Author Archives: woit

A Big Bang in a Little Room

Posted on February 18, 2017 by woit

There’s a review in today’s Wall Street Journal by me of Zeeya Merali’s A Big Bang in a Little Room. If their version is behind a paywall you might find also find it elsewhere (for instance here). I’ll reproduce parts … Continue reading →

Posted in Book Reviews, Fake Physics | 21 Comments

Various Links

Posted on February 10, 2017 by woit

The Columbia Math department has been doing extremely well in recent years, with some wonderful mathematicians joining the department. A couple items first involving some of them: Kevin Hartnett at Quanta Magazine has a great article about developments in the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 23 Comments

Perfectoid Woodstock

Posted on February 7, 2017 by woit

Every year in Tucson the Arizona Winter School takes place, with a five day program on some topic in arithmetic geometry aimed mainly at advanced graduate students, designed to get them involved in current research-level topics. This year’s topic (Perfectoid … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 22 Comments

Math and Physics Social Media

Posted on February 4, 2017 by woit

In the current situation, getting back to finding interesting news about math and/or physics to think about seems like a good idea, but I’ve been having trouble coming up with such news. Besides blogs, many of them listed on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Fascism and the Current National Emergency

Posted on January 28, 2017 by woit

After the election it seemed to me that it would be a good idea to ignore what Trump tweeted or said, and wait to see what he and the people he surrounded himself with would actually do. We’ve been finding … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 52 Comments

Fake Physics

Posted on January 20, 2017 by woit

2016 so far wins my lifetime award for most depressing and disturbing year ever (on the front of the larger world one reads about in the newspaper and elsewhere, personally things are fine, thanks). Perhaps the most disturbing thing has … Continue reading →

Posted in Fake Physics, Favorite Old Posts, Multiverse Mania | 61 Comments

Various and Sundry

Posted on January 13, 2017 by woit

A few links for your weekend reading: If you just can’t get enough of the Multiverse, Inference has commentary on Max Tegmark from Daniel Kleitman and Sheldon Glashow. Coverage of the important topic of blackboards is to be found here. … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 59 Comments

New Year’s Multiverse

Posted on January 7, 2017 by woit

I see little to be hopeful about the new year, but had a glimmer of a hope that we’ll see a reduction in Multiverse Mania. Surely people will sooner or later get tired of stale pseudo-science. Just got back to … Continue reading →

Posted in Multiverse Mania | 73 Comments

What Graduate School in Theoretical Physics is Really Like

Posted on December 29, 2016 by woit

I’m about to head off for a short New Year’s vacation in West Texas, but wanted to recommend a wonderful article that just appeared at Nautilus. It’s a memoir by Bob Henderson (who I met when he wrote about me, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 47 Comments

Various Links

Posted on December 15, 2016 by woit

A grab-bag of unrelated topics and links: Continuing the subject of budget cuts from the last posting, I heard today that the NSA is not funding this year the grant program that the AMS has been running for it, called … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands, Multiverse Mania, Uncategorized | 29 Comments