Fill up my cup. Mazel Tov.

29Jul10

It has come to my attention that there are those who will deny the unstoppable pop genius that is the Black Eyed Peas’ international megahit “I Gotta Feeling.” I want to speak only about the line “Fill up my cup — mazel tov!”  Amazing.  Amazing! You start with “fill up my cup” — which at [...]

Filed under: music   |  14 Comments
Tags: bar mitzvah, black eyed peas, celebration, fill up my cup, i gotta feeling, mazel tov

Canonical

26Jul10

One more comment on “canonical,” promoted to its own post because the non-mathematicians presumably stopped reading the other one very early on. It’s common for mathematicians to use the word “canonical” colloquially, to mean something like  “a choice universally or at least generally agreed on.”  For instance: The clock in Grand Central Station is the [...]

Filed under: language, math   |  10 Comments
Tags: canonical, nerds, words

The different does not have a canonical square root

26Jul10

Just wanted to draw attention to this very nice exchange on Math Overflow.   Matt Emerton remarks that the different of a number field is always a square in the ideal class group, and asks:  is there a canonical square root of the ideal class of the different? What grabs me about this question is that [...]

Filed under: math, philosophy   |  5 Comments
Tags: algebraic number theory, canonical, class group, cnidarian, different, emerton, functoriality, joe harris, math overflow, number theory, quadratic forms

Green eggs

25Jul10

We don’t eat ham in our house, but CJ got excited about having green eggs anyway.  We had them for lunch today.  And this is how you make them:  get the blender out and puree a bunch of peas, a handful of basil, and some grated parmesan or what have you.  (I used Farmer John’s [...]

Filed under: cj, food, recipes   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: colorless green eggs scrambled furiously, eggs, seuss

Duel at Dawn

22Jul10

Speaking of Galois, my review of Amir Alexander’s Duel at Dawn is up at BN Review today.  The book draws an interesting connection between the Romantic literary area and the invention of the “romantic” mathematical hero, of whom Galois is obviously the sterling example.  But Alexander commendably reaches past the endlessly-repeated Galois story to cover [...]

Filed under: books, history, math, writing   |  11 Comments
Tags: amir alexander, bolyai, cauchy, d'alembert, david foster wallace, dfw, duel at dawn, emo, galois, history of math, romanticism

Bhargava and Satriano on Galois closures of rings

21Jul10

Manjul Bhargava and Matt Satriano (starting a postdoc at Michigan this fall) posted a nice paper on the arXIv, “On a notion of “Galois closure” for extensions of rings.” The motivation for this work (I’m guessing) comes from Bhargava’s work on parametrizations of number fields.  Bhargava needs to generalize many classical objects of algebraic number [...]

Filed under: math   |  3 Comments
Tags: algebra, bhargava, galois closure, galois theory, number theory, satriano

I am cranky about people who are cranky about the tenure system

20Jul10

Via Deane Yang’s Facebook feed, this New York Times round table on the question of tenure, featuring weigh-ins from faculty members in education, English, religion, education again, and economics.  Notice anything missing?  Like, say, science, engineering, law, and medicine?  I said this before but I’m cranky about this piece so I’ll say it again.  The [...]

Filed under: academia, economics, politics   |  28 Comments
Tags: cranky, hiring, nyt, tenure

Nick Markakis is the new Mark Grudzielanek

19Jul10

Nick Markakis is leading the American League in doubles with 31, and has just 31 RBI.  Doesn’t it seem like it would be hard to hit with enough power to lead the league in doubles, and have so few RBI?  I thought maybe he was en route to a historic feat, but per Baseball Reference [...]

Filed under: baseball, orioles   |  1 Comment
Tags: 2b, doubles, frank baumholtz, freel, grudzielanek, markakis, nick markakis, rbi, slg, slugging percentage

Pizzayola

19Jul10

Full disclosure:  a few days after I posted this, a nice PR person from Ian’s mailed me a thank-you Post-it and a coupon for two free slices. Reader, I used it. Feel free to ignore my opinions about squid pizza from now on if you feel my integrity is now suspect.  I know I can’t [...]

Filed under: blog, commerce, ethics, food, madison   |  1 Comment
Tags: ian's, ian's pizza, payola, pizza

Up yours, Cook’s Illustrated

13Jul10

1.  For signing me up for a “preview” program when I ordered one of your books — no doubt because I neglected to toggle a checkmark in some tiny opt-out box on your website, thereby “signing up” for this “service” — and then sending me a new book, which I have to mail back if [...]

Filed under: commerce, ethics, food   |  Leave a Comment
Tags: brick, cooks illustrated, customer service, vindictiveness