i was moderately productive last night... check this out: new web book -- too bad my productivity mostly was organizing and presenting math i've already figured out rather than solving new stuff, but it's still something to show dr. z. today....
despite my lack of finishing stuff i'm supposed to have read and my lack of proving things i should have by now at least tried harder to prove, he'll probably be a little distracted today anyhow... today's the day that john nash is coming to speak at experimental math seminar :-)
if the name nash rings a bell, but you can't quite place it, remember a beautiful mind? he's the mathematician that that movie was about. his work made a notable difference in economics and since the movie he's been a celebrity with tons of books about him out, and whatever else have you. he also won the nobel prize back in the mid-90s, so he's widely recognized that way too.
because i have nothing better to type about him coming just yet, here's his autobiography on the nobel prize website: click here; and here's the mouth-ful of a title for the talk i get to hear today:
Speaker: John Nash, Princeton University
Title: The 'Agencies Method' for Studying Cooperative Games and the Resulting Mathematical Problem of Finding Equilibria in a Highly Multi-Dimensional Context
Time/place: Thursday, 4/21/2005 4:30pm in Hill 705
dr. z. also invited me to dinner with the speaker after, so i'm sure i'll have more to say tonight. :-)
later dudes :-P
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
mock lecturing
it's done!
unfortunately i totally screwed up... even after looking over ALL the problems i could have possibly been asked, i screwed one up and even the impartial dude managing the videotape pointed it out to me. i told lies about math and the non-math student even pointed out i was wrong.... ooops.
i feel silly.
but at least it's done.
i am so going to suck as a teacher.... oops.
unfortunately i totally screwed up... even after looking over ALL the problems i could have possibly been asked, i screwed one up and even the impartial dude managing the videotape pointed it out to me. i told lies about math and the non-math student even pointed out i was wrong.... ooops.
i feel silly.
but at least it's done.
i am so going to suck as a teacher.... oops.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
go dad!
on the phone just now:
dad: did mom tell you i won the garden club of america award?
me: nope... what does that mean?
dad: it means i had to go to dinner at some fancy country club and wear a tuxedo a couple weeks ago
me: oh really -- i haven't seen you in a tux besides your wedding pictures... how does that work
dad: i look like a blond penguin, that's how it works... it makes me feel old
click here to see my dad, with his award, but not in a tux :-P
dad: did mom tell you i won the garden club of america award?
me: nope... what does that mean?
dad: it means i had to go to dinner at some fancy country club and wear a tuxedo a couple weeks ago
me: oh really -- i haven't seen you in a tux besides your wedding pictures... how does that work
dad: i look like a blond penguin, that's how it works... it makes me feel old
click here to see my dad, with his award, but not in a tux :-P
oh joy
crazy week
i'm making decent progress on stuff for my reading class today, but that's interspersed with something else...
tomorrow morning i get videotaped while i teach a mock lecture to 3 other math grad students... it's the final step in our TA training program. lecturing for 20 minutes or so on camera, discussing how it went with the TA training instructor, and then i'm officially certified to teach in the fall... oi.
the section i have to lecture on is applications of derivatives (the calc problems that are like "so say farmer brown wants to make 3 pens shaped like in the diagram below and he only has 80 feet of fence -- what's the maximum area he can enclose?")
it's really not a big deal, but i went through this afternoon and worked the 15 problems i could possibly have to present to make sure there weren't any nasty numbers that required a calculator... it should all be fine, i just will be glad when it's over with.
tomorrow 3 other grad students who will ask ridiculous questions, in a few months a room full of undergrads... oh joy oh joy :-P
in the meantime, lots of math, and counting down til my mock lecture is done :-P
later dudes
i'm making decent progress on stuff for my reading class today, but that's interspersed with something else...
tomorrow morning i get videotaped while i teach a mock lecture to 3 other math grad students... it's the final step in our TA training program. lecturing for 20 minutes or so on camera, discussing how it went with the TA training instructor, and then i'm officially certified to teach in the fall... oi.
the section i have to lecture on is applications of derivatives (the calc problems that are like "so say farmer brown wants to make 3 pens shaped like in the diagram below and he only has 80 feet of fence -- what's the maximum area he can enclose?")
