One of many awkward me-affiliated places.
Time-Dependent SemiPublic Memory Bank,
Super Secret Dumping/Proving Ground,
Displaced Miscellany Collection,
3 Hours in the Future (EST)
In the vast expanse of networked global telecommunications space, there persists an awkwardly chirped soundbite of a ~5 years younger version of myself on Headline News saying, “Oh, you know, a lot of science is just sorta sitting still and waiting: so, uh…”
I have found this preamble can justify a panoply of weirdnesses*.
(54 is a pseudoperfect number of hours though, it’s not weird.)
*Or at least activities that can be done with a non-otherwise engaged half of a brain.
Day 144: The Champions of Breakfast Triptych Endures.
I can make both the pro- and anti- preservative arguments.
There are some who might call me “The St. Jude* of the Produce Section”. And I would say,
“My magnanimous adoption of desperately weird looking potatoes, and constant toting of scrolls and carpenter’s rules is no reason for veneration, you guys. You need not honor me: just…do good works.”
It’s just about leading by quiet example, sometimes. Sense of hominess and homeliness aside, I don’t identify with these vegetables, really.
*I forget how it was organized, but I believe my only formal affiliation with St. Jude’s was the Math-a-thon fundraiser back in the…80s. And I didn’t do that because I was a particularly good little kid so much as the fact that I really enjoyed doing math. I still do, depending on the math.
20121122: 110/67, 86; 114/62, 95; 109/64, 91; 115/66, 88; 116/66, 92; 114/59, 90; 112/65, 93; 108/61, 95; 115/73, 93; 112/59, 89; 109/54, 92; 115/73, 89. 20120905: 117-69-97; 127-73-98; 112-76-94; 118-76-95; 120-76-99; 122-77-100; 123-77-97; 121-73-94; 121-78-91; 127-73-98; 112-76-94; 118-76-95; 120-76-99; 122-77-100; 123-77-97; 121-73-94; 121-78-91; 127-73-98; 127-72-98; 120-74-100; 130-77-96; 117-77-96; 126-71-99; 109-68-94; 107-64-93; 107-58-97. 20120801 Marshes: 119/71//85; 111/59//82; 112/63//87; 114/64//85; 111/60//82. 20120704 Walmart: 132/78, 106; 130/73, 96; 119/74, 94; 113/81, 90; later; 131/90, 95; 129/90, 99. 201207031300ish standing at mall: 152/126, 111; 111/73, 113; 122/83, 105; 122/98, 114; right; 128/84, 110; 131/81, 111; later; 134/84, 111; 138/79, 107; 122/80, 105; 110/72, 109; 124/78, 107. 201207011215; 114/66, 87 BPM; 118/73, 79; 122/70, 85; 118/63, 79
(♫ I’m on a Mexican radio; I’m on a Mexican Num-bers radio! ♫)
…
The weird thing is—if we’re really being honest here—that I have my own manual sphygmomanometer, and numbers generally do calm me down. However, most of the calming effect seems to really require a robot voice.
“It has been noted that in games with simultaneous movement, the mathematical combinations are staggering: ‘Unlike chess, which has 20 possible opening moves, seven player Diplomacy, with its ‘simultaneous’ movement, has over four quadrillion possible opening moves.’”
*All entities move and nothing remains still
“The academic off-season (traditionally referred to as “summer”) can be especially difficult on mathletes, though various training regimens have been proposed to keep mathletic ability at its peak.”
...evaluate and rank me! Oh, I’m good, good, good, and oh so smart! —
More than a feeling I just remember.
![Who has 10 (DECIMAL: digits; BINARY: thumbs) and used to crush “math a thons” in elementary school?
*Waving frenetically while pointing at self with thumbs* Yeah.
[Still trying to get into a more cocksure* mental place.]
*Yeah, I know; but “ladyparts-certain” does not have the same cachet.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2hne2G1Fj1qauqmuo1_500.jpg)
Who has 10 (DECIMAL: digits; BINARY: thumbs) and used to crush “math a thons” in elementary school?
*Waving frenetically while pointing at self with thumbs* Yeah.
[Still trying to get into a more cocksure* mental place.]
*Yeah, I know; but “ladyparts-certain” does not have the same cachet.
