I wish I could try kindergarten again

One of my students put this on the bottom of the front page of her homework assignment. Pretty darn cool. (The writing in green ink is mine. I don't usually grade in red.)

It strongly reminds me of stuff we did in kindergarten, except possibly for the Pi. But I don't know, maybe my kindergarten wasn't as advanced as everyone else's.

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I realized that when I imagine people dressing up for school, I imagine everyone is wearing robes and House-colored ties like in the Harry Potter movies. Since we don't exactly have houses, our colors could be based on what we study. Symplectic things make me think of purple, and Lie group things make me think of green. Analysis should be red, and algebraic geometry yellow. Algebra makes me think of blue. I'm leaving a lot out. I'd have to give this some more thought.

And although I have nothing but warm feelings for purple and green, they are not generally my favorite colors to wear.

Which subject would be the mathematical equivalent of Slytherin? Hmmmmm...

I look forward to the day I graduate from Cornell. There are many reasons for this, but I think by far the most important one is that I'll get to wear a robe. This is dangerous though, because I'm pretty sure that once I put that robe on, it is never ever ever coming off again. Robes are a LOT of fun.

Technology in the bathroom

I covered my friend Sarah's classes last Wednesday and Friday, while she was out in the world spreading the good word of complex dynamics. I decided to dress up.

I had to wear a tie every day when I worked in a pharmacy (since apparently someone wearing a tie is less likely to miscount pills), but here in graduate school we only really have a chance to dress up once a year, at our Holiday Party. (Your last year is an exception, since it's not unusual to dress up for your thesis defense, the department graduation ceremony, and the university graduation ceremony.) I'm not in favor of mandatory dressing up for classes, but occasionally I think it's funny. I mean, fun.

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Have you ever been in the bathroom and you hear someone in a stall talking to themselves? And then you realize that he's talking on his cell phone? (My use of male pronouns is not meant to suggest that only men do this, but rather that I've never been in a bathroom where it's a woman who's in the stall. At least not that I'm aware of.) The first time this happened to me, I thought it was incredibly weird and inappropriate. This opinion has not changed with repetition of the occurrence, but I now realize that it's not so uncommon. I still find it a little disturbing.

On the other hand, last week I was at the urinal, and the guy next to me had his iPod and headphones on. It was on so loud that I could hear it. I think I approve of this. I like peeing to a soundtrack. (It would probably depend what kind of music it is. This requires further thought.)

I'm sure that part of the reason the music was so easy to hear is that men's rooms are, as a rule, as quiet as the vacuum of space. Up until this cell phone thing, talking in a men's room was considered the very baddest of bad form.

This is not completely true. Sometimes there is talking, but this is fairly unusual. Usually a friendly nod of recognition, or even a neutral nod of recognition, is more than enough.

I remember several years ago a friend telling me about a computer game whose object was to choose the optimal urinal in a men's room, in different situations. Things to take into consideration are that you don't want to be too near the door or the sinks, and you want to maximize your distance from everyone else. Specific conditions of the particular urinals would also come into play. Clearly someone was not wasting his time while using the urinal. Someone was thinking.

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Speaking of technology in the bathroom, what do we think of these automated faucets, soap dispensers, and paper towel/hot air dispensers? I myself am perfectly okay with the faucets. It's true that sometimes the water doesn't stay on long enough, but this is no worse than those faucets with the spring-loaded handles. It's a question of adjustment, not complete reconception.

The paper towel and/or hot air dispensers I am not too happy with. I have had too many bad experiences with these contraptions. I have memories of waving my hands underneath with varying speeds and at varying angles. I try making different gestures with my fingers. I try standing in a different position relative to the machine. And I usually end up just using my pants.

And the automated soap dispensers. Hmmm. This may be particular to me. Tell me if I'm crazy. I find these machines far too reminiscent of the male aspect of the culmination of the sexual act for comfort.

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New topic. As I was driving to school this afternoon, I noticed something very sad. Along the road there had been a large hilly area of thick grass, bordered on the far sides by dabbles of forest. This road is how I usually walk to school, when I walk to school, and I've always thought this part quite lovely and peaceful and enjoyable. A couple of weeks ago I noticed some chain link fences going up, and indeed when I drove past it today, I saw the beginnings of some large construction project.

This is nothing particularly unusual for Cornell, or really for any college, large or small. But it was still disappointing.

The thing that really struck me is that, across the street from this, there are also nice hilly areas of grass, bordered by trees. The difference is that this second site is home to a gold course.

So on one side of the road we have a beautiful little pastoral picture, thick and lovely and green for at least three seasons out of the year. On the other side we have the same basic scene, except sporadically decorated with sandtraps and flags and tiny little cars. One useless (materially speaking), one used for golf. And we destroy the useless one.

I like golf, but I can't help but feel that our priorities are not exactly where they should be.

To sooth you, here is another wonderful photo of dressed-up Tim.

Dream come true.

This is a picture of my tongue after consuming a fruit punch-flavored lollipop. The pop itself was red, but for some reason turned my tongue extremely pink. I went up to my office mate and asked him if he wanted to see something weird. He said yes, so I stuck out my tongue. He gave out a little yelp and hopped back a bit.

I was thinking it might be fun to collect pictures of me with my tongue different colors, and in fact tonight I had a blue raspberry beverage at the movies and it turned my tongue blue. I took a couple of pictures with my phone, but for some reason they seem a lot more disgusting than the one above, so I'll try to repeat the experiment some other time.

It is not to this whole thing that the title of this entry refers. (I originally wrote that sentence ending in "to", but changed to avoid the hanging preposition. It seems much more awkward now, but I think it has a kind of fascinating ugliness.)

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Tonight I got to do something I've thought about doing many, many times before. Have you ever been waiting to turn left at a red light, and the light is taking forever to change, and absolutely no other car is in sight anywhere? Have you ever thought about making a right turn on the red light, making a U-turn, and then going through the light that has not changed and so is still green?

Well, tonight I did it. I was waiting at a light, and for at least two solid minutes the light did not change. Absolutely, positively no one in sight. It was 2:30 AM. So I changed my directional signal from left to right, looked both ways (and indeed there was still no one in sight), and made the right turn. I went a very short way, put on my left turn signal, checked in front of me and behind me, and made a quick U-turn. The light was still unchanged (and indeed may very well be unchanged now still), so I went through it.

It. Was. Awesome.

I highly recommend you try it, at least once in your life.

More solutions in the back of the book.

No, wait! I remember what I wanted to finish with.

Here is my solution to dealing with answers in the back of the book, if I am the teacher in charge. For each problem I assign, tell them to replace the numbers in the problem with different numbers I give them. So, they can still do the original problems and check their answers with the ones in the back of the book, but they don't know the answer to the assigned problem! And so the grader is off the hook.

I should say that, when I am taking a course, I greatly appreciate having the answers in the back. It's very helpful. I wish more advanced textbooks did this. I wish to God that more advanced textbooks did this. And some of them, God bless them, do. But solutions for more advanced texts are usually not short things, so I kind of understand why they're usually not included.

Solutions are good for students, but bad for graders.

Solutions in the back of the book.

This semester, my Teaching Assistant assignment is being the grader for two courses. They are both upper-level undergraduate courses, having to do with math that's in my neck of the woods. The topics and assignments are pretty fun. One of them, Matrix Groups, is taught by my advisor. It's a tough course, with tough assignments. True to form, all of his assignments are really interesting and lead the exercise-ee to wonderful and useful mathematical topics.

But I want to write today about the other course, Differential Forms and Manifolds. We're working out of a textbook by Stephen Weintraub. It's a nice book, although not as sophisticated as some others. The course is usually taught out of a really fantastic set of notes written by my advisor, but someone somewhere decided that the course would use Weintraub's book this semester instead. This is fine. It's a nice enough book.

What is bothering me is that nearly all of the solutions are in the back of the book. These are not step-by-step solutions, just the final answers. But by allowing students access to the final answers, the textbook has short-circuited one of the grader's most important shortcuts.

This is only a 50% TA assignment for me, so even though there are fewer than 10 students in the class, there's no way I can read and think about every single word and symbol in the students' homeworks. But I usually don't have to. I can check certain key parts of their solutions, and I can see if their answers have the right "shape". If they were doing the correct calculations, if they have set up the correct integrals, the formulas should have a certain length and complexity, and in general a certain shape. Certain precise parts of the content may be incorrect, but they are probably only minor mistakes. And of course, the grader can check the students' final answers.

(This technique, of checking the "shape" of a student's solution, is also applicable to grading proofs as well as calculations, which is very convenient. When a math problem asks you to prove something, you usually already know what the final answer should be, so there's no sense in the grader checking that. Although, students do have a remarkable capacity for being stupid (or, if you prefer, for making silly mistakes). And of course, this included graduate students ...)