it's really not a big deal, but i went through this afternoon and worked the 15 problems i could possibly have to present to make sure there weren't any nasty numbers that required a calculator... it should all be fine, i just will be glad when it's over with.
tomorrow 3 other grad students who will ask ridiculous questions, in a few months a room full of undergrads... oh joy oh joy :-P
in the meantime, lots of math, and counting down til my mock lecture is done :-P
later dudes
Monday, April 18, 2005
yuck
for the record buchberger's algorithm is officially my nemesis... buchberger is the algorithm that finds a grobner basis for a polynomial ideal. i'm sitting here in algorithmic math class and we're trying to program the algorithm together in maple, and i already spent 8 hours trying to do it yesterday and couldn't manage to make it work... now, even though i'm the only person who's seen it in another class before, i'm the one person who can't seem to answer anything right.
i can't answer questions about it, i can't program it, i can't seem to do anything about it right no matter how many times i see it.
i officially hate buchberger's algorithm... stupid polynomial reductions...
end of rant.
i can't answer questions about it, i can't program it, i can't seem to do anything about it right no matter how many times i see it.
i officially hate buchberger's algorithm... stupid polynomial reductions...
end of rant.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
more quizzes :-P
You Are 40% Normal (Somewhat Normal) |
 While some of your behavior is quite normal... Other things you do are downright strange You've got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself |
You Will Die at Age 76 |
76 You're pretty average when it comes to how you live... And how you'll die as well. |
Lara Kristin Pudwell's Aliases |
Your movie star name: Orange David |
Your fashion designer name is Lara Budapest |
Your socialite name is La New York |
Your fly girl / guy name is L Pud |
Your detective name is Llama White Station |
Your barfly name is Grits Margarita |
Your soap opera name is Kristin Elmore |
Your rock star name is Mints Car |
Your star wars name is Larnes Puddan |
Your punk rock band name is The Happy Pizza |
You Are Best Described By... |
 The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh |
You Are A Good Friend |
 You're always willing to listen Or lend a shoulder to cry on You're there through thick and thin Many people consider you their "best friend"! |
You Are Incredibly Logical |
 (You got 100% of the questions right) Move over Spock - you're the new master of logic You think rationally, clearly, and quickly. A seasoned problem solver, your mind is like a computer! |
i've always said i've got a mutt accent ;-)
i understand the dixie (grew up in memphis), i guess the yankee is the valpo/jersey years? (then why'd i get 0% midwestern?), but where the heck is the "upper midwestern" from (ah yes, i live with a minnesotan now ;-)... j/k i don't think colleen's speech patterns have affected mine, but i have no better theory :-P)?
Your Linguistic Profile: |
50% General American English |
25% Dixie |
15% Yankee |
10% Upper Midwestern |
0% Midwestern |
it's a BEAUTIFUL day!!!!
so despite not falling asleep until after 4am and waking up at 7:45am, i am having a FANTASTIC morning :-)
first off, it's sunny and like 70F outside. this means during my 25 minute drive to church, i could make excellent use of my sunroof :-) i was the lone car with TN plates speeding down jersey state route 18 this morning, all windows open and BLASTING kirk franklin tunes... it was FANTASTIC :-P
second off, at church from time to time they take surveys of what people would like to see going on through the church that either they aren't aware or that actually isn't going on at the church... the couple times i've filled out such surveys i've commented that a like 18-35 singles group would be a good thing... apparently several other people have been remarking that every time too, but no one's ever stepped up and said they have the time to start spearheading something like that (like me for example, i'd definitely want to be involved, but i'm a ph.d. student 20 miles away.... i don't have time to RUN such an endeavor)
anyhow, don (our coordinator of lay ministry -- he lives in the church office and it's his job to know EVERYTHING that's going on so he can help get people plugged into things they'd enjoy being a part of) finally decided he wasn't waiting anymore for someone to step up and instead organized a spaghetti dinner for two weeks from yesterday for people to show up and discuss what they'd like to see done. that's *just* before the end of the semester, so i can actually make it... i signed up for the dinner and i'm very excited and hopeful that something good comes out of it. i have plenty of friends at church from altar guild, new member class when i joined, spiritual gifts seminar, and just from the service i attend, but by and large they're junior high, my parents age, or my grandparents age. i know there EXIST other singles in the church, but i don't KNOW them. while it's fantastic to have a church FAMILY with friends of all ages, i'm happy to see gears turning to potentially help me find other people in more similar parts of life to me :-P
they're also hoping to have a call list put together by sometime in may -- this is exciting too :-) pastor v. (interim pastor) though did a really good sermon today... it's good shepherd sunday in the church calendar (ironically i attend lutheran church of the good shepherd :-P)... he talked about how people have names, churches have names, lots of things have names that each set us apart and tell the world something about who are are supposed to be, yet with all the diversity and how many billions of people there are in the world, Jesus knows us all BY NAME.... he calls us, walks with us, and talks with us knowing us each and every one BY NAME. pastor v. is nice enough, but he doesn't always have just one thesis statement when he preaches so he isn't always the easiest to follow. when he does manage to stick to just one main topic though, he does a beautiful job.
