Entertainment

The Oval Portrait

/ 2 Comments

A busy Halloween for me, so I’ll shamelessly offer up an excerpt from the master — a bit from The Oval Portrait, by Edgar Allen Poe.

She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee. And evil was the hour when she saw, and loved, and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his Art; she a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee; all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn; loving and cherishing all things; hating only the Art which was her rival; dreading only the pallet and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of her lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady to hear the painter speak of his desire to pourtray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high turret-chamber where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead.

But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour, and from day to day. And be was a passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in reveries; so that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and the spirits of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him. Yet she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw that the painter (who had high renown) took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrought day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak.

And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her whom he depicted so surpassingly well. But at length, as the labor drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret; for the painter had grown wild with the ardor of his work, and turned his eyes from canvas merely, even to regard the countenance of his wife. And he would not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her who sate beside him. And when many weeks bad passed, and but little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye, the spirit of the lady again flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed; and, for one moment, the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrought; but in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying with a loud voice, ‘This is indeed Life itself!’ turned suddenly to regard his beloved:- She was dead!

The Oval Portrait Read More »

2 Comments

The world is not magic

/ 42 Comments

Here is a true story. Saturday, after the symposium at Fermilab, I was driving back into the city. To be honest, I was completely exhausted; it had been a long day of talks, and I had been up quite late the previous night throwing mine together, resulting in very little sleep. So I was pretty much ready to crash, certainly uninterested in any sort of activity involving serious brain function.

And then I remembered that the big football game was about to start — my beloved Penn State Nittany Lions vs. the Ohio State Buckeyes in a titanic battle for Big Ten supremacy. Sadly, however, I don’t have cable TV at my place (long story). But I knew how to circumvent this obstacle: a visit to ESPN SportsZone, the modern sports-bar/video arcade that features comfy leather recliners in which you can grab a bite while you watch the game on their huge-screen TV. A perfect brain-free activity to cap off the evening. Very un-physics-professor-like behavior, but I’ve done worse. And if all went well, Penn State would even win, preserving their unbeaten record and vaulting them into the national-championship picture.

(Aside: they did win, outlasting 6th-ranked OSU for a rain-soaked 17-10 victory in front of 100,000 screaming Penn State partisans. An incredibly important victory for the program and for legendary coach Joe Paterno, who had inexplicably suffered through four losing seasons in the last five years. Paterno has been head coach for 40 years, including 20 bowl victories (best ever), 349 total victories (second-best), five undefeated seasons, and two national championships. He’s also donated millions of dollars to the university — to build a library. When Penn State joined the Big Ten a dozen years ago, Paterno was 66 and widely expected to soon retire. When Barry Alvarez steps down from the head job at Wisconsin at the end of this year, every school in the conference will have experienced a head-coaching change — except Penn State. Due to the travesty by which college football chooses its national champion, it will be difficult for PSU to get a legitimate shot at the title this year even if they win all their games. But if things break just right, the Lions could be headed to the Rose Bowl on January 4th to duke it out with USC for the big enchilada. Watch out, Clifford, we’re coming for you!)

So there I am, enjoying my buffalo wings and Guinness and cringing as Ohio State scores the first field goal. At the table next to me was a group of women who were visiting the big city for the weekend, celebrating the birthday of Caroline, one of their number. They were also Ohio State fans — no accounting for taste. It’s perfectly clear within the restaurant who is rooting for which team, just from the timing of shouts of delight or groans of dismay, so we were soon trading good-natured barbs about the relative merits of our respective squads.

By halftime Penn State was up 14-10, so I was feeling especially magnanimous. We chatted about what we all did for a living and so forth, and I ended up explaining something about dark energy and particle physics and the big bang. Caroline, after making a good-faith effort to understand the distinction between quarks and leptons, pleasantly but firmly demanded to know “What is the practical use of all this? What can we actually do with it? Why is it worth spending time on it?”

My line on these questions is that there isn’t necessarily any practical application (although there may be spinoffs); we do it as part of a quest to understand how the world works. I was trying to explain this, with less than complete success. But then Caroline’s younger sister (whose name I unfortunately forget, as I would love to give her credit), who was a secondary-school science teacher before she had kids of her own, leaned across the table and said “Because the world is not magic. This is what I always taught my kids, and it’s what everyone should understand.”

The world is not magic. The world follows patterns, obeys unbreakable rules. We never reach a point, in exploring our universe, where we reach an ineffable mystery and must give up on rational explanation; our world is comprehensible, it makes sense. I can’t imagine saying it better. There is no way of proving once and for all that the world is not magic; all we can do is point to an extraordinarily long and impressive list of formerly-mysterious things that we were ultimately able to make sense of. There’s every reason to believe that this streak of successes will continue, and no reason to believe it will end. If everyone understood this, the world would be a better place.