This is not high school math, or even beginning college math. The answers are not usually 1 or 5 or -2. More often, they are things like -95/3, or 3252 times Pi, or the square root of 5 divided by negative 2. Barring students copying from one another, you've got to figure that the answers are generally such weird numbers that there is simply no way that the student could have gotten the right answer without doing the problem correctly, unless there was some miraculous alignment of multiple mistakes.

But if the students already know what the final answer is, all bets are off! There is an exception, and this is in the wonderful circumstance that the answer in the back of the book is correct. Then the grader can go to town with the red ink.

I found this especially troubling in the last assignment, which dealt with the Generalized Stokes' Theorem. This marvelous theorem connects integrals over a manifold with integrals over its boundary. In a sense, it is simply an extension of the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus to much more complicated situations. I never actually learned the theorem in Multivariable Calculus. We didn't get that far. My first real exposure to it was when I took Differentiable Manifolds as a second-year grad student.

So in most of last week's exercises, the students were asked to verify Stokes' Theorem, for different objects. This amounted to computing an integral over a manifold, which was always a surface or solid body in three-dimensional space; then figuring out what the boundary of the manifold is, which would have been several curves or several surfaces; then computing some other integrals over the boundary of the manifold; and finally showing the these integrals gave you the same answer. This last part means showing that one number is equal to the sum of the others.

The main complication is that you actually want to add some of the numbers, and subtract the others. This has to do with orientations, which is a subtle and sneaky and confusing topic, and it's clear that many of the students have yet to come to grips with it.

Here's the problem. Usually there were only two numbers to put together, i.e. the boundary consisted of two pieces, and the only question is whether you add them, negate both of them and add them, negate one of them and add them, or negate the other and add them. But it's impossible to tell whether they really knew what they were doing, because they already knew what answer they were supposed to get, so they just did whatever gave the right answer!

If they only knew what answer they should get based on the other integral they calculated, that would be fine. Because then one calculation serves as a check for the other. But for all the integrals, they already knew what answer they should have been getting! The book told them! I had students who weren't able to do the problem, but who wrote down what the answer should be! As if that was an astonishing announcement!

I sense that I am ranting. I think I'll get back to work now.

Middle autumn

I can't believe I was writing about Autumn back in July. And now we're in the middle of October, and Autumn is here. My apartment is pretty well-decorated with pumpkin stuff. I have a pumpkin carpet, a pumpkin soap dispenser, a pumpkin cookie jar, a smaller pumpkin candy jar, a large pumpkin candle holder, a small pumpkin candle holder, various pumpkin- and fall-scented candles, and a fall-scented plug-in air freshener. I also added a large Nightmare Before Christmas poster to my walls. Actually, the poster looks like this, only larger and printed on paper.

I haven't quite come up with a Halloween costume yet, but I'm working on some ideas.

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I'm back in Saugerties for the first time in a month and a half. I went to college and lived in a dorm for four years, and I've been in graduate school in another city 150 miles away for four years, but it was only recently that it really felt like I had left home. In the past it's never been more than three weeks between visits home.

It's kind of weird.

Part of it, I think, is that my parents have been working on upgrading our [their] house. They built a new front steps and porch area, and plan to redo the front sidewalk, the roof, and all of the windows. They are going to tear down and rebuild our back deck and back porch. I love our back deck and porch.

I'm not exactly thrilled about all of this.

But they are incredibly excited, although they keep running into difficulties regarding designs, workers, and cost. Every time we talk, they give me the latest updates. It's a little awkward, because I'm feeling nervous and ambivalent and a little angry, but I listen quietly and make enthusiastic noises because I know how happy they are about this. And I know that when it's done it will be amazing, but I've always had trouble letting things go. That's why I'm not a Buddha yet. Or why I haven't realized my true Buddha nature yet. Or something.

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Here are some messages I found on some hot sauce packets from Taco Bell.

1. "I'm just doing this between films." (mild)
   
2. "Help! I can't tell where I am. It's dark and I can hear laughing." (mild and fire)
   
3. "Will you scratch my back?" (mild)
   
4. "I'm taking the day off. See next packet." (hot)
   
5. "Tah Day!" (fire)
   
6. "I collect straws." (fire)
   
7. "Can I drive?" (fire)
   
   

My favorites are the second and last ones.

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I'm in Saugerties because tomorrow there is an undergraduate mathematics conference being held at my undergraduate alma mater, Bard College. I was asked to be on a panel that will discuss and answer questions about graduate school. (For God's sake, just get out! Get out while you still can! You'll never leave!) As far as I can tell, I am the only graduate student on this panel, which will be filled out with professors. I think this is very funny.

When I was at Bard, there were three, arguably four, mathematicians in the department. They've really expanded! And they fancified their webpage too!

While I was checking out the website, I found something a little disturbing. I think I may have discovered an alternate-dimension version of me, only a lot smarter. (Seriously. Check out his research interests!) It's spooky.

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I read a wonderful quote today, by Lord Byron.

To have joy one must share it.
Happiness was born a twin.


I think it's clear what this means. I really need a girlfriend.

I think that may have to be it for now. I'm very sleepy.

Early autumn

I think one of my primary personality components is passivity. Given a choice of doing something or doing nothing, my initial response is almost always to do nothing. It's more than inertia alone can account for. My preferred position usually consists of waiting and watching. It's almost ridiculous sometimes. I'll bet that when I'm aggressive, it comes out as passive-aggression.

Actually that's not true. I'm told that when I'm angry or annoyed, it's almost impossible for me to hide it. I know that this is especially true when I don't like someone. I'm told that my transparency on these occasions puts the finest glass to shame. My father is like this too. I'm not sure I ever noticed it myself, but he told me about it. My mother is not like this at all. She is one of the most politic people I know, or have even heard of. I think it's more civility than dishonesty. This may explain why she's more of a people-person than either me or my father, although she's definitely more introverted than average.

The weather today was miraculous. Bright blue skies, big fluffy clouds, sun but not too bright, pleasant gusts of wind. And the temperature, oh, the temperature! I felt so close to fall I could almost taste it.

I love fall. I love Halloween and Thanksgiving, and the start of school. (I love all the new students. Girls a little bit more, but also the boys.) I love apples and apple orchards, and I positively adore pumpkins and pumpkin patches and pumpkin pie. (I only like apple pie, but I love pumpkin pie.)

In the book Idlewild by Nick Sagan, there's a character who has his own little pocket reality, where he is called Halloween and lives in a creepy castle and commands a household staff of ghosts and vampires and monsters. This fun little Halloween world plays little role in the main story of the book, and has no presence at all in the two sequels, except that the character continues to go by the name Halloween. To be perfectly honest, I wasn't took taken with the book on first reading, but the second time through I really liked, and then plowed through its sequels. It's a very interesting story of how humanity comes back from the brink of extinction. And of course, Nick Sagan is the son of Carl Sagan, who was a great proponent of space exploration, a wonderful writer, and professor at Cornell.

I've been rewatching a lot of The West Wing lately. I feel like there was something funny or important or poignant that I wanted to say about this, but for the life of me I can't remember what. So instead I'll just point out that it, or at least the first four seasons of it, are brilliant and amazing. (The later seasons may also be brilliant and amazing, but I haven't really seen them, so I can't say for sure.)

I saw a great note written on a Wendy's French fries container.

Please note the adorable but totally irrelevant mathematical symbols on the left. So I guess what they're working with is their classic burger, which has buns, some number of beef patties, and toppings. The toppings, unless I'm wrong, are cheese (American), lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, mustard, ketchup, and mayonnaise. Since 256 is 2 raised to the eighth power, and I've only listed 7 toppings, I suppose they must have included bacon. I thought bacon was only available on particular burgers, none of which, to my knowledge, include those 7 other toppings. But what do I know?

I just started rereading an amazing comic book. It was a limited series called Secret Identity, written by Kurt Busiek and illustrated by Stuart Immonen. Busiek is a major heavy hitter in comic book land. He wrote Astro City and Marvels, both of which are incredible, although I think Kingdom Come kicked Marvels' butt. Off the top of my head all I know that Immonen has drawn is many issues of Superman and some issues of X-Men, but he's one of my favorite comic book artists.

The story is basically set in our world as it is, where a Kansas couple by the name of Kent have a son with dark hair and blue eyes who they, in poor humor, named Clark. Every birthday and Christmas, his relatives and friends shower him with Superman-themed gifts, which he accepts with a smile and later quietly adds to the growing pile in his closet. Then, one otherwise perfectly normal day, he suddenly develops super-powers. Superman super-powers. It sounds funny or maybe silly, but it is a brilliant and somber and fascinating story, with absolutely gorgeous illustration. I originally bought and read it in four installments, but I think now you can get it as one collected book.