otherwise, lots of math to do today, most of which involves the computer, but that doesn't mean i can't continue to enjoy the day... i'm BLASTING music throughout the house and have all the windows open around here. just because i have to stay inside doesn't mean i can't enjoy the weather ;-P
later dudes :-)
happy day to all of YOU!
first off, it's sunny and like 70F outside. this means during my 25 minute drive to church, i could make excellent use of my sunroof :-) i was the lone car with TN plates speeding down jersey state route 18 this morning, all windows open and BLASTING kirk franklin tunes... it was FANTASTIC :-P
second off, at church from time to time they take surveys of what people would like to see going on through the church that either they aren't aware or that actually isn't going on at the church... the couple times i've filled out such surveys i've commented that a like 18-35 singles group would be a good thing... apparently several other people have been remarking that every time too, but no one's ever stepped up and said they have the time to start spearheading something like that (like me for example, i'd definitely want to be involved, but i'm a ph.d. student 20 miles away.... i don't have time to RUN such an endeavor)
anyhow, don (our coordinator of lay ministry -- he lives in the church office and it's his job to know EVERYTHING that's going on so he can help get people plugged into things they'd enjoy being a part of) finally decided he wasn't waiting anymore for someone to step up and instead organized a spaghetti dinner for two weeks from yesterday for people to show up and discuss what they'd like to see done. that's *just* before the end of the semester, so i can actually make it... i signed up for the dinner and i'm very excited and hopeful that something good comes out of it. i have plenty of friends at church from altar guild, new member class when i joined, spiritual gifts seminar, and just from the service i attend, but by and large they're junior high, my parents age, or my grandparents age. i know there EXIST other singles in the church, but i don't KNOW them. while it's fantastic to have a church FAMILY with friends of all ages, i'm happy to see gears turning to potentially help me find other people in more similar parts of life to me :-P
they're also hoping to have a call list put together by sometime in may -- this is exciting too :-) pastor v. (interim pastor) though did a really good sermon today... it's good shepherd sunday in the church calendar (ironically i attend lutheran church of the good shepherd :-P)... he talked about how people have names, churches have names, lots of things have names that each set us apart and tell the world something about who are are supposed to be, yet with all the diversity and how many billions of people there are in the world, Jesus knows us all BY NAME.... he calls us, walks with us, and talks with us knowing us each and every one BY NAME. pastor v. is nice enough, but he doesn't always have just one thesis statement when he preaches so he isn't always the easiest to follow. when he does manage to stick to just one main topic though, he does a beautiful job.
otherwise, lots of math to do today, most of which involves the computer, but that doesn't mean i can't continue to enjoy the day... i'm BLASTING music throughout the house and have all the windows open around here. just because i have to stay inside doesn't mean i can't enjoy the weather ;-P
later dudes :-)
happy day to all of YOU!
