Author Archives: Clifford

Facing Up To Social Media

By | |
9 Comments

Ok. So here’s a little experiment. I’ve noticed (perhaps you have too) that everyone seems even busier than they did a couple of years ago, and furthermore, that facebook, twitter, and other such social networking sites have fragmented and otherwise mopped up some of the conversation that used to take place a lot on blogs. You might say that there’s nothing wrong with that since the conversations are still happening somewhere, but the problem with that is the fact that if parts of the conversation disappears behind the horizon of people’s facebook accounts (so that only their friends can see it) it takes away from a lot of what I think is the best spirit of an open blog – (1) anyone can join in, (2) the conversation is there on the web to be searched for and used as a resource later, and so on and so forth. Besides, in my opinion there’s a lot of fun chatter on facebook, etc, but it is mostly the exchange of (sometimes playful) short remarks about a status update or a picture of something. Conversations can be more than that, but I’ve found little of that there. (Of course, as we know, conversation can rapidly deteriorate on blogs as well, for a variety of reasons. As you know I’ve tried to steer clear of the shouty stuff here for that reason.)

Anyway, I’m not expecting a huge change as a result of this, but in an effort to try to connect thoughts expressed here to conversations inside facebook, I’m trying out […] Click to continue reading this post →

Poetry Slam!

By | | , ,
6 Comments

On Sunday evening (perhaps after a lovely day at the Festival of Books), come along to the Mt. Hollywood Underground for a fun evening of poetry, organized by Smart Gals in the Speakeasy series! There’ll be food, fun, and even celebrity (!) poetry judges, (plus me), on the panel. There’ll also be live music form the Red Maids. Here’s some of the description from their website:

L.A.’s intentionally lowbrow, literally underground literary salon returns! Now running as a seasonal series, Smart Gals’ Speakeasy celebrates National Poetry Month with its fourth annual Dead Poets Slam. Year one, the Suicide Poets stood down the Natural Death Poets by but a few points. Year two, the Men took on the Women. Year three pitted East Coast against West Coast. And now, Smart Gals’ Spring Speakeasy presents a fresh challenge, ripe for a country with new leadership: Citizens vs. Expatriates. Many and mythic are the artists, writers, and otherwise sensitive types who have fled these United States to seek creative support and more responsive international audiences. Recall Langston Hughes’ Parisian sojourns, Hemingway’s romance with Spain. Smart Gals will pit die-hard American denizens against those who chose to disembark. Our criteria? The poet in question must live abroad for no less than four years, the length of one presidential term. Can poet-of-the-plains Carl Sandburg defeat Eurocentric Gertrude Stein? When dead poets enter the slam ring, there is no sure victor.

Hosted by Noël Alumit (Letters to Montgomery Clift, Talking to the Moon), the Dead Poets Slam levels the creative playing field by forcing seasoned performers to throw down anonymously. […]

To find out who’s performing and judging (besides you in the crowd), go to the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Literary Festivities

By | | , , , , ,
1 Comment

ice sculpture with typewritersDon’t forget this weekend’s LA Times Festival of Books! It is always a pleasure to wander the huge festival and see what’s on offer, and simply be part of an enormous gathering of people in LA on the usually lovely weekend days. – Gathering in the name of books! How excellent that is!

Some bad news this year. You’ll recall that I’ve reported (here and here) on the Oscar-like awards ceremony for the book prizes, complete with fancy after-party. (With chocolate fountains, and ice sculptures with embedded typewriters, no less!) Well, they’re not doing it this year. I imagine its the hard financial times. You see… now it’s hitting home to me that there’s a crisis out there – no awards gala, and no chocolate fountains. However will I survive?

Well, the good news is that the awards continue (actually there is a private ceremony at the LA Times building… yes, for all I know if it is the usual affair, and perhaps they just don’t want the riff-raff any more) and the short lists are interesting once again. You can […] Click to continue reading this post →

I See Book People

By | | , , , , ,
4 Comments

The LA Times Festival of Books is coming up this weekend (see my upcoming post). In memory of the fun time I had at the first time I went to the accompanying awards ceremony in 2006, I’m reprinting a post I did over on CV that year, in which I reported on it. (Timestamp: April 30th, 2006 3:45 am.)

book awards LA Times Well, I’m recovering from an excellent hike up Mount Wilson with the USC Neurobiologists earlier today, so while I do that, I’ll tell you about last night. Recall that the LA Times Book Festival is happening this weekend.

I came closer to seeing a realization of one of those topsy-turvy scenarios I often fantasize about, where more “academic” pursuits, or at least those more associated with the life of the mind, are celebrated in full Hollywood fashion. (I envision it in the context of science and scientists….imagine an Oscar-Like awards ceremony for the year’s best science papers, watched by millions on TV in prime time… but this will do for a start.)