Although it's been quite some time since I first read it, and so far I have only reread the first ten pages or so, I recommend it most heartily. It is just lovely.

I think that's all for now.

A miracle occurred.

The most amazing thing just happened. I just started watching an episode of Futurama that I'd never seen before.

At least, that's what I thought. About ten minutes into it, I realized that it was just an episode that I'd never entirely seen before. I've seen the last five minutes of it a couple of times, but that's all. (This is the episode, by the way.)

I remember being a little freaked out by it, just as I'm freaked out generally by werewolves and the incredible Hulk. I think if I were able to catalog all the nightmares I've ever had and form a subject index, the Hulk would have the most references.

The title of this entry makes me chuckle, because of another Futurama episode. (This one.) Fry and Bender enlist in Earth's military in order to get a discount at the convenience store. Just after signing up, the fellas ask the recruiting officer if they can just quit after using the discount. He replies, "Sure, unless war were declared." Then huge sirens go off all over the place, and Fry and Bender yell, "What's that?" The officer replies, "War were declared."

Bwahahahahahaha!

On a different topic, I've just rediscovered that I really really really really really ought to just sit down and read through the textbook Lie groups, by Duistermaat and Kolk. Several times, I've been trying and trying to figure something out for myself, or figure out the details of something my advisor has told me about, and I've finally cracked open that book and found it all written out.

The detail of the book is somewhat excruciating, and there's an analytical and/or differential equations feel to some of it, but that's just what makes it such a good book. The authors actually worked it all out and wrote it all down.

Plus, Professor Duistermaat was my advisor's advisor, which is really cool. Plus, I exchanged emails with Professor Kolk once, and he seemed very friendly.

Plus, in the forward of the book, after thanking various mathematicians for their assistance, input, etc. Professor Kolk thanks his cardiologist for his contribution in helping the book get published.

How cool is that?

Joe Cool

I just returned to Ithaca from my hometown of Saugerties. On the way I stopped in Albany to visit and dine with one of my favorite, most talented, and most beautiful friends. It was really great.

My trip from Albany to here was somewhat eventful. The first event was when I was at a tollbooth exiting the NYS Thruway onto Route 88. There was only one lane open for cash, and there was just a single car in line there. I assumed that by the time I came to a full stop, it would be my turn, and I could pay my quarter and be on my way. Unfortunately, this was not to be. I was actually waiting in that spot for a full five minutes, mere feet from freedom.

During this time, the toll-person and the driver exchanged pieces of paper several times, the toll-person performed several unknown actions in her booth and pointed in several directions for the driver, and, judging by the amount of time and gesticulation, solved what I can only assume was the problem of world hunger. Or perhaps war.

Out of context, five minutes doesn't seem like a lot of time. But these minutes flowed with the same syrupy lack of speed as "waiting for Christmas morning" minutes, or "waiting for the bus" minutes, or "stuffed in the back of a non-ventilated, non-air-conditioned car" minutes. Or "football minutes."

The time waiting at the tollbooth, behind a single car that was already there for several minutes before I was, defined for me a new type of minute. This minute is a goliath, standing in for almost an hour's worth of its brethren. It was incredible. But, as alluded to in the title of this entry, I was as cool as a cucumber, and waited out my subjective hour, without going any further than the merest contemplation of violence.

There was no further excitement until I got off of Route 88 and started on the smaller roads. These are not roads where lighting is a high priority, and it makes driving at night very interesting. I had just come over a hill and shut off my high beams for an upcoming motorcycle when I saw something dart across the road, inches from the front of my car. It was a (very lucky) deer. It was freaky, but I was Joe Cool. I had been whistling along (I had already lost my voice from too much singing) to a Billy Joel song, and I didn't even miss a beat. This was even more amazing if you consider the fact that my heart stopped for about half a minute. Apparently heartbeat is not a prerequisite for whistling, at least not locally.

A bit later on the road, I had to steer a quick bump into my path to avoid a possum who was hanging out on the road in the middle of my lane. (He didn't even have time to pretend he was dead, although he did give me a panicked look.)

Finally, a bit later on, as I came to the top of a little hill a bat performed a nice swoop tangent to my windshield.

This is not to mention the other deer and the several cats I saw who didn't cross my path.

So I claim credit for not running over the possum, but the deer and the bat did it all on their own.

Crazy, man.

Lyrics to a fantastic song

To Morrow

I started on a journey just about a year ago
To a little town called Morrow in the state of Ohio.
I've never been much of a traveller and I really didn't know
That Morrow was the hardest place I'd ever try to go.

So I went down to the station for my ticket and applied
For tips regarding Morrow, not expecting to be guyed.
Said I, "My friend, I'd like to get to Morrow and return
No later than tomorrow for I haven't time to burn."

Said he to me "Now let me see if I have heard you right.
You'd like to go to Morrow and return tomorrow night.
You should have gone to Morrow yesterday and back today
for the train that goes to Morrow is a mile upon its way.

"If you had gone to Morrow yesterday now don't you see
You could have gone to Morrow and returned today at three,
For the train today to Morrow if the schedule is right,
Today it gets to Morrow and returns tomorrow night."

Said I "I'd like to go to Morrow, so can I go today
and get to Morrow by tonight if there is no delay?"
Well well I said to him, and I've got no more to say,
"Can you get anywhere tomorrow and get back again today"

Said I "I guess you know it all but kindly let me say
how can I get to Morrow if I leave this town today"
Said he "you cannot go to Morrow anymore today
for the train that goes to Morrow is a mile upon its way".

I was so disappointed, I was mad enough to swear
The train had gone to Morrow and it left me standing there.
The man was right in tellin' me "you are a howling jay,
You cannot go tomorrow." Well I guess in town I'll say.

The best $38.87 I ever spent.

Before I get started, I want to apologize. I just scanned my last entry, and I think it was poorly organized and spent too much space on uninteresting topics. My apologies.

Now, on with the show. Today I bought season one of The Muppet Show. It was the best thirty-eight dollars and eighty-seven cents I ever spent. Ever.

I think my favorite character is Zoot, the sleepy saxophonist named Zoot. (His picture is above.) Or maybe it's the comedic duo of Statler and Waldorf, pictured below.



The show is brilliant. I just watched Ruth Buzzi wrestle the monstrous to the ground. Amazing, absolutely amazing. And now she just tickled Kermit the Frog to the ground.

Writing down the dollar amount reminded me of something funny that a fellow math grad student told me. You know when you're spelling out the dollar amount on a check, and then you write the change as a fractional number of dollars? (Fifty-two cents is written 52/100.) Well, he said that he used to sometimes reduce the fraction. So instead of 52/100, he would write 13/25. He said that he stopped doing this after a store refused to take the check and made him write out another one.

This morning I saw a Time Warner Cable truck drive by, and it was inscribed with their current motto: "Time Warner Cable - The Power of You". I thought of another way of writing it.

st² + u^{Time Warner Cable} + x²y³

Do you get it?

I am such a girl.

Let me tell you about my most recent favorite movie. It is The Family Stone. It is a sweet and funny little movie about a family gathering together at Christmas. The children are all adults now, at least age-wise. One is married and pregnant with her second child, one is deaf and gay and married (or some legal equivalent) and in the process adopting a child with his partner, and two are apparently unattached, and one has just brought home the woman he intends to marry. This last is the main initiator of dramatic tension, because the lady-love is uptight and formal, in great contrast to the warm and fuzzy and slightly overbearing rest of the family. It's quite wonderful.

Just before that, I was somewhat obsessed with Love Actually. I can't remember exactly what was before that, but I'm sure it was something in the same neighborhood as far as mushiness goes.

Ok, I remember. Before that it was Bend It Like Beckham.

During my first year of college, I watched several movies over and over. (We didn't have cable in our rooms, or really anywhere on campus at the time, I think.) One of the ones I watched the most was My Best Friend's Wedding. I didn't really think I watched it that much, but several years later I heard that someone once asked my first-year roommate about me, and he replied that he had been a little weirded-out sometimes, because I watched that movie so often.

So it seems to be both my choice of movies and my willingness to watch them over and over and over.

I think part of it might be genetic. My mom isn't too much of a movie person, but my dad sure is. He loves escapist movies of all kinds, and he is definitely not shy about watching movies again and again. I recently brought a longtime campaign to a successful finish, regarding my dad. I'd been trying to get him to watch Love Actually. He was hesitant, primarily because he really doesn't like Hugh Grant. (My dad doesn't easily separate actors skills from their private lives, and he really hated certain parts of Grant's private life. My best friend in high school and I had similar issues regarding talking about girls, and specifically which ones were hot, etc. He would have trouble admitting that a girl was attractive if she also happened to be a jerk, whereas I was readily willing to separate these qualities -- for purposes of discussion only, of course.) (I may have made up some of that. That was more than ten years ago.) So, it took many visits for me to get my dad to watch the movie, but I finally succeeded last weekend. And of course, he loved it. He downloaded it onto his iPod and watched it several more times while commuting to work. (He commutes by bus. He wasn't driving and watching the movie.)

