{"id":687,"date":"2008-05-15T10:33:45","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T15:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=687"},"modified":"2008-06-17T16:44:54","modified_gmt":"2008-06-17T21:44:54","slug":"quick-links-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=687","title":{"rendered":"Quick Links"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The speakers for Strings 2008 have been <a href=\"http:\/\/ph-dep-th.web.cern.ch\/ph-dep-th\/content2\/workshops\/strings2008\/?site=content\/talks.html\">announced<\/a>. One anomaly is that someone from the LQG camp has finally been invited, Carlo Rovelli.   Another anomaly is that Witten won&#8217;t be speaking.<\/p>\n<p>Remember last November&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=621\">&#8220;unmistakable imprint of another universe&#8221;<\/a> which vindicated string theory? <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eurekalert.org\/pub_releases\/2008-05\/ns-hhi051408.php\">False alarm<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a new X-files movie coming out this summer, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ew.com\/ew\/article\/0,,20193041,00.html\">The X-Files: I Want to Believe<\/a>, with a plot that revolves around string theory and features Amanda Peet (no, not the string theorist).<\/p>\n<p>Outside magazine has a <a href=\"http:\/\/outside.away.com\/outside\/culture\/200805\/garrett-lisi-1.html\">profile<\/a> this month of Garrett Lisi, and quotes from various physicists about last year&#8217;s media storm.  I&#8217;m pretty much with Frank Wilczek on this, who says:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To my perception, Lisi hasn&#8217;t advanced the story.  That said, I admire people who think for themselves and dare to take on reality directly rather than writing footnotes to fashionable literature. So I hope he keeps trying and inspires others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I also hear that the New Yorker will have an article about this, to appear sometime during the next couple weeks.<\/p>\n<p>Bert Schroer has a new version of his paper about <a href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/0805.1911\">String theory and the crisis in particle physics<\/a>.  It contains both sociological observations on the string theory phenomenon, as well as more technical arguments about how to think about a quantum theory of strings.  Schroer was involved in endless battles on this blog a couple years ago over an earlier version of this paper.  People who want to argue this again are encouraged to first read through the old discussion, and then see if there&#8217;s something new and interesting to contribute, rather than a rehash of the previous arguments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The speakers for Strings 2008 have been announced. One anomaly is that someone from the LQG camp has finally been invited, Carlo Rovelli. Another anomaly is that Witten won&#8217;t be speaking. Remember last November&#8217;s &#8220;unmistakable imprint of another universe&#8221; which &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=687\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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-687","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\/687","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=687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}