Quest for the Woolly Owl: 2009 Edition

On the fine day of 16 June 2009, a team of intrepid young swordsmen swordspeople mathematicians stepped on a bus at the ungodly hour of 8am (having previously woken up at even less godly hours such as 6:45) to proceed to Cambridge, which one of the signs along the way identified ominously as "NORTH". In fact, there were quite a few ominous signs on the way---most of which involved warnings of danger of some form. (Perhaps some giant elastic BLOB might appear there?)

What was the point of this quest? Well, besides avoiding tutorials (at least for one day), these fine young mathematicians and their faculty slaves mascots colleagues were on an epic quest for a mythical object known as Ock The Woolly Owl. Rumor has it that it looks kind of like this. Occasionally, it might even look like this. But I digress.

Our intrepid adventurers set foot on Cambridge soil at the slightly more godly hour of 10:15ish. Naturally, the first thing they did was mark their territory accidently block the exit to prevent some of the faculty from getting off the bus. (Truth be told, I think I contributed to the blocking.) They then received treasure in the form of slips for free coffee. And just to make sure were were aware that the coffee machines were in order, the two machines had displays that showed the words "working" while the caffeinated bliss mediocre coffee was being poured.

As I mentioned above, yesterday's battle was an epic one. It wasn't exactly on the scale of Pirates versus Ninjas or even Mario versus Donkey Kong, but it was still pretty damned epic.

The first presentation was given by Ed Brambley, who spoke about "Introduction and Timekeeping". That woke everybody up and was given a neutral score so as not to advantage the Cambridge side. That was when the fluid mechanics talks started flowing. And for most of the day, they pretty much didn't stop. Before the day started, I had heard rumors that certain Oxford faculty asked tough questions during Cambridge talks and certain Cambridge people asked tough questions during Oxford talks. This didn't really happen this year, though a few of us had our moments. (I was wearing my power law t-shirt, so I was not about to let fly a power law to which I had objections.) Some of the tough questions came from Oxford mathematical biologist Thomas Woolley (no relation to the owl), which didn't surprise me at all given I was on the receiving end of those during my perturbation methods lectures last school year.

During one of the breaks, it was uniformly decided (at least by the Oxford crowd) that the Oxford talks had sexier titles. Perhaps this will lead to a victory in a future competition on grant proposal writing? (And with EPSRC running the show, that method will probably lead to about as much success as writing a good proposal. But I digress.) During the talks, the Cambridge students kept bringing up the famous Cambridge mathematicians who had previously studied the problems they were working on. (This probably explains why they hadn't been solved yet.) The Oxford mathematicians kept bringing up Cambridge mathematicians in their talks. They also kept bringing up Ock. We can only speculate how such slides will be filled in the future when he retires.

There were various other talks, though most of them were about fluid mechanics. (A few others---especially on the Oxford side---touched on other topics.) The BLOB did finally show up in the only mathematics seminar I have ever seen that mentioned Cthulhu. I just thought I'd get that in there. In total, there were 9 talks from each side, but alas our interpid adventures came up short, as the neutral unbiased dispassionate detacthed equitable nonpartisan judges (Amit Acharya and Graeme Wake) awarded Cambridge a narrow victory over Oxford. Of course, I am giving out the names of the judges to give them credit for their hard work, though I do worry that some bitter Oxford faculty students or postdocs might google their snail mail addresses in order to send them mail bombs (or at least unsolved fluid mechanics problems). This, of course, meant that the Woolly Owl will be remaining in Cambridge for the next two years. Until then, the pressure will be building on our side (aka, "Good") to reclaim this mystical trophy in 2011 when Cambridge (aka, "Evil") descends on us in 2011.

Once the Woolly Owl was awarded, many of us headed to the Castle Pub, which is one of only two Cambridge pubs I had previously entered (that was in 05, when I didn't know that I'd ever be living in this country) At 7pm, we boarded the bus back to Oxford. Ock told me that the route would be a different one from the morning for the express purpose of making life easier for those of us with motion sickness. (I didn't bother to verify if this was the actual reason, but I was apparently looking like what I like to call "my best" when I crashed Somerville's SCR after-dinner drinks upon my arrival.) Despite constant threats on his life (mostly by Ock), Grame Wake managed to survive the bus ride intact. And so our intrepid heroes came back on their shields, but they nevertheless alighted from the bus at about 9:15 or so with sincere promises of revenge on their lips and probably headed over to another pub.

And so I write this journal entry with extreme sleep deprivation (even with one day having passed) and provide a Call to Arms for the 2011 Quest to Reclaim the Woolly Owl. In the words of the immortal Duke Nukem: "Come get some!"