Category Archives: academia

One in the eye for Big Textbook?

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Well, back to teaching issues. Textbooks. I know the following is illegal, but I will admit to being hopeful that this will supply a much needed kick in the rear end for the “textbook industry”. (The very term makes me a bit ill sometimes.) In teaching the big courses at freshman or sophomore level to classes that have a couple of hundred students (broken into sections – we don’t like super huge classes here at USC) enrolled, it is hard not to notice that there’s something slightly insidious about aspects of the textbook game. Despite the fact that we are teaching subjects (Newtonian physics, thermodynamics and a brief bit of “modern physics” that is mostly from no later than 1905) at levels that have not significantly changed for over a century (in some parts, several centuries), the Industry (shall we call it “Big Textbook”?) keeps finding new excuses to come up with new editions. These editions get more and more expensive, and heavier and heavier to carry around. I don’t know why this is necessary, except to force new students to buy the books all over again.

Additionally, the new hook is to combine the book with an access code for further […] Click to continue reading this post →

Thoughts During Break Time

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Ah. I see that it’s been three days since my last confession. Gosh.

Well, it’s been a quiet weekend here in, er, my part of the universe. Good time for reflection and rest. I had a couple of posts I was going to do but in the end decided to break the pattern and change up my Saturday and Sunday, and the “change up” did not include the blog. So sorry about that.

I’m taking a break between an interesting meeting (that I will tell you about) and my office hour. The sun’s shining outside and it is not oppressively hot, surprisingly, so I’ll keep this short and poke my head out there again before my Physics 151 visitors arrive.

Some of the things on my mind: […] Click to continue reading this post →

On Good Ideas

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A commenter, slim potato, implicitly asked a really good question earlier. It was a comment on a post I did yesterday about my struggles with a computation I was working in a notebook working on. I gave an answer, but since I know that a lot of readers don’t read the comments, and because one of the missions of this blog is to give a window on what scientists such as myself do and (importantly) how we do it, I thought I’d elevate the comment and my response into a post. Feel free to add your own thoughts to it in the comments, either as a non-scientist, a scientist, a specialist from another field, or other.

slim wrote:

I would have assumed that most of your time when working on a paper was involved on catching good ideas, not getting muddled with conventions and calculations.

cvj wrote:

Hi,

Thanks. That’s a common misunderstanding of what we do. What makes a field of physical science like physics work is computations – all of that business with calculations (including checking that your computations conventions are internally consistent) is vital to the field.

Frankly, “Good Ideas” are a dime a dozen. Anyone in my field ought to be able to think of at least six of them before breakfast. What makes a good idea go […] Click to continue reading this post →

Where Many Paths and Errands Meet

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[Typed in a cafe on Tuesday at about 3:45pm. It’s just a rough collection of thoughts about various recent meetings and activities:]

Interesting day so far. One of those “my office is everywhere” days. I’m on the West side, in Santa Monica, where I’ve a number of errands to do. Also I get to work and have some meetings in between. I try very much to corral everything to one part of town so that I am not driving around too much, adding to the general junk that we all pour into the air without thinking. So I brought my bike with me to connect the dots that I intend to go between while in the area (a couple of cafes (coffee and work), the beach/boardwalk (lunch and work), a mechanic (they’re changing brakes on my car and diagnosing a Noise), one of the English shops (for tea supplies), an electronics store (to shop for memory), a grocery store, possibly a bookstore, possibly the public library (to work and ‘cos it’s just really nice)…).

