Annoying movie subtitle

I was at the theatre today to see Hellboy 2 (which I'll review briefly when I go through lots of media in a subsequent post that I swear I will write eventually). While there, I noticed a poster for the new Bond film, which will come out here on October 31st. I'm obviously very interested in seeing it, but its subtitle ("Quantum of Solace") really annoys me and (less relevantly) seems to break from the Bond subtitle formula. Maybe the subtitle of the 2010 Bond film will be "Strangled Perturbations"?

T-shirt of the day

I just received my new J!NX newsletter in which they advertised a new t-shirt that combines two of my obsessions and is so awesome (not to mention "awesome") that I'm simply going to have to buy one: Rock Me, Asmodeus!.

Update:: I guess I'm not going to buy one immediately given that the shipping would cost me more than 50% of the price of the full item. While in the big picture that doesn't matter, it annoys me sufficiently that buying this through J!NX isn't going to happen. I suppose I'll do it when I'm imminently visiting Southern California. Ah well. It's a really nice shirt, though.

A Tribute to Vin Scully

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here is a fantastic tribute to Vin Scully by Richard Hoffer.

Like many other Dodger fanatics, when I think of the Dodgers, I actually start with Vin rather than any of our current or former players or managers. I've been listening to him call baseball games for almost 30 years, and he's the best announcer I've ever heard.

RIP Phil Saffman (1931-2008)

I just saw on the Physics Today obituary notices that Phil Saffman, one of my Caltech professors, died on August 17th. Here is the Los Angeles Times obituary.

As some of you probably know, AMa 95 was essentially created by Phil Saffman. (In fact, I have my copy of the Saffman lecture notes in my office and I still refer to them on occasion when teaching relevant material.) So in this way, he impacted a lot of Caltech undergrads (though given the level of popularity of that class, I suppose many wished he hadn't). I had Saffman for AMa 101 during my junior year (1996-97). This was the last class he taught at Tech, and he specifically decided he wanted to end his classroom lecturing career with that course (which he had previously taught 20 years ago). So he was the first person who showed me things like steepest descents, WKB theory, multiple scales, hypergeometric functions, etc. On the last day of class, he very quietly said he was retiring and had specifically decided to end with that class. (I had been wondering why his TAs and random people---including his daughter---were in the audience.) That remains the one time I have ever seen champaign in a classroom, and I remember we all had a laugh after one of his TAs accidently fell backwards into her chair after taking her first sip. (There were comments about how little alcohol she could handle.)

Anyway, so while I didn't know Saffman that well, I do have some memories of him and definitely was influenced by him to some degree academically through AMa 95 (intro methods in applied math, for non-Techers; this was a one-year course) and AMa 101 (methods in applied math; this was also a one-year course).

Tales from the arXiv: Narcissistic Edition

My collaborators and I finally submitted our paper on Facebook networks last night. I normally post blog entries about my papers after the official journal version comes out, but this one was a royal pain in the ass ('particularly arduous' in more official language) to write, so I'm going to make an exception. Besides, this article is 38 journal-pages of sheer joy and community detection, so how can I not post about it now. (This is the longest article I've ever written, and it's longer than many doctoral theses. As I said, writing it was a pain in the ass, but I'm quite proud of the article and I hope it has a nice impact.)

First, here is the link to the arXiv posting.

Before I give the abstract, let me also shout out to my coauthors Mandi Traud (UNC student), Eric Kelsic (my 2005 Caltech SURF student, which is where this project all started), and Peter Mucha (UNC applied mathematician). Let me also give a shout out to Aaron Clauset and James Fowler, whose thorough commentary on an older version of the manuscript were inordinately valuable and way above and beyond the call of duty. (I can overstate my thanks for your help!) Without further ado...

Article title: Community Structure in Online Collegiate Social Networks

Article abstract: We apply the tools of network analysis to study the roles of university organizations and affiliations in structuring the social networks of students by examining the graphs of Facebook "friendships" at five American universities at a single point in time. In particular, we investigate each single-institution network's community structure, which we obtain by partitioning the graphs using an eigenvector method. We employ both graphical and quantitative tools, including pair-counting methods that we interpret through statistical analysis and permutation tests, to measure the correlations between the network communities and a set of self-identified user characteristics (residence, class year, major, and high school). We additionally investigate single-gender subsets of the university networks and also examine the impact of incomplete demographic information in the data. Our study across five universities allows one to make comparative observations about the online social lives at the different institutions, which can in turn be used to infer differences in offline lives. It also illustrates how to examine different instances of social networks constructed in similar environments, while emphasizing the array of social forces that combine to form simplified "communities" obtainable by the consideration of the friendship links. In an appendix, we review the basic properties and statistics of the employed pair-counting similarity coefficients and recall, in simplified notation, a useful analytical formula for the z-score of the Rand coefficient.

Best baseball slide ever

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here is the best baseball slide ever! Wow!

Quote of the Day

Courtesy Rob Neyer's chat on ESPN today, we have this wonderful line from Mark Twain as today's quote of the day: "Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time, and your government when it deserves it."

Comment: Amen!

Tales from the arXiv: OK, that's just wrong

I had forgotten about this particular mathematical object, but I was poignantly reminded by the following paper that was just posted to the arXiv:

\\
arXiv:0809.0262 (*cross-listing*)
Date: Mon, 1 Sep 2008 15:06:04 GMT (12kb)

Title: Replica overlap and covering time for the Wiener sausages among
Poissonian obstacles
Authors: Ryoki Fukushima
Categories: math.PR math-ph math.MP
Comments: 14 pages
MSC-class: 60K37; 60G17; 82D30
Journal-ref: Journal of Mathematics of Kyoto University 2008, Vol. 48 No. 2,
455-470
\\
We study two objects concerning the Wiener sausage among Poissonian
obstacles. The first is the asymptotics for the \textit{replica overlap}, which
is the intersection of two independent Wiener sausages. We show that it is
asymptotically equal to their union. This result confirms that the localizing
effect of the media is so strong as to completely determine the motional range
of particles. The second is an estimate on the \textit{covering time}. It is
known that the Wiener sausage avoiding Poissonian obstacles up to time $t$ is
confined in some `clearing' ball near the origin and almost fills it. We prove
here that the time needed to fill the confinement ball has the same order as
its volume.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0809.0262 , 12kb)


Comment: That's just so wrong! (And I don't mean wrong scientifically; I mean wrong on humanistic grounds.)

Scary Dodger thought

I am reading Peter Gammons' blog on ESPN.com and he points out that "There isn't anyone who doesn't laugh at the Los Angeles Times' T.J. Simers' suggestion that they put up a statue of Jose Lima outside Dodger Stadium in honor of his being the only Dodger pitcher to win a postseason game since the Reagan Administration."

Holy shit, that is scary!

(I obviously remember very poignantly that we only have the one win. What I forgot was that Jose Lima of all people got it! Also, as depressing as it is, I have to admit that Simers' suggestion is pretty damn funny. Ah well, I have to laugh at my team sometimes I suppose even though my heart is breaking all the while.)

Handouts in the Quad

I had just finished lunch and was walking back to my flat through the quad when I passed by a guy who was giving handouts to people who were passing by him.

I didn't think Somerville allowed that in the quad, but anyway I passed by this guy, heard him mumble something and then automatically said 'No thanks' and passed him by. I have many years of experience in just filtering that stuff out and assuming I don't want whatever is in the handout.

Then it occurred to me that I thought the guy is 'quantum field theory problems.' I figured that was my usual overactive imagination until I found a sign in the quad that we're apparently hosting an "HEP" (i.e., high energy physics) summer school. Now I am actually tempted to go and see what problems are being assigned, but then again maybe this is all some elaborate hoax to give me a leaflet about the Jesus degrees-of-freedom we have all been ignoring in our Hamiltonians.

(Also, the handout method doesn't seem like the most efficient way to do this...)

McCain picks Sarah Palin as running mate

I just saw on cnn.com that John McCain has picked Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his running mate for his presidential campaign.

My immediate reactions came in the following order:

(1) First came the cynical reaction: This is a brilliant choice because now Obama loses some of the political-correctness advantage of his attempt to become the first African American in the White House and because of this choice the Republicans are now more likely to win than they were before. Fuck!

(2) Next came the positive reaction: No matter what happens, some history will be made because we'll either get an African American president or a woman vice president. Each of these could---and should---have enormously positive long-term ramifications no matter which party gets into office. Hell, it's already extremely positive (and historical) that they're running for these offices in the first place.

(3) Then came the debate of (1) versus (2): No matter how much I care about point (2)---which actually is quite a bit---I care a lot more about point (1) because I don't want anything to happen that increases the chances of the next president being a Republican, and this includes things like this one with extremely positive long-term ramifications.

(4) Then came a question: Who is Sarah Palin?

Future Ig Nobel laureate?

The following blurb appeared in the issue of mini-AIR I just received by e-mail:

"Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice," Bram Van den Bergh, Siegfried Dewitte and Luk Warlop,
Journal of Consumer Research, June 2008, vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 85-97.

