I know nothing about Mr Wizard (Donald Herbert), largely because I grew up elsewhere. Many of you do, however. Even if not*, this (from Rebecca at Skepchicks) is worth pursuing**:
(Click to follow over to YouTube.)
“Ultimately, the point is to flood YouTube with videos of people doing fun and entertaining science experiments. Woo hoo!”
I’ve just noticed that Jacques Distler will be blogging from Strings 2007 (his first post is here). Excellent! I hope that others will be too. If you learn of anyone else who will be blogging from the conference (either physics content or other aspects of the event), do let me know (either in comments or by email) and I’ll update this post with pointers. If you have anything interesting to share from it*, but don’t blog, consider sending it along too!
-cvj
(*You know, anything from supplementary physics discussion to incriminating photos from those notorious string theory after-parties that plague the conference circuit…)
The main annual conference in my main field of interest starts today. Strings 2007 is in Madrid, and runs all week. The website is here (while there, have a play with the front page image of the Goya painting – quite entertaining – snapshot right). They promise to update the schedule/speakers page with scans of slides, and video, so you’ll be able to keep track of some of the new developments online. There’s no system for doing this live, or asking questions remotely, so if you want to quiz Ed Witten about his new 83-page monster paper on three dimensional gravity that came out yesterday (just in time for the conference!), or feel the buzz of event-anticipation whenever Witten talks about a huge new sets of results, you’ll still have to show up in person.
Why am I not there? Well, it would be nice, but there are lots of reasons I’m not going Click to continue reading this post
Not long after I told you about the TASI school and the excellent online lecture resource they were rapidly building, I heard* about a school in Utah that might be of interest, especially if you’re interested in the fruitful interface between mathematics and string theory. The title: “Derived Categories”, and it ran for two weeks with lectures on mathematical aspects and stringy aspects. The main reason I’m telling you Click to continue reading this post
Not exactly a bumper crop in volume today, but definitely in flavour:
…and then you have days when nothing works. At all. This was not like last Saturday. Despite starting out nice and early with a cup of tea in the sunshine and scribbling away while wrinkling one’s brow. Things got worse and worse through the morning, as I realized that many things I so wanted to be right about the next stage of my computation (which perhaps I’ll tell you about one day) were in fact not going to work. Not even close.
By lunchtime I’d given up, and summarized my thoughts on the research blog for my collaborators. Was probably not the most encouraging reading for them to encounter, but I tried to be as constructive in my deconstruction of our idea as I could. I’m hoping that they -or later, I- might find some useful threads to pick up on from my notes and remarks.
It’s not over yet.
Maybe I should have gone for that hike instead of sitting entirely at home on a Click to continue reading this post
This is actually a bit exciting! While eating lunch at home, I’m reading the live updates* on the space shuttle’s preparations for re-entry, since it is going to land in California. It actually might fly overhead while supersonic and we’ll get a sonic boom.
It is currently doing its series of rolls (times are in EDT):
And the immediate followup question is “Should there be?” I’m referring to the story on NPR’s Marketplace the other day about the effects that some women’s voices have on whether they are taken seriously in the workplace. The audio is here, along with a transcript. The article, entitled “Professional women? With little-girl voices?”, is by Ashley Milne-Tyte.
The piece begins with a clip from the recent news, of Monica Goodling (Former Justice Department White House liaison) speaking in her defense during the hearings over the Justice Department firings. She has a noticeably “little-girl”-pitched voice. (I’m sure you remember hearing her during the news or the live broadcasts, and possibly your first instinct was to ask yourself why – in the political feeding frenzy aimed at bringing down Alberto Gonzales from the Attorney General position – the Congressional Democrats were now rounding up and grilling small children. (Or at least that was how it was for me for a split second since I mostly don’t watch television news – I find it too slow and otherwise annoying – and so I heard her on the radio.) It was then announced in the news piece who it was and I thought nothing more of it at the time…)
My own take on this is that it does not matter. You just learn, and move on. Since coming to the USA long ago, I adjusted my expectations about what are considered Click to continue reading this post
Ah, the two-body problem. On NPR’s Marketplace last week, Kai Ryssdal had a piece entitled “Studying ways to help 2-career couples”, covering a “Dual Careers Conference” at Cornell. The audio is here, along with a transcript.
