topology has been joy-rioted

Mon, 02 Mar 2009 01:03:01 GMT

whats panarchy like these days?

everyone's week sucks. equivalently, it wasn't anyone's week. time for another week now.

i am vividly recalling

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:56:03 GMT

the insane effectiveness of the BLOCK button from high school.

OH AND THE WARN BUTTON

aim was my favorite computer game.

god and then it turned so dark, with allow lists.

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:49:28 GMT

+it turns out i was making too big a deal out of things!!!!! i love when that happens
-i can't find my ipod.

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:10:48 GMT

i don't usually do these, but this one is fun.

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* Grab the nearest book.
* Open the book to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions if you want to.
* Don't dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

in my case, it's kind of lame: jean-pierre serre's local fields was the nearest book, and the sentence is

Decompose the rational function 1/f(T) into a sum of "simple elements" a_k/(T-x_k), and determine the a_k by the usual procedure.

what have i eaten today?

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:11:22 GMT

1. one small remaining slice of fake meat quesadilla that jon and jamie cooked last night ( i slept over bc i had to get up early to potentially sub for nick cotton's class)

2. three relatively small pasta shells stuffed with spinach and cheese and mushrooms and covered with marinara sauce

3. a lot of blueberry kugel

4. two servings of yogurt, with granola and blueberries

5. two pieces of sour dough bread with artichoke spread

6. a can of corn chowder

the point is that i should stop, but i don't want to.

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 16:42:23 GMT

sunset rubdown concert was good. i am really into twitter now and only post here occasionally as a result, it seems. these things ebb and flow though, i have noticed. i'll be back. word.

VAP ATTACK

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 15:43:26 GMT

i have been incapable of moving myself for like two hours by accident.

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:46:30 GMT

it is like god wanted me to solve differential equations and has been punishing me ever since for calling him out on how much they suck. so i'm TAing the course. i have been grading diff eq homework since fall of 2003.

that's ok. it's dull, but it's easy and takes so little time relative to other things.
i'm fantastically hungry and think i'll head to baltimore.

bnb: the sequel

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:24:25 GMT

everyone should get a twitter. it's like facebook status without the facebook.

suspended realities.

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 02:42:43 GMT

outside the coop, which is not known for its john-mayerishness there was a john-mayerish guitar player. he wasn't untalented as a guitarist or a singer, but his sensitive vocals were pretty grating. anyway, as i munched on a delicious burrito, he started playing a few tunes he had written. then he said something along the lines of "this next one's not by me folks. it's a tune from jump little children called 'mexico.'"

omfjump. it's so improbable, i thought i was dreaming. JLC is from charleston, but theyre-- they were-- pretty centrally rooted in NC, having met at the school of the arts (where my mother taught english, and where her friend's daughter dated the lead singer jay clifford). i saw them many times late in high school. chris garrett had a crappy autographed JLC poster which i earned from him for some reason, which i hung in my room at panarchy (the penthouse) and which garrett jones was like "Who is this band?" in response to visualizing. the only point of the poster was that i vaguely knew that it was cool to be into bands that were a. local b. unfamiliar to everyone, though i didnt have the foggiest clue how much work that would be.

"mexico" is not a bad song. i heard the premiere of it by JLC themselves, once, at the Carrboro arts center! this guitarist played it well, and arguably sang it better than jlc themselves, but it's not a good song for a one man band because it features an accordion, which he didn't have.

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 06:18:29 GMT

god it's like flesh is the theme of the day. everyone is all flesh flesh flesh flesh flesh

i lost my phone

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:30:05 GMT

i am existing in a moment of terror regarding russell's paradox.

career schell in 82

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 22:38:16 GMT

if i stay in grad school, i will probably not get to be a professor at a decent school. on the other hand, if i drop out of grad school, i will definitely not get to be a professor at a decent school.

ALGEBRA!!

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:44:55 GMT

guys. i think i have found my career. i should take algebra quals. i'm serious. i'm teaching the algebra qual review session tomorrow, and we're going over an old qual, so i sat down and did it today. what a complete joy it was. it is the only area of human communication where i've ever felt fluent.

I will give an example that someone who's never done math before can enjoy (I hope).

A GROUP is collection called G, consisting of elements and an operation called *, such that
1. there's some element called 1 where for any x in G, 1*x = x and x*1 = x
2. * is associative; that is, (x*y)*z = x*(y*z)
3. each element g in G has an inverse, h, where gh = 1 and hg = 1.

Examples:

1. take G to be the set of nonzero real numbers and take * to be ordinary multiplication. It's associative, the element "1" is the element that we always call 1, and the inverse of a real number x is just its reciprocal. (You have to throw zero out because it doesn't have an inverse)

2. The "trivial" group is the set {1} where * is defined the only way possible: 1*1 = 1.

3. The group Z2 has two elements called 1 and x. Let's define * (it turns out there's only one way to define it). Axiom 1 says that 1*1 = 1, 1*x = x, and x*1 = x. So we're left to try to find x*x. Well, axiom 3 says x needs an inverse, and 1 isn't x's inverse since x*1 isn't 1. So x must be its own inverse, since there's nothing left to work with. That forces x*x to be 1.