2 freakin 15 am :-P
oh joy oh joy -- i haven't had this issue in awhile.... you probably haven't heard me talk about starbucks in a long time even though for years lara and starbucks have been synonymous... that's because since christmas amongst other things i've made a concerted effort to eliminate caffeine from my drinks... i went from coffee to tea (if you pick right you only get 60% of the caffeine in a mug of tea as you do in a mug of coffee), then to decaf tea, and then to water. being as i mostly drink water, and occasionally decaf tea anymore, and that's about it, there's no caffeine keeping me up late at night... until now...
ben's cousin michelle (aka misha) is considering grad school in NYC and stayed in town long enough to hang out with ben this weekend... ben and i were chatting this afternoon and he invited me to dinner with them... but first misha was dying for some coffee and really wanted starbucks as a prelude to dinner... so around 8pm going based on taste, i got a granda valenia white mocha (this includes 2 shots of espresso)... the halflife of caffeine is 6 hours, so that means here at 2am i've still got half a grand white mocha in my system, and being as i haven't had this much caffeine at once in MONTHS, i can't just make myself go to sleep... ooops....shoulda considered this 6 hours ago :-P
that's probably not the only reason i've been up... i've been thinking a lot lately about random stuff (well i'm generally always thinking about random stuff... can't help it)...
here's a sampling...
*eric's had some really random but good questions lately.... he ate dinner with me on wednesday night and commented that he finds it disturbing that for two people who are both decently well-read and think a lot about things that we have such fundamentally different views of the universe, at least on the theology side of things. he comments a lot about "well, say we both had grown up on pluto, no parents influencing us on what to think or how to think when we're little, no society messing with our heads, then i think we would naturally come to similar viewpoints on the world... even if there's differences i think our beliefs would be more convergent than they are now..."...
he wants to discuss a lot about what concepts are "natural", like although he doesn't believe in God, he can see how someone can say that things existing might be reason to believe in a "creator"... then again he comments, knowing enough science, he knows about how "rule 30" is exceedingly complex even though it follows from 8 simple binary operations, so he can see complexity arrising from different specified very simple laws, and doesn't necessarily see the complexity of the world as evidence for something all powerful and bigger tos start it. (see here about rule 30, or ask me if you're curious what the heck it meants)
on the other hand, eric doesn't think morality or the concept of a messiah are very natural. he argues that morality/conscience comes from thinking "well i wouldn't want someone to do this to *me*, so maybe other people don't want me to do it to them", but it's a human construct, and not very well-defined or formalized, since this definition can vary from person to person and so if it can't be axiomatized then it must not be very real.
i think it's natural to say "people murdering other people/stealing from other people/etc. is wrong; there's something fundamentally screwed up about the way people interact in the world", eric thinks that's just how it is, and maybe it doesn't need fixing because maybe that's just the most natural way to survive, by looking out for yourself.
mostly i think it bothers him that you have to get so deep to fundamentals to discuss where we differ... to discuss closer to the surface issues, we get to a point where "well my view on this follows from my belief in God and that He has an absolute sense of justice", while "eric's belief on this stems from...." it disturbs him that two people who have both seen and read a lot can have such widely disparaging fundamental axioms in our respective views of the world.
i find it intriguing, but not quite as distressing (word choice?) as he seems to find it... it's still some really good chats every time we get around to it.
* i've been thinking a lot about people and friendships. i find it interesting how while i've always had guy friends, i've generally had some really close female friends... now, here in jersey, i have female friends, but they're not who i talk to first about serious things. my primary local support system is 3 guys. and ironically the one i talk to the most about things is the one i share the least personal stuff with, and the one i see the least is the one i'm most comfortable sitting down and chatting about relationships and stuff with. i have a different kind of sister-brother relationship with each of them, and i find it humorous (word choice?) that i've gone in the past two years from having a primarily female support system to a primarily male support system.
