2007: The Year in Gaming

How's this for a belated blog entry. I should have written this one in December.

Now it's time to discuss the year in gaming. First of all, here is what I wrote in 2006.

Let's break this down by category:


Board (and card) games:

For one thing, I played Ticket to Ride correctly for the first time. I enjoyed the game both with the correct way of playing and with the incorrect one, and I was even still able to apply graph theory intuition when playing it correctly. I'd like to get a UK edition of the game because I've been on several of the routes now.

I also played the British Isles Edition of Apples to Apples, which contains a mixture of cards that could be in any version of the game and some that are specialized for this one. Among the latter, I now understand a few things but most of them are still almost completely lost on me. Obviously, this game is awesome.

Another expansion I tried is the Dunwich Horror Expansion to Arkham Horror, which makes the game even more complicated/involved than it was before. One new featured that I very much appreciated was the opportunity to develop psychological problems when one runs out of brains unless automatically going to Arkham Asylum. Mmmmm... braaaaaaaains.

Speaking of braaaaaaains, I also played the non-zombie version of Fluxx. One way to describe this---who was the person who described it this way? It wasn't me...---is as 1000 Blank White Cards with rules. It was extremely fun, even without the zombies.

Another card game I played is Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot, which is an expandable card game. It is like the game Nuclear War, except with bunnies. The game dragged on the couple of times I played it, and I wonder if some of the expansions help.

I also tried Blokus this year. That was pretty fun.

I'm sure there are other board/card games I tried for the first time this year. Some of them that I have tried pretty recently are coming to mind, but I'm pretty sure that all of those date from 2006 or earlier.


Role-playing games:

Let's see... I played in two one-shots in March when we visited Mylanda in Florida. I played a somewhat monkly kobold (though he actually had one level each in three different classes) in a D & D game. I'd really like to spend a lot more time playing as this character (which I was really getting into), but given the game's one-shot nature, that probably won't happen. My die rolls when creating the stats for this character were just about the best rolls I've ever seen. The other one-shot was a Serenity game that Zifnab ran. (Mike)^2 was able to participate via video iChat, and this was done in quite a clever manner. (We were the field team and he was back at the ship. It worked quite well, though I think my feet occasionally got in the way of my laptop's camera.)

After I got to Oxford, I played in a Vampire game without vampires. We used the psychic powers expansion book, and my character specialized in seeing and interacting with dead people. The setting was contemporary Oxford and it was interesting to play in a world that was basically my current world with a fantastical twist. I believe that there will be a sequel to this minicampaign at some point.


Console games:

I played Guitar Hero II for the first time in January when I visited Travis and worked up my skill level from needing to play even the early songs at easy to being able to pass Freebird at medium. (I had seen the game before but hadn't played it, and I had played a total of one or two songs on the original Guitar Hero.) I also spent a bunch of time playing this in Pasadena and its environs at various times throughout the rest of the year. When I visited Travis again in August, we worked our way through Guitar Hero: Rock the 80s, although only a few of the songs were ones I really liked. (Unfortunately, they didn't include too many new wave songs. I did, however, find out just how much knowing a song really well helps one with this game.)

More recently, I played a lot of Rock Band when I visited the gang in December and January. The guitar stuff was more of the same (though it was cool to play using the spiffy perky goth guitarist who I designed), and I was trying to make the transition from medium to hard (which I am finding to be extremely difficult!). I can do some songs on hard with effort, and I can now actually get 100% on some songs in medium, which is quite a far cry from where I was in January 2007. The rest of the gang is much better than I am, but I'm happy with improving my ability compared to what I was before. It doesn't matter how I compare with other people. Playing the drums was really fun, and I am currently making headway through the songs on medium level. As I wrote in a separate blog entry a while back, the thing that makes Rock Band special is rocking out with ones friends. That's what I liked best about the game. I wouldn't get close to as much out of it playing on my own.

I got my Wii in 2007, so I've spent some time with a few of those games. I did some Wii sports, which is basically a tech demo. It serves it's purpose, however. My favorite game on it is tennis, and the boxing game is quite exhausting (especially when one is punching madly before the game actually starts! Oops...). Making a Mii is pretty cool as well. Mine actually resembles me quite a bit, and my collection now includes Miis that several of my students (and a few of my colleagues) have made. I tried Rayman Raving Rabids, which has lots of minigames. There was one that I just couldn't handle at all (sometimes, one has to just recognize that something isn't working), but watching others play the game and the associated sense of humor was a pretty fun diversion. But there were only a couple of minigames that was interested in actually playing.

I have now beaten the boss in Super Paper Mario, though I still want to do the pipe of 100 battles (or whatever its called) and the 100 consecutive battles against the Samar people (I died at the 90th battle yesterday... bloody Hell!). As with prior games in the series, this one has an excellent sense of humor. Also, Mario's special 3D ability is awesome and the allusions to things like Flatland (the first world is called "Lineland" and, for instance, has fake mathematical equations in the background), nerd culture (Francis is awesome), and more were really great! I'm also almost done with Zelda: Twilight Princess. I'm on the final boss battle (which I tried once and failed), and I plan to do the Cave of Ordeals after that. It's not a huge jump over recent Zelda games, but there were some very clever additions (like Spiderlink and the ball-and-chain weapon). My copy of Super Mario Galaxy arrived, but I haven't technically tried it yet. I will soon. Also on the docket (finally!) is Super Smash Brothers Brawl, which will arrive pretty soon after its layover in Pasadena.

I tried a bunch of console games and a couple of card games at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX). (See my old blog entry on that.) It's not really worth getting into the various details because there would be too much to write to cover all the things I tried. I beat one of the designers at an incomplete version ('You can't play as that monster yet.') of a Godzilla game for the Wii. That game wasn't very good, but I pretty much just tried it because it was there. Another of the many games I tried was a Wii version of ping pong, which I had previously tried for the XBOX 360. I prefer playing in real life.


