Odds and Ends

The little railway on the left is apparently the shortest rail journey in the world. So the sign proudly claims, anyway. I imagine they mean shortest for one carrying passengers, and that considerations of scale have been made (so that model railway that loops around your dining room table does not count). Whether it is the shortest or not, Angel’s Flight is very charming and quite a lovely, brief ride (shot of interior is below). I recommend visiting it if you get a chance. It’s in downtown Los Angeles. A reward at the end is Grand Central Market, so you can’t lose.

I’ve been quiet here on the blog for a few days. It has been an oddly busy time where on the one hand I’ve been trying to work on my project, and on the other I’ve been helping out with some other projects to do with various science based TV shows. Lots of phone calls, emails and various discussions have been keeping me busy there. I’ll try to tell you a bit more later, when I can. On a third hand, one of my students, Arnab Kundu defended his Ph.D. thesis (congratulations Arnab), which meant I had to break from being in sabbatical hiding and come into the department for a while. I was spotted by a number of colleagues, but I told each one “I was never here… you never saw me” while staring into their eyes in a way I have. I’m pretty sure that’ll work.

In my unnamed project, I’ve reach an interesting and telling stage, but I’ve been struggling to work properly on it due to the TV outreach stuff mentioned above, so in the coming week I want to be a little more protective of my work time to better focus on it. It has been interesting socially as well. Last night I was at an excellent party at some friends’ house, and had some nice chats with various people. In addition to very interesting discussions about various aspects of physics that some were curious about, explaining carefully to one person that being on sabbatical does not actually mean that I’m doing nothing for several months (!), and also trying to convince two people that learning to cook is actually very rewarding, enjoyable, and (perhaps surprisingly) easy, I had a longer chat with one of the hosts (I arrived before the party started to do this) about an idea for… another project. Not sure where I’ll fit this into the scheduling right now, but I’ll start trying to shape it a bit in my spare moments, with my friend’s help. It’s an outreach project, of sorts.

I’ve been telling-but-not-telling you about several projects, it would seem. I’m sorry if that is annoying. As it is already May (!) I realized yesterday that I can not only tell you about but show you the results of another project that I’d mentioned earlier and that had taken up a lot of time over the last several months. I’m going to leave it for the next post, however, since right now I’d rather like to pull on my hiking gear and get my Sunday started with a quick hike.

-cvj