So yesterday at Pinewood Studios they announced the name of the upcoming second James Bond film in the new series that (excellently, in my opinion) re-envisions the Bond movie universe. Last year’s first one was “Casino Royale”, you may recall. Did you hear what the next one will be called? […] Click to continue reading this post
Ok, ok. Since more than a few people have spotted it, I think it is best to (as they used to say in Hill Street Blues back in the 90s) “get out in front of this thing”.
You’ll recall (see list of related posts) many of the good things that I’ve talked about concerning the work various program makers are doing for the History Channel’s The Universe, and KCET is doing for PBS’ WIRED Science, Discovery’s Science Channel, and other science shows I’ve mentioned (and there are more I’ve not yet mentioned). I’ve shared with you some details about some of my own small role in some of these sorts of things so that you can see some of how these programmes come to be, including various shoots I’ve mentioned here and there, various behind-the-scenes activities, and my optimism about what seems to be a general renewed interest by program makers on various channels in making more and better science programs, working more closely with scientists in the process.
From all this you’ll be of the expectation that within a year or two, my dream that everybody on the street will be chatting about science topics/culture just as often as any other topic in our culture might be realized. Well, of course, that’s a bit hasty. The vast majority of stuff out there is just as it always was, and some efforts go rather wrong. Here’s an example:
You’ll remember a couple of fun shoots I did last year. I blogged them here and here. I had high hopes that they’d turn out to be part of something promising. I was (and am) willing to try to bring a little science flavouring to places where it is not normally found, to audiences who don’t normally seek out science programming. Who knows where that can lead? But… the show turned out to be, how shall I put it? Low on science and high on… other stuff, shall we say.
The show I’m talking about is on Spike TV and it is called MANswers. I always knew it was going to be close to the mark, but was willing to take the risk just in case it got a few people thinking about science for a second or two or more. My reasons? No […] Click to continue reading this post
I’ve met some striking writers in this town, but these are easily the best so far:
Writers on strike in Hollywood at the Sunset Gower Studios. (This is the Sunset Blvd entrance to parking. Remarkably, it was reported that earlier today at one of these entrances, someone on the production/editing staff deliberately ran over one of the striking writers in his car to gain access to the building.)
I’m sorry. It is a poor opening pun but I could not resist. I was rather excited this morning as I got an email from someone who’s working on a science documentary show I was reading a script for and the subject was “HELP!”. I was wondering if it had something to do with the strike. The show will air not too long from now and I began to […] Click to continue reading this post
For the record, I’m quite disturbed by this. It’s old news now, but the wonderful Powerpuff Girls:
…have been horribly re-imagined for the Japanese market: […] Click to continue reading this post
Here’s my promised report/diary on yesterday’s adventures in film-making.
6:45am Got up a bit earlier than perhaps I should have, given that I got to sleep at 1:00am. Spent a while reading a ton of email, and sending some more. Will be away from my regular professoring duties for the whole day, and so wanted to make sure the fort was held. Prepared some appropriate TV clothing (pretty much what I wear normally anyway – simple solid colours), and so forth. Attempted to beautify myself just a tad (with the usual…inconclusive results). Shower and so forth. Coffee and oatmeal, sprinkled with NPR… Read a bit of stuff on dates of historical background on material I’ll be talking about. I often forget that sort of thing, and its never ever needed whenever I do remind myself of it, so after a few minutes I decided not to bother. The core physics ideas are more important, ultimately. Spent time looking for rain gear (the micro-brolly, basically), since supposedly there’s going to be a rainstorm later (hurrah! finally!). Ready to go.
8:45am Fifteen minutes later than I intended to (how did that happen?), I set off to walk to the Sunset/Vermont Red Line subway station. Waved to a neighbour, and we exchanged pleasantries about how nice a day it was.
8:47am Walked past surprised neighbour back toward home…. briskly.
8:52am Riding the Brompton (the folding bike, for those of you not keeping up), I cycled off to the Sunset/Vermont station.