Portable games:

I also played a couple of Nintendo DS games, and I am eagerly anticipating playing the DS version of N+, which I tried at PAX for a different system and which was most recently slated to come out two days ago. (I plan to pick it up while I'm in LA, assuming it's actually come out.) I have done a bit of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass, although I have lately been concentrating on my console games. I also played some Puyo Pop Fever (Did I actually buy this in 2006? I don't remember anymore.), whose computer players are ludicrously challenging in the player-versus-player mode! (Somebody should have playtested that better, because it reached ridiculous levels.) Of course, I am quite pleased to have a DS version of Puyo Puyo. "Ribbit! Ribbit! Ribbit!" Also, I think I spent some time playing New Super Mario Brothers last year, but that was more of a 2006 thing. I ought to finish that game at some point...


Computer games:

I played some Civilization IV and decided that I really like cultural victories. That's about it. (Does Scrabulous count?)



I'm sure there's stuff I'm missing, but this entry is already way too long, and I should have written it in December anyway...

2007: The Year in Music

Here is another post that is over a month late.

I didn't listen to too many full albums, so I'll just give out a few awards:


Best Lyrics: Suzanne Vega, New York is a Woman (this song has seriously fantastic lyrics!)

Best (re)discovered cover: Tom Jones, Situation (thanks, Lemming!)

Best discovered band: The Lovemakers (thanks again, Lemming!)

Song that always gets stuck in my head: The Torreador Song (from "Carmen")

Most belated song acquisitions: stuff by Joy Division that isn't "Love Will Tear Us Apart" or "She's Lost Control"

Best concert: Loreena McKennitt (of course)

Best movie soundtrack: Control

Most appropriate (and 'best' in some sense, but not the sense of my liking this collection of songs better than others) movie soundtrack in a movie that isn't about musicians: Juno

I think I had other things to mention and if I remember them at some point, I'll put them here. But I didn't get enough sleep last night, so for now (at least), I'll leave things as they are.

2007: The Year in Theatre

I think I've figured out the way to get me to finish blog entries that I have been meaning to do for a while---I'm supposed to be grading right now and I've finished checking e-mail, so I need to do something else that doesn't involve marking papers. (In principle, I could work on my next book instead, but I find it hard to do much of that when I am working this hard on real work. Somehow if the number of actual work hours gets above a certain threshold, then working on my book fades into the background for another week. I have several e-mails from a few months ago with people who are supposed to give us information for stories...)

Anyway, let me talk about some of the plays, musicals, and operas (well, there was only one opera) that I saw in 2007.

The opera in question was Carmen, which I saw in December at the New Theatre in Oxford. It's actually quite a nice venue and I enjoyed the show quite a bit (and couldn't get "The Torreador Song" out of my head for several days after I attended).

The big disappointment of the year (in terms of musicals... "Leave my personal life out of this!") was Chess, which played for one night only in Hollywood and which I had been looking forward to seeing for over a decade. The problem is the acoustics were lousy and they screwed up the song "One Night in Bangkok" completely, so I need to see this musical properly at some point.

Avenue Q was extremely fun! I'm glad I finally had a chance to see that!

Along with Caltech's CPA theatre group---hey, does anyone here want to go to theatre together? I'm still trying to figure out who is into what.---I saw two Shakespeare plays (Richard III and MacBeth) in a park in Hollywood. (The plays were produced by a small indie Shakespeare company and were quite well-done. Plus, it was a relaxed atmosphere, so I dug it.) The latter was a good reminder that a particular line of Tom Lehrer's that I like ('full of words and phrases, and signifying nothing!') actually comes from Shakespeare. Then again, so do a lot of lines that I take for granted. (Did you know, for example, that Shakespeare actually invented the term "metric fuck ton"?)

With the CPA group (and Lemming), I saw All About Waalken at a small theatre in Hollywood. It gave me quite a fever, which I couldn't find even close to enough cowbell to cure. I also saw some other stuff with the CPI theatre group, such as a small play whose name escapes me. There might have been something else of note, but I can't think of it at the moment, so this will have to be it tomorrow.

I'll be seeing my first play of 2008 on Saturday: Sheridan's The Rivals, which I read back in the day in 10th grade English.

By the way, I just noticed that I have a slight redundancy problem in parts of this entry. (I think that's the story of my life...) CPA stands for "Caltech postdoc association," so "Caltech's CPA" is a bit awkward. (And I can no longer ask, "Who's the CPA now?" Do any of the Lloydies reading this remember that one? It was classy.)

On a completely different note, does anybody have any bright ideas for ancient Somerville (or Oxford) traditions that I should introduce in the near future? I was going to get my math minions to do something on pi day but then I was reminded that we list the day and then the month around here, which foiled my plans entirely. (I would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those kids! And their stupid dog, too!)

Alright, I better go do some more marking. Oh what fun we have!

New Year's resolution (as determined by iTunes): Take 3

Just like last year and the year before that.


