So what is “Calamity Physics”? Can you help me please, perhaps with your own examples, real or imagined…? I’ve been finding piles of this book (click for larger view) in a number of places…such as in the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the weekend. Either way, it is … Click to continue reading this post
Ah yes, it is that time of year again. The LA Times book festival is on, starting today, and it was kicked off with the swanky Book Awards festival last night, followed by a reception. This all takes place on the UCLA campus, in Westwood. You might recall that I went last year and reported on it. [(Update: A version of the post is here.] (If in town, go to the LA Times website for more information and find your way over there either today or tomorrow!)
So I went to the Awards show again because:
(Above: MC for the night, PBS Newshour host Jim Lehrer, and the LA Times’ Kenneth Turan, on the set/stage. I really like the work of both of these guys…)
Spent most of the evening after the ceremony at the reception talking with LA Times (or related) people and their spouses. This was not my intention, but it was a happy occurrence, as they were all really interesting people – two science writers (Rosie Mestel and Alan Zarembo, who I’d not met before and who were just great to talk to) and also some more general columnists, such as (novellist and essayist) Meghan Daum and others whose names escape me now. K C Cole, my friend and USC colleague – and ex-LA Times science writer – was there for good conversation, as was Tom Siegfried. So it was just excellent to stand around and munch on the excellent food, drink the wine, and talk (and yes, sometimes gripe) a bit about science coverage and science writing. Briefly chatted with poet and author Michael Datcher (remember him from the point of view event?) and his wife as well, who told me about an upcoming event I’ll be mentioning later, I hope.
Rosie and I turned out to have some interesting points of commonality, which was a pleasant surprise, and so we talked about not just science and science-writing, but England, gardening, and the East/West divide in Los Angeles.
(Above: Available light (sorry) shot of Alan Zarembo dipping a bit of pineapple into the chocolate fountain. Meghan Daum and Rosie Mestel look on.)
Some friends and colleagues from USC were there in an official capacity as well, such […] Click to continue reading this post
I don’t care what they say – I’m excited!
Having consumed (a number of times) the several books worth of J. R. R. Tolkien material scraped together from his papers by his son Christopher Tolkien (they sit here on my shelves…. The Book of Lost Tales (I and II), the Lays of Beleriand, Sauron Defeated, Morgoth’s Ring, and so forth…), and thirsted for more, this is just excellent news:
From Reuters, in an article by Mike Collett-White, I read:
More than 30 years after his death, a “new” book by J.R.R. Tolkien goes on sale on Tuesday which may well be the author’s last complete work to be published posthumously.
Tolkien’s son and literary executor Christopher, now in his eighties, constructed “The Children of Hurin” from his father’s manuscripts, and said he tried to do so […] Click to continue reading this post
No, this is not a blog post of full disclosure or anything (sorry, but come back later), but just one to note* that -to my delight and amusement- Nick Evans’ free physics+sex+murder novel (that I told you about a while back) has now been pointed out in the Times Higher … Click to continue reading this post
The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 25th March. 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. There’s a new website showing past and upcoming events here. You can also have a look at some of the descriptions I did of some events in some earlier posts (such as here and here), and the description of some of the recent special ones on Point of View and Uncertainty that I organized with K. C. as USC campus events (here, here (with video) and here).
Here is a description from the poster for the upcoming programme: […]
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Now that’s a phrase to roll around in your head:
Spotted when on my rounds on Friday, walking around various old haunts in New York […] Click to continue reading this post
The Nominations have been announced, I learned from the blog LA Observed. Among them: Science and Technology nominees: • Joyce E. Chaplin for “The First Scientific American: Benjamin Franklin and the Pursuit of Genius” (Basic Books) • Ann Gibbons for “The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors” … Click to continue reading this post
Well, I got an email from my dear friend and collaborator Nick Evans on Tuesday, and in all the craziness of my work week, I forgot to do this post. In the email, he says:
We talked on a few occasions about the need for physics to meet popular culture… sooo.. over the last 2 years I’ve put together a novel about particle physics… it’s quite high level – aimed at A-level science students really… but hopefully it’s fun… I was really playing with mixing a novel and popular science… it’s mainly LHC science …[…] … we’ve done it as a web book Outreach project. [link here]
If it intrigues have a read…
So I’m passing it on to you. I’ve not found the time to read it, but I trust Nick enough to know that it is certainly worth a look. (To resolve a possible transatlantic confusion, I should mention that “A-level science students” in what he said does not refer to “grade A science students”. It refers to a specific subject level in the UK school system.)
Enjoy! (Come back and let us know what you think…)
-cvj
(See also blog comments by Nick’s former student, Jonathan Shock.)
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You learn something every day. I only allowed myself one shot at this, and did not go back to try to change it. I found that: Apparently, I am: Cordwainer Smith (Paul M.A. Linebarger) This inimitably unique storyteller created a future with so many deep layers of history that all … Click to continue reading this post
An American Physics Student in England has a nice post about physics resources online in the form of video. In addition to the resource list provided by Serkan Cabi, which he discusses, he provides some favourites of his own. Check out his list. I am pleased to see the ASTI … Click to continue reading this post
Well, yesterday I handed in my grade sheets for my courses, so I’ve finished all undergraduate teaching duties for the calendar year! Time now to turn to all those things that have been piling up waiting to be done. Eventually, this will mean research, but in between there are various tasks, from writing letters of recommendation to reviewing grants, fellowship applications, and more.
Mostly, I just want to disappear for a while. Leave the planet for a bit and go walkabout, like I did last year’s holiday season. That might happen, but I have to be partly available for a little while for a number of duties. Either way, I need to get out of the old mode, and into the more contemplative one. In order to begin the resetting, I decided to hide away from campus entirely and in the afternoon visit one of my other offices… the beach.
I had some errands to run out in Santa Monica, such as picking up my boots from that great boot repair place (where I’d dropped them off to get stretched a bit… the miracle repair I told you about before had resulted in them a bit stiff and slightly tighter on the slopes, and so I thought I’d try a stretching of a few days), and so this fit well. I figured I’d just stay there until the evening.
I have a love-hate relationship with Santa Monica. It sometimes annoys me a lot, and seems to be a place that is so squeaky clean that all the flavour of real life has been drained out of it, to be replaced by mostly smugness…. but at other times, I’m very happy with it, since it has a number of gems that I like a lot.
If the truth be told, one of the main reasons that I like to go over there is the tarts. […] Click to continue reading this post
There’s a lovely new book (or it sounds that way) out on Darwin. It’s a biography by David Quammen, called “The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution”. There was a very nice radio piece on it on NPR’s Morning Edition, on the segment by Robert Krulwich, with an interview with the author. I recommend it, as it is a very pleasant conversation that does not dumb everything down, for a change. From the […] Click to continue reading this post
