Thane Plambeck

As usual, I don't know what I'm going to type

What's the correct model for people's filtering of interesting online "content" (I hate that word, but what else is there?): looking at photographs, reading of books, papers, encyclopedias; reading poems, listening to music---whatever.   I often suspect absolutely no one is reading this blog  [it only mildly troubles me existentially, because I'd probably be writing it for myself in some kind of journal, anyway, if blogs didn't exist]---yet I often come across people telling me, in person, that they do.  The number of people who have told me in person that they read this blog is probably ten times the number of people who have left a comment during its long lifetime.  I'm always surprised.  "Shocked" would be more accurate.  Or, when I post a photo to flickr that I find mildly more interesting than others (most of my photos are boring, even to me), I notice that more people "view" it.   The public's assessment of my contribution usually closely corresponds to my own prior notion of its worth.  When I took the photo of Steve Jobs using an iPhone prior to its release, I thought, "well, that's kind of interesting," and I got thousands of views in the first ten minutes after it was posted, and it ran up to 100,000 in the first day.  So:  how to model it?    If "practically no one" is looking at stuff, why does the stuff that is more interesting catch on?  I certainly don't think of myself as a sort of "hair trigger" that would rapidly amplify to others things I find interesting---surely others aren't, either?  I thought my Youtube video of a diet coke can saying "Merry Christmas" was interesting, and sure enough, it has 350,000 views (or something like that).  Paul Olson, a professor of English at the University of Nebraska long ago, once said to me "People think that good art is often ignored, that things need to be 'discovered,' and so on, but that is not true.  The good art is always discovered, or nearly so"  (quotation very much approximate).  But how?

Cool

George Hart used a selective laser sintering machine to make himself a real Satterfield's Tomb.

Every blog posting must have a title, and this is the title of this one

1) Can't decide if I want to post Emily Dickinson, astrological information, or stuff from Lucretius on Twitter.  It's been tending to Astrology, but Emily Dickinson is now ascendant.  I'm a huge fan of A. E. Stalling's recent Penguin translation of Lucretius, but am now somewhat suspect of some passages.  At least with the Heaney Beowulf, it was too great to think "hmmm, is that what it really said?"

2) In the foregoing approach to Twitter, I was heavily influenced by the 2005 poem "Sixty Instant Messages to Tom Moore", by Paul Muldoon.  I recommend his book of poetry, Horse Latitudes.

3) How to figure out who did the amazing painting on the cover of the 2 Feb 2009 of The Nation?  Well, look in the corner, where artists write their names, of course, and find it's John Mavroudis (zenpop.com)

4) Couldn't figure out how to do the bottom row of the Rubik cube without dragging in heavy machinery and blasting the problem all to hell.  Sad.  Very sad.

Too sad

It really bugs me that I can be a member of the AMS for over twenty-five years and still see this:

A username and password are being requested by http://www.ams.org. The site says: "MathSciNet Authentication"

There's got to be other non-academically-affiliated people who would like to use the Math Reviews, and are (like me) even willing to pay something for it.  But there doesn't seem to be any way to do it, without becoming an "Institution" and forking over over(**) $600/year (or is it over $6k/year; I can't tell (?)).

Here's the current pricing schedule:

Database Fee	Payment Schedule	2009 Price
List Price	Annual	US$8,314
Institutional Member	Annual	US$6,651
Product Delivery Fees*
Mathematical Reviews (individual and site) Postage charge: India US$153; other foreign US$144 Optional Delivery: First class US$138; International first class US$453	Annual	US$639
MathSciNet	Annual	US$2,200
MathSciNet for current MathSci subscribers**	Annual	US$866
MathSci on SilverPlatter™, an Ovid® Technologies product***	Annual	US$2,200
Combination - MathSciNet and MathSci on SilverPlatter, an Ovid Technologies product (available from Ovid)	Annual	US$3,066

Give me a fucking break! There's still no reasonable way for an individual to access this stuff, except by trudging off to a "terminal" at the nearest math library.

----
(**) "forking over over" -- that about describes it

Hyperaccuracy in NYT clueing

One of the reasons the NYT puzzles are getting too easy is the over-accuracy of their clueing.

Saturday's puzzle was by Mike Nothnagel and Byron Walden.  I happen to know that Walden is a mathematician (at Santa Clara, I think).  So when I read the 15-letter clue

Rectangular array that's identical when its rows and columns are transposed, as this puzzle's grid

I wrote in SYMMETRICMATRIX, which is about the only thing it could be, at least mathily.

For the 15-letter answer at 5 down       

They may be seen on a lake's surface

I considered RIPPLEDWAVELETS and REFLECTINGWAVES before settling on REFLECTEDIMAGES, the correct answer, but I didn't actually ink any of that in.  The first reinking I had was clued

Believer in al-Hakim as the embodiment of God

For which I wrote in DRUZE after getting most of the crossings (it's supposed to be spelled DRUSE, I guess).

