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August 31, 2010
Still a Few Bugs in the System
I received the following in my email, last night (8/30/2010):
Ms. Ref. No.: XXXXXX Title: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Journal of Geometry and Physics Dear Professor Jacques Distler, You agreed to review Manuscript Number XXXXXX for Journal of Geometry and Physics on . Your completed review was due by 12 Oct 2010. Your review is now -42 days late. Therefore I would be grateful if you would submit you review as soon as possible at the Elsevier Editorial System at http://ees.elsevier.com/geophy/. Please login as a Reviewer using the following username and password: ...
August 30, 2010
Supertheory of Supereverything
Gogol Bordello are my current favourite band … by far.
August 9, 2010
Conservative “Physics”
Conservapedia is the brainchild of Andy Schlafly (son of conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly). It’s supposed to serve as a conservative counterweight to the notoriously liberal Wikipedia. Since, as Stephen Colbert noted, reality has a well-known liberal bias, this leads to … ahem … certain intellectual difficulties for our reality-challenged friends. Hence this article, entitled “Counterexamples to Relativity” – authored by the aforementioned Mr Schlafly himself:
The theory of relativity is a mathematical system that allows no exceptions. It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world.[1] Here is a list of 22 counterexamples: any one of them shows that the theory is incorrect.
The footnote [1] (like all the footnotes) is as hilarious as the body of the article
See, e.g., historian Paul Johnson’s book about the 20th century, and the article written by liberal law professor Laurence Tribe as allegedly assisted by Barack Obama. Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible, a book that outsells New York Times bestsellers by a hundred-fold.
[hat tip: Talking Points Memo]
August 5, 2010
Fermions
Paper 2, of Dan Freed’s, Greg Moore’s and my series of papers on Orientifolds is out. This one focusses on the worldsheet formulation — particularly the worldsheet fermions. Because it’s for a volume dedicated to Is Singer, it’s written in a somewhat mathematical style. So, while it’s more accessible than our telegraphic Précis, it’s maybe a little tough-going for some of our physics audience. There will be some more physics-oriented papers in the series, but I don’t think any of them will be specifically devoted to the worldsheet. So, contrary to my usual practice, I’m going to try to distill some of the salient points of our current paper, here.