Wanna see my new car? Well, ok, I’ll grant you a glance:
From Instagram
From Instagram
White
I always love it when these pop their heads out to sample the sun:
The Mission
All very mysterious. Can’t tell you anything about it until it is all over. Maybe not even then. Lots of meetings to take place at a hotel or hotels. Locations undisclosed until the last minute. Got the call to pick up my instructions and briefing data from an office. Large white sealed package with just my name on….
Philosophia Naturalis #6
I just learned that the blog carnival Philosophia Naturalis #6 is underway. It is hosted at Science and Reason. Several city blocks have been shut down to make room for the revelry you get at carnivals.
The monthly collection of recent posts on physics and related topics from around the blog world is very good, and I bet that there are several that will catch your eye. Go and look!
Don’t forget to ask the Brain (click right) a question!
-cvj
Not Nominal
The Sea Launch organization is a private satellite launch company. This is arguably the shape of the future of a lot of space activity, so it is interesting to keep an eye on them. They launch, using their Zenit-3SL rocket, from a latitude near the Equator, out in the Pacific ocean, from a platform that looks a lot like an oil platform (it is a converted one, in fact). The whole thing sails out from near here, at Long Beach, and steams along to the launch site, like some super-villians’ outfit. It’s all rather James Bond. More about them here.
It’s strangely fascinating to look at the videos of past launches. (The October 30th 2006 XM-4 launch video, for example. Their archive is here.) They have a sort of old-fashioned feel to them that is riveting, although utterly boring at the same time since there’s not actually a lot going on, and the video quality is not so great. If I’m honest, I think the attraction for me is the slightly mechanical Eastern-European-accented female voices saying things like “we have lift off”… “separation phase complete”… “propulsion system nominal”… “pitch angle nominal”…. “auxiliary control nominal”….. Most of the videos are pretty much these people saying stuff is nominal, with occasional bursts of chatter layered above and below. It was strange entertainment for me last night while cooking. Go and have a look. Their whole site is worth a browse.
They had a bit of a bad day yesterday, though. Definitely not nominal. News story here. Spectacular video on YouTube here:
Click to continue reading this post
Sabine Hossenfelder: My Inspiration
Today, a guest post. I’m excited, because it’s from one of my favourite bloggers, Sabine Hossenfelder, or “Bee” as you may know her from her comments here, and of course her blog Backreaction.
Bee giving a guest post here on Asymptotia originated in a suggestion I made in the comments of an earlier post of mine. Bee had asked me to do a post on her blog as part of her excellent series of guest posts about what made her guest choose to go into physics. Pressed for time, and not sure whether I’d really have anything new or interesting to say about myself, I stalled for time (I thought) by saying I’d do it in exchange for her doing a post here on a similar subject. She rapidly came up with the post. And of course it’s a great one. I’m so on the spot now.
Anyway, here’s Bee! -cvj
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I just sat down with the best intention to write a lengthy blah on Clifford’s question what inspires me. Now that I sit here, hands above the keyboard, I am facing a problem. It’s not that the question is too difficult, it’s too easy to answer. I get inspiration everywhere. Reading books, seeing movies, taking a walk – ah yes, also from scrolling through blogs. Most of all by talking to my friends and colleagues. The problem is now that I’m too inspired not to shamelessly use the opportunity of writing a guest post for Clifford 😉 So let me redirect the question to your opportunity to use your inspiration.
Had you been born some thousand years ago, your life would have been pretty much determined by where and when you were born, and whether you happened to be a man or a woman. You’d have spent most of your time striving to survive. Undoubtedly, you’d have considered your generation very progressive, still you’d have worked hard to make a better future for those coming after you. And of course our generation says since then we’ve made a lot of progress! But what is it? Is it a 6 lane highway, 50 different Jelly Bean flavors, the size of a 2 GB USB stick, a life expectation of 80 years, plastic surgery, weblogs for everybody?
In my opinion, a society’s maturity is measured not by the development (alias shrinking) of more and more technological gadgets, but by its ability to let (wo)men follow their passion. Progress is what makes our life easier. It is what gives us more time, more freedom. It is our understanding of nature that has allowed us to spend less time on the struggle to survive, and given us the opportunity to live. It has given us the freedom to follow all the stray thoughts that came with the evolution of the homo sapiens’ large brain: the everlasting wish to find and understand our place in the universe that we are part of.
A search that everybody of us undergoes in his or her own way. Some find their place Click to continue reading this post
Hubble Trouble
As you can tell by putting “hubble” into the blog’s search engine on the right, the Hubble Space Telescope has been a strikingly successful eye on what’s going on (and what went on) in the universe, and very powerful tool in lots of research. A lot of that research is done with the instrument called the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS), which have been the instrument in most heavy demand by researchers since it went online in 2002 (Hubble was launched much earlier, in 1990 of course). The instrument stopped working a few days ago (see e.g. stories here and here [update: and especially here]), and is not expected to become operational again without direct intervention. Given that the Hubble orbits some 360 miles above the earth, this is not an easy thing to do.
There are other instruments on board too, but the loss of use of this one is a heavy Click to continue reading this post
Talk about the Talk
Chuck Stevens’ visit went very well indeed. The talk was excellent, and well attended by faculty and students from both Physics and Astronomy Department, and the Neurosciences Research Institute. I’ll tell you a bit more about what he said in a subsequent post, along with pointing to video and slides from the talk, I hope. (Click on left for larger view.)
By the way, when I got to the Steve Reich concert venue, there was a huge line of people waiting to get in. They eventually turned a lot of us (myself included) away due to lack of space.
So I got on my bike and cycled rapidly up Figueroa Street to downtown and found the restaurant where some of my colleagues had taken the guest for dinner. Excellent conversation instead of excellent music. A good trade.
