Category Archives: Uncategorized

No Joking Matter

Back now from vacation, and while I was away several people sent me links to point out that string theory promoters definitely aren’t taking a vacation. Links here with a few quick comments, followed by something about the issue of … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 46 Comments

Hiking the Appalachian Trail

I’ll be heading North tomorrow, ultimately ending up in backwoods Maine, hiking the Appalachian Trail, then back home after a week or so. The comment section here will likely be closed for the duration. Progress is being made on my … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments

Nature on the new Nobels

This week’s Nature has an article by Zeeya Merali about various new science mega-prizes, including Yuri Milner’s Fundamental Physics Prize. There’s also a podcast here, and a Nature editorial here. I’m quoted in the article, saying about what you’d expect, … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 14 Comments

Nature at the energy frontier

Last week a symposium on Nature at the energy frontier was held at the ETH in Zurich, funded by the Latsis foundation. Videos of many of the talks have appeared here. As part of the symposium, David Gross gave a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 33 Comments

Simons 75th Birthday Conference

Last week the CUNY Graduate Center hosted a conference in honor of the 75th birthday of Jim Simons. It was organized by Dennis Sullivan as a set of expository “mini-courses” on various topics related to Simons’ mathematical work. I was … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Snowmass on the Pacific

Due to popular demand from the comment section, I spent some time this afternoon taking a look at the talks now posted from the KITP Snowmass on the Pacific conference held the past few days. This is part of an … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 26 Comments

A Tale of Two Oxford Talks

Last week (for more, see here) Eric Weinstein gave a talk at Oxford about his ideas about “Geometric Unity”, with positive coverage from the Guardian, leading to various critical commentary. I agree completely with the main point of most of … Continue reading

Posted in Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 72 Comments

Various Links

The Smithsonian has a long article about Lisa Randall here. The Wall Street Journal has a shorter article about Randall’s high school classmate Brian Greene here. Brian’s World Science Festival will start here in New York on Wednesday. I’ll probably … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Eric Weinstein on Geometric Unity

Eric Weinstein is a Harvard math Ph. D. who has been working as an economist here in New York for many years, and someone I’ve often enjoyed talking to over the years. Going back to his days as a graduate … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 76 Comments

One Ring to Rule Them All

This week in Sweden the Nobel Foundation is running a symposium on LHC results. It’s invitation only, but the slides of the talks are available here. One of the scheduled talks today was about string theory, and I was wondering … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 24 Comments