Near misses

Things have been utterly non-stop recently. I haven't seen the inside of my flat for more than about 5 minutes this week while not sleeping or trying to forget about the day's events and attempting to sleep. This isn't to say that anything has been bad, just very busy. I'm finishing up some work which has to be done really very soon and have written a couple of long posts about how I got to be where I am now (not in the Darwinian sense) and a little background to what I do, or maybe why I do it.

In the mean time I've been helping friends move house and running round the city saying goodbye to people leaving Beijing, teaching, attempting to start learning Spanish and continuing with the Chinese. Tomorrow I go out of town for a party, back on Sunday, take a friend to the airport and then straight back to work. September is looking to be very full with three couchsurfers staying at my place for a continuous period of 10 days. Also we have the string cosmology conference coming up all month at the KITPC, which I'm very much looking forward to. (first week's lectures here).

Today as I ran out of the office and caught a cab to get to my friend's house to help her move house my blood began to boil as the Beijing roads mingled with my already high pressure state.

I usually spend my time in a state of calm chaos, but just occasionally it boils over - in fact in the UK it very very rarely happens but the bloody stupidity on the roads in China just got my goat today. I love cycling and I know that I'm not a very safe cyclist. This has improved since I learnt to drive and realised how much I must terrify drivers as I speed around as fast as possible. Anyway, with however many million non-driving cyclists on the roads in Beijing combined with 3 million cars all of whom think that they have the right to get from A to B faster than everyone else, cutting up all who are in their way and slowing the roads down for all, the situation is often unbearably frustrating.

After several near misses (both my driver's fault and that of others) he got out of the car and had a fight with another road hog - a full on slamming each other against the bonnet fight, red-faced arm waving and general macho nonsense. I was either going to laugh or cry as I waited in the car for the frivolities to end so I laughed at them and they split up and got back in their respective cars.

So, we continued to weave our way through the ever-honking traffic and an hour later had deposited more clothes than you can possibly imagine to their temporary residence. The taxi driver left and I went back to the office.

As we reached the traffic lights I saw something which I so often see here in Beijing. A cyclist somehow forgetting that there are two sides to a road. She looked left, seeing that there was a gap in the traffic and pulled out to cross the road. However, she seemed hypnotised by the lack of traffic on the left, presumably thinking this to be a good enough omen. As she got to the middle of the road without appearing to slow down I looked in horror as the speeding oncoming car didn't notice her behind the central bollard. She pulled out, still looking left as the car slammed on its break, turning the wheel as it did so. The car screamed to a halt, in a haze of tyre smoke centimeters from the girl on the bike, who just sat there, looking puzzled at the car.

The police driving the police car, which had been the offending missile, shouted at her as she sat in the middle of the road, still looking unperturbed but a little angry at being shouted at.

The police car sped off and she stayed, sat in the middle of the road as other cars honked at her to move. Normally I would have put this down to shock, but Beijing cyclists get into these situations so damned often that she just seemed annoyed at the whole affair and couldn't be bothered to move.

I'm writing this having let myself calm down a little. My heart has left my throat and my pulse has dropped below 200.

ok, rant over - it just winds me up no end and sometimes I need to vent.

Google having hiccups in China

Things are very busy at the moment, still with a paper on its final stages along with various other responsibilities I'm involved with.

However, today there seems to be major problems with Google, here in Beijing at least. I can't open google.com, blogger.com or Google Reader. This is the biggest block I've seen for a long while and with wikipedia being blocked again last week it seems that somethings up. I'm currently writing this in blogger using the phproxy add on, which is a savior for fast, easy viewing when you don't want the trouble of using Tor.

Anyway, if anyone else knows more details about this then please let pass on any information!

Large hole in the Universe

There seems to be a big hole in the universe. A gap where there isn't matter, where there should be. There isn't much that I've found with any explanation simply because I don't think anyone knows. I'd be interested in speculative answers from experts though.

The hole was found by the very large array telescope which sees virtually no stars between 6 and 10 billion light years in one particular direction.

sparse details can be found at:
Lubos Motl's reference frame.
Slashdot
Toomanytribbles
Livescience

More advanced string theory lectures

Some wholesale copy and paste from the Scitalks blog which I've been contributing to over the last few weeks. I'll be taking a more active role next week too. In the series of posts on string theory video material, working up from pop-science through to basic introductory lectures, to more advanced topics I gave the following suggestion:

First I will give some ideas for lectures which are mostly in my area, the AdS/CFT correspondence.

Eric D'Hoker's lectures from TASI are great.

Though I would suggest that just about every lecture from TASI is worth watching. I haven't seen them all but most of the lecturers are really very good. I've been watching Mina Aganigic's lectures on topological string theory which are very good. David Tong's lectures on vortices, monopoles and kinks were excellent in 2005 and I would imagine they are still both entertaining and clear.

Also on AdS/CFT those by Mark Van Raamsdonk at the PIMS are good.

But again, the level of this school is just right for those who have are just about familiar with the previous material.

I can't view these lectures by Juan Maldacena who first developed the AdS/CFT correspondence but they may well be good.

I've seen Eva Silverstein talk a couple of times on string cosmology. She's one of the leading researchers on the subject. Again, I haven't seen this particular video of her but she's usually a good, clear speaker:

A little old now (2004) but still excellent is this workshop on QCD and string theory from UCSB, and the conference here.

My work is most closely linked to Rob Myers' talks on holographic mesons.

Trying to give a broad range of stringy subjects, the lectures on string phenomenology are here.

More on stringy cosmology here.

and some of the more mathematical aspects here.

As before I haven't seen all these videos but I've seen a few from each conference and can say that there are certainly some which are worth watching. We really need more, interested people to watch them and then advise which are the best. I'm just giving a general selection of some of the more cutting edge areas of the subject.

Note that there's a big jump between the previous set of lectures and this set. There's really a gulf between learning the basics and understanding the more advanced topics which is why a full length online course would be excellent.

Anyway, I'll be posting something about, eh, me, soon over at Scitalks to give some context to me work in the subject.

Emergent chaos

I've been swimming a couple of times over the last week, late in the evening before heading home. The Chinese are not known for their queuing skills, something which I, along with every other expat blogger has commented on ad nauseam in the past. However, it turns out the spending time in a swimming pool here allows you to see the lack of queuing skills writ large.

The chaos in a laned swimming pool is just incredible. One may have thought that having a single side of a lane for each direction was a relatively sensible setup, however, not only does this not happen, but when people do self-organise into something resembling a clockwise rotation, the vortex created seems to attract wayfarers who then swim into the middle of the lane, in the centre of the pool and tread water, gently watching as the lane swimmers attempt not to bump into them, sometimes. On the occasions that these self-imposed traffic wardens were hit by a particularly careless swimmer, the swimmer was severely chastised for not watching where they were bloody going. On other occasions swimmers would drape themselves over the lane dividers, letting their legs float in the middle of the lane, completely oblivious to those around them who may find this distinctly awkward.

I got strange looks as I laughed while watching this bizarre spectacle of disorganisation, and the life-guards sat around smoking. I'm happy to say that this sort of thing more amuses than annoys me as it seems to to many other expats. I don't think this is a comment on my higher tolerance levels, but perhaps the fact that I have a low threshold for base humour (Thanks Phill).

Expatois

Sometimes it's hard to tell the ratio of irony to Chinglish in signs here in Beijing. I'm sitting in a cafe at the moment finishing off a talk for tomorrow and tidying up a paper. The cafe is very quiet with comfy chairs and tables and a few students sitting round working hard (we're next to Qinghua university - the top university in China). The sign on the stairs on the way up to the cafe states boldly that: "A climax a day keeps the doctor away". I'm not sure if this is a tongue in cheek statement talking of eureka moments, or simply the obvious interpretation. These days I simply don't know.