While reading some notes by one of my students on a project we’re working on, and eating lunch down on the boardwalk/beach wall near the chess-players, I reached for my phone to send him a text with a question. As I did this I looked up at the passers-by and one of them was familiar! It was someone who used to be a postdoc in one of the other groups in the department, who used to share an office with the very student whose notes I was reading! Funny when that happens… We chatted for a while about things (such as career stuff concerning the interesting research life that can often found in various commercial settings), and he seemed interested in my […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tired

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It has been rather a tiring last several days. I’ve been focusing on writing a big report on various internal matters that my committee was charged to study for the whole academic year. The issues are rather large, and the solutions I was trying to present require not just cosmetic tinkering but major changes in the way things are done. So the key thing to get right in writing it is a tone that is critical of what there currently is in place while at the same time painting a picture of what could be in its stead, while also beginning to show how to get there. If you don’t balance all three just right, there’s no chance that anything will change, since either lots of people will just be pissed off that you trashed their system, or threatened the status quo, or they’ll agree but say there’s nothing that can be done, or they’ll say you have not really thought it through. I think I’ve managed to get the balance right.

It was due on Monday. On Sunday night, I had something down, but I did not really like […] Click to continue reading this post →

Up for Air

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early spring fig tree growthMorning cup of tea, and short reflection – coming up for air before diving back in…

It’s a bit of a mess here, time-wise. Just not enough hours in the day. Everything totally fragmented. Yesterday was grueling… here’s some of it:

Up at 5:30am, finding that I’m immediately thinking about a physics project for a bit (I fell asleep doing so, having been the whole evening in the Casbah drinking coffee and doing the same) before having to break off to get ready, get to office early to start an insanely busy day. Answer a ton of email, and deal with other online stuff, planning to ignore it for the whole rest of morning. Note that flimmaker/journalist friend B has sent me an email with a list of comments and suggested changes to my script for the Video. Got to discuss it with A, my collaborator in Chemistry on this. Whenever are we going to meet in the next few days? Sigh. (Must remember to do blog post about this new project, and how I ended up involved with the Chemistry department!)

After some dithering, decided to drive in, since the plan was to stay super-late and probably involve driving someone home.

Cold as I walk to the office from where I parked on the street. Mostly in my mind, and […] Click to continue reading this post →

DC Crossover

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I find myself in Washington DC for two and a half days, attending an interesting conference. It’s the annual meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists* (NSBP), and I’ve been invited to give a talk (which I gave a few hours ago, entitled “The Dynamics of Flavour in Gauge/Gravity duals”, with a focus on what we can learn about experiments and observations of strongly interacting nuclear systems using string theory. Post about that here). I’m here for more just the talk, however. I also want to talk – in the sense of converse. Basically, it is of interest to me to get a feeling for what’s going on with the issues of underrepresented minorities (in this case, people of African descent) in Physics. As you know, the numbers are vanishingly small, and as you also know from reading my writings, I am very interested in this issue, and of course, how to make it not an issue, by helping more people find their way into the field and have as much opportunity to do well as the next person.

    nsbp banquet nsbp banquet

(Scene from the opening banquet on Thursday night. The featured speaker (no, not on stage in photo) was 2006 Physics Nobel Laureate, John C. Mather. Click for larger.)

It has been years since I came to one of these, and I must say it is a real pleasure to be here. There seems to be a lot of contrast to how I remember things from the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Finally

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Well, it’s been a crazy week here in my corner of the universe. I’m still trying to find the time to break off from several things in order to update you on things from last week and the week before. Meanwhile, new things have this way of happening anyway, and sometimes I’d like to mention them too. So it is with teaching matters. Two Fridays ago was the last lecture of my electricity and magnetism class. We’d done magnetization, they’d waded through another couple of class worksheets I prepared for them on the topic, we’d remarked upon similarities and differences with respect to polarization in the electric case, and with a few hints about what phenomena were to come when they do electrodynamics (the second part of the course – we’d strictly been dealing with statics) a feeling of some sadness came over me as I said the last words of the class. I’d liked this group. They got it. I was going to take them out of their comfort zone and get them to work a bit harder and stretch themselves a bit harder, and the benefits (I hope) became apparent to them when they could see further, run faster, and jump higher (with respect to their abilities as physicists, I mean). (See some earlier thoughts on that here, as I prepared to start teaching the class.) They responded well by not whining about the extra effort required, but instead rolling up their sleeves and having a go, with good humour, a good sense of camaraderie, and remaining reasonably engaged and interactive right down to the very last lecture. They got it. I love it when that happens.

electricity and magnetism physics 408a final exam.

