stoutfellow

I took a bit of a nap this afternoon. I awakened to the (internal) tune of "Wake Up, Little Suzy".

My Inner Minstrel is a bit cheeky sometimes.

I'm really short on energy, thanks to this muscle strain thingy. I grab for a couple of hours of sleep, courtesy of Icy Hot (but only once or twice a day), or for an hour or so of rest (tucked into the right-hand corner of my couch, one of the few places of minimal pain); I eat a bit, or drink a bit more (water, milk, OJ. coffee, tea, cocoa). Once in a while I have the energy to post something for my classes.

Today, I put up something on the Bernoulli brothers (took longer than I expected, straightening out their work on the brachistochrone problem); I've mapped out a post on Nicolaus and Daniel, focusing on the work on the fringes of mathematical expectation (a concept in statistics).

For my other history of math clase, I've mapped out a couple of posts on the solution of cubic and quartic equations - one on the people, with some discussion of Renaissance Italian politics and economics, and one on the methods: how they solved those equations, the problematic aspects of their techniques, the first evidence of the necessity of complex numbers even for the solution of real problems, and why their techniques, though quite ingenious, were ultimately a dead end.

And in differential geometry, the stretch drive: the concept of parallel transport, which leads to geodesics, which finally leads to the brilliant and beautiful Local and Global Gauss-Bonnet Theorems.

I think I can, I think I can...

In case my "ON WISCONSIN" post was too obscure:

Last week, Wisconsin held an election. It included the Democratic presidential primary, but also a number of judicial elections. There were efforts to extend the window for mail-in ballots, but these were (mostly) quashed by the Wisconsin and federal Supreme Courts. Because of the ongoing pandemic, the (mostly Democratic) cities were unable to staff enough polling places; Milwaukee, which normally has about 180 polling places, could only open five.

Despite these handicaps - despite the health hazards of congregating to vote - voters in Milwaukee and elsewhere swarmed to the polls, standing in lines (expanded by social distancing) for hours to get their chance.

The ballots were, by court order, not counted until yesterday. The voters had their say: two conservative lower-court judges were defeated for re-election. A liberal appeals-court judge, who had narrowly been elected last time, was re-elected. And a conservative Supreme Court justice, bidding for a ten-year term, was decisively upset (55-45) by his liberal opponent.

November Is Coming.

I cannot fathom the following sequence of events.

a) I begin typing in the Google search box.
b) Google offers several possible completions, and I select one.
c) Google objects to my selection: "Did you mean :something else:?"

(I have many objections to the "Did you mean" message, but this one is especially annoying.)

It's being reported that John Horton Conway has died, of Covid-19.

This one hurts. Conway was a great and versatile mathematician. Non-mathematicians may know him as the inventor of the Game of Life - not the Milton Bradley board game, but the one played with black and white stones on a go board. I have several of his books and have read at least two more. He wrote on combinatorial game theory, on crystallography, on the theory of quadratic forms, on Euclidean geometry... One of my proudest memories is of the time I proposed a name for a certain phenomenon in triangle geometry, and he approved it. He was very fussy about names, for good and cogent reasons, and to win his approval delighted me.

Rest in peace, Professor Conway, and may the Great Geometer continue to give you things to think about.

On Twitter, some people are asking for favorite movies where the main couple doesn't end up together.

"Casablanca" is an obvious choice, but my number-one pick would be "Roman Holiday" - the sheer *rightness* of the two of them separating, not for the sake of a war but to be true to themselves, outmatches Rick & Ilsa, to my mind.

I'd also put "The Lion in Winter" here. The love between Henry and Eleanor is twisted and bitter, but it's still there; IMO the last scene ("Do you think there's a chance?") drives that home. My opinion only, of course.

(I'm not including "Pretty Woman", because it's not one of my favorite movies.)

Your picks?

"There were solitudes beyond where none shall follow. There were secrets in the inmost and invisible part of that drama that have no symbol in speech; or in any severance of a man from men. Nor is it easy for any words less stark and single-minded than those of the naked narrative even to hint at the horror of exaltation that lifted itself above the hill. Endless expositions have not come to the end of it, or even to the beginning. And if there be any sound which can produce a silence, we may surely be silent about the end and the extremity; when a cry was driven out of that darkness in words dreadfully distinct and dreadfully unintelligible, which man shall never understand in all the eternity they have purchased for him; and for one annihilating instant an abyss that is not for our thoughts had opened even in the unity of the absolute; and God had been forsaken of God."

G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, pt. 2, ch. 6


Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison. Kyrie eleison.

(I posted this once before, but it's been eight years and I really like this passage.)

I am saved! My lawn care people have shown up, and are now mowing my lawn!

:does happy dance, dissolves in fit of coughing:

Today's birthday list includes Spencer Tracy (1900), Bette Davis (1908), and Gregory Peck (1916). That's some star power right there.

I just posted another slide show for one of my history of mathematics classes, about Leonardo of Pisa, who was, more than anyone else, responsible for Europe's adoption of Hindu-Arabic notation. At the end of it I drop the bomb: they've heard of him, under another name. His father's name was Bonaccio, and he was often referred to as "the son of Bonaccio" - in the Pisan dialect, "fi'Bonacci".

I love that one.