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Category Archives: fun
Morning Jigsaw…
Before (upon finding no instructions but the picture on the box)…
After (once it was clear all the screws were the same size, so no serious assembly mistakes were possible)… […] Click to continue reading this post
Festival Panel
Don’t forget that this weekend is the fantastic LA Times Festival of Books! See my earlier post. Actually, I’ll be on a panel at 3:00pm in Wallis Annenberg Hall entitled “Grasping the Ineffable: On Science and Health”, with Pat Levitt and Elyn Saks, chaired by the Science writer KC Cole. I’ve no idea where the conversation is going to go, but I hope it’ll be fun and interesting! (See the whole schedule here.)
Maybe see you there!
Festival of Books!
(Click for larger view of 2010 Festival “What are you reading?” wall.)
So the Festival of Books is 18-19th April this year. If you’re in or near LA, I hope you’re going! It’s free, it’s huge (the largest book festival in the USA) and also huge fun! They’ve announced the schedule of events and the dates on which you can snag (free) tickets for various indoor panels and appearances since they are very popular, as usual. So check out the panels, appearances, and performances here. (Check out several of my past posts on the Festival here. Note also that the festival is on the USC campus which is easy to get to using great public transport links if you don’t want to deal with traffic and parking.)
Note also that the shortlist for the 2014 LA Times Book Prizes was announced (a while back – I forgot to post about it) and it is here. I always find it interesting… for a start, it is a great list of reading suggestions!
By the way, apparently I’m officially an author – not just a guy who writes from time to time – an author. Why? Well, I’m listed as one on the schedule site. I’ll be on one of the author panels! It is moderated by KC Cole, and I’ll be joining […] Click to continue reading this post
Nerd-Off Results
So I’m supposed to be writing 20 slides for a colloquium so let me see if I get this right really fast:- First round, the Koch Brothers bested the Justice League and Ultron was beaten up by Inspector Gadget meanwhile Ice Cube trumped Mr. Rogers and Stephen Hawking battled Charles Darwin but the audience loved them so much that they were asked to team up for the next round (before which Jon Snow did standup in the break) and in which they lost to Inspector Gadget who […] Click to continue reading this post
Nerd Judgement
I’ve judged Poetry battles a number of times, essay competitions, art displays… but never Nerd-offs. Until tonight. Come to the Tournament of Nerds around midnight tonight at Upright Citizen’s Brigade. I’ll be one of the guest judges. I’ve no idea what I’m supposed to do, and my core “nerd” and … Click to continue reading this post
Big Draw LA
The Big Draw LA event downtown today (in Grand Park) was a lot of fun! There were all sort of stations of activity, and lots of people were jointing in with drawing in various media, including making masks (so drawings and cut-outs) and making drawings on the concrete plaza area using strips of tape, which I thought was rather clever. (I forgot to photograph any of those, but look on twitter – and I presume instagram – under #thebigdrawla for things people have been posting.) One of the most interesting things was the construction made of drawings that people did on pieces of slate that lock together to make a larger structure. Have a look in the pictures below (click thumbnails for larger views). There were several, but maybe still not enough adults involved, in my opinion (at least when I went by). Perhaps this was due to a “I can’t draw and it is too late for me, but there is hope for the children” line of reasoning? Bad reasoning – everyone can draw! Join in, all ages. There are events all around the city (see links below).
The pursuit that had the highest proportion of adults was the costumed figure […] Click to continue reading this post
On the Road, with Whiskey…
I’m on the road. I gave a seminar at the University of Michigan yesterday, and spent the working day chatting with various physicists at the department there, exchanging ideas, catching up on what people are up to, etc. The seminar itself went ok. I’ve been talking about extended gravitational thermodynamics, the subject of all my papers so far this year. I think I paced things a bit poorly (trying to squeeze in results from two papers while at the same time being pedagogical about the basic material since it is not familiar to most), so had to rush at the end, but I got the main points in. Lots of good questions.
At the end of the day, I was pleasantly surprised by the offer of whiskey in the break room. Apparently it is a Friday tradition. I began to wonder, and made some inquiries and found out to my delight that it is a direct decendant of a tradition that I (co-) started back in the mid-90s in Santa Barbara!
It was a long time ago, so I am hazy on who the core people were who regularly kept […] Click to continue reading this post
CicLAvia Tomorrow!
