Seville so far

The conference doesn't start until tomorrow, but there are already several good signs that this one will work out better than the one in Venice:

1. My hotel is much nicer. We've got wireless in the lobby (as opposed to no internet at all, which meant I only had access during the day) and we actually have a tub instead of just a shower.

2. Several of my collaborators and others I know are all staying in my hotel. Granted, I do know more people at this conference than at the last one in general, but this is still a very good sign. It will also ease discussions and food acquisition.

3. It helps a lot that I more or less know Spanish. (I'm not as good as I ought to be.) I actually got completely through the airports in Spain without speaking a word of English. I understood the people perfectly and while I made some mistakes, I didn't have much trouble. I was able to get a proper iced latte by explaining what it is I wanted, and I never succeeded in getting a proper ice espresso drink in either of my two trips to Italy. Also, I had a nice steak sandwich at the Madrid airport. The default option was plain (as in meat and bun only)---I approve!

4. In Sevilla, I found a gelato place where I ordered a really good (apple) thick, practically-invertible milkshake. I was worried about the thickness, but I was pleasantly surprised by this. Yes!

5. I very much like having the opportunity on this trip to practice my Spanish.

6. I am really enjoying having a digital camera, and I expect this to continue.

7. There is some weird word usage and pronunciation here. For example, people just drop the final consonant in a word, so (for example) "gracias" sounds like "gracia". I had heard about this but didn't realize that it was so pronounced. Also, I see a lot of "os" in places where it should be "as". For example, the word for shoes is "zapatas", but I saw a lot of store signs for "zapatos". I still haven't figured this one out.

8. I knew what one particular menu item was specifically because of the nickname of a baseball player---"pulpo" (octopus) for Antonio Alfonseca, who has 6 fingers/toes on each appendage instead of 5.

9. I need to remind myself what the words for things like "menu" and "reservation" are, but I am remembering some long-forgotten vocabulary very quickly. Getting some of my Spanish ability back (and also testing it for the first time in a real situation rather than just practicing) was something I was really looking forward to on this trip. (OK, upon looking this up, it turns out that I do remember one way to say "menu" correctly and---despite how the guy at the hotel reacted---it turns out that I did use a correct version of "reservation". The thing is that I specifically used one that was American---as in South American---which is perfectly forgivable given that my father is from Argentina! (I said in Spanish that I had a reservation and the guy immediately switched to English because he apparently decided that I couldn't speak Spanish. Bah!)


Stay tuned for more updates...

Digital Camera Tips?

Now that I (finally) have a digital camera---which arrived while I was in Venice---I am planning to steal AG's idea (that I suppose he stole from others) and try to keep up a photojournal with one picture a day for a year or more. (Ideally, I'll keep it up for longer, but one consecutive year is a good goal.) I am not planning to wait until January 1st to start, but I do need to practice more with my camera before I start. (That said, if any of the pictures I take in Sevilla are fantastic, I might well start right away.) In my practicing, many of my pictures have been blurry, and I am trying to adapt to holding this camera differently than I did with previously-conventional ones. Any pieces of advice for helping me with this transition?

The Porter of Seville

AKA: Lo que pasa en Sevilla se queda en Sevilla. (I'm pretty sure that one should use quedarse here rather than quedar. An online Spanish-English dictionary seems to back me up. Let me know if I got this horribly wrong.)

AKA: What happens in Seville stays in Seville.

Also, while my upcoming status as the Porter of Seville isn't as cool as The Rabbit of Seville or even The Barber of Seville, I think it's pretty damned good. Naturally, I earmarked that title for this particular blog entry when I first decided to attend this conference. (I don't normally come up with entry titles several months in advance, but this one was just too good to pass up.)

Early tomorrow morning, I will get on the bus to head to Heathrow airport for a morning flight to Madrid. I will then stay in the Madrid airport for a several-hour layover before I take a "one hour" flight to Seville. (I seriously should have found a better configuration.) I suspect that only about 30 minutes of that flight will have actual flying. I will be attending LENCOS, a conference on "Localized Excitations in Nonlinear Complex Systems". In practice, this will entail lots and lots of talks on solitary waves and allied concepts. This is rather narrow in scope mathematically, though a wide range of applications will hopefully (and likely) be represented. One thing I really like about the conference is that there are no parallel sessions and that it is a level playing field---every talk is 20 minutes + 5 minutes for questions. My past experience with relatively small conferences in which everybody sees every talk have been quite good. This format is usually quite conducive to meeting and have lots of chances to talk to other people, which can be particularly beneficial for young scientists who might otherwise be virtually ignored by their senior colleagues. There are supposed to be some posters as well (for people who chose to do things that way), but I can't see any reference to them on the website.

Interestingly, the conference venue was supposedly the inspiration for Carmen back in the day. I need to find a way to get "The Toreador Song" (or maybe "The March of the Toreadors", which would probably work better) into my talk. I will be presenting a talk on granular crystals.

How Vin Scully got hired

Here is the transcript of an interview with former Dodger broadcaster Red Barber that tells the story of how Vin Scully got hired. This text appears on the blog Dodger Thoughts, which is hosted by the Los Angeles Times website.

2009 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest "Winners"

Here they are. (Tip of the cap to Josh Hime.)

Venice Roundup

Here is a belated roundup of some of my misadventures in Venice. I had been looking forward to the conference, but sadly it didn't work out very well. Here are some highlights and 'highlights':

1. One thing that partly amused me and partly made me uncomfortable because of my proximity were the geriatric boat lesbians on my boat ride to the area of Venice where my hotel was. It was of course nice that they were crazy about each other, but in general I prefer not to be so near anybody who can't take their hands off each other, especially when I get slightly bumped in the process. I guess Venice really can be quite romantic for some people, though the city didn't strike me as overly romantic when taken as a whole.

2. On the first night of the conference, I was going to join a bunch of fellow NetSci attendees at a private tour of a the San Marco Cathedral that the conference organizers had arranged. Sadly, I missed several obvious signs when walking there and ended up at the other side of the city instead. Who knew that the city had more than one giant domed building? So I paid 10 pounds for the privilege of getting hopelessly lost and stressed out in a hot, humid place. Thankfully, knowing Spanish eases communication with the locals quite substantially, and I took advantage of that when I finally realized how hopelessly lost I was and tried to get directions to get back to the hotel. (Venice is a really easy city in which to get lost, which bodes poorly for people like me who have a horrible sense of direction. As it turns out, one of my problems was that the direction that I thought was east turned out to be south.) I ended up having gelato for dinner and being depressed for a while, although the three hours of novel reading I did that night eventually got me out of it. My inability to find the cathedral also provides an excellent illustration of the difference between the concepts 'All Roads lead to San Marco' (which is what fellow conference attendees insisted when I explained to them that I got lost) and 'a set of measure 1 of roads, in the limit as the number of roads tends to infinity' leads to San Marco---namely, I managed to find some roads that would have measure 0 in such a limit. :( Also, Venice has the shortest mean free walking path of any city I have ever been in.

3. Our conference dinner was on the third night of the conference. I was not very impressed. Also, I ended up sitting on my own for quite a while and talked to almost nobody for 3.5 hours during the event, so my mad social skillz really helped me out as well.

4. The lead organizer of the conference technically still owes me gelato. I needed to pay an extra fee to my bank in order to be able to wire money to register for the conference. (Such a transfer was the only payment mechanism.) He promised to buy me gelato and even brought it up again during the event, but I guess this will have to happen at a future conference.

5. We had our group dinner the night after the conference dinner. Four out of the six Oxford people attended. We had a much lower showing at this conference than we did in Norwich for NetSci 2008.

6. I walked around Venice with one of the Oxford grad students on Saturday before I headed off. There were a couple of neat stores, such as one with some fancy chess sets. We also saw some of the art exhibitions.

7. I seriously considered buying a funky jester hat---if for no other reason than to wear it at High Table at some point---but I didn't end up getting one. I'll try to pick one up the next time I'm in Venice.

8. I dropped my laptop onto a quite solid, 200-year-old marble surface. This provides an excellent example of an exogenous shock, as my computer was functioning quite effectively before I did this but not afterwards. My new laptop is on its way... (Also, this was the straw that broke the camel's back. I already wasn't very happy because of a couple of the items above, but then after this I basically really just wanted to go home.)

9. I gave my talk in a church. It was really pretty inside, but I felt the need to be somewhat blasphemous.

Obscure Baseball Rules Quiz

Here is a quiz on obscure baseball rules. (Note that this is a quiz about obscure rules rather than an obscure quiz about rules.) It is apparently part of an advertisement for some book about how to become an umpire. I found the advertising statements in their descriptions of the correct answers to be rather annoying, but the quiz itself is cool, so I'm passing it along anyway. I only got 4 right out of ten, though a couple of the ones I missed are rather cheap and depend on the interpretation favored by the book being advertised.

(Tip of the hat to Rob Neyer.)

A promising career move?

You know, I could increase my salary by becoming a witch.

(Tip of the hat to Rachael Hampden-Turner, who sent this link to Oxford's RPG mailing list.)

Optical Illusion of the Day

You might remember that I posted a link a while back to this awesome optical illusion of a spinning silhouette. (I can't find my blog entry on it at the moment, so I must not have tagged it very well.) Here is a more generic but still cool optical illusion that I mentioned previously.


