Crocheting hyperbolic geometry

Here is a Cornell University press release about the crocheted hyperbolic geometry of Visiting Scholar and math department Senior Research Associate Daina Taimina. One of her specialties is mathematics education, and such creations can certainly be helpful in visualizing non-Euclidean geometries.

A similar, but even cooler, thing that this reminds me of is a crocheted Lorenz attractor made by colleagues I have seen at conferences (and met very briefly). This got a lot of attention in both the mathematics community and the popular press. I think I mentioned it in an entry before (though I couldn't find the entry just now), and at some point I may devote a full entry to it. (I know I discussed this with Tim a couple months ago, but I thought I also blogged it briefly.)

Airplane boarding: the model

Well, it's really 'a' model. Anyway, the following entry just got posted to the arxiv:


Title: Analysis of airplane boarding via space-time geometry and random matrix
theory
Authors: Eitan Bachmat, Daniel berend, Luba Sapir, Steven Skiena and Natan
Stolyarov
Comments: 4 pages
Subj-class: Physics and Society
\ We show that airplane boarding can be asymptotically modeled by 2-dimensional
Lorentzian geometry. Boarding time is given by the maximal proper time among
curves in the model. Discrepancies between the model and simulation results are
closely related to random matrix theory. We then show how such models can be
used to explain why some commonly practiced airline boarding policies are
ineffective and even detrimental.
\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0512020 , 79kb)
%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-%-

Next time I have boarding issues, I can tell the airline personnel that random matrix theory says that their strategy is full of shit.

Now all we need is a model describing pre-boarding and we'll be set.

We'll probably be reading about this in the news

Here is a new University of Michigan press release about violent video games and people's reaction to violent images. Based on this document, their main conclusion is that there is less of a brain-wave response to violent images for people who have played such games. The press release doesn't give any specifics about the subjects (precisely how much exposure, etc.), and I fully expect that the media is going to take this and run with it and give their usual annoying 'games are evil' diatribe. (You know, we really don't see enough of Jack Thompson in the news.) The "reaction-time test" reminds me just a tiny bit of something that psychologist Stanley Milgram did in his very controversial experiments on obedience to authority.

Anyway, I'm not surprised by the conclusions of the study, but I can already see the media blowing them out of proportion. (The press release already starts that job. The title is a bit more extreme than the contents---not that that's surprising or anything.)

Amusing t-shirt

While getting my lunch in Chandler today, someone was wearing a t-shirt about how Caltech's football team is undefeated since 1993, which naturally corresponds to when we stopped having a football team... (Hell, I was talking to one of Caltech's publications staff about Caltech sports a couple years ago and for several years the football team was apparently populated almost completely by staff members rather than students!)

The continuing saga of Kris and Anna Benson

Kris Benson is a pitcher for the New York Mets. The Mets acquired Benson by trade from the Pirates during the 2004 season and signed him to a three-year contract the following offseason. There has been some controversy over his wife Anna's activities, which most recently include supposed posing nude for Playboy. Reportedly, the Mets have been trying to trade Benson as a result of all this stuff. It is not uncommon for players to be involved in controversy (for both stuff that should cause controversy and stuff that shouldn't cause it), but this is one of the few cases where it's been the player's wife's activities that have been the cause. (Anna apparently also has some sort of talk show.) Personally, none of this stuff seems like it should matter to anybody, but my point here is who is causing controversy rather than whether the activities should cause controversy.

Shopgirl

I actually saw this a few weeks ago, so sorry about being so late here. Shopgirl is Steve Martin's new flick (which was adapted from his novella). Accordingly, I came into it with very high expectations. Unfortunately, it didn't meet them. The film was decent but no better and had very little humor in it. Steve Martin certain can do serious acting, and the quality of the acting in this film was very high, but I just didn't get what I wanted out of it. It's too bad, because I wanted to like it more than I actually did. There is a character in the film named "Loki", which always gets points in my book, and there were a few amusing moments (a couple of the band-touring scenes, in particular), but I wouldn't particularly recommend the film unless you have already read the novella and know you like the story or if you're in the mood for Steve Martin in a drama. Of course, I'm sure it beats the Hell out of the other Steve Martin flick out right now (Cheaper by the Dozen 2), which I definitely won't be seeing. The Pink Panther is currently slated for February, and I will be seeing that to satisfy a moral imperative (though I am admittedly worried about the film). The Pink Panther is far too important a part of my paradigm for me to miss that one.

