Disturb us, Lord, when
We are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we have dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely
Because we sailed too close to the shore.
Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life;
Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.
Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wider seas
Where storms will show your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.
We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push into the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
attributed - sir francis drake -1577
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
some laughs...
freakin hilarious...
(1) in church, one of the lines we have in a typical lutheran (or many other denominations) service is:
pastor: lift up your hearts
congregation: we lift them to the Lord.
in the church bulletin this morning, however, the response was printed as:
pastor: life up your hearts
congregation: we left them to the Lord.
both typos are pretty funny, i thought. :)
(2) ziggy, as always, is my hero today:
that is all. happy weekend!
(1) in church, one of the lines we have in a typical lutheran (or many other denominations) service is:
pastor: lift up your hearts
congregation: we lift them to the Lord.
in the church bulletin this morning, however, the response was printed as:
pastor: life up your hearts
congregation: we left them to the Lord.
both typos are pretty funny, i thought. :)
(2) ziggy, as always, is my hero today:
that is all. happy weekend!
Friday, January 11, 2008
back to the real world...
i love conferences. i just spent 4 days listening to math talks and hanging out with a bunches of people who i know from various mathematical parts of my past... it probably sounds nerdy, but being in a convention center of 5000ish mathematicians for the week feels like a mini-reunion of the past 10 years of my life rather than a chore or responsibility. and a trip to san diego for said convention was awesome too. now, alas, i'm no longer in math reunion land...
however, it appears that i now know what i'm doing with my life post grad school, but i'm hesitant to give all the details until they're all completely ironed out (which they should be within a month or so). it looks highly likely that this is my last semester of grad school and that i'll be moving in late july, which is exciting and moderately terrifying at the same time (seriously, i've ALWAYS been a student, and in a few months i won't be anymore... and i have a LOT of stuff (mostly books) that i'm dreading packing). but complain as i may about packing and transition, this is an exciting one, and the more i process the decision i made on monday (TBA in a month or so ;) ) the more enthusiastic i feel about it. :) life is crazy.
back in TN for the weekend. apparently i get to teach my mom's 8th graders for half an hour tomorrow morning. she wants me to tell them what a mathematician does. exciting, right?
this is a post composed of completely random paragraphs, so the conclusion will be no different. i flew memphis -> chicago -> san diego last saturday, san diego -> las vegas yesterday, and las vegas -> denver -> memphis tonight.
on the plane from denver to memphis, i ended up sitting next to brit, a hilarious 30-ish year old arkansas soybean farmer who really wanted to chat the whole time.... it started with
brit: "what do you do?"
me: "i'm a grad student, i study math."
brit: "oh! so see if you can beat my score on this quiz (pulls out a magazine quiz of which the first problem is "compute 2/3 x 3/4 x 4/5 x 5/6 x 6/7 without using a calculator"). my dad got a degree in accounting, if you beat him i'm impressed" (the dad sitting across the aisle didn't understand how i quickly concluded the answer was 2/7 and had me explain it slowly on the way off the plane later ;) )
quite some time later of oohing and aahing over math tricks, sharing crazy travel stories, and talking about gun control and soybeans....
brit: well, lara, i'm sure glad i sat by you this flight. it's made the last 2 hours a heck of a lot more fun.
me: yeah, me too. out of the 5 flights i've been on this week, you're the first person to be any kind of friendly.
brit: well, i bet you anything the rest of them were yankees!