Well, here is another really awesome optical illusion, which was posted on Bad Astronomy. Damn! It's probably not as cool as the silhouette, but I still really like it. It also makes me thing of the green/blue paradox (or whatever that's officially called). :)

Also, here is an aural illusion that I can't get to work. I get exactly the same thing whether or not my eyes are open or closed. Can somebody explain this one to me?

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Transformers Go Hollywood

Here is an amusing video on YouTube called Transformers Go Hollywood.

Mathematics Employment Task Force

The the results of the Mathematics Employment Task Force have now been published. The 68 departments surveyed had 40% fewer doctorate-required positions to offer. This aligns rather closely with my expectations based on anecdotal discussions, but ouch is still an appropriate word to use.

2009 Baseball All-Star Teams

The 2009 baseball all-star teams have been announced. Well, that isn't entirely true because there will be 5 National League Players and 5 American League players for whom the fans can vote. There will also invariably be injured players (and perhaps even "injured" ones) who will be replaced by other people.

At any rate, here are the current National League and American League all-star rosters.

The possible additions for the AL are Chone Figgins, Brandon Inge, Ian Kinsler, Adam Lind, and Carlos Pena. My choice here is Adam Lind. My second choice would be Ian Kinsler.

The possible additions for the NL are Christian Guzman, Matt Kemp, Mark Reynolds, Pablo Sandoval, and Shane Victorino. The way I see it, there is one excellent choice (Sandoval), two choices that are not as good but not horrible (Kemp and Reynolds, with the latter more deserving), one choice that is somewhat worse than that but still not horrible (Guzman), and one choice that seems to be rather nepotistic (Victorino, who is a fine player but is not having anywhere near the 2009 as the others).

Equation of the Day: Laptop + Marble Surface = Bad

So, it turns out that computer hard drives tend to have some serious issues after a computer is dropped onto a 200-year-old marble surface. (This week's life lesson: laptops + marble surfaces = bad.) Does anybody have any name suggestions for the name of my new computer? (As you might recall, my current one is called "Hourglass", in honor of a certain character and very much with a pun intended on its lifespan.) Applecare is still going for the current computer, so I am going to try to get that repaired as soon as the new computer arrives. I'll thus need a new hard drive name for the present machine as well. I should also mention that my last hard drive failure occurred right after my only other trip to Italy, so I might need to stay away from that country.

By the way, here are the specs for my new computer (I hope it's readable even with the copy and paste):

MacBook 15 inch 1 Z0GH

MacBook Pro 15-inch Glossy Widescreen 1 065-8668
Display

Keyboard (US) & User's Guide (English) 1 LL065-8482
Country kit 1 065-8484

500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm 1 065-8667

Mini DisplayPort to VGA Adapter 1 065-8472

SuperDrive 8X (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW) 1 065-8466

Mini DisplayPort to DVI Adapter 1 065-8468

Apple Remote 1 065-8476

8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB 1 065-8458

3.06GHz Intel Core 2 Duo 1 065-8455

EMEA CC-HE contract uplift MacBook 1 S2366 (aka, Applecare)

HP Photosmart C4580 all-in-one 1 TS420 (my first ever printer!)



This computer is the most expensive Mac laptop ever purchased from Oxford's Mathematical Institute. (I am paying for it with money from my McDonnell grant that was set aside for a high-end laptop.) It is almost the most expensive laptop purchased through the MI, but one from back in the day when laptops were much more expensive slightly trumps it. It is nowhere close to the most expensive computer purchased through the MI, so I'll be sure to let you know if I ever approach that.

Oh, and why I am so giddy right now even though I was just in a shitty mood from this conference and am now spending lots of time getting my data back-up situation in order (there was a bit of comedy of errors involved there as well): Simple. It's because I'm getting a fucking powerful computer that will probably give me my biggest performance jump ever when compared to my previous computer.

New to the Blogroll: "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks

I have mentioned this site in a blog entry before, but now I have decided to add The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks to my blogroll.

Quotes of the Day: Wolfgang Pauli Edition

Here are some stories about and quotes from Wolfgang Pauli. There's quite a bit of funny material there, though Pauli seems like quite an asshole.

(Tip of the cap to Predrag Cvitanovic.)

What happens in Venice stays in Venice

Tomorrow morning I hop on the bus (in my best Paul Simon impersonation, though I am guessing most of you won't get this allusion) to head to Gatwick airport for a flight to Venice. This will be my second trip to Italy---I went to Rome last July---and my first trip to Venice. I am going to attend NetSci 2009, a physics-oriented network science conference. I will attempt to get a picture with Lazlo Barabasi and Gene Stanley of me wearing my new power-law t-shirt ("I went to a physics conferences and all I got was a lousy power law."), and I also expect good pasta and gelato to ensue.

My new digital camera hasn't arrived yet, so I would lose the last approximately 15 exposures in my last roll of film of the analog camera that I bought during my first year of grad school (so about 10 years ago). One of my friends very kindly offered to loan me her digital camera, but I would feel very guilty if something happened to it, so I declined the offer. (I did waffle a bit, and it's only because this is a very close friend that I even considered accepting the offer.) A few weeks ago, when I mentioned to Somerville's domestic bursar in a conversation that I was going to a conference in Venice, she mentioned that I should find a girl while I'm there. Most likely, this isn't going to happen, but I have an incredible urge to take a picture of jailbait to bring back to the domestic bursar. (Hell, I probably would have borrowed my friend's digital camera if I felt that I were actually going to go through with taking such a picture. Given that I have 2 year's worth of film to get around to developing at some point, things just won't have the same effect if I take the picture with my present camera.) My new camera should arrive right after I return to Oxford, so maybe I'll do this in Sevilla (where I'll be going on July 13th).

Anyway, stay tuned...

Tie Me Wallaby Down?

According to this BBC article, stoned wallabies might be making crop circles.

(Tip of the cap to Steve Ginzburg.)

Internet Traffic and Michael Jackson

When I wrote my blog entry yesterday, I found myself unable to access Michael Jackson's wikipedia entry. Here is an interesting CNN.com article on internet traffic that resulted from first rumors and then reports of Jackson's death. Part of me is still weirded out by the whole thing---it's hard to think of him as gone---though the more analytical part of me is seeing yesterday and today as something that reflects the modern era more than most days.

As interesting as the article is, it's also somewhat self-serving with respect to what it says about modern versus traditional news sources: "The need of the professional media to be first with the news -- many did for a short time report the Goldblum rumor as fact -- adds further veracity. And, of course, the whole process is speeded up by the Web." Yeah, and all bloggers live with their mothers and write their material from their room in the basement.

Update: Mariano Beguerisse Díaz sent me the following article about google searches related to Jackson's death. As he reminds me, from a technical standpoint, such dynamics result from what is known as an "exogenous shock" (as opposed to endogenous dynamics that would refer, e.g., to normal search traffic patterns).

RIP Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

Pop icon Michael Jackson has died after suffering cardiac arrest. Among other things, he was an instrumental part of 80s music.

Earlier in the day, Farrah Fawcett died. (She was one of the original 'angels' in Charlie's Angels.)

(Tip of the cap to multiple Facebook users. More and more, I find out certain things for the first time via such posts, which seems to be an increasing trend more generally---going along with tweets, of course.)

Update: I have heard several others (from my generation and also from people about 10-15 years older) say that this feels like a piece of their childhood is gone. I don't feel that way, but this one definitely feels much weirder than most even though Jackson for a long time has seemed like he was on a trajectory to die young.

Tales from the arXiv: Super Mario and the Zeno Effect

arXiv:0906.3958 (*cross-listing*)
Date: Mon, 22 Jun 2009 08:59:18 GMT (221kb)

Title: Super Mario's escape trip -- a proposal of
object-intelligent-feedback-based classical Zeno and anti-Zeno effects
Authors: Shi-Jian Gu
Categories: physics.data-an physics.class-ph quant-ph
Comments: 4 pages, 4 figures
\\
Super Mario is imprisoned by a demon in a finite potential well. She can
escape from the well with the help of a flight of floating stairs. However, the
hateful demon may occasionally check her status. At that time, she has to make
a judgement of either jumping to the inside ground immediately in order to
avoid the discovery of her escape, or speeding up her escape process.
Therefore, if the demon checks her too frequently such that there is no
probability for her to reach the top of the barrier, she will be always inside
the well, then a classical Zeno effect occurs. On the other hand, if the time
interval between two subsequent checks is large enough such that she has a
higher probability of being beyond the demon's controllable range already, then
the demon's check actually speeds up her escape and a classical anti-Zeno
effect takes place.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.3958 , 221kb)


Comment: Mario is not female. If the author wanted to be sexually ambiguous about a Mario character, then he/she should have used Toad instead. I will admit, though, that the paper's title and abstract compelled me to look at a paper I would have otherwise ignored. Also, figure 1 and reference 5 amuse me. :)

Update (6/29/09): A revised version of this paper has now appeared on the arXiv. I didn't look at the new paper, but the one correction I noticed in the abstract was the use of "he" to describe Super Mario. :)

The Sounds of Silence

Wow, it's been 5 days since I posted anything. That's an eternity of silence for me.

