things that have amused me today

* Boy's pancake breakfast delayed the end of WWII

* Crafty Sea Lion Befuddles Fish Biologists

* my advisor's april fool's trick of the year:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2006 11:11:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Proof of Goldbach's Theorem


Dear friends and/or colleagues and/or students,

You may be interested to know that I have just succeeded in
proving Goldbach's Theorem.

The paper can be viewed/downloaded from

http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~zeilberg/goldbach.pdf


Best wishes

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things that don't amuse me...

* i've been grading papers for the past 2 hours (because what else does one do on a saturday), and it's a workshop week. i'm supposed to grade their papers both on (a) mathematical correctness and (b) writing clarity... it's part (b) that's screwy. i'll easily give 8 and 9 out of 10s, but out of the 75 papers i graded on the first workshop i gave 0 10s, and on the 2nd one i gave 1 10 in all. many times there are mathematical errors that contribute, but there have been students who have all the right ideas, but don't express themselves clearly and i give 9s too.

in an attempt to get those rarely given 10s, students are writing in painstaking detail, but it's hard find papers that bridge the gap between (a) not explaining what you're doing and just doing computations and (b) explaining plenty, but in doing so writing with such formal and unnatural grammar that it's equally frustrating to read.

it's *really* hard to give good tips on how to explain technical things well in good prose.

* i have an eye doctor appointment this afternoon. last year he was concerned that my eyes seemed too dry and switched me to another kind of contacts... i didn't think they were dry then, but now i know my eyes definitely are way dryer than they should be even with the new contacts and only leaving them in 8-9 hours a day... crossing my fingers that he doesn't get so worried as to tell me he won't renew my contacts prescription and will only let me have glasses... we'll see.