Sir Roger @Penrose on Conformal Cyclic Cosmology @PhilFacOx. Loved watching old-school transparencies on an old-school whiteboard in front of his laptop camera. Lovely talk, ‘tho I’m unconvinced by the theory itself — and he’s wrong about it being confirmed by Planck data.
This week with strong flour. 🍞 #lockdownloaf
That feeling when you don’t get an accolade you didn’t think you deserved, but are still disappointed…
Now that we’re debating how to end the lockdowns, someone’s going to have to start explaining decision theory. #WhatsYourLossFunction?
We’ve done scones, cookies, and cakes, but this is our first bread #lockdownloaf
Thanks — and hello — to old friends @robsheff, @RealJoeLevy, @audiation for bringing me your fantastic interview with @rxgau (the dean of rock critics, in case you didn’t know). Nothing else has brightened my day so much of late… #Nadine
RIP music producer Hal Willner. Best known for his work on #SaturdayNightLive and with Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, &c, but my favourite was his Brecht-Weill tribute album from ‘85, Lost in the Stars.
R.I.P. Margaret Burbidge, who has passed away at 100. She was at the forefront of our understanding of at least two fields in astrophysics: the synthesis of the elements in stars, and our understanding of quasars, some of the most distant objects in the Universe.
@help when trying to use the m.b sharing extension from The Guardian newspaper app, there is no ‘post’ button.
Why isn’t the government publishing more data about coronavirus deaths?
And, ideally, someone should be curating and coordinating the heterogeneous data that is available from many countries and organisations.
Update: Here’s a good one from the ECDC
Locked down in London.
Ok, official UK govt advice still seems to be that I should trek across London (via public transport) with my pre-school girls to bring them to their nursery (located @ImperialCollege where I work).
Comments?
Trump is a narcissistic idiot who only cares about the Fed & how he wasn’t wrong about Google (he was). He makes Pence seem reasonable; Birx, Fauci &c on the US coronavirus team actually seem like experts.
So why isn’t Boris and the UK giving us similar information?
- Imperial College (my employer)
- The University & Colleges Union
- Hertz
- A yoga studio in New Jersey
- The Royal Astronomical Society
- My gym
- Deliveroo
- Several politicians in San Francisco, where I lived 20 years ago
- Cubitts Opticians
- The Institute of Physics
- The International Astronomical Union
As Europe shuts down, Britain takes a different, and contentious, approach
Helen Ward, a professor of public health at Imperial College London, said the government’s advisers should disclose more of their thinking. “We don’t know the evidence [for] its decisions”.
Apparently @imperialcollege starting this Monday “we will be delivering all teaching remotely.” Unfortunately they haven’t yet bothered to tell those of us actually doing the teaching.
Just had a wonderful rendezvous with old friend and present-day Bohemist @PeterZusi, made possible by the otherwise unpleasant #USSstrike. We haven’t seen each other since University — only our friends know how long that is (a long time).
Unconscious bias: Walked into the men’s room at the V&A museum. The walls were pink, so I immediately walked back out to check that it was really the Men’s room — even though the first thing I had seen was a row of urinals.
I was one of the first customers at the excellent new Guillam coffee house. If you’re around South Kensington in London, I definitely recommend it—one of the best places for a drip/filter coffee around (& espressos too).
Lovely interview by Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) with Freeman Dyson on his eschatological musings.
Come hear me give today’s @ImperialUCU #UCUstrike teach-out talk on “The Random Universe” — cosmology, Bayesian probability, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and more. Monday 2 March at noon in the @ICunion Metric Room. http://ucu.imperial.ac.uk #UCU
RIP Freeman Dyson. I was lucky enough to hear him speak at my high school after his first memoir, “Disturbing the Universe”. I might not be a physicist today if it weren’t for that meeting.
Thanks, @TfL, for the personal email… I know that the New Routemaster has problems, but using the middle and rear doors was the best thing about these buses! Did I miss a “consultation”? Are you really losing that many fares to scofflaws?
Amused by my #UCU comrade who thought “Workers of the world, unite” was a reference to Morrisey, not Marx. #UCUstrikes
So, @TfL, what exactly is a “signal failure”, why do they happen so often, and why wasn’t this Victorian-sounding problem solved some time in the last century?
UK university staff to strike for 14 days in pay and pensions row
Workers express frustration in run-up to action involving 50,000 staff at 74 campuses.
Yes, including us at Imperial — workers of the world, unite!
It’s an honor after all these years to be able to support @rxgau — I just subscribed to Christgau’s And It Don’t Stop (the best use of Apple Pay so far…)
Bus-stop ad in Lambeth, London, the most pro-remain constituency in the UK. Do you think HSBC is pushing this ad campaign in Brexit-supporting areas?
Old stuff, new view, a little chaos.