I don't have much to say at the moment, and the entries I plan to write are rather long ones (and I am way too tired to do that right now), so here's a summary of what I've done since I wrote the last entry on Friday night. I have been sleeping rather poorly for the last couple of weeks, so I've definitely been quite tired lately. The one nice thing about insomnia, however, is that I've put a lot of time in revising several papers. I have also spent some time reading a novel and have finally ordered a digital camera, though it looks like that won't arrive until after I return from Venice on the 4th of July. Anyway, here is what I have been doing:

Friday night: I saw Transformers 2.

Saturday: I finished small revisions on a just-accepted paper (my survey/review article on community detection). These were practically all adjustments that I decided for myself that I wanted to make, as the journal accepted the article 'as is' aside from minor changes in format to be consistent with the journal's requirements. I then worked on revising a draft of a different paper and then went to a friend's house for dinner. (I was my usual stubborn self about eating what she cooked, but the company was excellent. I knew all of the guests, which helps my social comfort level.) I read a bit as well, of course.

Sunday: I finished my pass through that paper and then did some other work and novel reading.

Monday: I worked a bit on my scholarpedia article on solitons, which ought to have been finished a while back. I also read a little of the dissertation I was supposed to read (and the novel, of course) and then started revising a draft of another paper that landed on my desk during the evening. I finally also started Okami---I had previously only gone through the introductory sequence.

Tuesday: I finished going through the previous paper and I made some revisions to yet another paper (though I didn't make a full pass through it but rather just attacked specific parts). I then played some Munchkin Quest and had a bit of trouble with an ancient, lightning-fast potted plant. I was at level 10 when the game ended, but I didn't quite win.

Today: Part 1 of Examiner MEGA-meeting. When we were not making decisions about the final grades of some of Oxford's finest students, we also went to lunch and dinner.

Tomorrow: Part 2 of Examiner MEGA-meeting. Then maybe I'll get back to working on another of the papers that I hope to submit imminently (if one is on my desk) or I'll get farther into the dissertation, which is on conformal field theory. At night is the SCR leavers party for some of my colleagues who are retiring or otherwise moving on. Last year's was quite fun---the speeches reminded me a bit of the ones at Lloyd House's beach trip.

Friday: Lots of meetings with students, which I backloaded onto Friday because I couldn't make the normal times today and tomorrow due to the MEGA-meeting. Then the plan is to have late lunch/early dinner with a friend on Friday and then perhaps to read, play Okami, or crash.

Saturday: I will need to get some stuff ready for Sunday's trip to Venice. I might also take a look at the slides for my talk and work on a paper. I'm guessing some Okami and reading will also be on the docket. Maybe I'll also go see Fermat's Room? Sleep would also be nice...

Sunday: I fly to Venice for the NetSci 09 conference. Sadly, my digital camera isn't slated to arrive until after my return.

Graaaaaaaaaaaaaaphs

This might be one of the best xkcd comic strips ever. Wow!

I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Justin Howell.)

Take that, Open Access Journal!

Sometimes one just has to prove a point, as a Cornell graduate student has recently done with one particular open-access journal by submitting a hoax paper that was written algorithmically. For some of you, this incident should ring familiar, as physicist Alan Sokal submitted a hoax article in 1996 to attempt to prove his opinion that a certain field of study was crap.

One thing that really interests me is that I found out about this via Cornell University's official Facebook posting. I think it's awesome to prove the point because sometimes that's just what needs to be done, but I'm a bit surprised that the University would be willing to publicly endorse the action. This incident might have some interesting fallout... (Hopefully, it won't include the grad student's career, because I suspect it's easier for a well-known person like Sokal to continue professional scientific endeavors after such a stunt than it might be for somebody who is trying to establish him/herself.

Ivan Rodriguez becomes all-time leader in games caught

The title of this entry basically says it all: Last night, Ivan Rodriguez became the all-time Major League leader in games caught.

Quest for the Woolly Owl: 2009 Edition

On the fine day of 16 June 2009, a team of intrepid young swordsmen swordspeople mathematicians stepped on a bus at the ungodly hour of 8am (having previously woken up at even less godly hours such as 6:45) to proceed to Cambridge, which one of the signs along the way identified ominously as "NORTH". In fact, there were quite a few ominous signs on the way---most of which involved warnings of danger of some form. (Perhaps some giant elastic BLOB might appear there?)

What was the point of this quest? Well, besides avoiding tutorials (at least for one day), these fine young mathematicians and their faculty slaves mascots colleagues were on an epic quest for a mythical object known as Ock The Woolly Owl. Rumor has it that it looks kind of like this. Occasionally, it might even look like this. But I digress.

Our intrepid adventurers set foot on Cambridge soil at the slightly more godly hour of 10:15ish. Naturally, the first thing they did was mark their territory accidently block the exit to prevent some of the faculty from getting off the bus. (Truth be told, I think I contributed to the blocking.) They then received treasure in the form of slips for free coffee. And just to make sure were were aware that the coffee machines were in order, the two machines had displays that showed the words "working" while the caffeinated bliss mediocre coffee was being poured.

As I mentioned above, yesterday's battle was an epic one. It wasn't exactly on the scale of Pirates versus Ninjas or even Mario versus Donkey Kong, but it was still pretty damned epic.

The first presentation was given by Ed Brambley, who spoke about "Introduction and Timekeeping". That woke everybody up and was given a neutral score so as not to advantage the Cambridge side. That was when the fluid mechanics talks started flowing. And for most of the day, they pretty much didn't stop. Before the day started, I had heard rumors that certain Oxford faculty asked tough questions during Cambridge talks and certain Cambridge people asked tough questions during Oxford talks. This didn't really happen this year, though a few of us had our moments. (I was wearing my power law t-shirt, so I was not about to let fly a power law to which I had objections.) Some of the tough questions came from Oxford mathematical biologist Thomas Woolley (no relation to the owl), which didn't surprise me at all given I was on the receiving end of those during my perturbation methods lectures last school year.

During one of the breaks, it was uniformly decided (at least by the Oxford crowd) that the Oxford talks had sexier titles. Perhaps this will lead to a victory in a future competition on grant proposal writing? (And with EPSRC running the show, that method will probably lead to about as much success as writing a good proposal. But I digress.) During the talks, the Cambridge students kept bringing up the famous Cambridge mathematicians who had previously studied the problems they were working on. (This probably explains why they hadn't been solved yet.) The Oxford mathematicians kept bringing up Cambridge mathematicians in their talks. They also kept bringing up Ock. We can only speculate how such slides will be filled in the future when he retires.

There were various other talks, though most of them were about fluid mechanics. (A few others---especially on the Oxford side---touched on other topics.) The BLOB did finally show up in the only mathematics seminar I have ever seen that mentioned Cthulhu. I just thought I'd get that in there. In total, there were 9 talks from each side, but alas our interpid adventures came up short, as the neutral unbiased dispassionate detacthed equitable nonpartisan judges (Amit Acharya and Graeme Wake) awarded Cambridge a narrow victory over Oxford. Of course, I am giving out the names of the judges to give them credit for their hard work, though I do worry that some bitter Oxford faculty students or postdocs might google their snail mail addresses in order to send them mail bombs (or at least unsolved fluid mechanics problems). This, of course, meant that the Woolly Owl will be remaining in Cambridge for the next two years. Until then, the pressure will be building on our side (aka, "Good") to reclaim this mystical trophy in 2011 when Cambridge (aka, "Evil") descends on us in 2011.

Once the Woolly Owl was awarded, many of us headed to the Castle Pub, which is one of only two Cambridge pubs I had previously entered (that was in 05, when I didn't know that I'd ever be living in this country) At 7pm, we boarded the bus back to Oxford. Ock told me that the route would be a different one from the morning for the express purpose of making life easier for those of us with motion sickness. (I didn't bother to verify if this was the actual reason, but I was apparently looking like what I like to call "my best" when I crashed Somerville's SCR after-dinner drinks upon my arrival.) Despite constant threats on his life (mostly by Ock), Grame Wake managed to survive the bus ride intact. And so our intrepid heroes came back on their shields, but they nevertheless alighted from the bus at about 9:15 or so with sincere promises of revenge on their lips and probably headed over to another pub.

And so I write this journal entry with extreme sleep deprivation (even with one day having passed) and provide a Call to Arms for the 2011 Quest to Reclaim the Woolly Owl. In the words of the immortal Duke Nukem: "Come get some!"

"Trivial" is the new "MacBeth"

There was an amusing incident in tutorials last week that I forgot to mention in this space. It occurred on Wednesday, which was mostly sunny except for a quick torrential downpour for about 15 minutes in the morning and then an even more torrential downpour for maybe 20-30 minutes during one of the afternoon tutorials. It had started to rain pretty hard, and while I was explaining a problem, I mentioned that a certain part was "trivial". With exquisite timing, we immediately witnessed our first thunderclap of the day as soon as the word got out of my mouth. It was loud enough that it startled me, which I suppose helped make the whole incident even more memorable.

Old-School Forward

This is the text of an old forwarded message that Ben Williamson sent to me on 10/30/98. I was thinking about it today for the first time in a while, so I decided to dig it out. Even after all these years, it still brings a smile to my face. Here goes:

A Man walks into a supermarket and buys:
1 bar of soap
1 toothbrush
1 tube toothpaste
1 loaf of bread
1 pint of milk
1 single serving cereal
1 single serving frozen dinner

The girl at the checkout looks at him and says "Single are you?"

