Sunday, July 12, 2009

Michio Kaku

What was the first word of God?
How many bubbles are there?
Can monkeys understand calculus?
At least we know now that 'a few inches' is the length of ... a good equation.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Clifford and Michael

Is Clifford Johnson the Michael Jackson of string theory?
Of course he is too modest to suggest such a thing, so he drops a few subtle hints only.
"who knows, maybe the next humbling god of the kulcha will be a starchitect or a superstring theorist, the Michael Jackson of D-branes, black P-branes, and dark-energy engineering."
Let me state the obvious loud and clear: Clifford is the next humbling god of D-branes, the Michael Jackson of string theory. We all know that.
And I don't mean it in a creepy kind of way or something...

Jim Simons

He is a great mathematician and a billionaire, who donated millions to help out the RHIC experiment among other things. As some sort of inverse Robin Hood he makes money even when normal people suffer losses, at least until recently.
In 2009 the performance of his biggest funds was not so great, in fact pretty bad. So he had to write one of those letters to his Dear Investors and promised to find new signals, but in June performance was still not so good.
Let's hope summer will be better for him.

In unrelated news, the Harvard endowment fund lost $11 billion and Larry Summers may have to arrange for some bailout or something...

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Robert and Lubos

Robert Helling is a nice guy: I would never say a thing like "your approach is wrong", not in public nor in a personal conversation. I would say things like "I am skeptic" or "there might be an issue with..."

Lubos Motl is a different kind of guy: It is the AGW Chickens Little who are dissenting - and who are rejecting the very basics of democracy, freedom, modern civilization, and the scientific method. AGW nuts, you're the hippies, freegans, loons, and freeloaders. And be sure that I will go after your necks, bastards.

The diversity of opinions in the multiverse is a wonderful thing.

my theory of everything

This is no hype. I am working on a new theory of everything based on the Ising model. It already predicts gravity and I am sure it will contain the standard model and it will also describe supersymmetry and all kinds of new particles.
So far there is no evidence whatsoever for my new theory, but it turns out that the Ising model is very useful in condensed matter physics, in particular to understand phase transitions of ferromagnets.
I take this as an important hint that I am on the right track with my theory of everything.