Quote of the Day: Tempe Festival of the Arts Edition

I spent 3 hours or so at the Tempe Festival of the Arts today. I saw lots of cool stuff, and I bought a couple of things: a t-shirt with the Chinese symbol for "chaos", a hand-crafted dragon mug (the tail is the handle, for example, and its eyes make the face cute), and a print of a gecko practicing karate. I hope the print survives my trip back to Oxford (and the travelling between now and then) so that I can frame it and hang it in my apartment in Oxford.

I bought the dragon from a guy who had tons of cool dragon-themed and wizard-themed clay items. (I especially liked a couple of the lamps and the piece that had the small dragon familiar holding up the wizard's laptop so that he could use it.) Lots of stuff was reasonably large and expensive, and it unfortunately just wasn't practical for me to buy a more expensive item from him---though I totally would have if it weren't impractical. I think he doesn't ship his larger items, but I'm going to check his website anyway.

Anyway, I was wearing my "flirt harder, I'm a physicist" t-shirt today, and while I was buying my dragon mug, another customer said: "Nice shirt. [pause] Good luck." I'm amused.

Best combination of book title and author name ever!

Today I found the best combination of book title and author name ever: Apparently, an anthropologist named Barbara B. Smuts has written a book called Sex and Friendship in Baboons. Nice!

The book is obviously on a legitimate topic, but combining the title with the author's last name just makes me giggle.

Most insane. CV. Ever.

That honor goes to Gene Stanley. Crazy.

Cornell versus Kentucky

It's amazing that Cornell unexpectedly earned a birth in the "Sweet 16" of men's college basketball. Unsurprisingly, #1 seeded Kentucky beat us. Nevertheless, here is a fun comparison between Cornell and Kentucky. Tonight at dinner, we actually had an all-Cornell table, and we watched the beginning of the game together. The game started with a 10-2 Cornell lead, but then reality quickly set in (and watching the game made it obvious even to me---and I know nothing about basketball---that Cornell was simply outmatched) and we ended up losing 62-45. In one streak, Kentucky got 30 points to Cornell's 6.

The people at dinner included me (obviously), 3 fellow CAMsters (2 of whom overlapped with me), a former Cornell postdoc who overlapped with one of the people who overlapped with me (but not with me), a former Cornell professor who overlapped with us, and a former Cornell grad student from the biometry department. We were all present in one of my 2 seminars today, 3 of the people are faculty at ASU (main campus, which I was visiting), 2 of the people are faculty at ASU West Campus, and 1 person is a visitor from Purdue. And then there's me.

I don't normally care about basketball, but this was pretty cool. I guess that's what it's like to go to a "real" school, although the fact that we were severe underdogs was a big part of the fun for me.

Fashion Meets Topology

You don't believe me? Just take a look at this blurb (and links therein). Dude!

What happens in Tempe stays in Tempe

I am heading off to Arizona State for a whirlwind tour: 2 days on campus, 3 talks, 3 different topics. And do you know how I'm going to prepare for this? By going to tonight's Dodger game, of course!

I didn't see any baseball game in person in 2009 (for the first time in maybe 25 years), and I am going to make up for this!

Behind the Water Curtain

Check out this picture! I love cool, water-induced visual effects.

Maybe they'll call it the Virtual Boy 2?

Isn't this the same kind of promise we heard back in the day with the Virtual Boy? I know the world is a little more ready for 3D gaming nowadays, and Nintendo has certainly done a lot better on the market than it was doing for many years, but it does admittedly feel like I've heard this before.

Level 1 Human

I wholeheartedly approve of this demotivational poster.

Network science research provokes terror alert

A run-of-the-mill network science paper about cascading failures via targeted attacks (based on nodes with high degree or betweenness) has caused a bit of a panic in the United States. The work is rather theoretical and there are tons of other papers like it. This one did appear in a journal called Safety Science, and I wonder if that made a difference here? (By the way, I very much appreciate that the New York Times piece uses the term "network science".)

Maybe I ought to be careful about my research on cascading failures in networks?

(Tip of the cap to James Gleeson, my coauthor on this paper on network cascades.)

Think Globally

The latest New York Times article by Steve Strogatz is called "Think Globally", which is pretty ironic (despite the applications to earth's geodesics) given that the article is about differential geometry, which is inherently local. Maybe that's the "act locally" part? And it just warms my heart to see an article about differential geometry in the New York Times. Where are the wedge products, though? :)

More Blogs by Baseball Players (and Former Players)

I might look at the blog of former Astro Morgan Ensberg a bit more at some point. His tone is sometimes snarky, and he seems like he's being more forthright than most former players, but the color combination and typesetting hurts my eyes. He also responds to reader comments, which is always appealing.

On the other hand, current pitcher Pat Neshek's blog is a wall of text and doesn't appear to have the usual feedback mechanisms (though there was a message board that I didn't check out). On the other hand, I very much like the up-front information for autograph-seekers.

I have previously mentioned Curt Schilling's blog, whose format is more readable than I remember. Schilling also has a tendency to be pretty forthright. I'm going to see if I can find some e-mail contact information to send him a copy of my article in ranking baseball players. I think it would be awesome if he wrote snarkily about that.

Periodic Table of Visualization Methods

Here is a Periodic Table of Visualization Methods.

(Tip of the cap to Mark Rogers.)

Clay Millenium Prize Awarded to Perelman

It's official: Grigoriy Perelman has been awarded a $1 million Clay Millennium Prize for his resolution of the Poincaré conjecture.

How much do you want to bet that he declines the award?

(Tip of the cap to Mariano Beguerisse Díaz.)

"Can Baseball Be Used to Teach Statistics?"

This is the title of my new book review of a book that attempts to teach statistics using baseball (I bet you didn't guess that...) that just appeared in Notices of the American Mathematical Society.

Pick-Up Line of the Day

I just heard "Do you work in oxides?" used as a pick-up line. It appeared to be successful. :)

You know what 'they' say: What happens at the March Meeting stays at the March Meeting...