Monday of this week was really the end – they had their final exam (see photos above -[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Talk Talk

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[Post reconstructed after 25.10.07 hack]:

dbranesTwo Thursdays ago I went up to Santa Barbara to give a seminar. I had a great time, and it reminded me why it can be so much fun to go somewhere and visit for even a short time and do that. I got to catch up with several old friends, including Santa Barbara itself, where I lived for a number of years in the 90’s when I was a postdoc. I spent time chatting with the various people there before (at lunch) and after (individually) the seminar, learning about some of the research they’re doing, and also talking about other matters physics-wise and gossip-wise. I wish I’d had more time to talk since I did not get to talk to everyone I wanted to talk to, and not at as much length as I would have liked. (This was partly due to the fact that I spent the morning in my hotel room writing some of the slides for my talk. – I had a presentation the day before to focus on, along with a departmental visitor to host, and the day before I was also occupied. Don’t ask about any earlier than that – I never prepare new material that much in advance. Not because I don’t want to, but it just never happens… if I have more than a day or two, I will find that there’s other stuff I have to do.)

Anyway, a good time was had by all (I think). I can even post a picture of some of us at dinner in the evening after the talk. (Will update later with that, since it was downloaded to computer that’s not here.) We went to an old haunt of mine in downtown Santa Barbara – Roy’s. I’m pleased and surprised that it is still there and going strong, since it is the sort of highly individual restaurant that – since it is also reasonably priced – you’d expect to vanish from such a high value spot in town.

What was I talking about? Well, with three students (Tameem Albash, Veselin Filev, and Arnab Kundu), I’ve been involved in some fun work on some of the physics concerning […] Click to continue reading this post →

Not Following the Script

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Well, it was a weekend of an unexpected character. Fantastic outside, but I did not see as much of it as I’d have liked. I was working on a script, you see. It needed to be worked on immediately and at the last minute because the work of turning it into the final product that will get seen started this weekend, and so I wanted to make as many comments and suggestions as I could before it was too late. It’s science – don’t worry. Also it is rare to get to work on something that I know will get made (most things get shelved and never see the light of day), so that was sort of fun. I won’t tell you what it is (sorry) since I’m not actually a writer on the project, but I got the chance to look at the whole thing and make a lot of comments and suggestions, rephrasings, alternative lines, and so forth. All in a good cause. I think it will be out next year.

Yes, I know. “I was working on a script…” Sounds rather like I’ve finally caved in and succumbed to living in Los Angeles completely, working on a script like everyone else […] Click to continue reading this post →

Some of What Matters

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Below I’ve reproduced the text of the approximately 20 minutes of that which I presented at the What Matters to Me and Why event on Wednesday. I mentioned my preparations for it in a previous post. The event was well attended, in an excellent setting (a hidden campus cafe I’d somehow not known about before, Ground Zero). There were students, faculty, staff, alumni, and several others. I chose to give a structured address to start so as to make sure that I did not go on for too long, as I might in a more off-the-cuff delivery. I very much wanted to leave plenty of time to interact with the audience through their observations and questions. I delivered it partly from memory and partly from reading, and wanted it to have a bit of a feel of being read a story, rather than a formal speech. I don’t know how successful that was, but it was fun for me. I think I might try that approach again some time.

Overall, I think the event worked well, and I had a great time. A number of people (kindly) said at the end that they had a good time, and I hope everyone else did too!

___________________________________________________________________________________
Hello Everyone.

First let me say that it is an honour to be here. I’d like to thank everyone concerned for inviting me to speak in this series. I imagine that everyone starts their piece by saying that they struggled to find a way of saying What Matters to them and Why in a short time. So I won’t dwell on that, except to say that it’s especially hard when, the day before preparing, you realize that it’s not going to be that hour long presentation you were expecting to squeeze your essence into, but 20 minutes!