On the topic of language. Today's Wikipedia article (not viewable in China where Wikipedia has again been blocked) is on the Gwoyeu Romatzyh Latinisation of Chinese, in particular an alternative recipe for showing the tonal system. It looks far more complicated than Pinyin, which is relatively straight forward once you are able to reproduce the tones. I'll be discussing learning Mandarin soon as I've just reached a bit of a personal goal.

Over at the Scitalks blog I have given a series of suggestions for more advanced string theory lectures, mostly on AdS/CFT, but on other topics too. I've been watching lots of the TASI courses which are excellent.

Air pollution in Beijing

I just heard from a friend that on CCTV 9, the English language channel on the Central Chinese Television network, that the trial run to remove a million cars from the roads has worked marvelously. The quote came through to me that:

BizChina (CCTV 9) states that "air quality has improved dramatically over the past three days" apparently, the particulate count dropped from 116 (ppm?) on Thursday to 90 yesterday

Well, I thought that this statement needed a little context, so I have created a graph from the month of August, up until yesterday to see what a dramatic effect the removal of so many cars from Beijing's roads has really had. The data is taken from sepa.gov.cn where you can freely look at the countries pollution levels. I've created a graph from Beijing's recent data to see what the announcement really means.

The cars were removed from the roads in the last four days of the graph. The sudden drop from 115 to around 90 (similar, as far as I can tell, to the other changes throughout the month) is the result of the cars, or so we're told. I'm sure there's more to it than that, but this sounds like statistics being used without any context behind them.

For more context on the pollution index, take a look at this, though China's own pollution index is not exactly the same as this one, they seem very similar.

Apologies for the hastily created graphics, I'm in the midsts of calculations as I type.

Kabuki coming to Beijing

Anybody who has kept up with these travel adventures will understand how pleased I am to hear that Kabuki is coming to Beijing. Just for two days in September, but if you are in the city and want to see a Japanese art form, which is certainly the most spectacularly beautiful stage art I have ever seen, then buy yourself some tickets.

See here and here for my previous encounters with Kabuki in Tokyo.

Max Roach 1924-2007

I just read the sad news that Max Roach died yesterday. Max was one of the most influential jazz drummers of the last century.

Although most seem to claim that Kind of Blue is the best jazz album of all time, I have a definite soft spot for Money Jungle, from Blue Note Records, on which Max created a spectacular album with Charlie Mingus and Duke Ellington.

If you're either a fan of jazz and don't know this great album (I've met several people who passed it off because they figured Duke Ellington was purely big band) or if you haven't heard much, take today to listen to this stunning record. If you know it already, sit back, listen and remember some of the amazing records this guy produced. (M+D, you'll find the album in my collection, do put it on).

Max with Billy Harper, Cecil Bridgewater, Reggie Workman, enjoy.



RIP M.R

I managed to catch about 3 hours sleep on the train from Wuhan last night, so I'm not very with it today. I've finished a couple of calculations but need to call it a day now. Anything else I do is likely to take even longer to undo.

The workshop in Wuhan was good. Just as the previous quark matter workshops I've spoken at, it's really nice to have an audience who are listening to your lecture because they want to learn and use what you're talking about. The people with a background in RHIC physics are really keen to get in there and use the new tools available to them to study more about the different phases of strongly coupled systems. Of course it's also good to speak with the researchers there and there were a couple over from the States too.

I didn't get to see a great deal of Wuhan this time either. We got to the gate of the famous Yellow Crane Temple but it had shut by the time we got there. I have a rant about Chinese ancient architecture which has been brewing for a while, but I'll save it for a time when I'm rather more awake.

From the closed temple we made our way through a night market, selling all manner of tat, and got to the banks of the Yangtzi river. Wuhan has the first bridge which was built over the Yangtzi, and I managed to get a few photos of the rather pleasing lights and shadows of this impressive piece of 50 year old Russian engineering. I'll leave you with the photos for now and go get some sleep.



Larger photos can be seen by clicking on these.

Introductory level string theory videos

Still in collaboration with Scitalks I'll post my suggestions for introductory level string theory videos. These are lectures for physicists with a grounding in quantum field theory. I count introductory as the most obvious step up from the previous videos which were popular science level.

Most of these courses are just three or four lectures long, so I want to make a request here.

There are many universities, mostly in the US, who run one semester, or even one year courses on string theory (amongst many other interesting topics). If you know somebody who gives a good course on this subject then I would urge you to suggest that the course is videoed next time it's run. It's a waste not to. For those who aren't lucky enough to be at universities who run long term courses in this subject then please try and share this as an open source course. This doesn't just go for string theory, but for all other subjects too. It just so happens that string theory is the current example. I've said this before and I'll probably say it again.

So, find out of your department will allow this, find a willing lecturer, video the course, upload it to your department web server (this may be a lot of material but servers are pretty huge these days) and send the link to Scitalks.

Anyway, here are some of the best introductory materials on string theory that I could find:

Over at Scitalks there are now two sets of lectures at the appropriate level. One by Barton Zwiebach and one by Clifford Johnson. See below for a set of lectures on perturbative string theory from Clifford too.

There’s another series of lectures by W. Lerche here. I have only been able to read the transparencies, which look broad ranging and reasonably detailed. In the cafe I’m in at the moment I can’t download the video. I would imagine it’s good, but couldn’t guarantee anything.

There is a nice colloquium by Shamit Kachru, who is an excellent speaker, talking about string theory and cosmology here:

If you go to this page, and look on the left for ” Summer School: Strings, Gravity & Cosmology” you will find a host of great videos. Unfortunately it’s really difficult to try and view these independently from their special player (you need IE, too!). The lectures on perturbative string theory, again by Clifford Johnson, are probably excellent and just the right level for first year grad students. I just wish I could rip them and watch them at my own comfort and time. I’ve watched a few, but I just don’t like this format of streaming.

Again, what would be perfect at this point would be a full graduate course in the subject available online.

Next week I'll post links to lectures at a more advanced level, mostly in my field.

How to work with extra dimensions

I'm posting an e-mail that I sent to Lee at Scitalks which was added as a blogpost on the scitalks blog. Sounds a little circuitous, but having written it I wanted to add it here, with the little video I made.

Having mentioned that the video explanation of extra dimensions was in no way accurate, I wanted to add my two cents about extra dimensions and so sent the following message:

------------------

In fact it’s pretty easy to understand higher dimensions from some simple visualisations. The video on Scitalks was fine, up to the fourth dimension, and then things started to get a bit cryptic.

One thing I should mention first is that trying to visualise objects in higher dimensions is good to feel comfortable with what you’re studying. However, sometimes if we try and visualise the things that we are calculating, we may stifle, or bias our calculations. In my opinion it is usually best to become familiar with the mathematics, the purest descriptions of our theory and try to ‘visualise’ in this language rather than trying to use common sense from what we see around us. A good example is quantum mechanics. If we try and visualise what is going on on very small length scales we will quickly tie ourselves in knots and not be able to progress as far as we can by exploring the mathematics of our system. Of course it’s important to be able to translate the mathematics back into what you will actually see in your experiment.

So, given that caveat I will explain how we can build ourselves a hypercube (or at least the frame of a hypercube), the higher dimensional generalisation of a cube.

The way we will do this is to start with less than three dimensions and see what rules we have to follow to go up in dimensions. We will see that we can extrapolate these rules to however many dimensions we want.

Start with a point, a zero dimensional object.

