Synergy

That was interesting.

One of my Senior Project students is working on continued fractions. I was looking over his (in progress) paper today, and reached a point where he discussed a theorem discovered by Galois in the 19th century. I stared at what he'd written, and could not make the proof gel. Something was wrong; I e-mailed him, saying that we would have to meet to discuss this bit. Then it occurred to me: thanks to Project Gutenberg, calibre and Kindle, I have Galois' complete mathematical writings right here. I pulled up the copy on my computer; the very first paper was the one my student was referencing, and a brief perusal made clear why the proof works. My student had left out some crucial computations, which he'll have to add to his paper.

Isn't it neat, how things work out sometimes?

Education

I haven't been as amused as usual by Skin Horse during the current storyline, but this strip, from a week or so ago, gives me the giggles. The female in the pink dress is a robot drone, previously operated by the cyborg helicopter Nick Zerhakker; Nick has just been pre-empted by an emergent AI who needs a body for a little while. Take a look.