Valerie Weiss on Women, Science, and Film

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You’ll recall me mentioning filmmaker Valerie Weiss from earlier posts this year about her debut feature film “Losing Control”. Well, she wrote a guest post* for the website Women and Hollywood this week. It was about a recent film made for the European Commission to encourage girls to go into science. Apparently it was awful. (I’d heard about it from someone else too, but did not get to see it. [Update: Yikes! Seen it… Yikes!**]) Valerie shares some thoughts Click to continue reading this post →

All Work and No Play…

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One of my favourite scenes from the vast world of film is the one in the Shining where Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) discovers that all her husband Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) had been writing on the typewriter for so long (when he was supposed to be working on his book) was “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”, again and again and again. There’s something utterly chilling about this, as the tension in the film has been building steadily, and the discovery reveals another seemingly solid foundation crumbling away…

The Eye film museum in Amsterdam is fantastic. For a start, it is in a wonderful building (see right -click for larger view) that you get to by taking one of the small ferry boats across from the Central Station, a fun journey. Right now they are having Click to continue reading this post →

The Bridge

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The workshop has been fantastic, overall. In between discussions, the talks, and some thinking about my own projects, I’ve had some time to wander a bit, and look around. Yesterday after lunch I wandered a bit and then found myself settling down and doing a sketch of a bridge at a junction with lots to see. The Amstel is joined by Prinsengracht canal here, and it was fun to sit a while and put down some pencil lines, followed by firmer ink lines. I pulled the result into the iPad and splashed on some colour for good measure.

Having finished the paper last week, it has been fun to field questions about it from various people, as well as think at a more leisurely pace about the next Click to continue reading this post →

Slow Writing

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Well, the workshop is going well. I had to miss a talk this morning in order to carry on with this writing of a paper I was doing. Basically, we’re over due in producing our submission to a special volume of some publication or other that is going to be all about magnetic fields and models of strongly coupled matter… As you may have gathered by now, I’ve dabbled in magnetic fields for some several years by now, so it was natural to be asked. My collaborator in a lot of these dabblings, Tameem Albash, and a student, Scott MacDonald, and I have been working on a suitable project for a while, and due to my travels and entanglements with a previous project, I’ve made us all a bit late.

The last few days have been difficult for writing. I’d forgotten Click to continue reading this post →

Happy Higgs Day?

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Dont forget that today there will be big announcements of the latest results from the LHC about the search for the Higgs…(and some of us are hoping for news about what might be the beginning of the search for what lies beyond…)

There are so many live blogs, so follow a few… Like Resonances… for an expert view, Matt Strassler, for another expert view, or Quantum Diaries, for a non-expert view.

Exciting!!

(update… Looks like it is a strong enough set of results, statistically, to call the Higgs discovered… Hurrah! And with possible hints of new physics too? Excellent….)

Further update… A CERN press release is to be found here. Also, looks like any deviation from the standard model Higgs, at least for the decay channels examined so far, is very small… So there’s a lot left to do and understand…

-cvj

Amsterdam!

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20120703-171444.jpgAmsterdam! I’m here for a workshop for a while. It is on string theory – many aspects – and so the mix of people is a good one overall, with conversations ranging from high energy physics, the LHC (including the Higgs announcement at CERN expected tomorrow) and black holes all the way over to condensed matter and various kinds of exotic physics one can do in the laboratory in that context. It should be an excellent time here… It is good to be back in the city after over a decade, and to catch up with a number of friends and colleagues in the field. I also want to properly explore the city this time, not having done that much exploration last time. (Photo above is a snap taken of the lovely moon that came out last night, with the Amstel and accompanying reflections and so forth… Was pretty to see.)

I’ve been trying to read some notes in preparation for working on a draft of a

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Voice of God

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With the Aspen Center for Physics film almost completed (see several earlier posts, e.g. here, here, and here), various things get set in stone once and for all, so that other things can be built on top of them. At some point, I had to be certain of the final form of the voice over, so that Dave (the editor) can lay it in and time various transitions around it. This was done on Friday along with a huge rewrite of the whole film script, and lots of work on picking b-roll footage and other material to illustrate the film and create atmosphere. Once my co-producer/director Bob had glanced at it and made some helpful remarks (always good to have more eyeballs to spot any mistakes that could get frozen in) I was ready for Monday’s exercise – recording the final voice work. No turning back, no second chances, since we need to deliver the film this week.

While I’ve directed a bit before, I’ve not ever had the chance to direct a hugely experienced star actor, so this was going to be a blast! A while back, over food and drink at a party, my friend Harry Lennix (who loves contemporary physics – that’s in fact why we met, years ago) had generously agreed to do the voice narration for this project, and I was very pleased since it was his voice I had in mind since late August Click to continue reading this post →

Metropolis II

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Chris Burden’s Metropolis II, on display at LACMA, is a lot of fun. I was at LACMA recently, catching up with an old friend, hanging out and chatting for a while on the lawn. It was a pleasant afternoon to spend a bit of time talking about life and work outside, wandering into the museum to look at at an exhibit for a bit, and then resting outside in the late afternoon sun again, before going to see something else.