The man replies very sarcastically "How did you guess?"

She replies "because you're fucking ugly"

They ran, they ran so far away

In one of last week's baseball games, the Cleveland Indians got a 4-3 walk-off win against the Kansas City Royals with the assistance of a flock of Seagulls. Thankfully, some of the articles include the obvious joke. Where is Dave Winfield when you need him? (Actually, I would love to have watched a Baseball Tonight episode discussing this incident when Dave Winfield is one of the hosts just to hear the inevitable snarky comments. If that doesn't ring a bell, take a look at item #6 on this list.)

Shiny New Principal!

Starting on September 1, 2010, Somerville will have a shiny new Principal. (Note that the current one is quite good, but she is set to retire at that time.) The Somerville Fellows elected her (and she accepted the position) a little while ago, but the official public announcement was today. Hence, I can finally write this blog entry. The election process is best described as "interesting".

(In the press release to which I linked above, a number of Somerville researchers were (correctly) described as "world class". Here's to hoping that I'll accomplish enough to be worth mentioning in that light the next time we elect a new Principal.)

(Approximate) Quote of the Day: Overheard in the Clarendon Building

This afternoon, I was in the reception hall for the big lecture theatre in the Clarendon Building just before Michael Berry's talk. One physics professor asked another if he was done with grading exams, and here was his approximate response: "I finished a few days ago. Since then, I've been working on bloody papers and acting smug."

Comment: Here, here!

Making Friends in Oxford

I've been going through another one of my thoughtful phases recently, and I've been pondering the fact that the places in which I have been able to most easily make close friends are first Caltech and now Oxford. I have made a few pretty good friends here, and there is one local with whom I'm especially close who I would put up there with just about anybody I've ever met and as far as I'm concerned is a friend for life. It's also particularly nice for my mental state when I am slaving at work and I get an unexpected knock on my door. The gentle nudging to try to convince me to eat and sleep a little more properly are also much appreciated, and I occasionally even follow that advice. (Our first interaction was kind of interesting, so I certainly wouldn't have predicted this at the time we first met in fall 07. In retrospect, I probably should have, but it's easy to say that.) I know I've been here for about a year and a half now, but Caltech is the only other place where I've met such people on this kind of time scale. (And it's not like I haven't made close friends in other places---my best friend is someone with whom I've been friends for 29 years, and I obviously met him in a different place.)

So then part of the question becomes 'why' have these two places been so good to me in this respect. Obviously, friendships are constrained by opportunity, and I think that's the main key. It probably is true that Caltech and Oxford have more (as a ratio of total people) of the types I like, but it's not like those people don't exist at other places (and I have clearly met several of them in the past). Most of my close friends from Caltech were in Lloyd House and similarly most of my better friends from Oxford are people I know via Somerville. I don't know anybody in the Mathematical Institute that well (it's more of a colleague thing there, though I certainly like my colleagues very much), and I only know one person from the complex systems group at any reasonable level.

The number of good friends I've made here is admittedly smaller than after the same amount of time at Caltech, but I believe that the difference is that back then we were basically all thrown into close living quarters and that is different from my living arrangements here. But here I have excellent opportunities to meet wonderful, interesting people with whom I enjoy spending time. At Cornell and Georgia Tech, I really struggled to do that, and I would literally sometimes go multiple months between going out with other people. (At Berkeley, I just hung out with people I knew from before.) Here I am hanging out with my friends all the time (though, of course, Upper and Lower Crotch haven't been duplicated), so life is good.

I still get moody and even depressed at times, but that's who I am. But a couple of the locals are really looking out for me, so this entry is for you.

(Well, I'm not sure if I phrased my feelings eloquently, but I hope I got the point across.)

Congratulations to Caltech's Class of 2009

Today is Caltech's 115th commencement ceremony, which is honoring the class of 2009. Several of my former research students are among those who are graduating, and Nobel Laureate Stephen Chu is the speaker (that's a pretty good choice, actually). Congratulations!

A Unified Quantum Theory of the Sexual Interaction

Justin e-mailed me a recent blog post (on a blog called "In the Dark") that posits A Unified Quantum Theory of the Sexual Interaction.

Reaction: Um, shouldn't my article on Quantum Cuteness have been cited? :) I posted that on my website over 5 years ago. Granted, my work was purely theoretical.

Dodgers earn 10000th franchise victory

Last night, the Dodgers won the 10000th game in franchise history. Nice!

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Tales from the arXiv: Sexed Coagulation edition

I'll just post the title and abstract. I don't think any additional comments are necessary.

arXiv:0906.1773
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 16:18:58 GMT (28kb)

Title: A model for sexed coagulation
Authors: Raoul Normand
Categories: math-ph math.MP math.PR
Comments: 33 pages
MSC-class: 34A34; 60K35
\\
We consider in this work a model for aggregation, where the coalescing
particles initially have a certain number of potential links (called arms)
which are used to perform coagulations. This model is sexed, is the sense that
there are male and female arms: two particles may coagulate only if one has an
available male arm, and the other has an available female arm. After a
coagulation, the used arms are no longer available. We are interested in the
concentrations of the different types of particles, which are governed by a
modification of Smoluchowski's coagulation equation -- that is, an infinite
system of nonlinear differential equations. Using generating functions and
solving a nonlinear PDE, we show that, up to some critical time, there is a
unique solution to this equation. The Lagrange Inversion Formula allows in some
cases to obtain explicit solutions, and to relate our model to two recent
models for limited aggregation. We also show that, whenever the critical time
is infinite, the concentrations converge to a state where all arms have
disappeared, and the distribution of the masses is related to the law of the
size of some two-type Galton-Watson tree. Finally, we consider a microscopic
model for coagulation: we construct a sequence of Marcus-Luschnikov processes,
and show that it converges, before the critical time, to the solution of our
modified Smoluchowski's equation.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.1773 , 28kb)

Best. Scouting Report. Ever.

Here is an accurate scouting report of Mariner shortstop Yuniesky Betancourt that only uses sentences from dictionary.com. I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Quote of the Day: Ponti's Dinner Edition

Tonight we had our Ponti's dinner in Somerville, which this year is doubling up as part of our campaign (launched this weekend) to get lots of money from our alums and other sponsors.

The pre-dinner speech was given by Chris Patten (Baron Patten of Barnes). He announced in this speech that he was going to "do the West Coast" of the United States. Clearly, he has no clue whatsoever about how that would be interpreted back home---in particular when "do" is applied to the West Coast . (Let's just say that he is evidently going to have a very exhaustive trip---especially if he plans to visit Hollywood.) Wow.

In another bit of "awesomemess" (and in this case I definitely mean this term in a derogatory fashion), one of the fans at Dodger Stadium today (I turned on the game when I got back to my apartment) was wearing a t-shirt that had the terms "the man" and below that "the legend". Above "the man" was an arrow pointing up. Below "the legend" was an arrow pointing down. I think the word of the day for this one is probably "overcompensation". Or perhaps just "awesome".

Comic Strip of the Day

This recent xkcd comic strip holds way too much meaning for me.

(Tip of the cap to Ravi Montenegro.)

Happy 25th Birthday, Tetris!

Today is the 25th anniversary of the invention of Tetris, and Google is celebrating it in a simply awesome fashion! I love that game.

I think the number they really mean is 5000

The FAIL blog has a great picture of an epic fire alarm failure.

(Tip of the hat to Mariano Beguerisse-Diaz.)

Randy Johnson wins 300th career game

Randy Johnson just won his 300th career game. Just take a look at his awesome career stats. Wow!

Tales from the arXiv: Prepare to Fight!

Here is a new abstract that I just saw on the arXiv:

\\
arXiv:0906.0599
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 2009 20:54:33 GMT (8kb)

Title: The Ultimate Solution to the Quantum Battle of the Sexes game
Authors: Piotr Fr\c{a}ckiewicz
Categories: quant-ph
Comments: 8 pages
\\
We present the unique solution to the Quantum Battle of the Sexes game. We
show the best result which can be reached when the game is played according to
Marinatto and Weber's scheme. The result which we put forward does not
surrender the criticism of previous works on the same topic.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/0906.0599 , 8kb)


I'm not sure if this one requires any commentary.

Steve Strogatz on Networks and the Phillips Machine

I had never heard of the Phillips Machine, but there is a refurbished one at Cambridge that "works". As Steve Strogatz explains in his latest guest column in the New York Times, it's basically a miniature hydraulic caricature of the economy. The article then relates this briefly to some modern work in networks and complex systems, more generally bringing up the point that one of the really exciting and challenging things of these subjects is the attempt to move beyond reductionism.

From the archives (or, how I once almost made it into Time Magazine)

When I was in grad school, I saw an article in Time Magazine about mathematics and mathematicians suddenly becoming sexy, so I decided to send a letter to the editor. My letter almost got printed.

It's worth noting that I wrote this letter before I started studying granular chains, for which one of the most important elements is the stiffness of one's balls. (Acoustic waves travel faster in stiffer materials.) Also, Techers will recognize a bit of this from back in the day...

