I’ve finally discovered an intrinsic limit to my intellectual abilities at Temple: I cannot operate well on three hours of sleep!

(Yeah, I sort of knew that already)

Since I am again a member of the National Dean’s List this year, I knew it was only a matter of time before they sent the letter inviting me to attend a series of lectures in China for $5,000 again. While the program is not nearly as selective as they’d like to make people think, the people who go do seem to genuinely enjoy the experience (essentially, it’s a vacation where you get to talk to interesting people, much like the conference I just came back from). However, it’s far too disruptive and too expensive to even consider, especially with my planned dissertation timeline this year, so I usually just stash the letter in my “archive of things I’ll look back on someday and laugh at” (a.k.a. my closet).

The interesting thing is that this year, they didn’t assign me to a “delegation”, to be shipped off to China. They let me pick both the “delegation” and the country.

I don’t know if this represents an overall change in the program or if they actually understand the polymath thing I’m aiming for. Either way, it’s an interesting change, if irrelevant (because I’m still not going).

Is one of the most awful pieces of software Microsoft has ever released.

Including Windows ME.

The thing likes to corrupt every document it touches. Already I’ve lost my old resume (I have a new one, though) and my dissertation (I have a backup, though) to this idiotic program.

If I have seen further, it is because no one stood in my way.

If I have seen further, it is because I had the best seats in the house.

If I have seen further, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.

If I have seen further… eh, you’re not missing much anyway.

Any others? 🙂

You’re all scum and I’m not voting for any of you in this election.

While perusing the NY Hall of Science website, I discovered an effort to interest children in science and mathematics that took the form of a TV show called “Cyberchase”. While I applaud the idea, I think it may be missing the point somewhat. It serves the purpose of initiating children into science, but children tend to be natural scientists anyway. What we really need to do to keep children interested is:

a. Stop pressuring them to stray from science in the later years of their childhood and their adolescence. Anyone who fell into the “nerd” group in high school (and face it, most scientists did) should know that a desire to do science runs very much against the ability to remain popular.

b. Bring science and mathematics into the public consciousness. The only times people hear about scientists are when they have results, which are invariably communicated in the form of “scientists have found an x% link between y and z”, and they almost never hear about mathematicians. Ask any random person on the street whether they’ve heard of the recent proof of the Poincare conjecture. You won’t find many who know that it was proved (or even what it is!) or the name of the mathematician who did it. People know who Einstein is because his name became synonymous with genius. However, if ordinary scientists and mathematicians could be brought to the same level of public awareness as other occupations (forget celebrity status; it happens in other countries, but will not happen here for a long time, if ever), then people might consider taking careers in science.

How this would be done is up for debate, but it wouldn’t be done by a TV show. Still, every little bit counts, to kudos for the idea.

Politicians have been calling our house multiple times daily for the past month (of course, lying about the return phone number, as if this would somehow indicate that the person who is being promoted could be a responsible congressman who makes himself accessible to his constituents). I’m tired of this and at this point I really hate politicians as a group (something about power requires that one leaves one’s sense of decency at the door), so I decided to inject some noise into their survey. Not just random noise, though – noise that was planned to be as inconsistent as possible, thus having the maximum impact upon their model’s variance.

Thus we had “do you consider yourself democratic or republican?” (I don’t consider them opposites, myself) questions which were responded to as “Republican”, only to have questions such as “if you had to vote now, which party would you vote for?” as “democrat!”

I like screwing with politicans’ campaigns, since they invariably begin with interminable lying to the constituents and usually end in vicious mudslinging. One of these days, I’d really love someone who I could respect in power.