Er… it is National Physics Day today, apparently. National Science Foundation says so, so it must be so.
Bad me for not knowing. In my defence, I try to live every day like it is National Physics Day. International, even.
It is the 22nd Anniversary of the launch of the Hubble space telescope today! As you know, this instrument has produced a wealth of scientific information over the years, as well as lots of wonderful pictures for everyone that broadened and deepened our sense of wonder about this remarkable universe we find ourselves in. The Hubble site is here.
Phil Plait has re-posted his 2010 post “Ten Things You Don’t Know About Hubble”, Click to continue reading this post
You know, I’d love to pretend that I’ve just come in from hanging out at the Edison, or the Blue whale, or some other fun place, feeling a bit concerned about my morning class on how to write equations for the shape of the universe (we do some cosmology in the General Relativity class tomorrow)… but instead I’m up at almost 1:00am because of a persistent dry cough, indigestion, and a noisy mockingbird in a tree just outside. Are these connected? I do not know. All I know is I cannot sleep.
So I blog.
It has been, once again, a crazy week. There are times when I wonder if this has become the norm, which usually leads me to valiantly fight a bit to ensure that is not the case, resulting a a withdrawal from a lot of stuff to regroup. I hope to do that soon. Although I’ve said yes to so many things, it is looking like July or August before that can happen. That’s bad.
Right now I can only remember back as far as Wednesday, where the day began with a last check of the midterm I wrote for the GR class (second midterm for them) before setting it at 10:00am. (Perhaps the most interesting thing on it was perhaps the computation of the surface gravity of a static black hole, working in Eddington-Finkelstein coordinates…) At 10:25 I snuck out of the classroom to meet with a screenwriting student who is working on a screenplay featuring a physicist character. She was seeking some advice and wanted to exchange some thoughts about the work she’s doing… I got to gripe a bit about my pet peeves about scientist characters (not just the scarcity of well drawn ones – although things have gotten better in recent years) in TV and film. Somehow the rest of Wednesday (after the seminar ended at 1:40) is a bit of a blur, but I think it did involve me leaving campus to head home to hide and do a bit of finish work on a page I mentioned in the last post. Maybe. (Oh, there was also the official opening party for Umamicatessen (new restaurant downtown) in the evening, that kept me out to almost midnight. I’ve been meaning to blog about the place since the official “soft” opening party about two months ago, but had not got to it yet.)
Scene from the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books 2012. More to follow below.
Thursday saw me start the day way too early (as described in that post), and the Click to continue reading this post
I’m supposed to be writing a talk, but it’s too early to start on it. I’ve been woken up early (5:00am) and kept awake by ideas swirling around in my head, and a mockingbird’s singing – it is nesting in a tree near the house, and I think I may be doomed to listen to it every night until the Fall…
Tuesday of last week saw me hiding and working on The Project. This time, it involved a bit of stalking. Last year I wrote a story which mostly takes place in a family home, between a brother and sister. I had a very particular shape for the house in my mind. They move from room to room, and spend a bit of time on a patio at the front. This time, I decided to build the entire house and populate it with all that I needed so that I can use it as reference to design the backgrounds for the story. Some weeks before I’d started looking a bit more closely at some houses I’d seen in the area as models. It is almost like the house which existed in my head was out there somewhere in the city, and I just had to find it. Somehow it was intended to be a typical smaller Los Angeles single family home, and if I looked for it, there it would be. I saw a number of houses on my walks that looked suitable enough, and was going to choose one of them and make modifications… and then one day I found it.
I’d been walking past it every day for several weeks, and had not really been in the right mode of thought when doing so, and so had not looked at it in the right way. Also, I’d been distracted by a rather larger and grander (too grand) house almost across the street from it. As soon as I thought about what I’d designed last year, and so rejected the house across the street, I realized that this one was the house I’d been looking for all along. So I took a couple of hurried surreptitious reference photos (while walking past pretending to be fiddling with my phone), and went home and laid out some of the dimensions I’d guessed for it.
I worked up some made up floor plans (based on my story’s needs and my memory of the interior of houses like this that I remember, and then I decided to build it Click to continue reading this post
This was a fun assignment. I’m giving a talk (“Graphic Adventures in Science Outreach”) on Friday to my colleagues and friends at the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and they asked me to send a graphic to them to use for the poster. So I spent a bit of time digging into my database of drawings for The Project and threw something together pretty quickly. I rather like it. (You will maybe recognize that drawing from an earlier post – I added in an earlier stage, and then a drawing of a hand I’d done for something else…) By the way, it is not an event open to the general public and is by invitation only, so just showing up won’t get you in.
-cvj
Ok… probably not to me, but I have been banging on about the idea for some time, since my 2007 post on Paris’ Velib, so maybe mine was one of the many voices that came to his ears eventually… So they are going to finally start a bike sharing program in Los Angeles! News story here, and the Mayor Villaraigosa will be talking more about it at the start of today’s CicLAVia.
This is fantastic news!!! With this, the opening of the Expo line in a couple of weeks, and a number of other things, it feels like a lot of my dreams for LA are coming true….
-cvj
Don’t forget (if you’re in the Los Angeles area), 10:00am to 3:00pm tomorrow is CicLAVia. This is the fourth one. The weather looks like it will be perfect for cycling, and there’ll be even more stops for food and drink than before. More information at their website here (click here for the expanded route that debuted last time). See earlier posts (linked below) on the previous events, and I’ll re-embed one of the time lapse films I made so you can ride along with me:
See you there!
-cvj
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
.
.
.
.
.
