Author Archives: Clifford

Warmth

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griffith observatory at sunsetWarm evening light at Griffith, during my short evening hike last night. (Click for larger view.) The park was lovely, and of course the Griffith Observatory was looking wonderful in this warm light.

I went up to clear my head of a lot of things, and it was a good thing to do to rise up above the street level of the city for short while. I really just had the urge to storm up the hill at speed and get up there and look back over the city. Just for a little while. So it was not a hike so much as a run. I’m not a regular runner, but there are occasionally days when it suits me fine (assuming it is not on a hard flat surface).

It’s a pleasure to wander the grounds just in front of the Observatory and hear […] Click to continue reading this post →

They’re Back!

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Wow! Almost to the day (see last year’s post), they have returned, perhaps stronger than ever! I had two big waves of them this year, one about ten days to a fortnight ago, and another new one starting a couple of days ago. Here’s one:

flowers from my san pedro cactus 2008

Flower from my San Pedro cactus (trichocereus pachanoi). (Click for larger view.)

I love these flowers dearly for many reasons. First and foremost, they are beautiful, but there’s an additional enhancement of my love brought about by their short-lived nature. They’ll appear all of a sudden, somewhat unexpectedly, and last just one day […] Click to continue reading this post →

Sci-Fi Science

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I got this cute postcard from the people at Workaholic Productions. (Click for larger view.)sci-fi science poster You may recall a post I did some time ago about some things I was doing in a demo lab here at USC for a pilot for a new TV show. (Or, you may not. That’s what the archive is for – browse several of the Tales From The Industry” series here.) At the time I did not tell you about the show in detail, since I don’t like to reveal details of show ideas and so forth when things are still in development.

Anyway, the show is done. It’s a pilot, and so with your support, they may well get the go ahead to make more. So if you’re inclined, go and have a look. What is it about? Well, the idea is to start off with some standard (pulp) sci-fi scenario (alien invasion in this case) that you might see in a movie or tv show, and then through the course of the show examine aspects of what you see to investigate the science behind it. They have actual scientists (and engineers, since a lot of can be really about technology) come on and discuss things, explain science, do demonstrations, and so on and so forth.

This particular show, the pilot, has a lot of the standard alien invasion combat weaponry on display – shooting of ray guns, casting of lightning-bolt-like bursts of […] Click to continue reading this post →

Summer Reading: Fresh Air From Pollan

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I’ve been meaning to tell you more about Michael Pollan. I’ve been planning a post or two about Summer reading, and was going to discuss the books of Michael Pollan to kick off a possible series. That plan was hatched in the late Summer of 2007… then the Fall came, and then the Winter and Spring… then Summer of 2008… never got around to it. Drat. (Checking back, I see that I started the series by talking about Haruki Murakami, here. So I’ll call this part of the series too, even though it is not really Summer.)

Anyway, the good news is that Pollan was on Fresh Air (NPR) yesterday, and as usual he was excellent:

In an open letter to the next president, author Michael Pollan writes about the waning health of America’s food systems — and warns that “the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close.”

The future president’s food policies, says Pollan, will have a large impact on a wide range of issues, including national security, climate change, energy independence and health care.

Here’s the link to the audio. Before you rush off to that, let me continue what I was going to say, at least in brief.

Pollan has risen to prominence, justifiably, mostly as a result of his excellent book “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History Of Four Meals”. It is a delightful examination of the food industry, charting the route of much of the food that you eat […] Click to continue reading this post →

Categorically Not! – Entanglement

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The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday October 19th (tomorrow!). The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). Stirling Johnson at Categorically Not! September 14th 2008It’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. (Image on left is of bubble master Stirling Johnson, in action during the September 14th 2008 event on Bubbles.)

The theme this month is Entanglement. Here’s the description from K C Cole: […] Click to continue reading this post →

In Da House

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Click on the image to go over to a site* that examines the nature of a Palin Presidency. You’ll laugh and shudder at the same time. Once there (not here) be sure to drag your mouse all over the image, clicking when you can, and revisit some of them (like the door) since more than one thing can be found in some parts. Enjoy! (Notice what’s in the trash can…)

The Horror of Palin as President!

(Don’t forget, she’s such a great debater…)

-cvj

(*Thanks Samantha!)

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Chris Jordon on Our Cultural Anesthesia

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chris jordan at TED You may have noticed some of Chris Jordan’s work before, maybe not realizing what he’s up to. His work often looks like one thing (a rather beautiful abstract textured painting or photo), only to become something else entirely upon closer examination (the tiny elements making up the texture are paper cups, or mobile phones, for example), depicting some aspect of the vast quantities of some item or substance that we discard. His idea is to try to make […] Click to continue reading this post →

Monsters, Etc

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Well, it was quite a fascinating and fun Sunday afternoon, all in the spirit of art and community. And the story has a twist or two before the end.

