Tim's World Tree

E-mail etiquette

2012-01-11T21:58:00.002-05:00

Several days ago I received an email at my school address from a Gmail address I didn't recognize, attached to a name I didn't recognize. The subject line read "calculator", and the message consisted of the single sentence, "What kind of calculator do I need?". I checked, and this name did not appear on any of my class rosters.

Here is my response to the email.

==============================

Dear ---------,

I would like to answer your question, but I'm afraid your message is very mysterious. The following information would be helpful.

1. Who are you? Are you a student at Lenoir-Rhyne?
2. Are you taking a class with me this coming semester? If so, which class?
3. Are you asking about what calculator you need for a particular class, for a particular exam, for a particular secret mission, for a certain profession, etc.?

(Also, for extra credit, your message could have begun with "Dear Professor," or "Hello, Professor".)

If you can provide a little more context, I will be happy to help.

Have a nice night,

TG

==============================

I have not heard back from this person.

On the plus side, at least the single sentence was capitalized and punctuated correctly!

Halloween 2011

2011-11-02T23:39:00.008-04:00

Since Halloween was on a Monday, I dressed up for my classes. Here are some pictures my students took. (Click on them for the original size.)

Volume 4

2010-04-20T23:38:00.003-04:00

I now have a title for the fourth volume of my future autobiography.

The Tim Goldberg Story, Volume 4: Chasing the Burrito

This evening I planned to join some friends for dinner, probably burritos or something similar. It was a little late at night, so the first place we went was just about closed, and the second place we went apparently closed up shop about 6 months ago. Fortunately, we struck gold, as well as burrito goodness, with the third place. We decided to call tonight's adventure "Chasing the Burrito".

In other news, Richard Dawkins is my new hero.

I have a problem.

2010-04-09T10:59:00.005-04:00

They say that's the first step, right? Admitting that you have a problem? Well, my problem has to do with desktop wallpapers for my computer. I change my wallpaper constantly (figuratively speaking), and spend lots of time online searching for new images that might make suitable wallpapers. At one point I thought I had solved my problem by having my wallpaper automatically rotate through a folder of different pictures, but now I spend hours sorting and resorting pictures into different folders, instead of just picking individual images. I can't help but feel that all of this is a great waste of my time, (although an argument can be made that I get a certain sense of relaxation from the sorting process, looking at images I've collected).

Just to be clear, these images are almost entirely natural landscapes or inspired by comic books and super-heroes. I'm not talking about pornography here.

There have been periods where this compulsion has abated, where I've stuck with a single wallpaper, or even a specific slideshow of wallpapers, for as long a couple of weeks. But this never lasts too long.

I've thought about using only a wallpaper-of-the-day, such as those offered online by National Geographic, but I just don't like most of those pictures.

I've also thought about trying to bribe a friend to pick wallpapers for me, but I haven't stooped that far yet.

I think the main reasons of my wallpaper-changing compulsion are the following.
(1) I want a pleasing image on my desktop, both aesthetically and psychologically.
(2) I feel that my choice of wallpaper should reflect my interests and personality, and be a good advertisement of them.
(3) I like to procrastinate doing the actual work I should be doing.

Both (1) and (2) lead to wallpaper-changing because of my indecision and changing views regarding what pleases me and what impression I want to give about myself.

What's funny about all of this is that when I'm actually working on my computer, I don't really see much of the wallpaper anyway!

As I write this, my desktop wallpaper is a large version of this picture, from X-Men: First Class.

Excellent, excellent.

2010-03-12T16:21:00.001-05:00

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		85%
Spider-Man		75%
Robin		65%
Green Lantern		60%
Batman		50%
Supergirl		50%
The Flash		50%
Iron Man		50%
Wonder Woman		45%
Hulk		40%
Catwoman		30%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

Someday

2010-02-01T13:51:00.003-05:00

I now have titles for the first three volumes of the autobiography I am going to write someday.

One Burrito Too Many: The Tim Goldberg Story

The Tim Goldberg Story, Volume 2: The Cheese Stands Alone

The Tim Goldberg Story, Volume 3: It's Only Paranoia If You're Wrong

Title? I don't need no stinkin' title!

2009-09-17T12:50:00.002-04:00

More tattoo-related news. Yesterday evening I went to get my hair cut. I noticed that one of the stylists had a tattoo on her leg of a pair of scissors. I complimented it, and told her about my recent experience with a bus-tattoo-sporting bus driver. The stylist told me that her friend who works at a pizza place said he was going to get a tattoo of a pizza slice on his leg, but was actually just making fun of her. This all made me think that maybe I should think about getting a math tattoo. (As a side note, it turns out that if you do a Google search for "math tattoo", you get some very interesting pictures.) There was once a period of several days where I was seriously considering getting a small tattoo on my arm of the Green Lantern symbol, but my sister eventually convinced me not to do it. I had forgotten, you see, that I don't like getting jabbed with needles.

This morning I went with some friends to get some coffee to fuel our "work". We went to the Manndible Cafe on campus. I ordered a "Dragonfly", which is a peppermint-mocha-type coffee drink. This is why the image at the top of this entry came from. My friend ordered a "Wooly Bear", which I believe is something with mocha and orange in it. It occurred to me that "Wooly Bear" might make a great nickname for this friend of mine, although she might disagree. I'll have to try it out and see what happens. If I never write another entry, I guess you'll know.

On the other hand, I think I could be quite happy with the nickname "Dragonfly". (Did you know that, according to Wikipedia, despite the fact that they have six legs, dragonflies are incapable of walking?) I don't think I've ever had a really great nickname, except of course "Tim" instead of "Timothy". (Not that I mind my full name. People just seem to gravitate towards the shorter version. For a period of time I preferred the full version, but now I am quite happy with "Tim". I think it has connotations of both dependability and fun.)

I do have a friend who still sometimes calls me "Kiki", (or "Kiks", or "Kikster"), after a particular anime film, whose title happens to sound not just a little bit like that of a porno flick. A couple of girls in high school very occasionally called me "Teggy", after my full initials. A different girl in high school called me "Tim-who-mothed-he", or something like that, based on an elongated and distorted pronunciation of "Timothy". Finally, when they were little little little, both my brother and sister used to call me just "T". I think my grandmother did, too, come to think of it.

I ought to know by now.

2009-09-15T10:00:00.003-04:00

I ought to know by now not to listen to comedy on my iPod while commuting by bus, or waiting for the bus, especially not if I'm listening to it for the first time. It's very embarrassing when I laugh out loud, especially when it escalates to the "guffaw" level. I'm sure people can figure out that I'm listening to something funny, but they still give me weird looks. Even weirder than usual, I mean. I think there's something about the mornings especially that makes me much more susceptible to streams of hysterical laughter. It's probably either the altered mental state associated with sleep deprivation, or the giddiness I sometimes get at my first glimpse of and whiff at a particularly beautiful and fragrant morning.

This morning I was listening to the comedian Gabriel Iglesias. He's an excellent mimic, and an extremely funny man. I highly recommend his work.

Follow the white rabbit.

2009-09-14T21:32:00.002-04:00

When I got on the bus this morning, I noticed that the bus driver had a tattoo on her calf of a little bus. It kind of looked like a school bus, but I couldn't tell for sure because it was just an outline, and not colored in yellow or anything. It was flesh-colored. I wonder if she became a bus driver before or after getting the tattoo. (Notice that, logically speaking, this last sentence is true no matter what.)

When I saw the tattoo, the phrase "Follow the white rabbit" popped into my head. Despite the fact that I hadn't received a mysterious message on my computer that morning telling me to "Follow the flesh-colored school bus", I guess I did end up doing just that, since I rode the bus to school. Nothing extraordinary happened there, though. In particular, no Trinity. Not yet, anyway. Hope springs eternal.

My new favorite.

2009-09-13T15:00:00.003-04:00

I just found and bought what is now my new favorite birthday card ever. On the outside is a black and white picture of two children on an amusement park ride, with a top and bottom trim in shades of blue. Red print near the top reads, "Hope your birthday is somewhere on a scale between 'totally freaked out' and 'I may have just wet my pants.'" The inside is orange, and contains only the following words, in white.

Happy! Birthday! to! You!

I absolutely love this card.

It reminds me of another old favorite card. This one is a Halloween card. The outside reads something like, "If in the middle of the night you hear a scritch-scratch sound at your window, don't worry. It's just a tree branch." Inside, it reads something like, "That's how zombies open windows." The original writing was better, but I don't remember it. Somewhat surprisingly, it appears that I actually sent that card to someone, instead of keeping it for myself.

Last year when I was on the job market, my sister sent me a great card, which is still hanging over my desk. On the front is a hand sticking out of a shark's mouth, making an "okay" sign with its fingers. The top of the card reads simply "POSITIVE ATTITUDE". The bottom reads, "...the difference between being eaten alive by a shark and being okey-dokey." Many of my students have noticed that card, and think it's hysterical.

Many years ago, in high school, my best friend's family gave me a birthday card that still makes me chuckle. On the outside it reads, "When they made you, they really broke the mold." It continues inside with, "Rumor has it they beat the hell out of the mold-maker, too."

