Friday BayouBlogging

Well, I'll technically be commenting both on New Orleans and a more rural area of Lousiana (which isn't part of the Bayou).

Let's start with what else I saw while at the Joint Math Meetings in New Orleans:

Wow, my memory of the meeting is already fading quite a bit. Maybe if I weren't so tired...

On Friday, I didn't bother with dinner but was able to get some nice appetizers (almond-crusted chicken fingers!) in one of the receptions to which people with Project NExT affiliations are invited. I saw a couple people I knew there, but I was an hour late and managed to miss almost all of the speeches. I didn't try to do that, but my confusion about what constituted the "Balcony" helped out here. Another contributor to this was the fact that I ran into Steve Strogatz (a member of my thesis committee) at the meeting, so I talked to him for a while as a pause from rushing to where I intended to go. I asked him about a certain paper of his one of my students will be generalizing this summer. Oh, and he did one of the major awards, but not one of the ones I mentioned in the blog. He one the Joint Math Policy Board communications award, which is essentially a sort of lifetime achievement award for communicating mathematics to the general public. I hope I one day will have done enough to deserve that (whether or not I win it, though I suppose the only "official" recognition of having merited it is to actually win it --- anyway, the goal is to actually make a sufficient contribution in this area to deserve that kind of recognition).

On Friday night, I went to the Gibbs lecture, which was given by Peter Lax this year. (It alternates between a mathematician who has contributed significantly to the sciences and a scientist who uses lots of math in their research. Formally, Lax was recognized in the former category, but he really could be recognized in both.) After that was the AWM reception, and the area outside the lecture hall was way too small for the number of people there. I thus grabbed some food --- because of the two receptions, I skipped dinner Friday night --- and escaped closer to escalators which was away from the throng... when I was suddenly accosted by a women with green hair (well, green streaks in her hair) who was telling me about how I was being really antisocial and that I had also done that last year at the Project NExT reception. She said she felt comfortable doing that because I was a fellow Project NExTer (at which point I realized that I was correct that I hadn't technically met her before) and that something on my blog last year had irritated her. (I neither asked what nor did she volunteer the information, but I can only think of one thing last January --- which I suppose is when she looked at my page because she did so after seeing my talk on Congress --- that could have done that, and I'm not sure whether I only thought of writing that particular thing or actually did write it. Of course, I could have completely forgotten plenty of other things.) I was then told I'd be forgiven this time for both that comment and my present antisocial behavior because it really was ridiculously crowded where the food was. (I also was asked if my Congress talk this year would be the same as last year.) Anyway, I tend to get kind of confused when somebody I don't know comes up to me and starts giving me hell for my antisocial behavior. Apparently, "Dots" (aka, Project NExTers) are supposed to be social. But we got along fine after my confusion was dispelled and I was forgiven.

On Saturday, I went to the Prize ceremony and reception. In addition to Strogatz, one of the major prizes was awarded (well, co-awarded) to Tom Mrowka, who was my first ever math prof at Caltech. (I still remember his comment during a demo about how Tommy II was "bound and gagged." He was demonstrating the stable versus unstable eigenvectors in rigid body rotation of a non-symmetric body.) He won a research prize in geometry. I was going to leave the ceremony after Strogatz got his prize to attend a Project NExT session on advising graduate students, but Strogatz got his award close to the end and I didn't feel like walking into the session 20 minutes late.

I went to dinner with a couple friends from grad school (and their students) who run an REU. The speciality where we went was alligator (which supposedly tastes like chicken, but has the consistency of fish), though I chose to have a nice steak. There was a live band where we went and while some of the music was catchy, their selection was limited and the service was very slow, so we heard some of the songs more than 7 times (or if they were different, they were similar enough to seem the same to me). One of the oldsters in the band recruited women from the tables to dance with him and another recruited people to play a couple instruments (I forget their names), and the participants were given beads. Some of our table went, but then things got really crazy when a table of young future cheerleaders and a (separate!) group of cheerleaders from the University of Michigan (I think it was the University of Michigan) came into the restaurant to eat. The ones from Michigan saw the young ones demonstrating some of their moves on the dance floor and decided they should demonstrate a bit, and two of them went on instrument volunteer duty and played the instruments especially gregariously --- it was actually quite impressive how much fun they were having --- that they ended up getting their beads awarded to them in the middle of their performance instead of casually after the fact. All of this passed the time while we waited a loooooooong time for our food to arrive. After dinner, I went to my hotel room to finish my pass through a draft of a manuscript to give back to my student for him to revise further.

The next day, I had lunch with a friend of mine and got a chance to explore Bourbon Street both during the day and at night (with a collaborator when I went back there at night). There was a moon over Bourbon Street when I went there at night. There were lots and lots of bars (and strip clubs and the like), and my friend and I had some trouble finding the restaurant that had been recommended to him. It wasn't raining at all until suddently it became a huge downpour and we had to retreat under an awning of a nearby store because neither of us had umbrella with us. After a couple minutes wondering when things would let up sufficiently for us to escape, I noticed that we had sheltered ourselves right next to a general store ("Hey, they probably sell umbrellas!"), so we walked in, bought cheap umbrellas, and went on our way. We were going to play chess later in the evening, but it didn't work out this year.

At night, I had to miss a dinner for CAMsters (members of CAM at Cornell) from my era that had been organized at the last minute because I had already agreed to go with a collaborator to dinner. We went back to Bourbon Street and passed by a live Jazz band while we were walking off the dinner. I would have stayed there longer because it sounded good. The sounds in most of the parts of the streets were just really loud music being played over a stereo. One thing that was funny was a bar advertising themselves as the home of a certain specialty drink --- a "Hand Grenade" or something --- which had a person dressed as a life-sized hand grenade just outside the place. That's the straight part of the joke. The really funny part was the very next bar, which had a large sign proclaiming "We sell hand grenades too."