As usual, here is the key for how to read this resolution/fortune. Now let's see what the iTunes Oracle has to say for 2008:

1. The Covering: Wolfsheim, Blind (radio edit)
2. The Crossing: Billy Joel, Keeping the Faith
3. The Crown: EMF, Lies
4. The Root: Level 42, Forever Now
5. The Past: Squeeze, Loving You Tonight
6. The Future: R.E.M., Daysleeper
7. The Questioner: Tom Lehrer, Silent E
8. The House: George Carlin, Incomplete List of Impolite Words
9. The Inside: Celine Dion, (If There Was) Any Other Way
10. The Outcome: Novuelle Vague, Waves (cover of Blancmange)

Bonus song: Alison Moyet, Love Resurrection


Now let's try to figure what all this actually means. The Covering refers to some important stuff surrounding the situation, like the fact that I am often blind to social cues. The Crossing refers to current obstacles, perhaps a need to not give up on certain things. The Crown refers to the best that can be achieved with the current situation --- in this case, lies, which isn't exactly a very positive outcome. (To this song's credit, however, this is EMF's other, much-better big hit, because they are actually not the one-hit-wonder that most people believe them to be.) I don't understand The Root at all. Any ideas? The Past is also confusing --- what the fuck is it with these love songs? They're always so damned hard to interpret! The Future, however, clearly refers to the increasingly nocturnal lifestyle that I am about to possess. The Questioner quite clearly refers to American versus British spelling, which is starting to play quite a substantial role in my grant proposals. This is pretty eerie, isn't it? I'm somewhat disturbed that The House is represented by a George Carlin rant. I guess that means that other people view this whole spelling conundrum as a bunch of crap? On The Inside, however, I am apparently evoking Celine Dion. (In fact, this is one of her really good songs, as opposed to her slower-paced lousy ones.) Somehow, I want some other way to go about doing things other than whatever is I have planned. The Outcome of 'Waves' simply means that I'm going to say 'fuck it' and just continue doing research on nonlinear waves. What else could it possibly mean? Also, the bonus song refers to zombies (or perhaps more generally to my future as a necromancer) because I apparently love resurrection. All the alternate interpretations of the bonus song are even more disturbing, so let's just stick with the current one.

(Incidentally, both artists in my upcoming concert series are present: I'll be seeing Alison Moyet on February 10th and Nouvelle Vague on February 23rd.)

OK, that's about it for this installment of the New Year's iTunes Oracle. I'm going to continue revising a research paper now---it concerns nonlinear wave propagation.

2007: The Year in Movies

Now it's time to discuss the movies of 2007. My move to England confused matters a bit because of the different release dates. Among other things, some of the movies that came out this year in the States will be coming out next year in the UK. I'll discuss those as part of my 2008 discussion.

Before I get into this year's films, here is what I wrote in 2006.

Let's look at the movies from best to worst:

Fantastic: Stardust, Juno, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters, The Namesake

Extremely good but not quite awesome: 300, Ratatoullie (just a notch below fantastic, though I considered putting it there), Transformers (though I almost put it at fantastic because of all the nostalgia bonuses it got), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Darjeeling Limited

Very good: TMNT, The Simpsons Movie, King of California, Knocked Up (bordering on great), The Golden Compass, Control

Good: Grindhouse, Spiderman 3, Pirates of the Carribean: At World's End, Rush Hour 3

Pretty good: Ghost Rider, Shrek the Third, Ocean's 13, You Kill Me, Balls of Fury (though I should really put it in a separate "fun" category)

Fair: Wild Hogs (a generous fair), Blades of Glory, Superbad (a generous fair), Death at a Funeral (I was hoping for so much more from this one)

Bad: Well, I am not listing any of the new films that I saw this year as truly bad, a couple of the fair ones could easily be listed here.



Overall, I think the film selection from 2007 wasn't quite as good as in 2006, though there were definitely a number of standouts. (I don't remember how I listed films last year, but my mind is definitely telling me that 2006 was a bit weaker overall than 2007, so I'm going to go with that.)


Now let's give some awards for this year's films:


Best film: The King of Kong

Best film that was not a documentary: Stardust

Biggest dick portrayed on film: Billy Mitchell, who played himself in The King of Kong

Wittiest dialogue: Juno

Most appropriate song lyrics from soundtrack: Juno

Best animated film: Ratatouille

Biggest disappointment: Death at a Funeral

Most nostalgic moment: Listening to Peter Cullen as the voice of Optimus Prime in The Tranformers (which wins for most nostalgic film)

Best movie moment: When I first hear Optimus Prime narrating the story at the beginning of The Transformers (I hadn't realized he'd be doing Optimus's voice in the film)

Most familiar quote: "You failed me yet again, Starscream!" (from The Transformers)

Best quote: "I detest American television!" (from The Namesake)

Best cameo: Bill Murray, in The Darjeeling Limited

Film whose name I can't remember: The one I saw with Lemming that had the 'chubby chaser' but in it. What was this called? Anyway, I rate this film somewhere between pretty good and fair.


I'm not sure if I have any other awards to hand out for this year's films. There were several (like Beowulf) that I wanted to see but didn't get around to seeing.




A special nod in this blog entry goes to Buffy and Angel. I have watched the first 5 seasons of the former (and hope to watch some of season 6 before I head back to England), and I am three episodes into season 3 of the latter. Those are the only two tv shows I've been watching this year (aside from baseball games, Baseball Tonight, and podcasts of Bill Maher's tv program), and I didn't want to do a separate year-in-review post for them. Let me end, however, by saying that the hand that is typing this message is evil. It can't help itself---it's evil.


P.S. Go see Juno!!!!

2007: The Year in Literature (and other reading)

We're almost at the end of the year, so it's time to start writing up my end-of-year summaries.

I'll start with literature and other readings. Here is what I wrote in 2006.

Just like last year, I am defining "literature" rather broadly, as I really just mean whatever I read this year.

The book I am currently reading is the final book in the Taladas Trilogy, which is the first set of Dragonlance novels covering events on Krynn's other continent (that is, on Taladas rather than on Ansalon). The first book in the series was ho-hum, but I liked the second one a lot, so I immediately moved on to the third one.

In the Forgotten Realms world, I have read the first book in a new series that follows Halistra Melarn from a recent 6-book story on "The War of the Spider Queen." I also read the first book in a series that follows an alu-fiend from that same series. These were two of the interesting surviving characters from those books, so I am pleased to read about more of their adventures. I also read the second book in the Dragonlance "Lost Chronicles" series, which allowed me to read about old friends again. The two main foci this time were Kitiara and Laurana.