Even more years ago, when I was in elementary school, I bought a great Valentine's Day card for this girl I had a huge crush on. On the front was a guy holding bunch of flowers, looking excitedly up at the reader and confirming, "You'll be my Valentine, you'll bestill my beating heart?" Inside, the guy has fallen on his face, with an accompanying "thump". Awesome. I love onomatopeia.

Actually, I recall that there is a super-villain named Onomatopeia, originally appearing in a Green Arrow comic book. He's awesome, because he repeats out loud any sounds that occur near him (except speech). So in the comic book, you might see the text "THWACK" representing a sound effect, and then a beat later a word balloon coming from this guy, representing him saying "Thwack". My favorite thing that I remember about this guy is when he was hiding behind a doorway waiting to sneak attack Connor Hawke. Connor hears a SQUEAK from the door, then hears Onomatopeia say "Squeak". Then Conner says, "Squeak?", realizes something is up, and ducks, all just in time to avoid Onomatopeia's attack.

Incidentally, that character, as well as that scene I described, were created by artist Phil Hester and writer Kevin Smith. That's right, Silent Bob himself.

You're my main sandwich.

2009-09-12T15:06:00.003-04:00

Yesterday in class, my students and I talked about the Squeeze Theorem for limits. This is also sometimes called the Sandwich Theorem; indeed this is how their huge and extremely heavy textbook calls it. I pointed out that although the Squeeze and Sandwich Theorems are the same, in general a squeeze and a sandwich are quite different. For instance, you wouldn't want to refer to your "main squeeze" as your "main sandwich".

This got a great laugh in both of my classes, not the least of which was from me. I suggested that, on second thought, perhaps you would want to call him or her your "main sandwich", because that would be HYSTERICAL.

One of my students asked what "main squeeze" means, and I answered that it refers to one's boyfriend or girlfriend, or something close to that. Another student objected, and claimed that it's a much more general term, and often just means your best friend or the person you hang out with the most. I was, and remain, highly dubious. No one else I have talked to agrees with this objecting student of mine, although opinions seem to vary on the level of commitment and exclusivity implied by being a "main squeeze".

I love sandwiches, always have. It's hard for me to identify the best sandwich I ever had, because besides being subjective from person to person, I find that the quality of food depends so much on my state at the time, particularly on how hungry I am. For instance, it may be that the best thing you ever taste is a plain cheese sandwich, simply because it's the first thing you get to eat after being ill for several days.

The weirdest sandwich I ever made, and ate, was a grilled cheddar cheese sandwich with peanut butter. No contest. And it was not especially tasty, although it may have been under different, and extreme, circumstances. The recipe came from a list of progressively stranger and more complicated recipes for different cheese sandwiches I found online at some point. I think it was titled something like "The Journey of a Cheese Sandwich", but I can't seem to find it anymore. Just as well. I probably don't have to mention that the peanut butter one was the last cheese sandwich recipe I tried from that list.

Speaking of sandwiches, did you know that there is a french fry sandwich? And that it has its own song? I confess that I have been known to add a couple of french fries to a pre-existing meat sandwich, on occasion, but I never tried it without the meet. Hmmmm...

It has begun. Again.

2009-08-25T00:21:00.006-04:00

The students are back, and many of them brought their parents. I confess that I'm a little jealous. Although I didn't feel that way at the time, I think going away to college is a very exciting time. Still, Ithaca is a madhouse. I heard a story about an argument about dishwashing soap between a student and his parents had in the grocery store.

"I don't understand, why can't I get this?"
"Because we don't believe you'd use it."

Good stuff.

I went shopping at Wegmans earlier tonight, figuring that most of the frenzy there would have died down. It had indeed, but it had left its mark on the store. In this life, we get used to taking certain things for granted. Like the fact that Wegmans will always have lots of bananas in stock. And yet, behold the picture above, of my beloved banana stand, ravaged almost bare. Most unfortunately, my beloved shelf of beloved cases of cans of seltzer water was also cleared out.

Yesterday I heard someone mention the World Health Organization on the news. I imagined the following situation.

"Blah blah blah the World Health Organization."
"The who?"
"Right."
"Right, what?"
"No, not what. W.H.O."
"Huh?"
"What?"
"You're talking about who?"
"Yes."

And so on. (If this pattern is unfamiliar to you, please see this article.)

I also recently heard the phrase, "The cheese stands alone." I was unfamiliar with its origins, and found that it's the final lyric in the nursery rhyme The Farmer in the Dell. I was honestly hoping for a little bit more. It seems like such a dramatic statement. Imagine a deep voice speaking the words slowly, with great reverence.

And the cheese ... stands alone.

Oh well. I still can't wait to use it in conversation. I only hope I have enough patience to wait until it makes sense in the context, and that I don't just blurt it out. Only time will tell, I suppose.

In other news, I recently created a Tim-avatar in the Simpsons style.

I really do own that hat, and wear it quite often. I tried to find a picture of me wearing it, but was unsuccessful. Still, those who know me can surely attest to my honesty in such matters. I NEVER joke about hats.

This isn't nearly as good a likeness as that of the avatar (or Mii) I created on my brother's Wii. That resemblance is downright uncanny. It's by far the most handsome character I've ever seen in a video game. I'll see if I can get an image of it to post here.

Here I go, here I go, here I go again.

2009-08-11T13:58:00.004-04:00

(Title inspired by the lyrics to Salt-n-Pepa's hit song, "Shoop".)

My goodness, I am prolific today. On the one hand, this can be attributed to the fact that, before today, it had been almost a year since I posted anything on this blog, so I have a lot saved up. But something closer to the truth is that, after finally finishing teaching a summer course, and getting all the exams graded and grades assigned, I am once again on a bit of summer vacation. Having finished reading all of my unread comic books, I find myself with a little leftover time and energy.

Of course, after leaving this blog alone for so long, I'm not sure if anyone still reads it. Hmmm. Well, never mind.

Two more funny things.

Several weeks ago, I had coffee with a friend in one of the coffee shop/cafes on campus. I had just finished telling a funny story, my friend told me I was funny. I told her she was funny, too. She was excited about this, and asked, "Really? You think I'm funny?"
"Sure," I replied. "Funny looking!"
She thought this was pretty humorous, and as people often do in these situations, she laughed and repeated the punch line: "I'm funny looking!"
Of course, she repeated it QUITE loudly, so that everyone else in the shop turned and looked at her. There were literally half a ton of people there, too!
Fantastic, just fantastic.

Several years ago, I suggested that it would be fun to have action figures of some of our Cornell math professors. I still think this is a very good idea, but it is probably prohibitively resource-consuming. Nonetheless, we did put some thought into the designs. For instance, one of the figures would have to come equipped with a fanny-pack, as well as a switch on its back that would allow you to raise and lower one of the figure's eyebrows. Another figure would come equipped with a huge black coat and hat, a large wooden staff/walking stick, and be coiffed with a wizard-like beard and mane of hair. Yet another could come with lots of different outfits, all of them green.

And of course, they would all include a "kung-fu grip", as defined in the following passage from Wikipedia.

"In 1974, named after the increasingly popular martial art, Hasbro introduced 'Kung-Fu Grip' to the G.I. Joe line. This was another innovation that had been developed in the UK for Action Man. The hands were sculpted in a softer plastic that allowed the fingers to grip objects in a more lifelike fashion."

Perhaps you can guess to whom these figures correspond. Perhaps you cannot. That's okay. You can imagine your own designs.

What would your action figure look like and come with?

(On a related note, perhaps you are one of those unfortunate people for whom the line between action figures and dolls is not clear. Apparently there is now a legal difference.

Little thoughts.

2009-08-11T12:17:00.003-04:00

Here are some little thoughts I've had recently, which I found entertaining.

Consider the statement, "That's a ton of apples!" In most circumstances, this is an exaggeration. We mean that there is a rather large number of apples, not that the totality of these apples actually weight one ton (although that would indeed be a very large number of apples).

Consider now the statement, "That's a ton of people!" Assuming that the average person weighs about 150 pounds, one ton of people is probably just 13 to 16 people, (depending on which ton unit you are using). If you say, "There were a ton of people at that dinner!", then this might be accurate, but if you say, "There were a ton of people at that concert!", then you are probably massively under-exaggerating! Isn't that interesting?

(This thought was not my sole creation. I share the credit with my good friend Mike, who I have mentioned before.)

I was recently in the mood for ice cream, so I went to the supermarket to buy some. As was perhaps inevitable, after picking out some ice cream I found myself searching for some whipped cream. Next to the canisters of whipped cream, (Reddi-wip, to be exact), were some canisters of Cool Whip. These were on sale (by about 7 cents), so I bought one.

I like Cool Whip, but I realize that it is only tangentially related to the superior whipped cream, even the stuff in the canister. That's why I was so amused to find, at the end of the list of ingredients on the Cool Whip canister, a warning reading something like, "This product may contain some milk."

I realize that this warning is there to ward off people with relevant allergies or intolerences, but I couldn't help but feel that it was also some kind of plea. "We're really very much like real whipped cream. Really! You might even find some milk in here somewhere."

My good friend Josh, who was not long ago a fellow math graduate student with me at Cornell, recently did the following Things.
(1) Accepted a postdoctoral research position at a very prestigious institution. (Hint: It starts with an "S" and ends with a "UNY Stony Brook".)
(2) Defended his thesis, whose title I cannot currently remember or locate, but whose presentation was very good.
(3) Got married, the presentation of which was also very good.
(4) Moved. (See Thing (2).)

