Category Archives: science

My Achilles Heel

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Heat. Following is a little bit of a whine. You’ll be even less sympathetic once you read the postscript, but such is life. Once the temperature gets up to a certain point, I can’t think any more. Well, not at the level needed to earn my living, if you see what I mean. Long periods of concentration start out well, but usually just turn into a nap. Not good at all, really. For the second or third day running we’ve had super hot temperatures with little movement of air to ensure a decent amount of throughput. This is not always unworkable, since one can simply nap during the day, do tasks that don’t require much sitting and thinking, and then work in the very early morning hours, but this time around there are two additional effects that ruin that approach.

fires_with_downtown_laThe first is that the heat has been carrying on into the night (as opposed to dropping away rapidly in the evening as is the usual pattern), and the second is that there are two huge fires nearby, making the air a bit… chewy. (Left is a shot I took of downtown Los Angeles from the South showing the huge clouds of smoke from the La Canada and Altadena fires in the San Gabriels’ foothills in the background. From some views it looks like there’s been a small nuke detonated. Anyone remember 24 a few seasons ago? For some maps of the fire’s progress see here, and a view from one of the Mount Wilson observatories is here*.)

Both of these make for less than great sleeping conditions, and the feeling of lack of […] Click to continue reading this post →

Summer Reading: KC on Science Friday

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frank_oppenheimer_book-coverScience writer KC Cole (also a professor at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication) has written a biography of Frank Oppenheimer. She’s been working on it for a very long time and it has just been released, so if you look around, maybe she’s doing a reading/signing about it somewhere near you. (Some events are listed here. Los Angeles readers, she’ll be at Skylight Books tomorrow afternoon.) It is called “Something Incredibly Wonderful Happens: Frank Oppenheimer and the World He Made Up”. She was talking about it last week with Ira Flatow on NPR’s Science Friday. You can get audio here. Or you can listen to it embedded here and read on: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Summer Reading: Sheril on Science Friday

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unscientific_america_book-coverI don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have written a book, “Unscientific America” with an excellent discussion about science literacy. You know from reading here that this is a favourite issue of mine (look under categories such as science and society), and by far the primary reason I blog, and do the various other activities I mention such as appearing on TV and radio shows, consulting for film, theatre, TV, etc, contribute to popular level articles, making films, and other things. It is vitally important, if we are a truly democratic society, for all to participate in the conversations we have about science – whether it be about issues to do with medicine, lifestyle, environment, energy, or just for its own sake: it is part of our culture. Sadly, science (and scientists) is still on the margins of the national conversation – people are afraid of it, giggle about how bad they were at it at school and then decouple from the conversation, mostly only pay attention to bleak or incorrect pictures of it in the media and entertainment (or for political gain), and so on and so forth.

What Sheril and Chris are doing in the book is examining the extent to which this […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Universe: Season 4

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the_universeI learned* a short while ago that the fourth season of The Universe on the History Channel starts tonight! As you may have read from a number of posts of mine over the last couple of months (see e.g. here, here and here), there’s been a lot of filming for this new cluster of episodes. I actually thought it was all going to start airing in the Fall, so this is a surprise to me.

There are some fun topics coming up in this season. There’ll be plenty of interesting things to learn, with contributions from a variety of interesting scientists telling you […] Click to continue reading this post →

Scenes from Work

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cvj_at_workThe College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences here at USC has built a new website, and gone quite far in including extra media, and links and portals on YouTube, Facebook and so on. One of the things they did was have a filmmaker make lots of videos. Lots. Things about faculty, research, teaching, learning, etc. All very exciting. Have a look, here, if interested. Mira Zimet, who makes the films, gave me a call and asked me if I’d like to contribute, and I agreed. I chatted on and on for about 45 minutes to an hour and she cut two short films out of it. The shorter one is on the site and has me saying some general things about research, teaching, science, and USC. Mira made the second because she thought it might be a nice extra video for the College’s YouTube portal. It has me talking a bit more about what string theory is and does, […] Click to continue reading this post →

Meaty Meteor Watch

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I’m 24 hours too late to warn you of the peak, which was this morning, but I imagine it will still be very good over the next few nights. This is the Perseid meteor shower. Apparently it is very good this year. So wander out when it is dark enough and see what you can see. Look toward Perseus, of course. More information here, from the Meteor blog, and the ever-excellent Stardate site gives you some directions (or look here).

In a big city like Los Angeles? Don’t automatically believe the lazy excuse that […] Click to continue reading this post →

Shine a Light

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It is Friday, so time for a film release. So, get your popcorn, your ice-cold drink, and find your comfy chair! It has been a long time coming (see related posts listed below), but finally the first of the series of films I’ve been talking about is ready for you!

