EGAD

Things Which Take Hold

You've gotta love those weeks when you spend a solid two days trying to find a satisfactory way to integrate some expression. Which was way more work than the problem actually called for, but sometimes I get dogged that way, and usually over the wrong things. And I still feel like I'm missing some aspect of the stationary point method, at least as applied to complex functions.

John complained about Where's George, mostly that he disapproves of defacing currency and putting it back in circulation. Kind of like shaving coins, back in the days of gold currency, in extracting some private value for yourself before passing it along at full face value. That bill I mentioned yesterday was the first time I'd ever seen one, though, so I'm puzzled at how John's gotten enough of them to be annoyed at them. Have you ever seen these before? Let me know in the comments.

For whatever reason, though, the project really inspires some people. From poking around on the site, there are folks who report having stamped and entered into circulation literally thousands of notes. At least one of whom appears to be on the Uof MN campus, so there's probably a disproportionate number of them floating around hereabouts. Like a message in a bottle, except there's no message. Actually, it's more like putting dye in a river, and it's exactly like tagging migratory animals. So in fact, it's a big experiment on the ecology of greenbacks.

Poor Sara. Whoever she ticked off was willing to go to significant trouble to return the favor, it would seem. Pity I didn't manage to snap a clearer picture, but you get the idea, and I was in a hurry. 2006:02:11 17:30:19