Hanging with the Funny People

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I know what you’re thinking, based on the title, but I’m not talking about me and my colleagues. (Stage cymbal crash.) I mean funny-ha-ha not funny-peculiar.

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Saturday morning. I’m drinking a double espresso at Victoria’s (the newest of the cafes) and putting my aging ipod to the test after having opened it up and tinkered around inside to diagnose some strange behaviour. I notice out of the extreme corner of my eye that the guy who was sitting at a nearby table, now on his way out, changed his mind and is looking at me and now approaching and saying something. I Click to continue reading this post →

Guillermo del Toro on Mayo

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Well, inexplicably I’m up at 6:00am again after getting to sleep at 1:00am. Might as well have a cup of tea and blog a bit. I’ve a treat for you!

deltoro_panAs you know, I love some of the interviews that show up on Daily Mayo. So many interesting guests, and Simon Mayo is such an excellent interviewer as well, gently steering the conversation along. Well, he had the excellent director Guillermo del Toro on, a couple of days ago. (Who? Oh, he’s the director of the stunning Pan’s Labyrinth, or as I love to say out loud in a corny accent: El Laberinto del Fauno.) He seems to have been busy, what with co-writing a new book (for those of you into vampire-lit, here’s a new series for you, perhaps a nice contrast to the Twilight series), developing a lot of screenplays, moving to New Zealand, and… yes… you know… working on the Hobbit!

After a while, he does indeed get around to talking about the Hobbit films, and although I much prefer to know nothing at all about these banner projects before I walk into the theatre (as I did with Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings), I listened to the whole thing. (Even though I thought that the latter half of Hellboy II was a mess, I still trust him to do a good job on the Hobbit movies. Or, as he joked, the Hobbitses. (He said “Hobbitses” to pluralize… he gets it!))

There are several reassuring things. Several. One is that they seem to have Click to continue reading this post →

Best Abstract of the Year So Far?

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…At least in my field, as submitted to the ArXiv. Just saw “Remarks on the world-sheet saga” by Bert Schroer. The abstract (and the paper) is full of excellently derisive turns of phrase that are hilarious to read! Example from the abstract:

Attention is given to how such misleading metaphors originate and how their support is maintained by quantum mechanical analogies to models which for good reasons never existed before in particle physics physics and whose only purpose is to uphold the string metaphor. The correct localization is inconsistent with the idea of world-sheets and the string-theoretical interpretation of T-duality.

He’s not actually trying to make the reader laugh, I think, but is attempting to make some serious physics points in there, apparently suggesting alternative lines of Click to continue reading this post →

Breakfast Habits

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oatmeal_steel_cut_aspenI’m a creature of habit, it must be said. Part of my morning ritual while at Aspen is to slowly stir some steel cut Irish oatmeal (click for larger view) for a while (properly spiced, of course, and soaked overnight ), while listening to NPR and making some tea. The tea is also seasoned with spices and finished in a pan for a while. Why?

Tea up here is horrible if you just pour boiled water on to tea leaves (bag or no bag). This is because at this altitude, boiling water isn’t actually very hot. This makes for Click to continue reading this post →

Just Great!

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quantum_criticalI’ve no idea why I’m writing a blog post about this, since I can’t really explain any of the details in a way that won’t sound tediously technical. I’m just pleased since I had a sort of perfect workshop moment for a couple of hours after the weekly picnic at the Center today. I’d been talking a bit last week with Lincoln Carr, an excellent condensed matter theorist at the Colorado School of Mines, and had also been talking with Allan Adams, another excellent physicist, from MIT. Allan and I seem to be on the same page as theorists and so I really enjoy talking with him. We work on string theory, but are not fussy about where the physics that it can be applied to might come from. As long as it is good physics. We both seem to love the idea that there’s so much rich physics, that might be accessible with string theory, Click to continue reading this post →

Haunting while Working

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Well, there are two Aspen cafes that are probably a bit sick of me. The last couple of days saw me frequenting one or other of them while I worked on a number of things, primarily finishing writing a paper. I’ve focused on little else but finishing it up so that I can get on with other things, such as my various other projects, and also to allow me to pay attention to the interesting talks coming up in the workshop Click to continue reading this post →

Uses For Strings?

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viscosity_scatterThere were a couple of string theory stories in New Scientist last week. I forgot to mention them earlier. One is entitled “What string theory is really good for”, by Jessica Griggs. The other is entitled “Why cats fail to grasp string theory”, by Ewen Callaway.

