It is forty years on from the Dismissal, or coup, that ended the Whitlam government.
Riddle. Mystery. Enigma.
I appear in a rather excellent and fun episode of the ABC Radio National program Radiotonic.
Counting curves on surfaces, AustMS Sep 2015
On 30 September, 2015 I gave a talk at the Australian Mathematical Society Annual Meeting at Flinders University, in Adelaide. The talk was entitled “Counting curves on surfaces”. Slides from the talk are available.
Introduction to the AJ conjecture, Melbourne, August 2015
On 14 August 2015, I gave a talk in the Melbourne University Knot Invariant seminar, entitled “Introduction to the AJ conjecture”.
Why your calculator is a weapon
I gave a talk about the Defence Trade Cooperation Act, encryption, and number theory, as part of the Monash University LunchMaths seminar series, in August 2015. Slides are available.
Geometric quantisation and A-polynomials, June 2015
On 12 June, 2015 I gave a talk at the University of Melbourne, in the Moduli Spaces seminar. The talk was entitled “Geometric quantisation and calculation of A-polynomials”.
Every world in a grain of sand: John Nash’s astonishing geometry
After the recent tragic death of John Forbes Nash Jr, many tributes have been paid to this great mathematician, who was made famous by the movie “A Beautiful Mind”, and much has been said about his work on game theory. But less has been said about Nash’s other mathematical achievements.
The A-polynomial, symplectic geometry, and quantisation, May 2015
On 15 May, 2015 I gave a talk at the University of Melbourne, in the Moduli Spaces seminar. The talk was entitled “The A-polynomial, symplectic geometry, and quantisation”.
Paranoid defence controls could criminalise teaching encryption
You might not think that an academic computer science course could be classified as an export of military technology. But under the Defence Trade Controls Act – which passed into law in April, and will come into force next year – there is a real possibility that even seemingly innocuous educational and research activities could fall foul of Australian defence export control laws.
The CIA 119
Years and years on, abuses continue. Only in December 2014 did the US Senate Intelligence Committee release its summary of its report into the The CIA’s kidnapping (“rendition”) and torture programme.
It took nearly ten years after the fact for an official report to arrive.