The latest batch:
Sunday, 14 August 2022
Tuesday, 19 July 2022
that's no star!
Van Gogh updated with JWST image: stars are galaxies, swirls are gravitational lensing. Beautiful!
Van Gogh's starry night with the first image taken from the James Webb Telescope pic.twitter.com/ldmRiVjXQZ
— Jay Van Bavel (@jayvanbavel) July 15, 2022
Saturday, 2 July 2022
Tuesday, 14 June 2022
view from a hotel window
I'm at the University of Twente, Enschede, Netherlands, ready to be part of the committee at a PhD defence tomorrow. This is the first time I've been to a face to face defence in over two years. I was supposed to go to one in Norway last December, but then Omicron struck. I'm looking forward to an event not filtered through a small zoom rectangle.
UTwente has a hotel on campus: very convenient!
Wednesday, 8 June 2022
sabbatical location?
It's the last day of my visit, and I'm due to fly back this evening. Walking through MSU campus, I think I've found the ideal place for me to spend a sabbatical...
Sunday, 5 June 2022
a day at the beach
It's Sunday, so we went to the beach. Not the seaside, but rather a lakeside. Sauguck Dunes State Park on the shore of Lake Michigan, to be exact. We took something to eat, and sat looking at the lake for a while: it was very peaceful.
Despite the overcast sky, I still managed to get sunburned!
The walk from the carpark to the beach was through woodland. This looked like any ordinary woodland, except the path underfoot was sand. This wood was growing on the dunes.
Saturday, 4 June 2022
view from another hotel window
I had a great time at the GPTP workshop, with some fascinating presentations, and interesting conversations. I learned several new things: well worth the trip.
But to make the trip even more worthwhile, I'm going to visit some colleagues at Michigan State University next week, so I've moved hotel, to East Lansing. The view is a little less appealing.
Having unpacked, and photographed the view, I'm off to dinner with some colleagues...






