Just got back from taking my mum to the movies. The new Wallace and Gromit film! It’s wonderful. It hit several of my buttons: As you know (perhaps) our heroes are inventors and have wonderful homemade gadgets, and solve their problems by thinking, and often employing a little exaggerated physics when in a tight spot. The physical humour is just wonderful in all of the short film’s they’ve done, and there’s more of that in this feature-length film. Also there’s a special bonus for me this time: Gromit, my favourite (right, with rabbits), is -of course- a keen gardener! And it’s all about the humane trapping of garden pests, which fits nicely with part of the comment thread of my last post!

Went to see it at my favourite movie theatre, the Arclight, which I’ve told you about before (here and here), and it was in the fantastic Cinerama Dome. Another great thing about the Arclight is that they have interesting film-related displays in the lobby contributed by the film-makers. Guess what they have on display now? Two of the model sets from the film!

They are just great. I carefully took some snaps through the glass cases for you. (My secret for success: no flash, hold your breath, squeeze-don’t-press.)

Here’s Wallace and Gromit in the basement. I won’t tell you what’s going on in case you have not seen the film yet (above right has another shot from that same set):

Here’s Gromit, examining his prized vegetables in the greenhouse:

These are particularly bitter-sweet to see up close, since the recent news of the terrible fire which destroyed most of the sets and props from all the previous work of the Aardman Animation studios.

Anyway, tonight was a lovely evening before a terribly busy work week. Setting alarm clock for 5:45am. Sigh….

-cvj

Photon (colourless light carrier), by Jan-Henrik Andersen. (Ink on canvas, 42×56″)

From* an article by Elizabeth Wade, in Symmetry Magazine, on a gallery of artworks about particle physics. Quoting:

Ultimately, Andersen hopes to have his visualization of particle physics used for educational purposes. “The distance between Fermilab [a particle physics laboratory] and the dinner table is getting larger,” he says. “I want to aid communication between a larger audience and physicists, and make this fantastic and beautiful part of our world conceptually available to a broader audience.”

Godspeed.

-cvj

*via Boing Boing.

You may have seen some discussion in the comments of other threads about a new PBS programme entitled “Einstein’s Big Idea”. JoAnne mentioned her thoughts about it in her post last week. It’s basically a docu-drama, in the sense that they’ve written scripts, designed sets, sprinkled in extras, and generally tried to make the settings, characters, and circumstances all seem more accessible than just having a bunch of talking heads. They spend a lot of time describing and dramatising the conversations and discoveries of several other pieces of physics (conservation of mass/energy, Faraday’s electromagnetism, Maxwell’s demonstration that light is electromagnetism, etc) that lead up to the famous E=mc^2 equation. I have to say that this is a very good way of presenting this material, and overall I think it is quite successful.

Well, I’m in the middle of watching the programme right now, and several of you have already finished watching it in other time zones. I was thinking of writing an extended commentary on this programme, but then I realized that it may be less important to hear on this blog what I think in any detail, as compared to hearing what you think. So I’m going to be brief. I do have issues here and there, but they’re mostly all minor in the face of what they are trying to achieve. (Like why on earth do they go to all the effort to get the costumes, the silly accents, and the other -mostly successful- attempts at making the settings seem accessible and realistic, but then keep quoting the speed of light in stupid units that no real scientist uses!?)

On the positive side, I have several scattered thoughts and I don’t know which to mention. I’ll just say that I like the fact that they are very careful about emphasizing the role of women in the science, and try to set the record straight (in the face of how so many of these presentations commonly ignore their role in the crucial parts of the physics) by using dramatic license. Since this sort of programme is targeted a lot to schools, and since they’ll repeat it a lot over the coming days and weeks, selling DVDs, etc, the programme will be seen a lot by young people, and so this single aspect of the programme may well have significant impact on a whole generation of young girls and women, with regards pursuing physics a lot further than they normally do, for whatever reasons.

So I’m throwing open the comment area to everyone: non-scientists and scientists; physicists and non-physicists, educators and non-educators, film-makers and non-film-makers, etc. I want to know what you think of the programme. All aspects: How well did they do on the science? If you were not familiar with the science before, how did you find the explanations and dramatizations? Did the dramatic aspects help or hinder? Did the characters seem well-drawn? The conversations natural or forced? Any other things you want to talk about? Writers and film-makers, I’d like to hear from you too on all aspects that you might have a view about.

