A Few Things
Potluck
I can’t seem to get myself to a point where I can write up what I want to, so I’m going to dump a grab bag of half-baked observations and their attendant cognitive fumbling, in the hopes that you’ll find something worth reading among them. Maybe I’ll create yet another class of personal electronic publishing, extending the set {blog, Twitter, moblog, photoblog, tumblr} with the new element {fumblr}. Might be confused with a Daunte Cullpepper project, though. Lemme think on that one.
Age Is a Crutch
I’m 37 36 [Yes, I did.]. I’m feeling in diminishing health, if only superficially so. I’m feeling incompetent in the study of mathematics. I’m feeling a curious mixture of ennui and anxious undifferentiated anticipation, which makes for a kind of cognitive motion sickness sometimes.
Only the last three sentences are relevant, but I sometimes wonder about the first. I think this is a product of a culture that teaches us to find, if not create, our own foils, either as a scapegoat for failure or as a villainous target of our heroic success.
I came across this set of rules. Rules are another crutch, another kind of buffer against the daunting nature of reality, but they can take a little of the stress out of your neck. It’s cute, quaintly simple and authoritative, and not without its own kind of validity. I’m going to run with the following one, and hope for the best.
Nothing is a mistake.
There’s no win and no fail.
There’s only make.
The Music in the Lines
People ask why I’m studying math. The answer is kind of recursive, in that some points need to be demonstrated to serve as axioms on top of which to build out my reasoning. I’ve concluded that it’s rude to start the response this way, because they’re not asking, “Why should I study math?”
Here’s a more considerate effort. Read this.
It Brings All the Boys from the Yard
I don’t know what it means in the context of There Will Be Blood, but my curiosity is piqued by the newest heir to “Where’s the beef?”: “I drink your milkshake!”
It saddens me to have learned this from one of VH1’s “I Love Yesterday Afternoon!” episodes.
You Got A Perty Mouth
I’m taking a vacation this week. A real, corporeal, leaving-the-state-for-somewhere-else, I’m-only-bringing-my-wife-and-select-novelty-items kind of getaway deal. We’re going to the hills of Kentucky, far enough removed from where we live yet convenient enough for a relatively short drive.
We’re looking for Ned Beatty’s corpse.
Sponsored by My Crippled Ethical Core
I work, if tangentially, in the advertising industry. Not by any virtue of that industry, but merely by the horrible way my company comports itself, I can’t stand my work day. But that second statement is unrelated here, except that my disaffection is a constant subtext.
I think it can’t be mere emergent coincidence that I want to see …Blood as noted above, and the indentured comedian staff of VH1 were made to funnify it on front of a camera. Maybe they did just tap into some intrinsic pop-culture popularity; I think it’s more the result sly co-mingling of “content” with “copy,” instead.
This attempt at commercial subterfuge is everywhere. I’m listening to a podcast produced by the makers of Maple. The current episode includes interviews with three undergrad math students, who, interestingly enough, find Maple to be nearly indispensable in their math studies.
I’ve had some professors who just assume you’re going to use Maple. I went to one with a question about an integral I was trying to solve by hand, and he was, like, “Oh, we didn’t expect you to do this by hand; don’t you have Maple?”
Let me tell you one thing: if you ever come across a professor who assumes you’re using a computer algebra system (CAS) which isn’t an integral part of the course, e.g. “Numerical Approximation with Maple,” take your tuition money elsewhere. In other words, this is bogus, something like, “Before I tried Bondai’s Fudge-flavored Vitamin-C-enriched Protein Necklace, I couldn’t lose weight no matter how much I exercised; but now, everyone thinks I’m anorexic!”
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