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Sinuous Titanium & Big Iron
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I’m recently back from my vacation in Bilbao. Aside from the usual “getting away from it all”, the first highlight was the amazing pintxos–Basque tapas like squid-and-ink croquettes and piles of jamon iberico. With a full tummy, I could handle Frank Gehry’s spectacular Guggenheim Bilbao, one of the most beautiful buildings in the world. Sheathed…
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Vacation, all I ever wanted
OK, I’m off on vacation (holiday, as they call it in the UK). Lots of time to think, very little in front of a computer. Back in a week or so. In the meantime, congratulations to Janna and the other awardees, from the fqxi, who seem to have transcended their somewhat dubious funding source, and…
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Big brother, watching me (or vice versa?)
When I left for Trieste last week, I decided to leave some vital data with the UK government: the pattern of my irises. Now, when I enter the country, my eyes are scanned by a science-fiction-ish kiosk and I get through faster than those other less fortunate foreigners. But I’m the one with the data…
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Non-Gaussianity in Cosmology (on the Adriatic)
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I’m spending the week at the Workshop on Nongaussianity in Cosmology at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, just outside of Trieste, Italy. Just so you know I’m working hard, here’s the view from my room at the Adriatico Guest House that the ICTP runs: (More pictures here.) When I’ve got more time,…
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Majorana in superposition
This morning I found what is undoubtedly one of the weirdest papers ever to appear on the arXiv, “Ettore Majorana: quantum mechanics of destiny“, by O. B. Zaslavskii. On the one hand, it’s a short retelling of the life of Ettore Majorana, a major figure in the development of mid-20th-Century particle physics. On the other,…
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When they think we’re not listening
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We learned yesterday that President Bush has a bit of a potty mouth (at least when he’s abroad; I bet Cheney makes him wash his mouth out with soap when he talks dirty back home) and a not particularly nuanced view of foreign policy: Bush: What they need to do is get Syria to get…
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The size of the Universe
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I’m quoted today in article in New Scientist, “Universe Weighs in Surprisingly Light”. I spoke to the author, Zeeya Merali, last week about a recent article by Hans Fahr and Martin Heyl, in which they define a “radius of the universe” and therefore the amount of mass inside that radius. Because their calculation is done…
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Aliens in London?
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The aliens are taking over London: (Actually, this is a picture of one of Theo Jansen’s Strandbeesten, encamped in London for the summer, courtesy of the ICA.) And this must be the mothership: (And this is the summer’s Serpentine Pavilion, designed by architect Rem Koolhaas and Cecil Balmond of Ove Arup.)
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Brian Aldiss on Food and Civilization
In the years of the Han emperors in China… the Chinese perfected the crossbow with which to defeat the barbarians. The barbarians did not have the skills necessary to cast the bronze locks the crossbow requires. With the barbarians taken care of, a time of peace prevailed within the newly united states of China. So…
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