9:01am Arrive at said station on schedule (one minute late does not count in LA), and […] Click to continue reading this post
Ok. So I want to make this post timely, but it means that it will begin to let a cat out of the bag. We’ll see how much I can save for a later post as I write1.
So, as I walked to the subway this morning (yes, they have one in LA), I went through my little checklist of things I take on self-assigned assignments of this sort.
Notebook for scribbling: Check
Pen for scribbling: Check
Camera: Check
Phone (now with decent back-up camera): Check
Spare battery for camera: Check
Decent excuse/reason for being spectacularly late: Check
Water: Check
Good footwear for endless walking back and forth: Check
By now you get it. I’m either doing one of my parade reports, or perhaps a street fair/party, museum exhibit, or some random science fair, object or installation or other. Yes, but which? Well, apparently I was going to the future:
The scene: The Los Angeles Convention Center. The event: The NextFest, brought to […] Click to continue reading this post
For what? The story is here. Ok. Full disclosure – I was quite a Brian May fan as a teenager, and as a physicist in training while at Imperial College, London. Now I was going to do a long post about playing electric guitars, building electric guitars (because I was into electronics, physics and music, not because Brian May did it too),, analyzing his guitar solos, endless listening to Queen, endless teenage arguing with anyone who would engage about why he was a much better guitarist than [pick the flashy guitarist from some other rock group], probably permanently diminishing my hearing a bit at two huge Queen concerts, and maybe best of all …practicing music with my friends in the same room (it was said) over in Beit Quad that Brian used to use for practice in the days before Queen began! That was quite a thing for me back then. Here’s a little interview with him about his Imperial College days from the IC student newspaper Felix.
There would have been pictures of the guitars and so forth, a clever post title playing […] Click to continue reading this post
This is actually a bit exciting! While eating lunch at home, I’m reading the live updates* on the space shuttle’s preparations for re-entry, since it is going to land in California. It actually might fly overhead while supersonic and we’ll get a sonic boom.
It is currently doing its series of rolls (times are in EDT): […] Click to continue reading this post
The History Channel is diversifying a bit, and doing their first science show. It will be called “The Universe” and will premiere on Tuesday, May 29, 2007 at 9pm ET. It will be a series of 13 episodes. Here’s a blurb I found on the web:
It’s been fifty years since man first ventured into outer space. Now we have robots on Mars, telescopes capturing the birth of the stars and their collapse into black holes, and probes slamming into comets at hyperspeed. What we’ve learned has completely changed our understanding of the universe and our relationship with it – we once thought ourselves to be at the center, now we know we are a small, small spec. This epic series throws light on all the known universe and out to the edge of the unknown – what’s going on out there, what is our place, and is there life outside of Earth?
I like the idea of more TV channels (besides the usual suspects like PBS or Discovery) getting involved in making shows that have more science, so given the end that it serves (see the about page) -and because it is interesting and fun work- I was happy to help out when I got a call to do some interviews to camera for use in the show. (The other show I did some segments for last year -see here and here– turns out to be part of a (reportedly somewhat saucy) variety and comedy show, I’ve since heard! It will air on another channel in the Fall, and I’ll tell you more about it then. )
We recorded on Thursday. The original plan was to record in a house in the Hollywood Hills, with access to some Griffith Park backdrop to shoot some b-roll of me doing a bit of hiking, but the fire put a stop to that. Instead, we found another location – a house with a lovely garden overlooking the Topanga wilderness. (Actually, they wondered whether we could use my house and garden, but I decided that the garden was not ready for prime time yet, having just begun to come out of its Winter slump where there was hardly any rainfall… So it remains still just between me and you my dear blog readers, ok? In the end, it would not have worked anyway since on Thursday there was still a lot of activity from helicopters en route to patrolling the Griffith park embers… not good for filming!)
How did it go? Ok, it started well. There were two separate settings, for two separate […] Click to continue reading this post
So I don’t know whether you’ve noticed or not, but there’s been an awful lot of penguin movies (or movies with a big penguin component) recently. There’s yet another one to come out soon about surfing penguins. I’m slightly annoyed by it already, and I can’t really tell you why. It could turn out to be good, I suppose…
So I got to thinking that this could be theoretical physics’ big break! We can pitch our own penguin movie, since we have up our collective sleeve…
The penguin diagram!
