The Earth Also Rises
Sheril reminds us that it is 40 years to the day that this photograph was taken (by […] Click to continue reading this post
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Category Archives: science
Summer Reading: Falling For Science
(Yes, I know it is not Summer (here), but I love the idea of Summer reading lists so much that I will continue to discuss some books under this series title, whatever the time of year.)
I just heard a piece by Robert Krulwich on NPR about the book “Falling for Science: Objects in Mind”, which is a collection of essays with an introduction by Sherry Turkle, who’s a social sciences professor at MIT. Krulwich says:
“…written by senior scientists (artificial intelligence pioneer Seymour Papert, MIT president and neuroanatomist Susan Hockfield, and architect Moshe Safdie, for example) and by students who passed through her classes at MIT over the past 25 years. They were all asked the same question: “Was there an object you met during childhood or adolescence that had an influence on your path into science?”
And after a tidal wave of Legos (7 different essays), computer games and broken radios, I found a few wonderful surprises. One MIT student reported how she couldn’t stop braiding her My Little Pony’s tail, weaving the hairs into endlessly repeating patterns (a clue, perhaps, to her fascination with mathematics)….[…]”
He goes on to interview software designer Joseph Calzaretta about his childhood encounter with stop signs. It’s a really nice story. The whole radio piece is here, with audio and transcript. (There’s another version here with the excellent “Eggs in a Basket” story emphasized instead.)
This is actually an issue that fascinates me, and I don’t think that the question should be quite as narrow as above – focusing only on people who went into science. I think that -especially as children- we are all scientists, exploring the world around us, […] Click to continue reading this post
Remembering Uncertainty
Gosh, look what I found on YouTube, quite by accident. It is video of the first Uncertainty event I did with science writer KC Cole way back in 2006, and was one of the first Visions and Voices events at USC.
It has as features (about 20 minutes each) Jonathan Kirsch on Monotheism (and how it actually isn’t, really), some opening thoughts by moderator KC Cole, her interview […] Click to continue reading this post
Another Physicist in the House
With more refreshing words about what he thinks science is, and the role science can play in shaping society and steering the country forward, Barack Obama announced several key science posts today. One of them is a physicist by the way. (“Excellent…”, cvj rubs hands together with a gleam in his eye, “…all going according to plan.”)
Here’s a YouTube video of the announcement:
From an AFP piece by Maxim Kniazkov:
[…] Click to continue reading this post
Teachers Rock!
Listening live (over a late breakfast coffee) to the press conference led by President Elect Obama announcing the Secretary of Education. Arne Duncan is the nominee. This is an underrated post in terms of how high profile it is compared to the other cabinet posts… but of course it’s super-important. So it is wonderful to hear the lovely speech from the pres-to-be (and also the one from the vice-pres-to-be). Just really great. It is especially good to hear recognition of the fact that the core of […] Click to continue reading this post
Fat Moon!
Tonight, have a look at the full moon. It’ll be significantly bigger than any of the others you’ve seen this year since the moon is at perigee (as close as it can be in its elliptical orbit). This is not a slight difference that only those deeply into astronomy care about. The moon will be, as the NASA site on this* notes:
…14% bigger and 30% brighter than lesser full Moons we’ve seen earlier in 2008.
Go out and have a look at it at shortly after 4:30pm today when it rises. When the moon is near the horizon, it looks bigger anyway – combine that with the fact that it […] Click to continue reading this post
Physics Nobel Prize Winner in the Cabinet
I just learned this* – Steve Chu (Nobel Prize for Physics in 1997 – see here) has been nominated as Energy Secretary in the new Obama administration. I find that sort of interesting and exciting. An actual Physicist in charge of energy. And at this crucial time. Story here (for example).
-cvj
*Thanks Jeff! Click to continue reading this post
Gervais and Merchant on Mayo
Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant were on Daily Mayo for half an hour yesterday. It was a good bit of fun unscripted chatter that’s worth a listen. They were really there to plug the new boxed set of the TV show Extras (which if you have not seen you should put high on your list of viewing priorities – it is quite brilliant), but of course they were also there to mess around a bit.
