Miscellaneous happenings, including a couple of talks I’ll be giving — one on another coast, one in another plane of existence.
- 3 Quarks Daily has announced a series of four annual prizes, for blog posts in Science, Arts & Literature, Politics, and Philosophy. Science is the first one up, and they’re asking for nominations — the deadline is soon (June 1) so head over there and make suggestions. The final winner will be chosen by a well-known person in the appropriate field; this year’s Science judge will be Stephen Pinker. You are of course welcome to suggest your favorite CV post, because we like the attention. But this would also be a great opportunity to give a boost to that lesser-known blog that you really like and think should get more attention. (There are a lot of good blogs out there.) And if you are someone with a blog, don’t feel shy about nominating a post of your own — most readers don’t keep a mental file of your best posts over the last year.
- The World Science Festival is happening in New York (the U.S.’s second most interesting city) from June 10 to 14. I’ll be there, speaking at two different events. On Friday June 12 there is the WSF Spotlight, which is an informal forum with short talks and a lot of discussion. Participants include Kristin Baldwin (cell biologist), Dominic Johnson (political scientist), Christopher McKay (solar system researcher), and Frank Wilczek (not sure what he does for a living). I believe alcoholic beverages will be available; it’s that kind of event. Then on Saturday June 13 I’ll be on a panel discussing Time Since Einstein, with David Albert, George Ellis, Michael Heller, John Hockenberry, Fotini Markopoulou-Kalamara, and Roger Penrose. (I predict already that insufficient time will be a popular complaint about the time panel.)
- In Second Life, I’m giving a talk tomorrow morning at 10 am Pacific, sponsored by the Meta Institute for Computational Astrophysics. It will be a colloquium-level talk about “Dark Forces,” concentrating on building models of interacting dark matter and dark energy. Second Lifers can beam right there thanks to this elegant and finely-crafted link: http://slurl.com/secondlife/StellaNova/76/200/32.
- Max Brockman (son of John, doyen of Edge) has edited a new collection of essays: What’s Next? Dispatches from the Future of Science. There’s an essay by me in there on “Our Place in an Unnatural Universe.” You should buy it, because it would be like reading a set of interesting blog posts, but on paper. And most of these folks don’t have blogs!
Sean, in case you dont know them, be prepared about Hefner and Ellis: they are Templeton-prized high-caste exponents of the ‘Science and Religion’ (i.e. science and theology) group. They will probably team up with Augustine and claim that time is held up into existence by God. It could end up as a perplexing God vs. II law of thermodynamics struggle.
Aha! Sorry I did not go on the website of the talk itself until now. As a matter of fact it is sponsored by the Templeton Foundation… Have you revised your ethical guidelines concerning the partecipation to Templeton-funded initiatives?
It’s not an easy question, and (as I keep promising) I hope to blog about it soon. But I’ve never been against going to events that take money from Templeton — I went to the Skeptic’s Society conference, entered the FQXi essay contest, etc. And I blog at Discover, which takes Templeton advertising!
What I don’t want to do is to attend a conference that is purely about science, sponsored purely by the Templeton foundation, because I would rather not lend them undeserved credibility. But there are many very good organizations that, despite my advice, take money from Templeton. I’ve decided that there’s little to be gained by avoiding them all, although I appreciate the arguments on both sides.
That’s a good pragmatic point, and i agree that to avoid them all would indeed be useless, and hard — especially in your ‘line of work’.
I myself have nothing against organizations which accept Templeton money. I do not believe much in the absolute ‘purity of science’, and I generally think that the more events the better.
What I think is interesing is more of the other side of the question, that is to ask ourselves what is the criterion which underlies the choices of the Foundation itself. How did they achieve the absolute discernment on what counts as a ‘Big Question’ and what does not?
And we should turn the question on ourselves. In fact –forgive my fastidiousness– what do you mean by ‘purely about science’? How is the ‘time panel’ not purely about science, according to your standards?
Anyway, I’ll look forward to your post about them to raise once again this kind of issues: I would like to know if you consider your own work as tentatively answering a ‘big question’, or if you don’t accept the concept of ‘big question’ at all.
Jerry Coyne [of Why Evolution Is True fame] declined to appear at the World Science Festival because of the Templeton money. He posted his dialogue with the WSF folks, which includes a good summary of the two positions:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/05/07/world-science-festival-redux/