Sudeep is probably going to yell at me for this, but whatever. I was listening to Dvorak last night (7th and 8th symphonies). It's difficult for me to listen to the 8th and get work done at the same time, since I've played it. I keep listening for the viola part, the runs I could never quite get perfect, the really fun harmony/melody in the third movement. This CD showed me how it was supposed to sound, though I think we actually played this piece pretty well.

But I digress. After I finished the Dvorak CD, I put in Bach's Brandenburgs 1-5 (of which I've played 2, 3, and 5). [small voice] I didn't think the Bach held up well against the Dvorak{/small voice]. I mean, it was pretty enough, but I don't think you can possibly get the power with the small orchestra, I hate harpsichords, and, this is the worst part, all the Bach Concerti sound kind of the same to me. I mean the theme is different, but they're just so formulaic and kind of boring. I even like Mozart more than Bach. Mozart just seems to transcend the formulas more than Bach, and I would never confuse two Mozart symphonies. Two Bach concerti, in the same key? I can't say the same thing about. Sorry, Sudeep.

A note: I don't hate all Concerti. There are some fun Vivaldi Concerti Grossi that we played and I liked Vaughn Williams' concerto accademico a lot too. It's really just the Bach, I guess...

Man, I was all excited today. I got up and braved the 58th St. wind tunnel (It's really windy today and I thought I wasn't going to make it through) to go to the pool to go swimming. I get there and the pool is closed from 12-4 (it was about 1). Since I'm going to Maggie's for the most wholesome 21st birthday celebration ever (cookies and milk) at about 3:30, this wasn't going to work for me. Yuck. No time for the gym either. Oh well, I'll have to go tomorrow.

Amanda and I calculated that one shotglass equals two tablespoons, for those of you doing the most ghetto baking in existence. You know who you are.

Oddly enough, I read about this in the RedEye first...

Kenneth Barrett was arrested for the murder of Catholic lawyer Pat Finucane, known for defending pIRA prisoners. The interesting question is whether the inquiry into Finucane's murder ends here. According to this and this, British intelligence forces might have had a role in this murder. If they did (and I don't know the facts of the case and won't pass a judgment on that one way or the other), they should face justice. I think the British over the last six years have done a good job owning up to their mistakes in the north of Ireland, and I hope that won't stop here.

Midterm in an hour and a half, and we haven't gotten any homeworks back since the last one. I can't study for this!!

Finish the midterm, treat myself to an hour at the gym, then back home to grade papers and work on my midterm. I think I will go to BluesFest tomorrow. I need a break.

Over on Crescat Sententia, they've been talking quite a bit about Spam. I thought I'd offer the following link.

Was talking with C-- about why most people don't know much about the Byzantines. How many of you studied Byzantium in high school? In my "world history" class, our medieval history was exclusively European. The only thing I learned about Constantinople was in connection to the Crusades.I proposed two hypotheses. One was that GIbbon's disapproval of the Byzantines (he considered them effeminate, weakling, dying from the day of their foundation, and one of the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire-- an unfair characterisation, but that's not the point) has influenced later scholars. The problem with this is that Gibbon's views don't necessarily hold a lot of water among historians and haven't for a while. I buy that his views influenced the (lack of) study of Byzantium shortly after the book was written, but now? It's been a long time and I don't think these views would snowball that far. But it might have some effect on popular views of Byzantium.

Another opinion is a little weirder. I think some of it has to do with the fact that we (and by we I mean Americans and to some extent Western Europeans) don't identify with the Byzantines. Particularly I'm thinking of their societal emphasis on religion. To us, the Byzantines' ability to spend days arguing about theology is just weird and particularly in the twentieth century, a bit off-putting. We like to sweep religion under a rug and forget it's there at all. Also, the Byzantines (perhaps unfairly, perhaps not)are characterised as being good at religion and politics and not much else. Generally, these are things we as Americans don't like to emphasise. We can identify with medieval Europe more easily because we see ourselves as the descendents of their society. Even though medieval Europe was even farther than modern western society than Byzantium, we identify more with these people who are our ancestors than with the Byzantines.

I think that's unfortunate. From a purely selfish point of view, I find Byzantine history fascinating and the way the empire managed to meld Roman and medieval societies into something remarkably coherent difficult to get my mind around. The Byzantines also strike me as remarkably likeable too (ed-- You have this problem with overidentifying with things and people who lived long ago.). They weren't warlike, but they fought to defend what was theirs (ed-- that's problematic. What about all the reconquest between 920 and Manzikert? What about the taking of friendly Bulgaria? I imagine the Muslims and the Bulgarians saw the Byzantines as peacelike.). OK, maybe more like their society didn't glorify warfare in the same way that most other medieval societies did. They were supposed to be Christ's empire on earth, after all. I see the Byzantines as an essentially good-natured people and think even most of the squabbling over theology was more petty bickering than anything else. Yes, the world looks nice through my rose-colored glasses, thanks for asking.

The other reason that I think Byzantine history should be studied more in American high schools/ colleges is that I think we have a lot to learn from it. Their law was very good, they operated an almost federalist governmental system for 400 years, they are the most succesful empire ever. The balance they set up between Church and state influenced modern Europe, though the western Church was far more independent than the Eastern one ever was. Their military strategy until 1100 was superb.