There is a CicLAvia tomorrow*! I’m out of town right now (see next post) but I hope to make it back in time to enable me to go along at least for a little while. It looks like a fun route (see snap of map to left; click to enlarge), although it will be quite hot, so if you go, take it easy. The website is here, and you can find more information (like the 9-4 time) and so forth.
Enjoy!
-cvj
*Search the blog on that term clicking here to learn more. Click to continue reading this post
Save “Krulwich Wonders”!
As readers of this blog who appreciate the idea of putting science into the daily routine for a balanced diet, of mixing in sketches here and there, of good humour and a wondering eye on the world…. you’ll agree with me that we need to raise our voices and call out to NPR to Save “Krulwich Wonders”. According to Robert Krulwich, they are planning to cancel his blog as part of cost-cutting… this would be a big blow for the (always in danger) mission to improve the public understanding of science. Many suggestions are in the comments to that post I liked above, so feel free to read them and follow the ones that make sense to you! [Update: I’ve put a hashtag #savewonderNPR into the accompanying tweet of this post, so feel free to use that in your own raising awareness efforts on this…]
Act fast to let your voice be heard. The axe is on its way down!*
-cvj
*I learned this from the blog Nanoscale Views.
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Because…
Because… Wedding Season.
Crumpled bow tie at the end of a long but fun evening on a downtown LA hotel rooftop.
Pot Luck
Here in Aspen there was a pleasant party over at the apartment of one of the visiting physicists this evening. I know it seems odd, but it has been a while since I’ve been at a party with a lot of physicists (I’m not counting the official dinners at the Strings conference a fews weeks back), and I enjoyed it. I heard a little about what some old friends were up to, and met some spouses and learned what they do, and so forth. For the first time, I think, I spoke at length to some curious physicists about the graphic book project, and the associated frustrating adventures in the publishing world (short version: most people love it, but they just don’t want to take a risk on an unusual project…), and they were excited about it, which was nice of them.
It was a pot luck, and so although I was thinking I’d be tired and just take along a six-pack of beer, by lunchtime I decided that I’d make a little something and take it along. Then, as I tend to do, it became two little somethings…and I went and bought the ingredients at the supermarket nearby and worked down at the centre until later. Well, first I made a simple syrup from sugar and water and muddled and worried a lot of tarragon into it.
Then in the evening, there was a lot of peeling and chopping. This is usually one of my favourite things, but the knives in the apartment I am staying in are as blunt as sticks of warm butter, and so chopping was long and fretful. (And dangerous… don’t people realise that blunt knives are actually more dangerous than sharp ones?) […] Click to continue reading this post
Fireworks!
It is the 4th of July, and I hope you who are celebrating it have a good time today!
I can’t really let the day pass without sharing with you the episode of Fail Lab in which we examine fireworks and pyrotechnics with an appropriate cautionary note, and a dash of humour. Enjoy it again if you’ve seen it before, and don’t forget to check out all twelve episodes. You can read my discussion of the whole series (excellently made by Patrick Scott) starting here, and there’s more here. Click below for the episode: […] Click to continue reading this post
Honest Time Travel?
On Tuesday I hung out with some of the Screen Junkies folks who you may know from the hilarious “Honest Movie Trailers” web series (seriously, if you’ve not seen any of them, please go right now and have a look). We had a fun chat about time travel in movies, and presenter Hal Rudnick and I bonded over various movies old and new. The final version of the show is up on YouTube (embed below), and I’m bummed that I did not get to meet the other guest, Christina Heinlein (JPL), who seems fun – and is a descendant of, yes, that Heinlein. I love the idea that she works at JPL, helping make possible the space exploration that Robert Heinlein helped inspire us all about in his writing. Anyway, enjoy the short piece (I wish you could see a bunch of the other material too… we really had a great chat about the ins and outs of time travel, but a lot of it inevitably ended up not making the cut…)
I could not resist talking about my view of this (perhaps growing) trend of using time travel as a means of resetting movie franchises (see Star Trek, X-Men…). It’s a great way of repairing writing and other filmmaking wrong turns. Feel free to imagine your own version of this – Star Wars anyone? Another pass at […] Click to continue reading this post
Commencement Capers…
It is Commencement day today at USC! In celebration of that I thought I’d post a picture of my colleague Krzysztof Pilch and I, being a bit silly. We each have one of those excellently practical Brompton bikes (splendidly finished in British racing green, of course) you sometimes have read about here, and Krzysztof suggested that we take a picture or two of us in academic robes riding our bikes. Krzysztof had his academic full gear ready because […] Click to continue reading this post