On this blog, we talk a lot about the process of bringing science from the notebook/laboratory/textbook to the people. This PBS programme is one of the biggest ever recent efforts to do this through television for this particular area of science: Fundamental Physics. So let’s hear what you thought.

Cheers,

-cvj

…And all four of my co-bloggers have spilled their beverage. Sorry dudes!

I mean Kate Bush. Just to illustrate how out of touch I am with everything these days, I learned from my mother (who is visiting me) that she has released a new album.

Anyway, this is a big deal, at least in the UK (the release, not my being out of touch). Apparently the buzz about this is just huge over there. She has not released an album in 12 years, and this one is supposed to be really rather good. We shall see (hear).

I was simply in love with Kate Bush and her music as a teenager. It was not a sex thing (inasmuch as anything can be far removed from sex as a teenage boy); instead I was in love with just how different her music was while still remaining both interesting, tuneful, bizarre, and beautiful. (And often very funny.) You see, I loved listening to things other than the standard 80′s UK pop everyone else was into at school, and I went to great lengths in pursuit of this, and the results were not always interesting and enjoyable at the same time (you may recall me writing about being into obscure German electronic music as a teenager). But Kate Bush managed to be different and all of those other things I said above at the same time. She was clearly a genius, at least to my mind back then, producing all sorts of tremendous musical ideas and sounds.

Always being a supporter of the underdog, I probably secretly enjoyed it a bit that few others seemed to appreciate her tremendous talent, so that I could fiercely defend her. Women musical artists in the genre in those days were mostly supposed to just be pretty and sing stuff they were told to, not sing (with a truly haunting voice), dance, play an instrument, write, produce, mix, edit….etc…(I know there were a few other exceptions). And as a bonus, she showed up (with a Fairlight CMI!!**) on the cover of some new magazine I was into entitled something like “Electronics and Music Hobbyist” which had pages and pages of stuff on the internal circuitry of various sound synthesizers and sound modifying devices, my big hobby at the time, so she was right up my alley.

Anyway, a lot of you won’t even know who Kate Bush is, being either too young or from the wrong country. Well, so many artists copy her to some extent, so you’ve heard her through others. Think Tori Amos is terribly original? She’s channelling Kate Bush. Think you’re terribly cool listening to Bjork? Direct decendent of Kate Bush. Into Fiona Apple or any of the 1700 or so “talented girl singing with piano” artists? All Kate’s children. To get straight to the source, go out and get “The Kick Inside”, and then “The Dreaming” and “Hounds of Love”.

Here’s an excellent article from the Scotsman on her career trajectory and the recent buzz about the new release. And here is a short Guardian article, and a Wikipedia entry. And all around the web you can easily find more material, including an authorized download of the first single from the album.

I have to rush off now. My new (minor?) celebrity neighbour seems to be having his first party and his guests seem to be being valet-parked (the horror!). I have to go and look a bit disapproving from the balcony.

There goes the neighbourhood…

-cvj

(**Update: The exclamation marks are to indicate that this was a big deal back then. That piece of kit was every in electronic music hobbyist’s wildest dreams.)

You know by now, I’m sure, that the great playwright August Wilson has died. Here are stories in the LA Times, the BBC, and I read an excellent obiturary in the Guardian which you can find here. (Photo at left is by Genaro Molina of the LA Times.)

Of his work, I’ve only ever seen the play Jitney on a live stage, at the Donmar Warehouse in London. This was some years back, now. I decided back then I’d been missing out and should see more.

There was an “appreciation” of the man and his work, written by Charles McNulty in the LA Times Tuesday, which is (interestingly) somewhat careful and measured in its assessment. Here is a couple of paragraphs that I found stayed with me:

Wilson often referred in interviews to James Baldwin’s call for a “profound articulation of the black tradition,” and this imperative fueled his artistic journey with a sense of public mission. “I am trying to write plays that contain the sum total of black culture in America, and its difference from white culture,” he explained to an interviewer. “Once you put in the daily rituals of black life, the plays start to get richer and bigger. You’re creating a whole world in the process of telling your story, of writing this character. Once you place him down in his environment, you have to write about his whole philosophical approach to life. And then you can uncover, from a black perspective, the universalities of life.”