I had a dream last night about Josh and his new wife, Hannah. In my dream, part of their moving and him starting his new job was that they had to go into witness protection. (I have no idea why, although it made sense in my dream.) I recall suggesting a number of different new names for him. He was due to choose his name the next day, but he wasn't allowed to show any opinion about the names I came up with, in case he ended up using one of them. Apparently his and Hannah's new identities had to remain secret for a little while, until they got settled into their new lives. He promised to get in touch with me and tell me their new names, when he could. One of the people helping him set up this new identity was his advisor, who in addition to being a very well-respected mathematician, in my dream was also a liaison to the Federal government.

I have the best dreams, sometimes.

A tough year, and strawberries.

2009-08-11T11:45:00.003-04:00

It's been almost a whole year since I last posted something. This past year was a busy time. Working to finish my dissertation and getting ready to graduate. Applying for jobs. Not finding a job. Applying for more jobs. Figuring out what I can do if I don't find a job. Still not finding a job. Deciding to postpone my graduation for another year.

So here I am, still a graduate student, (or a doctoral candidate, if I want to sound fancy), and now the whole process is about to start all over again. Hopefully, however, I'm in a much better position for all of it this time around.

I am currently visiting my parents. On their back porch they have a little strawberry plant. I picked a couple of the little ripe berries, washed them, and tasted them. They were still warm from the INTENSE sunshine, which was a little odd. They were the tastiest little things I have ever eaten! Fresh strawberries, my god.

It's funny to think that I never used to like strawberries when I was little. From fairly early on, I liked strawberry-flavored things, but not the berries themselves. When I got older, I would eat strawberries if they were put before me, but I never really saw the appeal. But in the past several years, I have started coming across the good stuff. Tasty, juicy strawberries. Not necessarily fresh, but not too old or preserved.

When he was still in grad school with me, my friend Mike and I would often eat at the cafe in Wegmans Supermarket. One day, he realized that besides the delicious offerings of their cafe, which includes Chinese food, vegetarian, sandwiches, pasta, soups, pizza, chicken wings, and varying dinner dishes, we actually had available to us the full wonders of the rest of the market! He took advantage of this more than I did. He would almost always, in addition to a couple of items from the cafe, get several packages of berries of different sorts. He ate more berries more quickly than I had ever seen before.

Even if we were just grocery shopping, he would often buy, for instance, two large cartons of strawberries, and finish off one before I dropped him off at his apartment afterward.

Mike would be very proud of me. I recently brought a large carton of strawberries to school with me to munch on, (as opposed to "to throw at people", I guess). Except for one or two berries that I shared with friends, I ate every last one of them, all within about two hours. I know this isn't too impressive by his standards, but everyone has to start somewhere.

Absorbant and yellow and porous is he.

2008-10-26T12:52:00.005-04:00

I want to share a hilarious dialogue from a comic I was just rereading. The first guy is being interrogated by a government agent.

"All right, all right, I'll tell you what you want to know."
"That's more like it. You're making the right move, deciding to cooperate with the government, Mr. Rictor. Now, tell us about your contacts with the X-Cell."
"I've only ever seen the one guy."
"Can you describe him?"
"Kind of a squarish head... long nose... wide, crazy eyes..., yellowish skin..."
"Could be jaundice. Probably a drug addict."
"Probably."
"What's his name?"
"Robert, I think. Something like that."
"Where can we find him?"
"All I know is that he said he lives under the sea."
"Under the--?"
"Yeah. In a pineapple."
"Interesting."

That is just priceless. You know who he's describing, don't you? Later, the government agent's boss comes in.

"So what have you got?"
"His contact is named 'Robert' and he claims to live in a pineapple under the sea. I'm figuring that's code for a secret aquatic base."
...
"You don't have any children, do you?"
"Uh... no. I'm married to my work."
"Feel free to make it an open marriage. [To herself] Great, now I'm gonna have that stupid song stuck in my head all day."

The very smallest one.

2008-10-24T18:38:00.005-04:00

I've been watching the new Incredible Hulk movie, which came out on DVD this week. It's really quite good, even if the Hulk still creeps me out.

There's this fantastic line that I had completely forgotten about. Bruce Banner and Betty Ross are visiting Samuel Sterns, who may have a cure for Bruce's big, green condition. Dr. Sterns warns them about the dangers of miscalculating the antidote amount, and uses the phrase, "... if we miscalculate this by even the smallest integer ...".

BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!!

This is funny because of the blatant misuse of the term integer. The integers refer to the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, ..., together with their negatives -1, -2, -3, -4, ... . So, in the normal sense of "smallest", there is NO SMALLEST INTEGER! Even if by "smallest", one means closest to zero (i.e. smallest in absolute value), then the smallest integer is just zero! To miscalculate by zero means to calculate EXACTLY CORRECTLY!

I'm not sure Dr. Sterns is such a great scientist. He clearly didn't pay much attention in math class. Of course, he is destined to become the insane super-villain known as The Leader, so his priorities are probably pretty out of whack to begin with.

Oh man, there's something else really funny from a movie that I wanted to write about, but I've completely forgotten what it is. Oh well. There's always room for one more post!

All the time

2008-10-19T13:15:00.002-04:00

Oh my gosh, I do this ALL THE TIME.

By the way, if you don't already, then you should really check out this webcomic, Piled Higher and Deeper. And if you really like it, buy a book or two and help support the struggling academic/artist!

Batman, you can be such a jerk.

2008-10-16T23:09:00.001-04:00

I've been watching my seasons of Justice League while grading (best money I ever spent. EVER.), and there was a really funny scene that I wanted to relate to you.

There's been this massive jail break, with all sorts of dangerous super-villains on the loose. There's also this one prisoner, who is just a regular criminal and was actually in a coma, and he's disappeared. Batman says that he's going to investigate this guy's disappearance (which is good since he is actually the one behind everything, not that there's any way Batman can tell at this point).
Green Lantern points out that there are many other much more dangerous bad guys to pursue, and that this one guy is just a nobody.
Batman replies with the story from the Odyssey where Odysseus pokes out a cyclops' eye, and when asked his name he replied that he was "nobody". So when the cyclops goes to tell his friends who poked out his eye, all he can say is, "Nobody did it."
Green Lantern seems placated, and responds, "Point taken."

What the hell?! That story has absolutely nothing to do with the situation, except for the connection to the fairly random use of the word "nobody". What a load of nonsense!
I guess the point of this whole bit is that Batman just wanted to go do what he wanted to do, so he gave this whole story, hoping to confuse Green Lantern and get off the topic. And I guess it worked, because Green Lantern either didn't realize that there wasn't any connection, or assumed there had to be a connection (because Batman is very smart, and he definitely wouldn't LIE, would he), and was embarrassed too embarrassed to admit he didn't understand it.

Batman just messes around with everyone else. I think that's what was happening.

Got it.

2008-10-07T15:31:00.004-04:00

I was just introducing my good friend Jessica to my new bear. (Jessica graduated from here over the summer and is now a postdoc at Stanford. She is back here for a conference for women in probability.)

Anyway, I was telling her about some of the bear's possible names. I mentioned "Nicholas Bourbaki", but she misheard me and thought I had said "Nicholas BEARbaki". I replied that I had not said that, but that I would say that from then on, because that was definitely his name.

In searching for Nicholas's name, I had some interesting discussions with people. Many of them said had teddy bears or other species of stuffed animals, either at the present or in the past. Josh told me that one Easter his parents sent him a basket with a little stuffed animal lamb. He had just been reading poetry by William Blake at the time, so he named the lamb Blake. A good fit.

Caitlin bought herself a teddy bear when she went away to college, because her blanky was too aged and worn to take the trip. Her bear is still with her. I can't remember his name right now.

I remember that when I was little, I had lots of stuffed animals (I still do), and at bedtime I would have to put them all on my bed and get them under the covers, and I would worry that they weren't all covered, or that it would be too stuffy under the covers and they'd have trouble breathing. I was so silly. I don't spoil my current stuffed animal friends like that.

More bear, more bear!

2008-10-06T20:41:00.004-04:00

I think I've decided to call him Nicholas, but my sister suggested Gershwin, which is also awesome. I'll let him think about it for a little while.

Mr. Bear stole my hat.

Mr. Bear noticed a pornographic image on my screen, and selflessly threw himself in front of it.

Mr. Bear was not happy about something, but I'm not totally sure what.

Whatsisname?

2008-10-03T13:25:00.004-04:00

I have recently adopted a new bear, but unfortunately I don't know what his name is yet. He has a bear name already, of course, but I need something I can pronounce. He refuses to give me any help.

He seems quite taken by Category Theory.

He is following the Presidential and Vice-Presidential campaigns very carefully.

I recently became interested in the name "Bertram", but I don't think that quite right. I thought of the name "Bieberbach", after the German mathematician Ludwig Bieberbach, but he didn't exactly work in the same field of math that I do. (Maybe Cartan instead?) I'm also not sure what would be short for Bieberbach. Although the more I think about it, the more I kind of like it. Bieberbach. Bieberbach Bieberbach.