I googled the paper because I was curious what they actually did (especially given that I couldn't tell what they meant by "intertemporal choice" and---to be honest---after reading the abstract I still have no idea what that means). The abstract adds to the amusement:

Neuroscientific studies demonstrate that erotic stimuli activate the reward circuitry processing monetary and drug rewards. Theoretically, a general reward system may give rise to non-specific effects: Exposure to ‘hot stimuli’ from one domain may thus affect decisions in a different domain. We show that exposure to sexy cues leads to more impatience in intertemporal choice between monetary rewards. Highlighting the role of a general reward circuitry, we demonstrate that individuals with a sensitive reward system are more susceptible to the effect of sex cues, that the effect generalizes to non-monetary rewards, and that satiation attenuates the effect.

I think this is clearly a strong contender for an Ig Nobel prize. Maybe the peace prize? (Either that or physics.)

Headline: Instant Replay in Baseball

I only have a couple of comments to add to the raging debut, but I nevertheless want to provide an announcement that instant replay officially comes to baseball starting tomorrow. (There's supposedly some sort of test drive in today's Pirates-Cubs game, but I don't know what that actually means.) I believe that it will be limited to fair versus foul calls on homeruns at first, but we can obviously (despite what official baseball people state) expect its use to be expanded in the upcoming years. I think only a few of this weekend's series will include it. Whether or not baseball should have instant replay has been debated on-and-off over the years, but discussions really heated up this year and now it's reality.

My main hope, by the way, is that this doesn't reduce the fantastically amusing arguments between managers and umpires. The people against instant replay often talk about "the human element" of the game (which is a euphemism for making more mistakes), but the thing I would actually miss the most are things like Lloyd McClendon stealing first base. For what it's worth, the argument against instant replay that I do buy is the concern over game length if it's used too often. I think umpires and managers will still go jaw-to-jaw quite a bit even when instant replay is fully established, but I'm just saying that that's what I'd miss if it went away.

Vintage Mason

Most of you have probably witnessed what I consider to be vintage examples of my sarcastic wit. One MTBI student (Carlos Torres) even came up with the term "Mason moment" to describe verbal instances of such incidents in the context of scientific discussions (such as seminar questions and comments), although those were intended to be pointed but not necessarily sarcastic. (Admittedly, some of those comments have occasionally ended up being less mild than I intended.) Several of you probably have also witnessed the depths that my sarcasm can reach more often than you'd like. :) Here is the latest in a continuing series:

A few months back, one of my collaborators passed a paper on to me that was sent to him by his former Cornell advisor (who is on the editorial board of the journal that published the paper), who I also know pretty well. The reason that paper was brought to my collaborator's attention was that it concerned a nonlinear oscillator model of bipolar disorder, about which we wrote a paper in 2003. We never were actually able to publish this paper (though a few people have cited it anyway and at least a couple of psychologists seemed to be interested in it), but we posted the paper on the arXiv preprint server in 2003.

It turns out to be a very good thing that we posted the paper publicly in a manner that includes a time-stamp, because the article that was forwarded to us had a lot of very familiar ideas, analysis, etc. Once we saw this, we contacted the author to let him know about our paper and asked for his thoughts and to add a reference to it if at all possible. (His paper is already published online, but it's "in press" in the sense that it has not yet been assigned volume, issue, or page numbers.) We waited around a month or so and got no response, so we contacted the editor of the journal and gave him the link to our paper (and indicated the time stamp). To his credit, the journal editor immediately saw a problem and e-mailed the author later that day and asked him to comment on the differences between the two manuscripts. Another month (roughly) passed and the author still hadn't responded, so we asked the editor what we should do. Based on consulting with him, it was agreed that we should write a Letter to the Editor. Perhaps the final version will be edited by the folks at the journal, but here is the way it currently reads. Pay special attention to the last two sentences. As I mentioned, it's vintage Mason.

Anyway, sometimes one has to fight the good fight.

Update: The receipt of our Letter to the Editor was acknowledged at 3:54 pm (pacific time) and it was accepted without comment at 3:55 pm. I'm still waiting for my first negative-time paper acceptance. :)

Coupling Between Coffee Places

Today's barrista at my usual coffee place was the former owner of a coffee place I used to be a regular (and occasionally still go to). Actually, I didn't know until today that he didn't still own that other place, where he often served as barrista. He now owns the current usual coffee place. (Actually, the current one was my usual place first, but then they didn't have ice for several months, so I frequented the other place for a while. This one has better coffee.) It's a bit weird to see a person I associated with one place with another one (and I also felt a bit compelled to explain my coffee switch, although I guess that is just my own insecurity or something).

I have seen a couple of things like this before but not too many. All of the ones that come to mind are in Ithaca. (Naturally, it happened in the smallest town in which I've lived.) There were 3 examples (and arguably a 4th, on one occasion) that come to mind. The one I'll mention is one barrista who worked at one of my regular coffee places, then another one, and then back to the original one. Maybe it's weirder for them to see me as a regular at two different places (in addition to it being weird to see me in the first place).

I hope to wake up in a few minutes. I'm trying to gradually work up my mind to edit my Facebook manuscript some more.

A message to librarians

Attention: In mathematics, the fact that a book has a new edition by no means whatsoever should be taken to imply that the old edition should be discarded! (Just because it works that way in some subjects doesn't mean that it works that way in every subject. Some of them haven't exactly changed much in a while...)

The Somerville library ("Library!") was discarding some old mathematics books in the interest of space (which I appreciate is necessary). I took some of these myself because I think that there is a chance that I might have some use for them (even if it's only on a rare occasion) and a few of them I insisted that they put back because the student demand for them already outstrips the supply. (A couple of the books I rescued are ones I don't expect to use at all, but I have historical interest in them for various reasons.) Throwing these away would then exacerbate a problem that already exists. One of the books that I so rescued was this one (technically, the same edition but under a different publisher). Unbelievable...

Maybe they should try crowd control next?

At 10:15 this morning, everyone in my College was sent an e-mail (that was clearly not spam) titled "Please log off immediately
" from our IT support staff. It included the following very terse message (along with the usual greeting, etc):

Please log off until further notice as you are at risk of data loss. This also applies even if you believe that your computer is o.k.

Naturally, this made me feel some sense of panic. I was at the office. I considered delaying an imminent meeting so I could go and make sure my computer wasn't connected to the internet. (I didn't really know what they meant by "log off.") However, I had just backed everything up yesterday, so I figured I'd just recover everything that way in the event that something weird happened. Also I had no clue what the cause might have been or in general anything of what was apparently going on. Were we under attack? Was the world about to end, taking all of our data with it? I had no idea. The content of the message that I quoted constituted the entirety of the message body (aside from the greeting, etc.). Then my student came and we met for an hour, after which I sent the following e-mail at 11:22 to the IT folks in response to their message:

I am not at home and hence unable to log off at such short notice. (I
realize this is apparently beyond your control in this case.)

Could you let us know what's going on?


After my next meeting, I went home at 12:30 and unplugged my ethernet cable and went to lunch. I would then deal with a couple of things at the office and call up the IT folks to see what was going on if I didn't hear from them at that point.

At 2:11 pm, just before I was going to call, I received the following private e-mail from them:

There is no need to worry, there was a problem with the administration staff's
computers earlier today and an email was sent out to everyone rather than just
the admin by mistake.
If upon your return to Somerville there seems to be any problem with your
ability to log on to your computer or with the email, please reboot your
machine as this should clear up any remaining issues.


So I have a question: If the original e-mail was sent out to everyone by mistake (and ask you can see that e-mail was titled and worded in a way that could reasonably be expected to cause panicky reactions in people), why wasn't there an immediate follow-up letting them know that they could safely ignore it because it didn't apply to them?

Thanks a lot, guys. Way to run a tightly-oiled machine.

(Am I being unreasonable here? It seems to me that this could have been handled much better than it was in almost every respect. Maybe I'm just missing something entirely.)

Update: Errr..., I mean a "tight ship" or "well-oiled" machine. I'm not quite sure what it means for something to be tightly-oiled, although I do recognize the term as a compound adjective...

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.

What is... JPEG?

Here is a belated post of an expository article from earlier this year that I have been meaning to point. This article, which gives the mathematical basics behind JPEG, is part of the "What is..." series in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

There are a few more of these that have built up about which I will eventually blog, and I'll even zip through my media review backlog at some point. :)

Averaging of Nonlinearity Management with Dissipation

My paper called Averaging of nonlinearity management with dissipation just appeared in Physical Review A. My coauthors are S. Beheshti, K. J. H. Law, and P. G. Kevrekidis (all from U. Mass. Amherst).

This paper is a short but interesting bit of research whose motivation is best described with its abstract:

Motivated by recent experiments in optics and atomic physics, we derive an averaged nonlinear partial differential equation describing the dynamics of the complex field in a nonlinear Schrödinger model in the presence of a periodic nonlinearity and a periodically varying dissipation coefficient. The incorporation of dissipation in our model is motivated by experimental considerations. We test the numerical behavior of the derived averaged equation by comparing it to the original nonautonomous model in a prototypical case scenario and observe good agreement between the two.