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I feel it's important to point out that not all movies I watch, and not even all movies I love, are mushy. I have like and love all sorts of movies. That's actually another quality regarding me and movie-watching that some people find unnerving, or at least a little strange. I like almost every movie I see.

I don't love every movie I see, but I probably love a lot more of them than most people, and I certainly like a lot more. It's difficult to find movies I've seen that I didn't like. Part of this is that I don't go to see movies I don't think I'll like (usually), but still, I watch a hell of a lot of movies. So when my close friends ask me if a movie was good, they know to take my answer with a grain of salt. And I have learned to separate my judgments into two parts:

(1) Did I like it?
(2) Was it good? (Would anyone else like it?)

There are two notable exceptions that spring to mind. I hated Black Hawk Down. To be fair, this was a predictable outcome, and I probably shouldn't have seen it in the first place. It was not my kind of movie. I also disliked Sideways. It wasn't awful, but I definitely didn't think it was that great, and I seemed to be stupendously in the minority. Still, I would watch Sideways again, but not Black Hawk Down.

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Two more things, on similar notes.

My ex-girlfriend used to change the Lifetime Channel's motto from "Lifetime - television for women", to "Lifetime - television for Tim". (There was a time when I was really into Golden Girls.)

Also, it's not just certain mushy movies that I've become obsessed with and watched repeatedly. Sometimes it's dumb kids movies, like Snow Day. And sometimes it's dumb comedies, like Road Trip and Boat Trip (and others that don't have "trip" in the title).

I am a man of strange tastes and strange habits.

But aren't most of us?

(At least, those of us who are men. The rest are women of strange tastes and habits. And I guess there are other categories, but I'll stop here.)

Missed one.

In my last message, when I was identifying potential origins for Skynet, I completely forgot about an extremely obvious one.

Google.

Google seems especially dangerous because everything they do and offer works so very well. What I am writing right this minute will soon be posted on a Google-affiliated site, Blogger. My primary email address is a Gmail one. The search engine I use, almost exclusively, is Google.

Do you know where the name Google comes from? According to the all-knowing Wikipedia, it was originally inspired by googol, which is the name of a very large number, namely 1 followed by 100 zeros. Somewhere along the line there was a spelling mistake, and thus Google was born.

I am beginning to suspect that I didn't really forget to add Google to the list in my last post. I think I may have been subconsciously influenced by Blogger. Or maybe I actually did add it to my list, but then Blogger automatically censored it. And then mind-wiped me as well.

I'll have to be more careful about this in the future.

Pay close attention.

I am an avid fan of science fiction, and a strong believer that science fiction is sometimes little more than foreshadowing of science fact. So I am always on the lookout for the place where Skynet may be born. (Skynet is very likely to give rise to humankind's mechanical adversaries in The Matrix Trilogy, and very possibly the villainous Borg. Although, it is probably quite terra-centric to think that the Borg will originate from us.)

For a long time, my suspicions centered around Microsoft. I know I was not alone. A global giant with tendrils pervading almost every corner of our highest technologies. I was a Windows user for a long time, and some small part of me couldn't help but feel guilty for lending support to the monster that might one day seek to enslave us all.

That small part of me felt much better several years ago when I switched to Mac. I don't think I'm ever going to go back. If I ever get around to learning Unix and Linux and the other "x"'s to a good enough degree, I might ditch both Windows and Mac altogether, but I don't see this happening.

At first I was deliriously happy, swept up in the wonders of machines that generally do not freeze and an entire subculture of hardware and software designed to be attractive and cool. But coolness and I have never been a particularly compatible couple, and the extreme hipness began to make me very nervous. I'll admit that the Mac and PC ads are very clever, and they definitely hit a particular cord with me. But I don't think it's a very good idea to alienate hardcore nerds. I don't think it's a very good idea at all.

So I became suspicious of Apple. It's a hipster juggernaut of coolness. And suddenly it's incredibly cool, and essentially necessary in this particular culture, to own some piece of Apple technology. And the names, oh the names. iPod, iBook, iPhone, iChat, iTunes.

iSkynet.

I've asked around, I've done internet research, I've inquired at Apple Stores. Nobody seems to know what the "i" is for. I don't either, but such a catchy naming technique with no basis other than catchiness makes me upset.

And don't even get me started on the Genius Bars. Yes, a cute little hipster girl wearing a shirt that says "Genius" is generally pretty hot. But even then it's almost impossible to miss the invisible stain of arrogance.

I don't know if I was alone in being so suspicious of Apple, at least with regard to the future subservience of mankind to machines. But recently I have identified a new threat. It is named Facebook.

I started out no more wary of Facebook than I was of Friendster or MySpace, or any of many similar types of sites. This is to say, I was pretty wary. But I saw them as mostly harmless, so long as you don't post any information on them that you wouldn't be comfortable having anyone in the world knowing. And I still believe that if you stick to this rule, there's no harm done. The trick is recognizing just how much information you're really giving them.

At some point I watched this video. I don't know how much of it is truth, but I think all of it is eminently believable. And eminently terrifying.

Not only are you forking over all the information about you that you explicitly post, but you are also revealing oodles of facts implicitly, in the form of your friends, your networks, your email addresses, etc. etc. etc. And is it really so hard to believe that somewhere out there is a government agency that's collecting and collating all of this information, just in case. Just in case. In case of what? It doesn't take too much thought to come up with some pretty scary substitutions for the word "what".

And Facebook just gets better and better. Tell everybody about your summer plans. (I can't actually remember any others, but they all strike me as creepily invasive.) And people fill these out happily! To be filed away for future use by anyone, or anything, that's watching!!

The latest change is the one that really floored me, and the one that inspired this entry. The opening screen now invites you to enter your email addresses and passwords, and Facebook will automatically go through your addressbooks and email Facebook invitations to everyone listed. Your email address and your passwords. Holy mother of pearl (who, incidentally, is Hester Prynne).

Does it really come as any surprise that Skynet may very well develope directly from the United States government, whether it be the visible component of the government or one of the less visible parts? Frankly, I'm not sure which makes me more nervous. The idea of Skynet having all of my personal information, or the idea of the current administration and co. having it.

So pay close attention. Keep your eyes peeled. It's only paranoia if you're wrong.

Immune to behavioral learning.

I spent some unknown but very large number of hours this weekend reading the entire archive of comics at Questionable Content. There were a bit more than eight hundred of them. One of them really struck me. It was this one. Check out the very last word balloon.

---

As I write this, I am halfway through a bottle of Magic Hat beer. It's kind of wonky. Not wonky in the sense that it's stale or contaminated, but wonky in the sense that I don't really like it that much. It has a few too many flavors for my taste. I prefer light and simple beers, and I'm not really much of a big drinker. (With regards to alcohol is really the only way in which it can be said that I am a lightweight.) As I drink this beer, which I don't want to waste, I remember that I have tried Magic Hat in the past several times, always with similar results. Apparently I am partially immune to behavioral learning.

This reminds me of some other silly thing I did recently. Last year I was trying to find a new pair of sneakers. After exhausting, but probably not exhaustive, searching of the internet, I found a pair that I liked that seemed like it might be wide enough for my feet. I tried them out for a couple of days, and each day after a bit of walking I would have this awful pain in my feet. It felt like nails were being driven through the bottom. I thought this might abate when I wore them in, but after a week that didn't seem to happen, so I put them in the back of my closet. Periodically I would pull them out and try them out for a day, and then spend that night rubbing my feet and smacking myself in the head.

So remember that oddly unseasonal blizzard we got a week and a half ago? (I took a bunch of pictures during it. There's absolutely nothing remarkable about them, until you consider the date they were taken.) I was outside when it started snowing. It was late at night and I couldn't sleep, so I decided to go for a little jog. I decided to wear the devil-sneakers, figuring that.... actually, I can't even justify it. It was too dumb. So I started out, jogging and walking and jogging and walking. It was sprinkling rain when I started, but about halfway through it became freezing rain with a little snow thrown in, and I swear that the temperature dropped ten degrees. (I won't specify whether the degrees were Farenheit or Celcius, since it's just an estimate anyway, but isn't it kind of interesting that the two measures are different but both called "degrees"?) By then, of course, my sneakers had put the nails back in my feet again. My return trip to my apartment had an epic feel to it, like the seeker of truth hiking through snow-buried mountains searching for the ancient hidden monastery. I almost, almost took my shoes off and walked in my socks, but it just seemed to cold for that.