What about Bourbaki, after the invented personage Nicolas Bourbaki? I could refer to him as Bourbaki, or Nicolas. Hmmmm.

Bieberbach Bieberbach.

What do you think? Any ideas?

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it.

2008-09-18T19:58:00.003-04:00

I'm so excited, because I'm going to go see The Dark Knight tonight, for the third time. It hadn't even occurred to me that it was still playing, but a friend of mine hasn't seen it yet and noticed it was there, so there it is.

There, now I am back from seeing the movie. And you wouldn't even know, except that I'm telling you! I wore my cool Batman hat, and even brought a little Batman action figure with me in my pocket. (I didn't take it out except during the movie in the dark, because I was afraid my friend would make fun of me.) Incidentally, the movie is still officially AWESOME. I mean, wow.

Saw some great previews, too. The trailer for Watchmen is incredible incredible (Dr. Manhattan looks fittingly magnificent and frightening, and Rorschach fittingly bad-ass and cool). The new James Bond movie seems like it will be pretty cool. I think Daniel Craig is such an interesting take on the character. He's much more rough and tumble, and he has a scary edge to him that seems more fitting than the somewhat untarnished flippancy of previous actors. And of course, there's The Day the Earth Stood Still. What can I say, except Klaatu barada nikto?

Earlier this evening I once again saw a particular commercial for The Olive Garden that always makes me chuckle. There's a bunch of people sitting at a table in the restaurant, and there's some sort of deal where you choose exactly which kind of pasta you want and exactly which sauce, and maybe something else. One fellow says that he's "done the math" on the pasta, and cites the number of possible combinations of pasta and sauce. His friend replies, "You do the math, I'll do the alfredo!"

I absolutely cannot wait until the next time I'm talking about math with someone, and the opportunity arises for me to utter this phrase, and I actually remember to do it. What an utterly magnificent non sequitur!

Good news, everyone!

2008-09-16T20:41:00.002-04:00

I just heard about a very cool thing. Apparently, the genetic codes of the human genome and the pumpkin genome are 75% the same! Seventy-five percent! And pumpkins are awesome! (One reference for this is a slightly old article from The Atlantic Monthly.) Of course, I suspect that for some of us this figure is only a lower bound.

Bon mots

2008-09-15T09:15:00.003-04:00

I just want to jot down two neat things I read recently. The first is from Astonishing X-Men (3rd series) number 13.

"I'm totally cool. I'm totally calm, and I'm totally cool.
My calm is only exceeded by my cool. Which is total."

Shadowcat said that. The issue was written by Joss Whedon, as were the twelve before it and the twelve after it. His run on X-Men is probably my favorite ever.

The second is from a Halloween greeting card.

outside of card: "On Halloween, if you hear a creepy, continual scratching at the window, it's probably just a branch."

inside of card: "Zombies use them to reach the windows."

I can't win.

2008-03-27T21:34:00.003-04:00

I'm ditching that idea about reviewing comic books that I read. I don't think too many people I know are all that interested. Besides, it takes too much time.

The other day, my girlfriend and I were sitting on the floor in my apartment, eating dinner at my coffee table. (I have a regular table too, with chairs and everything, but I like the floor sometimes.) She was complaining, mostly jokingly, that I talk to my cat more than I do to her. Just then, the feline in question leaped onto the table with a view to sampling our meal. I shouted, "Sofi, NO!" (Sofi is the cat's name.) My girlfriend looks at me and says, "See? Ignored again."

Hehehe.

I just realized how weird, but funny, it would be if Sofi were my girlfriend's name, and I had reacted to the cat trying to steal our food by shouting at her. As if to say, "No, let her try some!"

New agenda

2008-01-30T17:34:00.000-05:00

My goodness, it's been a long time!

I just saw an add on the Fox television station for the Super Bowl. They said they would have somebody out on the red carpet interviewing people. There's a red carpet at the Super Bowl???? Things sure have changed since the last time I watched. (I think they were actually referring to the Pre-Game Show, although I still think it's strange that this is a red carpet affair.)

I read a really wonderful poem sequence at the beginning of a collection of Calvin and Hobbes comics I have, and I've been trying to find the book so I can reread it, and maybe post part of the poem. But it seems to be lost in the wilds of my bedroom. It occurred to me that what I really need is a Search Window for my bedroom. I could type in "Calvin Hobbes", and it would give a list of several locations in my room where I have Calvin and Hobbes books, or anything containing both words. Better yet, it could produce a glowing circle around the physical location of the search results.

Oh yes. The future will be cool.

So I thought I would start a new agenda for this blog, or at least for when I feel like using the new agenda. I am a huge comic book fan, by which I mean that I really love comic books, and that I am a comic book fan who is kind of a physically large person. But mostly the former.

I mostly read comics in the form of Trade Paperbacks, which are usually collections of some number of individual comic books collected together in one volume. I thought an interesting thing for me to do might be to give a review of new comics that I read. I won't offer a detailed summary, but just give my thoughts and feelings about the story, and whether or not it is worth the price on the cover. More details about the stories and characters can almost certainly be found on Wikipedia, or elsewhere on the internet.

(If anyone reading this is interested in reading some comics, I would be happy to recommend something that you might like, based on your personal fiction interests.)

Let us begin.

Wetworks
Writer: Mike Carey
Penciller: Whilce Portacio
Price: $14.99
Purchased at: Borders, Ithaca, NY
Publisher: Wildstorm

This was a restart of the original Wetworks series, which apparently ended with the deaths or disappearances of most of the original characters. I never read the original series, and I'm beginning to regret it. I always assumed the book was about a military-type strike team that performed especially nasty missions. But it seems I was wrong. Instead, it is about a military-type strike team whose members have been enhanced by golden alien symbiotic armor, and who fight supernatural threats such as vampires and werewolves. Now that is pretty cool.

The new team contains only a couple of the original characters, and adds a vampire woman and a werewolf man. The latter is a detective from an alternate universe where the supernatural creepies have destroyed most of humanity, except for small pockets safeguarded by the few paranormal beings who fight on the side of the angels. These apparently include werewolves and some demons and ghosts. This alternate universe seems to be where a lot of the current and upcoming story will take place. There is a weapon, or something, which is a box containing the spirits of vampires who were executed by the werewolf police, and this seems to be what everyone is scrambling to get.

It's pretty cool. There's also a good bit of military and governmental intrigue and betrayal and hidden agendas thrown in, which was apparently a large part of the original series as well.

There aren't a lot of interesting super-powers floating around, but I think that's ok. This book is worth reading, and worth the price.

Uncanny X-Men: The Extremists
Writer: Ed Brubaker
Artist: Salvador Larroca
Price: $13.99
Purchased at: Borders, Ithaca, NY
Publisher: Marvel

This was a very good book too. Ed Brubaker has garnered an impressive reputation, and I think it is largely well-deserved. He has written several stories recently which fall under the category of, "What you thought was true wasn't really true. Here's what really happened, and has been happening all along." I'm thinking of his resurrection of Captain America's old sidekick, Bucky, who was long thought deceased but was actually brainwashed into being an assassin called the Winter Soldier for a Russian mastermind, kept in suspended animation and only thawed out for missions. And I am also thinking of X-Men: Deadly Genesis, where he revealed that the team of X-Men gathered in Giant-Size X-men #1 formed to rescue the original team from the living island, Krakoa, was actually the second such team formed and sent in, and that the original team was slaughtered, and that Professor Xavier telepathically erased all memory of any of this from everyone. This original team contained Cyclop's and Havok's brother, who they didn't know existed, and who somehow survived all this and eventually woke up and then went off to destroy an intergalactic empire, and ended up becoming it's ruler instead. (This second part happened in X-Men: The Rise and Fall of the Shi'ar Empire.)

I know how all of this sounds. But the fact that such stories were actually wonderfully written and completely believable, modulo comic book fiction, is tremendous testament to Brubaker's talents.

This book did not especially fall into that category. There was a new character introduced who was supposed to have been around all along, but it wasn't a major character, so no big deal. The story was mostly a continuation of the effects from and reactions to M-Day, an event where most of the mutants in the Marvel universe suddenly lost their powers. Specifically, it is about how many of the Morlocks dealt with this. The Morlocks were a group of mutants whose mutations were too obvious for them to live with everybody else, so they hung out underground in caves and sewers.

It's a good story, featuring Xavier, Storm, Warpath, Nightcrawler, and Hepzibah. I love the recent use of Warpath. This is a nice, odd little collection of characters. Xavier has his powers back, and he is not shy about using them to manipulate and investigate and deceive, all in the name of protecting the people he has sworn to protect. It's nice to see him back in action like this. The character has gotten a lot of slack for misusing his powers like that, but I think it makes for interesting reading. There's a good reason that mutants are hated and feared. They are damn powerful. And there are many good reasons that you don't mess with the X-Men, and Xavier is reason number one.

One of the main things coming out of Deadly Genesis, as well as Astonishing X-Men: Dangerous, is that most of the X-Men simply do not trust the Professor anymore. And I can't really blame them. This group is led by Cyclops, (who is recently back to being the canny and experienced tactical genius he's supposed to be). In counterpoint, we have people like Nightcrawler. When asked to accompany Xavier on a mission into space, putting aside recent disagreements, Nightcrawler simply replies, "You are and always will be the man who saved my life. Of course I'll go." (This may not be the exact quote.) Of course, you have to wonder whether Xavier somehow manipulated this situation, in order to obtain exactly this gratitude. He couldn't have, could he? No, surely not. But maybe. But no. Hmmm......

