Author Archives: Clifford

I Am Cranky

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will smith in i am legendSo I took my mum and my brother (passing through on his way to the CES) to the new Arclight (Sherman Oaks) to see “I Am Legend” last night. I’ll admit that it has some things going for it. Overall it is not the disaster one might expect, given the direction in which big-budget “science-fiction” projects like this headed by action stars usually go. Furthermore, it might be said to be a bit of progress to have the main character be a scientist, and one of African descent as well, although I’d have been more impressed to see the scientist character actually using the scientific method – inference, deduction, hypothesis testing. The placeholder for being a scientist here was still the usual – surround the character with fancy equipment, give them glasses and a lab coat, and get them saying a few sciencey-sounding things. Hollywood – please listen up: That’s not what science is!!

So it was basically an action movie with more than the usual puddle’s worth of emotional depth, for a change. Very good performances and so forth and more or less well put together. It did not have the feeling of being written by committee, and so forth. So worth a look.

On the other hand, one main thing has been bugging me all day. If the rabid infected […] Click to continue reading this post →

Physics World’s List

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This might be a bit late for some of you, but since it’s rather good I’ll mention it anyway. Recall that I was discussing various “top n of the year” lists that came out in various publications over the last few weeks. Well, I thought that the Physics World one, a list of twelve (one for each month), was rather nice. I saw it only recently*, and […] Click to continue reading this post →

Comets and Meteors for the New Year

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On Space.com, Joe Rao talks about comet Tuttle’s return, and reminds us that comet Holmes (see here and here) is still worth a look. In fact, he gives a little bit of history of Tuttle, which is worth a read.

He also tells us, in another story, about the Quadrantid meteor shower. The what? I hear you cry. Well:

The meteors are named after the obsolete constellation Quadrans Muralis, the Mural or Wall Quadrant (an astronomical instrument), depicted in some 19th-century star atlases roughly midway between the end of the Handle of the Big Dipper and the quadrilateral of stars marking the head of the constellation Draco. (The International Astronomical Union phased out Quadrans Muralis in 1922.)

(Cartoon shaking of fist… “Curse you, IAU!!!”) (Er…. remember Pluto.)

This is not the most well known of meteor showers, but this year it was set to have […] Click to continue reading this post →

A Retreat

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sketches for studyAs I get older and busier, I seem to increasingly value quiet spaces. I always loved them, but now they seem more vital to me than ever. So I seek them out constantly. It’s important to note that it is, as they say, all relative. My whole house is a quiet space in a quiet part of a neighbourhood, which is itself in a relatively quiet part of the city. Nevertheless, I’ve been monitoring my working patterns of late and noticed quite a bit of fragmentation, which bothers me a lot. Sure, a lot of it is self-inflicted (email, blogging, and so forth can always be managed better – that’s another issue to discuss), but some of it has to do with finding good spaces to work, depending upon the type of mood and type of work to hand.

I’ve lots of favourites, and many of them are cafes and bars around the city, some places on campus (my office is not high on that list though), the odd bench in a park here and there, and so forth. But those are mostly for working in my “public space” mode. Sometimes I want to work in a different mode, or sometimes I want to just stay […] Click to continue reading this post →

Chinese Checkers

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Discovered a new trick accidentally. Go into the wrong folder in your database of photos and stumble upon things you photographed a year ago to the day with the intention of blogging but never did.

A year ago today, after a meeting with my playwright collaborator Oliver Mayer to work on our play, I took some snaps of some old “Chinese Checkers”* boards on the wall. We were at the Brite Spot, a legendary cafe in Echo Park. I found them rather pleasant to look at, and wish I could have got a better angle to photograph them properly, but it was not practical. Anyway, here they are (click for a larger view):

      chinese checker sets at Brite Spot   chinese checker sets at Brite Spot […] Click to continue reading this post →

Anticipation

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mum's coconut bread

Well, for some of you, the title of the post should be “Frustration”, since I’ll get to try these (click for larger view) later when they cool down, and (sadly) I can’t share them with you in that way. But I thought I’d share the common and special memory of the warmth of baking smells… good thing to start the year off with. Especially if you’re somewhere a bit cold.

There’s been a lot of cooking and eating here over the last week and a half. I’ve done […] Click to continue reading this post →

Reflection

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It’s time to do that other thing that people do at this time of year: Reflect upon the year that is coming to an end. People start doing highlight programs on the radio and tv, surveying the year of blog posts on blogs, and so forth. Also, various science editors start doing their “top science stories” of the year. They are usually smart enough not to try to rank them, but even so, I do find myself wondering about what makes it to the lists and what does not. I’m particularly curious as to the nature of the discussions that must have taken place in order to compile the list.

Of course, science does not work to a tidy calendar (even though that would be rather nice and neat for our funding agencies), and – more significantly – it is often very hard […] Click to continue reading this post →

Small Person in the House

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shoesNo, I’ve not been keeping a low profile in the Far East for a month, as I did a couple of years ago. Nor have I been doing the same in the desert. Actually, I was pondering doing one of those, or something else along those lines, when my sister got in touch and said that she was going to visit me, along with our mum, and my sister’s 18 month old son. This news meant that I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with things over the last few weeks, as a lot of my spare time has been devoted to a project that needed to be accelerated (pictures later) so as to not have too much dust and chaos at the beginning of their visit, and since they arrived, well you can imagine…

They arrived, and it has been a great visit so far. All my plans to think hard about […] Click to continue reading this post →

Drawing Room

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While I’m on the subject of art and science, I should point out that QMUL’s David Berman told me about an exhibit of drawings by scientists on various themes in physics. He was looking for contributions too (although it may be too late now, I’m not sure). The website is here. He told me a while ago, and I apologize for neglecting to point it out to you sooner (for a while I was sure that I’d done a post on it, but cannot find one).

David said (back in October): […] Click to continue reading this post →

Essence

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Over on Correlations, I posted about the second of the two pieces I was considering as exhibits for some of my thoughts on science and art for Seed magazine. Recall that my first post on this – about the piece and text that I finally submitted for publication – was done a few weeks ago. The theme I brought out there was “transcendence”. For […] Click to continue reading this post →

Christmas – Birth and Death – Oscar Peterson

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Well, somewhere in the Holiday Season comes Christmas, and somewhere in there is some celebration of a new life. On the other hand, the great pianist Oscar Peterson died the day before Christmas Eve. (See an AP story/obituary here, for example.) At about 6:00pm on Christmas Eve, I usually pronounce it time to have the first strong drink of the evening, and declare Christmas as having begun (defying everyone else who seem to want to start it earlier every year) by playing Carols, and other relevant music, the Christmas tree having been erected. It was again so this year, and I dug out my only “Christmas CD” and put it on. The first track was – of course – the excellent version of Thad Jones’ “A Child is Born” , by Oscar Peterson. In order to share this with you, I thought I’d see if perhaps the man himself might be playing it somewhere on YouTube, but was unable to find it. However, someone else was playing the piece, styling it after and reproducing Oscar Peterson’s famous version, and so I give you – with warm wishes for Christmas and the New Year – “A Child is Born”, Oscar Peterson’s version, channeled through the playing of an unknown (to me) pianist. (Hang on for some actual Peterson in a mo’):



Oscar Peterson was simply amazing, and (especially, for me, as an accompanist to several singers I love) he brought me a huge amount of musical joy, and it is sad to […] Click to continue reading this post →