Yearly Archives: 2006

Holiday Links

Posted on December 26, 2006 by woit

A random collection of links, on the whole not having anything to do with the holidays: A Stanford Physics Student in Berkeley is now An American Physics Student in England, and reports from the DAMTP Christmas party, where people were … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 44 Comments

Scott Aaronson For Sale

Posted on December 21, 2006 by woit

Scott Aaronson has adopted a sensible attitude towards the controversy over string theory, announcing in a new posting entitled Mercenary in the String Wars that his allegiances in this “War” are for sale to the highest bidder. I encourage all … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 44 Comments

02138

Posted on December 16, 2006 by woit

There’s a new magazine aimed at Harvard alums, named 02138 (after the local zip-code), and its second issue has just appeared. Personally I’ve never quite understood the phenomenon of people who retain a lifelong fascination with the fact that they … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 80 Comments

Yet More Links

Posted on December 12, 2006 by woit

The January Notices of the AMS is out. Two quite interesting articles, one of which is an interview with my colleague Joan Birman. She just recently officially retired, but, at the age of 79 is still very active in research … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | 36 Comments

Polchinski Review at American Scientist and Cosmic Variance

Posted on December 7, 2006 by woit

This month’s American Scientist has a review entitled All Strung Out? of The Trouble With Physics and Not Even Wrong by prominent string theorist Joe Polchinski, and he has posted a slightly edited version of the review with some explanatory … Continue reading →

Posted in Not Even Wrong: The Book | 16 Comments

Lots of Links

Posted on December 5, 2006 by woit

Various things that I’ve run across recently that seem worth mentioning: The proceedings of the big yearly lattice gauge theory conference that was mentioned here, Lattice 2006, are now available here. The New York Times today in its Science Times … Continue reading →

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Two Reviews

Posted on November 29, 2006 by woit

Two reviews by physicists of my book and Lee Smolin’s have recently appeared. The first is by David Lindley in the Wilson Quarterly. Lindley has written some excellent popular books about physics, including one about quantum mechanics entitled Where Does … Continue reading →

Posted in Not Even Wrong: The Book | 47 Comments

Media and Other News

Posted on November 25, 2006 by woit

There’s filming going on outside my office window today, right at the entrance to the Columbia Mathematics building. The film is Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, with a screenplay based on the David Foster Wallace book of the same name. … Continue reading →

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Langlands on Langlands

Posted on November 21, 2006 by woit

In a forthcoming issue of the AMS Bulletin, there will be a long review by Robert Langlands of the book p-adic Automorphic Forms on Shimura Varieties by Haruzo Hida. The book itself is on a very technical subject, but the … Continue reading →

Posted in Langlands | 24 Comments

Esquire On The State of Particle Theory

Posted on November 15, 2006 by woit

You know things are getting strange when Esquire magazine starts running an article on the current state of particle theory. As you might expect, their take on this is rather odd. It centers around Nima Arkani-Hamed and begins with: For … Continue reading →

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