Larroca's artwork was wonderful. His style has always been attractive. I first saw his work in Excaliber, long long ago. He has since then done amazing work on all sorts of things, mostly on the X-Men. But recently it looked like he was getting a little complacent. Things didn't look as real as they could. They were painted and pretty and smooth, but somehow not organic enough. But this book was soooo different. Fantastic work. I'm not sure exactly what it was. Maybe he had a different colorist here, or he began using more shadows, but the effect is pronounced. These are real characters, with real expressions. I want to say that Xavier especially looks interesting, but really they all look great.

The only bad thing I have to say about this is that the story has the feel of being the beginning of a much larger saga. And maybe it is. But that's not how it was advertised. As an individual instance of story, it really doesn't have enough momentum. But maybe after I read what comes next, which I think is a storyline called Messiah Complex, I'll change my mind.

At any rate, well worth reading, and definitely worth the price.

I wish I could try kindergarten again

2007-11-19T06:16:00.000-05:00

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.

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

2007-11-18T14:10:00.001-05:00

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.

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.

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.

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.

2007-11-11T02:56:00.001-05:00

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.)

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.

Solutions in the back of the book.

2007-11-10T13:54:00.000-05:00

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

2007-10-19T22:33:00.000-04:00

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.

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.

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

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

My favorites are the second and last ones.

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.

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

2007-07-20T19:38:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-06-21T02:14:00.001-04:00

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

2007-06-14T01:26:00.000-04:00

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

2007-06-05T00:03:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-06-04T23:27:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-06-02T11:36:00.000-04:00

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.)

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.

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.

2007-05-30T21:22:00.001-04:00

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.

2007-05-23T06:39:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-04-22T15:51:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-04-19T07:33:00.001-04:00

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

Cirque du so long, sucker!

2007-04-17T10:14:00.000-04:00

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.

2007-03-29T21:37:00.000-04:00

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.

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

2007-03-02T13:39:00.000-05:00

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

2007-03-02T13:00:00.001-05:00

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.

2007-03-02T10:00:00.000-05:00

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

2007-02-07T15:51:00.000-05:00

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

2007-01-27T18:13:00.000-05:00

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.

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

2007-01-25T21:22:00.000-05:00

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.

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?

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 ...

2007-01-14T11:00:00.000-05:00

... 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.

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.)

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

2007-01-13T11:12:00.000-05:00

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

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.

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.

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

Ithaca weekend

2007-01-12T08:24:00.000-05:00

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.

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.

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.

2007-01-08T23:07:00.000-05:00

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.

The answer is "Nope".

2006-12-06T22:31:00.000-05:00

Is there anything in the world cuter than a baby all bundled up in winter clothes?
The answer is an emphatic "Nope".

Mike and I just started watching a movie. When we saw that the movie was, unexpectedly, rated R, I said, "Oh no! I don't know if I'm allowed to watch a movie like this!" Mike replied, "Do you want to call Sjamaar and find out?" (Sjamaar is my advisor.)

Awesome.

Last week I was down in my office in the math building, which, for those of you who are not familiar with the standard work habitat of a graduate student in the mathematics department at Cornell, is simply a cubicle in a large room full of cubicles. (I actually like it very much. As I've told people before, if I want to be alone, I can always go to my apartment, where I am, except under the most extraordinary circumstances, quite completely alone.)

So, I was in my office last week when I heard the communal phone ring. Since no one generally wants to answer the damn thing, and I was happy to step away from my work for a minute, I answered it. It was Professor DH. He asked if JA was there. I checked and found that he wasn't, and was asked by Professor DH to leave a note for him, which I agreed to do. I had just lifted a sheet of paper for said note, when the phone rang again. Again I answered it. Again, it was Professor DH.

The professor was part way through asking if MB was there when he interrupted himself to ask if he was talking to the same person as before. I said yes, and he asked if I wouldn't leave a copy of the same note on MB's desk. We were about to end the call when I had a thought. I asked if there was anyone else who needed this note. The professor said, "Well, I don't suppose GM is in that office also."

"Yes, he is, actually. I'll leave him a copy too."

"Ok, thanks so much."

Available outside of class

2006-11-27T19:42:00.000-05:00

I was just leaving the grocery store, and I remembered a pretty funny story.

A couple of years ago, sometime in mid-September, my sister and I were at the grocery store here in Ithaca. Down one of the aisles I saw one of the students from the class I was teaching, and her roommate. I said hi, and my sister and I kept shopping. We had paid and were leaving the store when we noticed my student and her roommate gathering their groceries together and getting ready to head to the bus stop.

I offered them a ride. We bundled up into my car, and as I drove out of the parking lot I told my student about the Course Evaluation that she would be asked to fill out at the end of the semester. I went on to describe how one of the questions would be "Was the lecturer available to help you outside of class?" And I asked my student to remember this night when it came time to answer that question.

I drove around Taco Bell tonight, and the cashier at the window had the most amazing voice. When I arrived at the window, I saw that the voice belonged to a beautiful girl. She just looked heart-breakingly sweet. The point of this story is that as I was waiting at the window for my food, I thought to myself, "What a beautiful voice this cute Taco Girl has." This was followed shortly by the thought, "Taco Girl is one of the very, very coolest nicknames I have ever, ever heard."

Taco Girl. My Taco Girl. Sweet Taco Girl. I love the nickname. I am going to have to find a girl who has something to do with tacos, just so I can use it.

Failing that, I am going to have to find a girl and give her a gigantic taco dinner, just so I can call her Taco Girl.

One out of n isn't bad.

2006-11-10T20:03:00.000-05:00

How large does n have to be for one out of n to actually be bad?

I've recently taken up playing basketball again. And when I say "playing basketball", I really mean "playing basketball by myself". And when I say "playing basketball by myself", I really mean "shooting at the basket, walking over and getting the ball, and then shooting again".

I used to enjoy this a lot, and I'm finding that I still kind of enjoy it. I'm a little rusty, but then I was never very good anyway, so there's not too much of a difference now.

My very favorite thing to do involving basketball and other people is the game where one person shoots, and if he/she scores, he/she gets to shoot again. Otherwise, whoever got the rebound gets to shoot. Occasionally someone will go in for a lay-up, or start dribbling around a little, and occasionally someone will give them a little obstacle, but it's very easy-going. There are no teams. I love this.

Competition has always made me pretty uneasy, even friendly competition.

Anyway, the thing I realized, or more accurately, remembered, was that my greatest challenge when I'm off shooting hoops by myself is not losing my cool. When I miss ten or more shots in a row, especially when the last eight were from less than two feet from the basket, it is incredibly difficult for me not to give the basketball a good kick. I remember doing this many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many many times when I was in high school.

That was a very difficult time for me, and if that stupid ball wasn't going to cooperate with me, then, darn it, the ball was going for a little trip!

I think I'm much better about that now. I'm older, wiser, and more mature. And I'm far too lazy now to go get the ball after I kick it.

Score yet another for laziness!

Little funny things

2006-11-10T19:45:00.000-05:00

One of my students has had a nasty cold for the past week. I sent a get-well e-card earlier in the week. I was trying to come up with another get-well gesture the other night. Bringing an actual can of chicken soup to class seemed like too much, so I came up with a more subtle, and much funnier, thing to do. I would bring in the label from a can of chicken noodle soup to class, the idea being that the label probably absorbed some wellness-inducing-vibes from the soup by osmosis.

Unfortunately, although I remembered one-thousand of the things I had to remember to bring to school this morning, I forgot the one-thousand-and-first. So, I was left with no other option but to scan the soup label’s image into my computer, and send the picture to my student. It can be found here.

Here’s another funny.

One generic cinematic sort of situation that’s always stuck in my head is the idea of two people, maybe friends, maybe enemies, maybe a little of both, standing on the top of a mountain during a gathering storm screaming at each other about the fate of the world, or at least humankind. Does this make sense? Do you know what I mean?

I especially like the idea of two people who were friends when they were young, who are now in positions of great power in opposition to each other.

I guess it’s definitely a comic book sort of situation too.

So I told Mike about this, and he immediately envisioned it as the last battle between Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty on top of Reichenbach Falls, which is certainly a very similar situation, although not quite what I had in mind.

Many months after I first mentioned it to Mike, I was telling him about a particular person that I sometimes really really dislike. This person is also a graduate student.

Mike suggested that maybe I had finally found my partner for this scene of mine. He said that ten years from now me and my enemy could enact this fateful mountaintop encounter, like Holmes and Moriarty. Except, Mike added, that ten years from now me and my nemesis would both be professors. I wasn’t so sure.

“Only ten years? I wouldn’t count on it. I think I’ll probably still just be a ‘Mister’.”

(It’s not entirely obvious to me that I will ever graduate from here.)

Ok, one more.

Riding the bus this morning, (yes, I ride the bus an awful lot), I saw an advertisement above the seats opposite me. It was actually an advertisement for the advertising space. It was a cute cartoony drawing of a view of Earth from the surface of the Moon. There was text that said something to the effect of "Let more people see your adds".