This empire lasted for 1100 years, from 330 AD - 1453 AD. To put things into perspective, the Roman empire lasted barely 500 years, and that's if you count such 'Roman' emperors as Romulus Augustus, who was a Goth. But how many people reading this blog can identify more than four Byzantine emperors (and no, Theodora and Justinian don't count separately)? How many people have any concept of Byzantine wars other than Justinian's wars and the battle of Manzikert? Heraclius and his theme system may be the only reason that I don't pray facing Mecca, but I imagine 99% of graduating high school seniors have never heard of him.

I think in a marginally different world, I could have been a Byzantinist. Or a spy.

Still here, still writing. One more page before I get to go home. Really should be a page and a half, but whatever.

Random thing I remembered that should make Susan happy. When I was walking through the Reynolds Club on Saturday, I overheard the following conversation.
Guy 1:(pointing in the general direction of the email stations) That's terrible.
Guy 2: What? The email things?
1: No, the senior class gift.

It finally happened. I tried the system recovery on my computer, and now I can't start Windows. This computer is such a piece of shit. So far, in the about 20 months that I've owned the computer, it's needed two hard drives, a fan/heat sink, and an Ethernet card (sort of). That's ridiculous. Since my dad rocks, he's shipping his old laptop up from Atlanta, and it should be here on Thursday. I can use that till the end of the year, and since I won't need a computer for summer or fall, I can buy a new one at Christmas. I'm eyeing the Dell 600m's right now. Anybody have any Dell horror stories? I'm not going through this crap again. If HP hadn't screwed up and said one repair was under warranty when it wasn't, I would have had to spend $850 on fixing this computer just to make it run, and that is NOT acceptable. Don't ever buy a HP computer, and I'm leary of Compaqs now too. I'm going to compose an angry letter after Wednesday.

Otherwise, I finished the problem set due tomorrow (and by finished, I mean I did 3 of the 5 problems-- I don't have time to do the rest) and am at Crerar for hopefully about three hours of paper. I need a full draft tonight. That's the goal. I have 7.5 pages right now, but the last graf is a bit sketchy. Then one more problem set due Wednesday afternoon, this paper due Wednesday night, a 'midterm' on Friday (sure there're two classes after the midterm), a takehome over the next weekend, and then beginning to study for my finals and such.

God, my life is BORING.

It's an absolutely beautiful Sunday and I'm here at the Reg. I've gotten a bit done. So far, two more pages of my paper, and I'd like to get one more before I leave in an hour and a half or so. The paper is supposed to be ten pages. Not ten to twelve. So nine is OK, right? Anyway, it's going fairly well, though I'm afraid I have only about eight pages worth of things to say, so I'll have to squeeze out another page.

I've found this internet radio station that is playing happy club music in honor of Memorial Day for people stuck at work today and tomorrow. It's oddly comforting, though it's hardly the type of music I ever listen to. Whatever.

Kathleen's General Tips

If you're a professor and arrive ten minutes late for a class, you don't get to keep the class ten minutes later to make up for it. It doesn't work like that.

Don't refer to yourself in the third person.

Bach fugues are not appropriate as cell phone ring tones.

You know those signs painted on a lot of street corners that say "No Bikes on the Walk?" Those apply to you.

If I can hear your conversation across the reading room at the Reg, you need to take it elsewhere.

Shoes should stay on your feet in class. There are no exceptions.

I'm sure Susan has a million more of these, so I'll stop.

I'm writing a paper and doing my laundry right now, since my life is just that boring. The laundry's almost done, but the paper's not.

It's about this life of the patriarch Tarasios, specifically its role as religious propaganda. It was written about the time of the second iconoclast controversy by an iconophile and spent a lot of time glorifying the iconophile Tarasios and explaining why iconclasm was bad. But there's a lot more propaganda in it than that. Stuff about the second marriage of Constantine VI is ignored, as is Tarasios' position in the imperial bureaucracy. He, like Thomas Becket or Nicephorus, was raised to his position as a religious leader despite not being a churchman. He argued with (and was hated by) the Studite monks, major figures in the Church.

So I think my thesis is more or less sound. It's just sitting down and writing the damn thing that makes me sad.

Hey, for those of you in Chicago, you should check out the RedEye machine on the corner of 56th Street and Woodlawn. It appears that Team Verna has returned the "borrowed" box with some added decorations.

It's so nice today. I went to the driving range this morning and to the gym after class. Walking home, I saw an Alaskan husky, light colored with those icy blue eyes. And a little black bulldog that was really afraid of me. Walking to the Co-op at 10:30 last night two people were walking a Golden Retriever and a little fox terrier (I think). At the carnival on Saturday, a woman was walking a Great Pyrenees that barely seemed to notice anyone else's existence and a really old Golden Retriever. I miss my dog.

Speaking of carnivals, the provider-of-bunnies-carnival is back for the year. Does anyone want to go? And yes, I know I can't get a bunny this year. Shut up.

Scary ad-related things of the day:

I got an email advertising "HGH at discounted prices."

Also, last night, I was reading about Chicago theater in the New York Times and I got the funniest ad ever. It was for tourism in Rhode Island. I'm not sure if it comes up every time, but I got it between pages 1 and 2. It really has to be seen to be believed.

