Things I've seen at the Joint Math Meetings so far...
Several people asking about my job situation followed by impressed surprise and congratulations. (I anticipated this.)
A person from Davidson College who said he will be attending my Congress talk on Monday morning because Susan Schaeffer said he should... (Thanks for the advertisement!)
Lots of people who overlapped with me in grad school at Cornell... (I knew this as well.)
One of my former TAs from Georgia Tech and a couple other GT grad students I know... (I didn't anticipate it but I'm not at all surprised. I just never hung out with them, so I didn't think about it too much.)
Lots of fellow Project NExTers... (Well, duh.)
One of my thesis committee members (Steve Strogatz), who I didn't know what attending. He said he didn't know either and he typically only goes to the applied math meetings. This can mean only one thing: he got one of the major prizes. These aren't announced until tomorrow, but the two most logical ones are the award for research in applied math and the Steele Prize for exposition (which would most likely be for his nonlinear dynamics textbook but could be for his popular book on synchronization. (I was surprised to see him.)
Lots of free chotchkes from the Exhibit Hall and some of them are actually useful. (Also no surprise...)
My student and her mother. (This is the second year in a row she's gone with her mother, who is a mathematician -- I think at San Jose State.) She'll be working on synchronization this summer, so hopefully I'll be able to introduce her to Strogatz. (She told me on Wednesday that she'd be here.)
A shuttle containing mostly fellow conference attendees on the way from the airport. (This almost always happens for conferences of this size.)
A premeditated awesome/"awesome" comment by me during one of my talks: "This slide is for people who forgot the 60s." (The title was "Shrooms!" in multicolored letters. In the slide, I introduce the example of mushroom billiards.)
An unpremeditated (well, premeditated by coming up with it a minute earlier in case I might need it) awesome/"awesome" comment: "My slides will be kind of like Pleasantville, except they won't become color at the end." (I already can't remember exactly how I phrased this.) This was for the other talk I gave today. It was in a room without a computer projector, so I had to print them out, and I printed them out entirely in black and white. (One person was asking whether some stuff amidst the black background was part of the slide or because of the printer.)
Summer undergraduate students of one of my friends from grad school, who indicated that the people running the program (all of whom went to grad school with me) told stories about me all summer. Also, this included a quote along the lines of "Mason Porter in the flesh!" because I was just a name on an article. (I gave them my Congress data, and they were doing some of their work on it. They have a poster on this topic. I'm one of the poster judges, though each person only gets 2-3 posters to judge. In the spirit of Scalia, I will be recusing myself from judging this poster if I end up being selected for it.) Also, I already knew from my friend that they would be attending the meeting, and part of my hoped-for agenda was to see how they were doing and see if I could help.
My math 5 prof from back in the day. (I last saw him at the Atlanta meeting in 2005 and, before that, I last saw him when I was still an undergrad.)
A hotel which actually had a floor 13... (This is exceedingly rare in the U.S.)
Another hotel with the most assinine room selection mechanism I've ever seen. (Errr.....)
Rooms called "balcony" that are on the 4th floow. (At first, I thought I should go to the highest floor possible, which was the 41st. This is how I found out about the aforementioned hotel. As one math prof I know said when I told her about it, "Mason, you can really be an idiot sometimes.")
I have some more things to write, but I'll do them later. We're in the downtown area of the city. Everything's open really late (apparently 24/7), but the streets and sidewalks are narrow, the smell outside isn't so great, and the area of the city is pretty dirty. (I asked a friend who did a postdoc at Tulane, and he assured me that downtown is basically in its pre-Katrina state and that what I am seeing is not the result of that at all.)
There is a Harrah's here, so I could play craps if I want. (I doubt I'm going to do this. I am sleep-deprived and very busy.)
I hope I can see the Mississippi River in person. I've never done that, and I think it's supposed to be within walking distance.