Huh? Who exactly do they think is riding this bus??? Or, how far exactly do they think this bus's route goes???

Well, just one more.

They keep making these movie versions of classic TV shows. I'll admit that I enjoy some of them, but that's not saying much, because I enjoy 99.999% of the movies I watch. But even with the ones I enjoy, I do ask myself why exactly they felt it necessary to make such a movie. Because some of them are pretty awful. AWFUL.

Then the other day I was flipping through the menu to see what was showing on TV, and I saw that Leave It to Beaver was on. But it wasn't the TV show. Oh no. It was the movie. (Don't believe me? It exists. Check it out!)

I had never heard of this movie, or seen any indication that it exists. So I thought to myself, "Considering how bad all the other movies based on classic TV are, exactly how bad does this one have to be to have been beneath my notice??"

And this made me very frightened. I actually had to turn the TV off right that moment.

Ok, now I'm done.

Everything makes me sad

2006-11-10T19:30:00.000-05:00

The title of this entry is a quote from Greg Muller. I don’t even remember the context, but it was very funny at the time.

Here is another funny quote about sadness. In an episode of Futurama, Fry is apparently killed in space. When back on Earth, Leela keeps having dreams that he’s still alive, that he still exists. The Professor replies, "Of course he still exists—as a frozen corpse in outer space. Oh…I made myself sad."

So I was riding the bus home from school the other day. I was on one of those sideways-facing seats. There were two undergraduates sitting across from me. They weren’t a couple, but they were totally into each other. You could totally tell. Totally.

The bus stopped at one of its, well, stops, and the kids started to panic. They didn’t know where the bus was, and they weren’t sure if this was their stop or not. They had to consult the driver, a passenger just getting on, and a passenger still sitting.

It wasn’t that they didn’t know where they were going, but it was nighttime and they couldn’t immediately see where the bus was, and they had lost track of the stops. They had completely lost track of where the bus was – that was how into each other they were.

I have never in my life lost track of the bus stops.

I’ve had conversations on the bus, and I’ve even been pretty into people I’ve been riding the bus with, but they’ve never been that into me at the same time. Because I’m pretty sure that if that had ever happened, not only would I have noticed, not only would I have lost track of what bus stop we were at, but I would almost definitely have lost track of what planet we were on.

And yet, I’ve always been pretty darn aware that I’m on planet Earth.

Choose your destiny

2006-10-25T07:37:00.000-04:00

I just saw a commercial for new Star Wars Episode III lightsaber toys. The bit that caught my interest is one which allows you to change it's color from blue to red. The tagline attached to that product is, "Choose your destiny, like Anakin Skywalker." (I may be getting the exact language wrong, but the idea is the same.)

I find this very disturbing.

This is downplaying some pretty horrific events from that movie. Not only did poor little Anakin kill a large number of fully-grown Jedi, but he put down all of the little preschool Jedi! I trust this is not the mode of choosing one's destiny that the toy company means to endorse. "Impress your friends! Kill your friends! Kill your friends' little brothers and sisters!"

Not cool.

It was really easy to fall in love with the character of Darth Vader from the original movies. He would walk around all threatening, and choked some stupid British guy for his "lack of faith". But that's about the worst that we ever saw him do. Well, he did cut off Luke's hand. But honestly, he had it coming.

Darth Vader was pretty cool.

But in these new movies, I just don't know. At first he's too little and annoying. He's ok for a little while, as a good Jedi. But then he starts whining about how powerful he is, or should be, or something. I don't know. The exact dialogue can be a little too much to stomach in these movies.

To be fair, I think just about everything up to and including cutting off poor Samuel Jackson's forearm can be forgiven. They were extenuating circumstances, and given Anakin's knowledge at each point, his actions were basically excusable. They were brash, and maybe a little stupid, but not really evil.

What I love, and by "love", I mean "am completely boggled by", is that at this point, it's like a switch gets thrown in his head. The Emperor is like, "Kill the little ones." And for no apparent reason, with no thought or pause, Anakin goes, "Ok." Because clearly, killing all of these children will help him save his wife, not to mention the fact that nothing impresses the little woman, especially the PREGNANT little woman, like slaughtering a bunch of ankle-biters.

This was not too well thought out.

So yes, little ones. Choose your destiny, like Anakin Skywalker.

Anti-joke

2006-10-20T08:12:00.000-04:00

"Anti-joke" is the name of one of my most successful recurring jokes. It's never the joke I start out to use - it's more of a recovery vehicle. Here's how it comes up.

It starts out with me telling a joke that turns out badly. I don't mean a bad joke in the sense of one that makes you groan, e.g. almost every pun ever invented. I mean a joke that starts with genuine intentions of being funny, but falls tragically short. The kind of joke that falls completely flat, that produces awed silence so astonishing that you couldn't just hear a pin drop, you could hear the whooshing of the wind resistance on its way down.

When I realize the horror of what I've just done, there's no choice but to come clean. First, I apologize. There's simply nothing else I can say at first that makes any sense. Then, I comment that if someone were to tell a genuinely funny joke at this moment, no one would laugh, because that joke and my joke would cancel each other out.

Sometimes I will continue, confirming that, yes, my audience had just witnessed a comedic feat so awful that it dipped below absolute zero funny, and reached a level of negative humor. Oh yes. An anti-joke.

Thankfully, the anti-joke routine is usually enough to make everyone laugh, or at least unclench from their full-body expressions of absolute horror at the inhumanity of the first joke I told them. Truthfully, the more awful the first joke, the better the reaction to the revelation of the anti-joke concept.

It's a very dramatic concept, the idea of an anti-joke, floating around out there canceling any funny it runs into.

Watch out.

One burrito too many

2006-10-20T02:10:00.000-04:00

Mike and I were hanging out tonight, and I suddenly realized that my tummy ached. I told Mike that if there's ever a biography of my life, the title should be:

One Burrito Too Many:

The Tim Goldberg Story

He laughed, and replied that, from now on, I should live my life so as to live up to this title.

Writing this down, I'm reminded of my very favorite comedic work that Mike has ever produced. It started with me sending him the following email, written (for no particular reason that I can figure out now) in telegram code.

STILL HAVE YOUR JUICE AND PICKLES STOP KEEPING THEM IN FRIDGE STOP
SARAH AND JOHN AND SHELBY AND I MEETING TOMORROW AT ALADDINS AFTER
OLIVETTI TO DISCUSS ARMSTRONG BABY SHOWER STOP WANT TO COME QUERY
SIGNED TIM

Here is Mike's e-mail reply. (He interspersed his reply with a copy of my e-mail.)

STILL HAVE YOUR JUICE AND PICKLES '

ok

STOP KEEPING THEM IN FRIDGE

but you still have them

STOP SARAH AND JOHN AND SHELBY AND I MEETING TOMORROW AT ALADDINS AFTER
OLIVETTI TO DISCUSS ARMSTRONG BABY SHOWER

ok, i'll do everything in my power to prevent it

STOP WANT

i donate to third-world aid organizations all the time.

TO COME QUE

I don't speak spanish.

RY SIGNED TIM
I didn't know Tim knew sign language.

The Office

2006-10-05T12:13:00.000-04:00

I'm in the middle of watching the second season of The Office (the American one). It's an amazing show. It induces very strong emotions in me.

The first emotion is joy, motivated by the fact that it is incredibly funny. Two scenes stick in my mind. The first is from the very first episode of this series, where Dwight opens his desk drawer, pulls out a plate with a blob of jello on it, with his stapler floating in the middle of it. He exclaims, "Jim put my stapler in jello again!" I think the boss says, "Jim, stop putting Dwight's things in jello."

It's such a beautifully absurd thing, and the characters' reactions just skip over the absurdity of it, like it happens all the time. It's this juxtaposition of something from way out in left field with mundane reactions that made me laugh until my stomach hurt.

The second scene is more recent. It was the opening of one of the episodes. Jim passes Dwight in a doorway. Dwight is on his way to the vending machines, gets there, and screams, "What are my things doing in the vending machine?" Jim turns around to help out. In place of chips or candy bars, there's a stapler, a Dwight's name plaque for his desk, etc. Suddenly Pam shows up, surveys the items for sale, and buys Dwight's pencil holder. Dwight offers to buy it back, and then discovers his wallet missing. Jim helpfully locates it in one of the slots of the vending machine. Jim hands Dwight a bag of change, and he and Pam walk off.

I was absolutely dying.

There's one more scene like this that floats to the surface of my mind. Dwight comes into the office one day to find his desk missing. (How can you find something that's missing? The phrase doesn't imply that you've actually found the missing thing, and even if you had, then it wouldn't be missing! I love this phrase.) Dwight starts looking around, then starts out into another room. Without looking up, Jim says, "Warmer." This proceeds as Dwight wanders around the building, until he finds his desk sitting in the Men's Room. The part that absolutely kills me is that everything is set up perfectly. The computer is plugged in, it's screensaver running. Even the phone is plugged in, as evidenced by Jim calling Dwight to get some information about a certain paper product they're selling. Dwight sits right down and gets to work.

It's absolutely amazing.