And further:

Though conscious always of the historical division between white and black America and its deleterious repercussions, Wilson refused to paint in black and white. While reminding us of the roots of our 20th century racial nightmares (whether it’s Jim Crow fallout or ghetto blight), he went to great lengths to reveal the ways men and women contribute to their own tragedy or transcendence.

The list of African American actors who owe a debt to Wilson is staggering — Charles S. Dutton, James Earl Jones, Mary Alice, S. Epatha Merkerson, Angela Bassett, Ruben Santiago-Hudson, Viola Davis, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Leslie Uggams and L. Scott Caldwell, to name just a few. His works have given to each of them, in starring and supportive roles alike, the chance to reveal onstage the hopes and heartbreak of an embattled life.

Do go and see a play of his when you get the chance. Especially some of his modern classics, perhaps from the cycle of ten “Pittsburgh” plays. I certainly will:

Gem of the Ocean (2003), set in 1904; Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1986), in 1911; Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1984), in 1927; The Piano Lesson (1987), in 1936; Seven Guitars (1995), in 1948; Fences (1990), in 1957; Two Trains Running (1990), in 1969; Jitney (1982), set in 1977; King Hedley II (1999), in 1985; Radio Golf (2005), in 1997.

-cvj

Below is a snapshot of a computation I was working on earlier this Summer. Will explain later. Spoke about it at the Southern California Strings Seminar.

I’m curious about what a physicist’s scribblings look like to others, regardless of field (science or non-science). So, non-specialists: What does this all look like, to you? What impressions do you get, if any? Do tell.

There’s no wrong answer here.

-cvj

Picture (by Sara Krulwich) spotted in a New York Times article about (apparently happily) performing cats in the Moscow Cats Theatre. Yep, it was in the Theatre section of the paper and all; they’re coming to perform in New York.

I was pleased to read the quote:

Cats are like actors,” Mr. Kuklachev [pictured below] said. “They do what they want. Sometimes a cat doesn’t want one trick, so he does another.

So… good, you still can’t herd cats, but:

As a cat-lover, the caption “Help Meeeeee!” is all I think when I see that picture and the expression on the cat’s face (you’ve got to say it out loud in the squeaky voice from the original movie called “The Fly“), but from reading the article, it sounds like they are wonderfully loved and looked after, and are quite happy. There are other pictures on the Times’ website, some involving bike riding, that disco ball lying there in the background, a rocking horse, and other household items…

-cvj

So today you are hiding, since the first three days of the week were taken up with teaching and committee work, and because tomorrow will have at least two committee meetings in the middle of the day. You need a full day to get back into full immersion for working on this paper you’re writing. You’ve no plans for exciting and varied writing venues today, as described in a previous post. This is because now you’re more into the part of the writing that can benefit from just sitting in one comfortable and familiar place for a long time, staring, scribbling, typing, mumbling, and drinking lots of tea and coffee…

…and listening to music. Today, you woke up in the mood for Cassandra Wilson’s music, and so while you write you’ll be listening for the entire day to every album she’s ever recorded. Blue Skies is one of your favourites, as is Blue Light ‘Til Dawn. And the recent Glamoured, has many wonderful reworkings of several modern standards from several genres such as pop, jazz, blues, country…(for example, Sting’s “Fragile”, while the original is a favourite of yours, never sounded better, or made more sense, before her version, and you’ve been listening a lot to her wonderful version of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy” recently). But you’ll not just be listening to her later stuff, you’ll be digging way back into work closer to her earlier, more experimental M-base collective work too.

Happy Hiding Away, Writing, And Listening To Cassandra Wilson Day*

-cvj

(*After the excellent blog Girls Are Pretty .)

So you might have noticed that I’ve read the odd comic or two. You may also have noticed that I think about physics from time to time. So you’d guess therefore that if I saw this post about a book on physics and comics over at Caolionn’s QuantumDiaries blog, I’d not be able to resist commenting, and then when the author showed up and commented as well, and pointed me to the website, and I saw the book’s table of contents…..how could I not blog about it?!