'Saturday Catblogging' and 'Cheerleaders at a Physics Conference?'

As promised, here is some Saturday Catblogging (which I am only posting 3 days late). Also, registration for the March Meeting opened on Sunday---while a conference for (way too) young cheerleaders was still going on. I'm pretty sure that they were just as afraid of us as we were of them.

Square Dancing

Here is Steve Strogatz's latest article in the New York Times. It concerns the Pythagorean Theorem and the different levels of elegance of different proofs of it.

Quote of the Day: March Meeting Edition

Sometimes, I even amuse myself. Today's quote come from me:

"I think I'll take one piece of candy for each paper of mine that you've rejected." (Me, to the people manning the Physical Review booth)

Early contender for best talk title: Accelerated Evolution in the Death Galaxy

Here is my opening contender for best talk title at the APS March Meeting: "A27.00002: Accelerated Evolution in the Death Galaxy"

Note that this talk is not in the psychoceramics session. I'm not going to see it, as it conflicts with a 'human mobility' session (which is a complex systems session), and I'll also need to use part of that session to set up my posters.

Oh, and here is a poster on psychoceramics. And another one. Um, do you think this person is generating these abstracts algorithmically? Why were these abstracts accepted? Does anybody read the submissions? (By the way, check out the first authors for these three posters---they include variants of familiar names---of at least one person who has been dead for several years---and allusions to mathematical formulas.)

P.S. Happy Pi Day!

Sometimes, I'm very easy to please.

After a bit of an arduous journey---especially the last leg, which had me get lost and turn a 2-block walk to my hotel (complete with lots of luggage) into a 25+ block trek, I was ecstatic to see a location of Peet's right next to my hotel. Woot!

During my "epic" journey, I managed to accidently leave my posters at a bus stop. (I needed a place to sit to look at the .pdf maps I had saved in order to orient myself and see what I was doing with my chaotic spiral around my hotel.) Somebody opened the poster tube while I was gone, and apparently just left it and the posters therein where he/she found it after not seeing anything of apparent value. It's a good thing that whoever this was evidently isn't into either community detection or granular crystals.

Anyway, hello from Portland. I need sleep!

Even more "awesomeness"

I made a brief pitstop at Tim and Christina's place to pick up my laptop (and other stuff in my laptop bag) for my meeting at Peet's Coffee at 4pm (so, imminently).

I wanted to make sure to put my computer to sleep. I noticed that it was asleep, so in order to put it to sleep, logic dictated that it would be necessary to wake up my computer.

And, therefore, I woke up my computer in order to put it to sleep... because I wanted to make sure to put it to sleep before putting it away to bring with me to my meeting.

I am awesome.

(Technically, my logic was impeccable, though I did manage to inadvertently rediscover the inverse operator in the process...)

Another Reason That I Am "Awesome"

I find myself in the middle of what I thought was about 34 hours in Pasadena. (I had to really squeeze things tightly with flying from the UK to LA and then flying from LA to Portland for the APS March Meeting.)

As it turns out, it will actually be about 33 hours, because the clocks get sprung forward tonight due to the whole Daylight Savings Time business. (I only found out because I found a blurb about this on the APS website in the context of not being late for the Sunday tutorials. I am currently trying to figure out my plans for Sunday and Monday in terms of registration, the events I want to attend, etc.) Great; just great. I wonder if Supershuttle will screw up my 4:15 pick-up?

Thankfully, I'm flying out of Burbank airport. I have previously been to LAX the day after the clocks change, and it's significantly more of a nightmare than usual (which is saying a lot, because it's usually pretty nightmarish even at its best).

In sum, I am "awesome". (Oh, and what happens at the March Meeting stays at the March Meeting.)

Demonstrating the Emergency Bra

Tonight I went to the Oxford show of the 2010 Ig Nobel UK tour, and I took this picture of the demonstration of the emergency bra.

I love the look on the guy's face...

Quote of the Day: Oxford Don Edition

Today's quote is just priceless: "The verb in the sentence is the equal sign."

(To get the proper ambience, you have to imagine these words coming from an old Oxford professor with a stuffy British accent. I won't say who uttered this beauty, and the context---arguing grammatical structure on the wording of an exam---makes the whole thing even more awesome.)

Monkeying Around with Investments

Apparently, monkeys can do more than just rank football teams. Money quote: It shows that financial knowledge does not play a great role in giving forecasts to how the market will change. It is usually a matter of more or less successful guessing. And the monkey got lucky.

(Tip of the cap to Martin Gould.)

Monday Catblogging

Gazebo isn't doing this anymore, so I feel like I need to pick up the slack.

Actually, I think that today's catblogging photo (once again featuring Pogo) is actually quite nice. (And I am using "quite" in the American sense rather than in the British sense.)

I think that maybe I'll have a Catblogging picture on Saturday. ;) Stay tuned.

Like ping pong injuries, except even more manly

Sadly, my hands have been horribly savaged by the British winter this time.

The cold has lingered a bit longer than usual, and at many times, the winter has actually been quite dry, so the skin on my hands has nicely cracked, become rough, and developed a couple of open sores. It's rather unpleasant, actually.

I realized today that one of the things that has been exacerbating the problem is that I have been lecturing this term with chalk rather than with whiteboard markers. I forgot to make my usual request in advance to get a room with a whiteboard, and I am paying the price. Giving my lecture was literally physically painful today. (I warned by students at the beginning of lecture that my writing would be worse than usual, which is unfortunate given that my writing is messy anyway, and I indicated the reason why; upon hearing that, one of them actually sneered. That's pretty insensitive, Dude!)

Lifting the boards, which are very stiff and require some effort, was unpleasant, and it turns out that chalk dust and open sores really don't mix.

It's now gotten to the point that I can barely lifting my cutlery to eat, carry my plate to the table to start eating, etc. (And it hurts a lot to do all of these things.) Ugh. I have one more lecture tomorrow, and then maybe I can start recovering.