D & D scheduling: weekend of 12/9

Here is a summary of our scheduling discussions from after today's game.

The only day I can make it is Friday 12/9 because I have a flight out of town on Saturday morning. Doug indicated that Friday is most likely a problem for him, so the current plan is to play on Saturday 12/10 or Sunday 12/11 and NPC my character.

For the following weekend (I'll put a post about this next week), my return flight is on Saturday 12/17. I'll be available to play the next day. (Also, that Saturday has about 15 hours of flying in it for me, so I won't be playing that Saturday even if the game starts in the evening.)

My Dec-Jan schedule is a bit nuts...

Dodgers sign free agent Rafael Furcal

The Dodgers have agreed in principle to a 3-year, $39 million dollar contract with free agent shortstop Rafael Furcal.

Assessment: Furcal is a good player but is not worth close to this amount of money. One thing I'd like to see us do is try to sign Nomar Garciaparra to a one-year, incentive-laden deal or to get someone like AJ Burnett who would improve our starting rotation. Also, I'd like to see us trade Milton Bradley because he has baggage but is very talented and can net us useful players. (A Bradley trade is very likely, in fact.) I'd also like to see us hire a manager.

World University Rankings (from Bloody England)

The Times Higher Education Supplement (from the United Kingdom) has just posted its 2005 rankings of what it considers the best universities in the world. (One needs a subscription or a 14-day free trial to see this link.) Some of the entries make sense ---you'll notice plenty of the usual suspects---and others bring out the big WTF.

I found this via a press release from Cornell, which is 14th this year and 23rd last year. Caltech is #8 this year and was #4 last year. (#1 is Haaaaavaaaad, #2 is TOIT, #3 is Cambridge, #4 is Oxford, and then we go back to the US for a few rankings.) There are also some exceptionally strange choices. According to these guys, UCSF is 17th in the world (tied with U of Chicago). WTF? Isn't UCSF practically 17th in the state? Well, it's probably a little higher than that (maybe 11th or 12th?), but how did this happen? (Last year it was 20th.) Not that the specific numbers actually mean much of anything, but this entry is really absurd. Also, U Mass Amherst (#68, down from #45) shows up just ahead of Brown (#71) and U of Rochester shows up decently ahead of Dartmouth. Among the more precipitous drops was experienced by Georgia Tech, which went from #65 to #147. (Maybe word of the decimation of its math department has already gotten around?)

Now, rankings only give leading-order information, but how does UCSF get to #17? I know it has some good medical stuff and bio stuff and I certainly don't mean to suggest it doesn't have anything else that's good, but Chicago is an absolute powerhouse and so are practically all the other schools that are up there.

The title is a reference to a particular Budweiser commercial, by the way.

Iraq: The Next California?

Courtesy Predrag Cvitanovic, here is the list of candidates for Council of Representatives in Iraq. It's not quite as cool as having a porn star (going by only one name), a retired medium-weight sumo wrestler, and Gary Coleman on the ticket, but it's probably because they're a little bit behind the times over there in the Middle East.

50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' famous incident

I saw a sign on a Chapel Hill bus comemorating the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks' stand to insist on sitting (pardon the pun) in a bus rather than give up her seat to a white passenger (on 12/1/55). She died recently (on 10/24/05).

What happens in Chapel Hill stays in Chapel Hill

I am in Chapel Hill, NC visiting a collaborator at UNC. We'll be working on the follow-up to our Congress paper and related stuff (like following up on my SURF student's Facebook network project).

