MacArthur Mashup

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The MacArthur Fellowships were announced today. These are particularly great, as it’s awarded across so many different fields, and I always learn about interesting work going on by reading the synopses at the website. Congratulations to all recipients!! Before I point to the list, I’d like to make a plea that will, of course, go unheeded.

Please please, people of the media, stop calling them “genius grants”. Just stop. By way of explanation, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the term just seems to strike the wrong tone about what these things should be about. It seems to me to push the recipients away as being “other” rather than encouraging us all to embrace the qualities that they are being encouraged to show by getting the fellowships. Ok, that’s the end of my plea.

Here’s a reminder of what the Fellowship is about (extract from their site):

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New Installation

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Yesterday we saw the official “installation” of Howard Gillman the new Dean of the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. I find this term amusing in this context, as it sounds a bit like putting in a new lightbulb, or perhaps a new operating system (the latter is, I guess is closer to the truth). I sort of had to go since it represents the outcome of a lot of work I did last year on the search committee* that advised the Provost and President on their choices, and of course I have an interest in it as an ordinary faculty member of the College and of USC in general – The LAS is truly the core of USC, and we need the new Dean to do a good job of steering it forward in this (happily) continuing period USC’s steady and rapid progress on all fronts. So a good opening speech is seen as a good sign. It was good – much more than good actually – and everybody seemed to have genuinely good things to say afterwards (as we munched on the always excellent food served at these events – the other reason we go to them).

new dean installationRight: Not the most representative photo (click to enlarge), but you can see him mid-speech, with President Sample seated listening. Assembled is a lot of the faculty, mostly seated. All the other Deans from all the other units were present, as well as various vice-Presidents and so forth. They all precessed into the room, and members of USC Thornton School of Music’s choir sang the USC song, which was… quite a bit more pomp and circumstance than I was expecting. What you can’t see is that the room is about twice as big as the part you can see, there’s lots of faculty standing around in that part, with several tables of very tasty food and wine for all.

For the record, the fact that I thought that it was a good speech has nothing to do with Click to continue reading this post →

Tips on Global Warming

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global warming book by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon This looks/sounds like fun.

I heard about it on NPR (audio about it here). I suspect that it will be useful and informative not just for kids, but for us older ones as well. It is by Laurie David and Cambria Gordon. I’ve not read it, but from what I gather from the interview, it is certainly worth a look if you’re in the market for accessible information that someone you know (or a whole household) might like to have.

From the NPR site:

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ScienceWoman’s New Digs

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Just thought I’d let you know that the blog of ScienceWoman (that I talked about in an earlier post) has now moved. Her blogging about her day to day experiences and thoughts as an early career woman scientist will be getting a whole lot more attention now that it is under the ScienceBlogs umbrella. Go and have a look at her new digs. She’s already started off nicely with a post asking readers to name their favourite woman scientist, with the resulting interesting contributions and discussions you’d expect in the comments. Go and add your two cents.

While I was over at ScienceBlogs (haven’t been in a long while) I spotted a rather Click to continue reading this post →

Rain!!!

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griffith observatory with storm clouds
Photo (added later): Griffith Park’s Mount Hollywood with the Griffith Observatory and rain-filled clouds above. Mount Lee with the Hollywood sign (just visible) is behind.

Finally. I never thought I’d see the day again. Finally and end to the seemingly perpetual sunshine. It has not been since March (unless I’m very mistaken) since there’s been any serious rain here, and more than five months since there’s been any officially measurable rain of any sort in Los Angeles (as measured by the official station down at USC).

I was beginning to despair a bit. I need rain, psychologically as well as for more mundane reasons like wanting my garden to get a good soaking. There’s something about the way my outlook on the world works that needs to have good rainfall sometime. Rainfall where I live, I mean. I’d seen some wonderful rain over the summer (almost daily afternoon thunderstorms in Aspen for a few weeks, nice rain and drizzle for a week in Cambridge), and that did help me with the waiting, but I’ve been needing rain at home.

And so here it is! There’s the wonderful sound of it on the roof, and then there’s the Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry, XII – A Shooting Diary

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Here’s my promised report/diary on yesterday’s adventures in film-making.

history channel shoot september6:45am Got up a bit earlier than perhaps I should have, given that I got to sleep at 1:00am. Spent a while reading a ton of email, and sending some more. Will be away from my regular professoring duties for the whole day, and so wanted to make sure the fort was held. Prepared some appropriate TV clothing (pretty much what I wear normally anyway – simple solid colours), and so forth. Attempted to beautify myself just a tad (with the usual…inconclusive results). Shower and so forth. Coffee and oatmeal, sprinkled with NPR… Read a bit of stuff on dates of historical background on material I’ll be talking about. I often forget that sort of thing, and its never ever needed whenever I do remind myself of it, so after a few minutes I decided not to bother. The core physics ideas are more important, ultimately. Spent time looking for rain gear (the micro-brolly, basically), since supposedly there’s going to be a rainstorm later (hurrah! finally!). Ready to go.

8:45am Fifteen minutes later than I intended to (how did that happen?), I set off to walk to the Sunset/Vermont Red Line subway station. Waved to a neighbour, and we exchanged pleasantries about how nice a day it was.

8:47am Walked past surprised neighbour back toward home…. briskly.

8:52am Riding the Brompton (the folding bike, for those of you not keeping up), I cycled off to the Sunset/Vermont station.