Take this point and turn it into two points. Now pull one of the points apart from the other one, say a distance L away, and join the two points with a piece of elastic. Now you have a line, a one dimensional object.

Now do a similar thing, but this time turn the elastic into two pieces of elastic (on top of each other - now you have four points given by the two ends of the pieces of elastic). Pull the pieces apart in the direction perpendicular to their length. While you’re pulling them apart keep the two ends joined by more elastic which will grow to length L. Now you have a square, something with four edges (pieces of elastic) and four points, or vertices. This object is two dimensional.

Now repeat the process. Take your square and replicate it with another square, on top of the first one. Join the vertices of the two squares with four pieces of elastic which will be stretched in the direction perpendicular to the face of the square. Pull the squares apart to a distance L. Now you have a cube. This object lives in three dimensions. It has six faces, 12 edges and eight vertices.

So, what rule have we developed? We have taken our previous object, replicated it, joined the vertices of the two objects together and pulled them apart in a direction perpendicular to the directions they lie, until the two copies are a distance L apart.

Let’s do that again.

Take your cube and replicate it. Join the vertices of the twin cubes to each other, again by elastic, and pull them apart to a distance L in the direction perpendicular to the direction they are living. There seems to be a problem though, in the last example, the square could live on a piece of paper and you could pull the two squares apart vertically to create the cube, we seem to have run out of directions. We need to pull the two cubes apart in the fourth dimension to a distance L.

Though we can’t really picture this realistically (at least I can’t) we can draw the projection of this onto 2-dimensions, just as easily as we can draw the projection of a cube onto a piece of paper.

When we pulled the one square from the other, we did this in the third dimension, say height, from your paper. So we don’t have another direction to go to pull the cube apart any more. This is where we have to imagine, as best we can, that we take the cube, split it into two and, joining the vertices of one cube with the other pull the two cubes apart to a distance L in the fourth direction, to create an object with 16 vertices and 40 edges. It’s almost as easy to draw the projection of this object onto a two dimensional piece of paper as it is to draw the projection of a three dimensional cube onto a piece of paper.

I've created a short animation of the above construction using Mathematica. We see the projection onto 2-dimensions. When I have time I'll let the objects rotate and slow it down a bit too.



In terms of mathematics, it’s even easier to go to higher dimensions. As an example, we might want to know the length of a line in two dimensions, going from some point (0,0) to (x,y). The length, as we know is the square root of x^2+y^2.

In three dimensions for a line going from (0,0,0) to (x,y,z) the length is the square root of x^2+y^2+z^2.

Well, let’s stop labelling directions as x,y,z etc and label them x_1, x_2, x_3,x_4, etc. (1,2,3,4 are simply labels). Now it’s easier to keep track of them.

Now a line in four dimensions stretching from (0,0,0,0) to (x_1,x_2,x_3,x_4) has a length of the square root of (x_1)^2+(x_2)^2+(x_3)^2+(x_4)^2.

Well, if you can work out the 2-dimensional example, I would suggest that it’s pretty easy to calculate the 4, 10, or any dimensional example. Imagining it isn’t easy, but as long as you have a mathematical handle on the objects that are living in your higher dimensional theory, you should be doing fine.

I would suggest having a read of Flatland, a romance in many directions - not for it’s political correctness, but for an idea of how things would be if we didn’t live in 3 dimensions. Chapter 16 is particularly relevant.

Wuhan beginnings

A ten hour train ride, four hours juddery sleep, a stationary traffic jam and a definite lack of coffee has seen me safely, if tired from Beijing to Wuhan where I will be talking in a couple of hours. Wuhan is at 32 degrees and climbing fast so we're all inside, trying to cope with the high strength air-con. No videos from this workshop, but Scitalks continues to add to the now impressive catalogue. I'll report back when I have more eyelid strength and another talk finished off.

The many degrees of Wuhan

This evening I'll head off on a ten hour train ride to Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, famous for being one of the four furnaces of China and also for having some excellent spicy duck's neck (superb as a snack with a cold beer). There is more to Wuhan than this, though last time I spent more time on the plane and road getting to and from the university than actually seeing it or any of the researchers.

This time I'm staying for a three day workshop on quark matter and again presenting on QCD from the AdS/CFT correspondence. I hope to see a bit of the city as well as discussing with some excellent researchers, both from China and the US, who will be at the workshop.

I spent most of yesterday stuffing myself in the all you can drink for 18 kuai (a little more than a pound) cafe near my flat while working on a current project and getting my talk for tomorrow polished off. I do find the buzz of a cafe inherently conducive to good work and almost without fail have more breakthroughs in these relatively noisy places than in the rather sterile environment of my office.

After spending all day in the cafe, a few of us headed over to Sanlitun in the East of the city, went to Kokomo (up on the roof of one of the taller buildings in the area), ordered a beer, sat back and watched for the Perseids. A strange sight for the others in the bar perhaps but we wanted to take advantage of the fact that Beijing is pretty cloudless at the moment (I speak a little too soon, I fear) due to last week's artificially induced storms and reduced traffic. We saw a few throughout the night, coming from the East, though you really need to be up in the early hours of the morning to catch the height of the showers, as the part of the Earth you are on is travelling towards the patch of dust and rock.

(The Bad Astronomer on watching the meteor shower)

Anyway, for now I'll leave some photos from last weekend, when I took a good friend for a birthday meal at Haiku, one of Beijing's top Japanese restaurants. Well worth a trip for the atmosphere and service. The food is good but sadly by my sushi standards which have been permanently affected by my stay in Tokyo, the food was excellent but not mind blowing.

The first photo is of the Beijing national gallery, currently housing an exhibition of works from the Prado. An excellent collection from Titian to Goya, with lots in between. Well worth a trip (though check online if it's still on). We went there in the afternoon before going for dinner.

I attempted to get a good view of the new, amazing structure which will be the CCTV headquarters. These two, leaning towers which will meet in a tangle at the top should be great for photographing, but from our position we could only get a hint of them.

and some photos from Haiku:




OK, got to go finish getting ready for the train ride ahead.

Basic string theory videos

A good number of string theory videos are appearing on Scitalks now. I've given long lists of videos and there are many still to be put up on the site. There are now many good movies from Clifford Johnson and Barton Zweibach at the introductory level and lots more advanced talks by Ashoke Sen, Matthew Strassler and others.

For the pop science level I think that Brian Greene's video series The Elegant Universe was excellent, and the book is also superb. It's what got many undergrads, including myself, interested in the subject.

From Strings 2005 the talks by Robert Dijkgraaf and Leonard Susskind are good presentations to the general public on a variety of stringy issues.

Some nice lectures by David Gross on a fundamental theory of reality. Parts I, II and III.

Also from the Princeton centenary lectures Juan Maldacena on gravity, black holes and string theory.

Soon I will be discussing slightly more advanced videos for which at least a degree in physics is expected.

I should note that not all of these videos are up on the Scitalks site yet. When they are I urge you to contribute, first in the initial stages of this site where you can vote for a video, but secondly when the tagging and social networking aspects of the site come online later in the year.

(I can't claim to have seen all of the above movies completely, I have seen some of them in their completeness and others I have watched samples from different sections to see that they are appropriate for this level. They are also all from very well known researchers in string theory. If people find problems with the videos then either tell me, or get in contact with the people at Scitalks).

Olympic warmup

A collective breath was held here in Beijing yesterday evening as 8.08 pm on 8.8.2007 came round. One year to go until the Olympics and this year is the trial run. Note that in Chinese numerology the number 8 is deemed lucky.

