Just in time to avoid delays due to childbirth, I've finished and submitted a new paper for publication: The KK-Monopole/NS5-Brane in Doubled Geometry. I'm excited about this work; it's the same topic that I presented on a couple of months ago at the Great Lakes Strings conference in Chicago. Since the title is once again largely jargon, I've ( Read more... )

It's been a long, long time since I wrote anything here: I've just finished teaching an intensive one month "Spring Term" class on Medical Physics that met two to three hours a day, five days a week. This might have been less stressful if I'd ever taught (or taken) a class on the subject before (or if I hadn't spent the whole week between my ( Read more... )

I don't think I'm excessively nervous around spiders. Sure, I tend to react poorly if they're actually on my body, and I'm not eager to share my living space with big ones. But in general I think spiders and their webs are pretty cool. Relatively few are dangerous, so there's no reason to be paranoid about them. In fact, I've never been near a ( Read more... )

The stairs up to our apartment double as a doorbell: the apartment shakes a little when people come to the door. So when I felt them shaking last night, I thought "Kim's home!" I jumped up to get the door for her, but when I looked outside there was nobody there (false alarms aren't entirely uncommon). I'd obviously been a bit too vigorous as I ( Read more... )

I just had my first real earthquake! Sure, on a couple of occasions I've felt a quick jolt around the house, but never enough to even be completely sure it was actually a quake. No doubts about this one, though. While my first thought was "What did they drop upstairs this time?", I quickly realized that the rumbling and shaking was stronger and ( Read more... )