local and remote seminars

In the morning, Jeremy Tinker (Berkeley) gave a nice seminar on halo occupation. He showed that by modifying halo occupation parameters, he can fit the two-point correlation functions of galaxies of different types in a wide range of cosmological models. But then he showed that if he used those models to predict other observables, like the void probability function or the mass-to-light ratios of groups from weak lensing or the multiplicity function for clusters, he can strongly distinguish models. His results are beautifully consistent, in the end, with WMAP results, and more constraining in some directions.

In the late afternoon I went to California to give a seminar at SLAC by videocon. This worked pretty well, although there are definite and strong limitations to communicating over the wire. The event was set up by Phil Marshall because he is exploring ways for astronomers to reduce their environmental footprints, and air travel sure is a big fraction of mine, according to the bible (and, indeed, any common-sense order-of-magnitude calculation). I avoid politics here, so no more said on this. As for the seminar, it was on my dynamical inference stuff. Phil even went so far as to arrange sit-down chats with various people there before and after my talk, which was very nice.

[The environment tag on this post is for HOD modeling, not carbon footprint.]

[Update next day: Phil sent me these photos taken by Kelen Tuttle (SLAC):]