I finished reading Handful of Dust two nights ago. It's about a woman who has an affair with a man, and this affair's effect on the woman, the man, and the husband. Though the story is told by a partially-omniscient third person narrator, the point of view of the narrator switches around a lot through the book. It opens with John Beaver, switches briefly through his mother, then goes to Brenda Last, then Tony Last. The end switches between all of them more and more quickly. It's an interesting device and I think it works pretty well for this type of book.

The problem was that I didn't find Brenda or John at all compelling. I have very little sympathy for a woman who sleeps around on her husband, tries to cheat him out of a lot of money during the divorce, and then complains about how poor she is when he manages to stop her from cheating him by dumb luck. John is just sort of a loser who obviously doesn't give a damn about Brenda.

Tony seemed like a nice enough guy, but he is passive almost throughout the book (he is really active only once). He isn't strong enough to serve as the hero. I suspect we're supposed to see Brenda as the hero, but I just can't like her enough to do that. But the book had a strong plot with a couple of unexpected twists, and I enjoyed it.

Everything's looking up today. I rebooted my computer and it's running enough so I can burn the movie and music files off the hard drive and hopefully by tomorrow will be able to do a system recovery. I can't save anything on there until I do that, so I need to be pretty quick.

Went to golf today and realised that one hour at the driving range and one 40 minute class on putting stand between me and being done with my PE requirement.

I did four problems from my problem set, have no clue how to do the other three, and really don't care.

It's amazing what sleeping for eight and a half hours will do to your outlook on life. The only thing I'm worried about right now is that I don't have the number theory assignment that's due tomorrow. Hmm.

Today sucked. I got up to do the budget for college bowl (which is a $20,000 budget that they give us exactly five days to do), spent about five hours on it, realised it was due at 3 rather than at 5, skipped my 2:30 class, and did get it finished, though I think parts of it aren't right. Talked to Diana and found out that Enterprise is claiming they called Amanda about the missing car saga (short story-- she parked it on the wrong floor of the parking garage, they didn't call to ask her where it was for two weeks and want us to pay for 'having' the car that whole time. Oddly enough, after they called her, it took them 20 minutes to find the car. You think the dipshits would have looked before). So they said they called her (even though they didn't leave a message on her machine), so we should have to pay them $500, which I don't think we have left in the budget. I asked Diana to keep fighting with them. I get home, my computer has gone from hiccupy to non-functional. No Internet Explorer, no Outlook, no AIM. I can use insecure Telnet to check my email (shut up, Matt), but that's about it. I ran chkdsk and chkdsk /F, but apparently everything's too corrupted for that to fix it. If I don't run chkdsk every time I reboot my computer, it doesn't reboot, but chkdsk takes an hour to run. Oh, and apparently my /pagefile.sys file is completely fucked up. Wonderful. So I'm facing a system recovery. I'm hoping I can get the computer to boot back up so I can burn some movies and a couple of papers to my hard drive.

Went to a talk on the Poincare conjecture for my topology class that actually wasn't that bad, but I have a problem set due in 16 hours that I've barely started, the beginnings of a migraine, and I haven't eaten since last night.

So my day really wasn't that bad. It was the Phil, prince of Insufficient Light of bad days. I still feel better for bitching about it for a while.

I've been a bad baseball fan recently and haven't been paying much attention to the Braves. Maybe I should continue doing that. Last time I checked, they sucked. Now-- best record in baseball:-) Must mention this to Subash, particularly with the Mets in last place, no? If the Braves can just sign Sheffield for next year and (please please please) bring back Millwood, I'll be really happy.

Yayy, Funny Cide won the Preakness today. I would love a Triple Crown winner this year, though it seems that a lot of horses can win the first two parts. The extra quarter mile of the Belmont just screws them up.

I went to the carnival today. Riding around on the little train that went approximately 3 miles an hour with Avi, Laura, and Solma, eating a deep-fried Twinkie, making fun of a Texan who couldn't ride a mechanical bull, ah, good times. . . It seems that everyone I know at the U of C was either at the carnival or at the Reg.

Concert tonight, but I'm not going. Too much work to do. I think I might drop by a party for five minutes with Maggie, but that's about it. I'm so behind, both on classwork and grading, and I can't motivate myself to do any work. Oh, well, grades don't matter, right?

We cooked dinner last night. Will, William, Evan, and Anna came for dinner (and Maggie came after we didn't have any food left-- sorry, Maggie). I think it went pretty well. We had tabouli for salad, lentil soup, quiche, and a fruit tart. It was all very good. Raspberries make me so happy. I think I might go to Hyde Park Produce and buy some after I finish here. Stupid work.

My computer's not doing so well. Internet Explorer wasn't working so I tried to reboot and it wouldn't reboot. I'm running ScanDisk (or I guess, CheckDisk in WinXP, but whatever). Hopefully that will fix the problem. I know I need to do a clean install but I really don't have time until the summer.

Also, my mother broke her leg. I'm going to send her a box, but I don't know what to put in it. If you were stuck in bed for four weeks, what would you want?

Do you know what? It's May and it's 48 F outside right now. That's ridiculous.