4. This one's related to the symmetries of an equilateral triangle. G is the group of the following "words": {1, r, rr, s, rs, rrs} where the multiplication rule is: to multiply two words together, first write them next to each other in order, then erase any rrr you see, any ss you see, and turn any sr you see into rrs. (the empty word is 1). Examples of the multiplication:

rs * rs = rsrs = r(sr)s = rrrss = (rrr)(ss) = 1 (so this proves that rs is its own inverse)
rs*rrs = r(sr)rs = r(rrs)rs = (rrr)(sr)s = ()(rrs)s = rr(ss) = rr

(it's not obvious why * satisfies rule 2 above-- trust me)

What's interesting about this example is that it proves that a group does NOT have to satisfy the commutative axiom a*b = b*a. For example, r*s = rs, but s*r = rrs.

5. The integers form a group, but only if you interpret * as meaning + and 1 as meaning 0. The integers don't form a group when * means "times" because integers greater than one don't have inverses.

RIDICULOUSLY FASCINATING ALGEBRA PROBLEM: Let G be a group and suppose that G consists of a PRIME NUMBER of elements. Prove that G DOES have to satisfy the commutative law.

That one's probably too tough to solve from just the definition of a group, but this next one is do-able.

RIDICULOUSLY ENJOYABLE ALGEBRA PROBLEM: Let G be a group and suppose there are exactly 4 elements in G: 1, x, y, and z. prove that G satisfies the commutative law. (hint: make a 4 by 4 multiplication table for G and use logic to fill it in).

list of things not to do if youre bored

Sun, 08 Jun 2008 00:54:38 GMT

on a saturday night and are easily prone to nostalgic hysteria (WOMB DISEASE):

1. google street view your old haunts

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 14:35:12 GMT

older readers may remember my revelation of september 2005 that a position is something that one posits. it came to me during a hurricane in an airport. i was taking anti-anxiety medication.
FALSE
think about it
a supposition isn't something that you supposit
the opposition isn't the set of folks that opposit
a proposition isn't something that you proposit

and so on. a position, of course, is a manner in which one poses. a quick google confirms that "posit" was first used in english several centuries after "position."

Tue, 27 May 2008 04:09:09 GMT

i worked all day and didnt finish till 10:30 with no interruptions and it was wonderful

Fri, 23 May 2008 16:51:29 GMT

i lost my pants at pantsarchy
it turns out that perl and respectability are intertwined but non-intimately
i am getting distracted by programming when i should be studying. but soon i'll get distracted by studying when i should be programming, so i'm not worried.

the arbitrarity of it all

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:22:12 GMT

suddenly 2-adic numbers seem more rustic than rustiality proper?

Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:35:10 GMT

j'ai brisé quelques coeurs

by saturday morning:

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 17:53:20 GMT

1. learn french
2. break hearts

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 15:25:46 GMT

it's appearing unlikely that i will get better at taking criticism, so my new strategy is to stop sucking.

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 23:25:25 GMT

good:

meeting with advisor thursday, and he signed the e-mail by his first name (!!)

bad:

it would be inaccurate to describe my state as burnt out, since at no point was i ever burnt in. still, doing work is now next to impossible. i also spend as many nights as possible not at home.

ugly:

edebate.

Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:12:32 GMT

me: femininity has no telos
sylvia: not with that attitude it doesn't

judith butler: jews have no telos

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:53:20 GMT

ok definitely not going by ernest even with new people, at least not for a while.

meanwhile:

not math:

pottery! what used to be child labor is now such fulfilling art and craft. in its irrelevance the art has gone from evil to good again. i have to pot in an ahistorical manner, or possibly in a pre-historical manner. a little venture into the realm of the literal: i signed up for a pottery class and i am terrible at it but it seems wonderful and i know i can be good if i do it over and over (just like juggling).

math:

meanwhile: tori glide through my mind. connected sums are so natural here. i'm afraid i have no time for smoothness and care about manifolds only in their brilliant algebraic manifestations. i wish i could fiat this knowledge from my mind into everyone's, my highly limited knowledge of algebraic topology. i must say though, that what i really love the most in math is taxonomy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface#Classification_of_closed_surfaces
maybe i should not drop out but should just switch from number theory to algebraic topology. well, who can know? the actual proofs in that field are quite boring. just the results are interesting. GUYS GUYS. here is what i think i could pull off: i think i could write a book about algebraic topology for people who don't like math. i know THE SHAPE OF SPACE sort of already did that, but i think mine would be different in that it would be less rigorous and more for humanities majors. plus way too much geometry in THE SHAPE OF SPACE.