-
Harmony in the Universe
Cosmology fans in and around London: Please come here my colleague Jean–Philippe Uzan, visiting us from Paris, who will talk about “ Harmony in the Universe: between science and music” this coming Thursday, 25 October 2012 in the Huxley Building here at Imperial College. It’s free, but please contact us at astro-outreach@imperial.ac.uk if you’re going…
-
Cage 100
·
Today (September 5), John Cage would have been 100 years old. A few weeks ago, I went to the John Cage Centenary Celebration at the BBC Proms. Cage is probably best know for 4′33″, his infamous 1952 piece consisting of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence (originally in three movements — although he eventually…
-
This sporting life
[Warning, this post will be largely about sport(s), a subject I am even less qualified than usual to discuss, and so is mostly an excuse to brag about my having seen the fastest man in the world live — along with 80,000 other spectators, and post some of the pictures I was lucky enough to…
-
Higgs vs Religion on the Radio: no contest
The Higgs day continues (and I’m not even a particle physicist). At about 5pm, just as I was dialling into one of my several-times-a-week Planck teleconferences, I had an email from Tim at the BBC, who works with the World Service “World Have Your Say” show, coming on at 6pm. Would I be able to…
-
Expat playlist
·
I am in England for Independence Day this year, having just spent last weekend back in the USA. Here’s a taste of the view from my ancestral (i.e., my parents’) home: So I’ll eat a burger in celebration, and listen to some appropriately-themed music from my playlist (in order of release): Van Morrison, Almost Independence…
-
Fundamental Scalar found?
·
I am just back from STFC‘s media event covering what did, in the end, turn out to be the discovery of a particle that appears to be the long-predicted Higgs boson, the last component in the Standard Model of Particle Physics to be discovered, and in many ways its linchpin. Via a mechanism known as…
-
Future Science Bloggers Wanted
Attention Imperial Postgraduates*: I’ll be helping lead a course in Science Blogging this Friday, 6 July 2012 at Imperial, along with a couple of fellow (science) bloggers: biophysicist Professor Stephen Curry and biostatistician (and actual graduate student!) Erika Cule, both of whom write at Occam’s Typewriter, an excellent grassroots network of scientist bloggers. Imperial students…
-
50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong
·
I wandered across Prince Consort Road from my office in the Blackett Laboratory a few weeks ago — to the Royal Albert Hall and Elvis Costello‘s Spectacular Singing Songbook tour. Elvis has settled into a comfortable phase of his career; he hasn’t quite managed a late-period resurgence — his last true masterpiece was probably Blood…
-
Causerie – The Creation: On Cosmogony and Cosmology
·
A quick alert to any friends or followers in or near Rotterdam this weekend: I’ll be participating in a series of dialogs supporting The Humans, a piece of theatrical performance art sponsored by and shown at the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art. The production, which will encompass a series of symposia with the…
-
Bad memory. Bad law?
·
(Warning: this post is pretty far outside of my usual bailiwick…) I was reading today’s Guardian and came across Zoe Williams‘ sketch (in UK newspapers, this is a short, often humorous, descriptive piece, usually about an event like a parliamentary debate or court proceedings), “Rebekah Brooks lays bare the secret of her success“, recounting the…