Road Benefits

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I’ve been on the road for a while now (see the last several posts, e.g. here), and it has been good for me. Why? Well, I think that it has been good to get out of some of the routines that I normally find myself in, and have a change of perspective. This feeds my thoughts about things, whether it be work-related, play, or personal life. So being in a mode where I’m living out of a suitcase and moving from location to location helps me simplify somewhat. Work has been good. Some aspects have not been as efficient as they might have been were I in my home office or in my office at USC, but efficiency is not really the point. There’s plenty of time for that later, and in travelling mode, the value of the high quality reflection about the work I’m doing or an approach I’m going to take on the project I’m working on is something I’d not trade for the equivalent time sitting in my office being highly efficient at some task.

So where am I? Well, I’m a month into hardcore sabbatical time (recall that the first Click to continue reading this post →

Twisted Bridge

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twisted_bridge_covent_garden_1The Walkabout returns me to London for a short while before I head North. While wandering around Covent Garden, I spotted this lovely bit of geometry suspended between two buildings in an alleyway. It is a bridge, but with a twist.

twisted_bridge_covent_garden_2 Upon getting home and starting a post to share it with you, I see that it is called the Bridge of Aspiration, and it connects the Royal Opera House with the Royal Ballet School. More here, where you can see that the interior is quite stunning.

-cvj

Dessert Coffees

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three_coffeesThese are not really my cup of tea (at least not first choice), so to speak, but they are very pretty.

While working at the countertop of a coffee bar at Mercado San Miguel, in Madrid, (drinking my usual café cortado) I watched the fellow at the counter making them for some customers.

It was a rather elaborate process, and quite fascinating to watch. It might seem odd Click to continue reading this post →

Road Report

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durham_maptoledo_mapA brief report from the road. My wanderings took me to Toledo. The one half an hour on the train from Madrid (Spain), not the one in Ohio. It actually reminds me a lot of Durham, in England, where I lived and worked for three years. I’ll leave you to look a bit at their geography, strategic history, and so forth, to see why. You can start by glancing at the maps I clipped for you for clues.

I enjoyed it quite a bit, although I shall have to go again to explore more thoroughly. Click to continue reading this post →

Waterfall

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My Walkabout finds me in Madrid for a little while, and I find myself reporting joyfully on rain, once again. Not because it has been raining an unusual amount here, but because of a production I went to the other night. It was primarily a dance event, celebrating and dramatizing the work of poet Frederico Garcia Lorca during his time in New York in the 1920s. The choreography was by (I’ve forgotten… will find ticket and update shortly) [update: Blanca Li. Title: ¨Poeta en Nueva York¨] with flamenco as the primary form, mixed with several other dance traditions. dance_theatre_stillThere was a lot of good and enjoyable work to see, but I’ll admit to being blown away by the theatre’s (and associated production staff’s) ability to suddenly create a rainstorm on the stage, and sustain it for a prolonged period while one of the dances (using the water, as you can see) used it to great and stunning effect. I had to sneak a (no flash and no disturbing of neighbours of course) photo for you. Click for larger view.

A bit like the first time you saw Jurassic Park back when it was first released and utterly groundbreaking visually, I (and maybe you?) spent time thinking, “this is amazing!”, “how did they pull off this illusion?”, before concluding that maybe the Click to continue reading this post →

The Creative Science Studio

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I received an email the other day asking me if I had any connection to the new initiative announced at USC recently (link here), talking about a new partnership (involving USC and the NSF) for increasing and improving the amount of science in entertainment and media products such as films and television shows, and probably more. It is called the Creative Science Studio, or CS2. You’ve read me talk about these sorts of projects on the blog a huge amount, and so I won’t repeat the motivations here (you can find earlier thoughts if you look under some of the categories this post is in for other posts on the subject).

One of the fallouts (fallsout?) of being a dabbler, behind-the-scenes-agitator and general troublemaker is that one can never really tell what are all the final projects, initiatives (and so forth) that come about as a result (at least in part) of one’s actions. In trying to significantly move forward things such as this (involving public Click to continue reading this post →

Hideouts

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library_i_like

One of the things I tend to do when on Walkabout is seek out pleasant public spaces in which to work. Sometimes institutions to which I might have some connection might give me access to a guest office, or something similar, but often I go “off the grid”, where the grid here refers to the network of academic connections and arrangements that produces such (generous and vital) courtesies. So every city I spend time in, I try to work build a personal network of hideouts. Sometimes, these are just favourite cafes of one sort or another (you’ve maybe seen posts on those), but at times it can also be libraries or other spaces at one sort of institution or another. Some of them are quite splendid, or simply pleasant or convenient. Among the examples for me are the Santa Monica public library, the (downtown) Los Angeles public library (yes, even close to home I like to get away from my standard offices), the Butler Library at Columbia University in New York, the New York Public Library Click to continue reading this post →

Dedication

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max_roach_parkThis was nice to see. (Click for larger view.)I was hurrying along in the rain, but had to take a picture for you.