I then went to the main Project NExT reception and talked to a bunch of friends there, although I unfortunately didn't get a chance to talk to all of them. (At this reception, the partially green haired person mentioned that she caught me being social at the undergrad poster session earlier in the day.) I hung out with a couple friends for a couple hours after the session and then crashed at 12:40 even though I was giving my Congress talk at 8 am the next day. (Pain!)

I got a 7 am wake-up call and made it to my room in plenty of time. (The last day was the only day I bothered with a wake-up call, so I missed some morning talks the prior two days that I would have attended if I were awake. I couldn't sleep the first night, so I was up bright and early on the first day of the conference.) My talk went well. The attendees included one of my friend's students (the other had already flown off), a person at the meeting who I wanted to track down and meet about some quantum chaos stuff (one of his collaborators had told him I would be at the meeting and that he should track me down because I was a person worth meeting, so this made my life a lot easier), and a bigshot (who I've met before) who has written a book about mathematics and voting. The talk went well, and then I went outside, autographed the Mathematical Moments based on my Congress work for the undergrad (she had said when we discussed things on Saturday that she wanted me to do that in case I became famous some day and that now I was obligated to become famous some day... that's quite a bit of pressure), and then discussed quantum chaos stuff and possible collaborations. So I definitely got some work stuff done that was on my agenda, despite my own antisocial tendencies (which I admitted openly in my conversation Friday night). Starting to get a scientific reputation is really useful for somebody who is antisocial because then sometimes people will come to me and I don't have to seek them out. My discussion with my friend's students was on Sunday, and I talked to them both about their projects and grad school stuff. Also, a couple of my friends at the meeting mentioned how when I'm famous, she's going to tell everybody she knows me. (Man, people are putting so much pressure on me. I can't say it wouldn't be cool, and I'd rather the expectations be this high than the reverse. Still, I don't particularly see my achieving that level of recognition.)

Just after lunch, I hitched a ride with the Louisiana Tech prof by prior arrangement and we drove up to Ruston, which is in Northern Louisiana (which is quite different culturally from southern Louisiana!). We passed over the Mississippi River, so I did get to see it for the first time even though I didn't get a chance to walk by it in New Orleans. (I had been too busy during the day and it was too sketchy for me to want to go alone at night --- and I couldn't convince anyone else to go with me.) We also drove into and out of Mississippi, so I got to add a second state (though in a much weaker sense) to my list rather than the one I was thinking would happen. I did use the bathroom in Mississippi, so I suppose that's something. (I like to make all the states I visit just a bit dirtier.) In April, I may be visiting University of Louisville, so I should be able to add Kentucky to my list soon enough.

Social life in the town of Ruston revolves around churches. Alcohol couldn't be sold in the city until recently, though there are several places that do this epsilon distance outside the city limits. One place was a drive-through daquiri place, which is apparently legal as long as they don't put the straw in your drink. (My mind immediately went to parallels with the selling of mp3 players and the companies denying any connection with downloading songs for them illegally --- in particular, before the legal downloading servicex existed.) On the first night, we ate at an Outback Steakhouse (a familiar franchise...) in Monroe, which was on the way to Ruston. A couple faculty members took me to a Mexican restaurant the next night, and their colleagues remarked that it was curious that they would do that with a Los Angeles native. (Our waiter was completely dumbstruck when I asked for iced coffee to drink. He was just completely confused.) For the first lunch, they took me to a nearby Chinese restaurant. The only Asian I saw at the place was a faculty member from Korea. They gave us forks at this place (so you can guess how authentic I think it is), and I asked for chopsticks and was the only person I saw using them. (It wouldn't have felt right to use a fork.) One of the people at the table was referring to an accident but it sound like "accent" to me because of her, well..., accent. At the Mexican resturant, one of my hosts brought up the local culture and how the town was a typical southern town though (naturally) the LA Tech faculty were a much more diverse bunch. He mentioned one time when he went to a doctor's appointment, somebody there found out he worked at LA Tech and mentioned to him conspiratorially that "I hear there are atheists there." His response was that he was Buddhist and she said that that was ok. (I was extremely amused by this story.) I love snarky people.

I spoke about complex networks for my talk and used college football and Congress as my extended examples. I started the talk by mentioning that in Louisiana, I wasn't sure which one was more controversial.

On Thursday, my host drove me to Shreveport for my flight back. We passed by their minor league baseball stadium on the way to the airport. (That was why I had originally heard of the city.) I listened to some music from my laptop while waiting for my flight. I had my earphones on, but unfortunately I had them plugged into the wrong jack. (Oops!) I did the same thing on the plane from Dallas to the other LA when trying to watch Much Ado About Nothing (Oops!), though I had to quickly give up on the movie because watching it was making me far sicker than watching a moving a screen on a plane normally would. (I listened to the airplane's music a bit and used my computer for that a bit. This is where having a working iPod with me would have been reallty nice.) Once I am finished with this entry, I am going to finish off the movie.

In the Dallas airport, I finally played the single player version of New Super Mario Brothers for the first time in a few months. I passed one level with which I had been having trouble before I stopped for a while, and now I hope to get past some of the other ones I hadn't solved before my hiatus. More important, I ran into a friend from grad school (now a postdoc at Colorado State) who I hadn't seen since I left Cornell. He was on his way to a conference in Vicksburg. Anyway, that was a really nice surprised.

So, now I am no longer in LA but am instead in LA and it's time to finish watching a movie.

Also, I will hopefully be able to walk normally tomorrow. While at Peet's tonight, my right foot decided it no longer wanted me putting any pressure on it, so I had to limp back home and walking is seriously problematic at the moment. First my iPod and now this.