Have a Fantastic Fourth of July, to everyone who is celebrating it!
It’s been several days since my last confession. Sorry about the silence. I’m honestly not sure exactly what I’ve been doing, since it has been a mostly fragmented set of things, coupled with a generally down mood of introspection over matters personal. Hmm… So nothing new there.
Physics-wise I’m a bit stuck. Not on a particular project this time, but stuck on Click to continue reading this post
150 years ago today, Charles Darwin presented his theory of evolution to a group of his peers for the first time. It was read at the Linnean Society, and the reading didn’t really rock the world. That came later when Darwin published the Origin of Species. Either way, it is quite an anniversary today, since evolution is without question one of the single most important scientific discoveries ever made about how our world works. (Have a look at my earlier post on the Darwin Online Project, by the way. Lots to see there.)
Actually, Wallace had the idea some 20 years before Darwin, it is said, but few remember him. A recent NPR piece quotes the author David Quammen (“The Reluctant Mr Darwin”):
Over on Correlations, we’re in the process of saying goodbye. The PBS experiment with a genuinely new (for them) and fun science format, WIRED Science, along with its really fantastic online component (with resources for schools, the general public, the blog Correlations, and so forth), is officially over.
I don’t know exactly what went on behind the scenes at the PBS mother ship, but frankly, it seems that they just did not have the guts to try something new at this time, and are returning to their standard stuff. I thought that the show had a lot of good work in it, including several shining portions, and deserved a bit more time to find its feet. It may well have got there, building followers that would have tuned in regularly for years, becoming a sort of US (and science-oriented) version of the UK’s Tomorrow’s World (a BBC show that ran for 38 years and -despite its flaws- is fondly remembered by many generations). Oh well.
The mood at KCET (the local Los Angeles PBS affiliate that was making the show) was Click to continue reading this post
…in the kitchen. A friend of mine has a number of banana trees that are producing fruit right now, and to help her get rid of her surplus I accepted a generous gift of bananas last week. (Thanks M!) It turns out that they have a remarkably strong flavour, concentrated a lot by the fact that they were already quite ripe when I got them. That strong flavour meant that I only managed to eat one of them in a given day, even though they are quite tiny.
Well, after some days I still had many of them, and now they were rather far gone down the road of ripeness. Too far, for my tastes, but I did not like the idea of throwing them away. It did not seem in the spirit of the gift at all. Then I hit upon the solution. This means, of course, a long overdue episode of: Asymptotia goes to the kitchen…!
My mum’s recipe could not be used at this point since she was travelling, and there’s an eight hour time difference, so I could not call her to ask for her method. Instead I consulted a replacement that’s sometimes acceptable in times like this: Jim Fobel’s Old Fashioned Baking Book. What was I looking for? Banana Bread.
Most, if not all, of what you need for a quick banana bread is probably in your cupboards already, if you’ve much of a cooking bent, so no special shopping Click to continue reading this post
In some parts of the city, mostly older parts, while out on a walk you can stumble across lovely staircases nestled between houses.
Like many things in Los Angeles, they’re hidden gems – you’ll hardly hear about them outside the city, or even much beyond the neighbourhood they’re in, and you’ll certainly never encounter them by staying in your car.
So they remain largely unknown to that majority who don’t walk – even if they live near them! Here’s a particularly lovely one, spotted while I was lost in thought on a long wander (right: click for larger view), which had lots of welcome shade on a hot day.
-cvj
Recently I was reading the PhD thesis of my student, Veselin. He was going to have his examination and so I was looking through a draft. He recently received a fellowship to go to do a postdoc abroad and so has decided that it’s best to write up and get everything done before it gets too late into the Summer. His new job requires him to have a PhD, of course. (He was, I’m happy to report, successfully doctored (as it were), after an excellent performance in his exam.)
I recall being in the same situation myself, 16 years ago. (Wow, so long…) Happy memories. I got a fellowship to go to my first postdoc in the mythical land across the sea, where so much of the wonderful physics I’d been studying was done by the giants of the field. I was going to get to go there and join them. But I had to write up and graduate first.
I loved writing (and, as you may have noticed, still do) and so relished the prospect. I procrastinated an awful lot (as I do…) for a while before getting down to it, even managing to catch chicken pox for a while (which helped keep me at home for a bit, usefully), and then eventually settled down to it. I essentially locked myself away at home for three or four solid weeks, with a little computer, in my room at the top of the Click to continue reading this post
[Note: Originally posted on CV on 4th November 2005. 25 comments on it here.
Feel free to add new ones here.]
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[Warning! This is an unusually technical post.]
Ok, so last time, I told you a bit about the motivations for what I’ve been up to. Now I want to simply show you some of the product. I’m going to use pictures, words, and equations. I will lose some of you, and for that I’m sorry. But I hope that the words will still give you the gist of the thing. I’ll answer some of your questions in the comments.
Consider the following equation (first found and studied in this context in about 1991/1992 and reported e.g. here, and here, and here):
[Note: Originally posted on CV on 31st October 2005. 31 comments on it here.
