Actually, it’s even better than I thought! There’s a whole collection called “The String Doll Gang”. Here are some of them (click for larger):
Cute aren’t they? Yes, each apparently made of onecontinuouspieceofstring. More about them, and closeups (and prices) at this site.
Now, being a responsible citizen and all, I can’t discourage you enough from trying to match various members of the real live string community to these dolls. That would be a bad thing to do. Bad!
-cvj
The corn has matured (they’re less full because of low volume of watering while I was away… but that’s ok… they’ll taste great!), and I’ve got a huge corgette/zucchini for my trouble. Must get around to harvesting the peas soon.
Upcoming…. that flower promises a tasty patty-pan squash in my future…..
-cvj
So this semester, at the request/suggestion of the people who bring USC freshmen the Freshman Seminars, KC Cole and I started a new course. Turned out we were brought in to replace another professor who was originally billed to do what looks to be an Art appreciation course. Looked good. The title was “The Art of Seeing and the Seeing of Art”. For whatever reason, that professor was no longer doing it, and relatively late in the day we were asked if we wanted to do a seminar, and it would be one of two freshman seminars that meets from 2:00-3:50 (or so) each Wednesday afternoon and deliberately engages with the events of the Visions and Voices programme. (See earlier blog post about that programme.)
Well, of course KC and I thought that we’d have fun with this, by mixing art and science and… everything else together. So we changed the title to “The Art and Science of Seeing, and the Seeing and Science of Art”. Heh.
The first meeting of the course, we had nine students registered, and five or six showed up. Yay! (These seminars are designed to enable freshmen to engage with all sorts of extra material, learn to take part in wide ranging discussions with their peers and a professor or two in a non-confrontational environment, and enrich their first year -some titles (more here): “You Can’t Go Home Again: Now What?”, “Bioterrorism and Emerging Diseases: Their Impact on Society”, “Beer and Belly Rings: Facts and Fictions About Today”s Youth”, “The Art of the Comic Book: Graphic Narratives from Maus to Sin City” (Blast! Why can’t I do that one?!)- are capped at 18 students in order to maintain intimacy of the discussions and discourse, etc….. lovely idea).
Then we handed out the syllabus. The word “science” was spotted. Faces fell. We Click to continue reading this post
Apparently, we are hard-wired for superstition and religion. This is according to Bruce Hood, of Bristol University, in the UK. I learned this from an article in the Guardian by James Randerson, which you can read here. The good professor:
suggests that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force.
He goes on to say (in a speech at the British Association Festival of Science in Norwich, or, more probably the press conference after his session):
“I think it is pointless to think that we can get people to abandon their belief systems because they are operating at such a fundamental level,” …. “No amount of rational evidence is going to be taken on board to get people to abandon those ideas.”
And what is being called “irrational”, by the way? Another quote:
But almost everyone entertains some form of irrational beliefs even if they are not religious.
“For example, many people would be reluctant to part with a wedding ring for an identical ring because of the personal significance it holds.
I’m sorry, but I don’t see why that is irrational. Since when is preferring objects of emotional significance actually irrational? All this seems to do is reinforce for the reader the stereotype that scientists regard emotions as “illogical”. This is of course utter crap, if you’ll pardon my French.
“No amount of rational evidence…” Really? I actually have found that there are a lot of things that people are willing to abandon as “irrational beliefs” if you take the time to Click to continue reading this post
The BBC’s Radio 4 starts a new programme about astronomy tonight. Called “The Cosmic Hunters”, it sounds as though it will be rather good, so do tune in. It will be on Wednesdays at 9:00pm. It will be discussing various areas of recent research, using some of the optical telescopes that we’ve come to know and love (like the Hubble) and will also talk about future telescopes, such as the Webb.
There’s a little article written by the presenter, Chris Riley, here. It is as a sort of preview of the radio show in which he talks about the search for extrasolar planets and the hunt for the oldest galaxies, among other things. Of course, if you don’t get a chance to hear the broadcast, you can always go to the programme’s website to hear archived programs (for a short period).
-cvj
… since on Friday, our event of Thursday night, along with a photo of KC and myself in action, made the front page …of the campus newspaper, the Daily Trojan! This is a big deal, you see. Front page spots for faculty in the student newspaper…. and colour photos to boot. Such treatment is for the football team almost exclusively, I was led to believe.
Story, by Laura Simurda, is here.