Update: After I pressed the button to publish the post, blogger gave me an advertisement for whiteboard markers. Now that's service! :)

Update 2 (3/11/10): I just noticed (because the website was still up) that after the update, I received an advertisement for Vaseline for chapped skin. I guess I can sometimes rely on responses to my blog entry not just from my readers but also from automatic advertisement. I'm amused. :)

Finding Your Roots

Here is Steve Strogatz's latest opinionator article on mathematics. My old "buddy" John Hubbard gets a nod in this one.

I think I'll try to solve the classical problem first.

In the latest tales from the arXiv, I present quantum dating.

Title: Quantum Dating Market

Authors: O.G. Zabaleta and C.M. Arizmendi

Abstract: We consider the dating market decision problem under the quantum mechanics point of view. Quantum states whose associated amplitudes are modified by men strategies are used to represent women. Grover quantum search algorithm is used as a playing strategy. Success is more frequently obtained by playing quantum than playing classic.


Comment: Um, I think that there is a quantum cuteness paper that really ought to have been cited. :)

Hmmm...

I think that what is possibly one of my greatest strengths professionally is certainly one of my worst weaknesses personally---namely, that I seem to be incapable of feeling content and focus way too much on what I don't have even in cases where the things I do have are arbitrarily good.

I am capable of feeling happy---just not content, and I sometimes drive myself nuts as a result.

On the academic side, this can of course drive me to bigger (and ideally better) things. On the personal side, for example, I have a tendency to feel down when I don't get to hang out with my closest friends as much as I want (which of course is going to be the case a lot because I'm busy and they're busy, and only a very small number of them live close to me anyway). My best friends basically are who I consider to be my true family, and I would rather focus on the excellent times I have with them. Those times are my fondest moments in life, yet I have an annoying tendency to spend too much time thinking about the fact that I wish there were more of them when I think it would be much healthier for me to think happily about the good times themselves. And so I can drive myself nuts sometimes with this. (The flaw aspect of this also can come into play academically---by not being satisfied with certain things in a similar fashion---but I think it's the personal one where I can truly drive myself nuts much more than I'd like.)

There are various bits of subtext above---such as why my best friends are my real family and my genetic family really isn't---but I might have written about that before and in any event, I am planning on getting to work rather than on writing volumes now. There is also a reason that I am thinking about it this morning, but I will save that for another time as well.

In the meantime, I have some solution sets to correct, and I hope to go through a draft of a paper today that has taken way too long to revise.

Jewish Wazzup Commericial

This video is supposedly a banned Budweiser 'Wazzup' commericial. It has a Jewish theme, and I think it's pretty damned funny. (Note: Some people thought that entire thread of commercials was really stupid, and the first few commercials in it were. But then it started getting incredibly self-referential, so that later commercials in the series became pretty bloody funny. Being amused by this video is probably predicated on knowing the thread.)

(Tip of the cap to my cousin Leydah Evers.)

Quote of the Day

Today´s quote comes from me: "Four years at Cornell made me a man."

Toto, I don't think we're in Topeka anymore.

Topeka has temporarily renamed itself "Google" in a rather shameless ploy. Unfortunately for them, they're still located in Kansas.

What happens in Sevilla stays in Sevilla (Take 2)

Tomorrow I take my second trip to Sevilla. In July, I went there for a nonlinear waves workshop, and this time I am visiting a collaborator. Thankfully, the weather should be much cooler than it was in July.

I have a way with words.

During tonight's after-dinner conversation, I accidently confused the term "on the menu" with the term "on the list of people going to lunch" (well, it might technically have been dinner). Um, oops.

I'm "awesome".

Traffic Shock Waves

Here is an experimental recreation of the traffic shock waves that uses one of the main idealized conditions (circular tracks, with cars attempting to travel at constant speed) that has been studied. My professor Gerald Whitham at Caltech was one of the pioneers in early, idealized models of such things.

(Tip of the cap to Wendell Misch.)

The Joy of $x$

Here is Steve Strogatz's latest opinion piece on mathematics in The New York Times.

This one wasn't as engaging for me as the previous ones.

Sowing the Seeds of Mathematics

The seeds were sown early.

I was sitting in Somerville's SCR, reading Steve Strogatz's "The Calculus of Friendship", when I suddenly recalled an old incident from 1st grade that I hadn't thought about in years.

I'm sure I'll get some of the details wrong, but here is what I remember (which unfortunately doesn't include many specifics): We were doing subtraction of numbers, and on occasion we were asked to subtract a larger number from a smaller one; e.g., writing down the answer to "3 - 5" would be a typical problem we had to solve. In such cases, the "correct" answer that we were expected to write down was "not defined" or "doesn't make sense" or whatever. That is, of course, bullshit---and unfortunately for my 1st grade teacher, I had encountered negative numbers somewhere and already knew it to be bullshit. (I wish I could remember the source. My best guess based on what I was reading at the time would be that I saw it in some magazine article about baseball. I certainly learned several other pieces of mathematics, such as decimals versus fractions, from baseball calculations before I ever saw anything like them in classrooms.) So on my assignment, I included negative answers at appropriate points. When these were marked with an 'X' to indicate that they were "wrong", I openly challenged my teacher (which all educators appreciate! :P ) and attempted to explain why it was correct. She made some comment along the lines of not being able to have -2 apples (I don't remember if it was apples or some other object, but my memory is suggesting "apples" as the likely example), and my counter-argument was the standard one of the concept of owing 2 apples. She would have none of that, and I have a vague memory of things escalating to the point that she had to call my parents (which, of course, they appreciated greatly). I also have vague memories of the other 1st grade teacher taking her side and my having to argue my point against both of them, but I'm not sure about that part either.

