"Money" Laundering: Doing it the Literal Way

Well, it wasn't my intent to discover this, but my debit card and university ID card survived their trip through the washer and dryer remarkably well.

Their Gaussian curvatures got transformed a bit, but overall they're doing alright.

Sometimes, I am such a theorist.

Note: I suggest responding with your best money-laundering joke.

Additional note: My debit card still has its glossy sheen, but the ID card's surface isn't quite as smooth as it used to be.

Mary Somerville to Appear on Scottish £10 Note!

Mary Somerville will appear on a new £10 note from the Royal Bank of Scotland. Excellent!

(Tip of the cap to Alice Prochaska.)

Quote of the Day: Money Edition

My quote of the day actually occurred yesterday. I was going to lunch with some Rutgers people (and one of my fellow visitors, who I know and was very surprised to see yesterday), but I had forgotten to bring money or a credit card with me. I had my wallet in my computer bag at the time, so I suddenly exclaimed something like "Oh! I need to go to my computer to get some money." This didn't make too much sense to anybody besides me, and the deadpan response I got of "Do you also need a printer?" was absolutely priceless.

Money, Money, Money

I recently got some money to continue my research on network analysis in U.S. Congressional networks. This grant, which comes from the McDonnell Foundation's complex systems initiative, is joint with James Fowler of UC San Diego's political science department. The funds are awarded in units of Boeing stocks.

I approve!

What do you think of the name Citi/Taxpayer Field for the Mets' new ballpark? I wholeheartedly approve of it!

In case you don't click on the link, two New York politicians want the name above instead of Citi Field because the billions of dollars in federal aid that Citigroup is getting.

Grrr.... I'm annoyed

In addition to my general grumpiness from being exhausted (I took a red-eye flight from Montreal), I seem to have misplaced about 100 pounds worth of bills that I had with me. They must have fallen out of my wallet at some point. I hope that whoever picked them up is a poor person who can really use them. This could have happened as much as a week ago, but I only just noticed upon my return (as I had been using Canadian currency for the last week). Basically, this is not enough to affect my life in any way, but it is enough to annoy me.

I'm writing this entry because I needed a small rant. It's my own fault because whether it was technically lost or stolen, it was absolutely carelessness on my part. Maybe I should pretend this was caused by a previously-unheard-of form of Canadian taxation?

Se la vie. If this is the worst thing that happens to me in the next (say) year, then I think I'm in pretty good shape. Must...put...this...in...perspective.

OCIAM to fund research on camel-spitting distance

Update (6/26/08): Enough time has passed, so I put the correct 2008 posting year back in.

Note (added 4/30/08): This is actually a blog entry from 4/29/08, and I am burying it elsewhere on this page by request.



Remember that a few weeks ago I wrote this blog entry, which I then relegated to a "2007" post with a date change until it was safe to announce things officially. (I'm sneaky that way.) Well, I have now been given word that the news can be made public. So here goes.

I'll start with the official words from our research facilitator:

I'm delighted to announce that the department has just been awarded $25M
by the Global Research Partnership of the King Abdullah University of
Science and Technology to set up the Oxford Centre for Collaborative
Applied Mathematics (OCCAM), to be run in the first instance by John
Ockendon and 6 collegues drawn from OCIAM, CMB, Numerical Analysis and the
Computational Biology Group.

The Centre will be based in the Gibson Building and will have 4 new
faculty, 4 research fellows, 16 PDRAs and 14 graduate students. It will be
formally launched on 1 Oct 08.

We will be making a presentation on 16 May in the Industrial and
Interdisciplinary workshop slot to describe what'll be happening with
OCCAM and how you can get involved. I hope everyone will be able to come
along.