I think I also read another book or two from my old queue of D & D novels (and perhaps one or two that spent a much shorter period of time on my shelf), but they aren't coming to mind at the moment.

I also finally read Flatland and Neuromancer, which I intended to read years ago. I read Oath of Fealty as well because part of it was inspired by life at Tech. I read some more short stories by Philip K. Dick and Harlan Ellison. In fact, I finally finished my Ellison collection, so I ought to buy a new one at some point.

I think I read other literary things, but they're not coming to mind at the moment. I'll add them to this entry later if I can think of them.

I read my usual websites: friends' blogs, ESPN.com's baseball page, baseball-reference.com, pages from various academic societies, and so on. I also made it a point to read The California Tech online after I moved to Oxford.

I also read my usual magazines: Electronic Gaming Monthly, various Caltech publications, and so on.

And of course I read lots of technical scientific material --- I always do.

Once I am done with the third book in the Taladas trilogy, I'll move on either to the new Drizzt book or to Amber and Blood, if the latter is out by the time I am ready for it. (Amber & Blood got delayed from last summer until February, and I've been anticipating that one for a while because it is the conclusion to the current trilogy containing the main Dragonlance storyline.)

I think that's about it. I'll post some other year-end reviews later.

Caltech Commencement 2007

Caltech's commencement was today.

The commencement speech, by Jared Diamond, sucked total ass. He basically just mentioned stuff that I assume is from his book (probably the first chapter) and didn't bother making any connections to Caltech aside from an asisine way of introducing his speech with the idea of what the world is going to be like in 32 years because that's about how much older Jean-Lou Chameau (Caltech's new president, who was official installed today as part of the ceremony even though he's been around since September) is than the typical graduating senior. Also, his repeated assertion that Chameau's age constitutes the prime of his career is wrong for most scientists. While the 'best work is under 30' bit that one hears about, say, mathematics isn't true, I would argue that 10 years before retirement is atypical at best in as a career prime for a scientist. Any, while Diamond gets some credit for not being David Baltimore, his speech sucked and would have been far better if he actually drew some real connections to the Caltech student experience. Even Tom Brokaw did that a little bit! (See, I told you I'd get back to posting rants here.)

The important reason I went to the graduation ceremony was to be there to be there to cheer on Janet Sheung and Julius Su, both of whom are good friends of mine. Janet is a Pagegirl who I know primarily from ping pong (yes, some people from Page are actually very cool) and over the last several months (which is when we really got to know each other well) she's been my main ping pong partner and co-conspirator on t-shirts and stuff. Julius was officially awarded his Ph.D. today. I first met him during Rotation in Fall 2004 (my frosh year), and he's one of the few people I met that week who has been my friend ever since. One of my favorite Julius stories, about the alternative uses of capacitors, is in Legends III. (Julius did an excellent job telling this story!) Also, I've counted Julius for than any other Flem in history. (It's kind of funny that I went to the commencement ceremony and cheered mainly for people from Page and Fleming. Well, those were the two important ones, at any rate.)

The other thing I really like about graduation besides cheering on my friends (and, in some years --- like 1998 and 2005 --- the commencement speeches) is to see the cornucopia of funky caps and gowns worn by the professors. It's really awesome that each of them wears the plumage ("Beautiful plumage!") of their doctoral institution and some of them (especially those from the old European institutions) are extremely funky. I love seeing the professors march every year. I took pictures of my postdoc advisor Mike Cross and my phononic-crystal collaborator Chiara Daraio, though I suspect they didn't come out well. (They're both very tall, so we'll see.) Apparently, they talked about me a little bit while they were marching.

Also, my timing in walking up to get a seat was extremely fortuitous: I ran into Janet coming out of Baxter, so I was able to get a picture of her in cap and gown. I didn't see Julius and it's really hard to get shots of people while marching, but one out of two isn't bad.

Three final observations about the ceremony: (1) While some yellow shirts were present in the audience, this year's commencement didn't include a sea of yellow (a tradition that started during my senior year, instigated by that year's frosh --- I believe Pei was the main one who set that up, but some of my readers may be able to confirm or deny this) and also didn't include the gong. I like the idea of banging the gong for every Lloydie even though I wasn't there to root for Lloydies on this particular occasion. (2) This is the first year that Techers who were one term away from graduating could walk with their class (with an additional notation in the program). This was an excellent policy change and was long overdue. (3) This was my 9th Caltech commencement ceremony. I know there will be at least one or two more in my future.

2007 SURF projects

Going through the Legends III page proofs has been absolutely mind-numbing -- I'm now on page 57 out of 96. Note that this is not just random reading; I need to read things extremely carefully, and that's just a tiring job.

I also have two movies and season 1 of Buffy to review, but I'll do those later. For now, I want to discuss the projects of my 2007 SURF students, as they have now been finalized (the two on the waiting list got awarded their SURFs today).

There are four students with me as the main advisor and Mike Cross as the secondary one, and two with Mike as the main advisor and me as the secondary one. (I have been working closely with one of thse two -- as I recruited her -- but I technically haven't yet met the other one.) One student got his SURF project rejected, but he still plans to work with me this summer, so I'll discuss that project as well.

Students with me as the main advisor (alphabetical order):

1. Natasha ("Alex") Cayco Gajic: Alex, a Sophomore in Ricketts, will be working on a project in synchronization (see also this page). In particular, she'll be studying basins of attraction of synchronized states and other states in coupled phase oscillators (along the lines of the Kuramoto model). In particular, Alex will be building on a 2006 paper by Dan Wiley, Steve Strogatz, and Michelle Girvan. Alex's mother is a math prof at San Jose State University, and Alex is already attending the Joint Mathematics Meeting that takes place in January. She has a mathematical tattoo that looks like a pentagram but has another name (it's either the 5-clique or the 5-clique minus the "outside" connections that would make it an Euler graph... my memory is failing me here; I don't remember if those links were present in the tattoo).