More about education-- Will has posted something I actually agree with, more or less. His proposal was what I was going for before, though he said it much more clearly. My idea was essentially to have the schools in an area band together, so that one could be a vo-tech school, one could be college prep, one could be arts/writing/whatever, and so on. This would save money while giving students more options. This cluster system would reduce the cost of busing (which is much higher than most people realise-- more than 2% of my county's budget during my senior year).

And while I don't approve of the really rigid tracking that German schools use, and I don't think there should be any tracking until high school, I don't have a problem with a flexible tracking system in high school. This system exists already in most high schools, though it's self-selective. The kids who take the AP classes (and most kids who take one AP class take a bunch) end up taking classes together, while other students take all their classes together. The system I'm proposing would be essentially self-selective too; a student decides which school he or she wishes to go to and the curricula would be complementary enough that s/he could change after ninth or tenth grade. Ideally the schools would be integrated enough that changing schools wouldn't be hard on students who lost friends, but that's something that would have to be tested.

I have two problems with Will's proposal as written. One is that he seems to be proposing for-profit schools. I've heard no stories that for-profit schools work. I know the experiment in Philly has been a disaster (in terms of money, though I understand the education offered was pretty good), and I don't think any Edison school has turned a profit. Unless you can find a drastically different model, I think the government is probably going to have to administer the schools. If the schools are for-profit (or even if they're not), I'd want some sort of oversight committee, to make sure the schools are teaching appropriate material and to certify new schools in the system. I also am not sure about the constraints Will suggests. I don't think requiring a school to accept all comers is feasible and I think that if a student and requiring integrated schools doesn't work in all districts (Amanda probably has something to say about that, but my school system was 10% white and the city of Atlanta was under 5%. How do you integrate this? This is hardly a unique problem. How many rural counties are less than 5% black? And I'll bet that the urban school system in every southern city is less than 10% white).

One more thing before I go to sleep. I think it's time for the federal government to chip in more money for education. Two reasons. One, there's something fundamentally wrong with saying that someone who went to school in New Jersey gets a better education than someone who went to school in Mississippi. I don't think there's any way to come close to equalising the schools without federal funding. Two, the reason the communities were originally supposed to pay for schools was because they were getting the largest benefit out of having well-educated children. In the world we live in now, this simply isn't true. Well-educated people move around to wherever the jobs are, and I'm sure Atlanta with its abysmal school system is benefiting from the adequate to good public education in the Rust Belt far more than Rust Belt cities are. So why shouldn't Atlantans pay?

A lot of debate about school choice going on. A bit of anecdotal and therefore completely worthless data follows.

I went to elementary school in an average neighorhood in Atlanta. My school ranged from lower middle class to upper middle class. Our test scores were about what you would expect from such a school. My high school had a much greater range, from lower class to upper middle class, but half was a magnet school and drew students from all over the county and the other half was a regular high school in one of the better neighborhoods in Atlanta. My county was one of the worst school districts in a state that regularly boasts the 50th (of 51, including DC) SAT scores in the country. High school dropout rates were atrocious, and I think some of the schools in my ocunty had a 5% college attendance rate. By any objective measure, the system is failing. Despite this, I got a pretty good education. Going to the magnet school and having a fairly involved PTA meant that though our facilities were embarrassingly bad (science labs virtually nonexistent at times, giant cockroaches everywhere, heating that sort of did it's own thing), we got good teachers, plenty of AP classes, and chances to actually go to good colleges, something most students (both magnet and not) from my high school did.

However, this system was at the expense of everyone else in the county. My county was very polarised between white and black, and even the middle- and upper-middle-class blacks who lived in the south end of the county (who made up the majority of black residents of the county) got completely shafted in the education system. If you weren't smart enough or talented enough to get into one of the county;s magnets (and some were better than others, but all were better than the home schools in that area) and your parents weren't rich enough to pay for a private school or lucky enough to talk your way into another school, you were stuck. The white end of the county (and I use the term loosely, only one high school was less than 50% black) were better off.

You'd think with these experiences I'd be in favor of school choice, right? No, I'm not. I think that taking away money from failing schools is completely and totally counterproductive. If the school is remaining open and students are still attending the schools, you're just wrecking the chances of the students who stay. And generally closing the failing schools is not an option. Plus there is a reason for having students go to school in their own neighborhoods. Not only is it easier on them not to have to ride a bus for two hours to get to school (which some of my friends did) and they get to have friends in their neighborhood, but ultimately the communities (not the larger state/federal government) are supposed to be responsible for education. Moving students all over the place decreases the community influence on education which we're supposed to value.

There are other problems with school choice too: there are only so many 'working' schools and if they're not full they may require putting your 8-year-old daughter on the subway for an hour and a half (as in the NYT article I cited below). Ultimately, I think the only solution is to fix the neighborhood schools. I wonder if this is possible. It will require a lot more than the current budget and I imagine the feds/states (probably both) will have to chip in. And I can't imagine all schools ever being equal in a qualitative sense ot the word. Ideally, I'd like every school to give every student a chance to succeed at some field that interests him/her.

I think a tracking system might be the way to go in larger districts. This would allow poorer schools to pool their resources while still keeping students relatively close to home. If a student wants to become a mechanic, shouldn't he spend part of his day learning that and less of his day reading Shakespeare? The elitist in me says that he's not getting as good an education, but I'm not sure that that's really true. I definitely think an education like this would be better than the vast majority of the education a student receives in a failing public school now, anyway, so if it's not a long term solution, at least a short term one. I know many European districts have had success with tracking in the past (though the school systems and societies are so different that I'm not sure the comparison can teach us anything).

