to be born again...

HST

2010-06-14T04:03:58Z

Jesus, no wonder Lionel had a stroke. What a nightmare it must have been for him to see the honest rebellion that came out of World War Two taken over by a witless phony like Warhol . . . the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Lights, Noise, Love the Bomb! And then to see a bedrock madman like Ginsberg copping out with tolerance poems and the same sort of swill that normally comes from the Vatican. Kerouac hiding out with his "mere" on Long Island or maybe St. Petersburg . . . Kennedy with his head blown off and Nixon back from the dead, running wild in the power vacuum of Lyndon's hopeless bullshit . . . and of course Reagan, the new dean of Berkeley. Progress Marches On, courtesy, as always of General Electric . . . with sporadic assists from Ford, GM, ATT, Lockheed and Hoover's FBI.

And there's the chill of it. Lionel was one of the original anarchist-head-beatnik-free lancers of the 1950's . . . a bruised fore-runner of Leary's would-be "drop-out generation" of the 1960's. The Head Generation . . . a loud, cannibalistic gig where the best are fucked for the worst reasons, and the worst make a pile by feeding off the best. Promoters, narks, con men, -- all selling the New Scene to Times magazine and the Elks Club. The handlers get rich while the animals get either busted or screwed to the floor with bad contracts. Who's making money off the Blues Project? Is it Verve (a division of MGM), or the five ignorant bastards who thought they were getting a break when Verve said they'd make them a record? And who the fuck is "Tome Wilson," the "producer" whose name rides so high on the record jacket? By any other name he's a vicious ten-percenter who "Special-Guaranteed Used Cars" in the 1950's, and the 29 cent thumb-prints of John Kennedy in the 1960's . . . until he figured out that the really big money was in drop-out revolution. Ride the big wave: Folk-rock, pot symbols, long hair, and $2.50 minimum at the door. Light shows! Tim Leary! Warhol! NOW!

just wasting our time, but having fun doing it

2010-05-07T15:05:19Z

Poincaré, in several of his famous essays on the philosophy of science, characterized the difference between mathematics and physics as follows: In mathematics, if the quantity A is equal to the quantity B, and B is equal to C, then A is equal to C; that is, in modern terminology: mathematical equality is a transitive relation. But in the observable physical continuum "equal" means indistinguishable; and in this continuum, if A is equal to B, and B is equal to C, it by no means follows that A is equal to C. In the terminology of the psychologists Weber and Fechner, A may lie within the threshold of B, and B within the threshold of C, even though A does not lie within the threshold of C. "The raw result of experience," says Poincaré, "may be expressed by the relation

A = B, B = C, A < C,

which may be regarded as the formula for the physical continuum." That is to say, physical equality is not a transitive relation.
...
Instead of distinguishing between a transitive mathematical and an intransitive physical relation of equality, it thus seems much more hopeful to retain the transitive relation in mathematics and to introduce for the distinction of physical and physiological quantities a probability, that is, a number lying between 0 and 1.

Elaboration of this idea leads to the concept of a space in which a distribution function rather than a definite number is associated with every pair of elements. The number associated with two points of a metric space is called the distance between the two points. The distribution function associated with two elements of a statistical metric space might be said to give, for every x, the probability that the distance between the two points in question does not exceed x...

when i read things like this i want to give up on math. but why would i do that? things are just starting to get interesting.

and circumstance

2010-05-06T22:47:26Z

i finished my last exam today: anth 101. i probably got a D. this will be the first D of my life. do i care?

not a damn bit: i'm graduating sunday. see you mother fuckers on the other side.

psychopomp

2010-05-06T00:10:42Z

the schism between psychosis and creativity is a narrow, yet very deep one. LSD bridges the two but provides a very weak foothold. the mindhold is even weaker -- a balancing act featuring serotonin and dopamine. god knows what else. then it hits you: you're tripping. this is it, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. but that's a risky corridor to transit. accept it. embrace it. open your eyes and bask in the sensory overload. your mind can handle it. hell, your mind is fabricating it. and that's probably the most fascinating part of it all.

except not yet. there's still the ego erasure, the exodus of identity and the genesis of ... what? you don't know. but it's some sort of understanding. it's not the way you see the universe; it's the way the universe sees you. it's the most serene peace, the purest beauty.

two thousand bland

2010-01-02T01:39:07Z

2010 will be a normal year

Plato

2008-10-06T23:56:54Z

"In the first place, there were three kinds of human beings, not merely the two sexes, male and female, as at present: there was a third kind as well, which had equal shares of the other two, and whose name survives though, the thing itself has vanished. For "man-woman" was then a unity in form no less than name, composed of both sexes and sharing equally in male and female; whereas now it has come to be merely a name of reproach. ... The number and features of these three sexes were owing to the fact that the male was originally the offspring of the sun, and the female of the earth; while that which partook of both sexes was born of the moon, for the moon also partakes of both."

