Category Archives: fun

Art and Science

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e.coli image by shardcoreSome time back I wrote a post concerning E.Coli, and illustrated it with an image that I found on the web. The other day I learned more about the actual source of the image. The painting (click on image to enlarge) was from someone working under the name shardcore, and you can visit their site here. Notably, there are several pieces of work there, and a number of them are of science subjects, and scientists. Shardcore writes interesting notes for some of the work too.

The work is overall quite fascinating, striking, and often very aesthetically engaging. I recommend having a good long look around. To tease you to go there, let me point out a (topical) one for some of us with eyes on the LHC. A painting of Peter Higgs:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

The Festivities Begin!

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LA Times Festival of BooksSo this weekend the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books takes place. This is a two day celebration of books that takes place on the UCLA campus that is a joy to attend each year. I’ve blogged about it many times in the past and you can look at previous posts from the list below. The website for the festival is here.

As you may recall, the night before the festival – that would be tonight – there is a ceremony to announce the winners of the LA Times Book Prizes, with a great reception at the end with lots of interesting people and (often) great conversation. The list of nominated books can be found here, and it is interesting again this year. Here, for example is the science and technology list: […] Click to continue reading this post →

She Blinded Me With Science…

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The funny video below* is good for a bit of nostalgia for the time of the Thomas Dolby song, the song itself, and perhaps for the X-Files TV show (but not for me, I saw only a few episodes). Scully fans will love this, and although I never regularly watched the show, I did appreciate her character. Strong skepticism, insistence on using the scientific method, etc. Excellent. Good character overall, and broke a lot of ground as a female lead with these characteristics too.

chloe_obrian_24Now here’s an idea. Would someone please do such a video for 24’s Chloe O’Brian? (Pictured left.) She’s definitely one of my favourite technical expert engineer/scientist types on a major show, and Mary Lynn Rajskub does an excellent job giving her life, depth and likeability even though she’s fighting against all the geek/nerd stereotype characteristics they’ve endowed her with. In essence, she does it by embracing them. Her attention to detail regularly saves the day (world, city, state, whatever), and the lives of her colleagues, and in the last episode they even had her supposedly determining that light in a video was daylight by […] Click to continue reading this post →

Awesome

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obama_light_sabre I’ve never been one for the naive Obama-gushing, you may have noticed, but I can’t resist this lovely tribute. It is the site called “President Obama Looking at Awesome Things”, a collection of “photos”, and the example to the left is one of my favourites. (Click for larger view.)

It is excellent use of certain looks he gets on his face when doing things like “looking interested” at things. Isn’t photoshop great?

The site is here, and be sure to look at (currently) all three pages worth, or jump to the Flickr photo set here, where I learned that […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Onion on Science Programming

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Yes, it’s very funny*, and awfully close to the truth as well, at least in terms of the final product. More seriously, it is worth noting that what they get wrong is the blaming of it on audiences. It is actually more about the channels (not just the Science Channel) themselves and the sort of business models they run. We, the scientists who care to, must carry on contributing where we can as well as encouraging and supporting the film-makers as much as we can. It’s not really their fault so much as the people who call the shots at the head of the money food chain. Most of the film-makers I’ve worked with on the many shows I’ve helped with (either in front of or behind the camera, or both) are passionate about the science, are keenly interested in understanding it more so as to tell the story to the public as well as they can, and are capable of doing so. They most often can’t get their shows past the people at the top who believe that the material is too inaccessible or not interesting to the public. (I’ve heard the same complaint from science journalists working in the print media too.) On the other hand, I get recognized and stopped on […] Click to continue reading this post →

Best in Show

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ion2003 (Well, in the Ion Micrograph category, you understand.)

Sometimes extreme geekery is charming. (As you may know, I do not use the word “geek” lightly.) I spotted this on Phil’s Bad Astronomy Blog. You know what shape it is trying to evoke, I presume. Know also that this structure is 8.8 micro meters across, and that the subject was magnified some 5000 times normal size to make the image. I’ve no idea how they […] Click to continue reading this post →

Waterfall

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My Walkabout finds me in Madrid for a little while, and I find myself reporting joyfully on rain, once again. Not because it has been raining an unusual amount here, but because of a production I went to the other night. It was primarily a dance event, celebrating and dramatizing the work of poet Frederico Garcia Lorca during his time in New York in the 1920s. The choreography was by (I’ve forgotten… will find ticket and update shortly) [update: Blanca Li. Title: ¨Poeta en Nueva York¨] with flamenco as the primary form, mixed with several other dance traditions. dance_theatre_stillThere was a lot of good and enjoyable work to see, but I’ll admit to being blown away by the theatre’s (and associated production staff’s) ability to suddenly create a rainstorm on the stage, and sustain it for a prolonged period while one of the dances (using the water, as you can see) used it to great and stunning effect. I had to sneak a (no flash and no disturbing of neighbours of course) photo for you. Click for larger view.