Basically, the point is that the theoretical research involving "nonlinearity management" (which typically means using temporal and/or spatial adjustment on one or more of the nonlinear terms in a partial differential equation) uses an entirely conservative setting. However, one one applies one of these strategies experimentally, there is typically an additional dissipation mechanism that gets introduced. (We saw this in our work with experimentalists on nonlinearity management in the setting of nonlinear optics. This short paper was especially motivated by the associated series of experiments, though it's relevant for some Bose-Einstein condensate stuff as well.) Our paper take some theory for the conservative case and works it out for the periodic dissipation case that we saw in our optics experiments as an example of how one would do this more generally.

Indie movies and pretentious coffee bars

The study group with industry ended a bit after 1pm today, which gave me most of today, all of tomorrow, and part of Sunday to explore a bit (or, more precisely, to continue my Montreal escapades from 2003 and 2004). Accordingly, I headed to downtown after we were done to explore the eastern half of St. Catherine's street. (This is the main happening street downtown.) The metro station I went to was the one that turned out to connect to their grand central station and is where the buses from the airport go if one is heading downtown. (This time, I just took a cab because University of Montreal is paying for my travels. Hence, I didn't want to deal with the luggage-dragging---and the having to figure out where I actually needed to go at various stages---that the bus + metro option would have entailed.) This therefore touched me down amidst the familiar hotels from 2003 and 2004.

Upon exploring the eastern part of St. Catherine's (a street which goes on forever and is basically open all night), I ran into the Montreal film festival, which I didn't realize was happening now. (It started last night.) This is excellent, because it allows me to see some indie films long before they come out in theatres. (Some of these probably won't come out in UK or US theatres at all.) I saw a really good Japenese film called something like "The 100 Million Yen Woman." Various types of social awkwardness play pretty important roles in it, so while it was a bit too heavy-handed and predictable at times, it definitely resonated with me somewhat. (There were also some brief comedic moments, like a judge's/police official's voiceover proclaiming how bad it was to throw out a person's "Nintendo DS, as well as his other possessions" (the quote is approximate). I'll bring up the film again in a very belated entertainment review blog entry that will include films, theatre, etc. from the past several months. There are quite a few other films I'm interested in seeing (though only a fraction of those are playing while I'm still in town), so my current plans are to see 1-2 tomorrow. (I have already walked around a decent bit and I don't typically do things like museums unless I'm doing that with someone else. I just don't typically like going to museums on my own.) I was going to see a regular movie tonight, but once I found out that the film festival was going on, I threw out that option. (P.S. As far as I can tell, Philip Seymour Hoffman is not in any of the films being shown at this festival.)

As I have mentioned in the past (though maybe not in this blog), Montreal has tons and tons of very good coffee places. One of the ones near the university is in fact among the most pretentious coffee places I've ever been. (It's name is stupid---"Java U"---but its espresso drinks are fantastic! Ergo, I approve!) It might even be the 2nd most pretentious coffee place I've ever been to, although it is nowhere close to as pretentious as the venue occupying the top spot on the list (Equator Cafe in Pasadena). However, it has much better coffee than Equator (which has good coffee), which is what really counts. I went to another pretentious coffee place as well today---its barristas also seemed to range from dressed-in-black to very goth. I was also going to have crepes today, but it didn't work out. There's a crepes place near the theatre I went to and one or both of the films I'm seeing tomorrow are at that specific theatre as well, so I'll definitely make up for that tomorrow. It would be a crime to have my third trip to Montreal without having had a crepe in any of the three.

Fun fact: In high school, I was voted most likely to see independent films and drink pretentious coffee drinks while having crepres. (OK, not really---but I would have been if we had that category.)

Greg Maddux is heading back to the Dodgers

After a month or so of rumors, it appears that Greg Maddux has been traded again to the Dodgers. Awesome! Hopefully he'll help us win, and he'll pass Roger Clemens on the career win list in Dodger blue. Maybe we'll even keep him next year this time. (Although Maddux is geriatric and obviously a far cry from the pitcher he used, he's still solid and incredibly fun to watch. I'd love to see him remain on the team next year.)

Clever solutions to problems

I wasn't able to see some videos that one of my students sent me and I haven't had the time (or the desire) to deal with downloading software during the last couple of days---I was too busy revising a manuscript and now I'm out of town---so he cleverly solved the problem by posting his videos on YouTube. Here is one of his degree distribution movies. Although it doesn't have many hits, it does have quite a few more than I expected it to have.

Oh, and greetings from Montreal. I had forgotten how cheap good food can be in North America. :) I think I appreciate that much more than I used to---or at least certain food prices feel less expensive than they used to.

What happens in Montreal stays in Montreal

Tomorrow morning I am heading on a bus to the airport for my flight to the land of maple leaves, Celine Dion, and Tim Horton's. (Tim Horton's is apparently a big deal to many Canadians, but I must admit that I don't really get it. I've been to one and it was quite generic. Maybe some of the local Canadian folks want to educate me on this one?) In particular, I'm going to Montreal, which has various levels of association with all three (especially Celine Dion). Another big Montreal thing is smoked meat, which one can find ubiquitously in many restaurant menus there.

The reason for my travel is a fully-funded invite---that originally went to a more senior Oxonian, but he was busy and asked if I'd go---to a study group with industry. I went to one of these in Edinborough in April and it was fun but very exhausting. (I didn't end up walking around through Edinborough and seeing it properly, which is quite a shame given how cool a city it seems to be---and is, according to those who have truly experienced it. Hence, I will need to go back there and have a proper look around instead of just wandering the infinite corridors of Herior-Watt University.) At the Edinborough study group, I worked on a problem on item recommendation systems, which the industry presenters formulated as a probability problem but which our group recast as a bipartite network problem. (Funny, one wouldn't expect me to do that. :) ) The list of problems in Montreal includes one that is very TSP-like, and that's the one that seems the most interesting to me based on the short descriptions that have been published online. (The way it works is that on the first day, the industry folks present the problems---which are typically ambiguous and otherwise ill-formed---and the academics spend the rest of the week trying to get as far as they can with them, which for many problems can amount to just figuring out what the problem actually is.)

Anyway, I am very excited to have the chance to go to Montreal again. It's on the short short list of my favorite cities in the entire world (and, in this case, I am able to make that claim without any emotional bias due to the people or institutions in that city---well, except possibly for Youppi!), and I should have at least some time to go around and do cool things. (One big difference from Edinborough was that Heriot-Watt was away from the city center and in this case I should be able to just walk to where things are happening. If nothing else, the metro system in Montreal is really good, so I can haul ass over to St. Catherine's Street easily enough. There's an RPG store there that I might visit and I also want to pick up N+. Nope, I'm not going to be able to pick up N+ because it's been delayed another two weeks, so it's now slated to come out the day after I return to the UK. Bloody Hell. I was going to pick it up in Pasadena in January. I'll also be partaking in Montreal's many excellent cafes and restaurants. So I'm looking forward to going!) The last time I was there (March 2004), I tested Newton's laws of by running into a glass wall (they work) and had a butterfly give birth on my jacket while I was wearing it. (I have a picture to prove this. I think several of you have seen it before. There was also a Housequote related to this incident, but it was Jing Xu rather than me who uttered it.) The one time before that was in June 2003, and I can confirm that the weather in Montreal is much nicer during the summer than it is in March. :)

Oh, and in preparation for my upcoming exhausting study group with industry, I spent most of today (about 12 hours) revising a 40+ journal-page manuscript from top to bottom. I can overstate how painful this was! Now my collaborator has it and the hope is to submit it after his next pass. (It's conceivable that he'll ask me to go over specific parts again, but I hope he'll agree that we can submit it and post it on the arxiv. We'll then make more changes later when we deal with the referee reports and have had time to recover from the present ordeal.) One of my network science colleagues (and a fellow community-detector, no less) for whom I have a great deal of respect really liked it, which makes me feel very good about the paper.

Overheard (errr... written) while Manuscript Drafting (aka, Quotes of the Day)

Here is the first quote:

"The history of statistics is replete with measures of association and correlation. Just because a measure has plausibility at face value, ranges from 1 down to 0, and has a known sampling distribution under an extreme null hypothesis of total randomness is no guarantee of its usefulness or interpretability." (David L. Wallace, 1983)

Comment: Amen, Brother!


Here is the second:

"In summary, this paper is fucking long. Therefore, it ought to be published in a mathematics journal because nobody reads those anyway."

Comment: I wrote that one in a recent draft of a paper I am about to submit for publication that is now over 40 journal pages long. Sigh. I should have written "way too fucking long" instead.


There is actually a recent e-mail exchange that I'd also like to post, but I'll have to send that one privately.

Billboard of the Day

Jaideep Singh posted an awesome billboard on his Facebook page.

I understand the point of the billboard, but they managed to do this in a way that is truly "awesome". Maybe Caltech should adopt the billboard's catchphrase as its new slogan?

Mathematics Job Wiki

Following in the fine tradition of the condensed matter/atomic physics job rumor mill (and similar web pages in other physics subfields), there is now a wiki devoted to the mathematics job rumor mill. Not that it matters for me anymore, but I do like to gossip about this stuff (as Lemming knows quite well). :)

Say it ain't so!

Apparently, there is now a remake of the piece of shit known as Beverly Hills 90210.

The reason the old show annoyed me is that it propagated annoying stereotypes about my high school. It never even occurred to me that there would be a remake. Damnit!

And for what it's worth, there is only one Beverly High and it's in the 90212 area code! (Let's ignore the fact that my parents' home is in the 90210 area code.) Sheesh.