(... it's good to be a southerner ;))
the end.
however, it appears that i now know what i'm doing with my life post grad school, but i'm hesitant to give all the details until they're all completely ironed out (which they should be within a month or so). it looks highly likely that this is my last semester of grad school and that i'll be moving in late july, which is exciting and moderately terrifying at the same time (seriously, i've ALWAYS been a student, and in a few months i won't be anymore... and i have a LOT of stuff (mostly books) that i'm dreading packing). but complain as i may about packing and transition, this is an exciting one, and the more i process the decision i made on monday (TBA in a month or so ;) ) the more enthusiastic i feel about it. :) life is crazy.
back in TN for the weekend. apparently i get to teach my mom's 8th graders for half an hour tomorrow morning. she wants me to tell them what a mathematician does. exciting, right?
this is a post composed of completely random paragraphs, so the conclusion will be no different. i flew memphis -> chicago -> san diego last saturday, san diego -> las vegas yesterday, and las vegas -> denver -> memphis tonight.
on the plane from denver to memphis, i ended up sitting next to brit, a hilarious 30-ish year old arkansas soybean farmer who really wanted to chat the whole time.... it started with
brit: "what do you do?"
me: "i'm a grad student, i study math."
brit: "oh! so see if you can beat my score on this quiz (pulls out a magazine quiz of which the first problem is "compute 2/3 x 3/4 x 4/5 x 5/6 x 6/7 without using a calculator"). my dad got a degree in accounting, if you beat him i'm impressed" (the dad sitting across the aisle didn't understand how i quickly concluded the answer was 2/7 and had me explain it slowly on the way off the plane later ;) )
quite some time later of oohing and aahing over math tricks, sharing crazy travel stories, and talking about gun control and soybeans....
brit: well, lara, i'm sure glad i sat by you this flight. it's made the last 2 hours a heck of a lot more fun.
me: yeah, me too. out of the 5 flights i've been on this week, you're the first person to be any kind of friendly.
brit: well, i bet you anything the rest of them were yankees!
(... it's good to be a southerner ;))
the end.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
one of the cooler things i’ve learned in a bit...
i spent a large chunk of my afternoon at the main memphis library today to get some programming/research/writing the talk i give next week done. instead of going straight home though, i went to raid the math section and see if they had anything interesting or new since i last checked it out in may. amongst other things i found a book called "1089 and all that" which was a quick easy (150ish pages in about an hour) read, with lots of cute facts, most of which i knew already.
but one chapter amazed me. "the indian rope trick" is a magic trick where the magician throws a rope into the air and somehow, defying gravity, it stays in the air, and then a small child climbs it. if you google it, there's all kinds of speculation about how it's a hoax and how it might be pulled off.
however, inspired by this, the author looked at a different idea:
instead of a rope, think of a pendulum hanging from the ceiling and attach another pendulum to the bottom of that, etc., etc.... so it's like a giant stick that can bend in a bunch of places
now instead of attaching to the ceiling, attach the pendulum to the floor. clearly, if you let it be, it's going to collapse.
HOWEVER, the author proved that there's a "natural frequency" that if you move the base of your stick of pendulums UP and DOWN the right amount at the right speed, the stick will stay up... you can even push it up to like 40 degrees off center and it will correct itself.
the author's website has an illustration program. click on the upside down pendulum theorem at http://home.jesus.ox.ac.uk/~dacheson/1089comp.html
how cool is that?
but one chapter amazed me. "the indian rope trick" is a magic trick where the magician throws a rope into the air and somehow, defying gravity, it stays in the air, and then a small child climbs it. if you google it, there's all kinds of speculation about how it's a hoax and how it might be pulled off.
however, inspired by this, the author looked at a different idea:
instead of a rope, think of a pendulum hanging from the ceiling and attach another pendulum to the bottom of that, etc., etc.... so it's like a giant stick that can bend in a bunch of places
now instead of attaching to the ceiling, attach the pendulum to the floor. clearly, if you let it be, it's going to collapse.
HOWEVER, the author proved that there's a "natural frequency" that if you move the base of your stick of pendulums UP and DOWN the right amount at the right speed, the stick will stay up... you can even push it up to like 40 degrees off center and it will correct itself.
the author's website has an illustration program. click on the upside down pendulum theorem at http://home.jesus.ox.ac.uk/~dacheson/1089comp.html
how cool is that?
