-
Café Scientifique
·
I’ll be speaking at 7pm Tuesday, 16 January, at London’s Cafe Scientifique, held at the Photographers’ Gallery near Leicester Square. I’ll expound on “Why the Universe isn’t Boring” for about 20 minutes, followed by about an hour of questions and, apparently, free beer. I’ll be talking about why there is matter rather than an even…
-
Signs and portents
·
I can see Comet McNaught from my office window, bright in the evening sky due West over London!
-
State of fear
Starting tomorrow, you’ll be able to sign up with MI5 to receive an email notice when the “Threat Level” changes. Right now it’s “severe”, but they have the fine-grained menu of “low”, “moderate”, “substantial”, “severe” and “critical” to choose from — we certainly need that much more detail compared to the meagre green/yellow/red of the…
-
The Guardian: Ivy Ceilings and Human Spaceflight
On a day in which Nancy Pelosi became the first female Speaker of the US House of Representatives, the Guardian reminds us that there are still plenty of jobs that discriminate between the sexes, including “Physics professors: There is a grand total of 515 physics professors in the UK, and a mere 25 of them…
-
Carnival
My post on the topology of the Universe has been included in the latest edition of the physical science and technology “blog carnival”, Philosophia Naturalis, hosted on Chris Rowan’s excellent blog, Highly Allochthonous. If you liked what I wrote, there’s lots more physics, math and geology excitement for you over there.
-
Five things
·
OK, I’ve been tagged with the latest blogosphere “meme”: Barry wants me to list “Five Things you don’t know about me”. I thought I was an open book, but here are some of my not-too-deep-and-dark secrets (I suppose you’ve already read enough about my thoughts on cosmology and statistics for now): When I was in…
-
Let’s hit it and quit
·
R.I.P. the Godfather of Soul, the Hardest-Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Please Please Please: James Brown. (Listen via Alex Ross and WFMU.)
-
Hijacked for Spam
·
Apologies if you have one of the, um, tens of thousands (or more?) of email addresses that have been spammed by some damned robot pretending to be me (in the guise of coming from the address on the upper right of this page). Not much I can do about it except hope that I’m not…
-
Newly-minted PhD
Congratulations to my student, Anastasia Niarchou, on passing her PhD exam, for her thesis, “Low Power in the CMB and its Implications for the Topology of the Universe” — the same work that was covered last week in New Scientist. Great work, Dr. Niarchou!
-
God, Man and Katrina
·
I watched Channel 4’s documentary The Trouble with Atheism. I assume my secular fellow travellers in the blogosphere will take it and its presenter, Rod Liddle, to task for its myriad stupidities, misrepresentations and annoyances so I can leave them unremarked (except to point out that, with no offence intended, John Polkinghorne is a good…
Search
Recent Posts
Categories
- Academia (64)
- Art (57)
- Blog (1)
- Miscellanea (103)
- Music (71)
- Net (63)
- News (28)
- Politics (110)
- Science (333)
- Uncategorized (4)