And what is the moon but a weak reflection of the sun?

thesis topic thus given

2008-10-03T14:50:16Z

The Lebesgue differentiation theorem and Szemerédi regularity lemma. I couldn't have found a better topic myself. I have an indecent amount of work ahead of me.

resource allocation

2008-09-29T18:44:08Z

This is so stupid. It is completely devoid of intelligence in every way. I am stuck in this God-forsaken library for 3 hours sticking bar codes on German mathematical journals from the early 1800s.

No one reads these. No one can read these, nor does anyone want to read these.

They are falling apart.

The mathematics in them is antiquated and not of much interest.

They are in German. Completely. [edit: not completely. Some articles are French. The vast majority are in Latin.]

The librarian in charge of this operation says 'people will check them out if they are bar coded.' Exact words. Because, you know, that is exactly what I do when I look for German mathematical journals from the 1820s. EXCUSE ME. IS THIS JOURNAL BARCODED? NO? NO, THANK YOU, THEN. I ONLY READ BARCODED SERIALS.

What's even more stupid is that, even if you do check it out, you can't leave the fucking library with it. And you have to turn it in within 2 hours or you get fined. The better alternative, of course, is simply to read it in the library for as long as you wish and then put it back on the shelf, or even give to me and I will gladly shelve it myself. BUT AT LEAST NOW THEY HAVE BAR CODES.

And to top it all off, the library is completely baffled as to why they have a lack of money. I wonder if the University even knows where their money is going. The tax-payers and students whose money bought them sure as hell don't.

burrito results

2008-09-27T16:26:55Z

Cosmic Cantina was the clear winner. Yet again, Qdoba's tortilla was too sticky and stuck to my palate. And Chipotle's guacamole was disgusting. It was no competition.

R not-so-P not-at-all-G

2008-09-26T21:09:20Z

Chase is now a level-17 Mathematician. Newly acquired abilities, skills, detriments:
1. Sleep Nonexigency - Chase can now fully function on 2 hours of sleep per 24-hour period or 3 hours of sleep per 48-hour period provided considerable caffeine intake.
2. Metabolic Efficacy - Chase can now fully function on 700 calories per day, or only 400 provided considerable caffeine intake.
3. Asexuality - 50% decrease in libido
4. +2 theorem-proving, +5 proof-understanding, -10 arithmetic
5. 25% weakness to humanities, 25% resistance to physics and statistics

I love Cosmic Cantina, and I don't understand how anyone prefers Qdoba. But, tonight I am going to get a chicken burrito from Cosmic, Qdoba, and Chipotle and see which I prefer in a very scientific test. I will judge overall taste, tortilla and chicken texture, moisture of rice, value, and salsa deliciousness. I don't like beans. Results shall be posted tonight or tomorrow.

Immanuel Kant

2008-09-25T04:29:17Z

"A thoughtful person is acquainted with a kind of distress which threatens his moral fibre, a kind of distress of which the thoughtless know nothing: discontent with Providence which governs the course of this world. This distress he is apt to feel when he considers the evils which oppress the human species so heavily, and, apparently, so hopelessly."

worth

2008-08-28T05:24:22Z

Success, at the most ironic time.

tattoo?

2008-07-03T18:36:05Z

I'm thinking about getting a tattoo on the left or right side of my lower or upper back. Nothing big, and nothing stupid. I don't really have anything important enough in my life to warrant a tattoo right now, though. Maybe an integral symbol. That's kind of stupid.

attrition

2008-06-16T06:05:28Z

I broke The Rules. Got caught. No. Screw The Rules. I've followed The Rules my entire life, and look what I've gotten out of it. Look at what anyone has gotten out of it. We can't always follow The Rules. Thank God for Eve. Her unblemished stomach; no navel. From James Joyce, 'The womb of sin.' Yeah: Thank God for sin.

low humidity

2008-06-02T18:41:43Z

I get these headaches. Well, they aren't really headaches but more like a tingling feeling in my head. It starts under my arms, like around my lymph nodes, and spreads out down my back and arms and then to my head. It feels similar to being on hydrocodone, but then I get tunnel vision. The whole thing only lasts about 30 seconds and goes away once I get up and walk around.

