Well, here’s a bit of news. For one reason or another, I have been invited to a preview, later this month, of the soon-to-be-reopened Griffith Observatory, and so will get to see it before it opens to the very general public. (Library photos, by E. C. Krupp, by the way.) I will try my best to bring you a full report on the splendiforous contents… assuming they […] Click to continue reading this post
COBE is the experiment that really blazed the trail for all the wonderful physics that was to come from WMAP, and various other experiments such as Boomerang. And Planck is about to fly as well, giving even more precise information about our universe.
I was an undergraduate when this was announced. [Update: Oops…not quite: I had just started graduate school. Thanks Chad!] It was a wonderful feeling that all of us students had, partly gleaned from the feelings of our lecturers, I suspect. The thing that struck us as most appealing (I think) was the idea that the black body radiation spectrum (click on the image on the right for larger) that we’d been learning about in the abstract, during lectures, was sort of “out there”, writ large…. as large as can be in fact, on the whole universe! It’s always good to learn that physics -or any field- is still alive, especially when you’re still on the cusp of making a career in it. […] Click to continue reading this post
I’ve previously mentioned examples of the manipulation or suppression of scientific information by organisations such as the Bush Administration. See for example a recent post on hurricanes and global warming. Various scientists have made it their business to speak out against these types of wrongs, either as individuals in the line of fire, as individuals noticing it in the news and blogging about it to as many as care to read, and as part of organisations here and abroad.
Well I’d like to point out a new organisation I heard about* called “Scientists and Engineers for America”, and I am pleased to share with you that their website says:
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You’ve possibly read about my excitement about the long-awaited Expo line, connecting downtown to USC and the Science and Natural History Museum, and then connecting out to Culver City, and ultimately to Venice. I’ve blogged this here and here. They broke ground on the project two days ago. See here and here. Here’s a picture (yes, construction workers wear business suits in LA. They are very image-conscious here, and you never know when a casting director might be looking):
I am truly amazed every day by the small percentage of people who live and work in LA who actually know about this major breakthrough – the very existence of the plans for the line, never mind its approval.. It is as though I live in a different city…. Anyway, conversations are going on in the various direcly affected communities about the design of the tations, the business that will sprout up around them, the best way to include bike lanes along the projects, and the routing of the cars that will do doubt still have priority and therefore compromise the efficiency of the entire project as happened with the Gold Line. Join in these conversations if you live and/or work in the city.
There are some significant new developments. […] Click to continue reading this post
As mentioned before, I am really excited about the re-opening of the Griffith Park Observatory. See this earlier post. [Update: See post about my viisit here.] [Further Update: After reading the rest of the post, be sure to read the comments (starting here) for some commentary on the planetarium show … Click to continue reading this post
Anton Kapustin, yesterday, in the middle of what he called (not seriously) “the scary statement” of the Geometric Langlands duality…. Part of the audience, receiving the news…. The SCSS is going well. More later. Must go get my bus now so that I can start the Saturday session… -cvj
Would be a nice name in an astronomical context too, wouldn’t it? Well, this time it is a shot from the garden. The roses just never seem to stop giving… -cvj
In the continued public discussion of the treatment of Yau’s reputation by the New Yorker article (by Sylvia Nasar and David Gruber), to which I earlier referred (see here, and see the post about Yau’s response here), there has been a recent significant development. I don’t mean the press conference of last week, held by Yau’s entourage (…did anyone see that? I could not log on… there is archived video avaialble here. I still can’t view it…reports are welcome).
No, I’m talking about the public letter attributed to Richard Hamilton, the mathematician at Columbia University […] Click to continue reading this post
This is the Bush Administration’s war on science, I mean. There’s lots we don’t hear about, I’m sure, but there has been a new discussion ignited by an article in Nature yesterday. I found this article on Associated Press by Randolph E. Schmidt. Seems that there was a report being prepared at NOAA (National Oceanographic and Atmospherica Administration) about hurricanes:
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This may well be the best news I’ll ever give on this blog- if you love cats (like I do), and if you are allergic to them (like many are). It seems that the first commercially available hypoallergenic cat is now being shipped (or whatever you do to get new pets to customers). I learned from the journal Nature that […] Click to continue reading this post
Saturday afternoon, I spent a pleasant couple of hours in Burbank. You can step off the street into the Sidewalk Studio Theatre, and there you are… in one of the tiniest of theatre spaces just behind the door to the street. Who knew? The occasion was the reading of the … Click to continue reading this post
Well, before disappearing into a long session of thinking about some funny behaviour my strings are up to (more later) I’d like to do a quick report on the departmental colloquium that I went to just now. We had Gary Zank, the Director of the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics of the UC system (he’s based out of UCR) give us a talk entitled: “Particle Acceleration in Cosmic Plasmas”, and it was quite fascinating (and very well presented).
It is all about the physics of cosmic rays […] Click to continue reading this post
Did you catch Clinton on the Daily Show last week? It was nice. Good humoured. Nice to hear him chat about his initiatives, and nice to hear him still with enough footwork to avoid the “will Hilary run?” questions artfully.
But did you catch him on the weekend, interviewed by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday? I did not, since I’ve largely given up on TV news and related programs. The signal to noise ratio is just terrible. But this was good! The news is running all around the web. Apparently he was full of fire in response to questions about the hunt for Bin Laden and others on his watch. Here’s part of a transcript […] Click to continue reading this post
These tiny tomatoes are a beautiful yellow. I’m actually more captivated by their shape, though. They remind me of the large yellow/orange butternut squashes an order of magnitude or more larger. I’m going to harvest these guys soon, but it is a bit sad, because they look so lovely on … Click to continue reading this post
Chile de Arbol: I love these little trees’ splash of colour. And of course, the products are very tasty! -cvj
