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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!
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God, Man and Katrina
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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…
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The Shape of the Universe
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The work that I’ve been doing with my student is featured on the cover of this week’s New Scientist. Unfortunately, a subscription is necessary to read the full article online, but if you do manage to find it on the web or the newsstand, you’ll find a much better explanation of the physics than I…
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This American Life
I was delighted to discover that This American Life, the best radio show in the whole world (ever!), has finally moved into the modern internet with podcasts. In counterintuitive fashion, the latest show is available for downloading for a week, after which you can stream it for free, or purchase the MP3 file. (This must…
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How I will spend my winter vacation
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Maybe we should start a Cosmological Pynchon Book Club… And I’ve also got Richard Ford’s The Lay of the Land if I make it through all 1000+ pages of this.
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Where I’m calling from
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I know that nobody cares about the peregrinations of astrophysicists but there’s not much else to blog about when you’re on the road. So a quick explanation of my absence from the blogosphere: Last week, I was in Taipei for the CoSPA meeting (at which website you can find a copy of my talk on…
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Anthropic Answers?
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Author and cosmologist Paul Davies has got a new book out, The Goldilocks Enigma: Why is the Universe Just Right for Life? Like other recent books, it touches on the Anthropic Principle, the idea that we can learn something deep about the universe from the simple observation that we — sentient, water- and carbon-based life…
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Politics and the misuse of Science (UK edition)
The UK Parliamentary Select Committee on Science and Technology issued a report on “Scientific Advice, Risk and Evidence Based Policy Making.” Although their press release soft-pedals the issues, The Guardian’s headline says “MPs accuse ministers of twisting science for political purposes” and the article quotes Oxford Lib Dem MP Evan Harris to that effect. He…
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Obligatory political commentary
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I admit I was sceptical that my fellow Americans would manage to kick the bums out this year, but some sort of sense has prevailed. The Dems have the House, may yet win the Senate, Rumsfeld is gone (in a UK-style post-defeat resignation), and my own congress-person, Nancy Pelosi, is the first female Speaker of…
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