Tomorrow, I'm going to have dinner with Steve Van Hooser (a fellow Lloydie from my class), who I haven't seen since we graduated. (I've lately been working on trying to see below I haven't seen in a while. I wonder if I can get my former roommate, who lives in Long Beach, to put his computer games down for a bit? I'm tempted to just show up on his doorstep, because I can't get him to respond to queries about getting together, but then that would be annoying if that trip didn't work out. There must be a workable strategy somewhere, although Vincent's mindset is quite different from most.) Steve is a neuroscience postdoc at Duke. Steve Shepherd '00 is a grad student in the same program, although I didn't know this latter Steve too well and I don't have any plans to see him.

I'm in the Best Western right now, which isn't horrible close to campus and has no open food places in walking distance. There doesn't seem to be great delivery opportunities outside the campus area (especially not now) either, so it looks like the 30 minute delay between landing in Chicago and arriving at the gate is going to force me to go the whole day without food. (I typically don't like eating in the mornings when I'm tired, so I only had an iced latte today. If I knew the Chicago thing was going to fail me like that... United still congratulated themselves on landing "on time", although the extra 30 minutes in the plane, during which multiple babies decided it was time to cry and they didn't want us using our electronic stuff, wasn't particularly pleasant.)

In sum, "Mason needs food badly."

2006 Baseball Hall-of-Fame ballot

The 2006 Baseball Hall of Fame ballot was released yesterday. Players have to have been retired for 5 years and then can stay on the ballot for 15 years if they reach a threshold number of votes (amounting to 5% of all ballots cast) in a given year (and don't get enough votes to be elected). Players (and managers and others) can be elected via the Veterans Committee if the conventional way (which applies only to players) doesn't work out, but it's pretty hard to get into the Hall that way these days.

A notable absence from this year's ballot is Pete Rose, still banned for life from baseball and thus ineligible to appear on the ballot. (The 'still' in the previous sentence suggests that there are means to lift the ban.) This counts as year 15 for Rose because of when he retired, so he may have to get in another way if he's ever reinstated. Anyway, as much as his deeds were bad, Rose was a Hall of Fame player and, in fact, an upper-echelon Hall of Famer and he belongs in the hallowed halls of Cooperstown, which are supposed to be about his in-game performance. There are plenty of people in the Hall who can be evicted on the same grounds that Rose isn't even allowed on the ballot. (He does get a number of write-ins every year, though not even remotely close to enough to get elected.) Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame (without question)!

OK, so let's deal with who is actually on the ballot. Here's my opinion (of who should and should not get in, not of who will and will not):


Hell no (we won't go): Dary DiSarcina, Alex Fernandez, Gary Gaetti, Ozzie Guillen, Gregg Jefferies, Willie McGee, Hal Morris, Walt Weiss

No: Rick Aguilera, Albert Belle, Will Clark, Dave Concepcion, Steve Garvey, John Wetteland, Dwight Gooden, Doug Jones, Don Mattingly, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, John Wetteland

Tough call but probably not: Andre Dawson, Orel Hershiser, Dave Parker, Lee Smith

Yes: Bert Blyleven, Rich Gossage, Tommy John, Jim Rice, Bruce Sutter, Alan Trammell



A few things here deserve comment. First, there is no excuse for Bert Blyleven not to have been elected in his first year of eligibility. He had an absolutely superb career and is better than tons of the starting pitchers already in the Hall. It's an absolute crime that he hasn't made it yet. Tommy John and Alan Trammell should be shoo-ins as well. Jim Rice barely makes it in my book and if you compare his stats to those of, e.g., Andre Dawson, Dave Parker, and Dale Murphy, there are certainly some arguments here. Murphy fell of the ledge towards the end of his career, which hurts him. He, Parker, and Dawson also had some OBP issues that hurt them in my book.