2. Olga Mandelshtam: Olga, a Sophomore in Blacker, will be working on attachment mechanisms in online friendship networks. There is an idea that is sometimes called preferential attachment which stipulates that the rich get richer when networks are growing. This has been used most frequently in modeling the growth of the web (one is more likely to link to google than this blog in starting a new web page), though the results one gets don't actually do a good job of modeling the structure of the web (despite claims by some people in the literature...). Before that (and before the name preferential attachment was coined), these sorts of mechanisms were used in the study of citation networks (dating all the way back to the work of Polya, despite claims by certain people that they invented it...). Anyway, I think that these sorts of mechanisms may do a nice job with online networks like Facebook, Orkut, LinkedIn, and so on. Different online networks have slightly different rules for adding friends and these are reflected by different attachment mechanisms. A key question is how to these ("microscopic") differences in attachment mechanisms manifest in terms of the networks "macroscopic" statistics. A (much) harder inverse problem (that we won't get to this summer) is if one wants a desired statistical property in a network (say, a particular degree distribution), how can one design a specific attachment mechanism (or family thereof) to achieve it. Unsurprisingly, the Caltech Alumni Association is seriously interested in this project.

3. Liuyi ("Ye") Pei: Ye, a frosh in Page, is going to be looking at Congressional roll call votes using network theory. This is the third separate Congressional dataset my group will be studying, so she'll be comparing her results with the House committee networks and (especially!) the House and Senate legislation cosponsorship networks. She'll also be comparing what she finds with previous data-mining work that has been done on the roll call data. We have this data for the entire history of the US, so Ye will be looking at historical questions --- shifts of political parties, what's happening now with the 110th Congress, etc. Ironically, Ye lives in the same town as Yan Zhang, who worked with me on the legislation cosponsorship network (and who is finishing up some plots for a paper on the topic that is currently in progress). Their parents know each other, but I don't know if they have ever actually met (even though they're in the same House). I believe Ye said she saw Yan walking around once.


Students with me as secondary advisor (alphabetical order):

1. Sherry Chen: Sherry, a frosh who is rooming with Ye in Page (yeah, roommate SURFers!), is working on a project in synchronization. She is adapting a paper from a few years ago that dealt with a certain situation in a neuroscience application (involving getting more precise control in the presence of extrensic noise) to work for "antiferromagnetic" synchronization in nanomechanical oscillators. There are both positive and negative connections, and an antiferromagnetic situation would refer to an alternation of spin up and spin down, so in this context you basically have half the oscillators synchronized with each other and the other half 180 degrees apart from the first group but synchronized with each other. (The coupling between oscillators in separate groups is negative, and this can complicate the situation. One can also generalize the 180 degrees to more complicated situations.) Sherry will ultimately need to deal with not only phase oscillators but also ones with amplitude dynamics. There will be both numerics and analytics, and eventually we hope to compare to work being done in the Roukes experimental group (which is local). Sherry has begun working on the project already. Cat is the one who first referred Sherry to me, so he gets an assist on this one. (I need to see if one can pay for people to get floated at Page dinners because I am very amused by the idea of me, the advisor, floating a pair of roommates who are both research students of mine.)

2. Matt Glau: I haven't actually met Matt, and I can't remember if he's a freshman or a sophomore. He's also working on synchronization in nanomechanics, though he'll be focusing on coupling between small numbers of oscillators so he can get some analytical stuff done with them.


The other student working with Mike and me this summer:

Kausteya Roy: Kausteya is working on solitary waves in Bose-Einstein condensates with spatially-dependent scattering lengths (i.e., spatially varying nonlinearity coefficients). In particular, he'll be considering various sorts of piecewise constant coefficients to hopefully be able to do some analytical work with them as well as numerics to set the stage. He'll start with one jump, but eventually work up to a situation in which the coefficients are periodic and piecewise constant. Solitary waves that one finds in such situations are known as "surface" solitary waves.



Now that I've written these descriptions, I've done part of the work in adding short descriptions to my research website. I also need to add these students to the advisees listen in my CV.

Play ball!

Today is opening day of the 2007 Major League Baseball season.

There is only one game tonight (Cardinals vs. Mets), but there will be plenty more to come later. I still need to finish up reading spring training box scores and there's a small change I want to make for my fantasy team. Plus, I still haven't gotten a chance to listen to Vin Scully yet this season, but that will happen in the next few days.

Oscar Wrap-up (2007)

A few weeks ago, I offered some fearless predictions about this year's Oscars. Let's see how I did. (In 2006, I might as well have guess completely randomly. I know -- it's such a shock.)

Best Actor: Forest Whitaker (Me: Will Smith)

Best Supporting Actor: Alan Arkin (Me: Arkin). Conclusion: The Academy got this one right! (Arkin deserved this award beyond belief.)

Best Actress: Helen Mirren (Me: Meyrl Streep). Conclusion: Meryl got robbed!

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson (Me: Abigail Breslin)

Best Animated Film: Happy Feet (Me: Cars). This is total crap. And why weren't A Scanner Darkly and Flushed Away nomited. Criminal.

Best Art Direction: Pan's Labyrinth (Me: Pan's Labyrinth). Duh.

Best Cinematography: Pan's Labyrinth (Me: Pan's Labyrinth). Even more duh.

Best Costume Design: Marie Antoinette (Me: Marie Antoinette). Wow, three in a row. By the way, Marie got my pick for who would win. In my opinion, Curse of the Golden Flower should have won, but I was voting with my ... er ... "heart" rather than my mind as far as what I felt should have gotten the nod. Any, this is a victory as far as my predictions go.

