Here are various things of interest that accumulated while I was away:<\/p>\n
Last week there was a conference in Florence on the early history of string theory, some of the talks are available here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lots of blogging activity among Fields Medalists: there’s a lot worth reading in Terry Tao’s reporting on a series of lectures by Yau at UCLA here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>. At the blog of fellow Fields Medalist Alain Connes, there’s mention<\/a> of on a recent conference at Vanderbilt (slides here<\/a>), as well as a report<\/a> from Connes about a recent conference on the philosphical ideas of Wolfgang Pauli. Finally, yet another Fields Medalist, Richard Borcherds, has a blog<\/a>. Not only do Fields Medalists like to have blogs it seems, but they also like to use them to discuss physics…<\/p>\n Some other blogs I’ve run across include A Strange Universe<\/a>, from gravitational wave physicist Warren Anderson, which includes his Dire Straits inspired Papers For Nothing<\/a>. Also John Armstrong’s The Unapologetic Mathematician<\/a>, which has a lot of expository material, and Julie Rehmeyer’s MathTrek<\/a>, a blog at the Science News web-site.<\/p>\n Steven Weinberg has canceled a planned public talk at an event to be held in conjunction with PASCOS 2007<\/a> at Imperial College in London in July, an event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the arrival of Abdus Salam at Imperial. In a letter to Mike Duff (available here<\/a>), Weinberg says that he is boycotting the event in response to news of a boycott of Israel by the British National Union of Journalists, due to his belief that there is no possible explanation of this other than widespread anti-Semitism in Britain “especially in the intellectual establishment” or “a desire to pander to the growing Muslim minority in Britain.” Note: any attempts to use mention of this news to justify attempts to carry on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the comment section of my blog will be ruthlessly suppressed.<\/em><\/p>\n As usual, Tommaso Dorigo is doing a great job of making current collider physics actually seem exciting and interesting. He’s now spreading rumors<\/a> of a 4-5 sigma excess of multi-b-jet events being seen by D0. What does CDF data show? He’s keeping his mouth shut about that… Maybe there will be some excitement at the upcoming summer conferences…<\/p>\n There’s a new Harvard College magazine about math, run by undergraduates called The Harvard College Mathematics Review<\/a>. The first issue contains an article by Noam Elkies<\/a> about the abc conjecture, and one by Dennis Gaitsgory<\/a> about how not to teach linear algebra.<\/p>\n Via Mathephysique<\/a>, here’s an interview<\/a> with theorist Edouard Brezin.<\/p>\n I keep running across more and more web-sites of theory groups that are putting up material from their theory seminar talks. The latest is the HEFTI Seminar Archive<\/a> at Davis.<\/p>\n Mike Hopkins gave a Distinguished Lecture Series<\/a> in Toronto recently. Only audio from the talks is available on-line, and I can attest that forcing someone to try and follow a talk they are interested in like Mike’s The Topological WZW Space of Conformal Blocks<\/a> just by listening to the audio without always being able to tell what he is writing on the board is just cruel.<\/p>\n Via the n-Category Cafe<\/a>, notes from a recent conference in Kyoto on Link (also known as Khovanov) homology and categorification<\/a>. Lots of interesting talks to read, but I’m especially fond of the abstract of Dror Bar-Natan’s talk, which begins:<\/p>\n I’m over forty, I’m a full professor, and it’s time that I come out of the closet. I don’t understand quantum groups and I never did.<\/em><\/p>\n Now I don’t feel so bad. Also, for inspiration, check out his Dream Map<\/a>.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: A Chicago network news show has a recent segment<\/a> about Fermilab and the hunt for the Higgs.<\/p>\n Update<\/strong>: The D0 rumor has made it to Slate<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here are various things of interest that accumulated while I was away: Last week there was a conference in Florence on the early history of string theory, some of the talks are available here. Lots of blogging activity among Fields … Continue reading