Subject: Notes of two lectures

From: categories <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 20:00:16 -0300 (ADT)

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 1997 11:39:29 +1100
From: Ross Street <[email-masked]>

With computers, things we expect to be simple never are!

Last week I announced the placement on the WWW of the notes (see the short
description below) of my two lectures at the Conference on Higher Category
Theory and Mathematical Physics, Northwestern University (Evanston,
Illinois;  28-30 March 1997). The site is:

       <www-math.mpce.mq.edu.au/~coact/street_nw97.ps>

I'll spare you the details of the problems, but, up until today, what was
at this site was an old version prepared before the conference. This is not
what I had intended. I am truly sorry to people who have downloaded that
version already.

The correct version is NOW at the site. There still seems to be a problem
when the document is viewed (by some "ghost" technology) but it does (at
least for us) print out pretty well. There is a colour table on page 2
which even seems to view correctly!  I am extremely grateful to Ross Moore
and Sjoerd Crans for helping me out of the mess I (and my little Mac)
created.

I invite people who have downloaded the old version to try again; I am
really sorry.

Title: The role of Michael Batanin's monoidal globular categories
            Lecture I:  Globular categories and trees
            Lecture II: Higher operads and weak omega-categories

        This is a report on recent work of Michael Batanin. The goal of his
work is to provide an environment for defining the concepts associated with
weak omega-categories and for developing the ensuing theory.  The approach
is "globular".  Apart from providing a precise definition of weak
omega-category, the work gives a new algebra of planar trees and uses them
to define higher operads which I believe will find many other applications.

Note that, in the meantime (and again not without trouble!), Michael
Batanin has announced his paper containing the full details of this part of
his work. It is available at:
        <http://www-math.mpce.mq.edu.au/~mbatanin/papers.html>

Happy surfing and enjoy the trees.

Ross