I just learned from Amy French in a comment on the post on the production of the “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” play that got cancelled) that the short promo film she did for the play is on YouTube. It has two of the principals on screen. It’s short and fun!
Here is is: Click to continue reading this post
Don’t forget the big event of the Spring! The LA Times Book Festival is the weekend of the 21st and 22nd April, and we’ll be hosting it on the USC campus. The website is here for more information, and start booking your tickets (free) for the various panels you plan to visit.
I’m also looking forward to the Book Awards on the night of the 20th. It’s always fun and interesting, with a great reception at the end (see links at end for previous posts). I’ve no idea if I’ll get tickets to all that this year (but I hope so, since three friends of mine are presenting [update: see here to purchase some]), but in any case it’ll be interesting to learn the results of the awards in the various categories again this year.
The list of nominees is here. Here’s the list from the Science and Technology Click to continue reading this post
Prepping for a Sunday roast (I decided to have for a few friends over for it at relatively short notice):
The result (just as they were about to be carved, and the cornmeal-walnut-celery-etc stuffing removed):
9:30am, my office. Phone rings. I get it on the first ring.
Hello?
Oh. Is that… Professor… Johnson?
Yes.
Oh! I was not expecting to… Well I’m watching this program, and had some questions…
I see.
Well, when you say…
Well, who am I talking to?
Oh, I’m [name].
Hi.
Hi… So, when you say millions of years, even billions of years in these programs… do you mean earth years? or, um, do you mean space years?
Oh, that’s a good question. I mean the regular years. Earth years, if you like.
Oh. So these things are really that old.
Oh, yes. They are.
I have one more question.
Of course, please go ahead.
Michio Kaku says that the universe is full of many things and all you have to do is ask for something and you’ll get it. How do you go about doing that?
Uh… Well… I’m not sure I understand what that means…
Well, you know we come from supernovae…. and… we’re from space… and there are maybe lots of gods out there that we can ask for things…Kaku says we can just ask the universe. How does one do that?
Well… I am not sure what he had in mind. It might be…. might be best to ask him…. But maybe what he meant is that the universe is a very big place, with lots of things going on, and maybe he meant that there are all sorts of things you could find out there because it is so big and diverse… But perhaps he did not have in mind that a particular person could go out and get any of those things… but you might want to ask him. I can’t say for sure.
Oh, ok.
But I can tell you what I think. I think that while the universe is a big and exciting diverse place, it is still the case that a given individual only has limited access to all those things in it. It is a big place, and so you mostly only have access to what you can get to locally. Travelling around it takes a long time…
Oh, I see. Well, thank you.
And… thank you, by the way, for watching the program. I am glad you enjoyed it.
Yes, I love these programs.
I’m glad to hear that. I hope you continue watching and do tell your friends about them too. All the best.
Goodbye.
Goodbye.
I enjoyed that chat. I love it when people are inspired to step away from their Click to continue reading this post
Tuesday evening was fun. My dear friend Amy French, who was hired to direct a production of Steve Martin’s play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” had been been rehearsing her cast for a few weeks. She invited two people to come along as guests one evening to talk about Picasso and Einstein – their work discussed in the play (Cubism and Special Relativity), and the impact of their work on the world. Megan Mastroianni from the Art History department (see her in the center of the photo above – you can click it for a larger view) came along to talk about the Picasso aspect, and I talked about Einstein. It was a lot of fun, and verity informative for all concerned.
The cast were all assembled, and Einstein and Picasso were even in costume, as we Click to continue reading this post
(Well, it’s not really the correct use of the term in the title, but I’m going to stick with it.) It has been a busy last several days, and so I’ve been quiet here. The last couple of days I’ve been at a conference in Pasadena. I’ve been enjoying the conference. There has been a host of interesting talks, and interesting people to talk to, including old friends I’m getting to catch up with a bit. It has been quite tiring though. I evidently don’t have the stamina I used to have for a schedule of eight talks in a day. Perhaps I never did.
On Thursday I managed to get an hour of David Gross’ time to sit down with me and Click to continue reading this post
So this morning I splashed on some flat colour on the woman’s side of things.
