Charles Babbage and "Street Nuisances"

Wow!

One of my fave things about Charles Babbage is he dedicated 28 pages (!!) of his autobiography to street nuisances, in which he classified:

1) Instruments of torture permitted by the govt to be in
daily & nightly use in the streets of London
2) Encouragers of Street Music
1/2 pic.twitter.com/sUN8g4MskA

— Dr Elizabeth Bruton 🏳️‍🌈 (@lizbruton) October 1, 2019

What Happens When You Finish a PhD in Complex Systems

No cynicism or snark at all. :P

When you finish a PhD in complex systems, they take you to a special room and tell you that people are not actually particles.

After you recover, you’re sworn to secrecy, and you can try to publish papers in Nature again. Either that, or you can now join a sociology department. https://t.co/jXAzDuoJ7o

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) September 22, 2019

(By the way, I have been enjoying various instances of this meme that I have encountered during the last couple of days.)

The Original People of Los Angeles

Here is an online vignette from a Los Angeles Times project about the origins of Los Angeles.

Quoting from the vignette: "The original people of Los Angeles, the Tongva, defined their world as Tovaangar. It extended from Palos Verdes to San Bernardino, from Saddleback Mountain to the San Fernando Valley."

(Tip of the cap to Paulette Steeves.)

Video project: "Faces of Women in Mathematics"

Last month, Irina Linke (Director) and Eugénie Hunsicker (Producer) collected videos of women mathematicians, and today they released their compilation video.

Quoting the project page: "In February 2018, women mathematicians from all over the world responded to a call for clips in which they were asked to introduce themselves. The result includes 146 clips of 243 women mathematicians from 36 different countries and speaking 31 different languages. Supported by the Committee for Women in Mathematics of the International Mathematical Union."

Take a look at the video!

I met Eugénie, a fellow Somervillian, at last summer's Somerville mathematics reunion (and informal Erdmann-fest). I just found out that she is also a fellow Project NExTer (i.e., a fellow 'dot').

The Problem With Talking to People

There are two things that I really dislike about talking to people: (1) talking and (2) people.

An Imposter Physics Professor with a "Compulsion to Teach"

The case of former physics professor Marvin Hewitt is a weird one.

Quoting the Wikipedia entry: Marvin Hewitt (born 1922) was an American impostor who became, among other things, a university physics professor.

Hewitt was a high school drop-out with no qualifications who wanted to become an academic.[1] He always used names and identities of real-life people in his impostures. He later claimed that he had a "compulsion to teach".

This reminds me of the fictitious movie critic David Manning. (And, of course, there is the story of Sidd Finch.)

(Tips of the cap to MathFeed and Boing Boing.)

World Mathematics Day

Yesterday was apparently World Mathematics Day. Here are a bunch of mathematicians to learn about.

#realfaceofmath

Kit Yates has come up with an excellent suggestion: To help combat stereotypes, mathematical scientists should tweet a picture of themselves with the #realfaceofmath hashtag. I approve! (Not that my picture will end up helping to combat the stereotype...)

(Tip of the cap to Oxford Mathematics Good Practice.)

Update: OK, here is my #realfaceofmath tweet.

Being Part of the Story of Science

When you are an undergraduate student, and for the most part when you're a graduate student (though it starts to change then), you read scientific and mathematical results that have been neatly polished and compiled into books --- and then somewhat less neatly polished and compiled into papers. You probably will see that there are many mysteries left to uncover, but it's still knowledge and somehow something that already exists. And then you become a scientist (and mathematician) and you realize that there are stories --- often very interesting ones --- behind the knowledge and that can occasionally be just as fascinating (or even more so) than the knowledge itself. It's not just that some of the personalities are genuinely interesting (though that is also true) but that the path to knowledge is typically a maze of twisty little passages, all alike --- and there are a lot of inside jokes and events that become part of the stories, and these jokes and stories often have many layers (pun intended).

Being a professional scientist isn't merely about creating new knowledge (though that definitely is part of the deal). It means that you're part of an ever-enfolding story that people outside can watch and appreciate, but you are actually in the story, because you're one of the people helping to create it.

And let me tell you: It is incredibly awesome being one of the players in this evolving story! It's hard to beat being part of that, and I can't imagine trading it for anything.

So the next time you open a math book and see a theorem (or some other important or maybe not-so-important result), remember that that theorem might well have an interesting story behind it. It's more than just a piece of deductive reasoning. And, obviously, the same goes for all other scientific discourse. :)

And what made me think of all this particularly poignantly right now? Ergodic clams, of course. None of the thoughts above are new to me (I have had them many times, in fact), and I'm sure that I could have phrased them more eloquently, but I have to thank Petter Holme and Sang Hoon Lee for the immediate inspiration for writing this post when I should have gone to bed instead.