Now that we're getting funding from Saudi Arabia, there are going to be a few changes around here. For example, here are just a few of the new topics from which the newly-hired researchers will be allowed to choose:

1. Optimization of camel dynamics (including the kinematics of spitting).

2. Modelling oil extraction.

3. Optimal design of chadors.

4. Community detection in terrorist networks


Now let me be a bit more serious for a second. I have mixed feelings about this whole thing. While it's really exciting to be in a research group (especially one in mathematics) that is getting a grant of this magnitude and it will be "intellectually awesome" (to borrow some old phrasing from the efforts to get the grant and twist it slightly) to have lots of new faculty, postdocs, and graduate students around, there are some very serious ramifications. One of Oxford's student newspapers had an article last term about various programs here that have gotten money from sources that could be construed as dirty. Presumably, we will be henceforth be included on this list, so I expect that there will be at least some political backlash to this funding that the Powers That Be in our group will just have to deal with however they see fit. This new grant also has the potential to have ramifications on the politics within the group (and I have seen some signs of this already), so we're all going to have to work hard to make sure things remain pleasant in this respect. (One of the things that I like best about OCIAM is how much everybody seems to like each other.) I am not one of the central players on this grant, and right now my plans are to remain on the periphery. I will certainly interact with the new people we hire (and people already here, of course), but I currently don't feel comfortable accepting any money that percolates from this grant. I haven't decided for sure if I won't ever accept any, but I am definitely leaning against it. At the very least, I would have to think very seriously about the decision. Part of my discomfort certainly comes from my Jewish ancestry, and while my religious beliefs (obviously) differ greatly from what is "expected" of me, I have enough of a connection to my background that I wouldn't be able to accept funding from the source in question without serious thought/soul-searching. To be fair in my discussion, I should also mention that the grant has the potential to do a lot of good---and not just for the research group I'm in. With this grant, Oxford has been selected to help found a Western-style applied mathematics group in Saudi Arabia, so my colleagues have the chance to play a leading role in bringing something potentially very important to that country.

In closing this entry, let me recall for some of you that Arcane Gazebo jokingly phrased his decision to go into finance as "selling out". I hereby raise my plastic cup (with the remnants of this morning's iced latte, of course) in the fervent hope that we haven't done just that. I plan to be a passive observer in this whole thing (with a slight amount of "mo' money" attitude with respect to what OCIAM is getting) and look forward to the significant side scientific benefits from the additional academics that will be buzzing around the place. But it's also worth mentioning that I'm extremely glad that I'm not a central player in this grant and most definitely plan to remain that way. Maybe I'll change my mind later, but right now I feel like I can't accept any of the money that comes through this grant (which means, in practice, that I will make no attempt to fund any of my grad students or postdocs through this mechanism).

Now, in which direction am I supposed to bow? I can never get that straight.

Oil Money Networks

You can follow the oil money at this website.

I found out about this one from an e-mail that Skye Bender-de Moll sent to the SocNet mailing list:

"Dear Friends,

I've been involved in a project by the non-profit Oil Change
International to create interactive network visualizations of U.S.
federal campaign contributions from the Oil and Gas industries. The
website has finally been officially launched, and I think some of you
might be have fun exploring the networks:

http://oilmoney.priceofoil.org

The goal was to create accessible visual summaries of ~80,000
contributions, displayed in network and drillable/sortable tabular
forms for both chambers of Congress and presidential races from 2000
to 2008. The network images are bipartite graphs of companies and
politicians, linked by arcs giving contribution amounts. Clicking on
nodes gives additional information. Companies are actually
aggregations of giving by company Political Action Committees and
individuals' declared affiliations. Networks can be thresholded by
quartile ranges independently for edges, companies, and politicians.


The data come from U.S. Federal Election Commission filings, cleaned
and categorized by the Center for Responsive Politics, and includes
links to the actual filing receipts to document each contribution. We
have also integrated the data with a crude industry support voting
score based on selected energy and climate congressional votes. We
may be able to make formatted network and attribute data available to
researchers who are interested in working with Oil Change
International to do more rigorous and sophisticated forms of
statistical analysis. (...)

Technical note for those interested: The site is built from open
source components in PHP and javascript/AJAX. The coordinates for
the layouts are produced using the Kamada-Kawai layout implementation
in the GraphViz neato package. The Graphviz community was kind enough
to make some modifications to their code to assist us. Additional data
for id linking and voting came from GovTrack.us and the Sunlight Labs
API."

