Will the Authors of this Paper Look Back in Anger?

Key question: Will the authors look back in anger when they read their referee reports on this paper?

"Can high-density human collective motion be forecasted by spatiotemporal fluctuations?"

Eigenmodes of crowd dynamics at an Oasis concert. #moshmathhttps://t.co/srSG8Biyui pic.twitter.com/XxnlBQuDFJ

— Chris Danforth (@ChrisDanforth) September 24, 2018

RIP Tom Petty (1950–2017)

After experiencing cardiac arrest earlier this morning, and amidst conflicting reports earlier in the day, it's now been confirmed—unfortunately but unsurprisingly—that Tom Petty has died at the age of 66. (This is consistent with the recent shelf life of rockers. :( )

I got the chance to see Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in concert for the first time just 11 days ago, and they were awesome!

You can read more about Petty from Wikipedia page. He has a lot of awesome songs, and here's a link to Learning to Fly as just one of them. Because of the music video for Don't Come Around Here No More, Petty will also always be my vision of The (Mad) Hatter. There are many other awesome songs to which I could also link.

Here is the CNN.com obituary, which includes some interesting tidbits that are not in the Billboard.com article above.

Concerts and Things

I went to a few concerts recently, though I abandoned my plan to go to the Shakira concert in London on the 20th because there was lots of snow, and even in the best of circumstances travel takes 2 hours each way (the venue is in a corner of London, which entails 45 minutes of metro travel from the train station). I would have come back very late and faced a decent chance of getting stuck in London, so I decided that Shakira didn't make the cut for me to bother. Maybe another time.

There are two recent concerts in London that I did actually attend. One was Dar Williams, which took place in the Union Chapel, which has church services by day and concerts by night. It's a rather nice venue, and I got there early enough to literally have a seat in the front row---and I've never had one of those. The concert was cool, but Dar did spend too much time talking and not enough time singing. I later went to a Squeeze concert in which the Lightning Seeds were the opening act. That concert was awesome! Hearing "Cool For Cats" live gave me goosebumps (so did a couple of other songs), and the 12+ minute version of "Black Coffee in Bed" that started Squeeze's performance was awesome.

I have greatly enjoyed a couple of recent albums. One of the standout albums from 2009 (ok, so this one is not so recent, but I want to mention it anyway) is Röyksopp's "Junior". Their 2010 album "Senior" is much more mellow and unfortunately not as good (though it has a couple of songs I like). I also want to mention A-Ha's 2009 album ("Foot of the Mountain") and the new Loreena McKennitt album that just came out last month. I hadn't realized McKennitt was going to have a new album, and I'm really enjoying several of the songs---especially her version of "Star of the County Down". There are some other good albums and individual songs I've gotten in the past couple of years, but these are the ones I wanted to mention in this post.

Six Degrees of Black Sabbath

Six degrees of Black Sabbath is actually rather old, but I haven't seen this particular web page before. (This web page allows one to construct a path between any two artists, and---as you can see from my link---the path length between Loreena McKennitt and Depeche Mode is surprisingly short.)

Now back to marking exams... (though I'll be rewarding myself tonight with a Crowded House concert!!!)

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz.)

Depeche Mode concert

I went to the Depeche Mode concert last night; the last time I saw them in concert was in spring 2006 at Coachella. The time before that was in fall 2005. This was the third time I've seen them, which is the most I've seen any artist. There was some seriously cool stuff yesterday, although nothing quite on the level of the stripped-down version of "Shake the Disease" or the 100,000 people singing along to "Enjoy the Silence" at Coachella. The version they played of "Personal Jesus" to close the show was sweet---they started with a long acoustic introduction and then switched to the conventional version. There was also seriously cool stuff with "Policy of Truth" and (because of the audience!) "Home". They played "It's No Good", which pleased me greatly because I really wanted to hear that song live after they forwent it at the other two concerts. Sadly, they didn't play "Strangelove", even though that has often showed up among the encores during the current tour, and I am still waiting to hear that song (one of my all-time favorites) live. I've waited 23 years thus far, as I can handle waiting for a couple more years. I still haven't heard "People Are People" live yet either, though I have the sneaking suspicion that that is not one of the band's favorite songs. Here are the set lists from the current tour.