Recap from Rome

I'm blogging on this a bit belatedly, as is my habit. (I was going to be prompt, but then the whole laptop incident occurred.)

I've already posted the pictures my friend took. I still don't have a digital camera (I'll get one eventually... I'm being very bad about this) and I haven't developed my pictures yet, though the ones I showed you covered most of the visual stuff I wanted to pass along anyway.

My memory of things is a bit hazy at this point, but such is life.

General: While in Rome, I unsurprisingly had lots of good pasta and gelato. Mmmm... gelato. There was a really good gelato place near the hotel (which was somewhat in the boonies, as I mentioned). It had good, thick whipped cream and one of the people working there one time gave me double with the official portion was.

Italian driving: Basically, you have to just cross the street and hope they don't run you over. Right of way doesn't exist. If you stand on the sidewalk waiting for them to stop so you can cross safely (even if the traffic lights favor you, in the corners where there actually are traffic lights), you'll be waiting there a very long time. This was quite a nerve-wracking experience, and for an Angelino like me, walking in front of a car while it's moving counters multiple decades of muscle memory, intuition, and survival instincts. I definitely didn't like the de facto driving habits in Rome.

Attempts to get iced lattes/capuccinos: As I had been warned, this didn't work particularly well. I ultimately figured out how to get cold coffee drinks, but getting them truly iced (and hence ones that would actually stay really cold more than a trivial amount of time) didn't work very well. My shining moment of "awesomeness" came at lunch on one of the last days. A couple of days before I had accidently gotten an iced espresso and unlike in the US, one can't just add the milk oneself at a counter if one screws up that way. (At that place, one had to order in a different spot than one picked up the drink, and I didn't want to wait in line again, so I added some sugar and sucked it up.) However, I had learned from that experience that the Italian word for cold is "freddo" so I was thinking that I was getting somewhere. The next time I tried, I wanted to make sure my cold espresso drink wasn't actually an espresso, so I very confidently ordered a "latte freddo" and the waiter just as confidently gave me the cold milk I had ordered. Oops. I was so used to saying "latte" as a shortcut for "cafe latte" (as that is what's done in both the US and UK) that it didn't occur to me that without the "cafe" in Italy I would be taken literally. Bloody Hell! After that I just ordered capuccinos to be safe, but even on one menu that described the damn thing as "iced" it never got more than cold (and then not for long). Thankfully, gelato provided a nice way to get something that was truly cold and refreshing.

Day 1: This was my tourist day in Rome. My friend and I went to the Colosseum, where I managed to get very slightly bloody (there was a very sharp piece of plastic in an unfortunate spot). Sadly, I didn't have any of the 4th edition abilities that gave me bonuses in that situation. At least it was poetic. After this we walked to the city center and explored a lot. I learned my lesson from Zurich in summer 07 (and heeded the warning of how hot and humid Rome is in the summer) and made sure that I stayed hydrated. (I had a rough time in Zurich because of that.) Occasionally, this meant really overpaying for cold drinks, but sometimes you do what you have to do. I took either all (or perhaps nearly all) of my pictures on this day, and I covered lots of ground. When I travel to an interesting place, one of my pleasures is to just walk around a lot and see what's up. I like to get a flavor for the city and soak things in. Usually I get lost along the way, but at least I can also do some exploring as I try to find myself again. During this exploration, the sites included "Via Propaganda" (with the McDonald's sign, as I showed you pictorially) and a zombie mime. (What's the sign for "braaaaaaains...?")

The conference: It was productive and interesting, as expected. I actually went to the activity group's business meeting this time. I had considered going on some previous occasions, but I always had something else to do---either a meeting with a collaborator, dinner with friends, or whatever. (I didn't consider going when I first went to conferences, but after I had established myself a bit and become a regular, it started making sense to go to that stuff.) Anyway, one of the ideas I proposed was a resounding success, though it will need to go through the regular hoops to become official. Namely, there is going to be a nonlinear waves dissertation prize. Hopefully I won't end up on the committee that actually has to read these, but I believe in the cause sufficiently that I needed to risk that to try to make it happen.

Interesting factoid: This blog entry is 1337. I'm just awesome that way, and I'm not sure when the next interesting number is coming along.

Open source science

Courtesy Dave Richard, here is a New York Times article about open source science.

(By the way, yesterday we had a small Lloydies in Oxford day with Dave, Tom Maccarone, and me.)

Amusing t-shirt

In honor of gnomes being removed from the set of PC classes in 4th edition D & D, J!NX is now selling this amusing t-shirt. The idea is sweet and I was prepared to order one immediately after I saw the blurb in the J!NX e-mail, but unfortunately I don't actually like the graphics that much. I might still get one eventually because the idea is just that cool, but for now I'll wait.

The Amazing Brad Ziegler

I meant to blog about this a while ago, but I have a few minutes now, so let me belated mention the amazing rookie season of Oakland reliever Brad Ziegler.

As I write this, one thing you'll notice among Ziegler's statistics is that he hasn't yet allowed a run (earned or otherwise) in his 35-inning Major League career.

As discussed in his wikipedia entry, Ziegler now holds the Major League record for most scoreless innings at the beginning of a career. The previous record had been set in 1907.

While this hasn't been the most prominent story in baseball this year, in my humble opinion, this is one of the best and most interesting ones.

Tales from the arXiv: Categories are just like animals

Here is a new abstract that just showed up on the arXiv:

arXiv:0808.1032
Date: Thu, 7 Aug 2008 14:15:28 GMT (2695kb)

Title: Introducing categories to the practicing physicist
Authors: Bob Coecke
Categories: quant-ph math-ph math.CT math.MP
Comments: 30 pages and 19 pictures
Journal-ref: What is category theory? Advanced Studies in Mathematics and
Logic, volume 30, pages 45-74, Polimetrica Publishing, 2006
\\
We argue that category theory should become a part of the daily practice of
the physicist, and more specific, the quantum physicist and/or informatician.
The reason for this is not that category theory is a better way of doing
mathematics, but that monoidal categories constitute the actual algebra of
practicing physics. We will not provide rigorous definitions or anything
resembling a coherent mathematical theory, but we will take the reader for a
journey introducing concepts which are part of category theory in a manner that
the physicist will recognize them.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0808.1032 , 2695kb)


The reason I am including this entry is that it reminds me of a certain incident in the graduate abstract algebra course I took at Cornell. The professor was introducing the idea of 'category' and decided he wanted to do it without a precise definition. None of us were really following him, so we asked him kindly if he'd give him a definition and he said something along the lines of 'You're going to learn what a category is the way you learned what an animal is: by seeing examples of them.' He then gave another one or two non-illuminating (at least without the definition) examples to us, at which point a brave student (not me) asked him "What is a category?" The professor went slightly ballistic at that question given the prior exchange.

To this day, all I remember about categories is that they're important in abstract algebra and that they're apparently like animals. (I suppose if I tried reading the above article, I could fix that, but I don't really care enough to do so.) That was one of my more memorable classroom experiences.

Doc Ock is now Prof Ock

Congratulations to OCIAM's illustrious Research Director formerly known as Doc Ock! As of about a week ago, he is now officially Prof. Ock.

To be honest, the only reason* I am writing this blog entry is that I wanted to post a link to this picture, which bears an uncanny resemblance to what Ock looks like in real life.

* OK, it's not the only reason. The other reason is that by writing this blog entry, I am avoiding revising a certain grant proposal just a little bit longer.

Anyway, enjoy!

Pictures from Netsci 2008

The NetSci conference organizers have just posted some pictures.

There are 106 of them, so let me draw a few particular ones to your attention.

In pictures 4 and (especially!) 5, you can tell just how closely I was paying attention to things by the final talk of the conference. (I think that picture 5 may well help contribute to my burgeoning legend...) This was a panel session that could have been useful--the moderator was asking good questions--but the panelists just showed hokey prepared slides instead of saying anything useful. I left before that session ended because it was a waste of time. If you can, try to find me in picture 82. (I am all the way on your left, somewhere the camera didn't reach.) Can you identify the mafioso in picture 81? (Seriously, who the fuck is this guy? I was never able to figure it out during the entire conference.) Also, picture 60 shows the trivial solution.

I need to figure out who took pictures 4 and 5. Vengeance will be mine!

Ooh, they're including Squeeze...

The fact that "Cool for Cats" is included among these songs is really, really tempting. (OK, sorry for that pun.) I definitely want to play that song (and a few of the others on the list, though I don't care about most of them). There's apparently going to be a Wii version, though I'm a bit afraid of the shipping costs that would be involved (and the potential customs headaches because I suspect that this stuff would get noticed, unlike just shipping a game with conventional controllers). But anyway, I'm really looking forward to rocking out to "Cool for Cats" (and "Eye of the Tiger", "Alex Chilton", and a couple of other songs). I wonder if people singing "Cool for Cats" will try to duplicate the Cockney accent that the artists specifically used for it... (I won't exactly be demanding it, because I certainly won't be singing.)

RIP Skip Caray (1939-2008)

I just saw this article that Braves broadcaster Skip Caray has died. While his father Harry Caray was famous for his informal broadcasting style (especially his singing of 'Take Me Out to the Ball Game'), Skip was known for his sarcastic wit in the broadcast booth. He was an excellent announcer---one of the best. He had been having lots of health problems (diabetes, etc.) and was on a reduced broadcast schedule this year.