Anyway, the Metropolis II installation was fun, and very interesting. I can’t help Click to continue reading this post →

Time for Superstring Beans

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Yeah, I’ve made this joke before but I am always impressed when these begin to show up at the market, and they’e been showing up the last few weeks.

They’re very tasty, so I’m pleased to see and buy them… but I do suspect that a tiny part of the reason I get them is that I get to write a blog post with Superstring Beans in the title once again (see earlier posts on this here and here).

Click for a larger view, if you wish.

Anyway, there it is. Some are going into a pan tonight for my evening meal…

-cvj

Speaking of Time…

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Just finished a complete redo of a nine (plus one) panel page of the Arena story that was the prototype outing for the graphic novel project. (See some earlier posts, e.g. here, about this redo process.)

I shudder at the horrible drawings on the page it replaced.

To the left are some parts of the new page… Click for a larger view.

In other news, I met our new Dean (of the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences) today, during a short session where a few of us had a conversation with him while someone filmed us. I think it is some film they are doing about the new Dean taking up the reigns, or something similar. He seemed a nice enough fellow, and he seems to be coming with definite ideas for interesting changes… I’m looking forward Click to continue reading this post →

Monster Drawing Rally!

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Yesterday was the Monster Drawing Rally for 2012! I’ve reported to you on this event before in previous posts (see here and here, for example) and was pleased to go again this year. It was in a different space again, now co-sponsored (with Outpost for Contemporary Art) by the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts, and hosted there.

Again, it was lovely to see people fully engaged in the business of drawing, sketching, and a variety of related activities, in shifts lasting an hour each…

There was even a father-daughter team or two, given that it was Father’s Day.

My favorite thing though, I must admit, was the fan mechanism at the top of the room that elegantly converted a rotating motion into a gentle side to side motion, moving a large fan Click to continue reading this post →

Site’s a Bit Broken!

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[Update: And a bit better.. although now can’t get rid of white line to right of header image, etc… but almost all repaired… sigh…]

Ugh!

Rather stupidly, I trusted the theme designer people for the wordpress theme I’ve been using to not wipe out all my style information for my page when it ungraded. I was forced to upgrade to allow things to work in the new wordpress version, and of course all my old information was destroyed, including the banner image, colours and so forth. So for the first time since 2006, I have to go without the site looking its nice old self.

I think I have some of the information on a computer at home, so until I get to restoring it, please forgive the awful, AWFUL disarray you see on the site now. I’ve put in an attempted temporary header image, and all the other things you see are defaults that look dreadful.

Sorry.

-cvj

H4 Project – Kickstarter

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I’d like to draw your attention to an exciting project that my dear friend Harry Lennix is working on. It is called H4, and combines the two parts of Shakespeare’s Henry IV into a film. I have mentioned it in previous posts once or twice a while back, (I did a few vista to some of the locations), and now it is post-production. There’s an effort to raise extra funds to allow the film to be completed and find its way to audiences where I expect it will be both entertaining and educational, given the goals that Harry and his collaborators have for the project. Have a look at the film below to have it all explained to you by Harry and his producer Giovanni Zelko, and then head over to the kickstarter page if you want to help out, and maybe snag a thank you gift! You’ll learn more about the innovations they have brought to the work there too.

-cvj

Je Suis un Rock Star

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20120612-183800.jpgSo out of the blue the other day, I got an email with this photograph in it, and an explanation for its appearance. It seems that some old friends from my school days (who I’ve not heard from in a long, long time) were discussing it on Facebook, and one of the people reading the comments who lives near my mum in Preston, the town where I went to school, realized that I was one of the people in the picture…!! Since I am not on Facebook* (despite some misleading pages that sometimes send people astray – sigh) (**Update 27th Dec. 2014 – actually, now I’m back on FB as of 10th November 2014.) he contacted me the old fashioned way via finding my email address on my website. Nice and quaint, the way I like it.

I remember this 1983 event, but had no idea a picture was taken! Since it is all over Click to continue reading this post →

Peek Over My Shoulder

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Been splitting my time between being a physicist and being a filmmaker making a film about physicists. It has been an interesting time. Recall from earlier posts (see e.g. here and here) that I am working on getting a film made for the Aspen Center for Physics in celebration of its 50th Anniversary. I’ve got rather sucked into the process – a lot more than I intended – and so find myself putting together the script that will guide the editor in cutting the film. This means that I’m reviewing acres of footage of interviews and picking out some great quotes from my awesome cast of interviewees. You might recognize some of them (feel free to try to name them, and their field…).

What you’re seeing in the picture is a screenshot of some of the windows I have open Click to continue reading this post →