-
My Namesake, R.I.P.
I was saddened, and, I admit, a little freaked out, to learn that a namesake, one of the several other Andrew Jaffes out there, has died. This Andrew Jaffe was a journalist who covered the advertising business: he was an executive and editor at AdWeek magazine, from where he also ran the Clio advertising awards.…
-
Beyond Entropy II
I’ve been in Geneva now for a couple of days. We spent yesterday visiting CERN, trying to inspire the artists, architects and scientists alike (I’ve collaborated with people here, but I’ve never visited before). A mockup of a section of the CERN tunnels. More pictures here. You can also check out Peter Coles’ blog for…
-
Beyond Entropy
I’m in Geneva for a few days as part of a project called “Beyond Entropy: When Entropy Becomes Form“, sponsored by the Architectural Association back in London, the brainchild of Stefano Rabolli Pansera and others at the AA. It brings together eight trios of architects, artists and scientists to produce works to be shown at…
-
Climate Change: Who Should I Believe?
Today I went to a talk by Chris Rapley, a Professor at UCL and currently director of the Science Museum in London (across the quad from Imperial), “Climate Change: Who Should I Believe?”. In a department full of academic scientists (including a few working on the climate, such as our head of department, Professor Jo…
-
Crash: Homage to JG Ballard
·
I went to see the new show at London’s Gagosian Gallery, Crash: An Homage to JG Ballard. It assembles work from mostly well-known artists with some connection to the recently-deceased Ballard or his themes. So there are the obligatory car crashes from Warhol, referencing the eponynmous Crash, probably Ballard’s best-known novel. Indeed, works about cars…
-
Andrew Lange, Huan Tran
The cosmology community has had a terrible few months. I am saddened to report the passing of Andrew Lange, a physicist from CalTech and one of the world’s preeminent experimental cosmologists. Among many other accomplishments, Andrew was one of the leaders of the Boomerang experiment, which made the first large-scale map of the Cosmic Microwave…
-
Bayes and Blake at Bunhill
·
One of my holiday treks this year was across town to visit Bunhill Fields, final resting place of two of my favorite Londoners: William Blake and Thomas Bayes. Blake is of course one of the most famous poets in the English language, but most people know him only from short poems like The Tiger [sic]…
-
Doctors, Deep Fields and Dark Matter
·
Luckily, not all the astrophysics news this week was so bad. First, and most important, two of our Imperial College Astrophysics postgraduate students, Stuart Sale and Paniez Paykari, passed their PhD viva exams, and so are on their ways to officially being Doctors of Philosophy. Congratulations to both, especially (if I may say so) to…
-
Cuts
I presume that anyone reading this blog knows that today is the day when the great unwashed masses of UK Astronomers heard about our financial fate from the STFC, the small arm of the UK government responsible for Astrophysics, Particle Physics and Nuclear Physics. For various reasons, some clear and others manifestly not, STFC is…
-
Physics vs Poetry
When I’m traveling I try to read the New Yorker — a transatlantic flight usually gets me through most of an issue. I was even more interested than usual when I picked up the issue at Heathrow and found the front-cover blurb, “Physics vs Poetry: New fiction by Ian McEwan”. McEwan is thought of as…
Search
Recent Posts
Categories
- Academia (64)
- Art (57)
- Blog (1)
- Miscellanea (102)
- Music (71)
- Net (63)
- News (28)
- Politics (110)
- Science (333)
- Uncategorized (4)