Up and Running (mostly)

My computer is up and running, and I have installed most of the essential software that I need. ("It's my industrial-strength hair-dryer, and I can't live without it!") I have also recopied my back-up data onto my computer as well as the stuff that I had saved in my Oxford math account only during my time without a functioning laptop. There is some issue with Oxford's Matlab license (the key file I was sent doesn't have the right code), but I'll just have to deal with that after I get an e-mail response on Monday. (I was using a Caltech license before my computer crashed and burned.) Aside from Matlab, I think I'm pretty much good to go. (I am about to try Mathematica, and then I will be done with setting things up for the day and mostly done overall.) Then I can hopefully catch up on some of my work... (The last couple of days I was productive anyway because I was in my office revising papers that I had handy and just wasn't trying to fight computers.)

I am quite pleased with my experience with the Southampton Apple Store. Getting there was annoying, but I dropped off my computer on Thursday and I got the call at 1:30 pm today that it was ready with its new harddrive. Having to take a 1.5 hour trip each way on two occasions was annoying, but the service was great/prompt and I wasn't charged anything for it (though the train trip cost a bit). Note also that I explained to them the various diagnostics I had done (with help) on my computer and they didn't make me watch them do all the same things again. Between dropping off my computer and picking it up, the total amount of time I spent in the Apple Store was maybe 20 minutes and most of that was waiting for 10 minutes while somebody else was being helped (as I had come early; I was taken before my official appointment---this was one reason I purposely went bright and early in the morning; I also wanted to make a meeting and get work done in general). I rant a lot about bad service, so I also want to point out situations like this when I got excellent customer service.

Oh, and I have a new harddrive name: Hourglass.

This is in honor of a certain wizard, who came to mind particularly because a book about him for which I have been waiting for a year has been delayed from last month (when it was supposed to come out) until July 2009. So much for having a more positive alignment, but at least I'm now down to Neutral Evil (or just Evil, if you prefer the alignment systems in either 4th edition D & D or first edition Dragonlance Adventures AD & D).

By the way, the double meaning in the harddrive name (in terms of its life clock already ticking) is completely intentional. I happen to be feeling rather fatalistic. The reference to the song by Squeeze, however, is entirely unintentional.

Until the next traumatic blog post about one of my computers... (which I hope is a long time away!)

Pictures of Rome

Here are some pictures of my travels in Rome that Martin Centurion (with whom I was hanging out) took on his digital camera.

The first picture in the batch, taken at the Colosseum, is one of my favorites---as is the 'Via di Propaganda' with the McDonald's sign next to it.

Enjoy!

(I'll give some text on my Roman travels later. Posting pictures takes less time, so I'll stick with these for now.)

Update on invasion of privacy

Courtesy Justin, here is some information on some very scary US Customs policies.

Comment: Way to go, guys! Friends, I think we're in the process of witnessing the slow, painful fall of an empire. (In fact, I can very easily picture President Bush in the White House playing a fiddle.)

Sigh... I guess I ought to get my laptop back first before I worry about it being seized unfairly at the border. Though apparently, it's anything that can be seized for no reason whatsoever. Maybe I ought to be more careful about my "unpatriotic science"?

Did I mention that Doug Glanville is awesome?

Here is former baseball player Doug Glanville's latest op ed piece in the New York Times.

(I saw the link to this article on Rob Neyer's blog.)

I'll have some other entries coming reasonably soon (I hope). This includes the Rome summary and some long-awaited stuff.

An academic version of the Arbesman-Strogatz Monte Carlo study of hitting streaks

Samuel Arbesman and Steve Strogatz have now posted an arxiv paper that extends their earlier New York Times op ed piece on baseball hitting streaks. I asked Steve at the time whether there would be a technical article as well. He had said he wasn't sure they'd bother, so I'm glad that they decided to put something on the arxiv (and presumably submit it for publication as well). Here is the reference:

\\
arXiv:0807.5082
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 14:40:15 GMT (1064kb)

Title: A Monte Carlo Approach to Joe DiMaggio and Streaks in Baseball
Authors: S. Arbesman, S. H. Strogatz
Categories: physics.pop-ph physics.data-an
Comments: 14 pages, 10 figures
\\
We examine Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak and look at its likelihood,
using a number of simple models. And it turns out that, contrary to many
people's expectations, an extreme streak, while unlikely in any given year, is
not unlikely to have occurred about once within the history of baseball.
Surprisingly, however, such a record should have occurred far earlier in
baseball history: back in the late 1800's or early 1900's. But not in 1941,
when it actually happened.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.5082 , 1064kb)


I don't have time to read the paper for now, but I'm printing it out and will get to it in the next few days. (I'd normally put this farther back in the queue, but it's about baseball, so I'm going to make a point to read it earlier than I otherwise would.) I don't actually like the style of the abstract. I think it makes sense to make it informal, but I think it could use some polishing.

I want to write a scientific article about baseball! I do have a project in the works, but my collaborators and I are very far away from posting anything at all...

Dodgers acquire Manny Ramirez

Today the Dodgers traded for Manny Ramirez. Ramirez is a sure-fire first-ballot Hall-of-Famer. Here are his career stats. I think the trade is a good attempt to win things this year, though I think I would prefer not picking up his $20 million yearly option for 2009 (and also not to pick up the 2010 option at the same price, of course). I was just telling one of my friends at dinner that I doubted Manny would be traded because there had been constant rumors involving him for several years and he was still with the Red Sox after all this time. Oops. I missed that one completely. The Sox are paying Manny's salary for this year, which is great! (It also means that Andruw Jones will hardly be playing at all, and I hope that I can say the same thing for Juan Pierre.) We lost two minor leaguers: third baseman Andy Laroche (who it was clear we were never going to give a chance to play) and pitcher Bryan Morris (about whom I know nothing) went to Pittsburgh. (Our minor league system is absolutely stocked right now, so this doesn't bother me at all.) The Pirates also got outfielder Brandon Moss and pitcher Craig Hansen from the Red Sox and gave up Jason Bay to the Sox. (I would rather have gotten Bay than Manny, but overall I am happy with this trade---though again I really hope we let Manny walk as a free agent after the year is over.)

Let's see if we can go anywhere with this. Certainly this is better than the Juan Pierre and Andruw Jones free agent signings.

Note: The Angels did much better in getting Texeira. If they can sign him to an extension, then they'll have one of the best young players in the game locked up for several years.

It's time to quote Q*Bert.

To quote Q*Bert, my laptop is "@!#?@!"ed.

Disk Warrior could state how it wanted to fix the directory hierarchy (in terms of giving me a preview of what the gloriously correct node structure should look like), but it wasn't able to actually do it. All hardware tests from Disk Profiler and Disk Warrior claim that nothing is wrong, but I just don't believe it at this point. I wiped my harddrive clean (again!), and I couldn't reinstall the OS on it because of an error. Moreover, there are stilling lingering chaotic evil directory structures in there. Bloody Hell!

Anyway, my MacBook Pro has a hot date at the Southampton Apple Store tomorrow. (Sadly, I can't say the same thing for myself.)

So, what should I call my next harddrive? This one was Vecna. Maybe I should go with somebody with a slightly more positive alignment?

Sigh...

The LHC Rap

Courtesy Predrag Cvitanovic, here is a music video about experimental attempts to go beyond the Standard Model. (You can also hear some MC Hawking at the beginning and the end.)

In case any of you, gentle readers, were wondering how something can be simultaneously awesome and "awesome", I ask you to behold this video!

|Tales from the arXiv: Entropy and Truth?

Here's a nice bit of psychoceramics that was just posted on the arXiv:

arXiv:0807.4337
Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2008 23:58:10 GMT (5kb)

Title: Interaction between Truth and Belief as the key to entropy and other
quantities of statistical physics
Authors: Flemming Topsoe
Categories: math-ph math.MP
Comments: announcement
MSC-class: 94A17
\\
The notion of entropy penetrates much of science. A key feature of the
all-important notion of Boltzmann-Gibbs-Shannon entropy is its extensivity
(additivity over independent subsystems). However, there is a need for other
quantities. In statistical physics a parameterized family of non-extensive
entropy measures, now mainly known under the name of Tsallis-entropies, have
received much attention but also been met with criticism due mainly to a lack
of convincing interpretations. Based on the hypothesis that interaction between
Truth, held by ``Nature'', and Belief, as expressed by man, may take place,
classical- as well as non-classical measures of entropy and other essential
quantities are derived. The approach aims at providing a genuine
interpretation, rather than relying either on analogies based on formal
mathematical manipulations or else - more fruitfully, but not satisfactory - on
axiomatic characterizations.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0807.4337 , 5kb)


The thing that amuses me is that the abstract seems reasonable and straight-laced at first. The author discusses the need for other quantities (which is fine, in principle), and then comes the zinger sentence that he/she derives them based on some garbage that I can't even parse. Next up: some thermodynamic quantities based on "Justice" and the Anerican Way. O, Superman! (OK, so this Bowie reference was gratuitous.)