* i've been thinking a lot about me and math. the further you go in education, the more you realize that there's more and more people than you ever realized who are even smarter than you (unless you're extremely lucky and in the top fraction of a fraction of a percent)... i'm definitely not in that extremely lucky category. i completely lucked out though. i have an advisor who actually invited me to work with him and is extremely affirming of all his students. i NEED that encouragement, since i'm hard enough on myself already, so personality-wise he's a great match for me to work with. however, he's also in an area where the problems are pretty straightforward to state even though they're hard to solve. this means that my reading class with him is already doing minor research, without much background reading. i'm thankful for this because i thoroughly enjoy DOING new math instead of solving old problems, and knowing i liked that from undergrad is one of the main reasons i'm here in a ph.d. program, however not having to study and do as much reading for my work with my advisor i feel a lot like an amateur compared to friends in areas where they've HAD to do a lot of reading first. i do a lot of fun mucking around, but feel like i don't KNOW as much. this summer i need to do a lot of reading for oral quals for the fall, and that should help, but sometimes i question my ability/knowledge-base. i guess that's a perennial problem for most people... in a top tier ph.d. program, we're all in the top less than like 5% of math grad students in the country, and so i guess it's the nature of the beast to all feel pretty insignificant and incompetant from time to time... oi...
* here's something i've been getting excited about: john nash (the mathematician who "a beautiful mind" was about) is coming to speak at experimental math seminar this thursday. since i'm dr. z.'s student, i'm invited to dinner with the speaker afterwards, so this thursday i should be having dinner with john nash... a couple years ago i never would have dreamed of something like that. not that he's the president or anything, but he is a major name person for my field and i'll get to not only meet him in person, but chat with him over indian food. sometimes my life is pretty unexpectedly fun :-)
* i weigh 5 pounds less than i did a week ago -- stress probably had a bit to do with that, but probably so did me having bought a bag of oranges and apples for my snackfood for the week too... that made my day :-P
* eric watched "in america" with me yesterday afternoon. i hadn't seen it since i saw it in the theater 2 years ago. i had forgotten just how good the ending is. it's all about letting go of pain without forgetting the good that comes mixed in with the bad (if you see it, that statement makes more sense). it's one of the best movies i've seen in the past several years. i've been thinking about it.
* i've been thinking about going home and all the stuff i need to get done before then. semester here ends on may 2... it'll be busy in the meantime, but then summer job doesn't start til june 6. haven't seen my family since christmas and then it was for less than a week (unlike eric, colleen, and leigh who each went home for a couple weeks.. i was the last to leave jersey and beat them all back here by a week for the qual),... the extra study time for the qual paid off and made it a respectable pass rather than a hairline pass or a fail that i might have gotten without coming back so soon, but this means in the past year i've seen my parents and brother all for about 2 weeks total... i haven't seen grandma pudwell since last may either. it'll be interesting to see all of the above again. in a good way... just everything changes over time. mom's transitioning from principal to back to the classroom this year, memphis church is in search of a pastor (pastor mike moved to kansas last fall), brother's getting oooold on me and has a girl friend (purposely not one word) he's spent a decent amount of time with for months now,... i guess it's just my observation that when you only get "every 6 month" snapshots of life, being this far away most of the time, it's amazing the changes each trip, no matter how much stays the same...
so in summary: yeah, i've been thinking... about lots of stuff... and the caffeine is not in my favor :-P and here i've just spent 45 minutes typing away a novel of a brain dump... maybe now i'll go to sleep? (doubtful, but it's worth a shot... night y'all)
ben's cousin michelle (aka misha) is considering grad school in NYC and stayed in town long enough to hang out with ben this weekend... ben and i were chatting this afternoon and he invited me to dinner with them... but first misha was dying for some coffee and really wanted starbucks as a prelude to dinner... so around 8pm going based on taste, i got a granda valenia white mocha (this includes 2 shots of espresso)... the halflife of caffeine is 6 hours, so that means here at 2am i've still got half a grand white mocha in my system, and being as i haven't had this much caffeine at once in MONTHS, i can't just make myself go to sleep... ooops....shoulda considered this 6 hours ago :-P
that's probably not the only reason i've been up... i've been thinking a lot lately about random stuff (well i'm generally always thinking about random stuff... can't help it)...
here's a sampling...