Of course, there are different connotations to the word “magical.” One refers to inscrutable mystery, but another refers simply to a feeling of wonder or delight. And our world is full of that kind of magic. I get to listen to some fascinating talks on neutrinos and particle accelerators during the day, enjoy a statement-making victory over our conference rivals in the evening, and be handed a nugget of marvelously distilled wisdom from a woman in a sports bar who I had never met and will unlikely ever see again (a Buckeye fan, no less) — these are all magical. We shouldn’t feel disappointed that the march of understanding removes an element of mystery from the world; we should be appreciative of how much there is to know and the endless variety of ways in which our sensible universe continues to surprise us. The very fact that our world is comprehensible should fill us with wonder and delight. The world is not magic — and that’s the most magical thing about it.

The world is not magic Read More »

42 Comments

Nobel Prize 2005

/ 11 Comments

The 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics has gone to Roy J. Glauber, John L. Hall and Theodor W. Hänsch for their work on quantum optics. In particular, Glauber gets half the prize “for his contribution to the quantum theory of optical coherence,” while Hall and Hänsch split the other half “for their contributions to the development of laser-based precision spectroscopy, including the optical frequency comb technique.”

I figure it’s our duty to tell you that, although I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on quantum optics or lasers. Sounds like a worthy prize, though. In the meantime, you can become an expert yourself by playing this laser game.

Reflections

It’s hard. And that’s just classical geometric optics! Just imagine how tricky quantum optics must be.

Nobel Prize 2005 Read More »

11 Comments

Brad and Angelina

/ 9 Comments

Seriously, why did Mr. and Mrs. Smith get such mixed reviews? You have two of the prettiest people in the world, exchanging witty banter and steamy looks (and a substantial number of gunshots) with each other, moving through a visual feast of elegant settings while the surrounding chaos leaves their makeup and fashionable clothing largely undisturbed. What is not to like about this movie?

You will be unsurprised to hear that I have a theory. Like many works of genius, Mr. and Mrs. Smith is misunderstood. The movie makes no pretensions to depth or profundity; it is a genre film, pure and simple. But it skirts the edges of the conventions of its genre — action comedy — in interesting ways.

“Action comedy” is a somewhat novel and unstable classification to begin with. Classic action films may feature a witty line here and there, but they would never be mistaken for comedies. In the post-Raiders of the Lost Ark era, however, the hybrid has become more common, as witnessed in the success of franchises from Lethal Weapon to Men in Black.

But still, there are rules. Within the conventions of an action film, there are two standard ways of creating comedy: to play the action straight but include a substantial dose of humorous situations and dialogue (Lethal Weapon), or to move toward parody or satire (Men in Black). In the former case, it is taken for granted that the adventure scenarios must be traditionally realistic and thrilling; in the latter, allowance is made for a greater degree of slapstick silliness, and realism is happily tossed aside.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith falls into neither of these modes. No serious attempt is made to paint a realistic scenario — two professional assassins who have been married to each other for years without knowing what their spouse did for a living would be difficult to make believable. Mrs. Smith works in gleaming high-tech surroundings, where all of her co-workers would appear to be very attractive and fashionable young women; Mr. Smith, in contrast, works in sleazy surroundings that call to mind private investigators in the Sam Spade mold. We are never told what these organizations are, who their clients might be, nor how they fit into a larger picture. We are supposed to simply recognize the accepted tropes of the genre, and enjoy the fun that the characters themselves are so obviously having.

But the fun is not slapstick or parodic — it is affectionate. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is not a satire, calling our attention to the foibles of the genre or of society; it is a caricature, exaggerating notable features for purposes of amusement. The relevant distinction is between “making fun of” and “having fun with.” The point is neither realism nor social criticism; it extends to having a good time and no further. And the talents deployed towards this end are considerable: Jolie is obviously an extremely talented actress, while Pitt is underappreciated as a brilliant comic actor. The cinematography is colorful and evocative, and the dialogue zips along with very few sluggish patches.

The critics, by and large, don’t get it. David Denby, just to pick an example, complains about the absence of motivation when Jolie “appears at some sort of club in a strapless, shiny, black patent-leather rig, flogs some guy in a back room, and then breaks his neck.” Would more backstory have really enriched that scene? It’s like watching Bugs Bunny and complaining that we aren’t told how rabbits learned to talk.

Admittedly, the film is very much of its time. Although it is not a satire, I imagine that it wouldn’t be as enjoyable for audiences not immersed in a set of expectations about action films, comedies, and movie stars. It’s not The Maltese Falcon, but that’s no reason not to enjoy it on its own terms.

Perhaps next time we will discuss how Johnny Depp looks in lipstick.

Brad and Angelina Read More »

9 Comments
Scroll to Top