One of the All-Time Classics: "His Theory is Retarded."

One of the all-time classic seminar audience-member comments when talking about the speaker: "His theory is retarded."

This works, best, by the way when the speaker is a job candidate. :)

'Saturday Catblogging' and 'Cheerleaders at a Physics Conference?'

As promised, here is some Saturday Catblogging (which I am only posting 3 days late). Also, registration for the March Meeting opened on Sunday---while a conference for (way too) young cheerleaders was still going on. I'm pretty sure that they were just as afraid of us as we were of them.

Electromagnetic integral equations requiring small numbers of Krylov-subspace iterations

I was looking at Cat's website, and I found the page proofs for this paper, which I believe is Lemming's first publication. Congrats!

I only have one question: What happens if you consider random cracks?

Dali, Topology, and Catastrophe Theory

Courtesy Cat, I just found out that Dali had some connections with Rene Thom and put some catastrophe theory and topology into some of his art. In particular, he pointed out The Swallow's Tail and Topological Abduction of Europe - Homage to René Thom.

Back to the Old Grind

As people reading my blog know, I've been hanging out with my old friends in Pasadena since Monday night. It's very easy to slip into one's previous life, especially when one was living centrally in it only 2.5 months ago. I basically haven't been gone long enough to no longer be used to the day-to-day things. (Well, they would retain familiarity no matter how long I've been gone, but since I've barely been gone, it is especially familiar.) I only told a few of my friends that I'm around, and I need to bug some others to see if they're in the area at all for the next couple of weeks.

Having dinner with friends I haven't seen for a couple of months is obviously awesome, and I also appreciate going out to lunch and dinner at some of the restaurants I've missed --- particularly when it comes to types of food that aren't readily available (at least, for which high-quality versions aren't readily available) at Oxford. One example of this is chicken and waffles. Hmmm... it occurs to me that taking Oxford students and faculty dressed in sub-fusc to Roscoe's would be extremely amusing. It would be kind of like senior-frosh breakfast, except with better food. We're going to have to adapt this tradition and make it one of Somerville's own. I'll just have to think of an appropriate place in Oxford to use for this purpose.

A pleasant, unexpected surprise is that Cat is also in town for a few days, which means that the old lunch gang is basically here. Our conversations even picked up right where they last left off! I approve!

Pictures from the road

Courtesy Charles Lee, here is a picture that he and some friends took on a recent road trip.

Wow. That's spectacularly "impressive"... I am extremely amused!

And I definitely appreciate the Blues Brothers reference...

Goodbye to Cat!

As I write this entry, Catalin ("Cat") Turc, applied math postdoc and all-around porn expert, is on a flight to Charlotte to start his new life as a faculty member at UNC Charlotte.

It was really fun having lunch with Cat these last couple of years, and I learned more about German porn than I ever thought I would. (In fact, I'm still trying to forget my lessons and I probably will continue on that course for a long time.) I can only hope that in my time in Oxford, I'll be able to recapture the fun I had at lunch with Cat and Lemming. As Lemming says, every barrel has a bottom, and I can only hope he's right.

On Saturday, Lemming, Cat, Cat's wife, and I went out to Silverlake and Los Feliz for a goodbye dinner/chilling out. I was feeling like crap (see my recent post) for much of that time, but I'm not going to miss Cat's goodbye dinner for a silly thing like that. I am thinking that for my goodbye dinner there should be large portions of meat and then some gaming, and hopefully the goodbye dinner will even be while I'm still around rather than the night after I leave... :)

Random Cracks

I just found out from Katiya that one of her officemates has chosen Bruno for his advisor.

She asked me to guess what he'll be working on, so I naturally assumed it entailed wave scattering off surfaces with random cracks. That is apparently going to be involved along the way, although it won't be the main thing. But there's no point in discussing the main goal, because random cracks are all that matter for the purposes of this blog entry. (For those of you who don't know, 'random cracks' are fightin' words when it comes to Tim and [especially] Cat. Also, this post gives me another chance to use my 'Cat' tagline.)

This differential equation is retarded!

In the new issue of AMS Notices, a letter to the editor was given the section title "Retarded Differential Equations and Quantum Mechanics". (Go to page 2 of the .pdf file. Most of you should be at institutions with a subscription that allows you to see the link.)

Remember, "theory is retarded!" is the new champ stamp. I can see it being used by academic hiring committees everywhere.

Similarly, "he/she is more or less full of crap" is a popular comment to make about a seminar speaker.

Quote of the Day (overheard at Chandler)

Today's quote of the day once again comes from Catalin Turc:

"We had strippers dancing on tables. [pause] We wanted to have a nice, relaxed atmosphere." (Some of the minor connecting words may not be entirely accurate.)


Then the conversation at lunch really became "awesome" because of the whole yearbook bit. I think that Cat must have been making up for the recent tameness (relatively speaking) in our lunch conversations.