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The Talk I Gave on September 12
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More 25th anniversary thoughts and recollections. I was heading off to Durham, in the north of England — my first big talk now that I had started my permanent academic job. I arrived toward the end of the first day of the conference: September 11, 2001.
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Second test post
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Here’s an excerpt!
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Test post
Checking some infrastructure…
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25 & 60
Twenty-five years ago, I moved from San Francisco to the UK, from a fellowship at Berkeley to a permanent job at Imperial College, London. A lot has changed since then. I was 35; now I am 60. It was two weeks before 9/11; the world hasn’t seemed as open and free since. I arrived from…
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Around the world in 383 days
It’s been exactly two years since the start of our sabbatical year away from England, and almost a year since we returned. I’m only now understanding the shape of that year and the effect it had on me, my science, and my family. Imperial College has a competitive process for requesting sabbatical leave: you have…
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What My Thirty-Year-Old Algorithm Taught an AI
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As a scientist in the later stages of my career, the managerial and mentorship load has increased, leaving less time for math and programming. These technical activities were also why I wanted to be a scientist in the first place, and I regretted losing the time for this hands-on research. Formerly the core of my…
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The Only Gaijin in the Onsen
After living in Japan for about four months, we left in mid-December. We miss it already. One of the pleasures we discovered is the onsen, or hot spring. Originally referring to the natural volcanic springs themselves, and the villages around them, there are now onsens all over Japan. Many hotels have an onsen, and most…
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Discovering Japan
My old friend Marc Weidenbaum, curator and writer of disquiet.com, reminded me, in his latest post, of the value of blogging. So, here I am (again). Since September, I have been on sabbatical in Japan, working mostly at QUP (International Center for Quantum-field Measurement Systems for Studies of the Universe and Particles) at the KEK…
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It’s been a while
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If you’re reading this, then you might realise that I haven’t posted anything substantive here since 2018, commemorating the near-end of the Planck collaboration. In fact it took us well into the covid pandemic before the last of the official Planck papers were published, and further improved analyses of our data continues, alongside the use…
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The Milky Way
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