Evidently, I did make it back to my apartment. A hot bath did wonders, but the combination of the weather, the damn sneakers, and the unusual (for me) amount of exercise gave me a limp for the better part of a week.

Dear Lord, grant me the wisdom not to buy and Magic Hat beer for myself again, and never again to wear those evil sneakers. (I was thinking of doing a version of the entire Serenity Prayer, but I don't think it's worth the trouble. It wouldn't actually be that funny.)

Actually, the nice thing about being an alcohol-lightweight is that even half a bottle of beer affects me enough that it vastly improves the taste of the rest of the bottle.

---

Yesterday I went to the Ithaca Farmers' market with my friends Hannah and Josh. It was awesome. I absolutely cannot believe that I'd never been there before. It's set up right on the water of an inlet off of Lake Cayuga, and all the stands are set up in this giant beautiful wooden structure. I took a bunch of pictures, which you can see here. I would say more about it, but I think everything I wanted to say is in the captions to the pictures.

I didn't post the last picture I took on that role, and here is why. Josh and Hannah dropped me off at my apartment, and as I was walking towards my building I saw a small pack of little kids, all girls, walking ahead of me on the sidewalk wearing swimsuits and carrying towels. I was a bit confused, because we're not really very close to any water, and there's no swimming pool or anything. Then I noticed they were also carrying two large buckets filled with water, each with a plastic cup floating in them. They stopped on the sidewalk, and as I walked past I saw one of them pick up a cup, scoop up some water, and throw it at another girl. Then the other girl did the same thing to someone else. I thought this was absolutely hysterical, and took a picture. I took it from far away, so as not to seem like a pervert (although in retrospect I'm not sure which way I tipped the odds on that one). Unfortunately, the picture didn't really capture what was going on, nor even the fact that these were little girls. It just looks like a distance shot of some girls in swimsuits. But you should have seen them. It was so funny. They just stood there in a circle, throwing water at each other.

Eww.

I think I have to train my cat to strike a match after using the litter box.

Cirque du so long, sucker!

I am very excited. Last night I finished my first draft of an actual math paper I've been writing. (It was actually my second or third draft, but it's the first draft I've submitted to my advisor for his perusal.) It's working title was originally Untitled paper, but more recently I've changed it to A convexity result for the involution fixed set of a Borel invariant variety. (I think I prefer the first one.)

There's nothing earth-shattering, or even really remotely important. It takes results from two papers that my author cowrote and mashes them together. My understanding is that at the end of last summer, or maybe at the end of winter break - I can't remember! - my advisor gave a talk at a workshop somewhere overseas. His talk included describing the results of these two papers, and saying that you could put these two results together. It was obviously true, but he thought about it and realized that it wasn't trivially true, so he put me to work on it, God bless him. It was probably more work for him to have me do it, since he had to guide me through most of it, so again, God bless him.

---

The title of this entry comes from something really cool I saw over the weekend. You may remember the TV show Mystery Science Theatre 3000, where a guy and a couple of robots (voiced by some other guy or guys) would watch old sci-fi movies and make fun of them. It was AWESOME. Well, some of the people involved set up a website called Riff Trax, where for a small fee you can download audio files that you play simultaneously with certain movies, which you have to obtain separately. The result is an MST3000-style situation, minus the robots. It's hysterically funny.

On Saturday my friends and I watched both The Matrix and Reign of Fire with Riff Trax accompaniment. (Of course, the former movie is spectacular, while the second is spectacularly awful, but vis-a-vis Riff Trax they are equally entertaining.) My favorite part was from the end of The Matrix, where Neo and Agent Smith are grappling on subway tracks as a train barrels down on them. At the last second, Neo does a slow-motion backflip off of the tracks onto the platform, dodging the train and leaving Agent Smith to get (temporarily) squished. (Of course, Neo probably only did a regular backflip, and the slow-motion was added later.) As this is happening, the Riff Trax audio says "Cirque du So long, sucker!" And just after that happened, I thought I was going to die for lack of air from laughing too hard.

I think I'm going to sign all of my future emails that way. (This is not strictly true. The first email I remember sending after seeing this was to my advisor, sending him my paper. I did not sign it that way. I hope.)

---

So how about this weather, huh? What an insane April! There are probably plenty of pictures posted already of all of the snow we've gotten, and unless they're dated, there's really nothing amazing about them. It's just snow! The only reason it's so remarkable is if you remember that a couple of days before you could wear shorts outside, comfortably. So instead I will post my reaction to going outside and finding all the snow.



Maybe I'll just send this photo at the end of every email instead. Hmmmmmmm......

I know. Put my earmuffs on the cookie.

Lots of little things.

---

This morning I was listening to my iPod on shuffle while waiting for the bus. ("My iPod on Shuffle While Waiting for the Bus", or any subset of that, is not the title of a song. While I was waiting for the bus, I was listening to my iPod, which was set to shuffle. Of course, "My iPod, Which Was Set to Shuffle" sounds like a good title for a song too.) A really catchy instrumental song came on. I was cool and dramatic and exciting, and it took me awhile to recognize that it was the theme to the TV show Dallas. I'm glad I never watched that show, so that I'm able to imagine anything I want happening during the song, and not just those snooty rich people from the show. (I think there were snooty rich people on the show. Like I said, I never watched it.) It's a good song.

---

I got a cool parking ticket on Monday. I say it was cool because it was the best possible parking ticket to get. It was stamped with a time which was seven minutes AFTER the time stamped on my receipt for paying for parking! I appealed it, and just got a letter that my appeal was accepted, or course. Along with my appeal, I gave them the following link, which is a scan of the ticket and my receipt: http://www.math.cornell.edu/~goldberg/receipt.jpg.

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Yesterday I went to one of those humongous book stores and bought a comic. With my receipt I received one of those offers to call and tell the company about the service in the store, with a reward of 15% of any item. I don't care too much about the coupon, because I get coupons from that place all the time with no catches, but the cashier is really nice and I wanted to put in a good word. Tonight I called the number, and started with the answering of questions. "On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 meaning ~~~ and 4 meaning ~~~ and ... and 1 meaning ~~~, please rate ~~~~." They repeated the scale several times. I just didn't have the longevity to finish the call. I gave up after ten minutes. It was just too intense.

You know how they use that information, right? When you're asked to rate the service of an employee on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the best, they put your answer into one of two categories: "5" and "not 5". It's a binary scale masquerading as a much larger discrete scale!

I love the big bookstores. Not only are there so many books, and also so many comic books, and now so many CDs and DVDs, but the atmosphere is great. And it's such a social place. I see more people I know there, than almost anywhere else, except school. Although, to be fair, that's something of a biased observation, because I really don't go anywhere except school, bookstores, and my apartment.

---

I had an IM conversation with a girl I know recently. It started with her saying, "I have a random question." Boy, that always makes my heart skip a beat. The random question could be anything, which is, of course, what random means. But I start imagining things, and the things I imagine are pretty random too.

"What is a covering map?"

"What's the capital of Spain?"

"Would you donate your kidney to me?"

"Do you want to go out some time?"

"Are you gay?"

"Can you give me a ride to the airport?"

"What's the last day of classes?"

"What's your favorite color?"

"What's your favorite compact manifold?"

"Are your parents married?"

"What kind of shampoo do you use?"

"Are you wearing pants?"

"Am I wearing pants?"

And so on.

Another noticed thing

Sharing some pizza with the Prospective Students and basically everybody else either in the building or within a short radius of the building, I was watching the different groups of people. I thought of something that I think is ridculously funny.

You know how, supposedly, a shark can only keep breathing so long as it keeps swimming? Something to do with having to force water past its gills, or something? Well, I think there are a number of people in the department who can only keep breathing so long as they are talking.

Furthermore, some of these people can probably keep breathing only so long as they keep talking about themselves. Further furthermore, they may need to keep talking about how great and awesome they are, especially in comparison to whoever they are talking to. (More appropriately, "whoever they are talking at".)

I'm not kidding. I really think this might be true. Just you look around you.

Noticed things

Ok, I just met with some of the Prospective Students, and they're not that bad. This whole mess isn't really so horrible, I guess. Although it's just started. I may change my mind again before today is over.

I really love seeing a ton of male grad students hovering around, or even hovering over, the desk of a female grad student. Part of why I think it's so funny is that it's just SO damn obvious. If I'm honest, another reason it's funny is that I have little doubt that it's something I've done myself. But I hope I was more subtle about it.
The
I drove to school today. It's raining periodically, and the thick blanket of snow is thinning, but also becoming more homogeneous and blanket-like under the pelting. What I noticed, and have surely noticed before, is all the ridulously stupid people who didn't have their headlights on. The thing I noticed today is the strong correlation between having the headlights off and having a car whose color is quite similar to the color of the surrounding sky and land.