--

Another feeling that hits me often when watching The Office is a deep sense of embarrassment. It simply overflows from most scenes involving Michael Scott. Steve Carell earned his Golden Globe award at least a hundred times over. It takes true talent to play such a preposterous individual. And Michael Scott is 150% preposterous. The things he says and does are just incredible. I wouldn't say that you can't see it coming, it's just that you can't imagine it will actually happen. It's astounding, and hysterically funny, but it also makes me very uncomfortable sometimes.

I felt this way sometimes watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, another brilliant show, but the feeling I get from The Office feels much more blunt. It takes me longer to recover from the Office. It leaves a dull ache for a while.

--

The last feeling that I get is harder to describe. It's really a couple of feelings, sometimes together and sometimes separately. It comes from the evolving story between Jim and Pam. I think it's mostly empathy and sorrow for Jim's character. The two actors have great chemistry together. Their timing and body language mesh beautifully together, and when the plot takes an awkward turn, you can feel the sudden shift in temperature between them. It's so abrupt that it's almost savage. It's great work from the actors, and from the writing, but it wrenches me around.

You really do want to give Roy a bop in the nose, don't you? Or maybe Pam a good solid shove to wake her up? Poor poor Jim.

I haven't finished watching this season, and my understanding is that there are dark times in store for Roy and Pam, but I don't think this automatically makes things lighter for Jim and Pam. We'll see, we'll see.

Oh deer

2006-10-02T00:32:00.000-04:00

Is there something strange going on tonight?

I just drove back from some friends' house, and came across many wandering creatures in the night on my way. (This does not include undergraduates.) There was a bunny who nearly hopped his way right under my tire. As I wound my way from one side of Ithaca to the other, I passed several little troupes of deer loitering in people's front lawns. And as I a last pulled into my apartment complex, a short line of deer found it's intended path interrupted by the sudden appearance of my trusty car. The first and last incidents were both far closer than I would have liked, although I can now say with absolute certainty that my breaks work.

I can't recall ever seeing quite so many animals hopping about at night, at least not recently, so I ask again, is there something strange going on tonight?

The moon doesn't seem to be full, and there's no eclipse. I find no reports of natural disasters, either recent or impending. The weather did seem to turn cold this weekend, for the first time this season, I think. I also noticed that the air outside seemed quite fragrant and gently sweet, maybe a last burst of olfactory pleasantness before everything tucks itself away, or simply gives up the ghost, for winter. I don't know.

The deer reminded me of the one time that I hit a deer. I think it was in the late summer or early fall of 2003. This was while I was taking a year off from Cornell and living in Saugerties. I was across the Hudson River, just leaving Red Hook on my way to visit my girlfriend at the time. She wasn't actually home, but I was going to leave a little surprise for her outside her door. She had a fondness for the combination of Dr. Pepper and Butterfingers, and I had put together a little arrangement of these.

I wasn't going very fast, but the deer seemed to come out of nowhere. I think it had galloped out from between some houses. It was a large beast, and in addition to setting off the airbag and stopping the car flat, it had pushed in the entire front of the car and cracked the windshield. The side doors were even dented.

I was fine, and the deer ran right off, so I like to think he was fine too, and as surprised by the whole thing as I was. The inhabitant of one of the houses came out, and told me how car after car had met deer after deer in that exact spot. (I was proud to be a part of such a consistent tradition.) Some other folks stopped by and helped push the car out of the road. A state trooper eventually stopped by, and then a tow truck. Each person had some sort of hunting weapon with him, (and they were most assuredly all "him"s), ranging from knives to bows and arrows to rifles, and all were eager to go check on the other, four-legged victim of the accident. Fortunately, no one found him.

I got to ride in the trooper's car and see some of his barracks, which was cool. On the way back home with my mom, I even dropped off the gift for my girlfriend. Unfortunately, the car was totaled. Fortunately, it wasn't my beloved car, but instead my parent's one-year-old automobile. This last fact would have been an "unfortunately", except that the insurance covered a brand new version of the car, although it wasn't quite as cool. (The first one was red, and had a sunroof and a six-CD changer/player. Its replacement was a sober dark blue, had only the traditional openings (four doors), and had a CD player that played only one meager CD at a time.)

Both were excellent cars. My brother made fun of the model, saying that it had been so easily rendered non-functional, but I continue to point out that its last function was to save my life, in which it was most successful.

I was thinking about this event as I walked from my car to my apartment this evening, and also about that particular ex-girlfriend, and I noticed that I've picked up an interesting new habit. It seems that when I feel a quick, sharp stab of emotional pain I emit a short laugh or chuckle. Something in the way of a "heh-heh-heh".

Of course, this isn't the only time I laugh or chuckle, so it's just a necessary condition, not sufficient.

Tim out.

Bring the funny

2006-09-27T22:43:00.000-04:00

I have two funny stories, for public consumption.

(1)
Last Saturday I went with James and Mike to see the movie "Fearless". Mike was late, so James and I bought our tickets. James went first, and when he was done, the fellow at the register called me up. I thought I heard him ask what movie, so I answered, paid for my ticket, and went in. As James and I were waiting for Mike, he pointed out something. The fellow at the register had actually asked, "How are you doing tonight?" And I answered, "Fearless," and stepped right up.

Awesome.

(2)
A couple of us were hanging out after Greg's Olivetti talk last Tuesday. The others were talking about sporadic groups and related stuff, and I wasn't too interested so I opened the door to leave. I was halfway out when I heard Greg say, "It's a well-known result in group theory that ------- is a dick."

I won't fill in the name, but it's pretty funny no matter who you put in there. After I stopped laughing, I said that although the result made sense to me intuitively, I was wondering what the standard proof was. Without missing a beat, Mike replied that the proof is by inspection.

Awesome.

Bugs on a hotplate with metal rulers

2006-09-17T20:26:00.000-04:00

A couple of hours ago I drove back to Ithaca from Saugerties. It was amazing outside. Warm but not hot, a little windy, and the leaves are just starting to catch Autumn flame. I went by way of Route 28 and Route 17, and in the middle of this is a weird little road called Route 30.

No, it’s name is not what is weird about it.

The road twists and turns its way around the Pepacton Reservoir, which is this lovely collection of water surrounded by pillows of hills. (I don’t think I actually knew how to spell “reservoir” until just now.) My favorite part is before you’ve gotten a good look at the water, where you’re mostly encompassed by trees, and suddenly everything opens up and you’re crossing this long, thin bridge across the middle of the open water. To either side the view is stunning. Someday I’m just going to stop in the middle of the bridge and take a good, long look. After the bridge, there is one of the zaniest series of turns I have ever seen a road take. I’d almost swear that some of them turn me around more than 360 degrees, which I would have thought to be very unlikely until I drove on this road.

On my trip I listened to two audiobooks, audiobooks being a secret passion of mine. First I listened to Richard Feynmann’s Six Not So Easy Pieces, which is actually a collection of a couple of recordings of his lectures. He must have been incredible to see in a classroom. I’d actually listened to some of this already, so the remaining bit didn’t fill my entire trip. For the rest of the time, I listed to some of Garrison Keillor’s Tales from Lake Woebegone, which are also amazing. He’s amazing. They’re just great.

What I wanted to write about here, though, is regarding some of Feynmann’s material. It was probably around the fifth piece. He had given an introduction to the idea of spacetime, much of which seemed dedicated to convincing people that the idea of a four dimensional vector space is not so crazy. (I didn’t need much convincing, of course.) He was going to start talking about Einstein’s reinterpretation of gravity as causing curved spacetime. To do this, he wanted to describe what he meant by curved space. He was basically trying to give a very informal, but fairly exact, description of Riemannian manifold.

He explained that as far as four-dimensional space is concerned, our imaginations suck. The only method we have open to us is to work by analogy, imagining how we in three dimensional space would look at someone stuck in two dimensional space. (This is very Flatland, which means it’s very smart.) He then took three examples of two dimensional spaces, and asked us to imagine little bugs who live there. He added later that these are bugs who decided to investigate some geometry. He then paused, and commented that these are very unusual bugs.

The first example was our usual Euclidean plane. The second was the surface of a ball, a sphere. (To many people, a sphere and a ball are the same thing. To mathematicians, of course, a sphere is the surface of a ball.) The way to measure distance in these first two examples is just what you think it is. Now we take a weird turn. His third example was bugs on a hotplate, armed with metal rulers. This requires some explanation, but is actually incredibly cool.

Imagine a hotplate the size of a plane. The temperature is different in different spots. At one spot, which we can think of as the origin of the plane, the temperature is pretty low. The further away from the origin you get, the warmer it gets. Now, the bugs on this hotplate have metal rulers to measure distance, and of course as these metal rulers expand or contract based on the temperature. Near the origin, the rulers stay a pretty normal size, but as the bug carries his ruler away from the origin it expands. This means that when he measures distances far away from the origin, the distances won’t seem as large to him as they do to us. The ruler gets bigger! Do you get it?

What I want to say is that when he’s far away from the origin and he sprints for a second, he hasn’t actually gone as far as he thinks he has. But this is ridiculous. The only way the bug can measure the distance is with his expanded ruler. He doesn’t notice anything! But if we’re watching him from above, we will definitely notice the difference. To us, the further away the bug is from the origin, the faster he can move, because distances which look huge to us are not really that big to the bug anymore. As the bug approaches the origin, he will appear to slow down.