I did not finish the guy and so have left him out. (Click for a larger view.)
And there you have it… a little bit of the production cycle on The Project over the last several posts.
-cvj
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I decided when I got home to spend the evening doing a bit of refining of the previously mentioned roughs and start trying out a new inking idea (working on Click to continue reading this post
Oddly today I had a meeting in a skyscraper in downtown LA that I’d been studying last year because I was doing a drawing of it for The Project. Funny old world. I really enjoyed being in it because from the meeting room one can view the classic public library building, a favorite of mine, from the 41st floor, and also check out the scene in the Standard rooftop bar (been a while since I’ve hung out there).
But the most unexpected thing of all was when I returned to ground level. I was walking on my way to the subway and slowed to enjoy a view of the public library, only to be faced with Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in two forms, Schrodinger’s equation, and an atomic spectrum (Rydberg, Bohr, etc) that one can derive from the latter, engraved into the wall! Hurrah!
The thing is, I can’t remember whether I’ve seen this before. I’ve passed there so very Click to continue reading this post
A process update, since some of you are curious about The Project.
While hiding in the desert on walkabout recently, I finished writing a story I’d been working on (one of a few I worked on), and started thumbnailing parts of it and refining the pagination of it. Thumbnails are just little sketches of how a page might be laid out, maybe focusing on how the eye might move about the page, how the words and pictures might flow, etc. There were some pages I was immediately interested to try out, and so I did larger versions of them in rough here and there (and for some other stories too)…. For one of them, I have a really exciting exchange (about symmetry and beauty) over a notepad, and I sketched over oatmeal one breakfast time a mannequin construction of the layout. (See earlier for introduction to my mannequin friends.)
Well, on Thursday and Friday I finished the rough pencils for the whole page, featuring those two figures, now given flesh and bone. Today I did the main figures for another page, with a variation on that pose of the mannequin drawing from the desert. (Vellum helps here.) I thought I’d share (click for larger view):
They’ll be refined later on, with things like scaling of various bits and pieces fixed Click to continue reading this post
Finally!
The Expo line will be opening (after an incredibly long testing phase) on April 28th. I’ll be there, Brompton in hand, to test it out, I think. A couple of articles on it appeared in the LA Weekly and the LA Times.
I’ve been excited about this for a while, not just because there’ll be a station across the street from my office, essentially (and the fact that when phase two is completed in 2015, or thereabouts, I’ll be able to step out of my office and board a train for the beach), but because I Click to continue reading this post
Well, you’ll either get this or you won’t (helpful remark there)… but if you do, you’ll see that it is very clever and hilarious*:
-cvj
*Thanks aef!
My friend the science writer Casey Rentz wrote a nice piece about the Science Film Competition and showcase last week for Scientific American Blogs. She talks a bit about the issue of science in film, the competition, and points to some other science plus film projects too. See here.
-cvj
Well, that turned out to be a very productive Walkabout. I set up an office there, taking some of the essentials of the things I was working on and disappearing for most of the week. No computers, just pens, pencils, and paper. My office? A chair and a shelter made of thin fabric, string, two poles, and some large stones to weigh down the pegs against the wind. The shelter was against the sun, since I was in Death Valley, camping. As I sometimes do.
My routine was simple: I’d wake up at about sunrise or shortly thereafter and after a visit to the restrooms across the way to freshen up a bit, I’d get my old whisperlite stove going to make some water boiling for tea. Once that’s done, I’d make a pot of oatmeal for breakfast and sitting eating it while flicking at the gnats that seem to begin to swarm during the morning’s first heat, I’d watch the morning move along for a while, with campers across the way getting ready for their day’s hikes or drives in the area. (My hiking boots and other gear were with me just in case I wanted to hike, but that was not my focus, and I didn’t in the end.) Next I’d make a large pot of coffee (sweetened with dark brown sugar), have a cup of it then and there, and pour the rest into a thermos flash for consumption during the day. Then I’d wash up everything, put them away, and take my work materials to my office, situated just behind my tent. By then, most people have left for good or for the day in the neighboring campsites, and it is quiet, except for the large ravens that tour the Click to continue reading this post