*eric's had some really random but good questions lately.... he ate dinner with me on wednesday night and commented that he finds it disturbing that for two people who are both decently well-read and think a lot about things that we have such fundamentally different views of the universe, at least on the theology side of things. he comments a lot about "well, say we both had grown up on pluto, no parents influencing us on what to think or how to think when we're little, no society messing with our heads, then i think we would naturally come to similar viewpoints on the world... even if there's differences i think our beliefs would be more convergent than they are now..."...
he wants to discuss a lot about what concepts are "natural", like although he doesn't believe in God, he can see how someone can say that things existing might be reason to believe in a "creator"... then again he comments, knowing enough science, he knows about how "rule 30" is exceedingly complex even though it follows from 8 simple binary operations, so he can see complexity arrising from different specified very simple laws, and doesn't necessarily see the complexity of the world as evidence for something all powerful and bigger tos start it. (see here about rule 30, or ask me if you're curious what the heck it meants)
on the other hand, eric doesn't think morality or the concept of a messiah are very natural. he argues that morality/conscience comes from thinking "well i wouldn't want someone to do this to *me*, so maybe other people don't want me to do it to them", but it's a human construct, and not very well-defined or formalized, since this definition can vary from person to person and so if it can't be axiomatized then it must not be very real.
i think it's natural to say "people murdering other people/stealing from other people/etc. is wrong; there's something fundamentally screwed up about the way people interact in the world", eric thinks that's just how it is, and maybe it doesn't need fixing because maybe that's just the most natural way to survive, by looking out for yourself.
mostly i think it bothers him that you have to get so deep to fundamentals to discuss where we differ... to discuss closer to the surface issues, we get to a point where "well my view on this follows from my belief in God and that He has an absolute sense of justice", while "eric's belief on this stems from...." it disturbs him that two people who have both seen and read a lot can have such widely disparaging fundamental axioms in our respective views of the world.
i find it intriguing, but not quite as distressing (word choice?) as he seems to find it... it's still some really good chats every time we get around to it.
* i've been thinking a lot about people and friendships. i find it interesting how while i've always had guy friends, i've generally had some really close female friends... now, here in jersey, i have female friends, but they're not who i talk to first about serious things. my primary local support system is 3 guys. and ironically the one i talk to the most about things is the one i share the least personal stuff with, and the one i see the least is the one i'm most comfortable sitting down and chatting about relationships and stuff with. i have a different kind of sister-brother relationship with each of them, and i find it humorous (word choice?) that i've gone in the past two years from having a primarily female support system to a primarily male support system.
* i've been thinking a lot about me and math. the further you go in education, the more you realize that there's more and more people than you ever realized who are even smarter than you (unless you're extremely lucky and in the top fraction of a fraction of a percent)... i'm definitely not in that extremely lucky category. i completely lucked out though. i have an advisor who actually invited me to work with him and is extremely affirming of all his students. i NEED that encouragement, since i'm hard enough on myself already, so personality-wise he's a great match for me to work with. however, he's also in an area where the problems are pretty straightforward to state even though they're hard to solve. this means that my reading class with him is already doing minor research, without much background reading. i'm thankful for this because i thoroughly enjoy DOING new math instead of solving old problems, and knowing i liked that from undergrad is one of the main reasons i'm here in a ph.d. program, however not having to study and do as much reading for my work with my advisor i feel a lot like an amateur compared to friends in areas where they've HAD to do a lot of reading first. i do a lot of fun mucking around, but feel like i don't KNOW as much. this summer i need to do a lot of reading for oral quals for the fall, and that should help, but sometimes i question my ability/knowledge-base. i guess that's a perennial problem for most people... in a top tier ph.d. program, we're all in the top less than like 5% of math grad students in the country, and so i guess it's the nature of the beast to all feel pretty insignificant and incompetant from time to time... oi...
