Well, that was not altogether terrible, I gather, but I was so tired and a little bit out of sorts* when I started giving the talk that I was running very slowly. So by time I got to the end (even though I hit my right pace later on) I was some 15 minutes over. Ugh. People seemed to like it, but I definitely need to whittle out a few of the more superfluous slides (which I’d always intended to) and strike the intended pace I wanted to hit earlier than 3/4 of the way through the talk. My reward (besides some nice remarks at the end of the talk that sort of made my day) was a visit to another excellent restaurant for dinner, with some good company. The extraordinarily good Vij’s. The hour’s wait for the food was perfectly fine given the nibbles they bring you while you wait, and the food itself once you get it. Here’s a shot or two of some of the excellent food just after its arrival, and the empty dishes and satisfied hosts just after polishing it all off: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Remote Office

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I’m in remote office mode again. I’ve to give two colloquia while visiting two physics departments in Vancouver area over the next two days. (Subject matter will be essentially the same as the one I gave a month ago.) So tonight, I’m eating dinner at the splendid restaurant Banana Leaf not far from my hotel while reviewing the slides of my presentations on my pda (my iTouch dining_at_banana_leaf– I dump lots of files I want to read on it using an application called filemagnet. Very useful. See here. In this case I’m looking at the pdf output from the keynote presentation software I use. ) I’m making a few notes on changes I’ll make when I get back to my hotel. I’m also reviewing a few other documents that were sent to me for response, and tying off various loose ends here and there before the evening ends.

I sometimes worry that it might be considered rude that I’m apparently doing a bit of work and so not fully paying attention to the food, but I’m not too worried, really. Once the actual food arrives I’ve been quite appreciative of it, giving it my full […] Click to continue reading this post →

Brian Cox on Colbert

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brian_cox_colbertPhysicist Brian Cox had a bit of fun on Colbert a few nights back*. At Stephen Colbert’s prompting he mentions the nonsense about time travel and the Higgs boson, (which I decided not to blog since it was so frustratingly idiotic and had no business in, for example the science section of a national newspaper not the least because it just serves to confuse readers with even more nonsense about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) than they already have been) and then has a blast (it seems) discussing the importance of Special Relativity, [tex]E=mc^2[/tex], and why you should care, which is the subject of his new book with Jeff Forshaw.

Unfortunately he seems, at one point, to fall into the usual (high-horsed physicist) pattern of dismissing another legitimate science endeavour (food science in this case) as not science, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume it was just a joke made in the heat of the moment. He’s too smart and likeable a guy, (and a very good public spokesperson for science education by all accounts and past appearances), to be quite so dismissive. Riffing fast and furious with Colbert will no doubt sometimes produce such slips.

By the way (and Brian does not get this wrong, but does not get the chance to say it, and I’m sure he knows it) people often get left with the impression from press releases about the LHC (see related posts below for lots of LHC background) and other […] Click to continue reading this post →