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Serra’s steel
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Despite 100 years of abstract, conceptual, modernist art, it is surprising that Richard Serra’s sculpture works as miraculously well as it does. I went to see the (now-closed, alas) exhibition of his latest sculpture at London’s outpost of the Gagosian Gallery. For the last few decades, Serra has been taking great sheets of Cor-ten steel…
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Holiday Spirit
I’ve been asked by Katherine Blundell, a colleague in the Oxford Astronomy department, to spread this information about a chance to get a piece of astronomical history, and help a child in need. Please be generous! There is a one-off opportunity to buy vintage prints of the original photographic plates of the Palomar All-Sky Survey.…
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Health Care at Home and Abroad
By far the best article I’ve read about the British healthcare system, appeared this morning… in the New York Times. It discussed the NHS‘s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the organization that rations pharmaceuticals in the UK (although you’ll rarely hear the word “ration” used). When NICE’s decisions are discussed in the…
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Poetry and Space
I’ll be introducing this event tomorrow. Come on over for an evening of scientific poetry… (Apologies: most of the following links are broken.) Inua Ellams is one of the UK’s most talented performance poets. He is establishing a great reputation for the power and quality of his work. His live appearances have included the BBC…
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Change
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It is disconcerting to be moved by a website. Might we really get openness, sunlight, transparency?
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The First Family
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This is an even nicer picture: (Courtesy The Guardian) And a stirring speech. “Democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.”
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History, County by County
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What a joy to be able to show this map today: So much better than last time. I wept with joy and relief, and pride. (Courtesy The NY Times. Lots more very cool maps here.)
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Travel Karma
I’ve just spent a quick 36 hours in Italy, taking the role of External Examiner for a PhD defense at SISSA in Italy. I was very happy indeed to “confer the degree of Doctor Philosophiae” on a very worthy young scientist. But getting to and from Trieste was less pleasant. It started promisingly. En route,…
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Nobel 2008: Broken Symmetry
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The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to Nambu, Kobayashi and Maskawa. Nambu, although not exactly famous outside of physics circles, is one of the most influential theoretical particle physicists of the last half-century. He proposed the basis of quantum chromodynamics, which is the theory of how quarks interact to form subatomic particles…
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iCosmo
A quick pointer to Initiative for Cosmology (iCosmo). The website brings together a bunch of useful calculations for physical cosmology — relatively simple quantities like the relationship between redshift and distance, and also more complicated ones like the power spectrum of density perturbations (which tells us the distribution of galaxies on the largest scales in…