Category Archives: science in the media

Where Many Paths and Errands Meet

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[Typed in a cafe on Tuesday at about 3:45pm. It’s just a rough collection of thoughts about various recent meetings and activities:]

Interesting day so far. One of those “my office is everywhere” days. I’m on the West side, in Santa Monica, where I’ve a number of errands to do. Also I get to work and have some meetings in between. I try very much to corral everything to one part of town so that I am not driving around too much, adding to the general junk that we all pour into the air without thinking. So I brought my bike with me to connect the dots that I intend to go between while in the area (a couple of cafes (coffee and work), the beach/boardwalk (lunch and work), a mechanic (they’re changing brakes on my car and diagnosing a Noise), one of the English shops (for tea supplies), an electronics store (to shop for memory), a grocery store, possibly a bookstore, possibly the public library (to work and ‘cos it’s just really nice)…).

While reading some notes by one of my students on a project we’re working on, and eating lunch down on the boardwalk/beach wall near the chess-players, I reached for my phone to send him a text with a question. As I did this I looked up at the passers-by and one of them was familiar! It was someone who used to be a postdoc in one of the other groups in the department, who used to share an office with the very student whose notes I was reading! Funny when that happens… We chatted for a while about things (such as career stuff concerning the interesting research life that can often found in various commercial settings), and he seemed interested in my […] Click to continue reading this post →

When Worlds Collide IV: The Verdict is…

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casino royale shootSo you’ll recall the shoot last year, right? Casino Royale theme? Where I got all dressed up in a Tuxedo at a club in New York that was kitted out as a Casino playing blackjack and so forth (click right) and getting very cosy with Ms Moneypenny? (Wait, that last bit didn’t happen.) Along with some actual stars, from entertainment, sport, fashion, etc? You don’t recall? Well, that’ll teach you not to use the blog’s archives more during your coffee breaks…

To recap (but please read properly about the background here), it was a photo spread with short bios for an annual piece called “Coming Kings” for a men’s magazine called “King”. I’d got the call out of the blue from them, and decided to do it since it’s an opportunity to do something a little different. To put some awareness of science and scientists in places where you normally don’t find much (if any) of it, rather than only targeting the more traditional crowds. It’s all about, as I said: […] Click to continue reading this post →

No Debate on Science

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Sheril talked a little bit about the lack of a debate on Science by the presidential hopefuls, and pointed to a number of articles on the matter. Recall (from my earlier posts and many other sources) that she is one of the movers and shakers behind ScienceDebate2008. The candidates simply punted the issues.

Shame really. The Franklin Institute’s good china was all laid out and the space made ready to host the debate, and several were hoping it might really happen… But it was politics as usual on all sides, with lots of silliness, and pandering to the much more powerful “Faith” constituency.

Or, as Bob Park put it in his excellent “What’s New” column of the 11th April:

NO SCIENCE DEBATE: CANDIDATES WILL DEBATE JESUS.

Excellent title! He goes on to say: […] Click to continue reading this post →

Kobe as Einstein

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Did you see the Nike commercial with Kobe Bryant as Einstein?

Kobe Bryant as Albert Einstein

It is part of a series with the theme “genius”, in which he plays a variety of historical figures with a reputation for innovation. More (including the video) on Bryant’s website, and there’s a breakdown by fliptomato on his blog (where I found this).

Given the opening line of fliptomato’s blog post, I wonder if he (or the commercial makers) knows about the excellent Gary Larson cartoon from very many years back […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry XIX – Black Comedy

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Wow, a lot of time has passed since I thought I’d get around to posting about this. You’ll recall that I went to take part in the taping of a segment for Comedy Central some time ago, Well, later on I went to the taping of the full show in which it will appear, and it was an amusing and interesting experience.

Lewis Black on set of Root of All Evil

The show? Comedy Central, and in particular, Daily Show fans will be pleased to learn that Lewis Black finally has a shw of his own, and it is called “The Root of All Evil”. The format is that he presides as a judge over a case examining which of two popular […] Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry XVIII – History Looked On

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Notes on GRI had some unusual guests in my General Relativity lecture yesterday, Eric Salat and Philip Shane, two film makers from Left/Right productions. They’re working on a documentary for the History Channel on the development of various ideas in physics in the early 20th Century, and they wanted to know more about the topics, and to see a full (1 hour and 50 minute) lecture from me.

While it is the History Channel (hence the dramatic subtitle – sorry), it is not part of the series “The Universe”, by the way. It is another separate part of the increased very welcome expansion of that channel’s science programming. Have you noticed the diversification of their programming that they’ve been doing? I’ve mentioned it before, and a number of people have commented on it to me elsewhere. It has been great to see.