Now, Bruce Sutter (who was the closest non-electee from last year and very likely will make it this year) and Rich Gossage were two of the pioneering closers and should also be shoo-ins. I list them separately because there are a lot of closers with more saves who I would not elect, and this includes Lee Smith (the all-time leader in saves). The deal here is that the save is a very misleading statistic and not all saves are created equal. As the all-time save leaders become eligible for the Hall, this is one of the big issues facing the voters. Sutter and Gossage had outstanding careers, where some of the others did not. Lee Smith was merely very good, so he doesn't make the cut in my book even though he's the all-time leader. John Wetteland, Doug Jones, and Rick Aguilera were also merely very good. (Smith gets extra credit for longevity and counting stats.)

A lot of people think that Don Mattingly and Steve Garvey should make it. Mattingly's problem was that his career was cut short by back problems. At his peak, he did perform at Hall caliber, but he didn't sustain it. Garvey was very good rather than excellent. A lot of people also think Jack Morris should make it, but his 3.90 ERA would become the highest one in the Hall. Many of his wins came from run support rather than performance. His career was also very good, but I can't justify his presence in the Hall.

It pains me to say 'no' on Hershiser. There are actually a number of arguments for him and with his best years on the Dodgers, my heart wants to vote for him. However, my head puts him just below the threshold. Dwight Gooden had a good career, but with him, we're always going to imagine what might have been. He still won close to 200 games but that's far below what everybody though would be the case early in his career. Unfortunately, his best year in the majors came in 1985 when he was 21. He was truly amazing at his peak!

Albert Belle looked like he was heading to the Hall of Fame, but his career was shortened by injuries and I just don't think he has the longevity to justify it. His stats are great, but I think the early exit and presence in a hitter-happy era is going to kill his chances. (In comparing his stats to Will Clark and especially Don Mattingly, Dale Murphy, et al, the average offensive output needs to be considered. Mattingly stands out in his own era, even though his totals don't look as gaudy as they should when one compares them to what we see now. Hitting 30 HR in a season used to be quite an impressive feat, and it's easy to forget that.)

For the 'hell no's, I should mention that they include some fine players, such as Gregg Jefferies (when he was healthy), Gary Gaetti, etc. Even Gary DiSarcina, probably one of the worst players to ever appear on the Hall-of-Fame ballot, had a couple decent seasons. (I believe one has to be around for 10 years to be eligible for the ballot.)

As far as who will get elected this year, my guess is Sutter and perhaps also Alan Trammell plus possible people via the Veterans Committee (though that's tough) and the yearly broadcaster and journalist. (The latter two are technically through a yearly award, so there's always one of each per year.)

Einstein paper unearthed

The Cornell University press release about this is here. As discussed therein, German scientists probably knew about the paper (which was in German) and have likely also translated it before. The particular German copy in question was found at Cornell, translated into English, and then posted on the arXiv. What this means, of course, is that Einstein has posted to the arXiv (with help, of course) after his death just like L. Ron Hubbard continues to write new chapters of Dianetics after his death. (This gives me hope that maybe I can get some PRLs after I die?)

The paper in question is about superconductivity. Here are the words of the press release:

"The paper contains nothing revolutionary from the point of view of today's researchers in superconductivity, but it is, Ashcroft said, "a totally charming paper," with significant insights for its time. Among other things, Ashcroft said, Einstein correctly predicted that a strong magnetic field would destroy superconductivity, something verified later by experiment."

(Natural, the Ashcroft in question is the famous one---well, famous within the solid state physics community.)

The Aerodynamics of Insect Flight

Here is a very cool article on the aerodynamics of insect flight, which was reporting the results (and associated background) of a new PNAS paper by Caltech professor Michael Dickinson and colleagues. Dickinson does very nice work, but he is unfortunately one of those experimentalists who seems to like to slam theorists at every opportunity. He did it in a seminar I saw him give, and he and his coauthors wrote the following in their paper:

"Since this time," the authors note, "bees have symbolized both the inadequacy of aerodynamic theory as applied to animals and the hubris with which theoreticians analyze the natural world."

