118. Last two weeks of November on NEQNET

Well, those two weeks were quite productive ones! – 19 posts in overall (or 20 including this one ) This counts to 1.5 posts per day (and you should take into account that I was on leave to Munich for 4 days). I hope my writing was not too boring for you

Physics

* Eternal inflation with many light scalar fields

As Adshead, Easther and Lim indicate, for N-flationary setup stochastic inflation regime is not the same as the regime of eternal inflation.

* Confinement. Extremely naive introduction

This is a very brief non-technical introduction into the problem of quark confinement, as the title indicates

* Criteria of confinement. Wilson loop – physical introduction

I am starting to discuss criteria of confinement. This time I explain why the area law for the behaviour of the Wilson loop corresponds to confinement.

* Criteria of confinement. Wilson loop – getting more technical

I continue discussion of the Wilson loop and this time calculate directly its behaviour for long contours in the confining phase of the pure gluodynamics.

* How stringy is QCD string?

I calculate the characteristic length of the QCD string and find than it is much larger than its thickness in both heavy and light quark limits. To my surprise, one of the most popular posts of the last two weeks

* Introducing doubt in Bayesian statistics 1 (guest post by Pascal Vaudrevange)

Pascal is explaining his recent paper with Trotta and Starkman about the introduction of doubt in Bayesian statistics.

* Talk in Munich. One interesting infrared scale in inflationary cosmology

This post is based on my talk in Munich. I am starting by identifying one interesting infrared non-perturbative scale in inflationary cosmology. Instanton immediately identifies it in comments as the scale of self-reproduction

* Talk in Munich. Two other interesting infrared scales

I present two other infrared scales which are interesting from the point of view of a cosmologist studying inflationary perturbations. This time Instanton is unable to idntify them

* Talk in Munich. Leading logs

I explain the genesis of leading logs in a self-interacting quantum field theory in de Sitter background.

* Hawking at PI

Isn’t it science news? It is announced that Stephen Hawking is relocated at Perimeter Institute (well, almost, for a part of a year currently).

* Recent lattice QCD simulations – how good is QCD in the infrared?

Recent QCD results reproduce correct spectrum of light hadrons with precision about 1%. We do not need to modify the QCD lagrangian in the IR.

Economics

* Rant: Big Bubble of the Housing Market

I discuss the US housing market turmoil, identify its origins and explain why the recent housing market bubble has led to the global financial crisis’ takeoff.

* World crisis – looking for a job?

According to the FED forecast, unemployment rate will reach 7.4% in November, highest in 14 years. From the beginning of this year,Americans lost about 1.2 million jobs in total. Do you, guys, want to discuss what is going to happen with jobs in science in forthcoming years?

* And to scare you even more…

Overall traffic (all US roads and streets) has dropped down 4.4% (equivalent to 10.7 billion vehicle miles) for September 2008 compared to September 2007. Although Lubos says, nothing like this is observed in Czechia

Fun

* Advice, by Jim Kotsybar

However one tries to advise, the results only antagonize, yet the moral that’s missed is to never insist that one’s own ideas are the most wise.

* New “Ender in Exile” by Orson Scott Card

I am glad to announce that Orson Scott Card has just released a new book in the Ender’s series – “Ender in Exile”!

* Two horror movies: one – Hollywood, another  – documental

I am briefly discussing two horror movies – one Hollywood and one documentary. I am to conclude that real life is so much more scary than any Hollywood movie:-)

* Japanese inventors are always ahead

I explain why the Soviets lost the patent wars to Japanese.

* But Korean inventors are sometimes ahead of Japanese…

Indeed so… as the following forthcoming mobile phone model proves, the creativity of Korean engineers is overwhelming!