A bit like the first time you saw Jurassic Park back when it was first released and utterly groundbreaking visually, I (and maybe you?) spent time thinking, “this is amazing!”, “how did they pull off this illusion?”, before concluding that maybe the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Night Moves

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edison_outing_artwalkSome local thoughts. I can report that the downtown Artwalk is still a great event, effectively a street party running over a wide area of the city. If in the area, I recommend that you visit it (some upcoming second Thursday of the month) soon. (See earlier posts, e.g., here.) It is all part of the steadily increasing activity that’s going on downtown that I’ve mentioned several times here. It is not just second Thursdays. More businesses are simply opening their doors and people are coming. It’s great. The other night I went with a friend and colleague to try out the beer and sausages at Wurstküche, and had a wonderful time. wurstkuche_sausagesYou can see […] Click to continue reading this post →

Gunslinging Bohr

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bohr_einsteinThis story has come along at just the right time, given that my last post was about Einstein. Seems that Niels Bohr (another giant from the same period, and another one of the founders of the quantum theory) was a big fan of cowboy movies, and thought a lot about gunfights. Yes, really! (There he is in the photo on the left hanging out with his friend Einstein in later years, perhaps 1925. Perhaps they’re at a drive-in movie? I got this photo here.)

It turns out to be all relevant to new studies about reaction time. The fastest person to draw does not necessarily win the gunfight: […] Click to continue reading this post →

You Don’t Need Magic To Use Energy Wisely

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energy_posterThis is a fun poster I saw at the Grove the other day. (Click for a larger view.)

The good fairy (Tinkerbell, apparently) speaks the truth!

It’s nice to see such a campaign, and aimed at the younger set (who in turn might bug their parents into thinking about it too). It is sponsored by the Department of Energy (the same people who sponsor most of my research), and you can look at the website here. Maybe you’ll direct some others to it too! There’s an energy action checklist, and lots of useful tips and guidelines for everyone (young and old) to follow in order […] Click to continue reading this post →

Geminids!

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geminid_skymap_northThe skies have cleared here in Los Angeles after a sequence of remarkably rainy days – really torrential downpours that have been very enjoyable. Happily, the clearing has taken place just in time to see the Geminid meteors, which I learned are likely to be quite striking this year*. After midnight or so ought to be good for viewing, and be sure to be looking at the right part of the sky (they originate from the direction of Gemini – see the NASA map on the right). There’s more about it on NASA’s site, and be sure to look at their tips for viewing.

Don’t forget: – don’t assume that being in a large city means you can’t see anything […] Click to continue reading this post →

So Much To Do…

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madrid_cathedral_1I spent an astonishing stretch of time in the Prado on Saturday, in an operation that experience and aesthetics have taught me to pace properly. I pick a particular artist or cluster of artists and focus on them for an hour or ninety minutes (visiting the parts of the museum that are relevant to them, not focusing on anything else, more or less), then I find the cafe, get a cup of coffee and a tasty, and relax for a bit, glowing from the experience. Then I plan the next pieces of the museum I will visit next and begin my focus on that part. The temptation with a museum the size and complexity of the Prado, with the remarkable depth it has in its collections, is just to show up and try and see everything in whatever order you find them. This results in confusion, superficiality, and major headache and backache, at least for me. I’m happy to go in and see a subset of what is there really properly and in context rather than just “see stuff”.

So of course I mostly focused on Spanish painters – several of the masters before the 20th Century – and later, other masters who perhaps were creating work in a Spanish context of some kind, and later, particular masters who happen to have examples of some of their great work housed in the Prado, whether there be a Spanish context or not, of which there are several such examples.

The collection is amazing. About 1/3 of my time was spent on Goya, in fact. (I wisely […] Click to continue reading this post →