Where do I start? Well, it was the second LA area Monster Drawing Rally (organized on LA by the Outpost for Contemporary Art), held over in Altadena. A friend of mine, artist and playwright Nancy Keystone, told me about it. Over four hours, many artists (Nancy included) would draw, in hour-long shifts, and then the results would be sold at $75 each. There’d be people looking on, general fun, food, beer, wine, and so forth. Of course I’d go! (As a bonus, there was even belly-dancing at one point. Go figure.)

It was rather excellent. There were artists of all sorts, doing a wide variety of things under the banner “drawing”, and lots of people to chat with and things to chat about. Nancy drew faces in brushed ink on pages of the phone book, which I thought was a lovely idea (unfortunately, I missed getting a shot of her in action), and there were people cutting up bits of paper and gluing, blowing things, measuring and calculating things. More on that latter later. (Click for larger views.)

scenes from the monster drawing rally 2008 scenes from the monster drawing rally 2008

It was another great community event, and I recognized faces of friends and strangers from other things I go to around the city, such as the farmer’s market, Categorically Not! events like this recent one, and the wonderful Urban Homestead Speakeasy organized by Christine Louise Berry that I reported on not long ago. My friends Marc Kamionkowski (Caltech) and Robert Caldwell (Dartmouth) (cosmologists/astrophysicists) showed up at some point, and it was great to see them and catch up a bit.

Every hour the artists changed over, finishing their work and another set of artists seat themselves and get to work. So it was quite a dynamic event. As the 5:00pm session […] Click to continue reading this post →

Saturday Calm

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october rosesWell, another super-busy week has gone by. Work has been crazy, life has been crazy, and so forth. It is so good to be able to sit here for a while on a sunny Saturday morning and reflect. I thought I’d take you with me on some of the reflections.

The Nobel prizes seemed to come up so much faster this year, and go by even more quickly. I’ve not had as much time to contemplate them as I’d have liked. It was certainly really good to see that the physics one was a celebration of some of the key ideas in my field (see here), of course, but I’d have liked to have had more chatter about all of them, as I usually try to do. It is good to learn more about other things – get out of one’s comfort zone. Two years ago while I was departmental colloquium organizer, I set aside one date to be a colloquium where the three science prizes were highlighted – “Who, What, Why?” There’s always going to be local faculty who can […] Click to continue reading this post →

Prize Watch

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Don’t forget to be looking out for the other Nobel Prizes announced this week. Monday saw the Physiology or Medicine Prize go to Harald zur Hausen for work on the human papilloma viruses (which cause cervical cancer), and to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for work on the human immunodeficiency virus. Announcement and more details here. Meanwhile, today’s Chemistry Prize was to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP. Details here.

No, no, no. The Chemistry prize was not for the discovery of a substance that’s just pretty and sparkly-glowy. (Although, you know… maybe that is a good reason on its […] Click to continue reading this post →

The 2008 Physics Nobel Prize

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The announcement has been made. It’s for spontaneously broken symmetry in particle physics and it is to Nambu (1/2 – “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”) and Kobayashi (1/4) and Maskawa (1/4) (- “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature”). It’s all about what might be better termed “hidden symmetries” in Nature, showing that the world (the structure of fundamental particle physics, specifically) is in fact much simpler if looked at in the right way. It is a powerful technique that does not just propose what the hidden patterns (symmetries) are, but tells you what the consequences of those patterns are in the form of predictions such that physicists can go out and measure those predictions and verify the existence of those symmetries. In some sense, this type of approach is the driving force behind a lot of fundamental particle physics these days – finding the hidden, simpler structure that lurks under the surface.

Here’s the announcement:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

An Accurate Summary

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I am, as you have noticed, somewhat averse to writing the political rants you find on a number of the science-oriented blogs you might frequent. As I’ve said before, I try to maintain a place you can visit to get away from the shouty nonsense (or the naive I-drunk-the-KoolAid hero-varnishing for that matter)… but this is hard to resist. Basically, I find myself a bit depressed that things have fallen so far in terms of presidential level politics in this country that a candidate for vice-president, in maybe the most watched debate of the season, can (a) avoid answering questions, (b) explicitly tell the moderator that they are not going to answer the questions, (c) dissolve into obviously prepared talking points when faced with difficult questions, (d) wink repulsively at the TV camera in an obvious attempt to appear likeable, and (e) make up random stuff so as to get their opponent to waste time denying it, and be declared by everyone as having done well in the debate. I did not think that we could sink lower than Bush the Younger in terms of appallingly bad candidates (who nevertheless do well in this climate), but I think I was wrong. Ok. That’s all I’m saying. I was pleased to see* a precise summary of my thoughts on Sarah Palin’s performance and so I’ll leave you with it, for your amusement (see a post accompanying it here):


sarah palin debate flowchart

-cvj

*Thanks Nick W! Click to continue reading this post →