Activities

My Schedule

• June 10-14, 2009: World Science Festival, New York
• July 9-12, 2009: The Amazing Meeting, Las Vegas
• July 23-26, 2009: Comic-Con, San Diego
• August 9-11, 2009: SLAC SSI
• September 19-23, 2009: Philosophy of Cosmology workshop, Oxford, UK
• September 29-October 3, 2009: Ohio (OSU Colloquium, Kenyon College Colloquium, Project Narrative Symposium on Narrative, Science, and Performance)
• October 19, 2009: Public Talk, McGill, Montreal
• October 17, 2009: Quantum to Cosmos Festival, Perimeter Institute
• November 12, 2009: MIT Physics Colloquium
• November 14-22, 2009: Australia -- Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne (COSPA), Adelaide
• February 18-22, 2010: AAAS Meeting, San Diego

I may be in danger of overscheduling again.

Past Talks

There is an entire page devoted to talks I've given. Some simple collections of PowerPoint slides, but also some links to video, as well as a few radio appearances.

Teaching

My job here at Caltech doesn't call for much teaching; but I've enjoyed it when I have taught, and hope to do it again at some point. This teaching page relives some past glories.

Past Activities

My long-awaited general relativity book is finally finished. Now I'll finally be able to afford that BMW Jag.

I've also done a set of lectures for the Teaching Company, about dark matter and dark energy, not to mention more general topics in cosmology, gravity, and particle physics. The lectures are aimed at a slightly broader audience than the aforementioned textbook (anyone at all, really).

In addition to my respectable research, I have an interest in the relationship between science and religion. (Like Steven Weinberg, I don't think there should be one.) At a conference at Notre Dame I presented a paper on cosmology and atheism, and in Winter 2004 I co-taught (with Shadi Bartsch) a course on the history of atheism at the University of Chicago. There was a nice article in the Chicago Tribune from January 11, 2004.

Without really trying, I've also been pulled into exploring connections between science and literature. In March 2005 I gave a "literary lecture" for the performance of Charlotte Jones' Humble Boy for the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. Also in March, I visited the KITP in Santa Barbara for a conference on "Theoretical Physics in Drama and Narrative." See the roundup at my blog. In June I spoke about David Field's play Symmetry at the Victory Gardens Theater. Out of all this came an article entitled "From Experience to Metaphor, By Way of Imagination."

I spent Fall 2003 at the KITP in Santa Barbara, helping to organize a program on Superstring Cosmology.

In 2003 and again in 2004 I went on dinosaur expeditions to Wyoming with Project Exploration. (You don't believe me, I know. Here's proof.) I found an edmontosaurus, or at least part of one. Every paleontological outfit needs a team cosmologist.

Not even the federal government is brave enough to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on cosmology without consulting me first; thus, I served as a member of the Roadmap Team for NASA's "Structure and Evolution of the Universe" theme.

See also other writings and talks.