Start of the blog

My blog finally gets going on March 16 2008, a couple of days after Einstein's 129th birthday.

What will this blog be about? Will anyone read it? Let's leave both questions open. One may answer the other, and I'm not even sure in which order.

Still, let me tell you how I conceive this blog. The name, "tantu-jaal" (hindi: तन्तु जाल) literally means a web of strings. It also means "complexus" which in turn means "an aggregate of parts" (it has a medical meaning too, as a muscle at the back of the neck). Finally, tantu-jaal can mean "cobweb", which is of course a particular kind of string web. But I like to think of it metaphorically as the stuff that slowly expands to fill up our mind, whether we like it or not.

The main reason I chose this name is that I'm a string theorist, that is to say a physicist who does research on string theory. In addition I once wrote a paper dealing with "string webs" within this theory.

But the blog is not going to be mainly about theoretical physics. The world around us is a complex web of interacting situations. Our constant struggle is to simplify and make sense of this web. In the course of trying to understand the world, I find I keep talking to myself. Henceforth I will talk to my blog. I hope you find this interesting - but of course you are not obliged to.