Yes, still with the morning baking. I feel a bit bad about not getting bagels from Brooklyn Bagels (on Beverly) anymore (after six years of being a regular), but there’s only so much I can eat in baked goods and I seem to be in the mood to do it all myself these days.
Not sure why I’ve never done these before:
Sweet potato biscuits*. Perfect for using up that left over sweet potato, and, like all […] Click to continue reading this post
I’m taking a short break from it while I wait for my soup – that wonderful soup I made a huge vat of last night, using the essence of the left over carcass of a roast chicken I served on Christmas day combined with various delicious vegetables from the farmer’s market – to heat up for dinner. I need the break, as I’m mentally exhausted. Although I strongly feel like having a nice evening glass of wine, I am forbidding myself from having one since I must stay sharp for much longer this evening, despite my exhaustion. So a bit of blogging about my ongoing task will somehow serve as my relaxation. Oddly enough. Well, let’s see if it does.
I’ve been wandering an incredibly striking landscape, with such remarkable variety, detail, texture and hue. There are features that move me to tears at times, reduce me to fits of uncontrollable laughter at others, but mostly intense reflection throughout. I should be simply enjoying it for its own sake, drinking it in where I want to, letting it simply wash over me at times, while at others, cupping some of it in my hands and looking at it close up, before letting it flow away and moving on. But I do not have that freedom. Instead I have to look at it all with a view to ranking various features over others – putting it all into some sort of order. This is a terrible task to have to do, since so very much of it is simply wonderful in its own right, and there’s hardly any meaning to ranking some parts over the other.
What on earth am I talking about?
Well, as is so often the case with some of the things I get myself involved in, I can’t tell you much detail, since the process itself is ongoing, and rather sensitive. I’d not […] Click to continue reading this post
So have you been to Griffith Park recently? I went for a short hike there this morning for the first time in a month or so. The first time this year. (I’ve not been hiking much the last month due to several things, including waiting for a full recovery from my mysterious vertigo which still pops up from time to time…)
Well, I had a nice hike, and cleared away some cobwebs in my head, which was nice to do. I’m in the middle of writing two research papers, and reading a great deal of material for a search committee I’m on (meeting imminent) and so a bit of clearance is good.
The thing is this. The park was with teeming with people, of a broader range than is usual for the park, in those numbers. Not sure why, but it was good to see. Is it all those New Year’s resolutions? People resolving to use the city’s wonderful park areas […] Click to continue reading this post
Amy Mainzer has shared and discussed the first released picture from the WISE project that was launched (you’ll recall) not so long ago. It looks marvellous. Press release here.
By the way, I hope you’re following Amy’s blog to learn more about the mission now it is in full swing. She’s giving you a window into the science as it breaks and the excitement of doing the science itself, seeing a project come together […] Click to continue reading this post
Yes, I know: (1) Large head doesn’t make one smarter, but it was just so I could use the post title. (Maybe one or two of you see where it comes from…) (2) The final resort of a busy blogger: – cute animal pictures. Well, I already regularly share pictures with you concerning what I had for dinner, so no change there.
This is Yun Zi, (“Son of Cloud” I hear) who arrived in the public eye (at five months […] Click to continue reading this post
I just thought you’d like to know this. I’m a Specialty Act. Got that?
Last month, just before taping some material for a new TV show (that you can see on a major broadcast network starting in a week or so) I signed some routine documents. One of them involved me ticking a box to specify my official status for […] Click to continue reading this post
(Since it is bowl season…)
It has been rather pleasant here in Los Angeles over the last week or two, since there has been a mixture of rain, cloud, and sunshine that has been very good for all concerned: climate, mood, garden, etc.
Perhaps you’ll have noticed that I’ve been quiet with regards writing here over the holiday period. This is not because I’ve fallen off the planet or anything! I’ve been […] Click to continue reading this post
A shot (click for slightly larger view) from a lovely afternoon walking on the beach recently…
Happy Holidays, one and all!
I noticed yesterday that there’s a new group blog, at NPR, on science and culture, and – to my pleasant surprise – one of the co-authors is my friend and colleague KC Cole, the well known (and quite marvellous) science writer! I’ve met the physicist Marcelo Gleiser who will be a co-author and he seems like an excellent new voice to hear from. Astrophysicist Adam Frank and Biologists Ursula Goodenough and Stuart Kauffman round out the exciting-looking roster. (I cheekily grabbed a screen shot of the roster photos (left) from their site.) There are a number of lovely pieces up on the site already for you to read.
