Author Archives: woit

Hidden Dimensions

At lunchtime today I stopped by the excellent local bookstore Labyrinth Books, looking to see what was new. In the science section, I noticed a pile of copies of Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness. As with the … Continue reading

Posted in Book Reviews | 24 Comments

The Usual

Blah, blah, more anthropic pseudo-science on hep-th, blah, blah, blah, On the basis of a static support condition depending on the tensile strength of flesh rather than bone, it is reasoned here that our size should be subject to a … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 35 Comments

Message to Our Overlords

It turns out that the Future of Humanity Institute has a blog, and I’m being attacked there by Robin Hanson for my criticism here of the “Simulation Argument” as not science and not belonging in the NYT Science Times. In … Continue reading

Posted in Favorite Old Posts, Uncategorized | 61 Comments

Latest on K-theory Journal Situation

As reported here last week, the editors of the Springer journal K-theory have announced that they (or at least most of them) are resigning and starting up a new journal to be published by Cambridge University Press. Earlier this week, … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments

Ask a String Theorist

Over at Uncertain Principles Chad Orzel is taking a break and turning over his blog temporarily to, among others, string theorist Aaron Bergman, who has started things off with a posting called Ask a String Theorist. In my experience, Aaron … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 9 Comments

More of the Usual Sorts of Things

On the pseudo-science front, the Resonaances blog describes a talk at CERN by string theory enthusiast Jim Cline, about a variant of the anthropic principle called the “Entropic Principle” as “pushing the idea to the edge of absurd.” For beyond … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 51 Comments

Various Stuff

As anthropic pseudo-science spreads through the particle theory community, I’m finding it harder and harder to tell what’s a joke and what isn’t. Maybe I’m wrong, but I fear that recent examples from hep-th contributors and prominent physics bloggers aren’t … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 62 Comments

Another Journal Board Resigns

Last year about this time the entire editorial board of the Elsevier journal Topology resigned, this August it’s the turn of the Springer journal K-theory. The editors of this journal have all resigned, issuing the following statement: Dear fellow mathematicians, … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 32 Comments

Really Quick Links

The Fermilab Steering Group is about to come out with its report. Their roadmap for Fermilab proposes that if the ILC project is delayed “Fermilab should pursue additional neutrino and flavor physics opportunities”, in particular with “Project X”, a high-intensity … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments

University Grants Program Subpanel Report

The HEPAP University Grants Program Subpanel has just issued a report, concerning the “University Grants Program” in US HEP, that part of the DOE and NSF high energy physics budget which supports research based mainly at universities (as opposed to … Continue reading

Posted in Uncategorized | 19 Comments