Spiders, buildings, and geometric Satake

Louis Kauffman is a special description of the Jones polynomial and the representation
theory of U_q(SL(2))
in which each skein space has a basis of planar matchings. There is a similar
calculus (discovered independently by myself and the late François Jaeger) for
each of the three rank 2 simple Lie algebras A_2, A_2, and G_2.

These skein theories, called ``spiders