One of the biggest questions running up to now has been whether the weather will cause problems. With Beijing's chaotic weather, a storm during the opening ceremony could spell disaster. Well, it seems that the government has that in hand. Some 30,000 people have been employed around the country, especially in the North, to control the weather, in particular by seeding rain.

The last few days has seen tremendous thunderstorms across Beijing, coming in at around 7 o'clock in the evening and lasting for 2 or 3 hours. The lightning has been more frequent than I've ever seen, with flashes and blasts echoing around Wudaokou once every 5 seconds or so. Some of the lightning has been spectacular, but most of the time I was in the office, not able to get up to the roof of any of the larger buildings in the area to get photographs.

The one time I did have to make a break for it I find myself calf deep in water as the drains struggled to keep up with the massive downpour. The times I was safely inside I watched others struggle through similar flooding.

Along with snow seen over Chengfu lu (very close to me) - which is a sign of silver iodide seeding - speculation has been rife that the chaotic weather have been artificially created. It may just be a coincidence, but yesterday was a perfect blue-skied day and at eight o'clock the blue sky was simply dappled with small clouds. Rumour is rife on the Chinese blogosphere that this is no coincidence but truly the government proving that they can indeed control the weather.

Today temperatures are up to around 37 and the sky remains blue. A million cars have been taken off Beijing's roads for the next 20 days, so it will be interesting to see if the fine weather and reduced pollution continues.

As I have mentioned before, this face saving exercise will not impress the citizens who, after the games have finished and people are looking ahead to London in 2012, will again be cloaked in the deathly smog which we all know so well.

Anyway, for now I will try and enjoy the blue sky and clearer air in the knowledge that it's not going to last long.

String theory at Scitalks

I'm extremely happy to be working with Scitalks, which I've spoken about in several previous posts (see here for more). Lee Vodra and I have been in frequent contact. I was asked to set up a possible curriculum of video lectures on string theory for them to have as a featured set over the next month. I think this is a great idea and I hope that people will a) become interested in the subject and possibilities and b) ask questions about the material as it comes up.

At the end of the month I will act as guest blogger on the Scitalks blog where I will answer questions that people have raised. I urge others to come over to the blog and add their thoughts too. I hope to find an open-minded discussion developing.

One thing I pointed out was that it's not possible to create a curriculum in string theory which can start you out with the very basics (pop-science level) and in a month of videos work you up to cutting edge results in the subject. I hope however to be able to put together videos which will satisfy all levels. Those who are new to the subject will take most from the first sets of lectures. I hope that those at first year graduate level will gain most from the second week where there will be more prerequisite knowledge and then the final sets of lectures will be chosen as lectures on more advanced topics, for which knowledge of the foundations of the subject are expected.

I must point out that the lecture on 'Imagining the tenth dimension' featured on Scitalks is not one of my chosen videos and has nothing to do with the ten dimensions of string theory. This confusing video by musician and author Rob Bryanton is Rob's ideas of what extra dimensions may mean. Sadly this a) seems to have no mathematical formalism behind it and b) is completely unrelated to extra dimensions in the perfectly well-defined sense, discussed in string theory (though not exclusive to string theory).

In Rob's poll on his blog he is pleased that many people see his ideas as a combination of physics and spirituality. As a physicist, spirituality has absolutely nothing to do with my research and so anyone who claims to be motivated by this automatically loses a large amount of credibility in my book. Sadly this video is a great example of the clash between faith and science.

One thing I should note is that in Scitalks, just as in Wikipedia, though videos will appear which don't tie in with what most of us think of as good science, there will be voting and comment sections where people can voice their opinion about given videos. It will be interesting to see how this plays out, but I feel positive that as long as people take up this great opportunity to build a library and social network of great videos and great minds that Scitalks will be a huge resource for those coming into as well as already established in science. As Flip Tomato points out, watching videos of a conference is not the same as being there, but it's vastly better than having nothing at all. The interactive aspects of Scitalks, due for release in the not too distant future will only add to the possibilities.

Anyway, I hope that this experiment will be a good chance to share some of the excellent videos out there on the subject. I have already suggested a fair few videos but am always keen to learn of more, so please tell me if you know of good recordings of string theory talks, at all levels.

World's tallest building

The Taipei 101 has for around three years been the world's tallest building, something that stirs up some mixed sentiment here. A new building in Shanghai will be taller than Taipei 101, but not nearly as tall as the new tallest skyscraper, the Burj Dubai, still in construction but now taller than Taipei 101.

In July it reached 512 m tall beating the existing record. Estimates put its final height somewhere between 800 and 1000 m tall, though even this record is unlikely to remain for long in rapidly growing Dubai.

Headlines

John Denver is big here in Beijing. My planned work in a cafe is being interrupted by songs about leaving on jet planes and the like. I'm braced and ready for 'take me home, country roads' which blast the buses, the ring tones and my gym at all possible inopportune moments.

Anyway, I wanted to link to a few articles which have caught my eye today.

Firstly the fascinating news that the infamous researcher, Hwang Woo-suk, from South Korea whose claims of human cloning experiments turned out to be fraudulent may just have stumbled upon something even more important - Human parthenogenesis, the development of an embryo without using a sperm for fertilisation. The BBC news article can be found here and I'd love to learn more from those who know more about this subject.

Secondly an article about an interesting method of teaching physics from the US. This seems to have the emphasis shifted from remembering facts and formulae (not something which should be dismissed, but certainly not the most important aspect of learning the subject) to a deeper understanding of the laws of physics. In this method the student is lead to discover the rules by themselves. Sounds pretty sensible to me. Again, the actual details are sketchy and I'd be interested to learn more about this. (Original link from God Plays Dice).

Finally for now the news that a new clean energy bill has just been passed by the house of representatives in the US. One aspect of the bill is reduce subsidies for oil companies. The figures seem impressive, but I don't know what the percentages are. It also has a long way to go to become law but at least these issues are being raised in the US.

...And to the tones of Hotel California played in a pitiful saxophone cover I must get back to my topology.

(Photos to follow when my camera arrives back from a friend to whom it has briefly been lent)

Including your Feed Reader blogs in a blog roll

From the Google Systems blog are a set of instructions for taking the subscribed blogs in your Google Reader and automatically creating a blog roll which can be pasted into your blog. This takes about 2 minutes to set up and means a closer tie between the blogs you read and the blogs you advertise to others. Note that you can choose which blogs in your feed reader are included in the blog roll.

The new blog roll with a few new blogs can be found in the left column of this blog.

beginnings and endings

End of a tiring, stormy week. The CSSS summer school, which I've popped along to when I had some free minutes, has been fantastic and very well organised by Dave Feldman and others, lots to think about after that. New projects taking off, others fluttering to the ground, some of them falling harder than others, papers in the making.

Less than three months to go here in China so plans are afoot for travels both work related (I'm presenting at a school in Wuhan in a week or so) and extra-curricula (plans for doing China in October have been scaled down to tackling Sichuan for two weeks at the end of my stay).

In the humid, stormy summer months I feel like I'm running low on steam a little. The program starting here on string cosmology in September should certainly perk things up and there are still many things to see here in Beijing before I leave.

The huge midweek storms were not captured on camera as my camera had been lent to a movie director (who needed a digital SLR). He was the same movie director who came down with appendicitis earlier in the week and so the camera was inaccessible. He has now, quickly, recovered, thus the camera is back.

A random end of the week post I'm afraid.

Anyway, before a friend's birthday last Saturday I was stood in Wudaokou taking shots of the local hustle and bustle and got a fun shot of some of the Wudaokouites whizzing about on their scooters.

A better view of Chinese hospitals

I should add something to the previous post.

Last night I went to visit my friend who has now had his appendix successfully removed (and stitched up with what looks like shipping rope). He was in the new wing of the hospital in a very spacious room which would have looked pretty impressive in the UK. The corridors were wide, light and clean and the air was well air conditioned without being cold. It felt efficient and comfortable and the patients all looked to be as happy as one can be having just come through surgery.

It seems that the emergency room I saw on Sunday, which is still housed in a very old, badly kept building, really is the worst that you are likely to see and so my first real view of a Chinese hospital was probably a warped one. That said it was still in a terrible state and the fact that it's not the norm doesn't make it, on its own, any better. I'm told that this building will soon be replaced by a new one.

I'm also told by my friend from Sichuan that this is much worse than any hospital she has ever seen in her home province.

Taking it all in

Taken from the Wikipedia article on the air pollution index:

API index level.

0 - 25 Low Health risks: Not expected.

26 - 50 Medium Health risks: Not expected for the general population.

51 - 100 High Health risks: Acute health effects are not expected but chronic effects may be observed if one is persistently exposed to such levels.

101 - 200 Very HighHealth risks: People with existing heart or respiratory illnesses may notice mild aggravation of their health conditions. Generally healthy individuals may also notice some discomfort.

201 - 500 Severe Health risks: People with existing heart or respiratory illnesses may experience significant aggravation of their symptoms. There may also be widespread symptoms in the healthy population (e.g. eye irritation, wheezing, coughing, phlegm and sore throats).

Well, this year has seen levels over 300 here in Beijing. Frequently it's between 100 and 200, though today it's very good having had rain for many hours yesterday.

On a point of health out here (and incidentally more than half a million people die in China every year from pollution related illnesses) I went to visit a friend in hospital on Sunday who has appendicitis. It was a pretty shocking experience. Beds and chairs all packed together in old corridors and rooms, people wheezing and coughing all over the place with the humid stench of sweat, disease and pollution in the air. Pale men and women sitting glassy eyed with UVs in their arms and families washing their relatives in full view of everyone else. There are clearly problems in the British health system too and in fact several Chinese people I met looked down on the NHS a great deal when they came to Britain, but I left the hospital feeling angry and frustrated. We had called my friend who was sat in the chair waiting to see a doctor to see if he wanted anything and he said that all he wanted was for us to bring him some water.

One thing which is hugely frustrating in China is that there are so many people working in restaurants and cafes (often the high numbers are government imposed), on building sites and on the roads (service is always very very fast) yet the bottle necks where experience and education is required seem to be a long way from being eased. I'm sure that my one view of Chinese hospitals isn't always the case, but the department I went into looked to be near critical mass.

A note on pollution which I'm in two minds about: From the 7th to the 20th of this month a million cars will be taken off Beijing's roads to see how the pollution is affected. At the same time some of the coal burning power stations will be turned off. We are now at one year to go until the Olympics and this is a trial run.

It's great that Beijing may have a couple of weeks of lower pollution levels. The world is supposed to see and rejoice that Beijing is a truly developed, modern society, after which the city will return to its normal choking state and the population will continue to die in their thousands. The problems of Face continue to plague my views of China.

I took this from atop one of the tallest buildings in my neighbourhood. Note that even on one of the days when we appear to have perfect blue skies, if you look across at the horizon, the layer of smog is still clearly visible:

Schools Kill Creativity

Another TED talk link.

My set response to people who claim to be terrible at maths is to point out that different people learn in very different ways and it may well be that given a teaching style more appropriate to them they would have 'got' maths, or physics or whatever subject they failed to enjoy.

I know that the subjects that failed to click with me (or vice versa) didn't click simply because I never understood the reason the subject was important and the dry facts as they were presented never stuck with me. These were generally the subjects where knowledge over understanding was needed to excel in the exams, history being the prime example. These were the subjects that I had trouble visualising, the sciences I could always visualise with relative ease.

Though it would be easy to claim that it was spoon feeding, the things that did stick with me from history were generally those lessons presented simply through watching movies (strangely, that and a lesson on the satirical works of William Hogarth). Anyway, since the very dry lessons on the taxes of the 1500s and how to make a piece of paper look old I have become more interested in the subject and have read a little more than I had back then. I still find historical dates (unconnected to physics) stick for only a short time but I'm slowly building more of a structured understanding of how we've arrived at where we are today.

Anyway, I'm talking tangentially. I really want to talk about the fact that although we have an idea that it's important for all school kids to get a basic grounding in a range of 'important' subjects and that idea seems natural and wholesome, a video from the TED talks gives an interesting counter to this statement. Sir Ken Robinson is also a truly great storyteller in my opinion.

I have to admit that when I started watching this movie the scientist in me with the reactionary opinion that everyone can be good at maths and science if it's explained in the right way jumped to the forefront. By the end I realised that there's a lot more to the question than such a simple response.

I was really motivated to write about this subject because I found myself repeating the anecdote from this video about the 'troublesome child' to several people whose eyes lit up at this powerful tale of the right way and the wrong way to deal with someone who doesn't want to concentrate on the classical subjects at school. A perfect example of how one's gut reaction can be tragically wrong.

Anyway, the core of the argument is that we channel kids through a very narrow pathway of learning which probably sees a huge number of children excluded simply because they learn in different ways. We don't all find the same things natural to pick up and if we want to open the true creative capacities of the young then we need to rethink education in a big way.

The British Government seem to excel in rethinking education by changing the syllabus and exam system year on year. Sadly all they manage by doing this is to create chaos and devalue true learning over getting as many heads to university as possible.

I believe that the teaching of many subjects in schools in England needs to be rethought, but perhaps there are even more rotten foundations in our educational system which should be deconstructed and reconstructed first.

Anyway, watch the movie and tell me what you think

The Trial II

Man knocks on my door at 7.30 am and tells me I need to pay the gas bill right now, but I need the receipt. (see earlier post for context).

Receipt is in the office. Take 2 minutes to get ready and run to the office with man following on bike. Get receipt.

Take out 300 kuai from my wallet for the 286.80 kuai bill. Man (no longer on bike):'sorry no change'.

Run to hotel: not enough change for 100.

Run to hairdressers: Not open.

Run to baozi stand: 'Two pork baozi please, and can I please pay the 1.40 with a 100 note and, um can you give me change in 50s 20s 10s 5s 1s 0.5s and 0.1s?'

Get to office, tired and sweaty a little before 8 and start the day.

Later in the morning I returned to the visa office (third time in two days) with all the correct paraphernalia to order my visa. The queue was laughably big this time. Wait for an hour and a half watching people get turned away in hordes. Finally get to front desk and after some haggling over dates I get my ticket to return next week to pick up the visa. After this I will have to go to the police station to get a third residency permit. I may then simply leave the country through shear frustration.

That's not true, I have plans to take a proper two week vacation in October to go and see some of the country I've missed out on so far. This will be the first proper vacation where I've left the work behind since last August, so I feel both in need of it and duty bound to try and see some more of this amazingly beautiful, diverse country. I'll write about plans and seek advice soon.

Anyway, despite all this I've made some progress on one of the current projects today, finally having some possible physical insight into our solutions. Better get back to it...

Scaled Composites Explosion and the future of spaceflight

While Scaled Composites may not ring a bell, its most famous product SpaceShipOne is likely to.

A piece of very sad news today: there has been a large explosion in the Mojave desert at the Scaled Composites lab. Two people have been killed and more injured. More news can be found here, here and here.

Scaled Composites really does seem to be not only cutting edge in terms of its R&D but a real force for pushing our dreams of making space travel a viable option for more than a select few.

While his style grates with me a little, I do think that what Burt Rutan is trying to do is inspirational. There's a lot of fascinating information in this TED talk's video about why the space race has stalled and what can be done to restart it.

Fingers crossed for those injured in the blast.

Visa woes

It's been such a spectacularly useless day that I've given up on getting anything of worth done with the rest of it. Having spent the day drowning in bureaucracy I'm absolutely exhausted.

I don't spend much of my time wanting to shout at people, or banging my head against tables. I managed to avoid the former but did actually make contact between pate and tabletop at one point today.

The day started well with another great talk by James Glazier on embryonic development. Things went downhill fast after that. I was attempting to renew my visa, which should set off alarm bells in anyone who has spent any time in China.

10.30 get in a taxi to go to the visa office to renew my visa which has a week left on it.

11.00 After waiting in traffic I arrive, with slightly baited breath knowing what may be in store but feeling mildly positive. Steps:

a) Read the instructions which tell me to 1) request an application form.
b) Spend 20 minutes trying to find where an application form can be requested from, finding a small instruction in a tiny corner of the room that they can be requested from desk number 31.
c) Realise I haven't got my extra photos. Stand in line for photos. Get photos taken.
d) Go to desk to hand in ticket photos to get ticket to retrieve photos.
e) Take photo retrieval ticket to other desk to get photos.
f) Fill in form, including my name and address in poorly written Chinese characters.

11.30 Stand in queue to hand in application form.
12.15 Still standing, in roughly the same spot.
12.30 Get to end of queue. Greeted by smile from the man at the desk (possible evil tinge to smile).

12.35 Find out that although everything else is fine I need a stamp from my department on the recently filled in form (a duplicate stamp to the one which is on the letter from my department claiming that they have invited me here).

12.40 Get in cab back to the department.
13.10 Back at department, blood is a little warmer but still relatively calm. This was in the game plan all along. Get stamp.
13.15 Back in taxi to visa office.
13.45 Arrive back at visa office. Traffic stupidity has been getting to me a little more especially the truck which had to skid to stop before hitting us as we blocked two lanes attempting to cut across the traffic. The old grunting up a big gob of spit trick which is expelled outside the open door was performed at varying velocities.

13.50 Back in queue. A little shorter but still tedious
14.10 At front of queue.
14.12 Chinese man jumps the queue and goes to the desk I was waiting at. It seems he has an unusual request and therefore doesn't need to queue. Woman at desk goes away to consult with those on high. Due to unusual nature of request this takes longer than usual.
14.20 Woman gives me a smile (I see a hint of a fang).
14.25 It seems that though the form is perfect and the stamp is fine, my out of date residency permit may not be.

"But" I tell her "I used exactly the same out of date residency permit last time and there was no problem."

"Ah" she chuckles "the rules changed at the beginning of July and now you must renew it first."

(This is the point at which my head hits the table, briefly, but a definite head-table contact).

14.30 back in taxi, blood beginning to boil, partly due to lack of breakfast or lunch. Haven't eaten for 20 hours. Feeling quite hungry.

15.00 Buy some baozi, go back to the office and try and calm down. Eat baozi.

15.30 Go to police station to renew my residency permit.
15.35 Permit renewed but with date of current visa expiry. It transpires that I must then get my visa, return to the police station and renew the residency permit...again!

Visa saga over for the day.

15.55 At the bank to pay gas bill.
The following conversation is in Chinese:
Me: Hello, I'd like to pay this please.
Bank teller: OK...but there's a problem. Today is the 26th, and here it says the 23rd.
Me: I'm sorry, I don't read Chinese very well, I didn't know what that meant (This was notably feeble of me, I could have worked it out with a few seconds thought, but things have been too busy).
BT: It means 'something I don't understand in Chinese'
Me: very embarrassing but I don't know what that means.
BT: 'something I don't understand in Chinese' repeated louder.
Me: No, sorry, I don't understand these words. Don't worry I will speak with a friend.
BT: Repeats the same thing, slower and louder several more times. (I haven't had this happen to me before in China though it's the stereotypical British response to the foreigner who is clearly too deaf to understand English.)

I retreat to see if I can find someone in the bank who can explain it.

After some misunderstandings they tell me that I must go to the gas company to have the overdue bill stamped after which I can return to the bank and pay the bill.

16.30 Back at the office, feeling utterly exhausted and having managed to achieve almost nothing.

In fact, on a side note the authorities are currently cracking down on visas in China at the moment. It's very hard now to get more than a three month business visa which is a pretty useless amount of time. I'm told by various people that this is due to a crack down before the Olympics. This will apparently deter terrorism, or so the hearsay goes.

Anyway, having seen the looks on other people's faces in the visa building I'm sure that my story is a relatively simple one, but the fact that it's now only half way through and I'm going to have to return at least twice more to renew the visa (once to hand in the form and once to collect the visa) and once more to the police office, once to the gas company and once to the bank does not make me terribly enthused.

In a total of 6 hours today I've managed to get one thing done, and that could have been done in ten minutes if I'd known in advance what was in store.

Today, physics is on hold until my blood stops seething and I can see properly.

Space race

Things are just a bit crazy at the moment and I've little time to blog, consequently there are many things I'd like to blog about but have no time. I'm still thoroughly enjoying the lectures at the complex systems summer school particularly those this week by James Glazier on computational modelling of embryonic development. Ideas of cellular automata are racing around and I'd love time to play, but current research won't allow. Still, it's great to get some perspective on such diverse fields.

I was going to give a full review of Transformers but I'm afraid it doesn't deserve such time or effort. There are some fun effects but most of the fighting between big robots was so fast that it was all a blur (perhaps I'm just getting too old). Anyway, the robot sentiments were cringe worthy as were the mistakes regarding the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, the two lead human actors and...well, that's enough for me not to have enjoyed any more than the first 20 minutes or so. Every time it was mentioned that China may have been to blame for the strange goings on the sound was turned off which did amuse me but that was perhaps the biggest smile I got from the whole thing.

Anyway, I noticed this today which is worth a look, a set of photographs of humans in funny clothes orbiting the Earth. Some stunning views of true isolation, though with Big Brother - if not Mother - Earth looming behind, the perspective is a strange one.

I continue to share the blog and news stories of note every day in the widget at the top left of the screen so keep checking back for stories about science, China, travel, food and more when you are looking for a quick bite of something interesting.

Hot footing it...

Sometimes I fear that my concentration on the scientific disciplines has left me with strong abstract analytical skills but little in the way of common sense. I'm to be seen hobbling around the department today having been for a lovely walk in the warm afternoon sun earlier. Having spent the afternoon shivering in an air conditioned office I took off my shoes and reveled in the powerful heat of the tarmac. I greeted the burning pain with a smile of satisfaction as the rest of my body heated up. Back in the office as I put my flip flops back on and started to walk around the welts started swelling and I now can not let my feet touch the ground.

Anyway, apart from a mild loss of any dignity I may once have had, today has been superb as I've been attending the Complex Systems Summer School. A lecture this morning on the mathematics of genetic algorithms got my mind racing through ideas from topology and the possible studies one could do of the properties of a manifold mapped out as a system evolves through an evolutionary algorithm (the species are defined in terms of a real vector space). It made me realise the power of such interdisciplinary collaborations. I'm sure that I wasn't thinking anything very new but with enough time spent talking with other researchers in other areas, I'm sure that a lot can be achieved.

A second talk about the logarithmic relationship between metabolic rates of animals and their mass which holds over around 15 orders of magnitude of mass was also very interesting. If you measure for instance the heartbeat of animals as a function of their body mass, the data lie on a straight line to incredibly high accuracy over a huge range of animal sizes. What this allows is then the understanding of the differences between animals by finding the subtle deviations from these logarithmic scalings.

By dimensional arguments and studying the behaviour of the cardiovascular system in a relatively simplified model, the observations can be explained very well.

A third lecture on symbolic dynamics and measure theory was also very interesting, though having missed the first lecture I failed to understand the application.

Lots more interesting talks to come. See the Wiki linked from the previous post to read some of the slides from the talks, all very interesting.

I'm spending the rest of my time, apart from trying to finish writing a paper, reading through two very impressive papers: Exploring improved holographic theories for QCD, parts I and II, by Gursoy, Kiritsis and Nitti. I'll be giving a talk on these next week and the 110+ pages have a lot of detail to get through. Some great work though and vital reading if you are interested in AdS/QCD.

I'll leave you with another view of my favourite puzzling Chinese sculpture outside the Zhongguancun book building.

Random computations

There's an amazing looking summer school going on here at the moment. Run by Chaotic Soliloquy's Dave Feldman, the Complex Systems Summer School is about as diverse as any I've ever seen. Though I'm not officially attending I'll try and pop along to some of the lectures. There are lectures on genetic algorithms, the origins of life, Chinese characters, anthropology, molecular biology and lots more. I'll report when I've been to some, hopefully beginning tomorrow.

For now I'll leave you with Nicholas Negroponte's 'One Laptop per Child' talk from TED 2006:

and a photo I took a couple of days back of perhaps the most blatantly dubbed concert I've ever come across. I was just passing and didn't stay for the bad Chinese pop which I could feel was about to descend:

Wudaokou deluge

I know Britain is having a pretty hard time of it at the moment with so much rain, but, at least from the point of being drenched, if not flooded, I can sympathise. I took this photo while sheltering under a bridge in Wudaokou. We're having hot, muggy days (often about 90% humidity) at the moment with frequent rain or storms in the afternoon. The storms can be a lot of fun but the rain is just getting tedious.

Snail revenge

If you believed that snails were harmless, gooey gastropods which taste good with garlic and occasionally slime your carpet, then think again:

From a comment on Slashdot.

Kubrick continues

Watching Dr Strangelove in a bar in Beijing last night was one of those very special evenings. The twists of satire and irony will stay with me for a long time.

Next week:
Wednesday - 2001 A Space Odyssey
Thursday - A Clockwork Orange

Some interesting looking music on over the next couple of days, too.

I saw Elliott Sharp at D22 a couple of months back and promised to write a review. It's been bugging me ever since because, to be honest, I still don't know what I thought. I enjoy experimental music on the whole, the creative electricity of it can be exciting and the dynamics of the musicians is always fascinating to watch. I spent most of the Elliott Sharp concert with a big grin on my face. I enjoyed it, without a doubt, but I don't know whether I was smiling because of the genius of it or the chaotic self-delusion.

It was noise, there's no other way to describe it. It was disharmonies on guitar caused by random bits of metal grating against strings. It was flutes straight out of Star Wars warbling in different rhythms and different keys (there were no keys) with tuba accompaniment. It was expressions of deepest concentration making music that clashed in ways unimaginable before the evening.

A few people walked out within the first minute. Many stayed and enjoyed it, but I'm not sure what they, or at least I enjoyed. It was, without a doubt fun, and perhaps that's enough. Maybe I just don't understand the depths of musicality which went into it. It took explanation from educated friends and a lot of listening to appreciate a live jazz concert, which I do now, hugely. I can see the dynamics of the musicians as the tune is juggled and manipulated and I love the journey you can be taken on if you follow where they're going. I don't know if I need to know more about where Elliott Sharp was taking us or if I just need some chemical additives to fully appreciate his music. I'd almost certainly see him again because, as I said, it was a lot of fun to listen to and watch.

If anyone else is an aficionado of this sort of experimental music then please tell me what I should be listening for. If you think this is absolutely emperor's new clothes played loud, then I'd like to know your opinion, too.

In a random aside I was highly amused to hear about the klezmer-metal fusion band: Black Shabbat. This I've gotta hear. (from Charmaine X, a creative, amusing Beijing blog I recently stumbled upon).

Summer storms

Where best to be during a spectacular summer storm but on the roof of a 30 story building. For a couple of hours last night the sky to the North West of Beijing was alive with sheet lightning dancing in the clouds. The sky directly above me was clear and for once we could see a few stars. It's taken me almost two years to realise that one of the most stunning views in the city can be found from the building just next to mine. I sneaked in at about 10 pm, went up to the 28th floor and then took the stairs to the roof where students hang their clothes and do calisthenic exercises. The storm continued to bubble silently so I quickly shot about 300 photos, desperately trying to get the lightning, trying everything from many half second exposures to a few at 15 seconds plus. Getting back I had many photos of the lights of North West Beijing but few of the lightning itself. The one I did capture below (click for larger) was, I believe, a 5 second exposure. I'll be experimenting more over the summer:

and a few more of the view from the top:

Including the centre for microgravitational research:

More from Houhai

A lazy post as I'm still struggling to think anything other than cotton wool surrounded thoughts today - the summer cold is winning.

These photos are from a week ago at Houhai. Well worth a visit at sunset:

Flash Slideshow

Click on the photos for more details.

Inspiration from TED Talks

I was going to blog about this later, but I can't wait. I'm currently sitting at home nursing a horrible air-conditioning induced cold, but watching these 20 minute videos online, I'm absolutely mesmerised.

The TED conference (Technology. Entertainment. Design), held every year in Monterey California, gets together the real global innovators in so many areas, from experts in computing, consciousness, architecture, global poverty, future problems and solutions for humanity, ageing, slowness, happiness, and much, much more to talk about where we are today and where we will be in one, five, ten, fifty years down the line.

Many, many videos are online and almost every one I've seen so far has made me excited by the prospects in so many disciplines. A lot of it is speculation, but it's speculation from world experts who have already made a difference. It's inspiring and it's hugely exciting.

The first talk I watched is currently featured on the home page of SciTalks which I spoke about here, and I was immediately hooked.

I should be resting properly and although watching these videos isn't exactly stressful it is really motivating me to get up and get things done, anything, important things, to be a part of all this.

Below I've embedded some of the videos I've watched so far which have impressed me most but please if you find other videos which you are inspired by tell me.

Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty: No more boring data.


Neil Gershenfeld on Fablabs and personal empowerment for individual driven technological developments:


Aubrey De Grey on the future of longevity and the possibilities of living to 1000:


Burt Rutan on the future of space flight:


Blaise Aguera y Arcas on Photosynth and the future of imagery on the web:


Dan Dennet on dangerous Memes:


Jeff Hawkins on how brain science will change computing:


I don't know if you can view my profile but I will continue to update my favourites as I watch more which I think are worth a viewing here.

Although I've embedded these by linking to the Youtube videos you can watch them directly from the TED site (link above).

Quantum Shock

I'm in the midsts of some new calculations right now as well as writing up a paper I've been working on for a few months, so no detailed blogging today. I did want to quickly add a little self-deprecating self-promotion if that isn't a complete oxymoron.

Having appeared on TV here in front of 200 million (I still haven't seen the broadcast, though that's probably a good thing) and now being the voice to unknown thousands or possibly millions of school kids wishing to learn British English I felt that it was about time to make an impact in print. Well, actually I didn't decide, but I was contacted by the editors of 'Beijing city weekender', firstly in relation to my photos and then once they found out I was a scientist, purely in relation to my life here.

BCW is a free biweekly publication, mostly for the English speaking expat community. Every issue they have a 'Day in the life of' article, where they see what people in various professions get up to in a normal working day. They hadn't had a scientist in before so asked if I was interested. This would involve me writing about an average day and coming in for a photo shoot.