I don't know that I like this solution, but I'm just kind of throwing it out there.

One of the many problems with school choice programs.

This is one of the weirder quizzies:
What chracter from the Little Prince are you?

You are the little prince.


Saint Exupery's 'The Little Prince' Quiz.
brought to you by Quizilla

Today is the anniversary of the death of the last two Irishmen executed for their role in the Easter Rising, Sean MacDiarmida and James Connolly. Ar dheis siad go raibh a anam.

Since I've gotten so many hits from people looking for the Scavhunt list, it can be found here.

ScavHunt is over!! We came in fifth, which was not particularly good but not particularly surprising, either. I'm glad it's over so I can return to the land of the living and actually get some work done. ScavHunt can probably best be summarised by a joke that one of the judges told on Thursday night:
Q: How many ScavHunters does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: 100. 1 to screw it in and 99 to get naked for no apparent reason.

Admittedly, though, there usually was a reason. Our boys gone Wilde were really supposed to be wearing plaster of Paris and fishing twine and it's hard to get a lot of coverage from that. There was an item about a torch relay in your skivvies and apparently one of the judges really wanted to see a Dick Army, if you get my drift. We figured the point of ScavHunt was to make it impossible for as many people as possible to ever run for public office.

Isaac wanted to know what my favorite item was. I'm not really sure. I had fun working on the Echo Courts sign, but it was supposed to be 15-feet tall and made of sheet metal and only one team could really afford to build it right, so I don't really think it was a good item. The MarioKart go-cart race was cool, too, but again, most of the go-carts went on human power since people didn't have the time and money to do it right. I liked some of the little items more. I proved the existence of Max Mason dorm using the Axiom of Choice (well, the well-ordering principle) and transfinite induction since we weren't allowed to use Zorn's Lemma. The U of C porn website was cool, as was the Comma Sutra and the Foam Chomsky. I didn't think the party was very good, it ended up just being 8 separate parties rather than one big one.

Highlights:

• Our team captain, Keren, saying of one of the items: "Yes, I know it's only 8 points, but it's [judge's name's] item and he has a self-esteem problem, so we have to work on it."
  
• One list item was an unaltered orange with exactly seven seeds. We decided to just take a chance, so we just randomly picked an orange. The judge opened it, bitching about how he hated judging the item, mushed around in the inside for a little before telling us there weren't any seeds. Apparently the orange was from the dining hall and therefore a naval orange.
  
• Memorising one of Shakespeare's sonnets in 20 minutes.
  
• Seeing Laundry Boy give a ten minute version of the monologue from here. I think you had to be there.
  
• Seeing one of my former TAs in what appeared to be rabbit ears at the party on the Quads on Friday. Well, they might not have been rabbit ears, but they consisted of a pipe cleaner headband with two things that didn't appear to be antlers attached. I don't know what else they could have been.
  

Lowlights

• Getting more sleep last night than in the last 4 days.
  
• Running into Sudeep at Mr. G's at 10:45 pm while buying 8 bottles of juice for mixers for the party. Apparently Mike also came out of Kimbark Liquors for the first time ever and ran into Sudeep.
  
• The SearsTris tower debacle. We were going to skin a version of Tetris with the Sears tower in the background, Chicago-appropriate theme music, and little U of C building blocks. We got the first two working about 4 Sunday morning, but while adding the third, the computer crashed and completely wouldn't work after that. I went to try to do it Sunday about 12, and my ethernet card wouldn't work so I couldn't download the program on my computer. So, no points. I bought a new Ethernet card, but the old one seems to have fixed itself so I'll probably take this one back.
  
• The ScavOlympics item about blowing smoke into two lungs that Mo somehow morphed into a race the smoke-filled balloons thing. I don't know either.
  
• Driving all around Chicago on Saturday only to discover that almost everywhere I went was closed or didn't have what I needed or had NO parking. Sucked.
  

I'm glad I did ScavHunt. It's a chance to pretend I'm not a U of C student (and don't have any work to do) for 4 days. I'm glad it's over and right now I don't think I'd do it again. But I'll bet that when it comes time next May, I'll be back in the Tufts lounge (or wherever we end up working next year) to do it all over again.

Did people see the article about the shooting at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland? That hit pretty close to home. Not only do I know several people who go there, but I almost went there instead of the U of C. Also, it's the first hostage situation at a college campus that I remember. Have there been any others?

I didn't know it was possible for feet to hurt this much. Also, I'm not going to Iowa tomorrow.

Removed by the better judgement of the editor. Plus, ScavHunt is over.

It's almost mother's day weekend, so it must be ScavHunt time! For those of you not at the U of C, ScavHunt is a massive, 4-day scavenger hunt (which, odd-ly enough, appears in the Wikipedia article under University of Chicago). The list of items to find usually runs about 300 items, some of which must be found, while others must be made. Items can range from "power plants of Maryland" trading cards to "build a bowling alley in the back of an 18-wheeler" (which we did). It's wild and fun and a good chance to pretend we're not U of C students for a while (though with items like "Explian string theory using only sock puppets" and "prove, using the Axiom of Choice, that Max Mason dorm exists," it can be difficult).