Some time ago, when people started mentioning that they’d seen that I was a guest in this event, and that they were looking forward to hearing what I will say (!), I’d respond that I too was curious about what I was going to say, and would also try to show up and find out. This was actually true. The other thing that I (half-)joked was […] Click to continue reading this post →

What Matters?

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palm flower frondsI’ll let you know.

Huh? Today, I’ve to think about two things I have to talk about over the next couple of days. I’ve to give a physics seminar on Thursday at UCSB, but more urgently, I have to think about What Matters To Me and Why. Why? This is because in the Spring I agreed to be one of the presenters of the four-times-a-semester USC event of the same title, hosted by the Center for Religious Life. This excellent series is run by Rabbi Susan Laemmle, the Dean of Religious Life, with a committee of students. Here’s how it is supposed to work (extract from their site):

At each WMMW session, the featured guest spends about twenty minutes addressing the topic “What Matters to Me and Why,” and then the floor is opened to informal dialogue for the remainder of the hour. Just as there is no one way to address the topic, so there will be no one direction in which dialogue will proceed. The student contact from the WMMW committee introduces the speaker and makes sure that the session goes forward in a professional yet friendly manner. An indirect purpose of WMMW is to maintain an arena in which people can talk about important, personally charged questions in an open, mutually respectful way.

A typical session is described here. This is going to be a tough one. Not because nothing matters to me but because everything seems to matter, and I cannot effectively rank these things to say what matters most in any way. I only learned yesterday that I only have about 20 minutes to say what it is that matters. This either makes things harder or easier, I can’t decide yet. Probably harder. Now I really have to think.

I jokingly thought a few months ago that I ought to just look at my last few blog posts the day before and just talk about what’s in those. What can I see… Well, there’s public transport, community and the environment, composting and gardening, science and television (and scientific honesty). Not bad. (Good thing I did not do that post on dating. Probably not a good topic for WMMW…) I can probably weave something out of those. Do I blog about those things by accident, or because there are some themes there that are being brought out? What are the big themes in those then? Random scattered thoughts follow…. […] Click to continue reading this post →

MacArthur Mashup

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The MacArthur Fellowships were announced today. These are particularly great, as it’s awarded across so many different fields, and I always learn about interesting work going on by reading the synopses at the website. Congratulations to all recipients!! Before I point to the list, I’d like to make a plea that will, of course, go unheeded.

Please please, people of the media, stop calling them “genius grants”. Just stop. By way of explanation, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the term just seems to strike the wrong tone about what these things should be about. It seems to me to push the recipients away as being “other” rather than encouraging us all to embrace the qualities that they are being encouraged to show by getting the fellowships. Ok, that’s the end of my plea.

Here’s a reminder of what the Fellowship is about (extract from their site): […] Click to continue reading this post →

New Installation

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Yesterday we saw the official “installation” of Howard Gillman the new Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. I find this term amusing in this context, as it sounds a bit like putting in a new lightbulb, or perhaps a new operating system (the latter is, I guess is closer to the truth). I sort of had to go since it represents the outcome of a lot of work I did last year on the search committee* that advised the Provost and President on their choices, and of course I have an interest in it as an ordinary faculty member of the College and of USC in general – The LAS is truly the core of USC, and we need the new Dean to do a good job of steering it forward in this (happily) continuing period USC’s steady and rapid progress on all fronts. So a good opening speech is seen as a good sign. It was good – much more than good actually – and everybody seemed to have genuinely good things to say afterwards (as we munched on the always excellent food served at these events – the other reason we go to them).

new dean installationRight: Not the most representative photo (click to enlarge), but you can see him mid-speech, with President Sample seated listening. Assembled is a lot of the faculty, mostly seated. All the other Deans from all the other units were present, as well as various vice-Presidents and so forth. They all precessed into the room, and members of USC Thornton School of Music’s choir sang the USC song, which was… quite a bit more pomp and circumstance than I was expecting. What you can’t see is that the room is about twice as big as the part you can see, there’s lots of faculty standing around in that part, with several tables of very tasty food and wine for all.

For the record, the fact that I thought that it was a good speech has nothing to do with […] Click to continue reading this post →