Monthly Archives: January 2007

Discover Magazine has just announced a competition, calling on people to submit videos to them that “clearly explain perhaps the most baffling idea in the history of the world: string theory”. The challenge is called String Theory in Two Minutes … Continue reading →

Too much going on, hard to keep up with all the things that seem worth mentioning. Here are some quick ones: There was a meeting on Geometric Langlands involving mathematicians and physicists last week at the Schrodinger Institute in Vienna. … Continue reading →

Later this week there will be a mini-workshop at City College organized by some of the CUNY particle theorists, on the topic of Yang-Mills Theories: nonperturbative aspects. The schedule of talks is here, I’m planning on attending some of them. … Continue reading →

Every year the people running SPIRES put together a list of the most heavily cited papers in their database. I’ve discussed here in the past the listings for 2003, 2004 and 2005. Up until 2003 these appeared with a discussion … Continue reading →

Last summer the entire editorial board of the prestigious journal Topology resigned, in protest over the high prices that Elsevier was charging. It was announced today that a new journal called the Journal of Topology is being launched by many … Continue reading →

This week I’m getting ready for the start next week of the spring semester. I’ll be teaching the second half of our graduate course on Lie Groups and Representations, something I also did a few years ago, at which point … Continue reading →

When I was young, my main scientific interest was in astronomy, and to prove it there’s a very geeky picture of me with my telescope on display in my apartment, causing much amusement to my guests (no way will I … Continue reading →

As mentioned here earlier, the last Congress decided to not pass most new FY 2007 spending bills before leaving town, putting these off until the new Congress convenes, and running the government on a continuing resolution, mostly at last year’s … Continue reading →

Every year John Brockman’s Edge Foundation asks a large number of people in science and technology to write a short piece answering a chosen question, and this year the question is What Are You Optimistic About? Among particle physicists, the … Continue reading →