Well, I have to face up to it. There’s been this embarrassing thing all around town here in Aspen that I have not told you about, but I have to get it done this week. Everywhere you go around town -and I mean everywhere- there are little piles or pinboards of free flyers telling you what things there are to do in Aspen this Summer, along with other information about bus routes, timetables, etc. So you’ll see things for the Summer Films, the Theatre series, the Music Festival, the Music School, the talks going on at the Aspen Institute, and…. the Summer Public Physics Lectures at the Aspen Center for Physics. I’m pleased that the latter gets such wide distribution, since…. well you know how I feel about getting more Science out to the Public. But here’s the embarrassing bit:
I’m giving one of the Public lectures this Summer, and they decided to use an image of me as the cover of the flyer! So everywhere I go, there I am smiling back at me, holding up some strings. (Closeup on right, if you click.) It is actually quite an honour to be chosen to give such a talk, and more so that they wanted to use my photo for the series this year. Of course they got my agreement before using the photo, but it is still a shock to see it all over the town, but a bit embarrassing when asked about it by my colleagues! (I admit that am very pleased -given my passions in this area- to be alongside useful information about public transport. I like that a lot somehow….Perhaps I could have supplied them with a picture of me with the Brompton.)
The image they used, which is by the excellent photographer Phil Channing, has haunted me for years since it pops up to the front page of the USC website at least once a day -as part of a thing they do where they feature their faculty on the front page- which is always a shock when I need to go there for something. I have to explain to people from time to time that I am not always on the site and that I am not the face of USC. (You know, like Susan Sarandon and Halle Berry for Revlon, or Whoever-it-is-now for Maybelline, or Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz for L’Oreal… although if USC wanted to pay me their level of salary to do so, I’d be pleased with that… I could do the theoretical physicist’s equivalent of a supermodel swoop of the hair (write a long equation with brightly coloured chalk maybe) and say, in an annoying way, “Because I’m worth it”.) To be fair, the photo does a good job, since it gets people asking questions about what that thing is I’m holding up, and why.
(The backstory there is that the USC people in charge of the website project asked some of us to come to a photo shoot, and Click to continue reading this post →