Mason Porter: International Man of Mystery

Apparently, the French bureaucracy uses the word "mission" for things like my trip to Paris to give a seminar on my research.

"I'm sending you in attachment 2 documents that you should fill in to open your mission for the visit..." (...) "The policy here requires to ask you to please purchase your travel ticket(s), for which you will be refunded at the end of the mission..."

That's me, alright: Mason Porter, International Man of Mystery (formerly "International Phenomenon").

(I am accepting this mission, of course! Indeed, I am very much looking forward to it.)

Quote of the Day (Zurich seminar edition)

Today's quote comes from a seminar I saw a couple of hours ago:

"In this graph, you see this lovely lady in different body positions."


I believe the quote in question is also a Housequote (or perhas a "seminarquote"), as I'm pretty sure the meaning my mind went towards was not intended by the speaker. In case you're wondering about the context, the talk concerned isospectral problems (given a spectrum, determine the shape) and the graph being shown was talking about conformational changes (say, dancing or bending over) that shouldn't prevent you from identifying something as the same object. None of the depicted positions were dirty ones. Anyway, the phrasing was lovely.

Right now, we're having the reception for the Prandtl lecture. It's sponsored by Beck's, so their beer is the only drink available. This is really annoying, because I am thirsty (and possibly a bit dehydrated) and don't drink alcohol. One thing I am finding at this conference is that the quality of certain things is occasionaly being adversely affected by such sponsorship, and it's surprising and shameful to see this at a math conference. I know we see it in many (just about every?) walk of life, but would it be such a crime to have water?

On a similar note, the only water one can buy is sparkling water. Grrrrr.... I can't stand sparkling water. Bring on the tap!

Update to a prior post: I got my missing sheet today, which was simply an official certificate indicating that I had participated. Some organizations require that for reimbursement, though I doubt I'll need it. They reversed my first and last names despite my identifying which is which, but se la vie. (Ooh, Dido's "Here With Me" is playing in the background, though the crowd noise is mostly drowning it out.) Also, I was trying to refind the registration area yesterday to deal with it then but spent a lot of time searching outside and wondering where it was. I asked about it this morning, and the helpers gave me the info but treated me like I was stupid for asking this piece of information. Well, as it turns out, the registration area was moved to a smaller location after the first day even though this wasn't announced in any obvious spot. (I assume it's somewhere and that I just didn't see it.) I didn't even bother to explain to them that when I registered, the place do it was different than where they directed me because there was no point. As long as I could get where I needed to go... Anyway, my point here is that my question was obviously not stupid (given the move), despite the way it was treated.

"The Passion of the Cockroach"

The last talk of the workshop was a neuroscience/biomechics talk by Phil Holmes of Princeton University (one of the bigshots, by the way). The example of the day concerned cockroach locomotion, which has been studied extensively in the Berkeley laboratory of Bob Full.

I have seen Full speak oin various aspects of this topic a couple times -- he is a wonderful speaker! -- and there are a number of really awesome videos associated with this project.

I tried to find a video online relevant to this blog entry, but I could only find the old ones (and none of the really good old ones). Some of you might have heard me carry on about this series of projects before---I know I have mentioned the great videos of how roaches run over obstacles really well, can recover from perturbations like a small rocket being fired from a launcher on their back, etc.

OK, so whence my title? Well, one of the motivational videos for this talk showed a cockroach running along a treadmill with a thing on its back that looks like a cross. And the speaker casually, dryly referred to this video as "The Passion of the Cockroach." I approve!

Live MathBlogging

Here's a brief comment.

I just saw something in a seminar that I've never seen before.

The medium for the present talk is an overhead projector. The speaker was presenting a brief example but didn't have a good picture to show people. He was struggling with describing what the system is, so the next speaker (sitting in the front row) handed him a slide of that to borrow and show. (The next speaker is going into more detail on that topic.)

You gotta' love mathematical relief pitching...