* here's something i've been getting excited about: john nash (the mathematician who "a beautiful mind" was about) is coming to speak at experimental math seminar this thursday. since i'm dr. z.'s student, i'm invited to dinner with the speaker afterwards, so this thursday i should be having dinner with john nash... a couple years ago i never would have dreamed of something like that. not that he's the president or anything, but he is a major name person for my field and i'll get to not only meet him in person, but chat with him over indian food. sometimes my life is pretty unexpectedly fun :-)
* i weigh 5 pounds less than i did a week ago -- stress probably had a bit to do with that, but probably so did me having bought a bag of oranges and apples for my snackfood for the week too... that made my day :-P
* eric watched "in america" with me yesterday afternoon. i hadn't seen it since i saw it in the theater 2 years ago. i had forgotten just how good the ending is. it's all about letting go of pain without forgetting the good that comes mixed in with the bad (if you see it, that statement makes more sense). it's one of the best movies i've seen in the past several years. i've been thinking about it.
* i've been thinking about going home and all the stuff i need to get done before then. semester here ends on may 2... it'll be busy in the meantime, but then summer job doesn't start til june 6. haven't seen my family since christmas and then it was for less than a week (unlike eric, colleen, and leigh who each went home for a couple weeks.. i was the last to leave jersey and beat them all back here by a week for the qual),... the extra study time for the qual paid off and made it a respectable pass rather than a hairline pass or a fail that i might have gotten without coming back so soon, but this means in the past year i've seen my parents and brother all for about 2 weeks total... i haven't seen grandma pudwell since last may either. it'll be interesting to see all of the above again. in a good way... just everything changes over time. mom's transitioning from principal to back to the classroom this year, memphis church is in search of a pastor (pastor mike moved to kansas last fall), brother's getting oooold on me and has a girl friend (purposely not one word) he's spent a decent amount of time with for months now,... i guess it's just my observation that when you only get "every 6 month" snapshots of life, being this far away most of the time, it's amazing the changes each trip, no matter how much stays the same...
so in summary: yeah, i've been thinking... about lots of stuff... and the caffeine is not in my favor :-P and here i've just spent 45 minutes typing away a novel of a brain dump... maybe now i'll go to sleep? (doubtful, but it's worth a shot... night y'all)
Friday, April 15, 2005
more fun with music
apparently i'm just in a mood to be playing with music this week... here's CD #2 i've put together for myself, equally pleased with it as the first one :-P
1. digee dime (burlap to cashmere)
2. beautiful world (colin hay)
3. if i had $1000000 (barenaked ladies)
4. walking in memphis (mark cohn)
5. rest (skillet)
6. colored people (dc talk)
7. don't ask me why (billy joel)
8. i'm so happy (hokus pick)
9. live in stereo (newsboys)
10. huza-vona [ts arpeggios] (princess) <--hungarian electronic violin trio, were popular the semester i lived in budapest :-P
11. we shall be free (garth brooks)
12. the lutheran song (lost and found)
13. long time gone (dixie chicks)
14. standing outside the fire (garth brooks)
15. wide open spaces (dixie chicks)
16. cowboy take me away (dixie chicks)
17. the eleventh hour (jars of clay)
18. number 9 (the waiting)
19. dracula from houston (butthole surfers)
20. hey hey (the elms)
ta da
i should be asleep... night y'all
1. digee dime (burlap to cashmere)
2. beautiful world (colin hay)
3. if i had $1000000 (barenaked ladies)
4. walking in memphis (mark cohn)
5. rest (skillet)
6. colored people (dc talk)
7. don't ask me why (billy joel)
8. i'm so happy (hokus pick)
9. live in stereo (newsboys)
10. huza-vona [ts arpeggios] (princess) <--hungarian electronic violin trio, were popular the semester i lived in budapest :-P
11. we shall be free (garth brooks)
12. the lutheran song (lost and found)
13. long time gone (dixie chicks)
14. standing outside the fire (garth brooks)
15. wide open spaces (dixie chicks)
16. cowboy take me away (dixie chicks)
17. the eleventh hour (jars of clay)
18. number 9 (the waiting)
19. dracula from houston (butthole surfers)
20. hey hey (the elms)
ta da
i should be asleep... night y'all
Thursday, April 14, 2005
apprentice final 5
farewell chris -- how often does a contestant get invited back to shake hands with the donald and get personal advice? chris has been a little rough around the edges throughout, so it's appropriate that he was finally fired, but he's grown up a bit even in the course of this show.