3 days ago
5 comments:
It's unclear exactly where you're staying. However, if you get to see the French Quarter and that area, you are undoubtably within walking distance of the river (it's almost directly next to there). I highly recommend walking along Decatur or Chartres, if i'm remembering the streets right, there are many fine restaurants there.
If the convention is at the Ernest N Morial Convention Center, that's just south of the french quarter, and the river is directly adjacent to the east.
I unfortunately don't remember any restaurant names that i'd specifically recommend, but my experience has been that any place in the french quarter has absolutely excellent food (assuming you don't absolutely hate the style that restaurant serves).
Ok, so I immediately thought of more things I should say.
As far as I know, having visited New Orleans both before and after Katrina, it's always been a somewhat messy place. That's been part of the charm, that and the food, at least for me. Some of the city is definately very trashed - ex: when Doug and I went through, we saw a car graveyard under the highway, of flooded cars. This is not normal for pre-katrina.
About the smell, it used to be that it definately was a place where the smell wasn't neutral, but usually it was food smells that were generally good. I was told, when there more recently, that some of the not-so-good smell now is actually due to mildew and rotting due to the flooding. It wasn't very bad though, but noticeable.
If you have particular locations (where you're staying or whatever), I can give you better directions to where i've always liked walking around, should you be interested. You'll likely get to see many of those places just normally though. ;)
I'm at the Double Tree, which is basically right next to the French quarter.
I hope I have a chance to do that stuff. Things are somewhat less hectic today than yesterday (2 talks), but I got up a bit late and have other stuff I'm doing---in 25 minutes, the guy from Pixar is speaking. (When he talked two years ago, he showed us some stuff for upcoming movies that wasn't in the trailers.)
Also, it was really neat to see what mathematics goes into some of the animations of their movies, so I think this is the talk in the conference that I am most eagerly anticipating.
I'm sure you've probably worked this out, but here's directions should you need em. If you walk down canal street (which the double tree is apparently on) to the east, you'll get to the canal street ferry, which goes over the river. If you go the opposite way, take a right on Peters (or Decatur, a bit further, which Peters will merge into) and you'll be at the main area of the French Quarter. Parallel streets to Decatur (like Chartres, one more away from the river) are also quite interesting. It was on Chartres that Doug and I found an excellent restaurant on our way through, but there are many all through the area.
I hitched a ride (well, this was scheduled in advance) to Ruston, LA, the location of Louisiana Tech. This is the second leg of my trip. (I'll be flying out of Shreveport on Thursday.)
I'll have another blog entry about more New Orleans stuff, but I'm tired after the long car ride and once I'm done with various work-related e-mails, I plan to read a bit of a novel. (I have read 0 pages since I started my trip, and it promises to be a very interesting novel based on the first chapter.)
Instead of only adding 1 state to my list with this trip, I have in fact added 2, though the second one is in a weaker sense than the first. We drove into and out of Mississippi from New Orleans to Ruston, but I basically only rode through and pee'ed in Mississippi.
We did pass over the Mississippi River during the drive (thereby accomplishing my goal of seeing it in person), so while I unfortunately never really had a chance to walk next to it. I didn't have time during the day, couldn't convince anyone else to go with me at night, and didn't feel safe enough to go on my own at night. The downtown area is sketchy and I didn't really want to go alone to the Riverwalk Mall, which apparently is a virtual ghost town these days. On the other hand, Bourbon Street is crowded (too crowded, actually), but I had a chance to tour that a bit both at night and during the day, and there was some cool stuff (like the live jazz band), so also got to knock that one off my list. (For what it's worth, there was a moon over Bourbon Street that night. :) )
I've decided that New Orleans isn't for me --- either as a play to live (especially for that!) but even as a place to visit. I had talked a couple times about going there for my birthday (which often overlaps with Mardi Gras), but I've changed my mind on that. There are some similarities to Vegas, but I do very much enjoy visiting Vegas and really want to do so again. (I definitely don't want to live there either.) Among other things, the downtown area is sketchy, and I don't feel as safe walking there at night as I would like.
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