Has the world frozen over?

You know what happened today?

I actually received my reimbursement check from Charter, which overcharged me when I cancelled my service effective last October first. (This is separate from the summer fiasco, which sadly never got resolved in my favor.) The stamp on the envelope is dated February 20th, but the check is dated something like October 30th of last year for some reason. (Part of me thinks that the bank is going to insist that the check has expired when I try to deposit this... That would certainly fit in with the Charter motto.)

Other things: Joss Whedon did something rather evil in the credits towards the end of season 6 of Buffy. (I don't want to give spoilers, so I'll leave my comments for private discussions or later blog entries.) Also, the "Supersymmetry" episode of Angel made my heart warm and fuzzy with certain things (like mentioning Ed Witten and Brian Greene by name and referring to them as the Nomar Garciaparra and Sammy Sosa of string theory) but it also annoyed me in numerous respects by getting just about the entire physics and journal publishing atmosphere dead wrong. On a completely separate note, I have some teaching stuff I want to rant about. That will also have to be part of a private conversation.

Update on finances and possessions

I just got paid by both Somerville and the Mathematical Institute, so I actually have money now.

Actually, I have a decent bit in my UK account because having free rent, free utilities, and free food removes the need for a lot of the spending I used to have. Now I can safely buy my Alison Moyet and Van Morrison tickets without worrying about how much money is left in my bank account.

Also, I found out to today that my stuff --- which previously got delayed to arriving on 10/28 in the UK --- is now slated to arrive in the London on 11/02/07. It will then need to clear customs, which is supposed to take about 5 working days, and then it should finally arrive at my doorstep in Oxford.

It's a good thing, too, because I am going to host a games night at my flat for the Somerville mathematics students I am tutoring. There will be games, and there will be ice cream. You have to love that... (Also, I know at least some of the OCIAM faculty want to come over and play with the Wii, so I also plan on having a games night for them and some of the folks from Somerville who are my age.)

I've been meaning to post my baseball award prediction blog entry, but I'm tired and want to read a bit for pleasure, so I'm going to punt that. Because of the massive amount of marking I'll be doing tomorrow, I am very unlikely to post this entry then. Anyway, stay tuned...

The spatio-temporal dynamics of purchasing travel tickets

Continuing my past adventures in arranging my travel, I managed to be off by one day in my departure and return train tickets that I purchased for my trip to Durham to give a seminar.

I also added to my headaches by doing this, as it will probably take a month to get reimbursed for the old tickets (the process doesn't start until I send the old tickets back, which won't happen until I actually receive them). I lose 10 pounds in an administration fee, and depending on whether this morning's registers in my bank account before my transaction, I may also go negative very briefly and possibly incur a small charge for doing so. I am such a champ.

My other really "awesome" traveling adventure was when I accidently booked a flight to the wrong city in January 2002 (I didn't realize that the College Park crowd was holding their conference in Baltimore and I flew to a DC airport because I had had a bad experience at the Baltimore airport the previous year).

Well, at least I have always been correct in at least one of space and time for every plane and train ticket I've purchased. (I was going to write 'one of the space and time variables', but I've basically gotten all three spatial variables right when I've gotten any of them right.)

Somehow, I feel that there must be an analogy with spatio-temporal chaos lurking in here somewhere...

Your Caltech dollars at work

We have spiffy new door labels. They cost $40 each (though they're really worth something like $5) and this type of label (though not at this price) makes sense for grad student and postdoc rooms because the resident names can be changed by printing new stuff out. Our old labels, which cost $30 (and are also only worth something like $5) can't be similarly replaced. For the sake of uniformity, the faculty were given those labels as well even though they still have the old ones. So, considering only the things that are completely redundant, we multiply this cost by the number of faculty in the building and come up with maybe $400.

Anyway, with Caltech's financial crunch from non-research endeavors, one would think we'd see more efficiency with things like this.