{"id":8316,"date":"2016-02-23T10:03:20","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T15:03:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8316"},"modified":"2016-02-23T10:03:20","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T15:03:20","slug":"various-and-sundry-21","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8316","title":{"rendered":"Various and Sundry"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>The online magazine <a href=\"https:\/\/smashpipe.com\/article\/639\">Smashpipe<\/a> has the first part of a two-part article written by Gerald Alper, who recently came up here to Columbia to talk to me about string theory\/etc.  It was an interesting conversation, so I&#8217;m curious to see what he makes of the more substantive part, which is in part two, planned for next week.<\/li>\n<li>If instead you&#8217;d like to read about a conversation with my colleague Brian Greene, there&#8217;s a <a href=\"https:\/\/cosmosmagazine.com\/physical-sciences\/what-do-albert-camus-and-string-theory-have-common\">piece at Cosmos Magazine<\/a>.  Brian is taking his World Science Festival to Australia next month and will be on tour there.<\/li>\n<li>In other Columbia news, LHC experimentalist Emlyn Hughes has evidently<br \/>\nbaffled the students in Frontiers of Science again.  Three years ago he <a href=\"http:\/\/bwog.com\/2013\/02\/18\/frosci-gone-wil\/\">undressed for the students<\/a>, this year the performance somehow involved a student mistress (see <a href=\"http:\/\/bwog.com\/2016\/02\/22\/overseen-frosci-as-performance-art\/\">here<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/columbiaspectator.com\/spectrum\/2016\/02\/22\/frosci-phony-love-drama\">here<\/a>).  No, I don&#8217;t understand any of this either.<\/li>\n<li>As a last Columbia story, this semester in the physics department Bill Zajc is teaching a string theory course for undergraduates, Physics W4012, based on the Zwiebach book. While Zajc isn&#8217;t a string theorist, he is a frequent commenter at Lubos Motl&#8217;s blog.<\/li>\n<li>There&#8217;s a new issue out of <a href=\"http:\/\/inference-review.com\">Inference<\/a>, which has some interesting articles, including an <a href=\"http:\/\/inference-review.com\/article\/categories-from-zero-to-infinity\">essay by Pierre Schapira on category theory<\/a> (French version <a href=\"http:\/\/inference-review.com\/article\/categories-de-zero-a-linfini\">here<\/a>).  Also there&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/inference-review.com\/article\/the-holographic-universe\">Jean-Pierre Luminet on holography<\/a>.\n<p>Inference is a bit of a mystery, unclear who is editing it (some speculation <a href=\"https:\/\/mathematicswithoutapologies.wordpress.com\/2016\/02\/14\/intelligent-design-via-higher-categories\/\">here<\/a>).  Whoever it is though, it&#8217;s quite worth paying attention to.<\/li>\n<li>The <a href=\"http:\/\/heppostdocproject.com\/\">HEP Postdoc Project<\/a> is collecting anonymously information aimed at helping potential postdocs (or even Ph.D students) find out more about what it&#8217;s like to work with various senior HEP theorists.  No, like Inference, I have no idea who is behind this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The online magazine Smashpipe has the first part of a two-part article written by Gerald Alper, who recently came up here to Columbia to talk to me about string theory\/etc. It was an interesting conversation, so I&#8217;m curious to see &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/?p=8316\">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-8316","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\/8316","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=8316"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8321,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8316\/revisions\/8321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.math.columbia.edu\/~woit\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}