They asked for a higher standard of question to be emailed in by the viewers, and so I wondered whether anyone would send in some science ones – maybe some physics ones. Sure enough there were. […] Click to continue reading this post
Physics Intervened…
Well, I’d have hoped to have done a post today on a few things, but physics intervened. Recall that the Southern California Strings Seminar is on right now here at USC, and since I am the organizer, I’ve been nipping about serving up piles of various types of tasty cookies (hunted down on a late night visit to Trader Joe’s last night – gotta have good cookies to go with the coffee you see), announcing the speakers, and so forth, as well as actually sitting and enjoying the really excellent talks that we’ve had from several young people. Day one (finished off with dinner, wine, beer, and chats with people from USC, UCLA, and UCSB at Bacaro) was just great and day two is in the morning and so I’d better finish up this post and get to sleep.
We had a spectacular sunset on Saturday. Another example of a physics intervention, […] Click to continue reading this post
Are We There Yet?
Well, no we are not.
Are we making progress? Sometimes I think we are, and other times I’m not so sure, but what do you think?
I’m talking about that thing I talk about a lot: science and scientists being part of the broader culture. This time on TV. A recent LA Times article by Mary McNamara (one of their television critics) surveys a number of shows on TV in this context and is, on balance, rather positive about where things are compared to where they used to be. I’m inclined to agree (and I should say that I found the article itself rather valuable as a quick survey – I don’t keep up with all the TV produced out there, and found myself surprised here and there). She also quotes conversations with Jennifer Ouellette (of Cocktail Party Physics) and yours truly on the issue, (mentions the recently established Science and Entertainment Exchange I blogged about two weeks ago), and overall produced a pretty good article. (The full article is here.)
I’m still on the fence about all this, though. Once you scratch the surface a bit, I don’t think there is yet a single example of what I think is possible, and what I think should be fairly routine before we declare that […] Click to continue reading this post
Categorically Not! – Improv!
The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday December 7th. The Categorically Not! series of events that are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with occasional exceptions). It’s a series – started and run by science writer K. C. Cole – of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area. Here is the website that describes past ones, and upcoming ones. See also the links at the end of the post for some announcements and descriptions (and even video) of previous events.
The theme this month is Improv!. Here’s the description from K C Cole: […] Click to continue reading this post
Southern California Strings Seminar
Takuya Okuda talking about Wilson Loops at the SCSS, UCLA, Dec. 2007. Click to enlarge.
The next regional string meeting is a two-day one at USC, this Monday and Tuesday. It’s going to be full of interesting talks and conversations, as usual. Please encourage your graduate students to come, especially, since special effort is made to make sure that each talk begins with a pedagogical portion to help non-experts in that subfield navigate and see the motivation.
The speakers are: […] Click to continue reading this post
The View From LA
The conjunction of Jupiter (top), Venus (middle) and the waxing crescent moon (er, […] Click to continue reading this post
Conjunction!
Tomorrow night and the night after (Sunday and Monday), you should look West just after sunset, if you’ve a clear sky. There’s going to be a rare conjunction of Venus, Jupiter, and the crescent moon. Already, Jupiter and Venus look great together (they make a lovely couple) each night, but the trio – the three brightest objects in the […] Click to continue reading this post
Cartograms
There was a lovely segment on NPR the other day about cartograms – representations or maps of regions that are weighted or highlighted according to the sort of data you’re interested in studying. It was an interview with Mark Newman (Univ. of Michigan) about the book “The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live” (by Daniel Dorling, Mark Newman and Anna Barford).
To the right is an example of the sorts of things they do in the book, showing the re-adjusting the map of the USA to have the size of a state correspond to its electoral college weight (below) instead of its geographical weight (above).
There are examples of the maps they have presented on the NPR site, and of course the audio of the interview (and a short […] Click to continue reading this post
