Ten

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five_finger_shoes_in_actionWell, I got some. I recall blogging about seeing these some time back, and am impressed with them now that I’ve been trying them out for a week. Let me say however a couple of things. I’m not going to spout all the stuff being said about how this is all so much more “natural” than shoes, and so on and so forth. There’s a lot of that being said and I find myself generally deeply suspicious of the way the word “natural” is used to sell products, especially to a certain type of crowd who falls for this stuff. What does “natural” even mean, anyway?

I like these because they are like being barefoot without the pain and discomfort that often comes with it (stubbing toes, icky or sharp things underfoot, etc). I do not think these “five-finger” shoes (as they are called) will replace shoes for me in most circumstances. Apparently people are running in them, hiking, even mountain climbing. Good for them. I want much more support on my feet when I’m doing those things and that is why shoes were invented. Marvellous invention, shoes. Not clear to me shoes are any less “natural” than these are. They’re just different. Like cycling is not “natural”, but is a rather splendid thing humans came up with that I see nothing wrong with on the “natural” vs “non-natural” front.

See also shirts, pants, skirts, etc. Same thing.

But, in short – these are great. I was told by the fellow in the shop that they are becoming hugely popular now, although I am not sure I believe that since I’ve only ever seen one person out there wearing them, and that was a while back. (It is in shoe-sellers’ interest to make these claims.) I got them because I’ve a bit of a heel Click to continue reading this post →

Bad Universe

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Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy has announced what his super secret project has been. It’s a new science TV show for the Discovery Channel! It is called “Phil Plait’s Bad Universe”, and I imagine it’ll be a lot of fun and quite informative. There’s a trailer and some of his thoughts about the show here. I could not work out when it is going to air, so keep your eyes peeled*.

Enjoy!

-cvj

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A Vial of Calm

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After spending more than half the day writing a report, fiddling with data gathering for the report, and dealing with various annoying issues in background over email, it is nice sometimes to be able to walk outside into the garden, pause to take a deep breath in the warm sunlight, and harvest some lovely tasty things.

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Aaaahh…

I really need this sometimes. It is good.

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Happy Higgs Hunting

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lhcb_z_bosonIn case you were wondering, things are moving steadily along in the search for the Higgs boson, and in the general ramping up to study entirely new frontiers of particle physics. I noticed a couple of interesting articles today that give you a nice sample. The first, by Dick Ahlstrom in the Irish Times, and is about the announced “rediscovery” of the W and Z bosons at the Large Hadron Collider, by a team working at the LHCb experiment. (I personally think that the term “rediscovery” is somewhat misleading since it makes it seem like the community forgot where they (the key signatures of the unity of the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces at high energy) were since their discovery in the early 80s, but let me not quibble too much.) The point is that experimental teams are refining their searching techniques while sifting through all the new data being produced in the collisions at the LHC, and one thing you need to do before you begin to look for new things (like the Higgs) is to make sure you can find and recognize old things. Especially very important old things. Click to continue reading this post →

Lemon and Chocolate for Breakfast

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lemon_chocolate_cupcakes_1 Well, this morning I did an experiment. It began with zesting some lemons from the garden, and rapidly got into the business of mixing cupcake batter (recipe here – big on the lemon zest this time, and some of the juice), to make cupcakes… then melting chocolate (7 oz), pouring it over whipped butter (1 cup!), folding in some confectioner’s sugar (three cups or so), and a few drops of vanilla essence…. to make a chocolate frosting. More photos below, which you can click for larger views.

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This (and my dutiful munching on tester cakes that ensued this morning) was all in aid of a nice test of a lemon cake plus chocolate question raised earlier. You will recall from an earlier post that author Aimee Bender‘s reading at Skylight of her new Click to continue reading this post →

But is it Real? (Part Two)

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Ah. Well, I was reserving the title of this post for a followup post to an earlier post about physics research. But, the film I went to last night at the wonderful Vista theatre was so engaging, and so excellently done – on the themes of dreams and memory – that I thought I’d use it.

escher_penrose_stairsChristopher Nolan has done it again! Inception (both written and directed by him) is yet another (remember my discussion of the Dark Knight two years back) example that shows that it is possible to make a big budget Summer Blockbuster that does not treat the audience as idiots. It tells you from the opening frames that you’re going to have to pay attention and think during the film, and that interesting ideas and themes are going to be explored, and it certainly lives up to that promise right through to the end. It is thrilling on all sort of levels, and for those who don’t care about ideas, there’s plenty of stuff blowing up and crashing into stuff to keep them happy.

I am going to say absolutely nothing more about it (more or less) since one of the Click to continue reading this post →

I’m Melting, I’m Melting!

