| This is exactly the sort of feeling I never got from cosmology |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|10:08 am] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | mused | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Depeche Mode -- Blasphemous Rumours | ] |
So this morning while getting off the bus, I accidentally proved, in my head no less, that the repeating decimals are indeed rational numbers. This is most certainly a mean mathematical feat, and I mention it only because:
-- I don't remember ever being presented with such a proof, so I'm a little proud that I thought of it independently, modulo any subconscious processes, and also:
-- It came to me sort of all at once, in a way that I can totally understand other people attributing to the muses et al. That almost never happens.
My other recent mathematical achievement is having learned myself an outline of the proof of the Banach-Tarski paradox. The point of this theorem is that you can take a solid sphere ("ball"), break it into four pieces, move them around a bit, and then reassemble them into two balls of the same volume as the original. This sounds ridiculous, but it makes me feel a lot better that the "pieces" are totally disconnected point sets with zero volume. So, you know, this only works for certain readings of "you" and "can", so the real you really can't actually do this. Anyhow, I was a little proud that I got most of the proof of this abhorrent statement. And it led to this:
I may as well mention at this point that I've decided to leave physics because it sucks and I'm no damn good at research. If all goes well, next semester I'll be starting a program to get a Master's in Library and Information Services, essentially because I think I can be a shitty physics professor or a damn good librarian. More on that later, but the point is this: if I were still doing research, learning and thinking about math like this, or even a different kind of physics, would be considered a waste of time or worse. I think that's a little sick, so I'm switching to a career track that is, god help me, less intellectually restrictive than physics. |
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| "Last updated [twenty-seven] weeks ago" |
[Oct. 24th, 2009|06:25 pm] |
| [ | Current Mood |
| | back | ] |
| [ | Current Music |
| | Gotterdammerung again. So far, so good. | ] |
"Oh wow it's been a long time since I posted I gotta get on that etc. etc."
Because god knows the interblag is already full up on self-indulgent whining, I'll try to keep it brief. A lot of weird crap has happened since I last posted. Maybe I'll write about it (the crap), maybe not. I haven't decided. Here's the one-sentence summary of one two of the big ones:
It's strangely appropriate in my own personal cosmology that I was listening to Gotterdammerung when my second advisor called me in to congratulate me on getting married, and then fired me. |
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| (no subject) |
[Apr. 7th, 2009|10:43 am] |
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What confuses me about buying music on iTunes is this: if you can get songs like "Stairway to Heaven" and "Iron Man" for a dollar, I think all the other, lesser songs should be fifty cents at most. |
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| Celebrate it |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|09:17 am] |
So on NPR right now is an extended story about a proposed law in Afghanistan that would mandate that a woman can't leave her house without her family's permission.
Fuck that.
I am suddenly so ecstatically happy that I live in a country with a decent level of protection and almost unfettered freedom. America isn't perfect, we can all agree on that, but shit man. Nothing like this is even on the table in Congress.
It's too bad I have work all day today, because I totally want to celebrate the ideals of freedom and democracy that make this country suck less than a lot of others. This will do for now:
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 31st, 2009|03:59 pm] |
So Facebook has happened to me for the third or fourth time. |
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| Science both enhances and ruins art |
[Mar. 30th, 2009|03:30 pm] |
So Black Sabbath's song Iron Man is about a time traveller who witnesses a future apocalypse, and returns to prevent it, but ends up gaining super powers and causing the apocalypse, in his rage. I got a lot more enthusiastic about it when I learned this.
There's just one couplet I can't get around:
"He was turned to steel/
In a great mag-net-ic field"
That's just dumb. |
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| (no subject) |
[Mar. 13th, 2009|11:10 am] |
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Phrase of the Day; "Wall Gas" |
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