Miscellanea
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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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Python Bug Hunting
This is a technical, nerdy post, mostly so I can find the information if I need it later, but possibly of interest to others using a Mac with the Python programming language, and also since I am looking for excuses to write more here. (See also updates below.) It seems that there is a bug…
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The Sick Rose
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O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm: Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. —William Blake, Songs of Experience
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Atheism, naturalism, and the way things ought to be
In an occasionally thoughtful but mostly silly attempted takedown of the so-called New Atheists (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and such), philosopher John Gray writes that there is an irresolvable contradiction between viewing religion naturalistically — as a human adaptation to living in the world — and condemning it as a tissue of error and illusion. -John…
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Oscillators, Integrals, and Bugs
[Update: The bug seems fixed in the latest version, 10.0.2.] I am in my third year teaching a course in Quantum Mechanics, and we spend a lot of time working with a very simple system known as the harmonic oscillator — the physics of a pendulum, or a spring. In fact, the simple harmonic oscillator…
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Loncon 3
Briefly (but not brief enough for a single tweet): I’ll be speaking at Loncon 3, the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, this weekend (doesn’t that website have a 90s retro feel?). At 1:30 on Saturday afternoon, I’ll be part of a panel trying to answer the question “What Is Science?” As Justice Potter Stewart once…
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Around Asia in search of a meal
I’m recently back from my mammoth trip through Asia (though in fact I’m up in Edinburgh as I write this, visiting as a fellow of the Higgs Centre For Theoretical Physics). I’ve already written a little about the middle week of my voyage, observing at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, and I hope to get…
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TimeWave — Quest for the Grail: An International Adventure Game
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About a year ago, I wrote about TimeWave a festival of art, science and technology coming this May to London, with tendrils snaking out to New York and LA. As part of the festival, we’re organising Quest for the Grail: An International Adventure Game, later this month: from noon to 5pm in London and right…
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Prizes and Books, As Yet Unread and Unwritten
Over the last couple of months, I’ve managed invites to a few swish literary shindigs. For no literary reason at all (I’m the proud godparent of someone who works for the prize’s sponsors), I was able to make my way into this year’s ceremony for the Man Booker Prize, held in the rather splendid Guildhall…
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