Anyway, I am confident about my memory that the argument was lengthy and public, and also about the fact that I was stubbornly insistent that I was right and my teacher was wrong (and, in particular, that I refused to concede the point---except that I did subsequently and grudgingly write their version of the "correct" answer on things just so I wouldn't lose points). I know that the argument escalated, but I'm not confident about the '2 on 1' bit with my arguing against both teachers and I'm also not confident that the argument reached the point that my parents had to be called about my bad behavior.

OK, so what seeds were sown here? I don't actually think it's horribly uncommon for somebody to encounter and then understand negative numbers on their own---it is an obvious concept, after all---and that's especially true when one considers the subset of people who choose subjects like mathematics (and other quantitative or scientific areas) as a career. The early signs that we really see here are my extreme stubbornness---and I can recount tons of other incidents that demonstrated when I was essentially (but not literally) arbitrarily young and the fact that I learned very early on that I could be right and my teachers could be wrong. (One could argue that I learned how to disrespect authority early on, but it was really more of a lesson to not assume that the authority was right by virtue of the fact that they were supposed to be the relative "expert" on the topic---or at least that they were supposed to know more than me.)

This was actually the second of four incidents I recalled in immediate succession---the difference is that the first, third, and fourth ones are ones that I have never forgotten, whereas I think the last time that I thought about this second one might well have been before I started college (or certainly not long after that). The first one involves my figuring out multiplication on my own in kindergarden, the third involves my father's $100.00 math challenge (when I was a very young age, but I can't precisely remember how old I was) from a problem he saw in the Los Angeles Times that he only gave me because he seriously underestimated me and didn't think I had a chance to get it right. (He was a bit shocked when he then had to keep his word and fork over the cash. I guess he could have gone back on what he said, but that wouldn't have looked good.) The fourth incident also occurred in 1st grade, and that was my refusal to say the pledge of allegiance because of the presence of the words 'under God'. That one also led to a public argument with my teacher, but I ultimately resolved that one by just opening and my mouth without saying anything at the relevant point (and lip-syncing during the rest of it) and hoping that the teacher just wouldn't notice. I didn't find out until I got to high school that it was actually illegal for the teacher to force me to say the pledge. (There were also a couple of incidents in high school about my refusal to say the pledge, but those were with fellow students rather than teachers.)

I guess the title of this post is a bit misleading (because this type of thing can be construed as mostly independent of mathematics), but this type of stubbornness and nature can be seen all the time these with my career choice---and this type of stubbornness is rather useful for scientific endeavors, behavior during seminars, etc.

Alright, I better get back to work. This post was a lot longer than I intended.

(And, yes, I already was that much of a pain in the ass when I was in 1st grade. I suppose that that will surprise very few of the people who know me.)

Alternative Meanings for WTF?

One of my TAs for my nonlinear systems course sent me the following e-mail this evening:

Some students write 'what to show' at the beginning of questions as WTS, but there is one student in B8b who has abbreviated 'what to find' at the start of her questions as WTF. Or at least I hope that's what she meant!

Oh dear...

Gruesome Wiener Attacks

You don't believe me? Just take a look at this article. As if the Kansas City Royals needed more problems...

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Tales from the arXiv: Self-Propelled Hard Rods

This paper caught my attention because of its title:

\\
arXiv:1002.3831
Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 21:47:54 GMT (74kb)

Title: Nonequilibrium Statistical Mechanics of Self-propelled Hard Rods
Authors: Aparna Baskaran and M. Cristina Marchetti
Categories: cond-mat.stat-mech
\\
Using tools of nonequilibirum mechanics, we study a model of self-propelled
hard rods on a substrate in two dimensions to quantify the interplay of
self-propulsion and excluded-volume effects. We derive of a Smoluchowski
equation for the configurational probability density of self-propelled rods
that contains several modifications as compared to the familiar Smoluchowski
equation for thermal rods. As a side-product of our work, we also present a
purely dynamical derivation of the Onsager form of the mean field excluded
volume interaction among thermal hard rods.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.3831 , 74kb)


Comment: Not necessary.

The World is Irrational

In his latest opinion article, Steve Strogatz writes about the fact that the world is irrational.

Also, his article links to this lovely exchange with a customer service representative, which unfortunately hits way too close to home. Just remember that units are important, and apparently that many people find both units and decimals to be confusing.

Update (2/23/10): Apparently, the comments written by readers of Strogatz's article, which I am told express profound disbelief and taking offense at his statement that 1 = .9999999999 (with the 9s repeating ad infinitum), are only supporting just how little people know about mathematics. (Disclaimer: I haven't read these reader comments; I was only told about them. I don't even want to look because it's just going to depress me. Hence, I am purposely qualifying my phrasing to indicate that I am taking somebody else's word for what these reader comments say.)

Depeche Mode concert

I went to the Depeche Mode concert last night; the last time I saw them in concert was in spring 2006 at Coachella. The time before that was in fall 2005. This was the third time I've seen them, which is the most I've seen any artist. There was some seriously cool stuff yesterday, although nothing quite on the level of the stripped-down version of "Shake the Disease" or the 100,000 people singing along to "Enjoy the Silence" at Coachella. The version they played of "Personal Jesus" to close the show was sweet---they started with a long acoustic introduction and then switched to the conventional version. There was also seriously cool stuff with "Policy of Truth" and (because of the audience!) "Home". They played "It's No Good", which pleased me greatly because I really wanted to hear that song live after they forwent it at the other two concerts. Sadly, they didn't play "Strangelove", even though that has often showed up among the encores during the current tour, and I am still waiting to hear that song (one of my all-time favorites) live. I've waited 23 years thus far, as I can handle waiting for a couple more years. I still haven't heard "People Are People" live yet either, though I have the sneaking suspicion that that is not one of the band's favorite songs. Here are the set lists from the current tour.

I got home from London at about 2:15. I was exhausted but exhilarated.

Other details: I went to the concert with Nick Jones and his partner Jane. Our seats were awesome, as we had the front row in our section, so we never actually had to stand up to see. Earlier in the day, I met up with Jit Kee, a classmate from Caltech and one of my best friends.

