Small Person in the House

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shoesNo, I’ve not been keeping a low profile in the Far East for a month, as I did a couple of years ago. Nor have I been doing the same in the desert. Actually, I was pondering doing one of those, or something else along those lines, when my sister got in touch and said that she was going to visit me, along with our mum, and my sister’s 18 month old son. This news meant that I’ve been somewhat preoccupied with things over the last few weeks, as a lot of my spare time has been devoted to a project that needed to be accelerated (pictures later) so as to not have too much dust and chaos at the beginning of their visit, and since they arrived, well you can imagine…

They arrived, and it has been a great visit so far. All my plans to think hard about Click to continue reading this post →

Drawing Room

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While I’m on the subject of art and science, I should point out that QMUL’s David Berman told me about an exhibit of drawings by scientists on various themes in physics. He was looking for contributions too (although it may be too late now, I’m not sure). The website is here. He told me a while ago, and I apologize for neglecting to point it out to you sooner (for a while I was sure that I’d done a post on it, but cannot find one).

David said (back in October):

Sanjaye(Ramgoolam) and I are currently trying to put together a collection of works for a series of exhibitions we have lined up. The idea is to show how physicists use conceptual drawing and just to show some of the
interesting ideas around in a visual rather than mathematical way.

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Essence

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Over on Correlations, I posted about the second of the two pieces I was considering as exhibits for some of my thoughts on science and art for Seed magazine. Recall that my first post on this – about the piece and text that I finally submitted for publication – was done a few weeks ago. The theme I brought out there was “transcendence”. For Click to continue reading this post →

Christmas – Birth and Death – Oscar Peterson

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Well, somewhere in the Holiday Season comes Christmas, and somewhere in there is some celebration of a new life. On the other hand, the great pianist Oscar Peterson died the day before Christmas Eve. (See an AP story/obituary here, for example.) At about 6:00pm on Christmas Eve, I usually pronounce it time to have the first strong drink of the evening, and declare Christmas as having begun (defying everyone else who seem to want to start it earlier every year) by playing Carols, and other relevant music, the Christmas tree having been erected. It was again so this year, and I dug out my only “Christmas CD” and put it on. The first track was – of course – the excellent version of Thad Jones’ “A Child is Born” , by Oscar Peterson. In order to share this with you, I thought I’d see if perhaps the man himself might be playing it somewhere on YouTube, but was unable to find it. However, someone else was playing the piece, styling it after and reproducing Oscar Peterson’s famous version, and so I give you – with warm wishes for Christmas and the New Year – “A Child is Born”, Oscar Peterson’s version, channeled through the playing of an unknown (to me) pianist. (Hang on for some actual Peterson in a mo’):



Oscar Peterson was simply amazing, and (especially, for me, as an accompanist to several singers I love) he brought me a huge amount of musical joy, and it is sad to Click to continue reading this post →

Mars Attacked?

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A little over a month from now, Mars might be hit by an asteroid! There’s a 1 in 75 chance (due to uncertainties about the exact trajectory), according to the people tracking the object’s progress right now. The 50 metre wide object is due to pass within 300000 miles of Mars at about 6 a.m. EST (3 a.m. PST) on Jan. 30, 2008. Quoting quite a bit from the press release from JPL/NASA:

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NPR on Blogging

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Well, it is more or less the tenth anniversary of the blog. Not this blog – the whole weblogging thing. NPR did a rather nice radio pastiche to survey the business of blogging. It was done with good humour – they made a radio blog, with audio versions of hyperlinks, scrolling, and so forth. It’s rather amusing, and even somewhat informative as a bonus. They interview various people including (of course) Justin Hall who is identified as one of the earliest bloggers. He’s an interesting guy. I met him briefly when he was here at USC’s Interactive Media Division, during that meeting on academic blogging I blogged about a while back. You can start out finding out a bit more about him and blogging by google searching. Sooner or later you’ll hit the Click to continue reading this post →

Greg Bear on Correlations

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Over on Correlations, my co-blogger Damon Gambuto has started a new series: “Science Fiction Friday”, and guess who is featured for the first one? Greg Bear!

I’ve really enjoyed his writing over many years, starting with the first books of his I read in quick succession (“Legacy”, and “Forge of God”, along with their follow-up works), right up to the very good “Darwin’s Radio”. I’ve not read anything more recent of his yet.

Anyway, the interview (which will be in several parts) looks really good and interesting Click to continue reading this post →

NSBP and NSHP

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nsbp and nshp conference logoI learned from Chanda Prescod-Weinstein* (an occasional commenter here) that it is time to register for the joint NSBP and NSHP (National Society of Black Physicists and National Society of Hispanic Physicists) conference. It’ll be in Washington DC, February 20th-24th. (Actually, it has been time to register, for some time, but I’m late to the party, as usual.)

Chanda’s been working on some of the organization, and she says on her blog (go there for more):

This year’s conference will feature a plenary on Cosmology and Quantum Gravity, organized by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein and starring Abhay Ashtekar (Penn State), Lenny Susskind (Stanford), and Meg Urry (Yale).