One down,

Hindu musician's source material for improvisation

got reinked from POEMS to SAGAS and then to RAGAS, but I don't know what at RAGA is.  (And no, I don't intend to look it up, because I never look up things that come out of crossword puzzles.  And why is that?  Because I once asserted to my father that to look up a crossword puzzle clue on the web is to "Reduce crossword puzzle solving to a clerical activity," and I intend to stay true to that sentiment in the spirt of the leading my life according to meaningless rules, personal stricture, and pointless self-denial.)

I've got the puzzle here, but I'm too lazy to post a photo.

Stanford football stadium

Stanford football stadium, originally uploaded by thane.

tiltshift maker

Antisolicitations

1) "I'm already a subscriber."
2) "We don't make any purchasing decisions in this office.  Everything is handled out of Los Angeles."
3) "If I weren't about to move to Europe, I'd certainly be interested."
4) "We're renting."
5) "I don't live here."

Fractional effort

THANE:  I asked Cole to find The Special Rinsen*, and he said 'He's definitely not up here.'  But he hardly looked at all, and later it emerged that the cat was in Cole's clothes drawer, where he usually is.

GLORIA:  Welcome to my world. 

THANE: Cole, you didn't even do a half-assed job of looking for that cat.  I think maybe you did a one-seventh ass job.  Or maybe one ten-thousandth ass.

COLE:  I looked.

THANE: He looked while still on his bed.  He looks at the ceiling, thinks, "Well, no cat there," and then announces "He's not up here."  He throws in a "definitely", also: "He's definitely not here."  But he doesn't move a muscle.

GLORIA:  I love having a teenager.

COLE:  Ha-ha.

THANE: I have to say, "Cole, keep looking; if you don't find the cat, keep looking.  Keep looking."  This is in fact a general principle of looking for things, including The Special Rinsen.  "Have you found the cat?  No?  Well, keep looking." 

COLE:  Well, I found him.

THANE: In the end.  With maybe 1/5th ass.  I'd say it was a 1/15th ass effort.

COLE: Ha ha.

---
*One of the many names of our cat

The latest photograph of President Lincoln - taken on the balcony at the White House, March 6, 1865 (LOC)

The latest photograph of President Lincoln - taken on the balcony at the White House, March 6, 1865 (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

William Thurston

When I read a mathematical paper in a field in which I’m conversant, I concentrate on the thoughts that are between the lines. I might look over several paragraphs or strings of equations and think to myself “Oh yeah, they’re putting in enough rigamarole to carry such-and-such idea.” When the idea is clear, the formal setup is usually unnecessary and redundant—I often feel that I could write it out myself more easily than figuring out what the authors actually wrote. It’s like a new toaster that comes with a 16-page manual. If you already understand toasters and if the toaster looks like previous toasters you’ve encountered, you might just plug it in and see if it works, rather than first reading all the details in the manual.

People familiar with ways of doing things in a subfield recognize various patterns of statements or formulas as idioms or circumlocution for certain concepts or mental images. But to people not already familiar with what’s going on the same patterns are not very illuminating; they are often even misleading. The language is not alive except to those who use it.

* * *
I think that mathematics is one of the most intellectually gratifying of human activities. Because we have a high standard for clear and convincing thinking and because we place a high value on listening to and trying to understand each other, we don’t engage in interminable arguments and endless redoing of our mathematics. We are prepared to be convinced by others. Intellectually, mathematics moves very quickly. Entire mathematical landscapes change and change again in amazing ways during a single career.

On proof and progress in mathematics
via graham

Atom@Tak

THANE: Owen has all the elements with high atomic numbers.

OWEN: Yes---here---I'm playing a radioactive Radon card. That kills your last compound.

THANE: All I have is Energy and Negative Ions. I can't do anything.

GLORIA: I couldn't have said it better myself.

Friends Book Sale

This morning, I got rid of three bags of books by first taking them to Bookbuyers in Mountain View, where they accepted half of them in return for a $32 store credit.  Then, driving home with the other half, I noticed that the monthly Friends of the Palo Alto Libraries Book Sale happened to be going on, and got rid of the rest that way.  

The signs for the library's book shindigs always say "Friends Book Sale."  I've been seeing (and occasionally going to) the place where they have it for years, thinking it was organized by Quakers.

The Brave New World of robotics

Josh writes:

CREEPY


In the future, creatures like this will rule the earth and we'll all be imprisoned in their jails.

They'll be reviewing email and blog postings to see who spoke up against them in their early days.

I support the Mechanical Jackass.

desktop

desktop, originally uploaded by thane.

