September 2009
26 posts
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Cohomology and Hodge Theory on Symplectic... →
Li-Sheng Tseng, Shing-Tung Yau
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(Not so) recently read: Beautiful Evidence, by Edward R. Tufte
I actually read this months ago, but kept forgetting about it. There are some really good case studies of what makes a useful and beautiful information display, though I do get a little annoyed when Tufte keeps bringing up the same examples in book after book (yes, we get it, you like Minard’s figurative map of Napoleon’s...
Who’s Afraid of Sibel Edmonds? →
A fascinating interview with “the most gagged person in the history of the United States of America”. Here’s an interesting tidbit:
The monitoring of the Turks picked up contacts with Feith, Wolfowitz, and Perle in the summer of 2001, four months before 9/11. They were discussing with the Turkish ambassador in Washington an arrangement whereby the U.S. would invade Iraq and...
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Recently read: God Emperor of Dune, by Frank Herbert
Continuing the Dune series’ slide into ponderousness, only three things actually happen in this book.
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A Stick Figure Guide to the Advanced Encryption... →
(via Bruce Schneier)
robertghrist: “when you have had scientific training you will find you can be quite certain about all sorts of things which now seem to you only probable”
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Torsion and Open Book Decompositions →
John B. Etnyre, David Shea Vela-Vick
shitmydadsays: “Sometimes life leaves a hundred dollar bill on your dresser, and you don’t realize until later that it’s because it fucked you.”
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Scattering at low energies on manifolds with... →
Werner Muller, Alexander Strohmaier
Don’t play the “count how many people are surreptitiously checking their iPhones” game in this line; you’ll never stop.
Evening plans: string theory talk, then Monsters of Podcasting show. Determining the single nerdiest moment will be a real challenge.
irreverend: “I was in Tibet and I forgot to buy a prayer flag. It’s one of my biggest regrets.” Overheard and submitted without comment.
Apparent logic to having your CEO in your commercial: “I’m old, rich, and awkward, so you know our products must be great!” Huh?
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Poincaré duality angles for Riemannian manifolds... →
Hey look, I finally got around to re-formatting my dissertation and putting it on the arXiv.
So far, my school’s junk mail filter has a perfect record: every email it’s flagged as spam hasn’t been.
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Recently read: Stone’s Fall, by Iain Pears
As in An Instance of the Fingerpost, Stone’s Fall is a mystery story on the “Rashōmon” model: the events of interest are described and contextualized by different narrators, each with his/her own opinions, biases and conclusions. It’s very well done, less gimmicky than Fingerpost and with a denouement which is both...
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“[I]f room is not saved then ice cream may not be eaten, and a gap will loom in...”
– MAGIC MOLLY: Housatonic butter pecan
iPhone owners aren’t New Year’s resolution gym... →
via Gruber
“It’s humbling that I could be killed by 3.2kbytes of genetic data. Then again,...”
– Andrew “bunnie” Huang
No more free fishing expeditions →
We can but hope:
In the late days of the Second World War, German submariners looked back at late 1940 as “the happy time”— the period in which the Allies had not yet mastered convoy defence, the U. S. was neutral, the Royal Navy was in disarray and merchant ships were theirs for the killing. In 2009, the “happy time” for electronic investigators may be on the...
irreverend: Only gmail could get so many nerds to plead, “Don’t go down on me!”