Best Directing: The Departed (Me: United 93). In my defense, I made an arbirtrary prediction before I saw any of these films. Now that I've actually seen The Departed...

Best Documentary: An Inconvenient Truth (Me: An Inconvenient Truth). Everybody saw this one coming from a mile away. At least we now know Al Gore can win something. I heard he's keeping his statue in a lockbox.

Best Short Documentary: The Blood of Yinzhou District (Me: Yingzhou). I pulled this one out of my ass and picked a winner (as it were).

Best Film Editing: The Departed (Me: United 93). Once again, had I actually seen The Departed at the time I made these predictions...

Best Foreign Language Film: The Lives of Others (Me: Pan's Labyrinth).

Best Makeup: Pan's Labyrinth (Me: Pan's Labyrinth).

Best Musical Score: Babel (Me: Pan's Labyrinth).

Best Original Song: Melissa Etheridge, "I Need to Wake Up", An Inconvenient Truth. (Me: Randy Newman, "Our Town", Cars). When is the last time a documentary had the best original song? Back in the day, the best song almost always came from a Disney film, but the times they are achangin'.

Best Picture: The Departed (Me: Little Miss Sunshine). Oops. (Note that I was predicting which one would win. My favorite films weren't even nominated for this award.)

Best Animated Short Picture: The Danish Poet (Me: Time For Nuts).

Best Live Action Short Film: West Bank Story (Me: West Bank Story). Dig the title and dig it well.

Best Sound Editing: Letters from Iwo Jima (Me: Iwo Jima). I pulled another one out of my ass.

Best Sound Mixing: Dreamgirls (Me: Dreamgirls).

Best Visual Effects: Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest (Me: Pirates). Dude, another three in a row.

Best Adapted Screenplay: The Departed (Me: Notes on a Scandal).

Best Original Screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine (Me: Little Miss Sunshine).


OK, so how did I do this year? I got 12 right out of 24. Last year, I only got 8 right out of 24. The difference is a combination or randomness, a couple of obvious choices, and the fact that I saw more nominated films this year than last year and I made fewer wild guesses as a result. Actually, batting .500 in predicting Oscars (given the nominees) is actually pretty decent.

Oscar Nominations (2007)

Last year, I made some Oscar Award predictions after the nominations were released.

Well, the 2007 nominations have now been released so here is my fearless forecast of who should win and who will win. (I am suppressing italics and bold on the typesetting below because I am lazy.)


Best leading actor: Well, I haven't seen any of the films, so I have no opinion as to who should win. I will arbitrarily say that Will Smith (Pursuit of Happyness) will win.

Best supporting actor: Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine) should win, at least among the nominees. Of course, why the Hell was Stanley Tucci (The Devil Wears Prada) not nominated? Arkin will win.

Best leading actress: Meryl Streep (The Devil Wears Prada) should win. (She was fantastic.) Penelope Cruz (Volver) will win.

Best supporting actress: Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) could and should win.

Best animated feature: Well, I would vote for A Scanner Darkly if it were one of the choices. Of the choices, Cars will and should win. I wonder, however, why only three films were nominated. Flushed Away and Ice Age II should have been nominated. There were plenty of good options and no need to restrict to three choices (especially when it wasn't even the best three).

Best art direction: Pan's Labyrinth should and will win. (By the way, Pan's Labyrinth has gotten a lot of nominations for a foreign film, and they are well deserved! It didn't get as many as did Life is Beautiful -- which I really ought to see -- and Crouching Tiger, but it has done extremely well here.)

Best cinematography: Pan's Labyrinth should and will win. (The cinematography and art direction for this film were both exceptional.)

Best costume design: Well, Curse of the Golden Flower got nominated for this, so that's a clear winner. There's just no way any other 2006 film should have any chance of getting this Oscar. Nevertheless, I predict that Marie Antoinette will win.

Best directing: I didn't see any of these films, so I'll arbitraraily predict that United 93 will win because I think that films about 9-11 will get extra credit because of their subject matter. (I could write a whole diatribe about how that's a bunch of tripe, but I nevertheless think that this will happen.)

Best documentary feature: I didn't see any of these either, but An Inconvenient Truth is going win in a landslide. Hey, if Al Gore can't win the Presidency, he might as well win the Oscar. But then again, the Oscars could imitate the presidential elections and Jesus Camp might win because of Republican finagling.

Best documentary short: Like I have any fucking clue about this one... I didn't see any of these films, so I'm going to pull something out of my ass and predict that The Blood of Yingzhou District will win simply because it has 'blood' in the title.

Best film editing: I didn't see any of these films, but United 93 will win because it's about 9-11. Not to be cynical or anything...

Best foreign language film: This is a no brainer. Pan's Labyrinth will win, and Pan's Labyrinth should win. It's not close. I am surprised that Volver wasn't nominated, as it received a lot of hype.

Best make-up: Pan's Labyrinth will and should win. (Here, I noticed the seemingly strange nomination of Click. I didn't see the film, so maybe there's a good reason for this, but it seems weird on the surface.)

Best musical score: The only film I saw among the nominees is Pan's Labyrinth, but it's score didn't strike me as memorable. So I have no idea what film should win. I'll predict arbitrarily that Babel will win.

Best music (song): Well, the only thing I saw here was Cars. Three of the nominees are from Dreamgirls and the last is from An Inconvenient Truth (that's kind of weird). I'm going to predict that "Our Town" from Cars will win just because Randy Newman is awesome.

Best picture: Well, I wouldn't rank any of the listed films among my best films for 2006. I already discussed that extensively in one of my 2006 wrap-up blog entries. I only saw one of the nominated films, Little Miss Sunshine, and that's the one that I think will win.

Best short film (animated): Well, I'm not sure which one will win. I'll say Lifted based on the pedigree of the people who produced it. I don't believe I saw any of these, so I can't say what should win---but my warm and fuzzy feelings go with No Time For Nuts simply because it stars Scratch from Ice Age. My preciousssssssssss....