The blog is called 13.7, a number that might be familiar to you.
No? You might be thinking that it is the new high price for a basic over-priced cup of “gourmet” coffee in some new tediously pretentious cafe in LA (and believe me, I’d not be at all surprised), but I was in fact referring to the 13.7 billion years that is the age of our universe. I think that is the primary meaning they had in mind too. I’m pleased to see these new voices in the blogosphere, and pleased that authors of blogs of this sort can still come up with excellent names! 13.7 is a really rather nice name and, in a slightly inside way, captures the scope, variety, and grandeur of the themes I expect they’ll explore in much the same way that the name Cosmic Variance promised (and delivered) for that group blog back in 2005. I came up with that name a little before we launched the blog (we mulled […] Click to continue reading this post
Sometimes I find the most elaborate ways of procrastinating when faced with a tedious task (this time, gathering all my grade data for my class together and doing the analysis to produce a final letter grade):
It is good when the distraction produces good and useful results, of course, and a […] Click to continue reading this post
They’re sitting the final exam for my graduate electromagnetism class right now, having started at the ungodly hour of 8:00am. I’m sitting outside in the bright, lukewarm Winter sun with a cup of coffee, two cheesy biscuits I baked at 6:30am for no reason other than feeling in a baking mood (see right), my phone in case there’s a reason for the TA on duty to contact me, and my iPod, which I am of course using to write to you.
It has been an odd few days. Not so much because of the pair of them that had me wandering around a huge studio lot, being wardrobe-checked and make-up checked, shot from all angles with a live cheering studio audience in attendance (for your viewing pleasure on a new prime-time series on Fox to begin airing next month – more on this later, perhaps), but because early on Saturday I woke up with a severe vertigo attack. 
Very odd indeed and although I managed to get it under control and it had worn off over the days, every now and again it gets close to being triggered again. I don’t know the source for sure – I think it was correlated with a reaction to some of the food I had on set, maybe combined somehow with the severe ear blockage I had about a month ago after catching a (short-lived) cold on a long transatlantic flight? – but I have to say (and this is the point of my digression here) that it is a remarkably odd experience for me to feel slightly off balance for such an extended period. I’m used to being on the tips of my toes ready to skitter along the line at the edge of a low wall if the mood takes me while walking along. But I can’t imagine doing that now. I feel like I’ve lost my powers… it’s often amazing to me how little it takes to make a person feel very mortal, even fragile, again. It will no doubt pass.
I’ve been gentle on this final exam. I still find it disturbing that kids today (yes, I said “kids today” – perhaps my lack of equilibrium has put me in crotchety-old-man mode), even the very smart ones, typically do badly on any advanced exam that […] Click to continue reading this post
My friend, The Universe co-contributor, and colleague Amy Mainzer (JPL) is rubbing gloved hands together in the chilly night air up at Vandenberg. Well, ok, if not this very moment, she probably will be at various points this evening and into the wee hours of the morning. The launch pad for WISE (the mission on which Amy is deputy project scientist) is set, and everything is ready to go! See my earlier post about what […] Click to continue reading this post
The 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
There’s a physics angle to the Tiger Woods business of last week (that I’d not really been following since I was, thankfully, out of the country during the media blitz).
A physics angle? Really? Surely in my attempts to show the science angle in everyday things I’ve gone too far?
Well, actually there is. So there was some business with a car crashing and so forth, and there are photos of the interior of the car. There’s a book visible. It’s a physics book! It is John Gribbins’ Get a Grip on Physics, from 1999. 
It is out of print now, but apparently its Amazon (USA) sales rank shot from 396,224 to 2,268 over a short period. (For the record, before you ask about the other items in the photos (from Getty images), I’ve heard no news on whether umbrella sales also spiked. Or bottled water sales, for that matter.)
I like this story for lots of reasons, but the main one is that this shows to the […] Click to continue reading this post
When I’ve got a decent amount of jetlag, coming West, I find it not so much of a drawback as a way of seeing how to arrange one’s days differently. Sometimes the results are tasty. I had to leave a birthday party early last night due to the need to sleep, but this meant that at 6:00am today I suddenly felt in the mood to make a walnut […] Click to continue reading this post