Anyway, the list came out last night. The first item is always the list itself (how meta!), and this year the list was shredded through a paper shredder (?-- maybe just cut up, I didn't actually see it) and buried on the 57th Street beach. By the time Snell-Hitchcock dug it up and got it pieced together, it was almost 3 am, but they did share it with everyone. We got the list and almost immediately started planning the road trip, which is staying in Illinois this year. To make up for that, it's going everywhere in Illinois. And I do mean everywhere. I stayed until 9 am getting the road trip together, then went to golf and came home to sleep. Now it's almost time for Boys Gone Wilde, a fashion show at BSLC. Y'all should come out, at 7:30.

I'm taking a class with a lot of reserve reading, all on 24-hour reserve at the Reg. Despite the fact that there are 18 people in the class I've never seen a copy checked out by anyone but me. Am I the only one doing the reserve reading? Did everyone else just buy copies of all the books?

Provos: We were ready to lay down our weapons (from the Irish Independent, byline Brian Dowling and Gene McKenna)

"THE IRA was prepared to put all its weapons beyond use before the latest crisis hit the peace process.

But the Provisionals made it clear last night that the offer was now off the table.

Their plan for full disarmament was outlined in a statement issued to the Irish and British governments on April 13 and made public for the first time last night after Taoiseach Bertie Ahern met British Prime Tony Blair in Dublin.

In the April 13 statement the pIRA disclosed it had renewed contact with General John de Chastelain's international decommissioning body, and said arrangements to put beyond use a third quantity of weapons and explosives was at an advanced stage."

What else do the British want? Only the UUP wanted the elections to be postponed (and by that they really mean cancelled), and on the basis of this document, I don't understand what the British justification was. I think working on these arrangements should be the clear sign that the British wanted that the pIRA was willing to give up violence. It's time for someone else to meet the pIRA halfway.

"It went on to say that decommissioning of all IRA weapons would require a decision could only be taken by a "general army convention" representing "all volunteers"."

That's part of the problem with this whole idea. The pIRA operates on a decentralised cell system, so there's really no way that they can decommission all weapons without talking to all volunteers who have these weapons. That's not them stonewalling. That's the fact of the matter.

"It indicated that such a convention would be called, saying: "The IRA leadership reiterates our commitment to resolving the issues of arms. The commitments from the two governments, including the ending of the suspension of the political institutions and the firm pledge by the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party that he will actively support the sustained working of the political institutions and other elements of the Good Friday Agreement, enables us to do this."

The April 13 statement was intended as a response to the Joint Declaration in which the governments would present their road map for the North. But it was rejected as inadequate by the governments and so the process ground to a halt."

I'm not sure what else they want the pIRA to do. I know they want a clear disavowal of paramilitary techniques, but I don't think the pIRA can do this without some sign from the Protestant terrorist groups (UDA, UFF, UVF, Red Hand of Ulster, etc) that they are willing to do the same thing.

"Last night the Taoiseach and Tony Blair renewed their call for a permanent end to all paramilitary activity. But their appeal looked to have fallen on deaf ears when the IRA, in a new statement, said it regretted that its earlier willingness to facilitate political progress had been rejected by the two governments and the Ulster Unionist party.

According to last night's statement, the IRA leadership had re-engaged with the International Decommissioning Body headed by General John de Chastelain and plans were "at an advanced stage" for a third disposal of weapons only to be hampered by the deadlock in the political negotiations."

In a development, which will be worrying for the two governments, the IRA said these initiatives had now been "overtaken by events" - a reference to the postponement of the Assembly elections and the failure to conclude a political agreement.

Although it reaffirms the IRA's commitment to the peace process, the latest statement strongly suggests that decommissioning is off the agenda for the present."

Shit. Look, most people in Belfast support the Good Friday Agreements (and I don't think I'm talking out of my ass here). And, in the past, I've blamed the pIRA for not being willing to compromise. But it's someone else's turn, too. The pIRA may have started the violence in the North (and that's debatable and depends largely on when you date the Troubles to and whether you believe the British or the pIRA were at fault on Bloody Sunday), but they're sure as hell not the only ones perpetuating it.

I realise that most people reading this blog don't care about this issue. Oh, well, it's my blog and I can be as self-absorbed as I like.

Of course I have class from 7:30 - 10:30, and of course the American Idol results show is on from 7:30 - 8. You know I'm going to leave class at 8 to check to see who got booted, right?

Consider the following problem: "If you jump in front of a Metra train, n"

The case where n = is your problem set still due? has been well studied by Agarwala and Moriarty, who have determined that your problem set is still due, though you are no longer expected to turn it it. The case where n = is your midterm still due? is not as well understood. This author believes that the midterm is still, in fact, due, though there is no longer much incentive for you to turn it in because if you are dead, well, there isn't really much your professors can do to you.

However, this case is still open for study and is appropriate for a BA-level sociology paper.

*Just for the record, this is prompted by Amanda's away message. I am not planning on jumping in front of a Metra train to avoid my number theory problem set.*

And to all you depraved libertarians, I'm going to Purgatory!