It was dark and stormy looking today, and all the cars I saw with their headlights off (excepting the parked ones) were black or grey. I remember during some of the strong snow showers we've had recently that most of the cars that didn't have their lights on were white, or light grey.

Incredible. Darwin is rolling in his grave.

Another thing I noticed, this while driving last night, is how caught up I get by watching pedestrian crossing lights when they start blinking. You know how the light shows a white pedestrian when it's ok to cross (walk), and a red hand signaling "stop" when it's not ok (don't walk), and when changing from the former to the latter it shows the red hand flashing. I am absolutely fascinated by the flashing red, especially in that moment when the pattern of its flashing is interrupted early by its change to a solid red. It blinks on off on off on off on off on off, and during one of those "off"s it switches to "on" an instant too soon, and then stays "on".

I find that unless I concentrate, I habitually watch the blinking light, waiting for the pattern to be broken so abruptly. It's not a problem yet for me, but it might become one unless I watch it.

By the way, one of the coolest names for a cafe or bar or whatever it was that I ever saw was The Corner of Walk and Don't Walk. It's on the corner of two streets (of course) in Manhattan, one of which is Bleeker Street. I don't remember what the other one is.

2. An invisible force surrounding a living creature.

I hate Prospective Student Weekend. I'm generally uncomfortable in large social gatherings, but I'm also somewhat fanatical about knowing what's going on at any given time, so, paradoxically and quite unfortunately, I don't like not going to large social gatherings. This weekend promises a large number of them.

I also don't like all the new people suddenly wandering around, or being showed around. I'm very possessive of the place that I work, and I get nervous when people I don't know are around. I hate it how I'll get introduced to the person, and the person will get a short bio of me. "This is Tim. He is a fourth year. He doesn't like the weather here." Which is ridiculous. I love the weather her. I just call it crappy weather because that's what the consensus reality says that weather like this is. Crappy. I like it.

If I'm going to be grumpy, I want it to be nice and grumpy in the sky too.

I was sitting around with some people, and one of the organizers of the Weekend came into the room, and said to herself but also kind of to the room in general, "Now who can I ask to drive visiting students around?" She wandered around the cubicles, walking right past me. I knew that she could see me, because she detoured a little bit around my chair so as not to trip and fall right into me, not that I would have minded that especially, because she is very very pretty, but it was like I had some aura around me that made me invisible. She completely ignored me, both coming and going.

I should have just stayed quiet, but instead I blurted out my thoughts regarding this mysterious aura of mine. And of course, now I have to drive some students to a party. Dumb, dumb, dumb.

This same aura virtually guarantees me a seat to myself on the bus. It is uncanny the lengths to which some people will go so as not to sit next to me. Especially girls. Creepy guys, on the other hand, are completely unaffected by my powers. Naturally.

Also in the category of my paradoxical dislikes and desires, I found that this year, like all of them in the past, I have been almost completely unapproached to have anything at all to do with the visiting students. Someone did actually ask me to meet with a student for ten minutes, because the student is meeting my advisor right after or before, and I expressed my wonderment and at my general uninvolvement. She suggested that people are probably trying to concentrate on getting younger students involved, who will be here for a long time with the prospectives should they choose to come. But this is no different from any other year.

The one time ever that I was asked to go out to eat with a prospective was when the prospective was my friend and was actually staying with me. And even then it was almost iffy.

So I think that being involved would be a horrible uncomfortable nuisance, but at the same time I am grievously offended that nobody wants me, or thinks to want me, involved. It's this aura. It says "Go away." Or it sets something off in people that makes them want to go away.

This is not a good aura for a lonely person to have.

Stark raving calm

So this is my first February post.

I'm trying to walk to school a couple of times each week, for exercise and variety. It's not incredibly far, but it's not incredibly close. At some point I'll figure out what the approximate distance is. With the weather and temperature as it is, it's been something of an adventure recently. I get all bundled up, trying to expose a minimum of skin to the air. Sometimes I poke headphones into my ears under my hat, listening to some nice audiobook or another. I'm all sweaty and discomfited by the time I get to school, but it gets my blood moving. I'm not even too tired from it (after a short recovery time), until I reach the end of the day.

I thought about walking back from school, as my good friends the Armstrongs did, (they used to live the same place where I do now), but I decided it's much harder to force myself to do it at the end of the day than it is at the start.

On days when I walk, I wear long underwear. I looove long underwear. Not only does it keep my extra warm, but I feel like a super-hero. I go around wearing tights under my clothes. It's like a big secret I'm keeping from everybody else, that I'm wearing something extra under my pants.

Ok, enough about the long underwear.

Wednesdays are short days for me. As I was waiting for the bus to come and take me home about an hour ago, I remember thinking that compared to my walk this morning, or my wait for the bus last night at 6 PM, it felt downright balmy. I also remember, after waiting about half an hour for the bus to come, thinking that maybe it wasn't so very balmy after all. I should really take a look at the bus schedule.

---

Today was a pretty good day. (I can't figure out how to break up the next few sentences into paragraphs, so I will just break them up into events.)

I got a veeeery long night's sleep, starting from 8:30 last night, and I think it was even good.

I had a nice walk to school, although I think I should have worn a sweater under my jacket.

I had a totally empty office hour, where I got to read ahead in the book from the class for which I am grading. (That sentence would be one heck of a thing to diagram.)

I had a very nice class of Morse Theory, where I got to use all sorts of colored pens to draw a crazy picture in my notes. (It was a math picture, not something random.)

Then I spent a nervous hour waiting until my meeting with my advisor. This part was not fun. But then the meeting was fantastic. It was very gentle, and I was given two very neat papers to read. I really like my advisor. He's awesome.

Finally, a person I know agreed to let me do a favor for them. I didn't think this person liked me, and that may be true, but I don't think it is. I think I'm getting to make a new friend. It's very important to make new friends in grad school, because before too long you start losing friends to graduation, left and right. (Some of you reading this might be friends I have lost to graduation. Shame on you!)

And now I am planning a dinner. If I am lucky, I may even stay awake long enough to eat it.

Home again

After a quick week back in Ithaca for the start of the semester, I am back in Saugerties, in the house where I grew up, to welcome my parents back from their mid-Winter vacation. I still call this house, and this town, home. I am not quite so far removed that I call my apartment in Ithaca home instead, but I have progressed to the point where I refer to both Saugerties and Ithaca that way. In my head, the Saugerties home is a little heavier, but I don't think this is noticeable when I speak the words.

The drive partway across New York State last night was kind of fun. I was tired, but not tired in a prohibitive way. I was tired in the way that things start to seem a little more surreal than usual. I like that feeling, and last night I was only on the very cusp of it, so the crash afterwards wasn't too bad. I've had some extremely surreal mornings while in grad school, after having been up all night or most of the night, and when I run out of steam around 11 AM, the crash has been pretty awful. But last night was ok.

For most of the trip I was listening to the audio version of my favorite book, American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. It's read by George Guidall. He's narrated a couple of other audiobooks, and I'm pretty sure he's my favorite narrator. I've read this book once or twice, and listened to pieces or the full thing on audio countless times. It's wonderful, and I highly recommend it.

For the rest of the trip I listened to music. I put on a playlist on my iPod that I call Singalong, because it consists entirely of songs whose lyrics I've memorized and can hence sing along with (in theory). Even though I know most of these songs backwards and forwards, two of them struck me anew as I listened and sang. Here are their lyrics.

The Kid
(originally written and performed) by Buddy Mondlock

I'm the kid who ran away with the circus.
Now I'm watering elephants.
But I sometimes lie awake in the sawdust
Dreaming I'm in a suit of light.

Late at night in the empty big top,
I'm all alone on the high-wire.
Look he's working without a net this time.
He's a real death-defier.

I'm the kid who always looked out the window,
failing tests in geography.
But I've seen things far beyond just the school yard,
Distant shores of exotic lands.

There're the spires of the Turkish empire.
It's six months since we've made landfall.
Riding low with the spice of India,
Past Gibraltar, we're rich men all.

I'm the kid who thought we'd someday be lovers,
Always held out that time would tell.
Time was talking, guess I just wasn't listening.
No surprise if you no me well.

And as we're walking toward the train station,
there's a whispering rainfall.
Across the boulevard, you slip your hand in mine.
In the distance the train calls.

I'm the kid who has this habit of dreaming.
Sometimes gets me in trouble too.
But the truth is, I can no more stop dreaming
Than I can make them all come true.


I Wish I Could Go Back to College
from the musical Avenue Q

I wish I could go back to college.
Life was so simple back then.
What would I give to go back and live
In a dorm with a meal plan again?

I wish I could go back to college.
In college you know who you are.
You sit in the Quad and think,
"Oh my God, I am totally going to go far!"