Big Brother is Listening to you (and your musics)

Courtesy Christopher Voyce, here is a nice new invasion of privacy that is apparently under active discussion.

Comment:: Fuck you and the horse you rode in on! (Customs is supposed to protect people from things that are dangerous, not prevent them from drowning out obnoxious young children who sing the Fanta theme song for the bloody entirety of a six-hour long flight!)

Addendum: Writing "musics" was a typo, but it reminds me of a certain cat meme (and also whence it came), so I'm going to go with it. I meant to type "music", however. Damn governments have me all riled up... (not to mention the stress from my computer issues... my Mac passed its harddrive test, so we'll see how DiskWarrior does in a couple of days).

More Computer Conniptions

My MacBook Pro is having conniptions again today. SIGH... I just want to get some work done. (I have a note for something to add to an in-progress paper, and I would love to actually be able to do that.)

By the way, did you know that "conniption" is one of the official 'favorite words' in OCIAM?

Here's it's entry in the Online Etymology Dictionary:

1833, Amer.Eng., origin uncertain; perhaps related to corruption, which was used in a sense of "anger" from 1799, or from Eng. dialectal canapshus "ill-tempered, captious," probably a corruption of captious.

That's right, we invented this one, you punks! ;) (I did tell the story of this OCIAM discussion in my blog, right?)

Adventures in Olympian Lameness

My brother Adam pointed me to the following article, in which the Olympic version of baseball will be sodomized in its 2008 (and "temporarily final", as it's not in the 2012 games at all) appearance in The Games.

Here's how things are going to work for extra innings (after the first 9 innings are played normally):

Under the new format, the 10th inning will be played normally. At the start of the 11th, teams will have the option of beginning at any point in the existing batting order and placing the previous two batters on base.

For example, a team that opts to lead off with its No. 3 hitter would begin with its No. 1 batter on second base and its No. 2 hitter on first with no outs.

The 12th inning and beyond would begin where the previous lineup left off, with the two hitters ahead of the batter scheduled to lead off that inning being placed on first and second bases.


Comment: This is fucking lame. It reminds me of Jose Canseco's suggestion of occasionally using a yellow ball, and when a homerun is hit with that ball the team that hits it gets an extra run.

The Return of Mike Hampton

If you take a look at the box score for today's baseball game between the Phillies and the Braves, you'll notice that Mike Hampton started today for the Braves. I'm shock -- I say, shocked! -- that Mike Hampton actually pitched today.

As I write this, the game hasn't yet ended. So should we put some overs/unders on how many innings Mike Hampton pitches this year before getting injured again? Let's say 22 innings.

Three Cheers for my Phylactery!

My MacBook Pro decided to have a conniption today. With a massive amount of help from a local (Christopher Voyce), my computer (Vecna) seems to be working again, although when I saw the same behavior for my G4 back in Atlanta, it was a sign that my harddrive was on the way out. (Indeed, it failed for good a couple to a few months after that.) Hence, I'm not convinced the issues won't crop up again, but right now the computer appears to be working perfectly so if I went to the Apple Store, it would just work and they'd wonder why I'm there. (I could just go ahead and buy a harddrive on my own and assume this one is on borrowed time, but what if it isn't? One thing I now have done is buy the Leopard-compatible version of DiskWarrior because unlike the last time this happened, I didn't have DiskWarrior here to help me out.)

By the way, the observed behavior that I mentioned above was when I noticed iTunes suddenly coughing when it tried to play a song---like it was having hiccups. Then when I did a verify with Disk Utility, I was getting an 'invalid node structure' error. I thought that only happened with social networks! :) At first the OS 10.5 install DVD didn't want to install anything on my harddrive, so I was thinking that I needed to head off immediately (i.e., tomorrow, as the places were going to be closed by the time I got there today---the nearest Apple Store is in Southampton, so I would have needed to get on the train) to deal with it. However, after going to the office to get some stuff (like a possible backup computer), we came back and were able to install 10.5 on my harddrive. We had to erase everything on there, so I am currently copying stuff from Phylactery, which is my back-up hard drive. Once I saw the first conniptions today, I immediately backed up my documents. Otherwise, the back-ups date from July 17th (i.e., right before I left for Rome) and the only changes since then that weren't to documents were some podcasts that I can redownload. Anyway, the back-up business is the explanation for this blog entry's title.

The giant Rome blog is coming, but because of today's events, I'm not in the mood to do it at the moment. Today was going to be a chance for me to revamp a section of a particular article, but that will now have to be done tomorrow. It can't be helped and in any event I really don't want to deal with it now. I will finally deal with a couple of software things now that I need to do some reinstallation anyway. Namely, I am downloading Firefox 3 and I will switch over from the Caltech-licensed copy of Matlab to the Oxford one. Moreover, I will download Oxford's copy of Mathematica, as my inertia had led me to not bother with that after my Caltech-licensed one expired.

I also found out that everybody who works in my building apparently gets a 10% discount at the ice cream place I frequent. The person behind the counter mentioned that they don't like to publicize this. I estimated that since October, this has cost me about 100 pounds---which is not enough to affect my life but definitely enough to annoy me. The thing I have to do, of course, is treat this as a sunk cost and enjoy my discount from now on. There isn't anything else I can do. I wonder how many of my colleagues in Dartington House have been paying more for ice cream than necessary? Well, since the ice cream bar won't publicize this discount, I will. (Colleagues: When you go to G & D's, make sure to mention that you work upstairs so that you can get your 10% discount! And for those of you who did know about this before, I think from now on we should make sure that all the new people know about this from the very beginning of their time here. If we don't tell them, they have no way of knowing, and that's just not the right way to do things.)

Anyway, I love my Phylactery. :)

My favorite picture from Rome

I've posted it here.

I am tempted to make some comments, but I think it's best to just recall the phrase that a picture is worth a thousand words...

(This picture was taken by Martin Centurion. I took one too with my non-digital camera...)

I'll blog more about Rome later, but not today. I have some more amusement to pass along, including my various attempts to get iced lattes and/or capuccinos.

Baseball imitates Bugs Bunny?

As part of a blog article today, Rob Neyer linked to an Onion article about the Brewers' overlarge players C.C. Sabathia and Price Fielder seeing each other as giant food items. It was quite reminiscent of a particular Bugs Bunny cartoon... (I'm pretty sure it was Bugs Bunny and not a different one from that era, though I wouldn't be at all surprised if there was more than one episode like this.)

Geek Life Flowchart

My student Mariano Beguerisse Diaz posted a link on Facebook to a Geek Life Flowchart that appeared recently in the New York Times.

Comment: This network is missing a lot of the edges that ought to be included. :)

P.S. I just got back from Rome. When I get more sleep (and catch up on some work as well), I'll blog a little more about my trip.

Matter-wave solitons with a periodic, piecewise-constant scattering length

Physical Review A just published one of my articles: Matter-wave solitons with a periodic, piecewise-constant scattering length.

My coauthors are A. S. Rodrigues, P. G. Kevrekidis, D. J. Frantzeskakis [who I met in real life for the first time at the conference I'm currently attending] , P. Schmelcher, and A. R. Bishop. [I have yet to meet Augusto Rodrigues, Peter Smelcher, and Alan Bishop in person.]

Here is our abstract: Motivated by recent proposals of “collisionally inhomogeneous” Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), which have a spatially modulated scattering length, we study the existence and stability properties of bright and dark matter-wave solitons of a BEC characterized by a periodic, piecewise-constant scattering length. We use a "stitching" approach to analytically approximate the pertinent solutions of the underlying nonlinear Schrödinger equation by matching the wave function and its derivatives at the interfaces of the nonlinearity coefficient. To accurately quantify the stability of bright and dark solitons, we adapt general tools from the theory of perturbed Hamiltonian systems. We show that stationary solitons must be centered in one of the constant regions of the piecewise-constant nonlinearity. We find both stable and unstable configurations for bright solitons and show that all dark solitons are unstable, with different instability mechanisms that depend on the soliton location. We corroborate our analytical results with numerical computations.


The idea behind this is that my collaborators and I (as well as others) have done some work on BECs in "nonlinear lattices" in which the nonlinearity coefficient (which is proportional to the two-body scattering length) is a periodic function of space: g = g(x). In my past paper on this topic, my collaborators and I looked at periodic waves and g(x) given by a trig function. To try to delve more deeper into some things analytically, we decided to take a step back and let g(x) be a periodic step function. One can solve the governing partial differential equation in closed form in the g(x) = constant regions and then one can try to match the solutions at the boundaries between those regions. This was motivated by some conversations with more theoretical mathematicians (Bjorn Sandstede and Percy Deift) and to try to find a setup that would be more tractable to some theorem-proof work by people closer to the pure side of the mathematical spectrum. In the just-published paper, we looked at localized solutions. Our plan is to look at periodic solutions (in the form of elliptic functions) as well.

In the boondocks?

My hotel is nice, but it's located in a place with tons and tons of graffiti, which makes me wonder a bit about the area I'm in. Right now I am in my hotel lobby waiting for my roommate to arrive. I had a bit of an arduous, sweaty walk from the train station. (It had to be a bit circuitous because the sidewalks on some streets were completely blocked and I didn't want to get run over. The estimated walking distance was from the opposite corner of the train station where my train landed, and it went up quite a bit further with the twists and turns.) The concierge asked to see my passport to copy down some information, and he seemed a little offended when I said I'd wait to get it back instead of going to my room and then coming back for it in 10 minutes. (My attitude: I'm sorry, but you're going to have to be offended because that would just be a stupid risk for me to take.)