Photo by Joseph Zuniga of the DT. (Heh… if you look closely you can see that I forgot to take off my cycle-clips. I wear them all the time as it is the best place to keep them, when on campus…. also, think of it as a sort of silent protest against excessive car use.)
-cvj
(Thanks Krzysztof)
So, string theorists, the next time anyone asks you again whether scientists will ever be able to directly demonstrate that everything and everyone is made of string, show ’em this !
Yes, this (a surprise gift last week*) is a “Little Prince” doll, made of onecontinuouspieceofstring!
-cvj
(*Thanks Michelle!)
How to pass a few minutes outside on a very hot day? Do a demo in front of 90 students when you’re not sure of your equipment, of course! This was in the cause of demontrating Newton’s Laws of Motion in my Physics 100 class today. I’m actually moving backwards at a good speed in this shot.
Fun was had by all, and I got my first job-related injury from not realizing that the metal nozzle spins around and whacks your trigger hand hard if you don’t hold it…. Would have got better acceleration if I’d pointed it straight forward, but my hand was now injured a bit at that point, so I did what I could…. All’s well that ends well!
-cvj
(Thanks for taking the pictures, Tameem.)
Er… I had in mind the other sense of the word “retreat”. Although the Catholic Church does officially agree that:
[…] the earth is roughly four billion years old and that species changed through evolution.
But then it gets a little messy after that, as you know. Although not utterly and manifestly silly like the hardcore “intelligent design” proponents, who would deny all the evidence of evolution staring them in the face. It is indeed a relief to read:
[…] scientists and church experts say they cannot imagine the study session ending with any alignment of the pope or the church with intelligent design or American-style creationism, which often posits that Earth is only about 6,000 years old.
“I suspect they will try to avoid it,†said the Rev. Joseph Fessio, an American priest and former student of the pope’s, who is taking part in the meeting, “because intelligent design has been represented either as a religion, which it is not, or as a science, which I think is indefensible.â€
Study session? Pope? I’m quoting (above) from a New York Times article on the (now underway) annual meeting that the current Pope has every year at Castel Gandolfo (excellent satellite photo below from Amara via Google Maps!), where he has scholarly debates with other members of the clergy on various matters.
This year’s topic is evolution. Sadly, unlike (for example) the field of theoretical physics, there won’t be any streaming or downloadable video of the seminars and discussion sessions. Pity, really.
Anyway, the article, by Ian Fisher, is very interesting, so have a read here.
-cvj
It is Labor Day here (for once I use the weird spelling, in deference to geography, etc) and, as usual it is incredibly hot. Already at 92 degrees by lunchtime, and I’m in a relatively cool part of the city. Tomorrow will have lots of pictures in the newspaper of amazing scenes of people sunning themselves on the beach, filling up Santa Monica and Venice beaches in a way that is impressive, given how huge those beaches are.
I don’t actually understand this traditional cooperation from the weather. It seems to consistently get super hot just in time for this symbolic “last day of summer”, at least for the last three years I remember. Back in England, the traditional set up is that on a long holiday weekend, by time the holiday Monday comes, it is raining. People are used to this and plan for it. There are exceptions from time to time, but that’s the tradition as I recall it. Has this changed in Blair’s new Britain, I wonder?
Well, here are some shots from other traditional holiday weekend activity…
I should go and cycle by the beaches or something, but it is way too hot to go out right now (although I managed to get a couple of hours of morning hiking in the park to test out my boots’ repair). So I’m going to hibernate for a while. Then I’ll do some physics. Plenty of time for holiday fun once the sun sets.
-cvj
At about 12000 ft up a mountain, near the supremely beautiful Willow Lake (my destination… I’ll tell you about this and why I was doing it in a little while, now that I’ve managed to get the pictures off my ailing Mingus) my faithful companions of 14 years -my Asolo AFX 530s- decided to disintegrate on me. I’ve had those boots since 1992/3 when I started hiking and backpacking properly in the USA, doing some trips up from Princeton (where I was at the time) to the Adirondacks in upstate New York, occasionally disappearing into the wilderness there for a few days with just enough equipment to do the job reasonably comfortably. They’ve stuck with me through thick and thin all these years, and I’ve given them a lot of work to do, especially in the mountains in the Aspen area.
Well, that last half hour sprint/hike after the waterfall over sharp rocks up to the lake was the last straw for one sole, and it shattered into pieces, and continued to shred to the footplate just beneath my left foot. Upon closer examination, the right sole was also cracking and leaving the boot in some places too. It was as though they’d both had enough and agreed to end it all together.