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’Twas the Night Before Finals…

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My always-ignored advice to anyone studying for exams is that the best thing you can do the night before is get a good night’s sleep. Long study periods long before the previous night should have been used to build up your skills and knowledge. Late-night cramming at the expense of being fresh and having your wits about you in the morning is not really going to help much, if at all. (Heh… long study periods….call me old-fashioned.)

On this very matter, Yvette (one of our regular commenters here) has outdone herself once again with her literary skills! Here is part of her seasonal (as in finals season) poem:

The Night Before Finals

By Yvette Cendes

T’was the night before finals
And all through the dorm
Crazed cramming and panic
Was quite the norm.

The students were restless
And none touched their beds
While theorems and formulas
Danced in their heads.

With textbook in hand Click to continue reading this post →

Finally

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Well, it’s been a crazy week here in my corner of the universe. I’m still trying to find the time to break off from several things in order to update you on things from last week and the week before. Meanwhile, new things have this way of happening anyway, and sometimes I’d like to mention them too. So it is with teaching matters. Two Fridays ago was the last lecture of my electricity and magnetism class. We’d done magnetization, they’d waded through another couple of class worksheets I prepared for them on the topic, we’d remarked upon similarities and differences with respect to polarization in the electric case, and with a few hints about what phenomena were to come when they do electrodynamics (the second part of the course – we’d strictly been dealing with statics) a feeling of some sadness came over me as I said the last words of the class. I’d liked this group. They got it. I was going to take them out of their comfort zone and get them to work a bit harder and stretch themselves a bit harder, and the benefits (I hope) became apparent to them when they could see further, run faster, and jump higher (with respect to their abilities as physicists, I mean). (See some earlier thoughts on that here, as I prepared to start teaching the class.) They responded well by not whining about the extra effort required, but instead rolling up their sleeves and having a go, with good humour, a good sense of camaraderie, and remaining reasonably engaged and interactive right down to the very last lecture. They got it. I love it when that happens.

electricity and magnetism physics 408a final exam.

Monday of this week was really the end – they had their final exam (see photo above – Click to continue reading this post →

Transcendence

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seed december 2007 coverI noticed last week that the December issue of the magazine Seed has the short piece I mentioned I was working on a while back. I actually completely forgot about it, and just looked at it on the newsstand on the off-chance, and there it was. It is part of a larger cover story by Jonah Lehrer about science and art (which I’ve not yet read), with a number of other scientists giving their take. I was asked to contribute by picking a piece of art, and writing 100 (they said) words about how it connects to my science, Or I could talk about how a piece might have inspired me, or some combination of those sorts of things showing the intersection between science and art. It took me a while to come up with a short answer to this many-faceted and interesting issue. I actually did two completely separate pieces, before later focusing on one and polishing up the words for the magazine. and I’ll put the latter here (below), and later in the week the other will appear (probably over on Correlations). I’ll use the text I have here as I submitted it… I have not checked to see if it is identical to what appeared in the magazine yet. Go along and look at the magazine for the contributions from others. It is very interesting to see what pieces people chose, and why. What would you choose?

Tell us in the comments.

My choice:

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1485

Leonardo da Vinci, Study for the Virgin of the Rocks, c. 1485 (Click for larger view.)

Leonardo da Vinci’s pencil study stunningly illustrates for me the key parallel Click to continue reading this post →

Painterly

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Still utterly swamped by many things (more later), including setting the final exam for my electromagnetism course which is scheduled for 8:00am tomorrow, I must delay on several planned posts a bit more. With apologies, I leave you with a view I saw on a quick hike early this morning in Griffith Park. It’s certainly not a great photo, but it is relatively unusual. There’s the city, shrouded in early morning mist from middle ground to far, and a remarkable sky. (Click for a view that’s a bit larger.)

Los Angeles City Scape

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Categorically Not! – Beginnings

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Bob Miller at Categorically Not!The next Categorically Not! is on Sunday December 16th (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 – 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: The artist Bob Miller speaking at the event entitled “Really?” on 23rd April, 2006. He died recently on Oct. 28th 2007, and this week’s event is dedicated to him.)

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

Every thing (and every body) began sometime. Even matter, space and time have a history. So do music, religion and galaxies (and along with them, musicians, religious scholars and astronomers.) Of course, how things begin determines to a large extent how they evolve and go on to influence both human culture and the universe at large. So for this month’s Categorically Not, we’ll look at beginnings from three widely (and somewhat wildly) diverse perspectives.

categorically not! Beginnings Speakers
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Gell-Mann on Fundamental Law

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Got fifteen minutes? Murray Gell-Mann spoke at TED this year. For a fifteen minute talk, he really crammed in the essentials, and with good humour too. His subject? What we do in the search for the fundamental laws of nature, why we do it, and some of the key things that make it possible: Symmetry and beauty, and nature’s tendency to re-use a good idea again and again.

Insiders, outsiders, newcomers alike, I recommend having a look at the video. While I think he overemphasizes the beauty-over-experiment point a little bit at the beginning in a way that might be a bit misleading (Einstein and some others can get away with it, but not most of us), it’s a gem of a talk – great to see one of the legendary masters in action, at a widely accessible level:

murray gell-mann at TED

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