{"id":5017,"date":"2012-08-12T13:57:44","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T17:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5017"},"modified":"2012-08-13T21:01:44","modified_gmt":"2012-08-14T01:01:44","slug":"short-items-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5017","title":{"rendered":"Short Items"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>There&#8217;s an interview with the CERN director <a href=\"http:\/\/theeuropean-magazine.com\/263-heuer-rolf-dieter\/788-science-and-the-public-sphere\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>John Preskill and others at the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Mattter now have a blog <a href=\"http:\/\/quantumfrontiers.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The usual summer workshop on math and physics at Stony Brook is now running at the Simons Center, see videos of talks <a href=\"http:\/\/scgp.stonybrook.edu\/archives\/3124\">here<\/a>.  Videos of talks from the Simons Symposium this spring in the Virgin Islands on knot homologies and BPS states are now available <a href=\"https:\/\/simonsfoundation.org\/mps-funded-programs-knot-homologies-and-bps-states\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Last month there was a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.umb.edu\/~anoel\/cbms\/\">CBMS conference on Unitary Representations of Reductive Groups<\/a> in Boston, with David Vogan the main speaker.   For a nice set of survey lectures and others, see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.umb.edu\/~anoel\/cbms\/speakers\/\">here<\/a>.  If you find the Vogan conference too old-school, a <a href=\"http:\/\/pages.uoregon.edu\/njp\/crt.html\">workshop on categorical representation theory<\/a> this coming week organized by David Ben-Zvi may be more to your liking, lecture notes starting to appear <a href=\"http:\/\/pages.uoregon.edu\/njp\/crt-schedule.html\">here<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>The only thing stopping me so far from ordering a copy of Francis Farley&#8217;s novel <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Catalysed-Fusion-ebook\/dp\/B0084P6PAC\">Catalysed Fusion<\/a> is that it looks like it is only available in ebook form, and I&#8217;ve until now avoided those and stuck to paper.  According to an article in the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/science\/science-news\/9319470\/Steamy-novel-challenges-Cerns-serious-image.html\">Telegraph<\/a>:<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;a steamy new novel written by a retired physicist lifts the lid on the organisation&#8217;s studious exterior to reveal an altogether more glamorous lifestyle of wild nights, adrenalin-fuelled sports and romantic trysts&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Prof Farley describes a group of young researchers whose groundbreaking work and racy private lives intertwine as they enjoy the high life at Switzerland&#8217;s top ski resorts and France&#8217;s best beaches.<\/p>\n<p>Prof Farley revealed that he even based a character on himself \u2013 Ivan, a physicist and crack glider pilot who is married to a former stripper and sets up a new lab on a nudist Mediterranean island.<\/p>\n<p>He told the Daily Telegraph: &#8220;We were well paid, we had diplomatic status, no taxes. We got tax-free petrol and drinks and we went out and enjoyed life&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We worked hard and then some people would go home to their families but there were lots of little floozies about and other men had a roving eye, and so did some of the women.&#8221;\n <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Perhaps things have changed a bit since the eighties in Geneva&#8230;.<\/li>\n<li>Text books for graduate students on SUSY and string theory are coming fast and furious these days.  Next month will see Peter West&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Introduction-Strings-Branes-Peter-West\/dp\/0521817471\">Introduction to Strings and Branes<\/a>, a few months ago there was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/String-Theory-Particle-Physics-Phenomenology\/dp\/0521517524\">String Theory and Particle Physics: An Introduction to String Phenomenology<\/a> by Ibanez and Uranga.  Even more recent is Freedman and Van Proeyen&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Supergravity-Daniel-Z-Freedman\/dp\/0521194016\">Supergravity<\/a>, which now has one review on Amazon (from &#8220;Dan&#8221;):<br \/>\n<blockquote><p>This is a must-buy for every high energy theorist who wants to know Sugra. The first nine chapters also make a great source for classical field theory and can be used as a complement for PhD students learning QFT and GR.<br \/>\nA wonderful work! <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong>  A few more recent and upcoming string theory textbooks are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Strings-Fundamental-Physics-Lecture-Notes\/dp\/3642259464\">Strings and Fundamental Physics<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Concepts-String-Theoretical-Mathematical-Physics\/dp\/3642294960\">Basic Concepts of String Theory<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/D-Brane-Superstrings-New-Perspective-World\/dp\/3642235735\">D-Brane: Superstrings and New Perspective of Our World<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s an interview with the CERN director here. John Preskill and others at the Caltech Institute for Quantum Information and Mattter now have a blog here. The usual summer workshop on math and physics at Stony Brook is now running &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=5017\">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_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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5017","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\/5017","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=5017"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5033,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions\/5033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}