Table of contents:

Section 1—Mechanics
1. Up, Up, and Away—Forces and Motion
2. Deconstructing Krypton—Newton’s Law of Gravity
3. The Day Gwen Stacy Died—Impulse and Momentum
4. Can He Swing from a Thread?—Centripetal Acceleration
5. Flash Facts—Friction, Drag, and Sound
6. Like a Flash of Lightning—Special Relativity
7. If This Be My Density—Properties of Matter
8. Can Ant-Man Punch His Way Out of a Paper Bag?—Torque and Rotation
9. Is Ant-Man Deaf, Dumb, and Blind?—Simple Harmonic Motion
10. Does Size Matter?—The Cube-Square Law
Section 2—Energy—Heat and Light
11. The Central City Diet plan—Conservation of Energy
12. The Case of the Missing Work—The Three Laws of Thermodynamics
13. Mutant Meteorology—Conduction and Convection
14. How The Monstrous Menace of the Mysterious Melter
Makes Dinner Preparation a Breeze—Phase Transitions
15. Electro’s Clinging Ways—Electrostatics
16. Superman Schools Spider-Man—Electrical Currents
17. How Electro Becomes Magneto When He Runs—Ampere’s Law
18. How Magneto Becomes Electro When He Runs—Magnetism and Faraday’s Law
19. Electro and Magneto Do the Wave—Electromagnetism and Light
Section 3—Modern Physics
20. Journey into the Microverse—Atomic Physics
21. Not a Dream! Not a Hoax! Not an Imaginary Tale!—Quantum Mechanics
22. Through a Wall Lightly—Tunneling Phenomena
23. Sock It to Shellhead—Solid-State Physics
Section 4—What Have We Learned?
24. Me Am Bizarro!—Superhero Bloopers

Comment from the author (extract, from Caolionn’s blog):

Actually, its a real physics book, written for the general public, which starts with Isaac Newton and goes all the way through a standard undergraduate curriculum up through how a transistor works. There are simple algebraic equations throughout. It is NOT a textbook, but again, a general audience book.

The sneaky aspect is that there’s not a single inclined plane or pulley in sight. Rather, ALL the examples come from comic books, and in particular, those cases where they get their physics right.

So, granting a one-time miracle exception – if you were as strong as Superman, how much force would it take to leap a tall building in a single bound? If your strong legs resulted from your home planet having a larger gravity than Earth’s – what is the minimum excess gravity of your planet? Now, how would you construct a planet with this excess gravity? You can do it – but it’s hard to keep it from exploding!

Answering these questions takes you through Newton’s laws of motion and of gravitational attraction.

If like me, you teach Electromagnetism and Special Relativity (for example) and if like me you grew up reading Spiderman and X-Men comics (for example), you’ll appreciate just how excellent the chapter headings 17 – 19 are!!

I’d like to see this book, since if it is as good as the table of contents suggests, it’ll be a blast to read, and would be a good one to recommend to some (especially younger) readers. Hmm, maybe I’ll wait a while in case the author sends me a complimentary review copy (ahem!)…

-cvj

This is a reminder, for those of you busy people in the Southland who need plenty of warning, to mark your calendars for September 18th. Recall my post on the Categorically Not! series of events held at the Santa Monica Art Studios. Well, the first one of the new season is fast approaching. Here is K.C. Cole’s teaser:

Point of View

As physicists know better than anyone, they way we look at things determines what we see. A point of view is inescapable. Yet science and journalism both are frequently expected to be “objective”—a goal that is not only unattainable, but intrinsically fraudulent and ultimately counterproductive. Instead, the lesson of both relativity and quantum mechanics is that “truth” emerges only when “point of view” is inserted squarely into the equation. As the philosopher Max Otto wrote: “Let us remember that even Plato wore spectacles, and that if he or any absolutist ignores or repudiates this fact, it only makes him careless of the kind he wears.”

For our September 18th Categorically Not!, USC anthropologist Amy Parish will discuss how point of view has been central to her research into relationships among female bonobos, close cousins to chimpanzees who may be our closest living relatives; many aspects of their female-dominated society challenge popular assumptions about human evolution. From a journalistic perspective, Victor Navasky, author of the recently published A Matter of Opinion, will draw on his experience as an editor at Monocle, “a leisurely quarterly of political satire” (it came out twice a year), The New York Times and The Nation to speak about objectivity, subjectivity, ideology and opinion. Finally, Jon Boorstin, Oscar-nominated filmmaker and author of Making Movies Work will talk about how making movies, and enjoying them, relies upon the mysteries of point of view.

Directions and other information from the website. I’ll try to remember to do another reminder closer to the date, but I’m not promising anything, so mark those calendars now!

Do come and hang out with us!

-cvj