Here’s something I passed on the way to the restaurant. Took a picture while waiting Click to continue reading this post
New Einstein Letters
I’m not supposed to be blogging, since I’ve got to go and set up and introduce the visiting speaker, but I thought I’d point you to an LA Times (front page!) article by John Johnson, talking about some new material about Einstein and his more “human” side, as opposed to the standard image that is portrayed*. The letters (from about 1915, before the completion of his General Theory of Relativity – see a post I did about that Click to continue reading this post
The Hills Were Alive
Beverly Hills, that is. The Da Camera Society (a chamber music society I mentioned last year) arranged a concert by the Janaki String Trio in the Beverly Hills Women’s Club. Click the (no-flash, not-while-they-played) photo for a larger version. I’m a Beethoven nut, and so having two of his string trios on the program was excellent. There was also a trio by Shubert that I liked a lot. There were two bonuses however.
Click to continue reading this post
Steve Reich in the Afternoon
Ok, it’s really the evening – 7:00pm – but I could not resist the post title. Most of you won’t know (let me know if you do) what I’m playing with in the title, but that’s ok. I’m really, really pleased with it.
Amazingly, we have a free concert tomorrow here at USC with an introduction by the composer Steve Reich. Here is the weblink with complete information. Here’s an extract of the heaps of gushing remarks collected together to encourage you to go:
As part of a citywide festival celebrating his 70th birthday, Reich himself introduces a concert of his music played by three USC ensembles.
Widely regarded as one of the major “minimalists,” Steve Reich has composed music with a profound impact on art, film and popular music in the 20th century. He was recently called “…America’s greatest living composer,” (The Village Voice), “…the most original musical thinker of our time” (The New Yorker) and “…among the great composers of the century” (The New York Times). From his Click to continue reading this post
Looking Ahead To Tomorrow
Gosh, where do I begin? It’s going to be a hugely busy day on Monday. I’m excited about Monday first and foremost because of the colloquium. Charles (Chuck) Stevens from the Salk Institute generously accepted my invitation to come and visit USC and give a special colloquium to an audience made up of people from both the Physics and Astronomy Department and the Neuroscience Research Institute. This is because his talk is going to be about thing of interest to both camps! He’s applying physicist approaches -the sort that I do- to biological problems. This is a big deal to me because it is very hard to know when problems in biology actually really need or care about the sorts of things that physicists care about. The last thing you need as a biologist… when you’re happily gathering all those juicy data on various systems and finding out all sorts of highly specialized context-dependent mechanisms… the last thing you need is some arrogant physicist coming in an babbling stuff like “symmetry Click to continue reading this post
Trimmings
Last week Saturday morning, I stepped out to the garden to do maybe forty-five minutes’ worth of much needed pruning. Sometime late in the afternoon saw me finish. Things just got way out of hand. More and more tools were assembled:
…there was much in the way of climbing of ladders and parts of the roof, and I’ve now got about three huge piles of stuff to deal with -here’s one:
…and one tiny garden waste bin that the city to picks up (I cannot compost much of this) each week. At that rate, cleanup will take about a month or so… By then, half the stuff will have grown back.
It’s all in a good cause though. It is what ensures that I can share all those photos of Click to continue reading this post
So Who Are You?
You learn something every day. I only allowed myself one shot at this, and did not go back to try to change it. I found that:
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Apparently, I am:
This inimitably unique storyteller created a future with so many deep layers of history that all the world we know is practically lost in it. |
Go on then, find out which Science Fiction writer you are and come and tell us…
-cvj
Via Dynamics of Cats, via Pharyngula (where does he find this stuff?)
Not Improbable
On Wednesday night, accompanied by Tameem, a student of mine, I wandered across campus to attend the “Mathematics in Music” event. I blogged about it earlier. I don’t really want to talk about the event itself in this post. It was a nice enough recital of three pieces. I don’t know why, but the promised “mathematics” was disappointingly virtually non-existent. I’m not exaggerating, I’m afraid.
Keep in mind that it may simply just be my misunderstanding of the intent of the event, but there’s simply next to nothing to report in the way of what was said about mathematical aspects of music. There were plenty of opportunities, but (almost) none were taken. I got out my notebook and pen, all excited at what the presenters might say at various points… and the mathematics never showed up. There were a few extremely elementary remarks about tonal ratios in chords, about scales, keys, and time, and that was it, more or less. This was a bit of a shame, since I suspect that Elaine Chew could have talked at length and with some authority on the matter (given the projects she’s involved in – see e.g. here), but mathematics was almost completely missing in the event – despite the title. I imagine there were what seemed like good reasons for this. I was not party to decisions made behind the scenes, so cannot comment further.
More interestingly on that front was what took place in the minutes leading up to the delayed start of the event. First, although it was a free event, they pointed us to the box office where an attendant printed us two tickets from the computer so that we can show them to someone at the door who wasn’t really looking anyway. Fine. We got into the recital hall, but rather than sitting at the obvious available seats, I suggested that we move to the other side of the room where one can get a better view of the piano keyboard. I’m less than happy when I can’t see what a musician is doing, you see, so I always try to sit with the pianist’s view of the piano. So we did that, and found two seats. While we chatted and looked around us at the growing assembly, I spotted a friend and colleague of mine, the composer Veronika Krausas. She was in the company of someone who she introduced as Brian Head, who is a composer, performer (guitar) and music theorist (a “triple threat”, Veronika joked), also in USC’s Thornton school of music. They were looking for seats and there was one on either side of the two we were sitting in, and so they joined us and we chatted some more.
When the event start was about ten or fifteen minutes late -they were trying to get the reassuringly large crown all seated, they announced- Veronika idly looked at her ticket, pointed out that they were numbered, and wondered if we should have been Click to continue reading this post