I got home from London at about 2:15. I was exhausted but exhilarated.

Other details: I went to the concert with Nick Jones and his partner Jane. Our seats were awesome, as we had the front row in our section, so we never actually had to stand up to see. Earlier in the day, I met up with Jit Kee, a classmate from Caltech and one of my best friends.

I hate the Yankees. (Oh, and A-Ha is awesome!)

I know I am writing quite a few blog entries today, but here's at least one more that I want to do tonight.

Did I mention that I hate the Yankees? They won the World Series this year. Bastards.

Also, now that the baseball season is officially over, I also wanted to mention that 2009 is the first season is something like 25 years in which I did not see even a single baseball game in person. Lame. I will make up for that in 2010.

On a separate note, I went to London to see A-Ha in concert last night. It required a total of 2.5 hours of train rides and 1.25 hours on the tube, and I only made the last train back to Oxford (which had me entering my apartment at about 1:40 am), but it was totally worth it. I'll eventually do a mega-media roundup (with something like a year's worth of stuff!), so maybe I'll say more later, but let's just say that I was seriously geeking out---there were certain songs that I had been waiting to hear live for more than 20 years! Hell yes!

"Awesome" online security code

I was buying tickets to the February 20th 2010 Depeche Mode concert in London---Oh, Hell yes!!!!! (and the set lists for most of the concerts on this tour have even included both "It's No Good" and "Strangelove", which I really want to hear live and often aren't included on DM concert set lists these days!)---and the online security code to confirm that I was a human were particularly "awesome" (and maybe even awesome) on this occasion: "$10-billion castrate".

Now I just have to wait 6 months for the concert (which I'll be attending with a couple of friends)...

Several movies (plus a musical and a concert)

Here are some belated comments about several movies that I've seen over the last couple of months:


Lars and the Real Girl: This was quite a charming film, and deals with certain types of social awkwardness quite well. (The lead actor did a good job in this one.)

The Spiderwick Chronicles: This film is decent, but there's been much better stuff in this genre the past several years.

The Other Boleyn Girl: This film was a nice piece of historical fiction. It was good but not great. The character that Natalie Portman played was quite a bitch.

Horton Hears a Who!: I really liked this cartoon! (Highly recommended!) It captures the spirit of Dr. Seuss quite well, and Steve Carrell and Jim Carrey were both extremely well cast. I also got to see a teaser for the third Ice Age film during the trailers. I approve!

Son of Rambow: This film has been advertised as a "British comedy," which is a bit misleading. It does have some comedic moments, but it is better described as a dramedy. It is a great film. I recommend it highly.

Persepolis: This film was excellent and incredibly well done! The animation style was awesome. The thing I like best is that even in the most serious scenes, one can see something ridiculous in a small part in the background. (For example, in one such scene--which I believe focused on the tattered remnants of a city after lots of violence--one can briefly see a dog peeing in the background.) I was consistently laughing at that stuff (sometimes the only person in the theatre doing so). After seeing this film, I'll never be able to think of "Eye of the Tiger" in quite the same way again. The main quibble I have with this flick is that characters from culturally similar (or, really, the same) backgrounds are voiced by people with completely different accents, and that hurt my suspension of disbelief a bit. On a similar note, the casting of Iggy Pop as a voice actor was odd (to put it mildly). What the Hell? That notwithstanding, this is one of my favorite films of the year so far.

Iron Man: I saw this film on Tuesday, and it is also one of my favorite films so far this year. This flick is outstanding. In fact, in my mind this is one of the best comic book films ever! (Note: I am not classifying these films according to how faithful they are to the original sources, but merely according to how much I enjoyed the movie versions.) After seeing the film, I was thinking it might be my favorite comic book film ever, but this morning I remembered V for Vendetta (which is from a comic book, right?) and I'm probably forgetting others. Robert Downey Jr. is awesome, as usual, and I love the witty repartee he has with his character's inventions. (Downey Jr. is one of my favorite actors.)