Now I've seen everything

In my tutorial that finished about 30 minutes ago, a student actually fell asleep while presenting a problem on the white board. He slid gradually down the board, hit his head on and de-attached the part that holds the markers, and proceeded to slide down onto the floor, where it took a couple of minutes to wake him up. (He seems to be alright, by the way. He's currently resting and the plan is to get him a taxi or something to take him home after he's rested up.)

This actually beats the time that Aaron Kuzin fell asleep in Phys 1 and was snoring really loudly for the entire lecture. (The prof was giving him dirty looks the entire lecture and those of us who were sitting near him couldn't stop giggling.)

Living Bum RPG

I shit you not. This is a real role-playing game. Though the content seems rather insensitive, it seems that many of the proceeds are going to help the homeless, so I am intrigued by this.

(Tip of the cap to Louis Wang.)

See Also: RECURSION

Here is the latest entry in my photoblog.

Reducing the Eurocracy for Research Funding in Europe

Well, at least we can try. Here is a petition to sign whose goal is to do that. Assuming that you believe in reducing the amount of red tape to try to get research funding in Europe, please sign this petition.

It's a Rankmaniac, Rankmaniac (on the Floor).

Apparently, some Techers will benefit from some sort of "Googlebombing" competition (I'm not sure if it's a Google competition) based on how many people link to their entry.

That's the purpose of this blog entry. Booyah!

Their entry is meh, in my opinion.

Blast from the Past: 2007/2010 edition

I only read this blog post 2.5 years or so after it was written. I guess it's not too insulting (and the insults seem to be implied rather than stated anyway), and the only form of disagreement I can really offer would be to nitpick at details (which doesn't seem worthwhile, given that this was written so long ago). The main detail at which I can reasonably nitpick would be to point out that multiple close friends of mine were still at Caltech in 2003, which completely justified my continuing to visit!

Don't sing "My Way" at Karaoke Bars in the Philippines

It might not be as dangerous as playing "Tarzan Boy" at Caltech, or as dangerous as playing "The Ride" at Caltech, or even as dangerous as playing "Hotel California" in the Caltech Coffeehouse (well, at least with certain people behind the counter), but apparently singing Frank Sinatra's "My Way" can lead to life-threatening situations at karaoke bars in the Philippines.

(This link is courtesy of the new mini-AIR mailing.)

Best. Fan letter. Ever.

Twins reliever Pat Neshek posted an "awesome" fan letter on his blog (with the name of the "fan" deleted, of course). Here is a link to an article about this beauty. (I am linking to this article instead of to Neshek's blog because I couldn't figure out a way to link to that entry specifically. I don't think he's organized his web page to make that possible. And he also seems to be unaware of the fact that Google uses links very fundamentally in their search algorithm.)

(Tip of the cap to Rob Neyer.)

Second-Hand Obesity

You don't believe that this exists? Well, Kevin Smith just got kicked off of a flight for it.

The Enemy of my Enemy

Here is the third article in Steve Strogatz's mathematics series in The New York Times.

We actually went through Frank Harary's social balance proof in our networks journal club a couple of years ago.

Also, I was wondering how many articles in the series that it would take for Strogatz to get into networks. I suppose that's kind of like answering how many licks it takes to get the chewy center of a Tootsie Pop? (I hope somebody else remembers that.)

Social Awkwardness is a Scarlet Letter

I wished I lived in a world in which social awkwardness didn't result in quite so prominent a scarlet letter. I was in G & D's (a local ice cream place) and overheard a rather demoralizing conversation: The people at the next table were talking about socially awkward people as if we were a lower form of life---apparently, we're less nice, feel less, etc. than other people. I know I can dismiss them as a bunch of idiots, but I felt like utter shit after listening to that and I do believe that most people look down on me to some extent because of my social awkwardness. (One of the reasons I feel bad when I hear that stuff is my belief that so many people believe it to at least some extent.)

Obviously, I have been able to find people who aren't that way, but one of these days I would like to believe that the number of such people isn't so small. I go out of my way to find people who I feel are egalitarian in this respect, and that's one of the reasons that I have a lot of difficulty finding friends. Simply, this is a very hard search problem. (Though, again, I have obviously found some of these special people!)

One can get better at social skills---but only to a point. (And indeed I am better now than I used to be.) In the same way, one can get better at doing contour integrals---but only to a point. In each case, there is some level of natural ability involved, and I wouldn't dream of looking down on people if they had trouble with contour integrals.

"The Condensed Matter Song"

"The Condensed Matter Song"

By Mason A. Porter, Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford

(parody of the "Matter-Patter Trio" by Gilbert and Sullivan)



I'm having lots of trouble with this awful calculation –
So I shall go back to my lab for some Bose-Einstein condensation.
And see if better vortex lattices cannot attract my senses,
And with some extra stirring I shall find the consequences.
Oh but in my complex conjugate I did forget the dagger,
And now that I get vortices I have regained my swagger,
And a word or two of compliment my vanity would flatter,
But I won't get tenure anyway, because it's really condensed matter!

Because atomic physics is really condensed matter,
condensed matter, condensed matter,
Yes it's really condensed matter,
condensed matter, condensed matter,

Yes it's really condensed matter,
It is really condensed matter,

BECs are condensed matter, condensed matter, condensed matter!

matter, condensed matter, condensed matter,
condensed matter, condensed matter, ...


It may be a little tired and perhaps generally silly
And that energy landscape seems to me complex and hilly;
Though with it I want to grapple with a biological question,
But I know not what, so do you have a suggestion?
I shall then submit a paper to Physics Review Letters,
With excellent predictions to be tested when technology is better,
But right now I wish that landscape would be flatter,
And I don't actually know biology, so I study condensed matter!

Yes I study condensed matter,
condensed matter, condensed matter,
Biology is really condensed matter,
condensed matter, condensed matter,

Yes it's really condensed matter,
It is really condensed matter,

Biology is condensed matter, condensed matter, condensed matter!

matter, condensed matter, condensed matter,
condensed matter, condensed matter, ...


