Category Archives: science

Call Me Cecil…

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…Well, just for a 24 hour period or so.

Why? Well, it’s just that one of the many projects I’ve not yet had time to report to you about is inching along, growing ever more involved, has been sucking up a huge amount of time recently, and is going to go really large this week.

What’s “going large”?

Ok, here goes. I’ve been taking a turn at being a filmmaker, on and off, for over a year now. I hope that the products of this will be coming to a theatre near you one day soon (probably your computer), but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. What is it? Much more later, but I’ll just say now that it’s got science, and it is educational and – I hope – fun.

So far, what have I been doing? Writing a script, sketching storyboards, waving my arms about trying to explain the concept to actual filmmakers (you know, ones who […] Click to continue reading this post →

Pit Visit

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I promised a report on last week’s College Commons trip to the Page Museum at the Tar Pits, here in Los Angeles. It was an excellent trip. The usual thing I do for blogging these things is, some time later, as time allows, I sit down and do a sort of brain-dump. I tried to do something different this time, and walk on the tour with my Palm Tungsten (yes, really really old technology, I know) and simply write a sort of narrative into it as I went along. Then I combined the uploaded file with the images I took as I went along, and supplemented with some extra sentences here and there. The overall effect should be a sketchier description of the event than I usually do, which may or may not be an improvement given that everybody seems to skim everything these days anyway. (Click on the photos for larger views.) So, here goes:

tar_pits_trip And so it begins. And it begins well – after a name tag is given out, upon check in for the bus, we are given a little brown paper bag of snacks. Hurrah!

3:39 and we’re off! (We run by the excavations for the Expo line and since it is an elevated bus, I get a nice view of what’s going on for quite a way. Wish I’d had the camera out to make a video for you.)

My colleague David Bottjer, a paleontologist, gives a little run down of the history of the region (both social and paleontological) as we go north on La Brea (appropriately – they are the La Brea Tar Pits… Or given that La Brea means The Tar, they are The Tar Tar Pits…)

4:05 We’re here! Somehow, the little bag of goodies is all empty already. Except for […] Click to continue reading this post →

100 Hours!

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telescopeThis weekend, you might like to participate in the 100 Hours of Astronomy events going on all over the world. Recall that it is the International Year of Astronomy, and that there are lots of things going to celebrate the 400 years of the Astronomy era launched by Galileo’s use of the telescope for his landmark Astronomical observations. There are all kinds of exciting events, from local astronomers setting up telescopes in your neighbourhood for all to use, to things involving some of the great professional telescopes around the world live webcasting and even… twittering. From the main page of the organizers:
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Something to chew over…

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skull of sabertooth cat at page museum…while I prepare the longer post on the Tuesday special visit to the Page Museum at the Tar Pits.

I think it would be just fantastic if domestic cats had teeth like their cousins of 40+K years ago. (Click left for larger.)

Just great!

Would make for a considerably different dynamic while stroking them…

What do you think?

-cvj Click to continue reading this post →

Pit Stop

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saber toothed catI’m going to another interesting College Commons event today. It’s an away mission. We’re off on a specially arranged tour of the La Brea Tar Pits! This is part of the 1859 celebration series, and of course Darwin is the focus here to some extent. We’re going to be taken around the famous Pit 91. I shall try to take some pictures and report later. The image on the left is a painting of the saber toothed cat, by John C. Dawson. (It is in the LA Natural History Museum.) (By the way – yes, the “Los Angeles 20059 B.C.” on […] Click to continue reading this post →

Periodically Fun!

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This is just great. I don’t know what it is good for, except amusement and nostalgia, but that’s a good portion of the balance sheet of the good things in life, so that’s good enough for me. It is a periodic table of elements that you can click on to find a selection of early comic book references to it. It is by some of my old neighbours – members of the Chemistry department at the University of Kentucky (F. James Holler and John P.Selegue) – and I’ve no idea how old this project is (1996, perhaps?), but it’s new to me. Click on the table to go to their site:

periodic_table_comics
[…] Click to continue reading this post →

The Spiritual Life of Plants

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cvj sowing seedsGiven all the gardening I’ve been doing over the last week or so (there’s some seed-sowing action going on to the right – more later), it may be fitting to go and sit and participate in the event coming up today. It is another of the College Commons events I’ve been mentioning here.

It’ll be a round table discussion and workshop to kick off a series, and here’s the summary:

“The Spiritual Life of Plants” series, arranged by Natania Meeker and Antónia Szabari of French and comparative literature, aims to reunite urgent contemporary conversations around ecology and the built environment with an early modern past — a past in which plants existed both at the limits of being and at the frontier of new forms of knowledge. What might these animated plants have to tell us about the ways in which humans experience, regulate, and are transformed by the non-human beings that surround them? How can we carry these conversations forward into the present and the future?

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

Two Johns on the War

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Last week, John Stewart and John Oliver were hilarious about the Bush administration’s War on Science, and the Obama administration’s continuing efforts to undo some of the damage done. The rest of the content aside, John Oliver’s terrible Bush impression is worth seeing.

Enjoy: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Waiting for Stephen

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Well, the last couple of days events were tiring, but good overall. The Hawking event was a bit like a rock concert. I made a video of some of the long line for you, and also take you into Bovard Auditorium with me to see the rather nicely packed crowd (well the downstairs part) of about 1200 excited audience members. At the end of the video are a few stills, showing Dean Howard Gillman during his welcoming remarks to the College Commons event, Nick Warner introducing Stephen Hawking, the man himself, and some of the high school students and the undergraduate student, who won the prize to get to ask Stephen questions. (The high school students had all asked similar questions, and so were all asked up to ask one question.)

Here’s the video: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Hawking Talking, and More

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Gosh, time flies!

I almost did not get to announce this before it was upon us. Tomorrow and the day after combine into a notable event in the College Commons series here at USC. Some of us have been working on this for quite a while. On Tuesday we have Stephen Hawking giving a big public lecture entitled “Out of a Black Hole”. Here’s the announcement. Note that general tickets for seats in Bovard Auditorium all went within hours of us releasing the tickets several weeks ago, but there is room in the two spill rooms that we have set up where there will be screens relaying the talk. Make a bit of an event of it and go with friends! [Update: I forgot to mention that we had a competition in local high schools and also at USC where the prize was to ask Stephen Hawking a question. People submitted questions over the last few weeks and we selected some of the best. There will be three undergraduates and three high school students coming up from the audience (we’ve a lot of high school students visiting us for the talk) to ask him a question each at the end. Should be fun.]

The day after, there will be a related event. Some of us from the physics department […] Click to continue reading this post →