In a Random Universe…

So here I am, in that London. I’m attending a small meeting at called A Random Universe which is celebrating the occasion of the 60th Birthday of cosmologist Andrew Jaffe. The meeting is being held at South Kensington Technical Imperial College and covers cosmology, statistics, topology, and a number of other things. The title comes from a book Andrew has published: I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t read it yet – it was published last year – but I will do. An amusing thing is that I wanted to use that title for a book I wrote some time ago but the publisher rejected it! I also noticed just now that the book uses the definite article whereas the conference has the indefinite article. I had other things to do yesterday so I missed the first day of the meeting, and my train into London was delayed by an hour because of “a cow on the line”, which necessitated a lengthy diversion via Coventry, so I missed much of this morning too. I did make some use of the time, though, publishing three…