If I had been so lucky I would have studied complex systems
But unless I find a power law surely nobody will listen –
I was given good advice when my mentor saw me erring
That to study networks and call it "physics" would be ever so daring,
And then with real data I would truly get to fiddle,
And publish papers in Nature and Science that aren't worth a piddle.
That particularly vapid, unintelligible patter
Is very sexy nowadays, but we all know it's really condensed matter!

Yes it's really condensed matter,
condensed matter, condensed matter,
Complex systems is really condensed matter,
condensed matter, condensed matter,


All this rapid-publication, unintelligible patter
Is presented at the March Meeting, so it must be condensed matter,
Yes this rapid-publication, unintelligible patter
Is all part of the subject that we call condensed matter,
matter, condensed matter, condensed matter,
matter, condensed matter, condensed matter!



(OK, so I'm probably being a little harsh here and I'm definitely biting the hand that feeds me. But I couldn't resist doing this...)

The Curious Case of Batman and Robin

This demotivational poster is a big win. (It's also highly appropriate for Valentine's Day.)

The Big Hurt has officially retired.

Frank Thomas (aka "The Big Hurt") has officially retired. Next stop: Cooperstown. (Thomas last played in 2008 but hadn't officially retired.)

Just take a look at his hitting stats. The man could hit, especially in his prime.

One of the articles I was reading earlier today when the news leaked (but the press conference hadn't occurred yet) wrote something to the effect that Thomas "will get strong consideration for the Hall of Fame" (the quote is approximate, but the tone is accurate). Um, excuse me. Thomas is a mortal lock for the Hall (as long as PED-type rumors don't surface, and they haven't yet). The idea that he is in any way borderline is frankly absurd (pun intended).

Ernie Harwell wins Vin Scully Award

I didn't even know that there was a Vin Scully Award, but there is one, and Ernie Harwell has won it. This award, which is a lifetime achievement award in sports broadcasting, is richly deserved. (And it's also fitting that it's named after Vin Scully---not that I'm biased or anything...)

Celebrating Number 34

Yesterday was my 34th birthday (with 10:50 pm UK time the time where things turned over, according to my birth certificate), so I had a bunch of friends over to celebrate. We played some games, ate some cake, and generally hung out. The main party started at 7pm, and just before that I went out to dinner with my best friend among the locals.

Now it's very quickly back to the old grind, starting with marking quantum mechanics homework tonight. (My students who are taking this have told me that this is the hardest problem sheet they've seen in the 1.5 years that they've been here. I hope I'm not going to have to do all of these problems from scratch tonight---I'd greatly prefer a calmer marking period where I can wing things. We shall see.)

Strange Googling

This google search for future of those born on 10th February, 1976 has one of my web pages in the top spot. This is two spots ahead of a web page about Celine Dion on Oprah, because apparently in celebration of my 34th birthday tomorrow Celine Dion is apparently going to appear on Oprah. Let me just say that this is not what I wanted for a birthday present. Sheesh.

Update (right after original post): Except that now when I try the link to the search, my web page comes up 2nd instead of 1st. I'm not sure which parameter got changed, and I'm going to finish reading Salvatore killing off some major characters instead (just a few pages left). Given that I don't think any of you read his book's anymore, I don't feel too guilty about that spoiler.

3rd Annual Conference of the Oxford student chapter of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

We hosted a spiffy conference today.

Here are some pictures that I took. Kit Yates took even more pictures than I did, and I'm sure that they will be posted shortly.

Rock Groups

Here is Steve Strogatz's second article (of 15 total) in his current New York Times series. As I mentioned in the last blog entry, he's starting from the mathematical ground up. (I'm looking forward to the more advanced topics, but it's already neat to see how he's writing about the fundamental stuff.)

Lawful Neutral

I approve of this poster! If it existed in real life, I expect that this poster would tie the room together.

I come from the land down under.

Apparently, the song "Down Under" by Men at Work (a really awesome song, by the way) copied a bit from an Australian nursery rhyme.

Tales from the arXiv: Mastication of Fish Sausage

Not only is this abstract "awesome", but I think that the authors might have an Ig Nobel prize in their future... In particular, I'd like to point out the last sentence: In order to explain this structure, we propose a mastication model for fish sausage based on stochastic processes.

\\
arXiv:1002.0404 (*cross-listing*)
Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 07:17:47 GMT (878kb)

Title: Fragmentation of a viscoelastic food by human mastication
Authors: Naoki Kobayashi, Kaoru Kohyama, Kouichi Shiozawa
Categories: physics.data-an cond-mat.stat-mech physics.bio-ph
Comments: JPSJ3, 4 pages, 8 figures
\\
Fragment-size distributions have been studied experimentally in masticated viscoelastic food (fish sausage).The mastication experiment in seven subjects was examined. We classified the obtained results into two groups, namely, a single lognormal distribution group and a lognormal distribution with exponential tail group. The facts suggest that the individual variability might affect the fragmentation pattern when the food sample has a much more complicated physical property. In particular, the latter result (lognormal distribution with exponential tail) indicates that the fragmentation pattern by human mastication for fish sausage is different from the fragmentation pattern for raw carrot shown in our previous study. The excellent data fitting by the lognormal distribution with exponential tail implies that the fragmentation process has a size-segregation-structure between large and small parts.In order
to explain this structure, we propose a mastication model for fish sausage based on stochastic processes.
\\ ( http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.0404 , 878kb)

Oscar Nominations

Here are the 2010 Oscar nominations.

The main one I care about is Christoph Waltz winning the Best Supporting Actor award for his role in Inglourious Bastereds. (He was awesome!) I also really want Coraline to win the award for Best Animated Feature. Also, if A Serious Man wins for Best Picture, I'm going to be really annoyed. (I'll be somewhat annoyed if it wins the award for Best Screenplay.) I found that movie to be woefully disappointing. It had a few moments, but that's all it had.