Jamie Moyer wins 250th career game

Jamie Moyer was a late bloomer. I remember him when he was just trying to establish himself in the Major Leagues in the late 80s and early 90s (he made his big league debut in 1986). If you had asked me back in the day to provide a rank ordering of which Major League pitchers would get at least 250 wins, I would have placed Jamie Moyer near the bottom of the list. Once he got to the Mariners, though, Moyer learned how to win and he just kept on doing it long after just about all of his more highly-lauded contemporaries had left the game. Well, today 46-year-old Jamie Moyer won his 250th career Major League game. Congratulations! Moyer appears to finally be nearing the end of the line, but people have said that numerous times before, so let's see how long he can last. He's certainly an unusual player.

Sportscenter's Top 10 Baseball Meltdowns of All Time

Here is a video clip of Sportscenter's Top 10 Baseball Meltdowns of All Time. I don't completely agree with their choices, but they definitely included some classics. The funniest one---and one of the main reasons I am blogging about this---is Carlos Perez versus the dugout watercooler at number 7. I've been wanting to post a link to that video for years, so I'll have to settle for the small part of it here. (They don't show the entire thing, but what they do show is bloody awesome.) Priceless.

A Differential Equation in the New York Times

Here is Steve Strogatz's second guest article in Olivia Judson's New York Times blog. He lifted some of his discussion from his textbook, but it just warms my heart to see differential equations discussed in a venue like the New York Times and even more to see one (even a simple one) actually appear there.

My guess is that Strogatz's third guest article will be about synchronization and networks.

(Tip of the hat to Samuel Lee.)

"Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass"

Here is an extremely funny fake research report called Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass. I approve!

(Tip of the hat to Jing Xu.)

"I shot an arrow in the air / It fell to earth I know not where..."

There a couple of big wins in the new issue of Mini-AIR. For example, here is an article called Can a Falling Bullet Be Lethal at Terminal Velocity? Cardiac Injury Caused by a Celebratory Bullet. The abstract is also excellent:

This is a case report of rare cardiac and abdominal organ injuries sustained by an innocent bystander from a New Year’s Eve celebratory gun shooting. The force and velocity of a projectile fired into the air as it ascends and returns to earth, along with its potential for bodily injury will be reviewed.


Another paper, called Transcranial Arrow Injury: A Case Report, thinks about the problem a little bit more literally. Here is a portion of its abstract and conclusion:

In this report, a 37 year-old male patient, who was shot by an 'arrow' accidentally, was evaluated regarding clinical
presentation, treatment and clinical progress.... CONCLUSION: Management of such cases are still beyond the textbooks and
guidelines and it is depending on the surgeon's skill and experience in general neurosurgery.


I think what amuses me most are the quotations around the word 'arrow'.



On a complete separate note, this issue of Mini-AIR mentioned a paper that had something to say about the Apple versus IBM logos. Here is a blurb (which I assume is the abstract, though I didn't check):

This manuscript first examines whether brand exposure elicits automatic behavioral effects as does exposure to social primes. Results support the translation of these effects: Participants primed with Apple logos behave more creatively than IBM-primed and controls; Disney-primed participants behave more honestly than E!-primed and controls.


I am extremely amused.

Math and the City

Here is a guest article by Steve Strogatz that appears in the New York Times. Strogatz is guest-blogging for Olivia Judson in the next three weeks. The first article is called "Math in the City" and it discusses Zipf's Law and the work by Geoff West and collaborators. (However, unlike West in his seminar yesterday, Strogatz does not discuss what I have come to call The Power Law OF DOOM.)

(Tip of the hat to Hilary Ockendon.)

Today I am ashamed to be from California.

Come on, people. This is lame. Let people live their lives as they see fit when it does no harm to anyone else.

New Supreme Court Justice Nominee

Barrack Obama has nominated federal appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court.. If confirmed, she would become the first Hispanic and third woman to take a place at the Supreme Court bench. I wouldn't usually blog about this, but her name is actually a familiar one to me, as it was her ruling that led to the end of the 232-day baseball strike in 1995. If she can help bring baseball back after a cancelled World Series, then surely she can do well on the highest court in the land (even though she's a Yankees fan). :)

A Rags-to-Riches Baseball Story

One never knows how these things will end, but here's a very cool rags-to-riches baseball story starring Diamondbacks pitcher Clay Zavada and his handlebar mustache (dude!).

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Weirdness of the Day

I just took a look at an interesting author solicitation for a "Visions of the Future" issue of Philosophical Transactions A. I am considering writing such an article on granular crystals. Additionally, I am rather intrigued by the following sentence: All authors will receive a print copy of the issue as well as 50 electronic reprints.

Reaction: Um, I'm not so sure I want 50 electronic reprints. I assume the numbers in the two options were (pretty amusingly) flipped. And if this is purposeful, then that's just bloody weird.

Overview of the 2009 Snowbird Meeting

I just completed my network survey of the meeting and once the data is available, I am curious how much my experience as a 'tree' in this conference coupled with network science methods (which study the 'forest') such as community detection will break some of the theoretical anonymity in the survey. (This will be an interesting test of some of the methods and give some insight into how much network methods alone might be able to do in such contexts. Let's see if I actually end up having the time to take a look at the data once it's ready.)

I'm not really going to write a proper overview here. Rather (and, as usual), I'm just going to give a few thoughts.

1. The Snowbird meeting is still perhaps the best one at following my career trajectory. Not only did I know tons of people at the meeting (well over 100 and possibly over 200) but most parts of my career path since I started Caltech as an undergrad in Fall 1994 were covered. Including me, there were 4 people who were all undergrads at Tech at the same time (3 Lloydies + 1 Mole + 0 Flems) and there was at least two more who was a grad turkey then (including one with whom I took a class). There were also near-misses among the grad turkeys, which is one reason I wrote 'at least' (I'm not sure in all cases). There were a couple of people with whom I went to grad school, though not as many as there used to be at this conference. (Some people have left academia, others have different academic interests then before, and some of them are at small universities and simply don't have the travel money.) There were a ton of fellow postdocs from Georgia Tech, a small number of overlaps from my second tour of duty at Tech, and a few others currently at Oxford. From my pre-faculty era, I have not included any faculty in the above summary. There are quite a few of those at the conference with whom I overlapped as well.

2. Within the dynamical systems community, I might be known as much for my t-shirts and personality as for my science. (Some people have been known to make it a point to find out what shirt I am wearing on a given day.) That said, I did notice the audience in my session increase in number by a reasonably substantial amount when it was my turn to speak. That's kind of nice for the ego, though I do wonder about the audience's tastes. :)

3. Cooking bacon was used as an example of mechanical buckling in one of the plenary talks. Sweet! I celebrated the next morning by eating lots of bacon. (Proper bacon is definitely one of the culinary things I miss when living in England. I also miss really crispy friend chicken, so I got some food from Popeye's at the Dallas airport on the way back.)

4. As usual, there were a ton of current and recent CAMsters at the conference. (Cornell has been quite well-represented in dynamical systems for many years.) I don't think any of them knew that I used to be one of them, but then again several of them went to my talk, so maybe they have heard some whispers on the wind.

5. In another fine Snowbird tradition, I once again got a nosebleed. I have yet to succeed at going to this conference without getting one. Maybe in 2011...

6. Number of people at the conference who I had not previously met who told me they read my blog: 1 (I should check and see how large the readership actually is. Maybe I should start a somewhat more benign---by which I mean rated G---blog about dynamical systems to complement this one?)

7. Number of people at the conference who told me they read my papers: 0 (I know that some of them do, but the point is nobody told me that they do.)

Dodgers stretch lead to 8.5 games!

The Dodgers now have an 8.5 game lead in the National League West. We have the best record in baseball, the largest lead in baseball (the second largest is 3 games---Texas over the Angels in the American League West), the best run differential in baseball, and all sorts of other excellent qualities. I can't expect us to maintain this pace, but I'm sure as Hell enjoying it!

What happens in Snowbird stays in Snowbird

My friends just left, and I feel much more decompressed after having had the chance to hang out with them. Tomorrow morning, I am heading to Heathrow to fly to the Snowbird dynamical systems conference (that's not the official title), which is my favorite conference. I'll be bloody exhausted when I get there and I am pretty tired now, but that's alright. In addition to all the great talks, I'll see several collaborators and also some old friends that I haven't seen in a while. (That's one of the best parts about conferences, actually. It's nice to see old friends.)

Postscript (5/16/09): Wow, I just realized that if one reads the above paragraph quickly, then "decompressed" might come out as "depressed" and give entirely the wrong meaning as a result. English language, oh how I love thee. (Granted, 'more decompressed' isn't exactly textbook English...)

Mistaken Identities on Cardboard

Here are some mistaken identities that have been immortalized on baseball cards, as compiled by the blog Home Run Derby. A couple of these are absolutely awesome.

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Congratulations to Ben Williamson!

On occasion, when something special warrants it, I put the blog spotlight on one of my friends. In this case, my old friend Ben Williamson (who actually turned 29 yesterday, though I naturally still remember his days as a 14-year-old Caltech freshman) graduates from Law School with High Honors today. He has a 2-year gig waiting for him as a judicial law clerk in his home town of Pensacola, Florida. Excellent!