Best short film (live action): I didn't see any of these. I'm going to say arbitrarily that West Bank Story will win because it's name amuses me.

Best sound editing: The only one of these I saw was Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest. I'll say that Letters from Iwo Jima will win, but I am just pulling this out of my ass.

Best sound mixing: I didn't see any of these either, but I'm going to go with Dreamgirls as the one I think will be victorious.

Best visual effects: I only saw Pirates II among these films. The other two are Poseiden and Superman Returns. I'll predict that Pirates II will win.

Best writing (adapted screenplay): My WTF award goes to the nomination of Borat in this category. Look, there are categories in which one could nominate that film (even though I didn't like it). In my opinion, this one simply isn't it. My prediction is that Notes on a Scandal will win this one.

Best writing (original screenplay): Now, here's something interesting. Pan's Labyrinth got nominated even though it's a foreign film. I find this extremely interesting. I think that Little Miss Sunshine will win, but I'm going to go with Pan's Labyrinth as the one that should win just because I liked that film so much. But, if there were any justice at all in the world, Snakes on a Plane would have received an Oscar nomination in this category.


One more thing: Will somebody please explain to me how Prairie Home Companion didn't get a single nomination? (at least among the categories listed on the web page I found ... maybe it got one in a trivial category?)

"Out of Context"

This is the title of my mix CD, which I finally got around to finishing up. The theme is purposely facetious.

The song order matters occasionally (because I twist the meaning of a couple songs just a bit), but sometimes it doesn't matter all that much. The earlier tracks need to be where they are, as do the final few tracks. Some of the ones in the middle need to be ordered in a particular way, but it's ok if there are songs in between them. Others just needed to be on the CD somewhere, I was sure where to put them, and didn't feel like spending much brain power trying t optimize where they should go.

I'll be bringing a copy with me to Berkeley---I'm burning the disk now as I write this. Others besides Gazebo should let me know if they want a copy.

I'll write more after people have listened to the CD. A couple of the modified interpretations are slightly evil.

My next CD will be either more sensitive or my own selection of messed-up/cool covers. I have plans for each.

2007 Inductees in Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The 2007 inductees into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame are REM, Patti Smith, Van Halen, The Ronettes, and Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five.

The ones who are part of my paradigm are REM and (to a lesser extent) Patti Smith, and they are both certainly deserving inductees (whose inductions have been considered a given for over a decade, and in the case of Smith, over two decades). Van Halen isn't my cup of tea, but I know they're extremely influential (not to mention extremely popular), and their induction was also a foregone conclusion a long time ago.

This blog speculates on the possible dirt-flinging that may arise regarding which subsets of which configurations of Van Halen show up to the award ceremony. (That could be pretty entertaining...)

A couple of the songs I would expect to see performed are "White Lines". This is the only Grandmaster Flash song I can name without looking things up... this song isn't my thing, but it's been exceptionally influential; I assume their other stuff has been as well or they wouldn't have been inducted.

I'm guessing Patti Smith will perform "Because the Night" as one of her two songs. (By the way, an interesting exercise is to compare the versions of that song by Patti Smith, Bruce Springstein, and 10000 Maniacs. I believe that Smith and Springstein both have writing credits, or maybe it's just Smith.)

I'm sure I've heard of the Ronettes before, but I can't think of any of their songs and I can't currently remember having heard of them.

Return of Interhouse

Interhouse was already gone by the time I entered Caltech as a frosh in 1994. However, the memory of it (I think the last one was in 1989) was still quite strong, as some people on the N >4 year plan were there for it (as were then-recent alums). I had heard things about it, especially during frosh year and at the various times I've talked to old alums. For the current students, that's a distant memory. I was having lunch with an undergrad I know during the bbq (the food was pretty decent), and she never heard of it before. (She had also never heard the term 'slAvery House' before, and I was really surprised that hadn't stuck.)

I think Tom Mannion's spearheading to bring it back in some form is a very good idea, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out over the next couple years. I was certainly curious to see the construction, which (in true Techer tradition) wasn't finished until the 13th hour (i.e., after the parties had already started). I went on the tour of the last-minute construction and then I went back at the beginning of the party. (Though it involved the least construction, the Dabney-Page party, which had a jazz band including some Caltech students, was the one that was the most to my tastes.)

I saw a couple undergrads I know and also a couple alums from my era that I know (and some Alumni Association people I know---I know some of the older alums these days because of the book, etc), though most of the alums in attendance were people from the 80s and earlier. There were rumors that a couple other mid-late 90s Lloydies would show up (at lunch, I saw Anatole Faykin '96 for the first time since something like 1998; I also saw Ben Miller '98 at the party per se), but I didn't feel like sticking around without many people to talk to until that may or may not have happened. There weren't many places to sit, so if my foot weren't gimpy, I would have walked around more to try to find people I know. However, walking and--to a lesser extent--even standing are major problems at the moment, so I started limping home at about 9:35.

I was never much of a partyer, but it was cool to see a big project, and I think the potential of having current students and alums interact more through this is a great idea. (I was told that something like 500 alums [including their families] registered for the event, which is pretty impressive.) Not that I saw too many alums talking to students, though I talked a bit to ones I know and a couple of my SURF students for this summer encouraged me to go. I am not qualified to compare this to the older iteration of Interhouse, and it will be interesting to ask some of the 80s people about this. Oh, and I also like the idea of increased interaction between the North and South Houses. There always seemed to be a bit of a divide there, and there are definitely cool people on both sides of the walk.