I also saw a musical and a concert during the past couple of months (with two more musicals coming up in the next couple of weeks):

Buena Vista Social Club: This show was basically a linear combination of Jazz and various types of Latin music. The highlight for me was their souped-up rendition of "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps." Of the Caltech crowd, I think Lemming in particular would have enjoyed this.

Fiddler on the Roof: I've wanted to see this for several years, so I'm glad I finally had the chance to do so. The performance was very good (especially that of the lead actor), but everybody except for the lead had a considerable amount of trouble maintaining their accent (and even the lead slipped once or twice). Somehow, hearing a bunch of different British Isles accents hurts the suspension of disbelief quite a bit for this particular musical, which is usually done by a bunch of people who are supposed to speak English like Woody Allen, Jackie Mason, Fyvush Finkel, etc. (Finkel has actually played several different roles in this musical in the past.)

Two concerts

Here is another belated post.

On my (2^5)th birthday (February 10th), I saw Alison Moyet in concert. She sang most of the songs I wanted to hear, including two songs from Yaz ("Only You" and "Don't Go"). This included a couple of extremely interesting reimaginings (and one somewhat annoying reimagining). The main songs (by far) that I was disappointed not to hear were "Situation" (one of my favorite songs ever) and "Nobody's Diary".

A couple of weeks after that I saw Nouvelle Vague, which specializes in bossa nova covers of new wave and punk songs (note what 'nouvelle vague' translates to in English...). I really enjoyed that concert as well, and the two lead singers had an incredible stage presence together. They did some of the songs as duets, and they complemented each other very well not just with their singing but also with their on-stage interactions. The performance included a Frente!-esque version of "Bizarre Love Triangle" that I hadn't heard before as a studio version. I've written about this band a couple of times before in this spot, so I'll let you follow the link for more information.

Plays, Musicals, and Concerts for the new year

I found various early 2008 schedules for plays, musicals, and concerts in Oxford. Here is my slate of events thus far:


1/26/08: The Rivals

2/2/08: Alice - Through the Looking Glass

2/9/08: A Trip to Scarborough (by Sheridan, just like The Rivals --- this is apparently a modernized version that has iPods in it)

2/10/08: Alison Moyet

2/22/08: Nouvelle Vague

5/3/08: Fiddler on the Roof

5/24/08: The Pirates of Penzance

5/31/08: Hello, Dolly!



I'm hoping to see Van Morrison in March, but I haven't bought tickets yet because I want to keep that open in case I am coming back to the US at that time for Jing's wedding. (Once I find out when her wedding will be, I'll be able to figure out if I can make the Van Morrison concert.)

There weren't that many musicals, plays, or concerts I wanted to see this fall (and the only one I was actually able to make was Carmen), but thankfully there is a lot more stuff that I want to see in the spring. Time to immerse myself in culture! Additionally, the only one with a walk of more than 10 minutes from my home is the Nouvelle Vague concert! Having all this stuff so close to me is incredibly awesome!

There I was; they rocked me like a hurricane.

I just got back from a concert by The Scorpions (it let out late enough that the Gold Line was already done for the night, and I needed to take a bus [which was 30 minutes late]).

The concert was both fun and loud, and the band was excellent when it came to interacting with audience members (among the best I've seen in that regard). There was a particularly amusing moment when the drummer was doing his solo (each member of the band was given a chance to shine; aside from the lead singer, this was especially true of one guitarist and especially the drummer, who each had extended solos). He kept trying to get different parts of the audience to be louder. Finally, some woman (his wife or girlfriend, maybe?) runs on stage to give him a beer. He stands up, takes a break, and starts chugging the beer; meanwhile, the woman starts rocking on the drums and then they did a duet on the drums (banging them together, so to speak). It was pretty sweet!

I heard all the songs I really wanted to hear except one ("Winds of Change", in an extremely surprising omission). During a couple of the power ballads (in particular, "Send Me an Angel", which is my favorite song by The Scorpions), there was the usual lighting and swaying of lighters and cell phones. Does anybody know how the original tradition (the lighter or, I suppose, candle version) started? I understand that the visual effect is cool and all that, but if anybody knows the origins of this, please let me know.

(P.S. The bloody Padres and Phillies won again. Damnit! Thankfully, the Dodgers kept pace with them.)