The weather today is really nice.

do it

2008-05-06T11:04:06Z

It's mechanics time.

edit

That was probably the hardest exam I've ever taken.

revelations!

2008-05-05T03:21:16Z

I'm not a superstitious person by any means, and I think numerology is an embarrassment, but it is very bizarre that Sin(666°) = Cos(216°) = Cos(6°*6°*6°) = -φ/2. I'm off to seek a mathematical explanation instead of studying for my mechanics exam.

lol humanities

2008-04-26T19:46:11Z

I love it when people in the humanities attempt to use mathematics and symbolic logic to explain their ideas. Examine this beast from a linguistics paper I'm reading.
[[S(T)_BC]]_c,k = [[(T)_BC]]_c,k([[S]]_c,k)
[[(T)_BC]]_c,k = id(the truth-function such that, for any t ε {0, 1}, id(t) = t}

It was looking so rigorous and intellectual until he mismatched the parentheses and brackets, aside, of course, from the ridiculously cryptic symbols not even familiar to mathematics and logic.

Why must all but one of my exams be at 8?

My linguistics paper is 7/11 done. That is a very precise fraction. Don't question it.

Last night was a bit excessive. Just a bit.

analytical

2008-04-22T03:08:25Z

I had the most horrific (note how horrific is a negative adjective whereas terrific is positive...) milk tea tonight. The waitress at Lime and Basil accidentally used salt instead of sugar. That's all I'll say about that.

The Lagrangian and Hamiltonian formulations of mechanics give us notions of generalized forces as time rates of change of generalized momenta. I would like one day to formulate my own version of Newtonian mechanics which generalizes coordinates and inertia. From this we could write down immediately the generalized Newton's 2^nd law F_{gen, net} = M_gen*(d²/dt²)X_gen. I think that sounds like a great idea.

Still no word from the fluids lab(s).

caution, ridiculousness, uselessness, uncertainty

2008-04-12T22:36:06Z

A girl was run over on campus. Well, a car hit her at the pedestrian crosswalk. Coming back from Franklin Street, I saw her on the ground with an EMS team around her. The car de culpa was parked in the middle of the crosswalk.

Before I got to that scene, I was on Franklin Street eating dinner at this Turkish restaurant I can neither pronounce nor spell. I had this dish with grilled chicken and pita bread on tomato sauce and yogurt. It was called yogurtlu kebaplar I think. It was very delicious. I also had a glass of pure pomegranate juice that tasted fermented. It was good but not worth the over-$25-price.

Also, today: Southpoint. I tried to get my sunglasses repaired, but the man there told me I would need to send them back to the company. He thought they were beyond repair.

If the fluids lab hires me, I'm going to need a place to stay over the summer. A dorm room would cost over $1400 for the summer, which is probably how much I'll end up making all together from working in the lab. It's the experience that matters, though, right?

but it felt so good

2008-04-11T03:22:46Z

Seven miles. Bam.

Now I expire.

really

2008-04-09T00:43:25Z

Despite what I said, I like it a lot.

mmm

2008-04-04T04:32:06Z

I love milk.

biscuit conditionals

2008-04-01T04:52:32Z

My linguistics term paper is going to be on the truth functionality of English connectives, especially focusing on conditionals. Something very interesting I've found are biscuit conditionals. These were coined by Austin in Philosophical Papers. Here's the prime example: There are biscuits on the counter if you're hungry. And if you're not hungry...well, who knows?

My icon is the Cheshire cat. I'm surprised that needed clarification.

Our cereal. Buy. Classy. Delicious.

2008-03-31T22:00:26Z

Why are sentence fragments becoming the prototypical "elegant" way to write English? Observe the following sentences from the back of one my boxes of cereal.

"Sweet almonds. And our new light and crispy multi grain flakes. Blueberry Morning. Just one of our Post Selects cereals. Each with a story of its own."

No verbs. Anywhere. Very ridiculous.