The idea that topological gravity has something to do with the full quantum gravity is a reasonable conjecture and isn’t due to the Bogdanovs. I’m sure people will keep working on it.

I will rather say, on the contrary, that it was born from Bogdanovs.

I agreed with these statements actually, but how come he now thinks it is ok perhaps if the above variable “the metric” has signature fluctuations in the Planckian regime, a la Bogdanov, and is a viable variable in this regime?

Even if you think TQFT has something deep to say about the initial singularity of spacetime(and who knows)the Bogdanovs have effectively killed this as a respectable research direction.

that was on April 30 and in the preceding segment of that day’s blog he had said “Unfortunately, I currently do not enjoy the freedom to tell you what I think about these things.”

I tend to view Lubos protestations of tolerance for the Boganoff article as an ironical reproach to somebody who told him to ease up and stop the vitreolic attacks on other stuff. It puts him in position to say, well you told me not to be so ferocious so you must favor relaxing the intellectual standards applied to scholarship, so look what happens! I will just (to spite you) go and approve of the Bogdanoffs on the same basis that I tolerate specious research by [unnamed].

Yeah that is a tortured overinterpretation, and who cares about the adventures of Lubos melodrama, except he is entertaining sometimes. Anyway I dont take his apparent acceptance of the Bog paper at face value, it is a travesty just like the Bogs (or so I tend to suspect)

I can’t help but notice a parallel with certain defenders of Bush administration foreign policy who have adopted “not as bad as Saddam” as the new standard for acceptable moral behavior.

a propos Dijkgraaf, he is one of the invited speakers on the programme of Loops 05 conference in October
loops05.aei.mpg.de/index_files/Programme.html

since Dijkgraaf’s public lecture in July is about black holes and time, I was reminded of his recent paper

http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0504221
Baby Universes in String Theory

Abstract: “We argue that the holographic description of four-dimensional BPS black holes naturally includes multi-center solutions … This provides a concrete realization, within string theory, of effects that can be interpreted as the creation of baby universes…”

in that context I cannot imagine what he could mean by his jazzy phrase “the end of time” except that continuation through a black hole implies a branching of time which could be said to dispose of the classical single-track unitary-evolution notion and thus be “the end” of time as we have thought of it up til now. I certainly agree Dijkgraaf is a great choice (maybe “eminently sensible” could be supplemented to read “inspired”

I wouldn’t read too much into the lack of a definite program for the conference. Scheduling such a program is always difficult, with all sorts of last minute changes.

The schedule posted for Strings 05 is still (as of Monday 20 June) almost blank, but it now lists a Leonard Susskind public lecture and two other events.

http://www.fields.utoronto.ca/programs/scientific/04-05/string-theory/strings2005/program.html

Public Talks
Saturday July 16, 2-5p.m.
Robbert Dijkgraaf U. Amsterdam
“Strings, Black Holes, and the End of Space and Time”

Leonard Susskind Stanford U.
“Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design”

Panel discussion: The Next Superstring Revolution
Tuesday, July 12, 19:00-21:00

the conference goes July 11-16, so is only 3 weeks away. It seems curiously suspenseful on the part of the Toronto organizers that the posted schedule of talks is mostly blank (no regular talks shown, only the two public lectures.) Maybe we can take it as providential sign that Susskind’s title mentions the illusion of intelligence in connection with string theory (kidding)

Exactly! Until recently everything I have learned has come from popular literature and that is how we are told to “visualize” the Big Bang. For someone who is not a mathematician or physicist, where do we turn for a more accurate understanding of these issues? Something more advanced than popular books (Kaku) but not as complex as the text books by Polchinski, Zwiebach, Zee, etc.., which are presented as introductions but are too complicated for someone without an advanced understanding of math.

I’m trying to work my way through Penrose’s new book and almost threw in the towel on the chapters on Manifolds and Symmetry Groups. It’s very frustrating. In the introduction he nonchalantly advises readers to feel free to skip the math. 1) I don’t want to skip the math and 2) It’s ALL math.