America spying on Germany, EU

An ugly image of a double-faced, hypocritical America emergesOff-topic, philosopher's birthday: One of the greatest polymaths of the history, Gottfried von Leibniz, was born on July 1st, 1646. See this biography written in 2008. His father, a professor of moral philosophy in Leipzig, East of Germany (who was half-German, half-Sorbian i.e. Slavic: I couldn't understand a Sorbian song, looks like a countryside Czech dialect pronoucation of Polish words...

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Bob Carter's academic job "not renewed"

Climate alarmists' dirty hands were very likely behind the scenesI met Bob Carter (and his wife) 2.5 years ago during a seminar he was delivering in Prague's Auto Moto Club, an event organized by the think tank (CEP) led by Václav Klaus, then the Czech president.This Australian scholar is a geologist but his talks about the climate are perfectionist, comprehensive, comprehensible, balanced, reasonable, and focused on the most important points that...

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Dobrodošli u EU, Hrvatska

It means Welcome to the EU, Croatia, just to be sureIn two days, Croatia will become the 28th member state of the European Union. I think it is positive news for Europe and Croatia's parameters justify its membership because they don't differ too much from those of Slovenia, so far the only post-Yugoslav EU member state.Vinetou and Old Shatterhand, two most famous Americans, on a lake in the Plitvice Lake Region, CroatiaThe European Parliament has...

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Strings 2013

Guest blog by Daniel Grumiller of ITP Vienna, a participantLubos asked me if I would write a short summary of Strings 2013, and since I appreciate the cohomology of his blog [all blog entries, modding out the non-physical state(ment)s] I decided to oblige.If you are interested in the actual content of the talks I suggest you listen to them (or view the slides) here.If you want an excellent and witty summary please watch Jeff Harvey's summary talk...

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Jacques Distler on his lost new physics bet

Jacques Distler of Austin lost a $750 bet to Tommaso Dorigo and wrote an article about it:Guest Post: Jacques Distler, Why I Lost $750 On New Physics At The LHC (original text)They ultimately agreed that Distler wins if a new-particle-like 5-sigma discrepancy from the Standard Model is announced within 12 months after the moment when the LHC has had accumulated 10 inverse femtobarns of collisions (the energy was allowed to be just 8 TeV, it seems). Gordon Watts supported Distler's bet by another $250 so if he concedes as well, and I think he should,...

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The IPCC and the Flat Earth Society may merge now

Anthony Watts has highlighted an article in Salon.com, Actually, even the Flat Earth Society believes in climate change.The president of the International Flat Earth Society, Daniel Shenton, has endorsed the climate hysteria.Even Shenton realizes that it makes sense for others to make fun of his society (whose views are "unorthodox", using his language) and to present it as an example of things that are absurd. When someone believes preposterous,...

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An anomaly-like argument in favor of SUSY

A new Higgs tadpole cancellation condition reformulating the hierarchy problemStrings 2013 [talks] is underway.The first hep-ph paper today probably got to that exclusive place because the authors were excited and wanted to grab the spot. Andre de Gouvea, Jennifer Kile, and Roberto Vega-Morales of Illinois chose the title\(H\rightarrow \gamma\gamma\) as a Triangle Anomaly: Possible Implications for the Hierarchy ProblemThey point out a curious feature...

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Should and could science act as a religion?

Sabine Hossenfelder wrote an interesting essay that I mostly sympathize with:Science should be more like religionFirst, she believes that the 21st century is the century of the death of religions and the completion of the scientific revolution. This comment – many of us could say an optimistic comment – sounds so 1960s. If visions such as Eurabia become reality, the 21st century will mark the demise of the scientific attitudes and the return to the...

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Jiří Rusnok, the new technocratic Czech PM

Ms Miroslava Němcová (center right ODS, the current speaker of the House), a decent conservative previously loyal to President Klaus, and a former cancer survivor and a hippie as a young lady, could become the first female Czechoslovak or Czech prime minister (101/200 of the lawmakers vowed to support her government).The center-right coalition agreed that she was a good choice. On the other hand, the communist and socialist opposition hysterically...

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Larry Summers vs Stephen Hawking

Four days ago, the left-leaning Israeli daily Haaretz published a de facto interview with Larry Summers, the ex-president of an ex-employer of mine:Former Harvard president Summers rebukes Hawking for boycotting Israeli conferenceNote that the fastest free way to get to the article (plus 9 more articles a month) is to "register for free" and choose "Facebook".Summers, along with Stanley Fischer (an equally Jewish ex-teacher of Summers at MIT and...

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