{"id":11994,"date":"2020-09-10T14:38:16","date_gmt":"2020-09-10T18:38:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=11994"},"modified":"2020-09-29T18:28:11","modified_gmt":"2020-09-29T22:28:11","slug":"quick-links-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=11994","title":{"rendered":"Quick Links"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few quick links:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I was sorry to hear of the recent death of Vaughan Jones.  A few things about his life and work have started to appear, see <a href=\"https:\/\/terrytao.wordpress.com\/2020\/09\/09\/vaughan-jones\/\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/news.vanderbilt.edu\/2020\/09\/09\/vaughan-jones-preeminent-vanderbilt-mathematician-has-died\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ams.org\/news?news_id=6374\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>For a wonderful in-depth article about the life of Michael Atiyah written by Nigel Hitchin, see <a href=\"https:\/\/royalsocietypublishing.org\/doi\/10.1098\/rsbm.2020.0001\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>There are now many new places where you can find talks about math and physics to listen to.  For instance, just for math and just at Harvard, there is a series of <a href=\"https:\/\/cmsa.fas.harvard.edu\/literature-lecture-series\/\">Harvard Math Literature<\/a> talks and Dennis Gaitsgory&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/people.math.harvard.edu\/~gaitsgde\/GLOH_2020\/\">geometric Langlands office hours<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Breakthrough Prizes were announced today. There&#8217;s an argument to be made that the best policy is to ignore them. Weinberg has another 3 million dollars.<\/li>\n<li>For an interview with Avi Loeb about why physics is stuck, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2020\/09\/06\/physics-is-stuck--and-needs-another-einstein-to-revolutionize-it-physicist-avi-loeb-says\/\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>For an explanation from John Preskill of why quantum computing is hard (which I&#8217;d claim has to do with why the measurement problem is hard), see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.science\/blog\/amazon-scholar-john-preskill-on-the-aws-quantum-computing-effort\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: Last night I watched <a href=\"https:\/\/www.netflix.com\/title\/81254224\">The Social Dilemma<\/a> on Netflix, which included some segments with my friend Cathy O&#8217;Neil (AKA Mathbabe).  Highly recommended, best of the things I&#8217;ve read or watched that try and come to grips with the nature of the horror irresponsibly unleashed by Mark Zuckerberg  and Facebook in the form of the AI driven News Feed.  Comparing to a documentary about Oxycontin from a while back, the effects of the News Feed are arguably more damaging.  I&#8217;m wondering why the Oxycontin-funded Sackler family donations to cultural organizations and universities have been heavily criticized, unlike the News Feed-funded Zuckerberg\/Milner donations to scientists.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: Alain Connes has written a short appreciation of Vaughan Jones and his work <a href=\"http:\/\/noncommutativegeometry.blogspot.com\/2020\/09\/farewell-to-genius.html\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>:  For another article about Vaughan Jones well-worth reading, see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-020-02752-0\">Davide Castelvecchi at Nature<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A few quick links: I was sorry to hear of the recent death of Vaughan Jones. A few things about his life and work have started to appear, see here, here and here. For a wonderful in-depth article about the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=11994\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11994"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12007,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11994\/revisions\/12007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}