Tuesday
You know, you think you could earn a bit of a breather after finishing a year of grad school. Not this week. I had a subject come in at 7:30 this morning and she's coming back at 7:30 on Thursday. Erstwhile I'm taking a summer course in Linear Algebra, trying to tweak a stimulus-presentation program for an undergrad in the lab, and so on.
Thus the blog continues to be silent. You all shall either wait in my absence or feel free to spontaneously chime in with whatever you want. I am far too tired right now to put serious effort into thinking of discussion topics. Here's what I can offer just off the top of my head:
1.) Latvia? Georgia? What is George W. Bush doing in these places? Is it Democracy On The March propaganda? What exactly is the story about Latvia? Who are the Latvians? How did they become independent? Should they even care that W. is in their country? Should they feel like they're being used?
2.) Randomness: Is it a real phenomenon? Or is it a descriptor we attach to any event which we simply lack the precise knowledge and/or formulas to predict?
3.) When's the last time you accidently hurt yourself as the result of your own careless or stupid action?
4.) At work a few weeks ago, we were talking about the changes to Sesame Street. Cookie Monster discourages gluttony by singing, with a showy jazz tune, that "Cookies are a 'sometimes-food'", while Bert and Ernie no longer share a residence (I don't see the concern, given that they had separate twin beds...).
What's the deal? I always considered Sesame Street as a more sophisticated, well-researched attempt at providing educational yet entertaining children's television. Why are they suddenly vulnerable to the same mass hysteria as the rest of pop culture?
ok, will re-engage with the world sometime this weekend. everyone have a good week.
Comments
My wife and I both enjoyed linear algebra in college (they were different colleges). She liked the process of matrix manipulations. I liked that I could get loaded every night instead of studying and still beat or equal the teacher's pet girl on every exam. I used a TI-85 or TI-86 back then, and was able to allow technology to do most of the work for me (invert a 12X12 matrix? no problem.). It wasn't until later, in grad school, that I was forced to learn the meaning of the things I was doing on my calculator.
On randomness:
Einstein had great trouble in accepting randomness as a reality in quantum mechanics and fluid turbulence. If we had a perfect model, we could, I'm sure, show that these things behave nonrandomly. It's just that the smallest perturbations on the system lead to large instabilities making any model unverifiable. This is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle - the act of observing the subject modifies it such that the observation is not realistic or descriptive of the system in general. If a tree falls in the woods... So far Einstein's suspicions of statistical/stochastic descriptions of random processes have never been shown to have much merit.
On hurting myself:
This is an almost daily activity for me. Just yesterday, I was tweaking some pedals on a bike when my hand slipped off the wrench and I peeled my thumb on the chainring (that big gear that the chain goes on). Ouch.
On Sesame Street:
I watched Sesame Street until an older age than most kids do. I always found it to be sophisticated enough to be entertaining even as I got older and wiser. I haven't watched it in years now, and I'm disappointed in the changes you describe. Seriously. What 5 year-old is going to take the "wrong message" from Bert and Ernie cohabitating? Anyway, from what I hear, public broadcasting is quite the political football lately. I wonder if the changes in Sesame Street are really just a more universal shift toward sanitization of all public media.
Posted by: Jim | Mayo 16, 2005 11:20 AM
Well, I am a bit tardy with my posting. Been busy. Jim, I don't know how you keep up, what with Elissa certainly requiring attention, and a new job, and so on.
Matrices--ugh. I'm with you Jim. I'll leave it to my TI to do the row transformations, Gauss-Jordan stuff for me. I would always lose a sign, or something, doing things by hand, and nearly go crazy trying to find my mistake and correct every consequent mistake on my paper.
However I did show Karin how to use the Gaussian method, while we were flying somewhere. I created an augmented matrix and we solved it on a napkin---or something.
As to doing something stupid and hurting myself, Karin, you know I am not the one in this family with a lot of physical "daring do". You and your Dad tie for that distinction.
I wasn't the one to climb to the top of the playground equipment in grade school and fall off, winding up with a minor concussion--or biting my lower lip (so her mother could retrieve her, and have her sit in the back of her 9th hour Algebra class with an ice pack on it).
Of course, I did run away "to school" when I was too young to attend, and walked behind someone swinging, resulting in a broken nose (3 surgeries on it so far).
As we spoke of things happening to us while we are alone (on the phone) I remembered doing something stupid in my classroom while working there one weekend.
"Dedicated to details" I was determined to change something on my bulletin board, which I could access only by climbing on a chair, then climbing on top of the desk, then "oooching" myself to a sitting position on top of my 4-drawer filing cabinet.
This I did, and being my usual distracted self, when I descended, I forgot there what that "last step"--the chair. I managed to miss stepping on it and fell backwards on my backside.
I lay there for a few minutes, thinking "stupid, stupid, stupid--no one else is in the building--what if I can't get to the phone? I could lay here until Monday with a broken something."
Finally I gingerly attempted to move various "parts" and found I could get to a standing position--and walk. I imagine I was sore for a while. I'm just lucky I didn't do anything else--or is that why I have back trouble now???
Posted by: Jane | Mayo 18, 2005 08:22 AM
"I forgot there what that last step"???? I forgot there WAS . . . I don't proof well from the computer screen. Sorry--"dedicated to details!"
Posted by: Jane | Mayo 18, 2005 08:27 AM