Modern theoretical work on insect flight is predominantly computational in nature. (One faculty member at Cornell, Jane Wang, has done a lot of excellent work in this area. I first became aware of this problem at the job interview she gave at Cornell during my first year there.) In fact, the associated numerics are extremely difficult, which is one reason why there was confusion years ago about scientists predicting that insects can't fly. Models that don't model the wings as continua (and use rigid body dynamics instead) don't do the job here, so the problem of insect flight is much more difficult than that of airplane flight. This is an unsteady aerodynamics problem with a fluid (the air) coupled to deformable solids (the wings), and very intense computions (that challenge the current technology enormously---let alone what used to be available) are required to deal with it.

Anyway, this is one of the topics in fluid mechanics that I find really neat. I've never done any work in it and have many other things on my list so I can't say that I ever will, but this is definitely one where it's especially cool to keep abreast of how scientific understanding is developing.

New arXiv paper: Community structure of Rappers

I just saw the following paper about community structure among rappers. Here is the abstract:



Title: A Statistical Analysis of the Community Structure of a Weighted Collaboration Network Among Rappers
Authors: Reginald D. Smith
Comments: 8 pages, 1 figure
Subj-class: Physics and Society
\ The social network formed by the collaboration between rappers is studied
using standard statistical techniques for analyzing complex networks. In
addition, the community structure of the rap music community is analyzed using
a new method that uses weighted edges to determine which connections are most
important and revealing among all the communities. The results of this method
as well as possible reasons for the structure of the rap music community are
discussed.
\\ ( http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0511215 , 274kb)


There are a couple of amusing things here. First, the article discusses the classification via traditional feuds (East Coast, West Coast, and all that), and it makes me smile to see this discussed in a "physics" paper. (Note: My own work on communities in Congress is also "physics" in the sense that the statistical physics community has adpoted network theory even though a lot of it isn't really physics per se. That said, physics is a state of mind rather than any specific collection of topics). Second, the author is from MIT's Sloan School of Management. This seems a bit of an odd data set for someone from a management school to study.

I didn't actually go through the paper to see if the science was good, and I wonder if any of this guy's methodology might be useful for the data sets I have.

Word to your mother.

D & D scheduling for weekend of 12/2

Now that we've all been tenderized a bit (con damage will do that to a bird...), it's time to schedule next weekend's session.

My timing is a bit restrictive this time (so if the only way for things to work is to play while I'm gone and NPC Clutu, then there's no problem on my end), as I am out of town from Wednesday morning until Saturday evening.

Sunday 12/4 is the only day that's uniformly good for me. I can, however, play a little bit Saturday night if absolutely necessary. (I'll probably feel like crap---I don't do well on flights---but I can eventually get myself to the game if absolutely necessary. We're supposed to touch down at 5:30, so incorporating luggage and Super Shuttle, I figure that 8pm or so is a reasonable estimate for me to actually arrive at the game.)

If we did a quickie during the week, I am available tonight and tomorrow (after about 8pm for tomorrow because I have something at the Ath ending at 7pm and will want to go home and change before any game we play).

Also, there is a matter of the play about pirates (at the Pasadena Playhouse) on Thursday 12/8 at 8pm. Tim and I are going, and I need to figure out how many other tickets to buy, so please let me know if you want to come that day and I'll go ahead and buy the appropriate number of tickets.

Pride and Prejudice (the movie version)

I saw the movie version of Pride and Prejudice a couple weeks ago, so this entry is a bit late. I saw this with a friend of mine, as this movie was not on the list of flicks I'd bother seeing on my own.

I read Pride and Prejudice several years ago as part of a Victorian English fiction class, and I found the novel to be well outside my paradigm. In fact, I am not a fan of Austen's writing in general, in large part because she focuses on things I detest, such as etiquette, manners, and good breeding. This book was, naturally, full of that garbage.

OK, then, so why was I open-minded about the movie? Mainly, I figured (correctly, as it turns out) that such stuff would be vastly diluted in the movie version. Stuff like is much harder to do on the screen, because the pages and pages of that stuff just gets whittled down naturally. Also, if I am going to see a chick flick (or something that has a good chance of being one), it might as well be based on a book (even if I don't think too highly of the book). I could also add 'and it might as well have Keira Knightley in it', but I agreed to see the film before I knew that.