Delta? sucks. I bought 8 tickets (for ACF nationals) and I need to get reimbursed. They sent me a frickin' text file as a receipt and told me that I shouldn't need anything else, and if, God forbid, I needed a receipt that I couldn't create on Notepad in 20 minutes, I had to pay $20/ ticket. I called customer service after that, planning on bitching my way up the hierarchy at Delta, and the woman told me if I went to a Delta ticket counter before 18 May, they could print me out receipts. The only Delta ticket counters in Chicago? Are at the airports. I don't have the time to take a 45 minute long bus ride to the airport (and 45 minutes back) to fix their screw-up.

Luckily, my parents rock. My mother is going to pick up the receipts from a ticket counter in Atlanta. Hopefully, they'll give them to her and it will all be OK.

You know, I like to support local, and Hartsfield would be completely screwed if Delta folded, but if they're going to be such dicks about it, I'm not going to fly on their airline anymore. The little mean part of me is glad they're filing for bankruptcy.

Yayy, updated sidebars!

A long time ago, Kristy posted something questioning the value of the million dollar Clay Institute prizes for solving the major unsolved mathematical problems. I meant to post something responding to that, but I forgot, and then it seemed really late, but whatever. Here's the post now. Bit of a disclaimer-- I can't find the actual post, so I'm relying on Will's response (sounds like a problem in historical research-- the original is lost and only some 10th century monastical interpolation survives. But I digress). If I'm misrepresenting Kristy's post, I'm sorry.

Kristy questioned the necessity of giving the prize at all. Couldn't the money be better spent? Well, yes and no. I mean, I don't believe that the prize increases the desire of people to solve these problems. If you're a research mathematician, you're not a research mathematician because of the chance of getting a million dollar prize for solving some unsolved problem. As Hardy said in The Mathematician's Apology "The case for my life, then or for that of any one else who has been a mathematician in the same sense in which I have been one, is this: that I have added something to knowledge, and helped others to add more; and that these somethings have a value which differs in degree only, and not in kind, from that of the creations of the great mathematicians, or of any other artists, great or small, who have left some kind of memorial behind them." If you do research on the level of Jaffee or Lafforgue or Hardy, you doing that research because you can't imagine doing anything else. So the million dollar prize isn't a motivator. On the other hand, it does make things a bit easier. You've got this money with no strings attached. You don't have to justify a trip to Russia to talk with a possible future collaborator or spending six months just thinking about a problem. If it doesn't pan out, it doesn't pan out, but it might.

As for the usefulness of the research, the short answer is that we don't know whether it will be useful or not. It's possible that there will be no practical applications of the solution of the Poincare conjecture (and since I believe most mathematicians believed it was true and acted accordingly, I kind of think this will be the case). However, pure mathematics definitely has impact on the real world. Just a few examples I know: one of my friends last summer worked on applications of algebraic topology to quantum computing (I didn't understand it really, so don't ask me how it worked, though if you want to read his paper, I have a copy) and ideas from number theory will generate the next advances in codebreaking and codemaking.

I think ultimately what math can do, beyond its immediate practical applications, is help us to understand the universe. Whatever applications of GR that we've used, I think that the fundamental understanding of spacetime is more important for those, both because of the longterm applications and because I believe in the search for knowledge for its own sake.

Ultimately, though, I see these prizes as a reward. The people who manage to solve these problems have done something great in the advancement of pure knowledge. They've done something most people can't do. How much do we pay pro atheletes? A really talented mathematician is much rarer than a really talented quarterback. Shouldn't we pay them accordingly?

I think mathematicians kind of get screwed. Most people can see the beauty in a Bach fugue or in a perfect pitch. They can't (or believe they can't) see this beauty in a proof. So they don't see mathematicians as artists; nor do they really understand what mathematicians do or why they do it. Hell, I think my relatives think I sit around computing derivatives all day, and people I meet at parties seem to think I should be good at calculating gratuities. So most people kind of brush off mathematicians as "those weird people who sit around doing calculus all day." Weird? probably justified. The rest maybe not so much. Mathematicians create proofs to explain things that are true. When I was in high school, I was told "if you want to understand how something works, be an engineer. If you want to understand why it works, be a physicist." To that I'd add "If you want to understand why we can even think about it in this way, be a mathematician."

Someone has too much time on their hands.

From class today (about a proof that every surface is a connected sum of projective planes or tori):

Professor: I think the Conway proof isn't very rigorous. It's the kind of proof you could explain in ten minutes at a party and convince most people of.
[everyone laughs]
Professor [defensively]: At a math party. . .

So, is the fundamental group of the n-fold torus abelian if n>1? Munkres seems to say yes and no. I think it's no, but no compelling reason. I don't understand free groups. . . sigh.

The IRA is releasing the statement it gave to Blair's government. It will be interesting to see if it lines up with what Gerry Adams and SInn Fein have been saying. If it does, then the British decision to suspend the elections in the North of Ireland looks suspect.

Funny Cide won the Derby on Saturday. That might be good for racing. Since he's a gelding, there's no incentive for his owners to stop racing him to breed him, so he might stick around past his three-year-old year. Good stallions are too valuable generally to allow to race after that since if they get hurt, the owner could lose millions in stud fees. If Funny Cide continues to be good, he would be a recognisable horse for the public.

The Guardian reports the capture of Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash. Why would an American-educated woman help the Iraqi government procure anthrax? I don't think I can possibly understand. If I were a woman in Iraq, I'd be getting the hell out if I possibly could.

