Defending Truths, Restoring Worlds

The post in post-truth is premature, and also assigns too much importance to Brexit and the victory of Donald Trump in the US. Worst of all, it can foster the impression that people like Brexit voters and Trump supporters are irredeemably exiled in alternative fact bubbles beyond the reach of science, rational thought, and common decency. We have to find ways to work productively with these kinds of citizens, instead of merely condemning them, if we want to trigger both a worldwide alternative energy revolution and the revolution in politics and economics that a truly just and sustainable energy transition demands

Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance by Marilyn DeLaure and Moritz Fink

Review of Marilyn DeLaure and Moritz Fink\u27s Culture Jamming: Activism and the Art of Cultural Resistance

Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology After the End of the World by Timothy Morton

Welling reviews Timothy Morton\u27s book Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2013)

Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century by Stephanie LeMenager

Bart H. Welling reviews Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Cenutry by Stephanie LeMenager

The 2+1 Kepler Problem and Its Quantization

We study a system of two pointlike particles coupled to three dimensional Einstein gravity. The reduced phase space can be considered as a deformed version of the phase space of two special-relativistic point particles in the centre of mass frame. When the system is quantized, we find some possibly general effects of quantum gravity, such as a minimal distances and a foaminess of the spacetime at the order of the Planck length. We also obtain a quantization of geometry, which restricts the possible asymptotic geometries of the universe.Comment: 59 pages, LaTeX2e, 9 eps figure

Panel Discussion - Management of Eurasian watermilfoil in the United States using native insects: State regulatory and management issues

While researchers have evaluated the potential of native insect herbivores to manage nonindigenous aquatic plant species such as Eurasian watermilfoil ( Myriophyllum spicatum L.), the practical matters of regulatory compliance and implementation have been neglected. A panel of aquatic nuisance species program managers from three state natural resource management agencies (Minnesota, Vermont and Washington) discussed their regulatory and policy concerns. In addition, one ecological consultant attempting to market one of the native insects to manage Eurasian watermilfoil added his perspective on the special challenges of distributing a native biological control agent for management of Eurasian watermilfoil

The Torus Universe in the Polygon Approach to 2+1-Dimensional Gravity

In this paper we describe the matter-free toroidal spacetime in 't Hooft's polygon approach to 2+1-dimensional gravity (i.e. we consider the case without any particles present). Contrary to earlier results in the literature we find that it is not possible to describe the torus by just one polygon but we need at least two polygons. We also show that the constraint algebra of the polygons closes.Comment: 18 pages Latex, 13 eps-figure

Quantum Mechanics of a Point Particle in 2+1 Dimensional Gravity

We study the phase space structure and the quantization of a pointlike particle in 2+1 dimensional gravity. By adding boundary terms to the first order Einstein Hilbert action, and removing all redundant gauge degrees of freedom, we arrive at a reduced action for a gravitating particle in 2+1 dimensions, which is invariant under Lorentz transformations and a group of generalized translations. The momentum space of the particle turns out to be the group manifold SL(2). Its position coordinates have non-vanishing Poisson brackets, resulting in a non-commutative quantum spacetime. We use the representation theory of SL(2) to investigate its structure. We find a discretization of time, and some semi-discrete structure of space. An uncertainty relation forbids a fully localized particle. The quantum dynamics is described by a discretized Klein Gordon equation.Comment: 58 pages, 3 eps figures, presentation of the classical theory improve