It’s always fun to have more people in the classroom, and so we had a lot of fun… (Or at least, I did…I hope everyone else did too.) I happened to be doing a lecture on […] Click to continue reading this post →

Randall on Colbert

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lisa randall on colbertMy first time sitting down to watch this show in a while and, bizarrely enough, there’s a colleague on the telly! Well, I think that perhaps Lisa was trying a little bit too hard in one or two places to get the physics out. On Colbert, I think you just have to go with the flow and the comedy! But she got quite a bit out in the short time she had…

My favourite bit:

Randall: “Like…the fact that Einstein has taught us that spacetime can be curved or warped…”

Colbert: “Don’t patronize me, I know that…”

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Science Debate 2008 – Closer to Reality

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So Chris and Sheril have announced the next step in the journey to a real debate about science issues of note that intersect with the current political sphere. And they’ve come a long way in a short time! Here’s some of what they said in a recent post:

ScienceDebate2008 is now co-sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academies, and the Council on Competitiveness. We were looking at venues, and finally settled on an offer from the Philadelphia-based Franklin Institute–named, of course, after one of this country’s first and greatest scientists. We can’t think of a more appropriate venue.

And guess what?! They’ve actually invited the candidates: Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, John McCain, and Barack Obama.

So the next step is to get the event (they suggest April 18, 2008) taken seriously by the […] Click to continue reading this post →

Science Communication

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At the Science Blogging conference earlier this month, there was a very interesting discussion about communication of science, science and the media, and science in politics. It was led by Jennifer Jacquet of Shifting Baselines, and Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney (both of The Intersection), who each did a mini-presentation (Sheril and Chris doing a sort of tag-team double act, starting off with discussing Sciencedebate 2008, and moving into discussions of “framing” science, the separation of the cultures, and so forth – and of course, opportunities for bloggers). Happily there was a video made, and I’ve embedded it below (the quality is mixed, but overall […] Click to continue reading this post →

Planck Meets Fleming

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So yesterday at Pinewood Studios they announced the name of the upcoming second James Bond film in the new series that (excellently, in my opinion) re-envisions the Bond movie universe. Last year’s first one was “Casino Royale”, you may recall. Did you hear what the next one will be called? […] Click to continue reading this post →

Categorically Not! – Science Goes Hollywood

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Reza Aslan at Categorically Not!The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday January 27th (upcoming). 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 Reza Aslan at Categorically Not! – 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. (Above right and left: Reza Aslan speaking on the origin of various ideas in Religion at the event entitled “Beginnings” on 16th December, 2007. Click right one for larger view.)

The theme this month is Science Goes Hollywood. Here’s the description from K C Cole:

Despite our prejudices to the contrary, Hollywood and Science have a lot to say to each other. Take special effects: Nothing Disney dreams up can […] Click to continue reading this post →

Put Yourself In Their Shoes

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alan alda and kc cole

Excellent evening on Wednesday night. As I expected, KC worked her magic and steered the conversation in many interesting directions, with Alan Alda turning out to be – not unexpectedly – quite the character. I suspect that it was recorded (on video) and so I will update this post or do a later post with a pointer to it later. Alda was swamped by people buying his book and getting is signed and so forth at the reception. It was great to see such a good attendance at this Visions and Voices event all about science and the arts – very much in the spirit of what this is all supposed to be about.

  alan alda and kc cole  alan alda and kc cole  alan alda and kc cole

Among the many things of note that were said, one thing I liked a lot was the telling by […] Click to continue reading this post →

Alan Alda Chats With KC Cole

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kc colealan alda scientific american frontiersTomorrow afternoon at 4:00pm there’s be an interesting conversation on campus for sure. It’ll be between the science writer and journalist KC Cole and the actor Alan Alda. He’s such an interesting person, and (among other things) currently presents Scientific American Frontiers.

KC’s always so good at steering these conversations, so while I’ve no idea […] Click to continue reading this post →

Physics and Whiskey

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jameson irish whiskeyBeing a loyal fan of Scottish single malt whisky, I never thought I’d be blogging about Irish whiskey, but this is why we get out of bed in the morning – we seek the stuff we can’t guess*.

So I was going to point out to you an amusing distraction. The series of radio ads for Jameson Irish Whiskey that you can listen to here. There’s one featuring a physicist, you see, and a friend of mine sent me the link for that reason**. There’s the idea of attraction, and so gravity is brought in by the ad man trying to use the concept to sell the product, and the physicist is obviously not having it… a short bit of fun play between segments of some program on some station somewhere or another. I can see that they’d work rather well. Have a listen.

That was going to be it, until I found another – real – physics connection. Turns out that Guglielmo Marconi – he of the use of electromagnetic waves for telegraph communication, Nobel prize, and so forth – is the the key to the connection. Do you know what it is?
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