Author Archives: Clifford

Science and Food!

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Yes, two of your favorite things, right?

I thought so. Well, consider signing up to my friend Amy Rowat’s special new course at UCLA on the subject. It will feature many fantastic chefs from some of the finest restaurants around the city and beyond, as well as some excellent food writers. The course will have a wealth of wonderful information (like at the answers to why carrots are sweeter in the Winter), and hands on practice to get involved in. I think the course is only open to UCLA students (who should be sure to register fast to get on the limited list), but there are four public events (I think you might have to register for those too, as space it limited). See the list of events here. I’ve mentioned Amy and her work here on the blog before, soho and have a look at the earlier post for more about her work at UCLA, and go here for more on the Rowat Lab. (See also a recent article featuring her lab’s work on food science in UCLA’s Prime magazine’s Winter 2012 edition.)

Now, even if you do not make it over to UCLA, you can check you the excellent […] Click to continue reading this post →

Looking Again at Los Angeles

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My friend and colleague the author Aimee Bender wrote a piece for AFAR magazine recently about the process of her rediscovering Los Angeles over the years. Seeing it from outside the car, on foot, on a bike, and on the bus. You know, the way you see it a lot here through your Asymptotia-tinged spectacles. It appears in the March/April issue, and you can see it here. (I must say, that British guy she runs into seems like hard work… geez…!)

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Storyboard Extract

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On Sunday night I needed to throw together an illustrative graphic to communicate some of the design I want on the film I mentioned earlier I’m working on.

There was a meeting the next morning, and so I wanted to pretty it all up and put some narrative text on the side, as part of a larger report. This is part of what I came up with. I’ll spare you the text, and the later images I’ll perhaps show later.

I’ve no explanation other than it is (if filmed) a sequence involving watching a hand […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tasty Salad

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Saw these on campus the other day. I’ve forgotten what these are called, but I am always impressed with them.

They are part of a set of ornamental plants that in another closely related universe would (along with their neighbors) perhaps feature more on our dinner plates than in gardens, I fancy. I must try to find their name at some point.

But the point here is that I’ve never really studied their flowers before… They’re amazing and unexpected in form!

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

A Snowflake on Campus

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Ever heard of the Mosely Snowflake Sponge? There is one being constructed on campus here at USC right now! (The image on the left is the poster for the event.) The fractal was discovered by engineer Jeannine Mosely, and she did a similar construction (of a different fractal, the Menger Sponge) some years ago out of folded business cards (see here for some great images!), and the same thing is being done here. You can learn more about the project here. Margaret Wertheim, of the Institute for Figuring, is running this project, with the help of Tyson Gaskill. Everyone is invited to join in. You can just show up and fold a few cubes as you pass by. I took a picture and made encouraging remarks on this visit. (My defense is that I’d just given an hour and a half presentation, it was getting late into the night, and I was tired.)

There’s Margaret and Tyson working on constructing it, alongside a colleague of theirs […] Click to continue reading this post →

Rock Star!

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Just got back from stalking the biggest rock star in town. It is the centerpiece (wrapped in white material for the trip to reduce damage) of what will be the Levitated Mass piece by Michael Heizer, at LACMA, and it has been trundled over the last ten days or so from Riverside to Los Angeles in little late night journey, and as I speak is heading to its resting place at LACMA down Wilshire Boulevard. The picture is it when it was passing USC (my place of work) at about 10:45pm Friday night, trundling down Figueroa. This $10 million operation (involving a huge entourage […] Click to continue reading this post →

Documenting

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Speaking of film projects involving science, I’m involved in two new ones I’ve been meaning to tell you about. I’m working on producing a short film about the Aspen Center for Physics, to be used in the upcoming 50th Anniversary celebrations. My partner in crime on this is Bob Melisso, who I’ve worked with before a number of times, and it’s already been interesting, and fun. I think that the final piece ought to be interesting at the very least. I’ve been trying to work in a very particular look and feel for the film that reflects something about the nature of the work that goes on at the center (both its content and how it is done), and so there’ll be lots of chalk, scribbling on boards, reflections on the creative process and how a place like the Aspen Center helps, and so on and so forth.

We’ll be shooting from time to time over the early and middle Spring, and doing the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Losing Control

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Have you heard about Losing Control? It is a film that’s being released this year with a lot of promise to be unusual, interesting, and sure to tackle an area that you don’t see covered much in the mainstream: the choices facing a young female scientist when it comes to her career and her personal life. I was introduced to Valerie Weiss, the writer/director/producer of the film not long ago in the context of a project I was doing concerning science and film. Valerie is an award-winning filmmaker who has a background as a research scientist, and so is in a great position to tackle such subject matter. I’m looking forward to the film a lot. I want to see more of this sort of thing, as you know from my writing here about science and scientists in the media. This is (I think) Valerie’s first feature film, so let’s hope it does well so that she can be encouraged to do more work on this sort of subject matter.

It’s going to start with limited releases in cities in the US such as New York, Sacramento, Tacoma, Boston, Los Angeles, and Tempe, and go on from there, so try […] Click to continue reading this post →

Random Party Snippet

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Got a bit of work done on The Project yesterday. Some pencilling, inking and coloring – all on one busy page. I don’t want to show you the whole thing, so here is a corner of one large panel (click for larger view).

There’s a party going on…

It is an interesting process, designing backgrounds… So here I’m thinking of what everyone is wearing, how to place them in the field of view, what colours they are wearing and so forth so as not to distract from the principals, how the wait staff might be dressed, what drinks they might be carrying, and so on and on.
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Obliging

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On the Gold line from Pasadena to downtown on Saturday I was looking to relax a bit after a long morning of work over a meeting I had with some colleagues. I got out my pencil and notepad and was happy to find that just over the way at the perfect distance (not to close, not too far) was a fellow who was looking out of the window and obligingly keeping his head more or less in the same orientation, or bringing it back to a similar position if he looked away from time to time. So I got some good looks and built the drawing on the right, over 20 minutes or so. As a bonus, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Has the Fat Lady Sung?

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The OPERA experiment has reported that they may have found the source of the timing discrepancy that produced the result that neutrinos moved apparently faster than light. It seems that there was a faulty connection that affected the timing measurements. Here’s a physics world article on the matter, along with a link to a CERN press release. (Note that there are some doubts related more directly to the GPS timing signals they used, which on their own would make for even faster neutrinos, but clearly there’s cause to really doubt their strong claim from back in the Fall and take a step back.)

You’ll recall the huge press storm about it last Fall, accompanied by all the usual hysteria about the establishment (this time, Einstein) being overturned. I blogged about it here, with the noncommittal title “No, Uh-uh, Nope, Nuh-uh”. They’ll be doing more experiments later in the year, as will a number of other groups, in order to solidify the results one way or another. It’s clear that most people have decided the whole business is over, and will turn away from it to other things. Some will be pleased, some annoyed, some confused, and so forth.

My hope is (as I discussed in the article I wrote back then) that this gets as much […] Click to continue reading this post →