Feel free to add new ones here.]
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Well, I suddenly have 45 extra minutes on my hands as I was supposed to be at a very interesting two hour lunch meeting which I’ve now missed. I learned the hard way that we have in addition to the Annenberg School for Communication, the Annenberg Center for Communication, which is of course in a completely different location, North of main campus. I spent half the meeting running around the wrong place trying to find it, and no-one at the School could help me because they did not know anything about it, until after a long time someone had the bright idea of telling me about the existence of the other place….sigh. So I have some time to devote to you, dear Reader, and it will help me calm down from the frustration of it all.
Well, I promised a long time ago (since some of you asked) to tell you what it is that I am working on in my physics research. The problem always was that if I had time to Click to continue reading this post
[Note: Originally posted on CV on 3rd October 2005. 65 comments on it here.
Feel free to add new ones here.]
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Below is a snapshot of a computation I was working on earlier this Summer. Will explain later. Spoke about it at the Southern California Strings Seminar.
I’m curious about what a physicist’s scribblings look like to others, regardless of field (science or non-science). So, non-specialists: What does this all look like, to you? What impressions do you get, if any? Do tell.
There’s no wrong answer here.
-cvj
The next three posts are repeats of posts I did on CV in 2005. They were the first three in the series entitled “News From The Front”, and their subject matter partly lay the groundwork for a post on some new results that I hope to write soon.
Enjoy!
-cvj
One great thing to do when it is super-hot outside is to sit in an air-conditioned movie theatre. Yes, and watch a movie. And when its really hot, do it for a really long time. How about seven hours?!
Over the last two nights I watched something wonderful on screen, at the Bing Theatre at LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). A rare gem, in fact*. Sergei Bondarchuk’s film of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, (Voyna i mir) released (USA) in 1968, and in four parts (matching those of the book), each a full movie. I went with three friends (M, R, and R), since movie marathons are fun in company. The full print, in Russian and French with English subtitles, is seven hours long. This is not to be mistaken for the relatively paltry dubbed version cut down to a fleeting six hours duration. This is (closer to) the proper original version. It is rare…apparently not shown in the USA for a very long time, and apparently not available on DVD. (Arguably, it shouldn’t be seen on DVD on a screen that is inappropriate to the task, and without good company. This is a movie theatre movie if there ever was one.) It’s a national treasure, and frankly I have no clue how they made it so well.
The cinematography, set/production design, art direction, and – of course – direction Click to continue reading this post
The first day of Summer sees us deep inside a heat wave here in Los Angeles. It was already very hot before 8:30 this morning, and the temperature continues to rise. Yesterday, I was booked to do some shooting for another episode of The Universe (History Channel), but happily it was cancelled due to the heat. I’m grateful since I was to be demonstrating aspects of Einstein’s Special Relativity by cycling at relativistic speeds* around a racetrack. More superpowers on display, or another remarkable feature of the Brompton? More later. This was to take place in the Valley, where temperatures were touching on 107 F, apparently.
Wandering the city on days like this can be fun. The first trick is to accept that it is super-hot and that you’re going to be sweating, and so dress appropriately. I always wear a hat too, and carry a filled water bottle, as it is easy to get dehydrated here. Everything then ends up being done in a dreamlike state. Everybody seems a little Click to continue reading this post
Have you been keeping track of what Phoenix has been finding on Mars? There’s been lots of digging of holes, baking, peering at things under microscopes, and so forth. And, wonderfully, it has all been guided, monitored, and watched from here on earth. From all of this, there’s now very direct evidence for ice, for example. (Dig a hole, find white flaky chunks which disappear after exposure to sunlight…) (Image left (click for larger) is from the mission (credit: JPL/Caltech/NASA) and shows the before and after. Keep your eye on the darker corner, blown up in the inset.)
There’s a story from the AFP here, and one by Alicia Chang (AP) here. There’s a photo Click to continue reading this post
With the rise in gas prices, I’ve been seeing more and more people on the streets, walking and cycling, and more people using the subways and the buses. While I know that it has been producing real hardship for some people, I have to admit that it has been fantastic to see this change. So many streets and street corners have come to life. It has always been clear that higher gas prices would have this positive change, and I’ve hoped for it in some ways, but I wish that it had not come about in this way. I’d rather that it was because we’d managed to break out of a political climate so selfish and naive that nobody could propose raising taxes to an extent that would simultaneously give an incentive for people to use their cars less while at the same time providing much needed revenue with which to improve public transport infrastructure. Sadly, instead we’re just having high prices with nothing to show for it but a bunch of expressions of anger, while the oil companies and producers get fatter and fatter.
When I say I’d been hoping for higher prices, I need to clarify. I’m completely aware of Click to continue reading this post
Ok, so which one of you is responsible for this? (Since I started writing the post, I’ve since learned the answer – see below.)
I was watching the 1999 Mars University episode of Futurama some nights back. It’s the one where Professor Farnsworth teaches (among the many excellent lines: “I can’t teach, I’m a professor…”) a course entitled “The Mathematics of Quantum Neutrino Click to continue reading this post