Good Friends + Good Desserts = Big Win

I'm having a party tomorrow, some close friends will be coming, I've already bought some very good but expensive desserts, and there should be some gaming on the docket. That's about all I have to say.

That's creepy.

I was walking back from our networks journal club meeting just over an hour ago, and I noticed as I was crossing the St. Giles graveyard that two people were sunbathing among the tombstones. That's a bit much for me, and I find the constant picnics that the locals have among the tombstones when the weather is nice to be creepy enough as it is. Of course, the latter did lead to one of the most priceless comments that I have ever heard from one of my students when them informed me that she had lost her notes "either in Somerville or in the St. Giles graveyard". Brits are strange.

I think I want this on my tombstone.

Today I'd like to blog about the editorial by American Scientist Editor-in-Chief David Schoonmaker in the May-June issue of that magazine. This is the issue in which my article on the origin of the FPU problem appears, and David spent a lot of his editorial writing about our memorable in-person editing incident when I was visiting Peter Mucha, a collaborator at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I had spent the entire day working on network science research with Peter and then we started our marathon meeting at 6pm. As David writes:

... Still, as someone who has lived through the advent of television and dial phones and the invention of fax and the Internet, I recognize that there also have been losses. A recent evening spent with the first author of "Fermi, Pasta, Ulam and the Birth of Experimental Mathematics" (pages 214--221) really brought that home (he visited here, much as I would have enjoyed visiting him in Oxford, England).

Mason Porter, contributing editor David Schneider and I sat for almost four hours fussing over the details of the text, captions and figures for the article. Refreshingly, Mason is a young scientists---indeed the recipient of the 2008 Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award---who cares deeply about language. He felt no compunction about challenging our choices in wording, yet was perfectly willing to be reasoned out of his own preferences. (Thank goodness there were two of us editors!)

The result could not have happened in an e-mail exchange. Together, the three of us found solutions that wouldn't have arisen without the spontaneity of human contact. It was not lost on me that Enrico Fermi, John Pasta and Stanislaw Ulam made their "little discovery" at a time (1955) when personal communications were rarely more electronically enhanced than the telephone. Would they have found what they did using e-mail?

In the aftermath of that stimulating but exhausting evening, I have reflected on my working relationship with other American Scientist authors. ...

After we were done, it was too late to get dinner and I had some other urgent work to do (and a talk to prepare from scratch for the next day). I spent about 3 more hours on various bits of urgent work that night before I needed to crash because my body was starting to shake somewhat uncontrollably. I didn't even have time to start preparing my slides, so I did that the next morning. (I somehow managed to give a really good talk on some results that I had never presented before, so I guess I am able to do a reasonable job under that kind of time crunch---though I don't want to do it again!)

In some ways, David's editorial would be appropriate for my tombstone---though there are other things I would actually prefer there; for example, I really like the one that says, "I told you I was sick."---though it's perhaps more accurate to say that I want to be remembered as someone who is really, really anal. Since this article came out, I have received a small number of compliments by e-mail both from people I know and from those I don't, and one of the ones I know even mentioned especially enjoying the editorial comments about that incident. I won't be surprised if others who know me bring it up as will, because I think it will ring rather familiar to them.

In closing, I must admit that I am pondering at the moment whether I should e-mail David to let him know that his editorial doesn't have any Oxford commas. Sadly, however, it is American Scientist policy not to include them.

The Magic of Google Calculator

I probably should have known about this trick a long time ago. Nice!

(Tip of the cap to Thomas Woolley.)

Nine Famous Baseball Vendors

Mental Floss has posted brief descriptions of nine famous baseball vendors. Eccentric vendors are, in fact, quite an important part of the ballpark experience. ("Nuts! Nuts! Nuts!")

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Say it ain't so!

Um, apparently Manny has been getting some help to be Manny just a little bit better. Major League Baseball is expected to announce that he is being suspended for 50 games for testing positive for performance-enhancing drugs. I guess this means that the honeymoon in LA is over? We have him through 2010 based on his current contract (which I admittedly suddenly have an urge to wish didn't exist), so it's really good that we didn't give him the longer-term deal he wanted. You know what else really sucks about this: Juan Pierre is probably going to be playing every day again. Fuck. At least we have a very large cushion that should be able to hold up while he's out of the lineup. I can't say I'm surprised, though I wasn't predicting in advance that he was doing this stuff. Part of the reason that I am not surprised is that it's hard to be surprised by anybody getting caught, and part of the reason is that he was never exactly considered angelic in the first place.

(Tip of the hat to Scott Porter.)

Update: Officially, Manny was apparently caught because of the use of a female fertility drug. (There's more to the story than that, as you can see in the various articles that have appeared in the last couple of days.) I suppose he was just having trouble ovulating?

Dodgers set home win record

With last night's win (or this morning's win, for those of us in the UK) against the Nationals, the Dodgers are now 13-0 at home this year. These 13 consecutive wins at home to start the season have set a new modern (post-1900) Major League record. With last night's win, the Dodgers are now have a 6.5 game lead in the National League West. Hell yes! We have never had a season start so well during my lifetime, so while admin and bureaucracy might be causing problems in my life, at least Dodger baseball is working out the way I want. Go Dodgers!

Pitchers who can't hit

Well, most pitchers this side of Micah Owings can't hit, but Jerry Crasnick wrote a very nice article about nine pitchers who really can't hit. Highly recommended.

Stay Tuned

Many years from now, when I am no longer employed by Oxford, I swear I should write a fucking tell-all book about how Examinations and assessment really seem to work. In the meantime, I hope you can be patient. (And maybe by the time I leave, I'll even figure things out enough to make my descriptions coherent.) Not that the book would be interesting, mind you, but at least it would satisfy my deeply-seeded need to rant when things infuriate me.

Unwanted People

The UK Home Office has created a "Least Wanted List" of people who are apparently not moral enough to enter the country. I have a couple of comments:

1) It does seem that the people discussed in the article hold views that I find abhorrent. But see (2) for my far more important point.

2) I am exceptionally uncomfortable (to put it mildly) with the idea of not allowing people into the country on the grounds that they have ideas that I find abhorrent. In fact, several of the things that they apparently do are quite disgusting, but in my opinion, the things described in the article are not grounds for banning them from visiting a country. That sets a horrible precedent and, in my opinion, is quite a disgusting act itself.

3) Whenever I see the term 'Home Office', I always think of Angel.

(Tip of the cap to CNN.)

Starting the day off well

I set my alarm for 8:30 am this morning, so that I could get up, take a bath, get coffee, and go through e-mail in plenty of time for my 10:00 am Examiners meeting. I walked over to the Mathematical Institute and went to the room in which we were having our meeting. I needed to kick out the random old math faculty member who was in there. Nobody showed up for 10 minutes and I finally lost patience, wondering if I had the wrong room or perhaps the wrong day. Yup. (Also note that I went to the MI common room to check the e-mail message quickly, and of course the guy who I kicked out of the other room is now in this one. Maybe he didn't notice me?) The meeting is actually 10:00 am on Thursday in that room. I have a long day ahead of me---with the need to probably skip lunch because of a meeting that somebody really wanted to have today that I was convinced I couldn't schedule at any other time---and it turns out that I didn't need to set my alarm this morning. Bloody Hell! I'm such a champ. (I do stuff like this way too often.) Oy vey.

25 Rickey Henderson stories

Here are 25 Rickey Henderson stories. I've heard almost all of these before (maybe even all of them), but they are awesome nonetheless. It's just a big win. (Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Go Dodgers!

The Dodgers now have 10-0 record at home and have tied the National League record for most consecutive home victories to start the season:

According to the Elias Sports Bureau, this streak is the longest by any NL team since 1983, when Torre's Atlanta Braves won their first 10 games at Fulton County Stadium to tie the modern league record shared by the 1918 New York Giants and 1970 Chicago Cubs.

The Dodgers record now stands at 18-8, which is the best in the Majors and gives them a 4.5 lead over the Giants. This is the biggest lead among all of the division leaders, and the Dodgers +41 run differential (runs scored - runs allowed) is also the best in the Majors. Hell yes!

Some perspective on our place in the universe...

...is contained in this picture. (Click on it to make it bigger.)

(Tip of the hat to Rob Neyer. Also, I don't vouch for any accuracy or inaccuracy in the picture on the other side of the link.)

Journal Authorship Policies

As some of you might realize, I have been in a pretty shitty mood for most of the last week (though there were a few spurts of happiness as well, so at least I've had my moments). It's been more of a general feeling of being down rather than, say, rantiness (that ought to be a word, even though it appears not to be one) or something more extreme like bitterness. However, a small bout of mild depression (without any specific cause, by the way, so it's likely that I just need to do better with sleeping, eating, and getting people to distract me to get back to my version of normal) doesn't mean that I am not going to try to satisfy my deep-seeded desire (need?) to rant:

Today my collaborator Peter Mucha e-mailed me to pass along Nature's new authorship policies.