Some hours later, I (with two other members of the party – the others stayed at the Lake to camp overnight and then make an early assault on the 14000ft + peaks of Kit Carson and Challenger point) hiked back down toward the 8000ft point from where we bagan (near the village of Crestone, Colorado), and within 25 minutes were overtaken by torrential rain and a wonderful lightning storm, which had settled right on top of us. We hiked down the mountain for the next couple of hours or so in silence, broken only by the sounds of grand pianos falling down the stairs (thunder and lightning) and -at least to my ears- the loud squelching noise of my soggy-socked foot (now sticking out of the boot) as it sampled every puddle and rivulet made by the downpour.
Being sentimental, I brought them home back to California. Here they are:
Yesterday I decided that it was time to begin the arduous search for a replacement pair. I was not looking forward to this because: Click to continue reading this post
Saturday morning’s fig harvest.
I think you’ll agree with me that this constitutes an emergency. I need to make some tasty thing or other in order to use these up. I’m thinking of something in the pie department. I have a few ideas of my own, but nothing is blowing my skirt up at this point. Recipe suggestions welcome… So dust off those recipes… Help!
-cvj
Well, we had a full house. Really full. The auditorium at Annenberg has a seat capacity of 220, and all of those were in use, with people standing at the sides and sitting on the floor. In view of the fact that I was prepared to live with the fact that only ten or fifteen people might show up, this was a pleasant bonus. I think it helped that we were the first of the events of the Visions and Voices program (not counting the big gala opening last week), a fact that I did not take note of until I began to notice several of USC’s big cheeses milling around. This is a manifestation of the (relatively new) Provost’s vision, and so why would they not be there?
The audience was exactly what I’d dreamed of -or more appropriately, what the Provost had conjured up when he pitched the Arts and Humanities Initiative to all of us (see my earlier posts for extracts of his speech, here and here)- there were students and faculty from from an astonishing cross-section of the numerous schools, departments and programs that one can encounter by tracing a random 20 minute path through the campus on foot. I’m lucky enough to know a lot of these people, so it was a pleasure to look into the audience and see faculty, students and other friends from from Physics and Astronomy sitting next to faculty, students and other friends I know from the music school; and behind friends from the English department; right across from friends from political science who in turn were near students and faculty from the school of theatre, of cinema-television, etc. It was rather like happens when you invite friends from lots of different cicles to all come together to meet each other at a dinner party at your house. You’re excited since you’ve always wondered what it would be like to bring these people together, but you don’t know how it is going to turn out….but you’re sure it will be interesting. And maybe that’s enough to make it worthwhile.
It was worthwhile. We started off much closer to the appointed time than one can reasonably expect for any such large event. We had the Executive Vice Provost Barry Glassner deliver some introductory remarks, and then he handed over to Michael Parks, the Director of the Annenberg School of Journalism, who welcomed everyone to the Annenberg School and who in turn introduced KC Cole. He introduced her by recalling what he called a “typical KC Cole moment” back when he was her employer Click to continue reading this post
Well, it’s the morning after. I did not wake up with that sort of cringing feeling that you get when the night before had an event you’d rather forget such as that time you said something incredibly stupid at a dinner party, or some other such thing. No, I woke up at 6:00 am feeling fine, even though I went to sleep at 2:00. The evening before was in fact rather enjoyable. Earlier I participated in the “Uncertainty” event, about which I’ll tell you shortly. I was up that late partly because I was trying to recover the data from the hard drive of my ailing powerbook, Mingus. It was a success! I was able to get it to start up from the recovery disc (by holding down the “C” key as I started), so that (after a partially successful attempt to get it to repair the main disc) I could restart it again with my finger on the “T” key. The latter operation meant that when it came on, Mingus would make itself available as an external hard drive to my imac (connected to it by a firewire cable), which is called Ella, by the way. I was then able to go to Ella’s screen and (lo and behold!) see all of my precious data that’s on Mingus. Dragging and dropping copied over 10-15 GB of stuff from Mingus over to Ella’s hard drive. So easy. I love macs. Especially when they have souls of great musicians. I can now try to arrange to send Mingus off to the doctor for surgery, some TLC, and some rest and recuperation. Time for Ella to do the hard work.
I’d better tell you about the event last night. Next post.
-cvj
