Comments on: Really Excellent

By: Categorically Not! - Movement - Asymptotia

Categorically Not! - Movement - Asymptotia — Thu, 04 Jan 2007 17:38:06 +0000

[...] The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 7th January. The Categorically Not! series of events are held at the Santa Monica Art Studios, (with ocassional exceptions). They’re a series – started and run by science writer K. C. Cole – of fun and informative conversations deliberately ignoring the traditional boundaries between art, science, humanities, and other subjects. I strongly encourage you to come to them if you’re in the area. There’s a website of past and upcoming events here. You can also have a look at two of the last two descriptions I did of some events here and here, and the description of a recent special one on Uncertainty that was held at the USC campus is here. [...]

By: Music and Language | Cosmic Variance

Music and Language | Cosmic Variance — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:49:11 +0000

[...] Diana Deursch has done some research on “tone languages”, for example – languages where what sounds to English speakers like single word actually takes on several different and often unrelated meanings depending upon the pitch/tone at which it is spoken. The example of Mandarin is given (which makes me reflect quite a bit on the bizarre misunderstandings I had from time to time in my walkabout last year in Taiwan – I like to try the language a bit, even if there is an alternative… this sometimes gets me into trouble), and it leads to fascinating insights when you couple it to music. She discovered, for example, that the speakers of tone language have a vastly greater number of people who have perfect absolute pitch as compared to people who speak non-tone languages. There are links to her work from the radio program’s website. There are also links to her collections of audio files of musical illusions, which put me in mind of the optical illusions discussion I blogged about not so long ago, and associated links. [...]

By: A University of Wonderful Things - Asymptotia

A University of Wonderful Things - Asymptotia — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:01:21 +0000

[...] I’ve come to realise that there are all sorts of really interesting people on the USC campus, involved in fascinating work and interesting projects of one sort or another. This is of course true for any university. However, I am still finding pleasant surprises and connections quite regularly. The last major such discovery for me was in the early Summer, when I found out that the excellent writer Aimee Bender (e.g. “The Girl in the Flammable Skirt”) is on the faculty here. (I mentioned this and described her contribution to one of the Categorically Not! events in this post.) [...]

By: Categorically Not! - Apocalypse! | Cosmic Variance

Categorically Not! - Apocalypse! | Cosmic Variance — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 22:57:22 +0000

[...] The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 24th September. You may recall my post on the Categorically Not! series of events held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. They’re fantastic, and I strongly encourage you to come to them. Have a look at the last two descriptions here and here, and the description of the recent special one on Uncertainty that was held at the USC campus is here. [...]

By: Uncertainty - Asymptotia

Uncertainty - Asymptotia — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 01:14:25 +0000

[...] These are, as I said, events that build upon the Categorically Not! series held at Santa Monica arts studios on Sundays, and about which I have blogged extensively on Cosmic Variance (see some recent descriptions here and here). The old Categorically Not! series stop will not stop. The Santa Monica series will continue, but there will be some gaps to accommodate the USC events. We hope that the regular Santa Monica crowd will make the short trip across the city to USC on those nights. For more information on all Categorically Not! – type events, visit the Categorically Not! website. [...]

By: Categorically Not! - Uncertainty (Revisited) | Cosmic Variance

Categorically Not! - Uncertainty (Revisited) | Cosmic Variance — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 00:42:18 +0000

[...] The next Categorically Not! is Thursday 31st August. You may recall my post on the Categorically Not! series of events, started by K. C. Cole, and held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. They’re fantastic, and I strongly encourage you to come to them. Have a look at the last two descriptions here and here. [...]

By: Categorically Not! - Transparency | Cosmic Variance

Categorically Not! - Transparency | Cosmic Variance — Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:00:56 +0000

[...] The next Categorically Not! is Sunday 4th June. You may recall my post on the Categorically Not! series of events held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. They’re fantastic, and I strongly encourage you to come to them. Have a look at the last two descriptions here and here. [...]

By: I See Book People | Cosmic Variance

I See Book People | Cosmic Variance — Thu, 11 May 2006 06:44:36 +0000

[...] Well, it was a splendid party on the terrace. I won’t go into the details since I’m very tired and you’re probably not that interested anyway. I met a huge number of interesting people. I was there mostly through LA Times connections (via K. C. Cole and Jonathan Kirsch) and so I met an awful lot of excellent columnists, critics and editors. There were some other USC people there as well such as Annenberg School of Communication people, excellent author and USC professor Aimee Bender (who I met just a week ago at Categorically Not! in Santa Monica), and Barry Glassner, our Executive Vice-Provost, who’s also a noted sociologist and author (see his “The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things”, for example). But I also met a lot of authors (some already mentioned), publishers and agents. [...]

By: im

im — Thu, 04 May 2006 06:39:56 +0000

insider tricks …but it applies to more much more then that, doesn’t it?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 04 May 2006 02:27:11 +0000

of course Ilaria! it’s also true you knew a lot more about what I meant with that word….