Oriti to give Smolin Lecture #19

[marcus]

this week's lectures (#15 and 16) are the Hamiltonian quantization
and the area/volume operators

next week's (#17 and 18) are quantum Hamiltonian dynamics

the natural next topic after that is PATH INTEGRAL dynamics which in this context is called spinfoams----in which area Daniele Oriti is an expert. It turns out Oriti will be visiting PI around that time and he will give Lecture #19 and maybe #20

that will be on 29 March, when Oriti will stand in for Smolin in teaching the Introduction to QG course.

Today (16 march) Oriti is giving a seminar talk at PI
http://perimeterinstitute.com/activities/scientific/seminarseries/alltalks.cfm?CurrentPage=1&SeminarID=704
A generalized Group Field Theory formalism: quantum gravity transition amplitudes and causality at the Planck scale
maybe it will be put online at the PI streamer site

[marcus]

I see that yesterday (15 March) a seminar talk was given at Perimeter by Scott Aaronson
http://perimeterinstitute.com/activities/scientific/seminarseries/alltalks.cfm?CurrentPage=1&SeminarID=689

he is a very smart and funny guy
as an undergrad at Cornell he wrote a paper about large numbers that anyone can read and is well worth reading. It gets a lot of hits
http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html

He also has a pretty good blog
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/

Scott is a still-young expert in the Theory of Computation.
From my perspective the bonus point, with him, is that he can write.
he used to be at IIRC Berkeley and then at Princeton IAS, but now he is
at the University of Waterloo in Canada. This says something about UW, and the canada research establishment. Maybe waterloo is like shoes that don't pinch, and princeton is like too tight shoes. One can only guess. And also there is Perimeter at waterloo, which might be a factor.