It’s an important issue, (which I’m not going to spend a huge amount of time on here, since I’ve been blogging too much this morning so far), and I’d no idea that there were conferences devoted to it.
From the point of view of academia, there’s one aspect of it which still has not penetrated very far in the minds of many, in my mind. It is one I tried to emphasize when this issue came up during various advisory committees I’ve served on with relevance to matters of hiring, diversity, etc. What’s on my mind is that the two-body problem (as it is jokingly referred to by some) is not always to be thought of as a “problem” from the point of view of potential employers. In fact, if you can work with a potential employee to find employment for their spouse at your or a neighbouring institution, it actually can strengthen your faculty roster in many ways. Aside from the obvious ones, there are the benefits of having happier employees who are committed to setting down roots, rather than an employee who is spending a lot of time travelling to or calling their spouse in another city, wondering every day whether their job is really worth that strain. Retention is a huge issue in managing your faculty. The value of settled employees cannot be overstated if you take the long view for your organization.
Anyway, have a listen to the article (or read the transcript). There’s the usual interview with members of couples who are academics and struggling with the issue, and it’s interesting if you’re not familiar with the matter, or perhaps if you’re in academia, early in your career and wondering about what the job market holds for you. And if you’re currently wondering whether to date other academics or not, don’t be put off (at least not by this issue!). Things are getting better. Employers are getting smarter Click to continue reading this post
What was he surfing on anyway? Magnetic fields? Or just an all-pervasive Jack Kirby/Stan Lee medium? Or perhaps I’m making the same mistake that Nineteenth Century physicists made, thinking that light waves needed a medium in which to propagate? That’s it! The Silver Surfer needs nothing to surf on… Huh, why did I not think of that before?
Pity the film (which is on in the Arclight’s wonderful Dome, too!) will probably suck like a Dyson.
-cvj
Love these. They always look like a clockwork design… But look… five fold symmetry Click to continue reading this post
You’ll be pleased to know that some of our best people are on it:
This is quite brilliant..! (Be patient… it gets even better as it goes along. Some familiarity with the Star Wars films required for full understanding, I’d say. There are some brilliantly conceived extensions of various scenes, excellent re-imaginings of others, completely new added scenes (the John-Cleese-esque scene is just perfect, for example), and so forth. Hollywood Reporter background story here. ):
The BBC Radio 4 program Archive Hour was just brilliant on the weekend. Here is the synopsis:
Adam Hart Davies looks at some of the predictions made in the past by scientists, programme-makers and politicians about how future society and technology would develop. He explores some of the moral and ethical dilemmas arising from mankind’s thirst for new inventions, new technologies and new ways of life.
(Image right: Chesley Bonestell painting for a cover of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1950. See more art from that era at this excellent site.)
It brings to the issue a lot of archival footage of interviews, debates, and other material. There are interviews with many interesting people, including scientists and science fiction writers. The role of science fiction (the really good stuff, not the stuff that’s purely space opera… although sometimes it is hard to know which is which without the benefit of hindsight) is discussed quite a bit too.
There are the usual discussions about mobile phones, communications satellites, and the like, well-known things that were anticipated by writers of fiction, but the programme is much more interesting than that, reflecting upon the impact of various technologies and medical techniques (e.g. heart transplants) and how they were regarded and debated at the time, since they were often seen as either assaults on, or enhancements of (depending upon point of view) our humanity. This discussion is all in aid of reflecting upon us in the present. (Consider carefully the face transplant, for example, and how people react to what that means…)
There’s also very interesting discussion of the moral/ethical responsibility of the Click to continue reading this post
A disaster of a few days ago:
It was on a window sill, and after shutting the window rather suddenly, my hand slipped down and severed the plant’s trunk! Drat!
I will attempt to save it by putting it into water to root (Athena reminded me that soil rooting is better in this case**). Wish me luck.
If that does not work, there is A New Hope, however:
