HoodedHawk

Lisa Randall at Smithsonian

On Friday (April 24, 2009) I went to see Physicist Lisa Randall receive the Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award from The Smithsonian Associates and the Creativity Foundation. Professor Randall discussed the role of creativity in her life and work with University of Chicago professor Michael Turner. The talk was in the Baird Auditorium of the National Museum of Natural History – nice venue!

After the talk I was able to get Prof. Randall to sign my copy of her book, “Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the Universe’s Hidden Dimensions“. Great book!

From the press release:

Randall is best known for her work involving extra dimensions of space, or “warped” geometries, and her suggestion that could explain the relative weakness of gravity and that we may live in a world with an infinite extra dimension—possibly even in a three-dimensional sinkhole in a higher-dimensional universe. This has resulted in her being one of the most-cited theoretical physicists in the world. Time magazine included her in its 2007 list of the 100 most influential people, and Newsweek cited Randall as “one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation.” Her book “Warped Passages” was included in the New York Times’ list of the 100 most notable books of 2005.

Randall is a professor of physics at Harvard University and is tenured at Princeton and MIT. She has served on the editorial boards of several major journals and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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Lisa Randall at Smithsonian

I just received an email from ABEBooks.com, stating that:

The Hugo Awards and the Nebula Awards are the traditional yardsticks for fantasy and science fiction writing. Since 1953 when the Hugos began, (the Nebulas started in 1965) there have been 82 titles awarded one or the other prize – and 19 titles with the distinctive honor of winning both. We’ve listed them all for your perusal.

The Fine Books Company in Rochester, Michigan, is offering first editions of all the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novels for a cool $116,530. From Asimov to Zelazny, every book which won either (or both) award is here. And that’s not all.

The listing includes 126 books, and 95% of them are signed or inscribed, and in fine or better condition.

David Aronovitz, from The Fine Books Company, describes the collection “as a unique gathering of books that has never been offered for sale anywhere before and in all likelihood will never be offered again.”

Some of my favorite books are included:

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A Heinlein (1962)	Dune by Frank Herbert (1965)	The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Leguin (1970)
To Your Scattered Bodies Go by Philip Jose Farmer (1972)	Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke (1974)	Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card (1986)

See all the Hugo and Nebula winners at ABEBooks…

At lunch today I was browsing Amazon.com via the Amazon iPhone app. It prompted me to try a new experimental service: Amazon Remembers. Seems you can take pictures of things you want to “remember” while you are out and about. The pix get sent to Amazon, and the system will try to find the item for you.

Well, all I had with me in the lunch room was the book I was reading. I took a quick snapshot of it (bad photo – too much glare from the overhead lights). Sent it on.

Later today I got an email from Amazon that they have found a “similar” item for me: And sure enough, they had a link to The Fire by Katherine Neville.

This is something that will come in handy!

A bookseller in London has a first edition of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” for sale; a steal at only $180,000.00

I went to see Jacques Pepin give a talk at the Baird Auditorium (in the National Museum of Natural History) on Wednesday night – one of the Smithsonian Resident Associate presentations. He’s my favorite chef, and I’ve been watching his tv shows, reading his books and cooking his recipes for 15 years or so (since his PBS show, “Today’s Gourmet”).
It was wonderful to get to hear him in person. He was interviewed by Joe Yonan, the editor of the Washington Post Food section. It was so much fun to hear him talk about cooking and doing cooking shows. Oh, and Jacques’ impression of Julia Child (and his anecdotes about doing shows with her) was hysterical.

Cookbooks are heavy, so I only brought 3 for him to sign. :)