Yes, I went to my first LA Awards ceremony, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, and although I joked about Oscar analogies in a previous post, it actually was […] Click to continue reading this post →

Killing the Earth

By | | , , ,
1 Comment

el_mirage_shootIronically, the day after earth day, a TV program (part of the Naked Science series) entitled ‘How to Kill a Planet’ will air tonight (Thursday 23rd April) at 10pm on National Geographic Channel. It explores various scenarios for how the entire planet could be destroyed. Sensational, yes, but maybe an interesting way of exploring some interesting physics topics in an unusual way, assuming they don’t scare people unduly. I appear in it somewhere, I’m told. I’ll be talking about black holes, and may in fact be shown being swallowed by one, if I recall correctly what was planned. Some may rather enjoy that aspect! [Update: Phil’s on it too!]

You may recall me mentioning a shoot I did up near a dry lake (El Mirage) in the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Unintended Giggles

By | | , ,
16 Comments

Quick question:

So, has anyone else, while teaching a class, heard a breakout of schoolboy giggles behind them upon sketching the typical shape of the spatial intensity of the synchrotron radiation from a charged particle? You know, this:
[…]

As soon as I drew it and heard the giggles I knew what they were getting at. I had not anticipated it at all. It did not help that I drew it in the more exaggerated fashion that […] Click to continue reading this post →

Making Movies, 2

By | | , , , , , , ,
12 Comments

still_from_shoot_5_smallReally, I suppose this should be entitled “Making Movies, 1”, but I think that the earlier post “Call Me Cecil…” is morally the post of that title. Several days of insanity later (from worrying more about insurance, to locking in locations, worrying we would not get the HD cameras in time, trying to find a PA for the shoot, negotiating with various parties here and there about various things – in between the usual activities of physics professoring), the first big shoot day came. That was yesterday.

It was a day with record (for the date) heat (90+, in F), which was not helpful, but overall it was fun. On Thursday, in my location scout mode, I was to be found popping over once every hour or so to a particular location on campus and taking a snapshot. Why? I wanted to see where the sun would be at what time, so that we could figure out exactly when we could use the location, and for what shots. The sun […] Click to continue reading this post →

Categorically Not! – Doing Darwin Differently

By | | , , , , , , ,
Comments Off on Categorically Not! – Doing Darwin Differently

hyperbolic crochetThe next Categorically Not! is tomorrow, Sunday April 19th. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’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 above right is discussed in an earlier post here. The last paragraph of the description below made me think of it.)

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

Culture is Science

By | | , , ,
13 Comments

Well, on my way home on the bus just now I was the one responsible for the strange smell. Guilty as charged.

Let me explain.

This morning, a colleague, one of our teaching lab managers Joe, came by with a surprise gift. It was in a black bag, which I opened. Inside was a transparent bag with a quantity of mysterious looking goop in it. From it came the strong and very familiar smell of yeast. Along with it was a piece of paper with instructions.

yeast_cultureYes, it was/is a living yeast culture that Joe wanted to share with some friends. It was this that was with me in my bag on the bus just now. The idea is that you let it grow over ten days or so, and then you either make it all into a batch of bread, or you leave some over to make new cultures that you hand on to others after ten days and/or bake another batch of bread. What a remarkably unusual (these days) gift! (Thanks Joe!)

I’d actually been planning to start up my bread-making again (I used to do it a lot as a student, postdoc, and young professor-with-more-time-on-his-hands), and had […] Click to continue reading this post →

The University of Celebrity

By | | , , , ,
2 Comments

Marina Hyde at the Guardian wrote a hilarious article on the rise of celebrity spokespeople on matters of science and health, focusing on the claims of Madonna, Stella McCartney and Gwyneth Paltrow, concerning subjects such the healing powers of “energy injected” Kabbalah water, nuclear waste, “chemical-free” food and “biological foods (whatever those terms mean), among other things.

I recommend having a read of it, (here) as it is an amusing distraction. I’m a bit puzzled, however as to why she does not mention the efforts of their esteemed […] Click to continue reading this post →

Call Me Cecil…

By | | , , , , ,
15 Comments

…Well, just for a 24 hour period or so.

Why? Well, it’s just that one of the many projects I’ve not yet had time to report to you about is inching along, growing ever more involved, has been sucking up a huge amount of time recently, and is going to go really large this week.

What’s “going large”?

Ok, here goes. I’ve been taking a turn at being a filmmaker, on and off, for over a year now. I hope that the products of this will be coming to a theatre near you one day soon (probably your computer), but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What is it? Much more later, but I’ll just say now that it’s got science, and it is educational and – I hope – fun.

So far, what have I been doing? Writing a script, sketching storyboards, waving my arms about trying to explain the concept to actual filmmakers (you know, ones who […] Click to continue reading this post →