Now I better start thinking about what my theme song should be...

See! I Told You That People Are Particles!

Even Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal agrees that people are particles! See! I told you so! :P

(Well, actually, they aren't --- though that perspective can be both useful and insightful. Just don't go overboard with that perspective...)

Ideas >> People >> Drinks

I am going to bring up this 'issue' of SMBC the next time --- it will be soon, I am sure --- that people discuss something like wine at Somerville's High Table.

This one isn't funny per se, but it's dead-on accurate.

Song of the Day

Today's theme song is Regret by New Order. It's a damn fine song. You should listen to it someday.

I don't feel regret very often, but today is one of them. (I'm usually very confident about my decisions, make them, go forward, do the best I can, and accept the negative things that sometimes happen --- and this includes the breaks I have made with my family. I don't regret the bridges I burned with my family. I'm not confident about numerous other things and I guess that has come back to bite me on some occasions, and I hope I can gradually overcome such things and maybe even become better at interacting with people as a result.)

I did some major soul-searching after I got really distressed last night and made a decision that I feel was correct in the long term, even though it bloody sucks right now (especially after going through with it) and I feel worse than I have in probably several years. (I would say this is the worst I've felt since my grandmother died a few years ago and this is a bit different because I had no control over that.) It's amazing how I can simultaneously feel like this and still think I made the right decision.

In some circles, I guess all of this makes me weak. I think it means that I can express some feelings (which is one of my really major weak points --- even people I like don't necessarily know how much I like them!), which I think sometimes even some of my friends might on occasion doubt actually exist.

So, while I can't apologize for doing what I think was right, I can express the desire that I wish I could understand people (especially the ones I care about). I don't think I can understand people at all (even ones who I think I know well) because I'm just so different from everybody else. And maybe if I were better at putting myself in others' shoes, things would be better. And at times like this, I also wish people understood me a little better because the fact that I'm so different from everybody else seems to really cause major problems sometimes.

Usually, I'm able to roll with the punches... but not this time.


Despite the negative tone of this post, let me give some of the reasons I get up in the morning (mostly not in order, but some things are kind of in order):

My friends

Hanging out with my friends

Receiving an awesome home-made picture from a friend that I can proudly display in my office (a picture that I wish I deserved)

Somebody showing that they care about me enough to do something special like that

Hearing about successes from my friends --- whether that is passing a course, getting a paper published, the birth of a child (though I question the wisdom of considering that a success), beating 'Freebird' on expert level, or whatever

Finding out that I'm not totally hopeless in certain respects (even though I may well be mostly hopeless) and that maybe there's a chance (no matter how remote) that some seemingly unreachable dreams can come true.

Knowing that my friends are there for me even when I don't tell them why I happen to need them at a particular moment

Occasionally making baby steps to surmount by social difficulties and the hope that I can one day be able to make bigger steps

Baseball

The Dodgers

Looking at the standings and seeing the Dodgers in first place

Baseball articles and box scores

Good music

Good movies and tv shows

Good books and magazines (fantasy, sci-fi, math, physics, or otherwise)

Games

Caltech

Getting the chance to move back to Caltech

My job (both now and in October, even though I'll be moving away from my friends)

Applied Math (and parts of theoretical physics)

That 'Aha!' moment when a calculation or numerical simulation or whatever finally works after long weeks or months of struggling

Music by A-Ha

Keeping at least some of my sense of humor no matter how shitty I feel (I can't help it...)

Getting theory or numerics to match experiments (ideally with no fitting parameters)

My research students and their successes

Waking up to find out that Democrats are now the majority party in both houses of Congress

Going to cool math and physics conferences and getting booed (for which happened in 2005) or offending people by insulting Republicans too blatantly during my talk (which just happened at Snowbird)

Writing

Witty comments (even when I'm the target)

My MacBook Pro

Getting e-mails or IMs from my friends

Reading my friends' blogs (specific entries excluded) and interacting with them that way as well.

Seeing my book in the Caltech bookstore

Finding out about a new prank (or at least one I didn't know about)

Iced lattes (and other good things of the coffee persuasion)

Being a music snob (for a certain class of music)

Confirming my claim from earlier tonight that the original version of You Really Got Me was indeed by The Kinks. (And finding out that Boingo also covered this song... Dude!)

Occasionally believing in the existence of things and concepts I usually don't (note: this does not include dieties; those never exist)

Going to bed with the hope that maybe I'll gain some wisdom about all of this tomorrow (no matter how shitty I feel about things at the moment)

Inspiration



Well, this isn't me at my best. But it is dedicated to anybody I've ever hurt. You may not like me better after reading this, but I hope you'll at least understand me better.