Category Archives: Uncategorized

I recently ran across a recent interview with Mary K. Gaillard, which encouraged me to look again at the AIP’s oral histories site. For a review of her autobiographical book, see here. She has the following comments on the current … Continue reading →

Our semester here at Columbia is finally over, and I’ve put the lecture notes on Fourier analysis that I wrote up in one document here. A previous blog posting explained the origin of the notes: they cover the second half … Continue reading →

Defenders of certain failed speculative theories like to accuse those who point to their failure of being “Popperazzi”, relying on mistaken and naive notions about predictions and falsifiability due to Karl Popper. That’s never been the actual argument for failure, … Continue reading →

If like most other people you’re stuck at home, and having trouble concentrating on the projects you thought the current situation would cause you to finally find the time to complete, one thing you could do is watch a lot … Continue reading →

This semester I’ve been teaching a course on Fourier Analysis, which has, like just about everything, been seriously disrupted by the COVID-19 situation. Several class sessions have been canceled, and future ones are supposed to resume online next week. To … Continue reading →

Since last summer Eric Weinstein has been running a podcast entitled The Portal, featuring a wide range of unusual and provocative discussions. A couple have had a physics theme, including one with Garrett Lisi back in December. One that I … Continue reading →

A few months ago I ended up doing a little history of science research, trying to track down the details of the story of the Physical Review’s 1973 policy discouraging articles on “Foundations”. The results of that research are in … Continue reading →

If you’re a mathematician, you don’t need to go work for Dominic Cummings in order to have dramatically improved career opportunities in the UK. The British government has just announced a huge increase in funding for mathematical research: 60 million … Continue reading →

I was sorry to hear of the death a few months ago of Tony Smith, who had been a frequent commenter on this blog and others. Unfortunately my interactions with him mainly involved trying to discourage him from hijacking the … Continue reading →