  These lectures present an elementary discussion of some background material
relevant to the problem of de Sitter quantum gravity. The first two lectures
discuss the classical geometry of de Sitter space and properties of quantum
field theory on de Sitter space, especially the temperature and entropy of de
Sitter space. The final lecture contains a pedagogical discussion of the
appearance of the conformal group as an asymptotic symmetry group, which is
central to the dS/CFT correspondence. A (previously lacking) derivation of
asymptotically de Sitter boundary conditions is also given.