There’s something about a little park in London being named after the excellent (and legendary) drummer Max Roach that makes me feel good.

I hope it inspires those who pass by and those who use the park.

Now, find some time to listen to some Max Roach…Perhaps hearing him playing Click to continue reading this post →

Walkabout

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Well, having finished the various papers I wanted completed before turning to other things, I’ve now turned to other things. What I’ve not mentioned so far is that I’m actually on sabbatical this semester. Due to being too stupid to say flat out NO to various things, even though it was supposed to start in early January, I did not really get things together until the end of the month, but I’m happy to report that I’m properly in sabbatical mode now.

cvj wandering in dunes in death valleyMy plan for the sabbatical is to work on a specific project, and little else, right through until the late Summer. Sabbaticals come only once every seven years, and so I want to structure things to use the time as well as I can, but the nature of what I want to do with the time means I need to disconnect a bit, so I won’t be attached to a particular institution (as is common with sabbaticals), but instead will be a bit of a nomad. At times, I’m just going to be on Walkabout for a long stretch, taking my work with me wherever I go (the wandering is actually part of the work, in a sense) and just lying low, drifting from town to town like Kwai Chang Caine (I’ll try not to get into any fights, and, for the record, I’ve no plans to go to Thailand). Appropriately, therefore, I’ve dug out a snap from a recent visit to the desert by way of illustration.

From time to time I might show up in your town, so wave if you see me. My current Click to continue reading this post →

News From the Front IX: Water Everywhere

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water ripples at the getty villa
(Image above was used in an earlier post. It is of a pool at the Getty Villa.)


(Somewhat technical post follows.)

I was sitting in a random city somewhere watching the rain and it reminded me that I did not get to mentioning the completion of my other project. I reported on it in a paper with two students, Ram and Jeff, and the title was (perhaps intriguingly?) “String Theory and Water Waves”. You can see it here.

The work follows on from some projects I did a while back, and concerns attempts to gain understanding of string theory at a (perhaps) deeper level by working with various simple models of string theory that are complicated enough to capture many of the theory’s remarkable features while being simple enough to actually solve completely (in a sense). Actually, I laid a lot of the groundwork for this post by writing three earlier blog posts in the “News…” series, and you can find them here, here and here.

Here are some words from the introduction to get you excited. What you may have Click to continue reading this post →

Collapse Results From Space

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montserrat_dome_collapsePhil over at Bad Astronomy has posted about my childhood cradle (although I am sure he does not know that), the (still beautiful) island of Montserrat. I grew up there for ten years from ages 4 to 14. Many years later, in 1997, a volcano erupted there (in the “Soufrière Hills”) and devastated much of the Southern part (where I grew up) of the island wiping out almost all traces of where I lived. Much of the stuff of my childhood memories is buried under tens of feet of ash. In my more tender moments, this thought still brings me to tears, actually. (Yes, of course I do know that it is much more devastating for those whose lives it affects due to their living there in the present.) On a side note, I always find it slightly chilling that the mountain that erupted was one of a pair that I used to love to sit on a giant rock and stare at, for long periods, when I was in a contemplative mood (as I often was) when I was young. Furthermore, two weeks before the eruption I was actually visiting the island for the first time since I’d left it as a child. And guess what I did? One day I was in a foul mood over an issue, and I went and sat on that rock again and while brooding, looked over at the mountain for a long spell. (Just in case, I try not to get too angry these days… 😉 )

It turns out that the volcano has continued to rumble and burp over all these years, sometimes dangerously, with a growing dome that forms on top of the whole Click to continue reading this post →

The Write Stuff

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A little while ago, this season’s edition of the USC College magazine came out, and it is available online. Notably, it is featuring writers and writing, and there are several pieces in there about both faculty and students and their writing, in various forms. There are articles about superstars such as TC Boyle and Aimee Bender, as well as pieces by excellent writers such as California Poet Laureate Carol Muske-Dukes, and M. G. Lord. I recommend having a read of it.

It is with a mixture of mild amusement and embarrassment that I mention that among all that excellent writerly material is, perhaps oddly, an article on yours truly. It is about this blog, what it is about and for, and why I do it. (The blog is, of course, not to be mistaken for great writing, and so I will apologize personally to Aimee Click to continue reading this post →

Overview

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downtown_from_griffith_2

A lovely morning in Griffith park, overlooking the city, with a splendid view of downtown Los Angeles. In this photo (click for larger view), everything is lovely and clear after the recent rain. I’ll admit that I took this last Sunday and not this one. Somehow, procrastination, two loads of laundry, a batch of sweet potato biscuits, and staying up until 3:00am all contributed to me not getting up there this morning. Perhaps later.

For me, overviewing physically (as in the above) is always welcome, but it is also good to do so in other ways. I’ve been in that mode recently too. Friday and Saturday saw me brainstorming in a group of 20 or so other USC professors at a retreat over Click to continue reading this post →