How do I go back to college?
I don't know who I am anymore.
I want to go back to my room
And find a message in dry-erase pen on the door.

Oh, I wish I could just drop a class,
Or get into a play,
Or change my major,
Or %$&*$&*(& my TA.
I need an academic advisor to point the way!

We could be sitting in the computer lab,
Four AM before the final paper is due.
Cursing the world 'cause we didn't start sooner,
And seeing the rest of the class there too.

I wish I could go back to college.
How do I go back to college?
Oh-oh. I wish I had taken more pictures.

But, if I were to go back to college,
Think what a loser I'd be.
I'd walk through the Quad,
and think, "Oh my God.
These kids are so much younger than me."


These are both very nice songs. I've heard several different versions of the first one, including the original, but I think my favorite is by Peter, Paul & Mary.

I'm very happy for the day I first realized that a trip of several hours is the perfect time to play a song over and over and over to memorize the lyrics. My poor cat, who often goes on these trips with me, is, alas, not so happy. I think she finds it pretty upsetting, actually.

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I wanted to add to my list of Fantastic Moments in Fast Food Sandwiches. This one belongs to Burger King. It is their Rodeo Cheeseburger. (Although I only discovered it a couple of months ago, I just learned from Wikipedia that this burger was released nationally in 1998, and can now only be found in certain regional locations, including, apparently, several in Central New York.) It is a single burger with American cheese, several onion rings, and barbecue sauce, served on a sesame seed bun. It's not as large Wendy's' Classic Single with Cheese, but it has the advantage of currently selling for about $1.29, which is a pretty nice price. It's a startlingly good combination of flavors, and of course catsup can be added if desired. The barbecue sauce is a little strong, but not really spicy at all. Five stars.

Title

Proposed titles for future blog entries:
(1) Stark Raving Calm
(2) I know, put my earmuffs on the cookie.
(3) My dog is smarter than me.
(4) He's my brother, but he's still heavy.

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My first week of classes is over. (I only have a seminar on Fridays, but it's just an organization meeting tomorrow, and I don't think I have anything to contribute. I may go anyway, as a prelude to T.G.I.F. at the B.R.B.. It was really good. I'm sitting in on a lot of classes, and so far all of them are very interesting. One of them is something is Teaching Secondary Mathematics: Theories and Practices, and I've been very pleasantly surprised. I figured, quite correctly, that a lot of it would be discussion, but I'm happy to report that we've been discussing some issues that I haven't really thought about before, and that definitely deserve some thought.

Here are some that come to mind. Consider the "fact" that:

6 = Sqrt[36] = Sqrt[(4)(9)] = Sqrt[(-4)(-9)] = Sqrt[-4] Sqrt[-9] = (2i)(3i) = -6.

Obviously something is wrong here, because otherwise math is broken. But what exactly is wrong, and how on earth would you explain it to a high school student?

Something we talked about today is the difference between 2/0 and 0/0. They're both mathematical bad eggs, but one of the instructors of the class, Dave Bock, suggested that the two are, in fact, rather different. He called the first undefined, and the second indeterminate. He cited some pretty decent reasons for this distinction, and he did so without resorting to limits or advanced algebra. He did it based on the idea that a fraction a/b is the number which solves the equation b x = a. Using this logic, 2/0 can't be a number (because 0 times anything is 0), but 0/0 could be any number (again because 0 times anything is 0). We also talked about 0 raised to the 0 power, which is sometimes considered to be 1, and is sometimes considered undefined.

What I'm realizing now is that although we talked a little about the pure mathematical, foundational type reasons for defining things one way or another, the discussion leaders always steered things back to questions about how teachers can and do present these things to students. How can teachers help students make sense of these seemingly (and sometimes actually) arbitrary rules? How can we help them learn this stuff in a way that they'll remember it because they absorbed it into their structure of understanding, and not just their structure of random memory?

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Here's one more issue that I found extremely interesting. It started because we were talking about the FOIL method of multiplying two binomials, and how much it sucks in regards to student understanding and extension to more difficult situations. We talked about learning to use the distributive property, and some nice graphical representations of that.

This led to Dave Bock talking about how he's always found it absolutely amazing how algebra, specifically the distributive property, inexplicably captures the very geometric idea of multiplying complex numbers. I was very curious. I said something like, "What is this geometric idea of multiplication? I mean, I know the geometric interpretation of multiplying complex numbers, but to me, this was always something that comes after the algebraic definition."

Dave Bock replied that he thought this was very sad. I decided not to take offense right away, and hear him out. (Yes, I am actually getting somewhat smarter as I get older.)

He explained that when he looks at a complex number a+bi, he sees a single number. The plus sign is kind of artificial, or just algebraically convenient. It is the same sort of thing as the hidden plus sign in the single number "1 and 2/3" = 1 2/3 = 1 + 2/3. When we think of complex numbers sitting in the complex plane, there's no reason for the plus sign to be there. In a way, the plus sign is there exactly because the multiplication of complex numbers, defined in the standard geometric way, obeys these nice algebraic rules when we put the plus sign in there.

(Thinking about it now, I realize that a standard way of defining the complex numbers in certain circles is as the algebraic closure of the real numbers, obtained by adjoining the number i, and that this field extension is isomorphic to the set of all polynomials in i with real coefficients modulo the relation i^2 = -1. This is very much not the way I think of the complex numbers, of course. I think of them of sneaky little bastards that are often uncooperative, and sometimes far too rigid. I love them anyway.)

At the time, I was only preliminarily convinced, but Dave Bock wasn't done messing with my mind. He pointed out the globally recognized difficulty of explaining to a high school student, or elementary student, or college student, or your average adult, why the product of two negative numbers is positive. He posited that this explanation is much like the geometric explanation of multiplication of complex numbers.

I immediately agreed, and was completely convinced. I also wasn't exactly sure why I was so convinced.

I think that the explanation of why (-2)(-2)=4 is that the best way to think of negation is as a reflection. In terms of the real number line, the number -x is the reflection of the number x about 0. When we do two such reflections, we don't change anything. Since negation is multiplication by -1, and not doing anything is multiplication by 1, this means (-1)(-1)=1. Since multiplication ought to be commutative, this means (-2)(-2)=4.

I believe this kind of thinking is exactly how one makes sense, geometrically, of multiplying complex numbers.

I smell like a monkey ...

... and I look like one too.

Yes, today is my birthday.



If you would like to know how old I am today, here are two clues. (The second clue is a little more fun, I think.)

(1) I was born one year to the day after the author of the Incompleteness Theorem passed away.

(2) My age is perfect, and I am old enough to vote, and I am not dead yet.

Because the weather forecast for today is bleak, (so far we only have nasty freezing rain), last night my brother and I took a drive and did a little shopping. I bought a couple of very nice toys, such as the one whose picture adorns the beginning of this entry. I also bought the DVD copy of the complete series Defenders of the Earth, which is, happily, just as awesome as I remember it. It has a fantastic theme song too.

We also looked at a lot of anime DVDs. I'm a little into them, and my brother is a lotta into them. I was trying to remember the name of one I remembered watching when I was very, very little. There was a train in it that traveled through space, and the title had the number 9 in it someplace. My brother fancies himself an expert on anime, but even he eventually gave up. He claimed I was making it up, since I lie to him all the time. But to be fair to me, I've only been lying to him for a little while, like since he was born.

He bet me a donut that I couldn't find out what it was. I took the bet. Unfortunately for him, he doesn't have the knowledge of computation theory that I do, because otherwise he would have known that he can't possibly win until I die, at which point I suppose he would have to get my estate to buy him a donut. Hehehe.

As it turns out, a quick use of the Google yielded the title. It is Galaxy Express 999. The sucker owes me a donut. Hehe.

On our drive back I drove around Wendy's to pick up my fast food favorite, the Classic Double with Cheese, as a pre-birthday treat. (I'm trying to cut down.) I doubt you are as carefully familiar with this pinnacle of sandwich-ness as I am. It is a double hamburger (square, of course) on a plain white bun with american cheese, lettuce, raw onions, mustard, mayonnaise, and catsup. (I always say "ketchup", but I like the spelling "catsup". At least, I do right this instant.) There are also tomatoes and pickles available, but I don't generally care for them.

Amounts of the various condiments may vary with franchise and with burger cook, but the results are usually nothing short of spectacular. In most cases, the balance of flavor is blissful.

Unfortunately, upon returning home I discovered that my burger bliss had been replaced with a chicken sandwich. Gasp! This was still very good, but not what I was hoping for. Sigh...

Well, today I will make a fantastic chicken salad, and all culinary matters will be well once again.