The light show was cool, but the band Caltech hired was memorably awful. (The Alumni Association people are already aware of this and seem to share this opinion quite strongly.) It's a good idea to have events other than Interhouse per se, but there are some kinks to work out. For example, there are some local Caltech bands, and if one could get them to volunteer, that would be greatfully preferably to a crappy band like the one they had. At least a crappy band of Techers would be our crappy band, and some of them have actually been pretty decent. Hell, Dave Antonio '01 is in a jazz band, and I was digging their music at Casino Night.

Anyway, I'm glad I showed up, though staying up late for the full festivities is not something I was about to do without compatriots with whom to hang out.

I need to do something about my gimpy foot. The long limp home was not fun.

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.

New Baseball Hall-of-Famers

This year's new Hall-of-Famers are first-ballot inductees Tony Gwynn and Cal Ripken. Their elections were foregone conclusions. Goose Gossage got over 70% of the votes, and will almost certainly meet the 3/4 requirement next year. Bert Blyleven (among others) got screwed over again.

The Veterans' Committee will be considering some candidates a little later. Hopefully, some of the previously overlooked people will make it.

What happens in New Orleans stays in New Orleans

To start, truer words than the title of this entry have rarely been written.

Tomorrow, I fly to New Orleans to attend the 2007 Joint Mathematics Meetings, which is the mathematics version of the APS March Meeting (though it's not quite as large).

I will be presenting three talks: one on Bose-Einstein condensates, one on billiard systems with mixed dynamics (with a focus on mushroom billiards), and one on Congressional networks. (I will try really hard to not make jokes on certain topics when I give my Congress talk.)

As usual, there are a ton of people I know who will be attending the meeting, so while things will be hectic, it will also be a lot of fun. I found out earlier today that one of my SURF students for summer 2007 will also be attending the meeting, and she has promised to ask me tough questions during my talks.

After the conference, I will be visiting Louisiana Tech University for a couple days. I'll give a talk about networks while I'm there and meet some of the mathematicians there. My flight back home should arrive on Thursday evening, so the first day I'll be able to hang out again once I return will be Friday 1/12.

By the way, you shouldn't worry about me. If anything goes wrong, I'll just sit tight and wait for FEMA to arrive.

New Year's Resolution (as determined by iTunes), Take 2

Let's start by revisititing the outcome of my new year's resolution from 2006. Sadly, since m resolution didn't make any sense, I don't have any particular outcomes to report either. Hence, let's see what iTunes has to say about my New Year's resolution for 2007:

1. Enya, "Amarantine"
2. Cheap Trick, "Surrender"
3. Blues Traveler, "But Anyway"
4. Los Lobos, "No Tengo Dinero"
5. Talking Heads, "Stay Up Late"
6. Tears For Fears, "Head Over Heels"
7. Delerium, "Aria"
8. Engima, "Cross of Changes"
9. Garbage, "It's All Over But The Crying"
10. Talk Talk, "Strike Up the Band"


This is a very solid group of songs. My favorite of the bunch is "Cross of Changes" but not by much. For what it's worth, song number (9) is by far the best song on Garbage's 2005 album.

Now, what does this stuff mean (besides the fact that I am a sucker for iTunes resolutions/fortunes...)? Here is the key. If I use this as a fortune, then it looks like (3) implies that the best thing I can do is to say 'fuck it' and just move on (which is often good advice). Song (10) seems to be implying that things might end with a rim shot. As usual, I really don't have much of a clue as to how to interpret this, but I am amused at the placement of some of the songs.

In the spirit of reality, perhaps I should resolve to become better at making new friends. Once I move in October, I'm really going to need to find some good people or else I'm going to be hanging out on my own way too often.

Who should make the baseball Hall of Fame in 2007?

The announcement of Major League Baseball's new Hall-of-Famers will occer on January 9th. You can go to this page to see which players are on the ballot.

I went through this in a bunch of detail last year (not including new people on the ballot, of course), so I'll be shorter about it this year.

Thus, without going into a ton of detail, here's what I think at the moment. As always, my opinions are subject to change without notice. :) In particular, I'm not going to look up what I wrote last year about borderline cases. For the purposes of what I am writing, 'borderline' cases includes things like 'probably' and 'probably not'.

Definitely deserves to make it: Bert Blyleven (who should have been elected years ago!), Tony Gwynn (duh), Tommy John (who also keeps getting gypped), Mark McGwire (I'm sick of the witch hunt ... whatever he did -- and I'm sure he did it -- it was legal in baseball at the time and everybody turned their heads on this; plus, he basically had the misfortune of being subpoenaed; lots of players and former players were simultaneously thinking 'I'm glad I'm not the one there'), Cal Ripken (duh)

Borderline cases: Harold Baines (no), Albert Belle (no, though if his career lasted a little longer than it would be different), Jose Canseco (no, though his career numbers are a lot better than most people think), Andre Dawson (no, though I'm often tempted to vote 'yes'), Steve Garvey (no), Rich Gossage (yes), Orel Hershiser (no if I vote with my mind, but yes with my heart), Don Mattingly (no, but the first baseman from before stats exploded are going to be getting more votes now), Jack Morris (no; check out the ERA -- I believe his would become the highest in the Hall by a large margin), Dale Murphy (no), Dave Parker (no, but I'm tempted to vote 'yes'), Jime Rice (yes), Lee Smith (no), Alan Trammell (yes; and when will he get the respect he deserves?)

Better buy a ticket if you want to get in: Dante Bichette, Bobby Bonilla, Scott Brosius, Jay Buhner (no matter what Cosmo Kramer says), Ken Caminiti, Dave Concepcion, Eric Davis (if it weren't for all the injuries...), Tony Fernandez, Wally Joyner, Paul O'Neill, Bret Saberhagen, Devon White, Bobby Witt


This year's Gary DiSarcina Memorial Worst-Player-on-the-Ballot Award goes to Scott Brosius, with honorable mention to Bobby Witt (the worst pitcher on the ballot).