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Ah. Now I feel the Summer. We’ve been having a streak (starting Monday, or that’s when I noticed anyway) of quite hot days here in LA and, as usually happens above a certain temperature, sleepy_me_sketch_smallI’ve begun to be in danger of shutting down. I tend to get perpetually sleepy in such conditions, and wake up quite early in the morning (which is good for avoiding the heat with an early start), and so get to sleep relatively early. During the day I’m going at half speed if I don’t manage my temperature properly. I’m not a big fan of just switching on and blasting the air conditioning the whole day, so you can say it is entirely my choice to have these issues. Instead, I try to manage good airflow at times of day when it is possible, and shield interiors from heating up under the influence of the sun. It works pretty well, but there’s a point in the middle to late afternoon where things Click to continue reading this post →

Emerging Gravity

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In the New York Times this week there’s an article* by Dennis Overbye on Erik Verlinde and his paper on the idea that gravity is not a force at all, but a consequence of thermodynamics. You can think of it as an extreme take on one of the directions a lot of the research (that I’ve mentioned a number of times has been going on in string theory) has been pointing, although I think it is safe to say that there’s a lot to be done on making the statement a concrete one that you can do physics with. I think it contains the germs of the right thing we’re all reaching for, but does not quite get there yet. We’re now quite routinely formulating some of the key physics of gravity entirely as physics of a completely non-gravitational dual theory – this is the content of what we call holography – and in particular the quantum physics of black holes in those settings get holographically mapped to the thermodynamics of the non-gravitational physics. This is the basis of the tools that we’ve been applying to studying aspects of phenomena showing up in various experimental systems in nuclear physics and cold atomic physics (and studies of phenomena relevant to various condensed matter systems are also being done). I’ve told you about a lot of this in various posts. (Some of them are listed below.) Running this the other way, the model non-gravitational systems (certain gauge theories at strong coupling and with large rank gauge groups) can be thought of as examples of how gravity (and space-time itself) is really an emergent phenomenon, appearing simply as Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry XXXII: A Matter of Time

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patzcuaro_clocksHere are some clocks I saw at the House of Eleven Courtyards (Casa de los Once Patios) in the historic town called Pátzcuaro (at the aforementioned lake of the same name). It was a convent, and is now a place to go and see lots of arts and crafts in action, as well as buy some. The clocks, housed in copper, mark the entrance to an entire room of copper workmanship in various forms.

The clocks have reminded me to give you an update on something else. Through some of May and June, I did a lot of work for the show The Universe, which airs on the History Channel (as you probably already know from reading here over the years. See here.). There will be, as usual, several topics covered over the upcoming season, and it will be interesting to see how the various filmmakers put together their episodes. It is worth noting that the History Channel have done something remarkable here. This is now the longest run that any cable channel has had for a science show. They built an audience with a solid show, and kept producing good episodes and gathering more (and it is worth saying, an admirably diverse set of) viewers over the years.

In fact, the show has been so successful that they are going to, I predict, pay an Click to continue reading this post →

Yácatas while Brooding

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yacata_4 Another shot of one of the Yácatas at Tzintzuntzan. (See the previous post for background information.)

Bizarrely, my Summer is all of a sudden threatening to transform from one of withdrawal into hiding to work on my Project to a much more travelled mode than I intended. The Morelia trip was intended to be my only exception (I agreed to it back in the Fall of last year and have said no to nearly everything else that came up), but in the last week or two (and the last few days in particular) several things have come up (involving travel) that I can’t easily turn away from. One of them would take me to Aspen (even though I decided not to go and Click to continue reading this post →

Tzintzuntzan

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yacata_1(Top prize for the best name on last month’s trip.) This is the name of an existing town as well as the nearby archeological site, the subject of this post. On the Sunday I referred to in a previous post, several of the School went off on a bus to do some sightseeing West of Morelia. This is one of the places to which we went. I learned a bit about the pre-Columbian mesoamerican civilization, the P’urhépecha (or Purépecha), whose capital was Tzintzuntzan (place of the hummingbirds). The structures in my photos (click for larger view) are called Yácatas, which are on a plateau overlooking the lake Pátzcuaro. Click to continue reading this post →

Morelia Cathedral

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Morelia is a beautiful city. One of the things that strikes you is the high concentration of architectural features that are either churches or related to churches (convents, chapels, etc) in the core of the city. The queen of these is the cathedral, which was across the street from my hotel (and gave it its name). Here it is during the day. The photograph was taken quite early in the morning to take advantage of the pleasant light (click for larger view):

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It has fountains and gardens on both sides of it, and so acts as an all important Click to continue reading this post →

Street Invasion!

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cyclovia_morelia_3On Sunday in Morelia, Mexico, I was walking along the main street near my hotel and it seemed that something unusual was going on. The street was empty of cars, and some sort of event was going on. I saw a few cyclists here and there in the distance, but not the sort that look all hardcore and determined to go fast and determinedly on their way, but instead the more leisurely stop-and-smell-the-flowers sort. I wondered almost immediately if I had run into a local ciclovía, and a few minutes later, a sign confirmed this. Wonderful!

I’ve been waiting for such a thing to come to LA for a while now, since I heard of it last year when I part (and presented) in a public discussion downtown at the Artwalk about bike issues in the city, and had heard that it was becoming more widespread (it started in South America – Colombia) but it was an unexpected treat to find one right outside my hotel room! Here are three more picture. Click for larger view.

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It was great to see lots of people out and about just using the streets with no cars Click to continue reading this post →