9:01am Arrive at said station on schedule (one minute late does not count in LA), and Click to continue reading this post →

Soon They Will Come

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So the mexican sage (salvia leucantha) has started its new crop of flowers. The purple bobs pictured below right mexican sage(click for larger – yes, there is a little bee resting quietly on a leaf there for some reason) will turn into long purple fronds with lots of individual bells containing flowers. Soon they will come, and they will keep coming. They’ll come and examine each flower closely and attentively, and I’ll be waiting for them, since they are so magical – appearing suddenly and dramatically as though dropping out of warp, with a wonderful and powerful hum. I’m talking about hummingbirds, of course. They love these flowers, and come and feed on them regularly.

The warp reference? They are fast – incredibly fast, and they can accelerate and decelerate astonishingly effectively. So if you’re lucky and standing still at the right point, there’ll be a hum and suddenly one Click to continue reading this post →

Whither String Theory? – Too Soon To Tell

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stringscape image from physics worldGosh, a thoughtfully-written general level (more or less) article on some of the general outcomes of string theory research! It’s written by Matthew Chalmers, and is in the Sept. ’07 edition of Physics World*. The article can be read online here, and downloadable pdf is here. The graphic on the right came with the article. I don’t fully understand what it is, but the title, like that of the article, is “stringscape”… Look, let’s not over-think this cvj – it’s a pretty decoration.

I’ve done a quick read of it (should re-read more carefully later on – it will no doubt have some emphases with which I disagree somewhat**) and I’d say it is very much worth reading. While not a perfect summary (what is?), compared to a lot that’s been out there, you’ll find it rather more informed, less sensational, (refreshingly unpoisoned by various prejudices, such as the presentations of Smolin and Woit – see numerous earlier discussions in the “More Scenes from the Storm in a Teacup” series of posts, and others), and unafraid to go to some length to unpack the issues somewhat carefully.

Very importantly, it contains numerous quotes from various respected researchers in Click to continue reading this post →

Chicken Wire

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That’s such a lovely sound. Chicken wire, or maybe better: “chickenwire”. (I would put it alongside “cellar door”…[update: almost. I suppose it is not as transcendent, really.])

I digress. I just thought I’d share with you a picture of the things I went to the hardware store to get last night1 (Click for larger view):

    chicken wire project

  • Several feet of chicken wire (it really is called that on the labeling, but better: Poultry netting. Excellent. I like the idea of going home to construct an enclosure for my wayward happy fat chickens), 3ft high.
  • A collection of bricks (I chose some nice miniature ones… they called out to me while I was trying to find the regular bricks).
  • Large black plastic bags. Heavy duty.
  • Steel wire.
  • A 25 inch machete. Annoyingly, it comes from the store so (deliberately) blunt I’d be better off using a wet fish to perform the tasks intended for it2. Going to have to put an edge on it later.

Yes, you guessed right, I’m going to be constructing something. Any idea what the project is?

But I won’t start now. Just got back from a hike over at Runyon Canyon among the Click to continue reading this post →

Home School

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simpsons schoolThis is very interesting to me. I just heard a story (by Nancy Mullane) on NPR’s Weekend Edition about home schooling. (The link is here, and audio will be available at that page shortly). It focuses on the issue that African Americans are the fastest growing group of adopters among minorities in the US. I was also not aware that homeschooling is on a rapid rise.

This raises all sorts of questions for me. Very basic ones. How well does homeschooling work? Does the “product” – an educated person – perform well afterwards, once they’ve rejoined educational settings with the more traditional social environments (colleges and universities). Does the reduced level of social interaction during those homeschooling years have an adverse effect, or is it compensated for by social interaction that presumably takes place after school? Perhaps there are arguments that the reduction in social interaction even helps in some ways? I really don’t know much about this. Do you? I presume there’s all sorts of statistics on this, but I’d be curious to hear a bit of anecdotal discussion in the comments. Perhaps you were homeschooled? Have friends who were? Are homeschooling someone now? Are being homeschooled now? Tell us what you think!

I wonder about this since I’m curious as to whether this results in a different (better, Click to continue reading this post →

I’ve Got Next

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Ok. So I want to make this post timely, but it means that it will begin to let a cat out of the bag. We’ll see how much I can save for a later post as I write1.

So, as I walked to the subway this morning (yes, they have one in LA), I went through my little checklist of things I take on self-assigned assignments of this sort.

Notebook for scribbling: Check
Pen for scribbling: Check
Camera: Check
Phone (now with decent back-up camera): Check
Spare battery for camera: Check
Decent excuse/reason for being spectacularly late: Check
Water: Check
Good footwear for endless walking back and forth: Check

By now you get it. I’m either doing one of my parade reports, or perhaps a street fair/party, museum exhibit, or some random science fair, object or installation or other. Yes, but which? Well, apparently I was going to the future:

nextfest visit photo

The scene: The Los Angeles Convention Center. The event: The NextFest, brought to Click to continue reading this post →

From the Earth to the Moon

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Well, I’m reporting on this as part of a longer blog post (update: it is here) about an event I attended today at the Los Angeles Convention Center, but since it’ll take me a while to finish, and it will be buried in all the other stuff (including pictures and so forth), I’ll snip out a bit of what I’m saying there to inform you of this interesting development:

google lunar x-prize posterSo what were some of the big ticket items, at least in terms of where all the regular press were? Well, the biggest was of course the X prize There was a long movie with lots of stuff about space, and dreams about our future in space, and animations and things of roving robots on planetary surfaces, and all that good stuff…. very nice, I thought, and began to wander off…. and then there was a round of applause from everyone and I came back as a voice announced “The Google Lunar X Prize”, and various other people showed up on the stage (like one of the founders of Google – forgot his name, and later, good ol’ Buzz Aldrin, who seems to be required at these sorts of events). The Google co-founder guy began his speech by acknowledging all the Google engineers… and announcing that they’d just launched a new version of the moon. Applause. (I’m pretty sure that they mean Google Moon, by the way.)

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