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A couple of things to add to previous entries. I mentioned that for any of the super-heroes I mentioned, there is a ridiculously complete profile available on Wikipedia. I meant to add that, as an alternative, you can always ask me. In most cases I am very nearly as good as Wikipedia, if not better in some aspects. Knowing this may also help explain some of my behavior to you in the future. If I ever forget your name, or the date, or that we had plans, etc., please remember that the space where I ought to be storing that information may have inadvertently been used to store the fact that the original X-Men consisted of Professor X, Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Beast, Angel, and Iceman, and that their real names are Charles Francis Xavier, Scott Summers, Jean Grey, Hank McCoy, Warren Worthington III, and Bobby Drake, and that the occupations of their fathers, in order, were [I don't know], Air Force pilot, professor at Bard College, nuclear plant worker, CEO of a large corporation, and accountant.

Also, I was talking about how so many of my current behaviors seem to have been predicted by the events surrounding my birth. I wanted to add that I was born at approximately 8 AM, and I am still something of a morning person. (Truthfully, I am also something of a nighttime person. I am mostly just not a middle-of-the-day person.)

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I think that's it. Eat something tasty today, in my honor. Preferably something you normally wouldn't let yourself.

Faster than a speeding bullet

Most people who know me are very aware that I am a fanatic about super-heroes. I have many thoughts on the subject.

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Some of my rabid fandom can be traced back to Saturday morning, and eventually weekday afternoon, and later still Sunday morning, cartoons. There were individual cartoons for Superman and Batman and Spider-Man. One of my favorite ones was Super Friends, which had many different incarnations. It featured Superman, Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, and Aquaman, and various teen sidekicks. Later the show expanded to include many other characters, including the Flash, Green Lantern, and near the very end of the series, Firestorm, the Nuclear Man. (Firestorm become one of my favorite characters a little bit later, when I found a large collection of old comic books featuring him in a used book store. (To clarify, I found the comics in a used book store, and the comics featured Firestorm. The other interpretation of my sentence is much funnier, but not true.))


I should mention that you can read all about these characters on Wikipedia. There are entries for every single one of them, although I only provided links in this blog entry for some of them.


Another show I absolutely loved was Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. This show featured Spider-Man, Iceman, and Firestar. Iceman is one of the founding members of the X-Men, and Firestar was at the time a very new and rather minor character from the pages of New Mutants, which was a close relation of the X-Men. It's not really clear why these three were put together. Firestar was apparently used because the more popular character of the Human Torch from the Fantastic Four wasn't available for some reason. But still, there wasn't really a precedent in the comics for these characters to work and live together.


I didn't know any of this at the time, though. It was a really fun series, and it had all sorts of other characters thrown in on an episode-by-episode basis.


One more show from that time period to mention is The Incredible Hulk. The big green fellow has had several cartoon series all to himself, but I remember this one especially well. It scared the stuffing out of me. I think there's a good reason for this. Angry adults are scary to children anyway, and if you throw in the fact that the angry adult will transform into a large green monster who likes to smash things, it is absolutely terrifying. In most stories, and certainly every cartoon story, the Hulk somehow never manages to hurt anybody, but I've had many dreams where this guideline was violently violated.


I remember a "friend" from nursery school who would occasionally double over, grab his head, and say, "Oh no, I'm ch-changing...!" I would run very very very fast to the nearest adult, every time. What a jerk!


In the time that I've grown up, there have been many more cartoons involving super-heroes, and most of them have been extremely cool. In fact, right now I am watching an episode on DVD of Justice League Unlimited, which is a SPECTACULAR show. This episode is especially great. The witch Circe transforms Wonder Woman into a pig, and at the end of the episode Batman is forced to sing a lounge-singer-type love song in front of a crowd in order to change her back. Somehow Wonder Woman finds out that he did this, and taunts him with the knowledge by humming the song as she walks away from him.

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The other major influence that informed my love of all things super-heroic was my cousin Sam. He is two years older than me, and when I was little he was the epitome of all things cool to me. He collected comics, and drew super-heroes and other stuff all the time. So, I started collecting comics and drawing super-heroes. Today he is a professional graphic artist, and a very good one, but I don't think he reads comic books anymore. I still sketch a little bit, but by trade am a mathematician and teacher, and I still read comic books all the time. I'm trying to cut back on my collecting, because the darn things are increasingly expensive and I am increasingly mature, but I still read my old ones all the time.

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Neither of these things were what I wanted to write about today, but that's ok. I'll write more next time.

Ithaca weekend

My dad and I went to Ithaca for a couple of days. I had a few chores to do, and he wanted to come along for the trip. We didn't actually go over a weekend, but we stayed for the length of a weekend, and since both of us are still on vacation there's currently not much difference between a weekday and a weekend day.


One of the things I did was have some friends over for homemade-pizza-from-scratch. I'd never made it before, but it seemed to turn out well. The biggest problem was that the pizza became atomically bonded to the tin foil it was resting on in the oven.


The recipe was for kids, and so included lots of fun facts and extra activities. It talked about yeast and how it's alive, and how when mixed with water and sugar, the yeast releases gases from the mixture. It mentioned an activity where you mix these things together in a bottle and put a balloon over the top of the bottle and watch it slowly fill up with gas. It actually fills up very very very slowly. The photo at the beginning of this entry is the result of this experiment after the yeasty beasties have had a night to work.

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On this trip, we were supposed to be looking around to see if we could find some string bags. These are bags that are very handy for groceries, because they are extremely lightweight, and if you leave them in the car then everyone can see that they are empty, so nobody is tempted to break in to the car to steal whatever is in them, (unless the thief is someone like us, who is looking for string bags). These bags are also extremely nice for the beach, because they won't retain sand or rocks. The mesh size is too large for that.


We didn't have much luck. We found some very expensive which were far too small to be useful. The closest we found were the sort of all purpose mesh bags that people often use for laundry or to store soccer balls or something. These were too large for our purposes, though. My dad made the brilliant observation that what we needed were mesh laundry bags for midgets.

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Two of my friends who were there for pizza are going to have a baby in a couple of months, so several times the conversation turned to baby stories. I'd heard before that I was born exactly on my due date, but I hadn't heard (or maybe I'd forgotten) that my mom had to have a c-section because I was turned around the wrong way in the womb. When I heard this, it made perfect sense to me. I've always been a little confused, and been susceptible to being turned around easily, (physically and mentally).


Do you see? As a baby I was unbelievably punctual and easily confused. As an adult, I am still unbelievably punctual and easily confused. If only I had been studied more as a baby. Maybe we could have figured out what my dissertation topic is going to be, and where I should apply for a postdoc! Just imagine! The possibilities are limitless!! Exclamation points!!!!

It's been a while.

Wow! I haven't written in quite a while, have I?


The picture above is a sign on NY Route 206 that I pass almost every time I travel between Saugerties and Ithaca. Triangle is a very small village. If you drive a little fast, you can hold your breath all the way through it. I took a picture of it for my friend James, who has passed it himself many times, and has remarked what a funny picture it would make.


I've been spending a very relaxing winter break in Saugerties. It's good to see my family, and to spend enough time at home so that it feels like home again. It's also been great to see all of the animals on the great Goldberg Farm. I've posted some wonderful pictures here. My little Sofi-cat has really enjoyed being in Saugerties too. She loves visiting her cousins, and she gets to sit on a screen porch and watch birds and squirrels. It's like camp. I always feel a little bad about bringing her back to my stuffy little apartment in Ithaca.


I've even been doing some math, too! Some of it has been my own research, but a lot of it has been some more general textbook reading. Early on, I read through most of Humphreys text on Lie algbras. I realized that part of each of my meetings with my advisor often ends up being him reminding me about some Lie algebra theory that I should remember. (Even when I do remember it, it's still worth having him explain it, because he is a very, very good lecturer.) I still won't remember all of it, but each time I relearn the stuff a little more of it sticks.


The book I've been spending most of my time reading is Sharpe's text on differential geometry. I've started reading some of it many times before, but tended to get bogged down in all the structure and terminology. This time, I started from the very beginning and read through every chapter, which has been A-MAZ-ING. I highly recommend it, and I highly recommend going through it start to finish, (or at least start to wherever-you-stop-reading). The development of the Lie group-Lie algebra theory by focusing on the Maurer-Cartan form is especially interesting. And I am now ALL ABOUT principal bundles. They are AWESOME. Bundles ROCK.


I've been doing other reading also. One of the things I've been reading is Neil Gaiman's blog. He's my favorite human being that I don't actually know. His work is awe-inspiring. He is an amazing storyteller. I first read his work in the Sandman comic book, and since then have read all of his novels and many of his short stories. Read his stuff.


I'm going to have to stop for now, because one of the things I've done during this break is experiment, not always on purpose, with my sleep schedule. For instance, just last night I went to sleep at 3:30 AM and woke up at 5:30 AM. I took a nap earlier this evening, but I don't think I'm going to be able to make it much longer. I'll write more later.