Previously, Nature "strongly encouraged" statements of what each author did. Now they are following the practice of other journals---an increasing number of them, I think?---and requiring the listing of such contribution statements. I object to this rather strongly for a very simple reason: One of its big effects is to increase the potential for bad blood between people. There can be a ton of intra-group strife in science as it stands, and as far as I can tell, enforcing things like this exacerbates the problem. When I submit to a journal that requires such statements, I grudgingly include them, but whenever it is optional, I have a very strong preference for not including them. People's understanding of their own papers (and knowledge of the contents therein) will be judged when they give a talk on the bloody thing (or otherwise demonstrate it firsthand)!

To be fair to Nature---though since when was I ever fair to nature?---I should mention that there are other things in the new policies that I support. Those do take the form of box-checking, but the ideas behind what checking the box is supposed to represent are ones I support. I just have major problems with the enforcement of policies with so much potential to add to jealousy and intra-group strife. What is supposed to be gained by doing this? I know my opinion on this matter is far from universal and is reasonably likely to be in the minority (maybe even a rather small one?), but frankly I just don't get it. Nature wants to make author contributions more explicit, but to what end? If somebody is out to screw a coauthor, one can just game that anyway, so I don't see how it can discourage those kinds of hideous practices. Oh, one other thing I should mention on Nature's behalf: They do seem to be more flexible than some of the other journals in the format of contribution listing. (Some of the biology journals, for example, seem to be so experimentally oriented that they do not include any fields that allow one to give author contributions for things like "designed algorithms" or "wrote code". One is only allowed to use the categories they provide, and at least in some cases, this misses some very fundamental ways in which authors might have contributed!)

It's not realistic for things to be changed in the various scientific fields, but when it comes to paper coauthorship, there is one thing that I think the pure mathematician got exactly right: Always make it alphabetical. (And then one's knowledge can be judged when giving presentations, etc.)

Grumpily Yours,

Mason

Inaugural Class of SIAM Fellows

The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics has announced its inaugural class of 183 Fellow in its brand new Fellows program. (The American Physical Society has had such a program for a long time, and the American Mathematical Society membership has voted down at least a couple of attempts to institute such a program.) Among this initial group are 3 of my colleagues at Oxford, 1 person (the expected one) currently at Caltech, and a whopping 8 people currently at Cornell. The last list includes two members of my thesis committee. As discussed in the press release, the initial list was chosen using very specific criteria (people who had won certain major awards, etc.), so this class of Fellows was perhaps a little more predictable than perhaps some of the future classes will be.

One Less Non-Evil Republican

Arlen Specter, one of the few remaining reasonable Republicans, has now defected to the Democrats. Part of me says 'Welcome!' and part of me feels a bit bittersweet that that party has one less beacon of hope in it. (Of course, one can easily see where Specter was in practice based on the voting and legislation cosponsorship records. In fact, my collaborators and I have a couple of plots in our papers that convey it reasonably well.) On the other hand, there is something to be said for being filibuster-proof...

Life imitates "Pandemic"

Unless you're living in a vacuum, you've probably heard about the recent swine flu outbreak. I was playing the board game Pandemic when I was visiting Pasadena, and I can't help thinking about the various abstractions in that game as I read some of the current CNN articles. There is also an xkcd comic strip about it, and I think somehow that making light of such things is necessary as a mechanism for some people (like me) to cope with serious things like this. I am traveling to Salt Lake City in about 3 weeks, so we'll see where things stand then.

Sometimes I wish the world were less "interesting". At least there's escapism.

Making my mark in Somerville

I think I might have added another incident to the Legend of Mason today. (Actually, there is another recent addition as well, but I want to use the exact quote from the magazine's editorial before I discuss it fully here.)

I got to lunch in Somerville a little later than usual today because of a seminar. I was in a really crappy mood, but I recognized that I was in such a state (I still am, to some extent, though I am feeling slightly better now), so I tried to avoid people and use lunch for nourishment only. Unfortunately, my efforts to sit on my own were foiled for various reasons (one time, I was about to sit off on my own when a couple of people sat near there, so I needed to go somewhere else), and I ended up just taking the next seat on High Table and sitting near people. (I also didn't want any of the staff to set up an extra table setting somewhere for me. They shouldn't have to do extra work for this.) I put my plate down after my brief random walking in the dining hall, and the garlic bread on my plate bounced off onto my chair---spreading tons of crumbs to the chair. Some people were already amused by this. I was rather annoyed by what I had done to my seat, so I put the bread on the plate but I was sufficiently frustrated that I mildly slammed it on there. Unfortunately, this caused garlic bread shrapnel to hit the old lady sitting next to me. (I think this was an Emeritus Fellow of Somerville.) She quietly, casually wiped it off and gave me a look of mild dismissal. The other people nearby tried to give me disdainful looks, but they weren't able to keep the straight faces necessary to do so. I think I was too ashamed to apologize, and my mood definitely didn't help turn my thoughts in such sensible directions. (As you can tell, I feel a bit guilty for not giving the apology and I hope I get a chance to do this reasonably soon.)

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Legendary status is a combination of personality and circumstance. It's rarely a matter of setting out to achieve such things.

Three Fascinating Articles

I just read three fascinating articles on CNN.com.

The first one discusses tweeting directly using one's brain to form the letters.

The second discusses differences between men and women with respect to sexual orientation being continuous versus discrete. (There are other things in the article too, but this is what I found most interesting.) Apparently, a bunch of studies are suggesting that it seems to be much more of a continuum in women than in men (and also perhaps that it is more common for a woman to experience a change in location over time).

The third discusses the new Star Trek film. (If you haven't gotten the allusion yet, let's just say that this article is fascinating in a somewhat different manner than the other two.)

The Continuing Saga of Lenny Dykstra

Here is another very long (though fascinating) article about how much of a tool Lenny Dykstra is. The picture being painted certainly isn't a pretty one. For reference, here is Dykstra's wikipedia page. I haven't read it, but it has been flagged as the neutrality being in dispute.

The article to which I link also has my quotes of the day. Here is the relevant snippet:

"He thought he could keep my $500,000 and nobody would have the resources to go after him," Dada says. "But in this case, I am going after him. General surgeons are not intimidated by professional athletes.

"Like I told him, if I can cut somebody from the neck all the way down to the pubis with a scalpel, then I cannot be intimidated.

Great Falls Little League to pay fine on behalf of Elijah Dukes

Nationals outfielder Elijah Dukes, known for a long history of miscreant behavior, was recently fined $500 and benched for a day for being late 5 minutes for whatever time players were supposed to show up for Saturday's game. Now it turns out that he was late because of volunteer work at the Great Falls Little League, who have now announced that they are going to pay his fine for him. Their official reasoning is as follows:

"The point is, this guy gave back to our community, and now he's in a hard spot. We need to help him," said Jim Mraz, the Great Falls LL president, according to the Post. "It's not a question of whether this guy can afford the 500 bucks. We're just trying to send a message to our kids: He was here for us. Now we've got to be there for him."

You know, I'm with the Little League on this one. Now if Dukes really wants to set the right tone, he should pay the fine for himself anyway and not let the Little League do it. Nevertheless, I think the gesture by the Little League was the appropriate one, as they are sending the right message by saying that they have some accountability too. Amen!

2009 Mathematical Art Exhibition

The American Mathematical Society's website is hosting a 2009 Mathematical Art Exhibition. Take a look at it, as some of the pictures are really cool!

The Force is apparently strong in Scotland

According to BBC News, The Force is apparently strong among police officers in Strathclyde, Scotland.

As reported in the article's tagline, Eight police officers serving with Scotland's largest force listed their official religion as Jedi in voluntary diversity forms, it has emerged. (Apparently, Jedi are officially classified as atheists, but I hope I see the day when Jedi is officially considered to be its own religious designation. I also hope to see pastafarianism given such official standing.)

My favorite line in the article comes from Jane's Police Review editor Chris Herbert, who said: "The Force appears to be strong in Strathclyde Police with their Jedi police officers and staff.

I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Jaideep Singh.)

Particle collisions for fun and proft

Mini-AIR points out the following awesome article.

Title: The expected frequency of collisions of small meteorites with cars and aircraft

Abstract: The cumulative distribution cf2>Ncf1>(cf2>dcf1>) of diameters of Earth-Crossing Asteroids (ECAs) derived by Poveda et al. (Poveda et al., 1998, submitted) is used to estimate the frequency of collisions of meteoroids with cars and with aircraft. The expected frequency of collisions of a car with a meteorite larger than 10 cm in diameter turns out to be one impact every 16 years. This frequency is consistent with the known incidence of such events (Lewis, 1996).The expected frequency of collisions of a cruising airplane with a meteorite larger than 1 cm in diameter turns out to be one impact every 30 years. Such an impactor hitting an airplane at a velocity of several hundreds of meters per second could cause a serious accident.


Comment: Wow! Now that's what I call "awesome".

Life (and apparently an old schoolmate) imitates Wedding Crashers

One of my old schoolmates from Hawthorne Elementary School and Beverly Hills High School has apparently become very good at crashing Hollywood parties. He is apparently considered a blagger among blaggers.

I suppose I shouldn't reveal his name here, but the name being used in the article above is close enough. I'm sure there's a wikipedia entry in his future, which would make him the 3rd (to my knowledge) member of my Beverly High graduating class to have such an entry.

(Tip of the hat to the subject of the article linked above.)

