Stereography: It’s in 3D

I went to see Coraline this weekend. It is an animated movie made with stop motion animation (and it is supplemented by usual CGI effects). I like the medium of stop-motion very much, particularly because it is harder to achieve a good result. The most interesting thing about the movie is that it was filmed [...]

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What should every student know?

Back when I started my job at UBC, I remember dropping by our student’s journal club. I was happy to see that the students took initiative and had a very active club, reading and discussing review papers once a week. Good for them, I thought. I am a great fun of such clubs. Even if [...]

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Quick link

This is an important and interesting issue, which perhaps does not get enough love, so I was happy to see this discussion of chiral gauge theories on the lattice. There will be a followup tomorrow (update: here it is), I’d be also happy to hear about lattice supersymmetry, something I was pretty interested in a [...]

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Black holes as frozen stars

We now have a few working examples of a microscopic theory of quantum gravity, all come with specific boundary conditions (like any other equation in physics or mathematics), but otherwise full background independence. In particular, all those theories include quantum black holes, and we can ask all kinds of puzzling questions about those fascinating objects. [...]

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Pure vs applied research

I thought it would be good to point out the opinion article by Stephen Quake on the New York Times on how we artificially create barriers between applied science and pure science. On another note, please be patient as current time demands have prevented me from having a more regular blogging schedule.

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Writers block

As it is not surprising, even in the medium of a blog one can get writers block. Even though I can comfortably believe that I will be forgiven for any silly thought or misspelled word, I still find myself unable at the moment to find a topic or post that I would be willing to [...]

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Happy Darwin day!

In the name of scientific anniversary celebrations, it seems that today is Darwin Day. Since this year marks the 200th anniversary of his birth, it is somewhat special. To celebrate in the spirit of the  silliness of the occasion, here below you can see how random mutations actually happen.

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So what do you think of the current science funding structure?

There is an interesting article in the New York Times about the current science funding structures that depicts how hard it is to be truly creative and independent given the current model of science funding, especially if you are young and not established yet. I thought it would be instructive to have a dialogue about [...]

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Comment policy

Since I’m quite unhappy with the way the comment thread of my last post unfolded, I thought I’d briefly set some ground rules and ask for further advice. Here are a few things I did not like: First and foremost: long, long, long comments about someone’s favorite alternative theory of the universe. I’ll adopt zero [...]

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Looking for messages in the digits of pi.

Over at Cosmic Variance, they had a recent post on big surprises that one could have in physics. In the comments someone suggested that we should be looking for messages from the creator in the digits of pi. I’m sure this was said in jest, but I’ve seen enough similar attempts forwarded into my e-mail [...]

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