The three spaces that Feynmann was describing were models of the Euclidean plane, the spherical plane, and the hyperbolic plane. He goes on to describe how one can measure curvature in these spaces by studying triangles, or by studying circles. If the curvature isn’t zero, weird stuff starts happening. Mathematical X-Files stuff. An important point he mentions is that the bugs can do this themselves. Curvature is intrinsic. You don’t need some higher dimensional cohort to measure it for you. The Euclidean plane has zero curvature, the spherical plane has positive curvature, and the hyperbolic plane has negative curvature. Feynmann briefly mentions that you could have a space where the curvature changes from place to place, like the space we live in. This is a general Riemannian manifold.

Another cool model of the hyperbolic plane is the Poincare disc. (Poincare should have an accent aigu over the “e”, but I’m afraid it might get lost when I move this text around. Plus I can’t figure out where to find it.) Take the open unit disk in the Euclidean plane, and imagine that the rulers shrink as you stray away from the origin towards the boundary. In fact, they shrink so fast that you move more and more slowly as you get to the boundary - so slowly that you never reach the boundary. This model has a nice complex analysis description, which I don’t remember. (It’s probably not that nice anyway.) You can find very nice pictures of this online, or in Bill Thurston’s book on three dimensional geometry and topology.

I was going to write about my ponderings regarding the origin of the term “hyperbolic” to describe these spaces, but I just looked it up in Wikipedia and found the truth, or at least bread crumbs leading to the truth. Now that I think about it, though, why spoil the suspense? Join me in some speculation.

A hyperbole is a figure of speech whose main feature is gross exaggeration. I will share that I just learned that the root of the word comes from Greek for “overshooting” or “excessive”. (I think I could have reasonably been expected to have deduced this.) The main feature of the hyperbolic models I described above is that weird things started happening as you moved towards the fringes, or away from the middle. The weird things were actually of a very specific type, namely exaggeration of length, or its opposite, understatement of length. I think I’ll stop there. I’ve shared enough of my brilliant insight.

More on riding the bus

2006-09-15T10:02:00.000-04:00

Anyone who's been on city buses more than a couple of times has probabaly seen it. Two buses trying to round a sharp corner at the same time. A bus making a right turn, the necessary width of its right turn obscured by a car that has stopped to close to the stop sign. These and other nightmare situations seem to face bus drivers on a nearly daily basis, but they usually manage to steer their vessels through safely.

I find this absolutely amazing.

Now, to me, most of the simple feats involved in driving a bus seem incredibly difficult. It's such a huge contraption, and the roadways are so darn tiny and intricate. But as with most things, I'm sure it's mostly a matter of practicepracticepractice. However, these extraordinary situations I described above seem to be a quantum leap in difficulty above the rest. I've seen some incredible driving, buses passing within a centimeter of each other, or within a centimeter of a car, or a stop sign, or sometimes even a person.

I think that when this happens, when our bus driver performs what, to me, is nearly a feat of miraculous proportions, we ought to give a round of applause. That's right. The entire bus should put hands together in honor of the driver's skill, daring, and composure.

I haven't seen, nor heard, or this happening yet. But on of these days, I'm going to clap. And I hope everyone joins in.

The semester so far

2006-09-14T14:20:00.000-04:00

The semester so far is going pretty well. I certainly have lots to say about it, not all of which is appropriate for mixed company to read.

Teaching is finally going pretty well. I'm teaching a course one step above the one I have taught before, but it's good. It keeps me honest. I'm forced to spend considerable time with the material before I teach it, and that's never a bad idea. The first couple of classes were a little bumpy, but after a little talk and work with my dad, the legendary guru of math teaching, I was able to find smoother seas. My planning of each class is now pretty meticulous, with room left for improvisation. The most important thing I've picked up is to present the material very slowly. Start with the simplest examples, the simplest cases, imaginable. Don't throw more than one trick at them at once, until they've seen each of the tricks individually first. It's working very well.

I'm mostly lecturing, with a little group work on Fridays, but I'm comfortable with that. When I'm on, I'm a pretty good lecturer, and I don't think the students get too bored. (One of them does have an intriguing habit of reading a newspaper when I'm speaking, but I'm not sure he's in the right place, anyway.) The students seem nice, although quiet. I teach at 12:20, so everyone's either a little groggy from just eating, or fading fast from not eating yet. Also, I teach in a lecture style room, with stadium seating, so it's a little hard to organize group work, but that's ok. Not all of them seem too ridiculously eager to do the group work, and a lot of them work alone, but that's ok too. They don't have to like it, and they don't even have to do it.

Sometimes their incredible silence is a little irritating, like when I ask them questions as a group. Yesterday, I asked who had seen long division of polynomials before. Silence. I asked if anyone had not seen long division of polynomials before. More silence. I asked if we should all close our eyes, except for me, so that no one would be embarassed to admit he/she hadn't seen it before. Still more silence. I yelled "ARE YOU STILL BREATHING???" There was still silence, but a whole lot of very wide eyes. Some people nodded. Good enough. I told them I was just checking.

I'll probably write later about how my own classes and research are going. Again, there's a lot to say. I also should write about my cat situation at some point.

I'm finally getting settled in with the new kids, and adjusting to all of the people who have left. Let me focus on the new kids. There are FOUR GIRLS! And I think they're all nice! I know the other new folks a little bit, and there's only one of them that I wish dead. Most of them are pretty nice, and only smarter than I am by a tolerable amount. I was even feeling better about the one I wanted to die until just a couple of minutes ago.

Our paths crossed, and he thanked me, saying that even though I didn't know it I had loaned him one of my textbooks for about twenty minutes earlier today. He had left a note, but had finished with it before I got to my desk today, so he removed the note. This is not kosher.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I wish I had the mutant power to make anvils appear and fall on people's heads. Anvils or pianos. With pianos, you get that wonderful musical crash when they hit.

Of course, I could have just explained that I'd rather he didn't borrow books without asking, but I feel this is somewhat dangerous territory. The math department is not entirely the happy-go-lucky crew it once was. There are some entirely untrustworthy characters floating around, and I'm not even referring to the new guy who I wish was dead. There is no security at our desks except for the drawers, whose locks are probably not monumental in their sturdiness. This means anything on our desks, such as, say, textbooks, are up for grabs. So far this hasn't been abused terribly much by anyone, but I feel that it's a very delicate balance. Far be it from me to stir the waters.

This entry has taken on a darker tone than I intended.

Riding the bus

2006-09-14T14:08:00.000-04:00

This morning, as every weekday morning for the past several weeks, I rode the bus to school. This afternoon, as most afternoons, I will ride the bus from school to home. I could say that I have a "love/hate relationship" with riding the bus, but that would leave shades of meaning unturned, all in the cause of using a pithy and already heavily burdened phrase. The truth is, usually I like riding the bus, occassionally I hate riding the bus, and sometimes I have no real opinion about it.

I don't like it when the bus is very crowded, or when it's running very late, but this is happening less and less now. This morning I had a wonderful bus experience. There were seats left when I got on, but no pair of seats totally unoccupied. Rather than impose my considerable volume on another passenger, I chose to stand. For the entire bus-ride, I was the only one standing, and I had a blast. It was like surfing (I imagine), or at least like a very fun ride on which you are allowed to stand up. With the bus's current detour route, we make quite a trip around twists and turns, and over a lot of bumps. With no one else standing up, I could hold onto any or as many bars as I wanted, and it was great.

When it came to my stop, another guy and I both tried waving our hands in front of the door sensor at the same time, and we had a little gentle hand-slapping episode. It occurred to me that it's very good that the instructions for the door say "wave your hand", and not "karate-chop your hand". That would have been a very different situation.

The other thing I like about the bus is that, outside of school, it is the place where I find the most general social interaction. I wouldn't go so far as to say that I meet people, but I definitely experience other people, to a small extent. It's not always pleasant, but it's almost always a little interesting. The most interesting thing is how darn quiet everyone is at the bus stop. I think I've talked to people twice so far.

I've only taken the bus sporadically in the past. This is the first time where I'm forced to take it daily. The last time I had to take a bus-like contrivance on a daily basis was in junior high school, and I stopped that pretty soon because of my tendency to be tripped by other riders who were somewhat evil and very much stupid. One of the people who tripped me was working in the Stewart's convenience store near my home a couple of years after we graduated. I only saw him there once, and he tried to have a little friendly conversation and reminisce, as if we were great friends in school. What a bastard.

So far the bus here is much better. No one's tripped me yet, and I've only stumbled on my own once or twice, which is about how often I stumble when not on the bus anyway.

Zits is great.

2006-08-02T22:09:00.000-04:00

No, it's not a grammatical error. I am referring to one of my all-time favorite comic strips, Zits, by Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman. I just finished reading Sketchbook No. Ten, "Pimp My Lunch", and one comic in particular struck me.

--

Jeremy: Sometimes I feel like everyone else has it together, and I'm just a doofus.

Jeremy's Mom: We all feel like that, Jeremy.

J: So then NOBODY really has it together, and EVERYBODY is a doofus...

J: I'm not sure whether to feel comforted or freaked out.

J's M: We all feel like that, too.