The writing was fine, the photo shoot was very strange. The editor, a photographer and his assistant and I stood in the photo studio. I took a look around the place and eyed up the cameras. They also have a sister publication all about cooking and so I took a sneak peek in the well fitted-out kitchen where they create the dishes to photograph.

I was put on the spot, literally, as they started taking snaps. I stood there, looking slightly awkward having never had attention quite like this directed at me. I just stood in the most natural pose I could muster until they said:

'OK, you can, you know, do stuff now, you know, like poses'

'like what, sorry?'

'You know, make some poses'

I go between bouts of thinking myself reasonably confident and bouts of returning to the fact that I'm a gangly guy who was always pretty nervous at school. The call to 'make some poses' didn't help and I found myself standing there making perhaps the most unnatural poses they'd ever seen. They managed not to laugh and continued to shoot as I stood there feeling rather bewildered.

Well, they got their shots and then took some snaps of the three things from my day I had brought along: my laptop, a copy of Polchinski and my camera.

I headed off, bemused at what it would all turn out like. Well, I am bemused no longer (that's a lie, I spend most of my time in a state of slight bemusement), but for the purposes of this post I now know that they chose an only moderately awful pose (believe me, it could have been a lot worse!):

Welcome to the world of Quantum Shock (Note that they didn't go for the obvious Doc Shock jokes):

Waterworks?

An infuriating look at the situation with Beijing tap water can be found here. There are no cities within China where the tap water can be drunk directly. Personally, I will only use it for making tea if I have no bottled water left and all the shops have shut (I'm an Englishman - sometimes I really need that cup of tea!). The tap water leaves suspicious residues around the sink and in the saucepan. Sometimes it smells strange coming out of the tap and when boiled.

So, it seems like good news that finally the news arrives that Beijing's tap water has passed all 106 international safety standards and is safe to drink. Sadly not, this is not the whole picture. The news goes that Beijing has done an amazing job, getting the water to international standards five years ahead of time. However, if you are not lucky enough to live within or just next to the water treatment plants then forget it. The pollutants within the piping system is just as bad as ever and dealing with the many thousands of kilometers of pipeline running under the city would be a truly monumental task. The water which actually comes out of our taps is still not drinkable. It's just that this isn't what they choose to call tap water. They have a nice shiny tap at the treatment facility and that seems to be as good a tap as any.

So, though the headlines are all lightness and joy, in fact for the vast majority of Beijing this is simply a vacuous, infuriating piece of news.

-------

On a more positive note it seems that the transport infrastructure may finally become usable, if only the Beijing drivers follow a few simple rules. Clearly, as Kevin points out we just need a bit more honking and everything will turn out nice.

From The Onion.

Poetry in motion

I went for dinner at the revolving restaurant at the top of the CCTV tower yesterday evening. The food is pretty disastrous but you get a wonderful view of the city and it's well worth the trip, just don't expect a top-notch meal.

I was reminded of my favourite piece of Chinglish (which is in the tower) by Shelley's recent tour of the Oareyant.

Anyway, this is true poetry in Chinglish:

Click for larger.

Kubrick at D22

This month is Kubrick month at D22 in Wudaokou. Come by on a Wednesday and Thursday to see the free screenings. On the site it says 7 pm start but don't be surprised if it's rather later than that.

This Wednesday is Killer's Kiss.
This Thursday is Paths of Glory.

I've seen neither of the above but enjoy most of Kubrick's work, and D22 is a great place to come for a relaxed evening with a glass of Spanish wine.

After the films there will be live punk on Wednesday and experimental music from Japan on Thursday.

Moon snaps

As promised to a Beijing friend, even though I see you got your own, rather better version :-)

Taken just outside Wudaokou station. My 17-85 mm lens isn't really up to the job of astrophotography, but for now this will have to do.

More on SciTalks

I considered the potential for a video lecture repository while spending a month in sleepy Kyoto over the winter, doing research at the Yukawa institute. I discussed the possibility of setting up such a website with a friend: what capabilities would be necessary, what platform we could build it on, how people would upoad videos and what they would be able to say about them. However, lack of time and lots of research got in the way and it stayed as a project on top of the pile of other 'urgent - to be dealt with later - projects'.

I spoke, not about my plans but of the use of video lectures previously here.

Anyway, in the mean time someone else has taken the plunge and created just the platform. Currently it has a basic user interface which allows users to upload the url for a video. Each video has a section for a comment, the time and a voting system.

This is a good start but only a very basic system. I e-mailed Lee Vodra at SciTalks to pose a few of my suggestions and to see how the site would develop and I have been very impressed both with the lengthy response and the possibilities. I think that this is one of the most exciting projects in the academia/multimedia cross-over yet to come out of/onto the web - the possibilities are awesome.

Lee tells me that there is a version 2.0 of SciTalks which will implement many changes to the format and flexibility of the site. This is due to come online in a few months.

My initial questions were on the subject of a more refined system for comments where information about the level, prerequisite knowledge, audio and video quality etc. could be included with the video and added to by more multiple users for each entry. However, it seems that these are only the beginning of something much more far-reaching.

One of the biggest additions is going to be a social networking side to the site. Lee hopes that people will start to put together curricula for courses from the videos and this is really the basis for a powerful form of open-source education. Something which MIT has been trying for a while but because of the lack of videos in many courses, it is little better than having the books to work from.

The possibility to build a list of lectures on string theory, for instance, going from the basic to the very specialised, having only the clearest presentations at each level is very exciting. I must have seen a dozen or so online lectures on string theory but the overlap was huge and trying to find just the right level was not easy. With a team of interested students and academics watching videos from around the world, the appropriate lectures should soon be sieved through.

In my e-mail to Lee I mentioned tagging and the fact that I find the use of folders, both on my desktop and on the internet an inefficient form of data storage. Lee commented:

'User tagging and RSS feeds are the two most common requests so far. I'd love a tag cloud. (I'm fond of them anyway, and yes, folders feel outdated.)'

On the topic of a more organic user-oriented site Lee states that:

Once social networking gets into the mix, the site and its community could turn into something amazing, and I'm sure people will use it in ways we can't even imagine, although I'd really like to see online schools form up. Meanwhile, I'd be really psyched if you'd join and put together a playlist. If you have a bunch of videos that we haven't got together on the site, you can just send an email with a bunch of URLs and I'll see that they get up there.)

-------

There's a whole science to social networks and with each one we build, it becomes a deeper and more nuanced endeavor. I have some videos saved up for when we switch over that deal with social network design. There's a lot to consider and the devil's in the details.

So, please help to spread the word about this and see that it is used and developed in the most effective ways possible. I've sent a list of many links to them but I'm sure there are many that I don't know about so get posting.

Random images

I've been in contact with the people over at SciTalks about extensions and the future of the site. There are some incredibly exciting prospects for it but it deserves my full and undivided attention to write about it.

For now I will just urge you to go over there and start posting videos to build up the database. I'm told that the short URL problem has now been fixed.

For now I'll give you a couple of slightly random images.

The first is from my office window a couple of days ago, taken at about 2 in the afternoon. The sky changed from the usual hazy grey to a dark brooding mass of fast moving clouds, thunder and lightning over the course of about half an hour. This was just before the rain really started pelting down:


and secondly a picture of a painting from the school I visited with my uncle when he was out here. We went to play parachute games with the kids (photos of the afternoon are here). Following the games we walked around the school and found this painting in the main lobby. It was a little while later that I found that this is a painting of the businesswoman who had founded the school and commissioned the picture. You can form your own opinions.