As it turns out, the film was very good. There were a lot of humorous moments in the film version, so even if the book annoys you, definitely give the film a chance. (If you liked the book, then you should definitely see the film version because it manages to be a pretty faithful adaption without the heavihandedness that bothered me about the book.) Knightley's having an actual accent helps here, although the random giggling of her and her on-screen sisters---there was even one time that they looked at some random place off-screen and giggled at something unseen; I had absolutely no clue what was so funny to the characters---and it was interesting seeing her in this film given that the last role I saw her play was bounty-hunter Domino Harvey. That movie and this movie are practically polar opposites in style, although both characters do possess a sharp tongue (just with extremely different external trappings) and some related internal similarities.

For films based on Victorian fiction, the one that was superlative was Vanity Fair, which (1) was based on an awesome book with the cynical attitude I so love and (2) was cast almost perfectly.

(I also plan on writing an entry on Shopgirl soon, which I found to be decent but which didn't come close to meeting my expectations. More on that later.)

Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic

Sarah Silverman is officially awesome. Her "movie" Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic is really more of a souped-up stand-up skit, and it's really, really, really hilarious. Silverman's humor jives very much with my own sense of humor, which is why I wanted to see this film. However, it's definitely not for everybody; in particular, people who are easily offended (or who aren't into political incorrectness) should probably pass on this, although IMO that would be your loss. Subjects like rape, race, "little people", AIDS, the holocaust, and 9/11 show up repeatedly in the jokes (which can be a bit tasteless at times, much to my enjoyment), so consider yourself warned.

Anyway, the flick was bloody awesome! I was laughing the whole time. It's certainly not for the easily offended, but that's why I wanted to see it in the first place. I had seen a short preview for it (technically not a trailer, I think, because it was combined with the main feature) with The Aristocrats, which is also bloody hilarious. Silverman's performance in The Aristocrats was extremely good and coupling that with the preview, I knew that her "film" was a 'must see'. There are a ton of good lines in Jesus is Magic, as one would expect from the format. Several of the jokes are racial in nature, and I especially enjoyed several of the Jewish-themed ones because of my own heritage. (Of course, given her background, it's not surprising that she can do an excellent job delivering those jokes.) One that I especially liked was the following: "I was raped by a doctor... [pretty long pause] ... which is bittersweet for a Jewish girl." This line is fairly representative of her style of humor, which I appreciate greatly. Again, it's not for people who are remotely easily offended or who aren't into very caustic political incorrectness. (Subjects like rape, race, AIDS, the holocaust, and 9/11 show up repeatedly in the jokes, so consider yourself warned.)

Now, I would consider ranking this my top film of the year (and in terms of pure enjoyment, it's definitely on the short list), but it's not really a movie per se, so I don't think comparing it to movies consisting of actual stories is fair. A fair comparison: As much as I loved The Arisocrats, this flick was even better.


Some Silverman quotes from IMDB also convey her style of the humor very well:

"People are always introducing me as "Sarah Silverman, Jewish comedienne." I HATE that! I wish people would see me for who I really am- I'm white!"

[on the US-Iraq war of 2003:] "This is not the first time that Europe has been passive while a Jew-hating tyrant with a weird looking mustache killed the people by giving them gas. [Pause.] Obviously I'm talking about Chef Boyardee."

"Wax on, wax off." (RIP Pat Morita)

I just saw the headline about the death of Pat Morita who is most famous for his role of Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid movies. I've heard Morita had quite a foul mouth in his stand-up (and that he was bloody hilarous), which isn't surprising given that he and Redd Foxx were good buddies. (Morita guest-starred on severa; episodes of Sanford and Son, for example.) Many of the best quotes from the Karate Kid movies came from Morita.

As funny as he could be, Morita was an awful singer, as far as I can tell. In a spring training baseball game I attended in Palm Springs back in the day (circa 1988 or 1989, back when the Angels still trained in Palm Springs), Morita sang the national anthem. He was sincere in his attempt at the song (unlike some comedians...), but it was laughably bad.