Mathletes nationally ranked
——-
Sneakers and sweat pants are not the uniform. No helmets, spikes, crosses, or sticks are needed to play. Participants on the Mathletes are equipped with the eight pound weight between their ears and a pencil.
Recently, these masters of logic and numbers captured first place in the Senior Division of the Lehigh University/AT&T Math Contest…
“When I wear my lab goggles as a hat, I report numbers without judgment.”
(Ed.: Compiled Data Here)
The “you” was not clear.
The “far” and “pleasant” are to scale.
The “work” is still pending.
I sat and watched this little geometer¹ for almost 20 minutes yesterday. Entertaining as it was, I later remembered what pulled me away from an interest in entomology: I’ve since literally itched probably 16 and 16 square inches (206.45 cm ²) of skin raw. Etymology is a much more comfortable hobby.
¹Geometer: ORIGIN late Middle English: from late Latin (…) geometra, based on Greek geōmetrēs, from gē ‘earth’ + metrēs ‘measurer.’
…Those days are fever days and you sweated them away. You’ll never know what oceans of work you lost because you were moping! (Moping in your unmade bed! Always moping!…)
-Proof (2005)
New alarm-clock sound? It is alarming. Like a bullet shying past one’s head.
(This weekend, this movie was watched and the CFD slidedeck was adjusted instead of the work getting finished. [Such passivity requires the passive voice.] And then today I overslept. [Active.] The bullets are getting closer. Not in the slides.)
Its name was “the Oracle of Bacon”: how could I have forgotten its name?
(I don’t have any affection for bacon, but it is a good name!)
Things whose existence please me/Spreadsheets I have Loved
Back in/around 2006ish (or at least 2006ish according to my offsite offsite offsite backup,) I had a kooky idea about mapping all the collaborations in labs in the UCB College of Chemistry. I had started collecting data based on the joint students that I knew/lived with/could track down on lab websites, and even had started to put the data into a format where some manner of programming wizardry could make it useful to someone besides me who might be interested in figuring out the best way to begin joint research projects. Profriendster/Professorkut/Profligate Wastes of Time (PWoT had an assortment of different names—I enjoy naming things,) died in the water because the etch-a-sketch thing, which also rooted in 2006, thrived more than I expected it to and thinking about those things ate up a lot of my non-science time.
BUT!
Microsoft, using the metadata from publications (OH-SO-SMART, it is ever-so-slightly galling), now has a fancy thing that does that, at scale. [Microsoft Academic Search (Beta); Visual Explorer/Co-author Path] “It’s pretty neat,” is what I was going to write before I realized that it needs plug-ins that I don’t have in firefox/on this computer. It is neat. In any case, I’m 3 co-authors away from Einstein, Hawking, Sagan, Feynman (lots of different sets of 3). 2 away from J. Craig Venter! 1 away from Pete Shultz! We’re like creepy cousins! (I’m 4 away from my dad and there are no publications listed for my mom, though she does have a paper or two that I know exist: I will not be mentioning this to them as science fights are avoidable in any case.) Google *may have* a version of this that had appeared in the google-scholar thing for beta testing a while back, but—despite my deep roots with those guys—I have not seen it yet.
This is like a nerdy version of the imdb mining thing that calculated least steps degrees of Kevin Baconry. Intellectually delectable!
Whät Wë Tälk Äböüt Whën Wë Tälk Äböüt Röck.”
One of my former bosses is noted for saying that you can sleep with your ideas, but you should not marry them. Some of them make awfully compelling cases for themselves, though, my abuse of diacritics notwithstanding.
I just like making up titles. While the phrase usually used is “too clever by half”, I imagine one can be too clever by 3/4. I’ll let you know when I get there.
OM: Why are you taking a picture of that receipt?
ME: I don’t think you realize how good a receipt this is.
—before a long numerical conversation that I believe Rutger Hauer would call “tedious”*. The next number in both of those right-side 4 number sequences is 5. And it kind of implies, maybe not that I’m lost, but perhaps that I’m not found? That I have problems communicating with the server? And …
And I’m a hard person to know. And for this I am sorry. But c’mon. Look at it.
*The R.H. Dream, in 4 toots: 1 -2 -3 -4
“Firehose of Knowledge” was my nickname as a TA. Sometimes there was another one that would make me infer that I was not among the 99 canonical problems. General observation: few people are as quiet as they think.