I saw a bit of scenery during my treck (including a few cafes and, especially important, gelato places). When my roommate (who I know from Caltech postdoc days) arrives, we'll do some touristy stuff and also explore a bit. Now that I've taken a shower, I'm in more of a mood to do it. I'm exhausted because my 6am flight required me to get a 2am coach from Oxford--Why do I do this to myself?--but I slept on the flight due to my exhaustion and (with the kind help of some coffee) I should be able to manage. The conference starts tomorrow, so today is going to be the main touristy day. In the meantime, I'm happy to chill out and read some box scores.

At the airport, I was able to get through security quickly. There were tons of people in the EU line and tons of people in the non-EU line, which actually meant people with European passports from my places not in the EU. (So the Brits got screwed.) I went to the line for non-European passports, which only had 3 of us in it. We were all allowed right through. In fact, the country in which it consistently takes me the longest to get in is the US. (Thanks for welcoming me home, guys!)

What happens in Rome stays in Rome...

...which of course has the obvious subtitle of "When in Rome, do like the Italians." :) (Ave Maria. Gee, it's good to see ya.)

I am going to the SIAM nonlinear waves conference, which is held once every two years. This is the third conference in the series. The first was in Orlando and the second was in Seattle.

Two of the conference organizers e-mailed me early on to ask my collaborators and me to organize a minisymposium. (As you can probably guess, this is one of the conferences where I know a ton of people.) We chose to organize a two-part session on nonlinear waves in periodic media, which is a topic that is near and dear to my heart.

I will let you know if I see anybody doing the Vatican Rag. (By the way, my musical jokes for the blog entry I write for my Vienna conference in September will be better. Some of you will see it coming from miles away, but I'll be doing it anyway.)

A new occurrence of DEI in films

There's a new film called Meet Dave that just came out. I was the mathematical consultant on the film, which was produced by the same luminaries who brought us Norbit. (I was asked to produce a fake grand unified field theory, so I took [fair] advantage of that opportunity and inserted a DEI into the formula, which I can confirm made it into the official movie props. My gamma delta beta gamma didn't make it into the props, as I describe below). I was worried that I would have to actually go see the film in order to see the one scene about which I cared (namely, the one with my stuff in it).

Thankfully, due to the magic of the Web, I don't have to waste 2 hours of my life and actually go see the film (which currently has a 3.3/10 on IMDB, which is even lower than Norbit's rating) to see how my efforts turned out, because this clip in IMDB conveniently includes the relevant scene (or at least part of it). If you fast forward to when there are about 8 seconds remaining, then you can see a massive formula being put very quickly on the board. That massive formula just so happens to be the fake grand unified field theory that the movie people asked me to come up with (for which I was paid, of course). I included a DEI (as a subscript of the wave function in the upper left... sadly, it's basically impossible to read --- let me know if you were able to do it) and a gamma delta beta gamma. The latter got cut off because the film's prop people simplified the relation by reducing the size of the 4 x 4 matrix that I included. (Anyway, if you wanted an idea of how film people change mathematical formulas, now you have one.) I saw the prop and the DEI made it on there, but it gets cut off on-screen during the close-up and it's too small to read when they show the full board.

By the way, the 'periodic orbit expansion' (which the movie folks called a 'period orbit expansion') is a nod to one of my Georgia Tech postdoc advisors.

By the way, I would have laughed hysterically if the music they had chosen to use during the clip were The Ride.

Anyway, enjoy!

Interesting tidbits involving the prehistory of community detection

I am writing a survey article on community structure in networks, and part of my hard work in doing this is to look up classical algorithms from the computer science and other literatures that give a prehistory to its modern descendants that are being used in network science.

One of the things that I looked up in the process was of course the Kernighan-Lin algorithm for graph partitioning. In the process, I became extremely impressed with Brian Kernighan for several reasons. For one, it looks like he devised this algorithm as part of his Ph.D. thesis. At around the same time, he and Lin devised an important algorithm for the traveling salesman problem (this is usually called the Lin-Kernighan algorithm. Then I looked further and found out that he is the one who devised the ubiquitous "Hello, world" paradigm, co-authored the first book on the C programming language, and contributed fundamentally to Unix from its inception. (His wikipedia entry credits him with coming up with a pun leading to Unix's name. That statement seems more speculative, so I'll just report that this is stated in the entry. Mabye Lemming or Zifnab might be able to comment on this?) The only thing that would be cooler would be if he had coauthored The Mythical Man Month.

Another vote for iced espresso drinks

Lemming just sent me the following story about trying to order iced espresso drinks. Apparently I'm not the only person who prefers caffeine over ice.

I both appreciate and empathize with the reference to Five Easy Pieces.

I'm definitely with this guy telling this story on his frustration of the barristas refusing to give him an iced espresso out of coffee snobbery. (You can read in his blog entry just how extreme it got in his case.)

I've definitely gotten a few odd looks as a result of ordering iced espresso drinks (I greatly prefer them that way). I've once or twice seen such snobbery (though not at the level that guy did), although it's more common that places that can't do it simply don't have ice machines or ice.

The couple of times that baristas refused on principle, I just voted with my feet and left. (I've had one or two similar experiences with trying to substitute things on menus.) They can have whatever policy they want, and I can take my business where I want.

He was being a dick with what he did with the "tip", however. That's not cool.

Jim Healy tribute page

I am watching the telecast of the Diamondbacks-Phillies game, and Fox announcer Matt Vasgersian commented on Adam Eaton's pitching by stating that he's "gone the Leonard Toas route." Wow, that takes me waaaay back, as that was an expression that the late, great Southern California broadcaster Jim Healy used to use. He would then play a sound clip: "Leonard Toas has... uh... lost it."

When I was a kid, my brother introduced me to a hilarious, snarky radio show by Jim Healey. The format of his radio shows, which were wonderful, is described on his wikipedia entry:

Healy's shows (at least those from the late 1970s onward) took the form of him reading headlines, with the clicking sound effect of a teleprinter in the background. In response to his own headlines or comments, Healy would then play one of his many favorite audio clips, such as "That's a bunch of bull," "That's just plain poppycock," or "Jim Healy, you've got a weak show." (Howard Cosell) Among his sound effects was a silly laughtrack, sounding like, "Hee-hee-hee-hee..." (Norm Sherry)


Basically, he would give a headline (or give some commentary), occasionally being snide and sarcastic in his own deadpan way and constantly being snide and sarcastic through his sound bites. (Let me guess. You're shocked that I enjoyed this show. Just shocked.)

Anyway, the reminder inspired me to look at his wikipedia page and find a link to a Jim Healy tribute page that draws some of it's material from a site that no longer exists. (The Way Back Machine was, of course, of great help here.)

There's also an off-again/on-again podcast show hosted by Rich Perlman that is specifically of the same format called "The Sports Examiner: Out Loud!" In fact, I just checked and it's back after being gone for close to a year. Awesome! I'm going to listen to it now.

Three Baseball Links

Courtesy Rob Neyer's blog, here are three extremely funny baseball links:

1) Baseball frivolities (March, April), as compiled quite snarkily in a blog known as The Baseball Analysts

2) Baseball frivolities (May-July), as compiled by the same folks.

3) An absolutely wonderful meltdown by the manager of the Wichita Wingnuts. Check out the oscillatory dynamics of his head at the beginning of the video clip... I was extremely impressed by the head-bobbing. (I ought to do my all-time baseball meltdown blog entry at some point. It will have a separate section for audio and video. Maybe I'll even be able to find the Carlos Perez versus the dugout watercooler --- which is the best baseball dugout fight ever, by the way! --- video online by that point.)

OCIAM versus ComLab: Annual Cricket Game and BBQ

You know, part of me has the urge to write this entry in the form of George Carlin's famous Baseball and Football skit. ("In baseball, the object is to go home... and be safe. In cricket, the object is to stand in the outfield and drink beer. Wait... I should probably use a different argument to convince this crowd that baseball is better.")

Somehow I feel as if this particular blog entry is expected of me (although I was planning to do it anyway) after playing in my first cricket game. Actually, at some point I plan to write an entry on some of the strange sports people actively play and follow here---Like rowing. What the fuck is up with that? Apparently if you watch it live it's like watching a parade; they just go past you once. (Now that I've pissed off half my local readership, I can return to the main thread...)---but for today let's talk about our cricket match.

First of all, OCIAM won for what I am told is the third time in a row. Apparently, the players who led to this victory correlate quite well with the players who led to the previous victories. ComLab, the Computing Laboratory, scored some ungodly double-digit number of runs in their inning (which in sensible sports like baseball is called a "half inning." Apparently, it's considered good if you keep them under triple digits in one inning. (In case you ever wondered why cricket games can last for several days, wonder no more. Somebody can become a full professor, start playing in a cricket game, and then be of mandatory retirement age before the game is over. Wait... that won't convince this audience that baseball is better either.) So we had a pretty successful inning. I learned a few lessons during our inning in the field: (1) I prefer catching balls with a baseball glove rather than my bare hands (which is required in cricket, except for their equivalent of a catcher). (2) Cricket balls that are hit hard really sting when they impact your hand shortly thereafter. (3) Being used to catching with a glove makes it harder when you suddenly try catching with your bare hand. (4) I'm a much better baseball player than cricket player. (OK, I already knew that one.) Not that I'm a great baseball player, but in that situation I can use my knowledge of the game to make up for my minimal actual talent. In cricket, I just stink---though I was getting the hang of the differences at bat when I took batting practice.