But before I run the projector, let me say a few words. As I said before, this short film is (I hope) fun, engaging, and informative. I hope lots of people take the time to watch it at least a couple of times. A basic scientific knowledge of the world is for everyone. Science is part of our culture and should be more widely circulated. Films such as this is one of the ways the National Science Foundation, who provided the support to make it, is helping to bring science to everyone. For this (and the other ones in the series) to be a success, your help is needed. It needs to be seen. Tell your family and friends, colleagues and students, local teachers, etc., about it. Forward it on to people you know. Blog it, tweet it, facebook share it, etc. Crucially, remember that it is designed to be not just for people who already know they have an interest in science, but others too, so make no assumptions about who might like it… just please send it. Thanks.

Ok, let’s dim the lights! Run the Projector! (Tip: It is a high video quality, so pause it and let it buffer […] Click to continue reading this post →

LHC Update

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04collide_600Dennis Overbye wrote a nice summary article in the New York Times about the current status of the delays to the Large Hadron Colllider’s (LHC’s) re-opening. (Photo left by Valerio Mezzanotti for NYT) The issue is very frustrating, overall, even though one knows that delays like this can happen (and ought to be expected to happen) if you’ve built the largest and most complicated machine ever. I (and many colleagues) have in some sense waited for the LHC almost my entire professional career, and last Summer/Fall it seemed so close to finally starting to give us physics, only to have the failure happen, and set it all back. That’s life, of course. These things happen. I’ve a great deal of faith in the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Coming Soon!

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[Update: The film is here!]

Well, it is almost the big day! The first of the films I’ve been working on (see several earlier posts listed below), having had its world premiere on Sunday, is about to go on general release. It is the first of a series, and there is a second one to follow later in the Summer.

It’s a fun and educational short that I hope you’ll watch and tell all your friends about. Seriously, if you’re interested in science education (or just science as fun) do spread the word about this by blogging it, tweeting it, and sharing it on facebook and other sites.

This is very exciting! As with most film releases, however, there’s got to be a trailer. Straight out of the editing room to you, I present said trailer. Enjoy!



Check back soon!

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Lost Lessons

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lost_universityI’m sitting here recovering from last night’s event (more later), which, when you clear away the details (and the large amount of left over food, huge number of dirty dishes, glasses, pots, pans, etc.), was all about science, filmmaking and the media. There’s something else that is being discussed a lot recently that is about that too.

It seems to be all over the blogosphere (e.g., here), since apparently Lost is a very popular show, and so I’ll mention it here. You can now enroll in Lost University as part of the DVD/Blueray release of Lost’s Season 5. What you’ll be able to do (it says on their website), is enroll and take courses in Psychology, Foreign Language, Jungle Survival, Philosophy, History, and Physics. The Physics part is all about time travel. Classes are being “taught” by real professors. I mean actual people, not characters. I know this since I’m one of these professors.

Who knew I’d end up being faculty at another university teaching such a popular […] Click to continue reading this post →

Of Red Carpets, and Cooking

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premiere_prepMy films are finished! There’ll be more on them here later (including their online premiere), so check back. I might even try to find time to cut a trailer for the first one soon.

Being somewhat insane, I’ve decided on the (sort of) spur of the moment to have a (tongue in cheek) red carpet premiere of the films this weekend. I’ve a confirmed list of 20 hungry guests coming (mostly friends who are filmmakers, writers, actors, journalists, educators and other related professions), and I’ve promised to prepare them lots of food and drink. (Well, the films are very short.) It is already late in the day and I’ve been procrastinating instead of starting my prep. As usual.

Anyway, I’ve decided to plan a few long-prep centerpieces, and will improvise all the other dishes based on whim, the Farmer’s market offerings later, and how many of […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry XXIX – Dune

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death_valley_shoot_2_1There was a 24 hour period from 3:30pm Monday to 3:30pm Tuesday where I was engaged in a seemingly insane enterprise. My original plan was to document it here as one of my “24”-style blog posts, but since about 9 hours of it involved nothing but me screaming along to various songs (there’s something marvellous about singing “Roooooxx–anne!!! You don’t have to wear that dress tonight!!!….” and repeating “Put on the Red Light! Put on the Red Light!…” while whizzing along – fast!- on a road trip. I don’t know why), and five and a half hours asleep, I’ll spare you the details of each hour.

So what was the mission? To head to Death Valley. Yes, one of the hottest places on earth at this time of year! Why? To film something for The Universe (that History channel series I sometimes appear on). After my experiences of last Monday, you’d think I’d swear off hot filming situations for a while, but there you go. The physics involved is interesting, and it was an opportunity to get across some rather fun and interesting material (that you don’t usually see on TV) and so I went for it.

So since I had an afternoon meeting at 2:00pm with a Dean and some other […] Click to continue reading this post →