RIP Harry Kalas (1936-2009) and Mark ("The Bird") Fidrych (1954-2009)

Major League Baseball lost two more members of its family yesterday: long-time Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas and famous one-year wonder Mark ("The Bird") Fidrych.

I listened to Kalas broadcast a few games, and he was quite good. In particular, he was very articulate, which is something that few other broadcasters can claim.

Mark Fidrych is one of those legendary figures that I often heard about as a kid, but I never got to see him pitch during his magical 1976 season. Rob Neyer and Joe Posnanski wax poetic about him. One thing that was particularly notable about The Bird was how much fun he was obviously having on the pitching mound. There have been a number of baseball players who reached amazing heights and burned out, but Fidrych seems to have stayed more prominently in the hearts and minds of many fans.

I didn't blog about it, but of course course there was also last week's car accident that claimed the life of Angel rookie pitcher Nick Adenhart. The Angels seem to be terribly unlucky when it comes to such tragedies.

Non-chaotic cycling

New Dodger 2nd baseman Orlando ("O-Dog") Hudson hit for the cycle in today's game, becoming the second LA Dodger (and the first since Wed Parker in 1970) to hit for the cycle. A player is said to "hit for the cycle" in a game when he gets a single, double, triple, and homerun (in any order). There are fewer cycles in Major League history than no hitters, though this achievement is a bit of a curiosity, as of course one would rather have a second double instead of the single that would complete a cycle, etc.

By the way, you should read this book if you want to find out about chaotic cycling.

Extreme Sheepherding

Wow, this video with LED art created by herding sheep is pretty insane. (Tip of the cap to Steve Van Hooser.)

One of the weirdest baseball plays ever

One of the best things about baseball is that no matter how often one follows the game, one can always see something that is fundamentally new. This happened today, as today's Dodger game had one of the weirdest baseball plays I had ever seen. Unless my memory is failing me, I have never seen this in 30 years of following baseball closely.

Here is how it is described in the recap:

The Dodgers tied it at 1 on an unusual play in the second.

Los Angeles had Andre Ethier on third base and Pierre on second with one out when Wolf hit a line drive that was caught by Haren (0-2). He wheeled and threw to Lopez, who tagged Pierre for an apparent inning-ending double play.

Ethier was running on contact, and he crossed the plate before Pierre was tagged out. The Diamondbacks left the field, apparently thinking the run didn't count.

But the umpires said it did -- and by then it was too late for Arizona to appeal that Ethier had failed to tag up.

Wolf was credited with an RBI on the play, which was recorded as a 1-4 double play.

Adding to the confusion, the correct score -- Arizona 1, Los Angeles 1 -- wasn't posted on the scoreboard until the Diamondbacks came to bat in the bottom of the inning.


Note that Ethier did not tag up. Two things had to occur for this scenario to happen: (1) Lopez had to tag Juan Pierre after Ethier crossed the plate, and this happened because he went over to tag Pierre rather than tagging the 2nd base bag; and (2) Arizona was not allowed to appeal the play (namely, Ethier not having properly tagged up before crossing the play) because they had already left the field. Weird.

I'm sure ESPN writer Jayson Stark will have a lot more to say about this play, which Vin Scully (who has been broadcasting baseball games for 60 years) apparently has never seen before either.

By the way, we won.

Update (4/13/09): As Vin Scully mentioned last night and this article reminds me, the mechanism by which the Dodgers got their run is apparently known as "the fourth-out rule" (which is a new term for me). (Tip of the hat to Rob Neyer.)

Woody Harrelson mistakes person for zombie

Let's start this report with an "awesome" quote of the day: With my daughter at the airport I was startled by a paparazzo, who I quite understandably mistook for a zombie. (It is the "quite understandably" bit that makes this line priceless.)

Basically, as described in a CNN.com article Harrelson had a small tousle with a guy with a camera. So there's not much to the story, except for the fact that Harrelson was apparently still "in character" from a movie (in which he's pursued by zombies) that he had just finished filming.

Um, can I use this excuse if I assault somebody after playing certain video games? For example: Your Honor, I mistook him for a walking turtle, so I jumped on him and then kicked him into his friends.

Pulling Out (from) All the Stops

Here is a really awesome new Mathematical Moment from the American Mathematical Society about a pair of New Yorkers (who are implied to be math students, based on the vignette) who used some graph theory to help them set a new world record (by over 2 hours) for the fastest time to visit all of the stops in New York City's subway system. The thing that I really liked about this was something with which all Techers (and, in a different sense, most scientists) are familiar: The idea of doing something really cool in a collaborative fashion while using some technical expertise as a vital component. It's not just about breaking an old record; it's about how one goes about doing it!

I approve!

RIP Dave Arneson (1947-2009)

Once again the dice are silent, as D & D co-creator Dave Arneson has died of cancer. Co-creator Gary Gygax died in March 2008.

Every time I see a news story like this, I feel like a part of my childhood has died as well.

(Tip of the hat to Vincent Kong.)

Fermi, Pasta, Ulam, and the Birth of Experimental Mathematics

The May-June 2009 issue of the magazine American Scientist will include the article, Fermi, Pasta, Ulam and the Birth of Experimental Mathematics, which I coauthored with Norm Zabusky, Bambi Hu, and David Campbell. (I added an extra comma in the title of the blog entry, as I prefer that style. I was not allowed to use it in the article because of the magazine's official style policy.

This article is basically "FPU for Dummies", as it attempts to discuss the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem (and the massive amount of exciting work it has spawned; this includes multiple subdisciplines of math and physics!) without using mathematical equations. This is really hard for a subject like this...

Dial-a-Prayer

Arcane Gazebo recently blogged about a new automated praying service to which one can subscribe. That's what I call "awesome". As AG points out, doesn't this kind of miss the point?

2009 Baseball Predictions

The 2009 baseball season started yesterday with a 4-1 Braves victory over the Phillies. Derek Lowe turned in a stellar performance as the starter, and closer Mike Gonzalez was a little bit less stellar. Also, Brett Myers has the early lead in homeruns allowed. :)

Here are my fearless predictions for 2009:

National League:

East: Mets
Central: Cubs
West: Dodgers
Wild Card: Giants
NL winner: Mets

Of the above predictions, only my Wild Card one departs from most of the pundits. The Giants have an excellent starting staff, and I think that position players Travis Ishikawa and Pablo Sandoval are going to get really good really fast to make up for much of the weakness in the rest of the offense.

MVP: David Wright
Cy Young: Johan Santana
Rookie of the Year: I'm not sure, but I'll say Ishikawa. (Is Sandoval eligible? Doesn't he have too many plate appearances? At least one web site thinks he's a rookie.) I'll mention Cameron Maybin as well, but I'm not convinced he'll be the best rookie, even though he might well have the best career among the rookies.

Manager of the Year: Bruce Bochy (the manager of the surprise team)
Team on the rise: Giants
Team on the decline: Phillies
First manager fired: Dusty Baker

American League:

East: Yankees
Central: Indians
West: Athletics (after a fierce battle with The The Angels Angels of Anaheim)
Wild Card: Rays
AL winner: Yankees

These predictions are pretty consistent with those of the pundits, though I think most of them have the Angels over the Athletics.

MVP: Evan Longoria
Cy Young: CC Sabathia
Rookie of the Year: Matt Wieters (even though he's starting the year in the minors)

Manager of the Year: Bob Geren (the manager of the surprise team)
Team on the rise: Oakland (check out their young starting pitching); honorable mention to Texas because of their young offense (though I just can't trust them to develop any pitching)
Team on the decline: Angels
First manager fired: Ozzie Guillen

World Series: Mets over Yankees in 5 games


One final prediction: As usual, most of my predictions will turn out to be completely wrong by the end of the year.

Play Ball!

Today is opening day for the 2009 baseball season. As has become usual practice, there will only be one game tonight and then things will really get going tomorrow. Tonight's game is between the Braves and the Phillies.

Play ball!

Quote of the Day

Today's quote comes from my father: "The internet is amazing."

By itself, this quote wouldn't be very interesting, but let's consider the context: First, my father is a luddite and is only just discovering the internet. Second, he doesn't go online himself. We were talking about the book "The Ascent of Man" and he wanted me to see how the author's name was spelled so that I'd be more likely to remember the guy's name. (I've heard of the book, of course, but not the author.) He had one of his office secretaries print out a page with the name---I was expecting to see the wikipedia page for the author, but it was actually the IMDB page---and that was when he uttered his comment. Maybe there is some hope after all, but there's another decade or so left to catch up... Anyway, the comment amused me greatly, given the context.

Google's 2009 April Fools joke (and other, much better, ones)

While I appreciate the subject matter of Google's April Fools joke this year, I just don't think their implementation is particularly amusing. Sorry, Google, but you've let me down this year. The idea was good, but this just didn't do it for me.

This year, I was lame and didn't do anything, so it's not like I have any foundation to back up the above comments. :)

Update: On the other hand, Expedia's $99 flights to Mars are a big win. Here is CNN's summary of April Fools jokes. (It would be really awesome if some of the ones they are reporting aren't actually jokes that anyone has pulled.) The Guardian has some fake stories on their website. The one I like best is about their impending conversion to Twitter format. Now that is awesome!

Update 2: Ah yes, and Rob Neyer in his blog has reminded me about the best. April Fools. joke. ever.