In our inning, we scored some ungodly number of runs that was slightly larger than ComLab's ungodly number of runs. That gave us what is now known in baseball as a "walk-off win." (I believe that that term dates from the 70s among professional baseball players, but it became much more popular outside those circles starting in the late 90s.) That is, in the bottom of the last inning (or the last inning, in the case of cricket, which for today's game was the second inning), you surpass your opponent's score and, having won the game, you walk off the field. I was going to be the next batter to come into the game, so I didn't get a chance to display my baseball stance during the game. However, I got some nice batting practice in and there are pictures of me in some cricket regalia specifically using a baseball stance. (In batting practice, I basically found an isomorphism between the last part of the baseball swing and the entire cricket swing, and that allowed me to start hitting reasonably at least during practice---I'm not game-tested yet, but hopefully we'll fix that next summer.) I'll post the picture when I get a copy of it. I assume it's good because I was scaring people with my baseball stance. And I was doing my best Gary Sheffield with lots of bat waggling in addition to my usual thing of banging the plate with the edge of the bat. I guess the sophisticated folk of this country simply aren't used to such behavior.

Anyway, the company and the game-playing were fun, though baseball is a much better sport---not that I'm biased or anything! One thing that was really cool, by the way, was being able to use all 360 degrees while batting at one of the two "wickets," which is their version of a plate. (Yes, there are two of them.) This gives quite a bit of strategy when it comes to angling the ball. A couple of people had some success just turning around and hitting the ball backwards. (You can move wherever you want when you're batting.)

I guess aside from the promised pictures, that's about what I wanted to say. Maybe I'll even call my shot next year. I think enough people would get the joke.

Baseball All-Star Rosters (mostly) announced

The rosters for Major League Baseball's All-Star game have been announced, except for a set of five players from each league for whom the fans can now vote (and for the replacement of injured players, of course). Here is the American League roster and the National League one.

As usual, there are people who should be there (such as the Phillies' Pat Burrell, though he's one of the 5 NL players who the fans can now vote in) and those who really, really shouldn't (Jason Varitek? You've got to be fucking kidding me!).

By the way, in my opinion Tim Lincecum (who is extremely awesome, by the way) deserves to be the NL's starting pitcher and Cliff Lee deserves to be the AL's starting pitcher.

The worst selection is clearly Jason Varitek, and it's not even close. (Apparently, the players are the ones who voted him in.) He's been craptacular this year, so it's not like it's even somebody having a meh year. He's been so bad that he ought to actually be relegated to the bench at this point. So let's send him to the All-Star game instead, eh? There are a number of candidates for worst ommission, but I don't think any of them are as blatant as the Varitek thing because there is a numbers game after all. Putting Brian Wilson on the NL roster instead of deserving starters like Cole Hamels or Johan Santana (or even a reliever having a better year, such as Takashi Saito) is bad, but not close to the Varitek level.

Hmmm... looking at ESPN, it seems that the Sabathia trade between the Indians and Brewers has indeed gone through. I already thought the Brewers were going to win the NL Central, and now I really think they're going to win that division.

UK government data mash-up

My collaborators Nick Jones and Peter Mucha separately e-mailed me to let me know about the new UK government data mash-up.

Basically, the UK government has launched a competition to find innovative ways of using the mass of data it collects. Towards this end, they have released (in SQL format) a ton of data from the National Health Service and other interesting parts of their bureaucracy.

While there will presumably be many cooks stirring this pot, I still am quite pleased to have access to cool data for student projects. (Currently, I really need to recruit somebody to help me study the longitudinal cabinet data that I got from Brian Uzzi...)

Also, the UK government is being very smart to release the data in this fashion. Kudos!

ECMI

I just got back from ECMI yesterday. I was going to come back this morning (because I had paid for a dorm room stay up through last night instead of the night before due to some bait-and-switch with respect to details of my attendance at this conference), but I was so tired that I came home early. (I was going to go to the theatre last night, as there were several things I wanted to see.) The conference had ended a couple of hours earlier and I had just finished a discussion with a couple of the speakers in the session I organized. The advantage of trains instead of planes includes the idea of a "period return", in which I can come back at any point during a one month period. So after I was done with my conversation, I was thinking that I was tired and I could just go home. The 40 pounds for the extra night (that I didn't want) was a sunk cost. The room was small and hot. The shower was aggressive---the water temperature could be adjusted, but the intensity of flow couldn't---and the room had a dank, musty smell. I was exhausted in general and didn't want to set my alarm this morning. So I just put my stuff away, went to the tube station next door, took the tube to Paddington, got on the train, and was home within 2 hours of my decision to 'fuck it' and return home. Not bad. Then I took a bath (rather than those stupid shower things), got some ice cream, read some Dungeons and Dragons, went to see Kung Fu Panda, and felt much better. I need to remember this lesson that things like that are a sunk cost and I shouldn't punish myself by the stubbornness of insisting to use the room for every day for which I paid.

Here are the top sites seen while in London:

1. Lloydies in London (Jit Kee Chin, Anatole Faykin, and David Richard --- Reza Mohsin has two young kids and is hard to track down)

2. Very bored and angry exhibitors. (In fact, this situation appears to have been an epic failure. The exhibit hall was in a different building from all the talks, so people didn't come back to visit it very often. When they did come back, the coffee was mostly in nearby hallways rather than where the exhibits were themselves. So the exhibitors didn't get many customers, and I overheard comments from some of them expressing boredom, anger, and the possibility of never coming back to ECMI again. Somebody screwed-up big time on this point.)

3. Some good talks. (There was some crap as well, but that's how it always works.)


The conference also included the Quote of the Week:

"The IMA are a bunch of parasites."

I'm obviously not going to pass along who said this, but based on what I saw with this conference, I'm inclined to think that there's at least some truth to this. (At the very least, some of the people they employ are tools.) Things with registration could have been more flexible (then I wouldn't have had to eat 40 pounds), the conference was rather expensive (we'll see after time passes whether I get my money's worth in connections I made... I have already gotten one seminar invitation from this, so I am feeling somewhat better about this than I was a couple of days ago), and I am apparently one of many minisymposium organizers whose invited speakers were annoyed about how expensive things were. (In fact, I agree with them.) Worse than that, one of the speakers I invited was insulted in an e-mail by one of the IMA staff. (I should mention that I have seen the e-mail and the tone was pretty sarcastic. It was out of line.) They were also briefly talking about me behind my back (Hey Dudes: If you're reading this, my name is "Mason", not "Manson"!) when they didn't realize I was in the room and could hear them. They weren't horribly unkind or anything, but one person wasn't entirely kind either. (I couldn't tell everything he said, but he seemed to be acting like my entirely reasonable request to upload both my .ppt and .pdf files for each of my two talks---which he seemed to think were all for one talk---was not a reasonable request. As I said, not horribly unkind, but perhaps it might have occurred to him that I might have been in the room and hearing him say this.)

I think if the conference were less expensive, I'd feel better about it. That said, it is important for me to meet more of the UK applied and industrial mathematicians and going to this conference certainly seems like an effective way to do so. Its price is quite prohibitive and may well keep me away, but we'll see how things go.

Now I think I've "seen" everything...

I just came back from seeing Kung Fu Panda (which is really awesome, by the way!) and I can hear a wedding party outside of my flat in Somerville. (I decided to come back from London today instead of tomorrow because I am absolutely exhausted. I was going to stay tonight and see a show, but I just wanted to return to my adopted home and relax.) OK, so what's the special thing that I wanted to mention? Well, as I entered my flat, I heard some very prominent lines from this song coming from the wedding party. Wow. (Hmmmm... and they appear to have the track on repeat. I'm going to have to drown this out with my own music because while the "song" is great, I don't want to hear it that often.)

Subatomic particle plush toys

This is just so wrong... and yet it's both awesome and "awesome"...

Namely, this site is selling stuffed toys of subatomic particles. I was tempted to buy some, but the price is a bit too steep. Apparently, the weight of the stuffed toys is supposed to have some correspondence (via 'light' versus 'heavy') with their actual weights. I'm amused.

And when you complete your subatomic particle collection, don't forget to buy some stuffies of internal organs and microbes. (I've seen the microcrobes in a couple of places---first at DragonCon and then at J/L's place.)

There are also a bunch of crocheted Lorenz manifolds out there. (My link is to a page of the Bristol mathematicians who made the first one. Their page links to a few others.) I'd be up for buying or making something like a stuffed network. Does anybody want to help make a stuffed Watts-Strogatz graph? (I was going to suggest a random graph, but that would take more nodes to be able to appreciate.) One could get a bunch of stuffed spheres and connect them with stuffed rods.

(Tip of the cap to Jonathan Adams for posting the link to the subatomic particle zoo.)