Talk

One large monkey off my back. Gave a fairly technical talk to the faculty. And it went well. Sure, stumbled in a couple of places. Basically, I should have slowed down more in one or two technical spots, and I'm sure I misspoke once or twice. Nevertheless, the vast majority went well. Kinda like hitting a solid line drive right over the short stop's head.

The subject has been devilishly hard to grasp the technical details of. But they were in there and I at least touched on them accurately with the time constraints of a 1hr talk.

The work is not done. But in writing the talk I've been able to solidify the work in my head, on paper, and in-silico.

Woohoo!!

Not much blogging lately. Mostly working. But in the middle of all that working was a nice trip to a warm Mediterranean country for a conference. And then a week of touring around with Sugar Mama in wonderful cities with great coffee and food.

In addition to a nice time touring around, my talk at the conference went well, too. My first in a conference environment. Met lots of people working on intersecting problems, made some good contacts, and even got to refresh my knowledge of the romance language I studied in college.

It's nice to get out of town once in awhile. I feel very relaxed now that I'm back. This semester comes with quite a bit of work, but for some odd reason taking a break right at the start was perfect. Any restlessness got worked out, I hardly thought about my research while in Europe, and now I'm ready to "bust a move". Maybe even a couple. Which probably means I shouldn't be blogging....

Insidious religious documents

It really annoys me when thinly-veiled defenses of Christianity show up on the pages of major newspapers. See this annoying piece from the NYTimes. Even if they are on the Opinion page, couldn't the editors think of something more enlightening to print. It's not like the subject is new and interesting. Nor in this case is the argument so veiled that I'm "probably just being parnoid".

Back to work!

The dirty secret about mathematical proofs

It was hidden here all along.

Sometimes I find it heartening that others bumble around like idiots (almost) as much as I do. But then again, why should I find solace in that??

"Men" with Pens

It is stunning that a male pseudonym can still make all the difference. Read this!

The was posted by FSP. It's no secret that the sciences are still male-dominated. The classes I teach (mostly engineers in the calc sequence) are mostly male. I've heard of math grad schools with 60% women. Definitely not the norm, though. I guess feminism still has a long way to go.

The scariest part for me is that supposedly enlightened people still harbor so much prejudice. I'm sure this includes me. Food for thought.

A real-life version of the classic New Yorker comic.

Perfecto

I'm wondering if anyone out in the blogosphere may know anything about my dog's ailment.

Sugar Mama and I have a wonderful dog (code-)named Perfecto. Last Spring he came down with a mysterious nervous system ailment. It was peripheral, so only his legs were affected. The onset was sudden. Within the course of a day he went from normal to paralysed. He has steadily improved in the past 8 months, but is still only 80%. Unfortunately, we have no reliable diagnosis. The affect of the ailment was to all limbs, but his left side has been slower to recover than his right. And his front limbs came back much slower than the back ones. No limb is yet 100%. It has been deemed too "general" to be a stroke. Various nerve diseases have been mentioned (including the dog version of Guillian-Barre syndrome). Nothing quite fits his case, though. So I thought I'd throw this out to the ether and see if anyone else has dealt with some form of paralysis + recovery in their pet.

In other news: Happy New Year!

Elopement party

Went to a good friend's elopement party this weekend. He and his new wife eloped on kayaks by getting married in a tiny town in the Inside Passage (Alaska).

His sister is a hoot. One of those scientists who gets to work in a wet lab. I always love to hear stories from that side of science. Test tubes, rats, chemicals. Turns out that post-traumatic stress disorder is induced in rats by putting said rat in a straight jacket and shocking it. Stuff like that is shocking (no pun intended) for someone who works purely "in-silico". So I'm always impressed by those sorts of stories.