I am going there in July! It is for a conference by the FQXi. They are the ones who pay me right now. They are the Foundational Questions Institute. The X is in there just for awesome ( Read more... )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W582g_FKlbw

Small victories over the traffic and parking office fill me with so much sunshine I just might get ultraviolet indigestion.

"Now a state on a subalgebra of a C^*-algebra can always be extended to the full algebra [ref] The argument uses the Hahn-Banach theorem, which in the end is an appeal to the axiom of choice ( Read more... )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look-and-say_sequence
This is so cool. Everyone go look at this, it is a neat result that is very easy to state. I have to look up the proof still; I imagine that might not be so simple. Conway is a beast.

black eyed, yellow eyed
the great white northern navy
could use more veggies

"If you think god is merciful and will cancel out all your direction dependence... let's not put that in our paper."

Today was a day of great success. My stress tensor is now totally renormalized. I just completed the few weeks long task of doing lots of nitpicky error correcting. At first you get to do cool things like understand new kinds of physics, and that is fun. This last part of doing the new physics and getting all the signs and factors of two correct is ( Read more... )

Lentils! So earlier, I asked a grad student comrade from Turkey how he makes his lentil soup. It is maybe called chorba, or maybe that is just the generic word for soup. (I know if you ask for chorba in Turkey, you get this soup). He tells me it is just red lentils and lemon juice, and a little salt. Of course you do not trust him when he says "a ( Read more... )

He was a fascinating guy, as I find out today. Definitely a player ( Read more... )

Break has been delightful. It's been a real break from doing things, which is quite nice. There's much I could talk about but I have more breaking to do, so I will give some highlights! Christmas swag included a ladle and a nice pan, so now I can share soups and crepes and such with greater ease. These presents thus benefit all of you also, should ( Read more... )