Well, since cats are involved, of course I’m going to start with an extract from the second (even though it is obvious that the cats are deliberately skewing the results):

[…] Osthaus’s team attached fish or biscuit treats to one end of a string. A plastic screen with a small gap at the bottom separated cats from their reward, requiring the felines to tug on the string to get the treat.

With a single string attached to the food, most cats learned to paw at the string to get a snack. But when Osthaus’ team introduced a second piece of string, […]

Well, that was to pique your interest. You’ll have to go off to the source article to get to grips of this second piece of stringy research. The first article? It’s a discussion of Click to continue reading this post →

Combined Columbines

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blue_columbines Aha.

For a while, over the years, I’d see them in only one colour at a time, and would conjecture that they are all related since the shapes were all similar (out hiking on trails, the wild varieties – not these). See an earlier post on this here where the conjecture was confirmed by a bit of research with helpful discussion and links from some readers.

Now I found a cluster of them all together in an Aspen garden that I just happened to be walking by. So, columbines in three shades below for you (Click for larger views):
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An Odd Time

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watchWell, it was an unusual day here in Aspen. It was a day with lots of talks. Six of them, I think. There were four workshop talks scheduled for the morning, each of half an hour I think. Also got into a discussion before the sessions began, helping to explain how gauge/gravity duals work to a condensed matter colleague. I checked a voicemail message (only a relatively limited set of people have my number and so I figured it was a call to which I’d want to respond) and, despite the fact that I’m in retreat mode and would normally ignore it, returned the call. It was an office at USC wanting to put me in touch with a journalist who needed help. From Esquire. No, it is not what you think. I suggested they can could call me at 13:05, and at 10:30 went to the talks.

Somehow, successive speakers kept running over time due to lots of (actually, pretty interesting) interruptions and discussions, so I did not mind that we got to 12:50, and my talk, which was scheduled for 12:00-12:30, had not happened yet. With Click to continue reading this post →

Ink Time…

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ink_break_aspenAh, time to relax a bit after a somewhat busy last couple of days glued to the notebook and computer. The results? (1) A hasty colloquium to an audience of mixed expertise to try to get across a sense of why some of us are excited about various applications of string theory a diverse range of physics including ongoing experiments in nuclear physics and condensed matter physics (the person who was going to do it was a bit ill apparently so I stepped in with some hastily prepared slides… a bit messy but hopefully some use)… (2) Two papers with my student Tameem on applications of string theory techniques to superconductivity (one will appear on the ArXiv in about 20 minutes if you are interested [update: it is here.])… (3) Notes for a talk I’ll give on Thursday about said new results… (4) Several discussions with and ideas sent to some documentary film makers about some new TV shows coming up – Season 4 of The Universe! Seems I’ll get involved in some of them (stay tuned)…

So this morning I went to sit and cool down a bit at a cafe I like to visit a lot when in Aspen. Ink Coffee. Ok, I see that I did not yet mention I was in Aspen. Have been for Click to continue reading this post →

Silence is the Enemy

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rape_by_slytherin_princeSheril Kirshenbaum at the Intersection has spearheaded a campaign by a coalition of bloggers to raise awareness and promote and coordinate action on the matter of rape worldwide. Particularly the institutionalized and mass rapes that take place in various parts of the world. She writes very well about the matter in her first blog post on the issue and I recommend that you have a careful read of it. Note that just your clicking on the link and going over there to read helps, since all revenue from her blog traffic this month will be donated to Doctors without Borders, an organization that has tracked this issue for some time. There’s also a New York Times article by Nicholas Kristof from a few weeks ago that is worth reading. She points to it in her post too.

Do please take some time out to visit her site, and do tell others about it via word of mouth, letter, email, facebook, twittering…

-cvj

iMpressed

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newyorker_june_09The cover of the June 1st edition of the New Yorker (see right) was done by artist Jorge Columbo on an iPhone, using an application called Brushes. (Story here and here*.) This all smacks of (more) free iPhone advertising, on the surface, but there’s something impressive here.

The New Yorker’s website displays a video of the layering of paint brush strokes that he did, showing the process of constructing the art. I’m impressed. Not by the iPhone aspect of it so much as the painting technique and approach itself, especially in such a small space, and that he did it while standing there looking at the subject for the scene in question. It is fascinating to see his strokes. Have a look:

Click to continue reading this post →