Periodicity of interest in Charles Darwin

Periodicity of interest in Charles Darwin, originally uploaded by Colin Purrington.

KenKen

I don't predict success for the "KenKen" puzzles that appeared in today's NYT.


Here are the instructions as published in the paper:

Fill the grid with digits so as not to repeat a digit in any row or column, and so that the digits within each heavily outlined box will produce the target number shown, by using addition, subtraction, multiplication or division, as indicated in the box. A 4x4 grid will use the digits 1-4. A 6x6 grid will use 1-6.

Why will this fail to capture people's interest?

Because no one but greengrocers and the Japanese enjoy doing arithmetic.

In particular, Sudoku doesn't involve arithmetic. It's a logic puzzle.

I hope I'm wrong, since I can always use another puzzle to do.

pharmaceutical naming

In the old days people had great names for poisons, medicines and drugs:

                         arsenic,  witchhazel, quinine

If someone wanted to be creative they might come up with

                        theriac (made from viper flesh).

But in the 19th & 20th century everything got all chemical and scientific:

                    hydrogen peroxide, lysergic acid diethylamide, iodine.

Eventually the chemicals got too complicated, and people started to make up words 

                                xanax,  simvastin,  klonopin

But those are the good ones.   Now, even that's not working, and we're getting drugs made up of truly ugly lexical messiness

                                      erlotinib, ranibizumab

To summarize: as usual, things have gone off track.  In popular culture, people have always known that you need a snappy name like

                                        soylent green,  ice-nine

to capture the attention of your audience.   Who cares that the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug

                                                 rofecoxib

was withdrawn from the market?   Who can remember such a letter jumble, anyway?  It's like some kind of Scrabbly Nightmare.   Marketeers knew this and called it

                                        vioxx, ceoxx, or ceeoxx

instead, but that's not much better.

We need better drug names, and I'm here to help.

Step 1:  Pick some kind of dramatic word involving action:

                              hurricane, cliff,  racing, throttle

Step 2:  Pick some kind of simple descriptive modifier, maybe a color, or a number

                                     blue throttle,   hurricane 30

Step 3:  Remix to taste with syllabic fragments, deletion, or gratuitous punctuation, somewhere

                              exBlue/30,   ThrottlePan,  GreenCliffe

And there you are.

Where's my bottle of Ice-nine?

Saturday NYT

Just finished [ oh, I guess I didn't finish a couple, near the bottom...oh well ], and everything but the upper left-hand corner of this puzzle seemed easy.

I had to reink Rambler's lack from CLARITY to BREVITY, making it possible for 23D, Supported a runner to become VOTED, but still had some trouble with 1D, Idols, often, which turned out to be SEXOBJECTS, and also with 3D, Solitaire game of matching pairs of cards, MONTECARLO.

Answers that seemingly must be right, but I don't know why...

XENA for Lawless vehicle (someone named Lawless, maybe?)

CIRE for Glazed, waxy fabric finish, which is a women's clothing word, presumably. Once it gets beyond DRESS and SKIRT, I'm very weak on women's clothing.

GREG: Ugh, the ink on the coffee card stamper is bleeding all over my card.


THANE: On that card, you might be able to count one stamp as two.

GREG: That's an idea.

THANE: Anyway, you've inspired me to actually concentrate on this card business to actually remember to keep the card with me, and to ask for the stamps.

GREG: How many stamps do you have?

THANE: [Removing his CARD from his wallet ] Ah, yes! Well, I'm happy to say that today is my big day. After a lifetime of ignoring sales loyalty programs, coupons, discount strategies and everything else of that ilk, today is the day when I am going to cash in a fully-completed, honestly-obtained, 10-stamp coffee card for a free coffee. I suppose I should order something more expensive than I usually do? Observe... [THANE approaches counter]

COUNTER GUY: What would you like?

THANE: Could I have a double nonfat latte? And I have this card. [ THANE gives card to COUNTER GUY, who takes it, and moves away to make the coffee.]

[ Enter Blustery Mediterranean-looking OWNER GUY.]

OWNER GUY: Double Non-fat Latte? That'll be $2.60.

THANE: Uh, well, I just gave him my card...

OWNER GUY: Gave who a card? What card?

COUNTER GUY: He had a card.

OWNER GUY: Where is it? Was it fully stamped?

COUNTER GUY: Um, I don't know, maybe the trash? [Starts to look in various trashcans...]

OWNER GUY: That'll be $2.60.

THANE: You've got to be kidding me!!

COUNTER GUY: I found it.

OWNER GUY: OK.

THANE: Ha!

GREG: Your big day almost went bad.

THANE: I knew it was going to be difficult.

"what are you going to do, turn off your TV and your computer?"