Given my awful track record and other things I want to do (besides write an interminably long blog entry), I'm not going to bother actually predicting the award winners.

Look at all these Rumors

Somebody apparently started a false rumor that the seminar speaker that I am hosting on Thursday wasn't going to come. (I'm partly wondering what's going on, partly wondering whether somebody is trying to screw with me, and partly amused if somebody is indeed trying to screw with me this way.) Anyway, members of OCIAM and whoever else wants to come will most certainly be hearing about the FPU problem this Thursday.

The game is afoot.

Killed off in chapter 1?

I have heard rumors that a literary mathematician who is named after me is slated to be killed off in chapter 1 of a book. Granted, the rumor is now several years old, and this could easily change. Tom Hanks should clearly play him in the movie version.

Broadcaster Jon Miller joins Hall of Fame

Broadcaster Jon Miller, who is most famous for his play-by-play work on ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, has won the Ford C. Frick Award and has thereby earned a spot in the broadcaster's wing of baseball's Hall of Fame. About time.

Monday Catblogging

Here is a picture of Pogo trying to keep warm.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

OK, so that only makes four fish, but in this New York Times article by Steve Strogatz, one gets all the way up to 12 (count 'em) fish. Steve is writing a series of opinion pieces in the New York Times where he will take mathematics all the way from preschool to graduate school. This is the first article in the series.

New Blog Format

(1) Let me know what you think of the new format.

(2) Please give me suggestions for additional changes, given that I am thinking about this now.

Photoblog: Part 2

You can find picture 201 and beyond in Part 2 of my photoblog.

If you have a Facebook account, you know you want to be the first to comment on it. :)

Photoblog Entry 200

I just posted photoblog entry 200 today, which fills up the Facebook space for Photoblog 1. There is a limit of 200 entries per album, so Photoblog 2 (which starts tomorrow) will occupy a different album in Facebook. I haven't yet decided whether I will fill it completely or only with just enough entries for the photoblog to have lasted 1 full year.

Lemon Sorbet + SPRINKLES = Win!

Sometimes the simple things in life really help make things feel right in the world---I just came back from G & D's; they have lemon sorbet right now (I don't think I've ever seen them have that before), so I ordered lemon sorbet with SPRINKLES, which is what I always used to get at Häagen Dazs as a kid.

This, in fact, is one of my good memories from childhood, and I hadn't thought about it for many years until this evening. My mother would sometimes take me to a particular location (gone for well over a decade, I think) of Häagen Dazs in Beverly Hills, and I would order a waffle cone with lemon sorbet and rainbow sprinkles. [As for the most important thing that makes things feel right in the world, that is and always will be my spending quality time with good friends. Maybe second place goes to the beginning of the baseball season the first time I get to hear Vin Scully announce a baseball game in the new year?]

Quote of the Day

"Given how short you are, you probably will look like a smurf if you do that." [where 'that' = paint herself blue]

I suppose that's not something that one should say to one's student? To be fair, one of my other students had already suggested smurfdom (which needs to be a real word, by the way) before I interjected with the above comment.

"Optimal Design of Composite Granular Protectors"

This paper, which was accepted for publication in October 2008, has finally appeared in print. About bloody time.

Title: Optimal Design of Composite Granular Protectors

Authors: Fernando Fraternali, Mason A. Porter, and Chiara Daraio

Abstract: We employ an evolutionary algorithm to investigate the optimal design of composite protectors using one-dimensional granular chains composed of beads of various sizes, masses, and stiffnesses. We define a fitness function using the maximum force transmitted from the protector to a "wall" that represents the body to be protected and accordingly optimize the topology (arrangement), size, and material of the chain. We obtain optimally randomized granular protectors characterized by high-energy equipartition and the transformation of incident waves into interacting solitary pulses. We consistently observe that the pulses traveling to the wall combine to form an extended (long-wavelength), small-amplitude pulse.


Note that this paper is in many senses an engineering paper. Some of the results are definitely things that would be nice to understand in a more "fundamental" fashion.

RIP Andrew Lange (?-2010)

Apparently, Caltech astronomy professor Andrew Lange committed suicide on Thursday. You can read about some of his research here.

Maybe it's small sample size, but the suicide frequency at Caltech seems to have increased nontrivially during the last couple of years.

Riddle Me This

Why am I often in my worst moods on Friday evening?

(And I was in a shitty mood before I realized I'd still be working after midnight, when I ought to be letting it all hang out.)

Let me know if you have any ideas, but the Friday evening blues seems to have become a bit of a trend with me. (And it's not that I don't have shitty moods at other times, because I am a very moody person, but there does seem to be a Friday night spike with me.)

Oakland Athletics Prospect Retires to Enter Priesthood

You don't see baseball stories like this one every day. I love the headline for Rob Neyer's blog entry about this: A's lose prospect to higher league.

Tales from the arXiv: Apparently, Congress is a Sandpile

It's this type of research that gives complex systems a bad name. The authors "model" Congress using the sandpile model from self-organized criticality, and they even have a few lines mentioning Al Gore's praising of the sandpile model as evidence in their favor. I call bullshit. This is yet another one of those articles that makes me react with a resounding 'So what?'. Anyway, here are the details of the article:


Title: Stochastic modeling of Congress

Authors: M.V. Simkin, V.P. Roychowdhury

Abstract: We analyze the dynamics of growth of the number of congressmen supporting the resolution HR1207 to audit the Federal Reserve. The plot of the total number of co-sponsors as a function of time is of "Devil's staircase" type. The distribution of the numbers of new co-sponsors joining during a particular day (step height) follows a power law. The distribution of the length of intervals between additions of new co-sponsors (step length) also follows a power law. We use a modification of Bak-Tang-Wiesenfeld sandpile model to simulate the dynamics of Congress and obtain a good agreement with the data.

Is Alice in Wonderland about drugs or mathematics?