This is a type of “Feynman diagram” describing how various particles interact with each other in a specific process. (More on Feynman diagrams here, for example.) What does it have to do with Penguins? Well, this picture I got from Wikipedia might help:
Apparently, John Ellis is responsible for their appearance in the literature, pushed along by Melissa Franklin. The usual suspects were involved too (drinks, a pub, darts, etc…) From the Wikipedia article here is the story, in (we’re told) John’s words:
[…] Click to continue reading this post
A most striking representative of an item from a completely different world than mine is the magazine Angeleno. It is among the most glossy of the glossy magazines I’ve ever seen. I’ve no really strong idea of who its intended readership is – this has been a mystery to me for so long, but by default it clearly can’t be someone like me (an academic), I decided, upon first seeing it. (You can read about the raison d’être of their parent company, Modern Luxury, here.) For some reason it arrives (for free although the cover price is $5.95) in my mailbox every month and I don’t know why. It is almost as though it’s a joke on the part of some prankster deity or other.
It has nevertheless done an excellent job of sneaking past my defenses. I don’t immediately throw it away when I receive it, and I find myself alternately annoyed and fascinated by it. Could this have been part of their plan all along?
It used to be that I was just plain annoyed when it would arrive – as much as 1/2 an inch thick, larger in square footage than most other magazines, highly airbrushed A-list star on the cover, and every page super glossy and shiny – and it would sit there for weeks until I’d find myself glancing inside it … just to confirm that I was justified in my righteous annoyance, you see. Sure enough, it would not disappoint. It has pieces devoted to ways of spending oodles of money on pointless stuff at extraordinary prices. There’s be the hot new treatments (“is Fraxel the new Botox?”). There’d be a gaudy diamond-encrusted PDA for your microscopic toy dog, that you […] Click to continue reading this post
Well, the video of the Point of View event of a couple of weeks ago is now available. Click here for streaming media. There’s a problem, however. While my opening off-the-cuff remarks are utterly unimportant, and so it is not a big deal that the audio of that is poor, … Click to continue reading this post
Here are some shots from my point of view of last night’s speakers putting their points of view about the theme “Point of View”. The event was a reasonable success, in that people seemed quite engaged, and lots
The show on television called “24” has an interesting format. It is sort of meant to be in real time, and so each episode – roughly an hour long, including advertisements – charts what took place in an hour of a particular day. A whole season is one day. A very harrowing day for the characters in the show, particularly agent Jack Bauer. They are part of an counter-terrorist unit (CTU) trying to save the America from various highly complicated terrorist plots. The terrorists are obsessed with Los Angeles, it seems, which is convenient given that the unit is based in Los Angeles. Having watched two or three seasons of the show now, I’ve also come to appreciate the fact that the terrorist plots hand over to more and more complex and dastardly ones as the show goes along through the day. And the “controlling mind” bad guy earlier in the day is hardly ever the worst and most dastardly person our heroes will meet. There’ll be a really really bad guy along later on with an even worse plan than the one before lunchtime, and so forth. Another reason that it’s lucky that they’re obsessed with Los Angeles, since there’s an excellent supply of theatre and television actors here to be cast in various partsa.
What I’ve really been hoping to see is an episode of the show when Jack Bauer is not saving America/LA. Instead, he’s just… chillin’. Imagine it now: […] Click to continue reading this post
The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 7th January. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with ocassional 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 website of past and upcoming events here. You can also have a look at two of the last two descriptions I did of some events here and here, and the description of a recent special one on Uncertainty that was held at the USC campus is here.
Here is K.C. Cole’s description of the upcoming programme:
“Movement: You can’t leave home without it. In fact, you can’t get anywhere without it—whether you’re trying to bring about political change, compose music, send a robot to Mars, or merely make your way across a room. You can’t even […] Click to continue reading this post
