An excellent interview, coming in at slightly over 18 minutes. Well worth your time. Shirley Tilghman talks about science and the humanities, funding for them, their role Click to continue reading this post
From Instagram
The Spiritual Life of Plants
Given 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?
Today’s round table: Click to continue reading this post
Finale Thoughts
Well, some of the best writing on television (irrespective of genre) came to an end recently, and since I raved about it back at its height some time ago (and maybe even encouraged some of you to watch it) I feel I ought to comment a little, now that the series – Battlestar Galactica – has ended. If you’ve not seen the finale (or even several of the episodes leading up to it), please do not read any further if you don’t want to know plot details.
Two Johns on the War
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.
One Million!
Hmmm. With all of the current bandying about of “Billions” and “Trillions” in the news (at least over here in the USA – referring to dollars, and economic stimulus packages and so forth), every single day, “One Million” sounds decidedly underwhelming doesn’t it? Perhaps I should instead write [tex]10^6[/tex]. Does that help?
Why am I focusing on this number? Well, while I’ve been in hermit mode the last week (uh… yes, that’s where I was and I’ve got the beard to prove it – was resetting my head over Spring break – more later) the sitemeter counter continued ticking away and sometime today passed the One Millionth Visitor To Asymptotia mark! So we have a landmark of sorts. One worth noting. So…
Hurrah!
I’d planned to note carefully that visitor’s data (you can tell roughly what part of the Click to continue reading this post
Making Steps
-cvj
High Street Help?
Life in Sixty Seconds
Green
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Warped
-cvj
Pi Day!
It is Pi Day today! (It is also Einstein’s birthday, and Talk Like A Physicist Day. See below.) To remind you about Pi Day, from Wikipedia we have:
Pi Minute is also sometimes celebrated on March 14 at 1:59 p.m. If [Pi] is truncated to seven decimal places, it becomes 3.1415926, making March 14 at 1:59:26 p.m., Pi Second (or sometimes March 14, 1592 at 6:53:58 a.m.).
The first Pi Day celebration was held at the San Francisco Exploratorium in 1988, with staff and public marching around one of its circular spaces, and then consuming fruit pies; the museum has since added pizza pies to its Pi Day menu.[1] The founder of Pi Day was Larry Shaw,[2] a now retired physicist at the Exploratorium who still helps out with the celebrations.
This year it is officially National Pi day too, according to the U.S. Congress!
Be sure to do some pi-ous things, ok? (Making pies, walking in circles at 1:59 pm (at Click to continue reading this post
Ten Things About Pluto
Over on Bad Astronomy, Phil has a nice article entitled “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Pluto”. It is nicely illustrated, and indeed, some of those things he mentions might be new to you. Go and have a look and see.
(And don’t forget it is International Year of Astronomy, celebrating -for example- Galileo’s use of the telescope.)
-cvj
Waiting for Godot
Wow. This is a dream cast, a dream production, and a dream interview. You’ve got Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen as the leads, for a start. Two of my favourite actors on stage or screen. But they are joined by another favourite of mine, the amazing Simon Callow! The quartet is rounded out by Ronald Pickup (who I don’t know as well, but is no slouch himself). They’re doing Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot”, and it is going to tour at various theatres in the UK before ending up in London. That would be quite marvellous to see, I think.
Anyway, why am I telling you this? Other than just to enthuse about having those Click to continue reading this post
Waiting for Stephen
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:
Hawking Talking, and More
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