Apparently, at least one person thinks that many parts of Alice in Wonderland were about Lewis Carroll's (aka, Charles Dogson's) attempts to criticize the newfangled mathematics of the day (such as symbolic algebra with imaginary numbers). The full article appears in New Scientist.

I browsed through the article. It's certainly conceivable that Dodgson did this, but other than the obvious feasibility given that Dodgson was a mathematician (and a very conservative one with respect to mathematical ideas) and I find the idea being put forth to be a very interesting one, I don't really find the argument for this interpretation to be overly convincing. However, because it is rather interesting, I'd be curious to see the author of the New Scientist article give a seminar about it. Maybe I'll have a chance at some point. (She is doing a Ph.D. here, after all.)

Impact Factors Suck

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Impact factors suck. They can be gamed, and treacherously so at that, and they have little to no bearing on the scientific quality of a journal or the articles therein. Read this article for some examples, and indubitably there are numerous smaller (and thus harder to catch) bad practices all over the place. We need to be more discriminating in what journals we consider good, and I feel like screaming every time I hear somebody using a journal's impact factor as a reason to submit there. (And in some fields, such as pure mathematics, the citations often don't tell the real story anyway!) And I feel like screaming even louder whenever I hear about impact factors of the journals in which in author is published being used for hiring, promotion, tenure, or anything else that can be very meaningful to people.

When I publish a paper, I try to choose journals whose papers I actually read or that I feel will reach the audience I want to reach---independent of numbers, etc.

Let's spread the word!

(Tip of the cap to Predrag Cvitanovic.)

Oxford Police at Play

As reported on Boing Boing, Oxford cops have been reprimanded for tobagging on riot shields. I am officially amused. :)

(Tip of the cap to Tim Elling.)

Quote of the Day: Delayed Edition

While I was in Pasadena during the winter, I witnessed the following quote: "Am I a bad Christian because I like Mason's t-shirt?"

I'll let you figure out which t-shirt it was. (And it's unfair guessing if you happened to be there at the time!)

New to the Blogroll: ChaosBook

My collaborator Predrag Cvitanovic, who was my (unofficial) postdoc advisor on the physics side at Georgia Tech (Leonid Bunimovich was my postdoc advisor from the math side at Georgia Tech, and in that case it was official), now has a blog. Well, apparently, he had one before, but only since December 2009 has there been a decent amount of activity on it and only today did I find out about it.

The name of his blog comes from his award-winning (and I know, because I gave it the award) book on classical and quantum chaos.

There are certain comments that have appeared here over the past few years by anonymous posters that I suspect might have come from Predrag.

Pictures from My Winter 2009/10 USA Trip

You can find them here, and I even included a bunch of snarky comments. How about that!

Mechanical Properties of Ice Cream

Does anybody know why ice cream sometimes gets chewy when it gets old (you know, when a lot of crystals settle inside the container)? Surely somebody has studied the mechanical properties of aging ice cream...?

Sarcasm Emoticon

Here is an article about sarcasm getting its own emoticon, but surely the entire article is meant sarcastically?

I love the phrasing of the 'fun fact' at the end of the article: "Sarcasm" comes from the Latin sarcasmos, which means "to tear flesh." How bad-ass is that?

(Tip of the cap to Sharam Shokrian.)

Another Take on Mark McGwire and Steroids

I try to minimize the number of posts I have here about steroids in baseball, but this article in The Onion is just too good not to post. I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Kevin Hickerson.)

2010 American Mathematical Society prizes

The 2010 American Mathematical Society prizes just got awarded at the Joint Math Meetings.

The recipients include my Oxford colleague Marcus du Sautoy (who won the JPBM Communications Award) and Carlos Castillo Chavez (who I know from Cornell---I used to TA in the REU program he runs), who won the Award for Distinguished Public Service in recognition of his gargantuan outreach efforts. This is true of some of the other awards as well (and there are several on which I don't know enough to have an opinion), but I wanted to highlight these two as rather richly deserved and also because of my connection to the recipients.

Congratulations!

Baby Got Back

Recent research from Oxford university suggests that fat-bottomed girls and guys are gaining some benefits from having fat asses.

I've seen two articles about this research, and neither of them alludes to the two songs to which I've alluded. Hell, the only reason I'm posting this is because it lets me bring up those songs!

Demotivational Posters of the Day

In this case, the picture says it all. Wow.

Update: Another awesome one just got posted, so I wanted to add this one to this blog entry.

Google.cn

I have just gained a lot of respect for Google.

The only other thing that I have to say is: Way to go, Google!

(Tip of the cap to Dave Relyea.)

Binary Trees

In case you were wondering, I have photographic proof that binary trees exist in real life. (Also notice Peet's Coffee in the background.)

Andre Dawson Elected to Baseball's Hall of Fame

Andre Dawson got elected to the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame today. Bert Blyleven got jobbed again, missing by only 5 votes. He should finally make it next year. Shockingly, Roberto Alomar---who I thought would certainly make it this year (his first year of eligibility)---just missed getting elected. He should make it next year as well. Notable players eligible for the first time who didn't make it include Fred McGriff, Barry Larkin, and Edgar Martinez. I'd probably vote for all three of them, and I'd certainly vote for Larkin and Martinez.

Randy Johnson retires

In today's big baseball news, Randy Johnson has announced his retirement. Next stop: Cooperstown. (On that subject, the new Hall of Fame members will be announced tomorrow.)

Jewish Haikus

Here is a website of Jewish haikus. They are hit or miss---some of them are very funny (at least if you're 'in' on the joke) and others are very stupid.

(Tip of the cap to Predrag Cvitanovic.)

Quote of the Day

Today's quote comes from me: "It's surprising that there are two gaps... I'm too tired to calculate exactly how surprising it is."

The context: A large number of us (around 12 people, I think) at the conference were in the elevator after dinner. The elevator can stop at floors 1--6. We got on at floor 1 and nobody needed to get off either on floor 2 or on floor 6. I wouldn't have been too surprised to see one gap, but I think having two gaps put us near the extreme of the probability distribution.