Since Amanda hasn't been doing any copyright infringement lately, I thought I'd pick up the slack. . .

I've been reading Dylan Thomas' Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog recently. I'm almost done, in fact. It's a collection of prose vignettes about Thomas' life in Wales. In the last one, he's probably about 20 and in the first, probably about 12. The chapters seem kind of uneven and Thomas is oddly detached from a story of his own life (you don't ever get to know much about him), but there are some moments that are pure poetry.

In this part, Thomas is visiting his cousin Gwilym who wants to be a preacher.

'Now you confess,' said Gwilym.

'What have I got to confess?'

'The worst thing you've done.'

I let Edgar Reynolds be whipped because I had taken his homework; I stole from my mother's bag; I stole from Gwyneth's bag; I stole twelve books from three visits to the library, and threw them away in the park; I drank a cup of my water to see what it tasted like; I beat a dog with a stick so it would roll over and lick my hand afterwards; I looked with Dan Jones through the keyhole while his maid had a bath; I cut my knee with a penknife, and put the blood on my handkerchief and said it had come out of my ears so that I could pretend I was ill and frighten my mother; I pulled my trousers down and showed Jack Williams; I saw Billy Jones beat a pigeon to death with a fire-shovel, and laughed and got sick; Cedric WIlliams and I broke into Mrs Samuels's house and poured ink over the bedclothes.

I said: 'I haven't done anything bad.'

The funny thing about the book is that it doesn't seem to owe all that much to Joyce. Oh, on a superficial level, it's a story of growing up and there are some religious influences. But Thomas avoids stream-of-consciousness narration and stays out of the story, unlike Joyce. I can think of several novels that owe far more to Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man than this one.

For people who care about such things. . . FUCT went well, Michigan won, Giordano's brought the pizza and forgot the napkins, and Dunkin' Donuts will take a check a week after they drop off the donuts. The stupid BSLC people locked the doors at 5 with Carleton's buzzer inside, so we had to go find someone to unlock it and theat took a while, but still-- it's a minor problem, really.

Went to Nadia's Cinco de Mayo party last night. I ran into some random people, as usual at the U of C. It was fun and the jug Sangria still wasn't really that bad. I still want to make real Sangria though. We also went to this Mexican restaurant in Old Town that didn't card. Yayy margaritas!

Time to go buy soda and begin getting caught up on reading.

"Rodin's anti-union major domo and deputy provost, Peter Conn, who looks as if he loves to eat, loves to argue and gets most of his exercise gesticulating"

-from the New York Times article about PhD students at Penn who want to unionise.

The article isn't particularly unbiased (or really unbiased at all), but it erred on the side I agree with. In this market, only about 20% of new PhDs are getting jobs as professors. I don't think in these situations that the universities can really argue that they are preparing students for jobs in academia.

There were some interesting points about how the way Penn (and other universities) treat their TAs lowers the need for tenured professors, making it harder for the TAs to get jobs when they graduate.

Wow, I'm tired. 7 hours of sleep over the past two days will do that, I guess.

Now I just have to convince myself that everything's going to go fine. It is, it really is.

You know, you forget to put in one lousy quote and it all just screws up. Here's what I meant to say below.

I'm such a dork. I just stayed up until 9:30 am writing two packets for FUCT. I slept for two hours, then got up and studied a little for my midterm that takes place in half an hour that I'm woefully unprepared for. But the packets got finished.

I got back my topology midterm yesterday. It went surprisingly well. I think it was the first midterm I've ever taken where I did better on the problems than on stating definitions or theorems. Shows how much studying I did, I guess. Some day, all this slacking is going to come back to bite me in the ass. I know it. Possibly even today

I'm such a dork. I just stayed up until 9:30 am writing two packets for

Update to the math TA drinking game:

• Student does not simplify answers, leaving things like Ö 16 or sin (p) : Take a very small sip. This occurs roughly twice every problem when they're integrating.

Isn't HTML math cool? I never knew I could do this.

Woohoo, I finally fixed my permalinks. I wasn't pointing to the right subdirectory for the archives. This is why publishing via FTP is kind of a pain.

Also, if anyone knows how to make the directory permissions for this directory automatically 644, please tell me. Every time I archive another week, I have to go into telnet and change it and it's really annoying.

Margaret has posted a math TA drinking game (her permalinks aren't working, so just scroll down the page) to which I'd like to add a few points.

• Student doesn't staple his/her homework: Gulp and write a snide comment about the locations of various staplers on campus. Take an extra sip if you know more than ten.
  
• Student invents a notation involving more than two subscripts or superscripts: Sip. Dude, you have to be sober enough to finish grading, more or less.
  
• Student emails you franctically, saying s/he overslept and missed class and couldn't turn in his/her homework: Gulp bitterly, remembering all those times you dragged your ass out of bed to your 9:30 am first year physics course to turn in the goddamn problem sets. And accept the homework late, natch.
  
• Student turns in homework reeking of pot: Chug. Hey, if your students are having fun, so should you be!
  
• Student proves something by bad handwriting. Sip. Then write an undecipherable score next to it.
  
  I'm sure there are more ways to make this the weirdest drinking game ever. Discuss among yourselves.