what ticks me off is that chris can work his butt off and get fired whereas craig and tana can sleep for 1/3 of the time of their task and be spared by kendra's awesome work. i've liked kendra from week one, and this week she showed dedication. she's guaranteed final four status now since she was the winning project manager this week, and i hope she makes it to the final two. i am concerned though that by seeing her team walk out on her, her response, instead of reasoning with them, was just letting them go and doing the work herself. she didn't have their respect from the start. i'm not sure if that's a kendra issue or a tana and craig issue (probably both)... i would have liked to have seen her exercise more control over them when they mutinied, but nonetheless, she showed as an individual worker she can do an amazing job. she's been in the background but doing something quiet but brilliant just about every week and that's why i admire her.
craig, i'm severely irritated with. when he was project manager, no one believed in his vision with the box and it turned out to be jackpot. now he's on the other side of the coin and it's all kendra's fault? somehow i don't think so. it's clear that kendra and craig don't communicate well with each other at all... and maybe that can't be helped (i can name a handful of people that i mean well towards and vice versa but have never been able to talk on the same page as) personality wise, but they can both give each other the benefit of the doubt. i don't see craig doing that at all, and while kendra might be, she also gives up on him really quickly too... in summary, i'm tired of craig being unclear and ineffective at communication.
tana, i didn't like at the start of the season, then she was growing on me a ton, until this episode, and now i hope she or craig is off next week. besides, like craig, quitting and going to sleep while kendra did their whole freaking brochure, she turned on her "mothering tone" towards kendra. i HATE when people talk to me that way when we're supposed to be equals, and my own mother doesn't even talk to me that way. the whole "what you might not understand is that we don't pull all-nighters like you, we're going to sleep, and you can pay for it" was completely obnoxious. even worse was her taking all the credit in the final presentation. if you didn't do the job, you can't just take over like you did... that happened last season with jennifer once too... completely unhonorable and obnoxious. so tana, i was a fan, but this week you stunk.
down to the final 5... i hope bren and kendra are the final 2 and i hope kendra wins, but only time will tell.
later dudes.
what ticks me off is that chris can work his butt off and get fired whereas craig and tana can sleep for 1/3 of the time of their task and be spared by kendra's awesome work. i've liked kendra from week one, and this week she showed dedication. she's guaranteed final four status now since she was the winning project manager this week, and i hope she makes it to the final two. i am concerned though that by seeing her team walk out on her, her response, instead of reasoning with them, was just letting them go and doing the work herself. she didn't have their respect from the start. i'm not sure if that's a kendra issue or a tana and craig issue (probably both)... i would have liked to have seen her exercise more control over them when they mutinied, but nonetheless, she showed as an individual worker she can do an amazing job. she's been in the background but doing something quiet but brilliant just about every week and that's why i admire her.
craig, i'm severely irritated with. when he was project manager, no one believed in his vision with the box and it turned out to be jackpot. now he's on the other side of the coin and it's all kendra's fault? somehow i don't think so. it's clear that kendra and craig don't communicate well with each other at all... and maybe that can't be helped (i can name a handful of people that i mean well towards and vice versa but have never been able to talk on the same page as) personality wise, but they can both give each other the benefit of the doubt. i don't see craig doing that at all, and while kendra might be, she also gives up on him really quickly too... in summary, i'm tired of craig being unclear and ineffective at communication.
tana, i didn't like at the start of the season, then she was growing on me a ton, until this episode, and now i hope she or craig is off next week. besides, like craig, quitting and going to sleep while kendra did their whole freaking brochure, she turned on her "mothering tone" towards kendra. i HATE when people talk to me that way when we're supposed to be equals, and my own mother doesn't even talk to me that way. the whole "what you might not understand is that we don't pull all-nighters like you, we're going to sleep, and you can pay for it" was completely obnoxious. even worse was her taking all the credit in the final presentation. if you didn't do the job, you can't just take over like you did... that happened last season with jennifer once too... completely unhonorable and obnoxious. so tana, i was a fan, but this week you stunk.
down to the final 5... i hope bren and kendra are the final 2 and i hope kendra wins, but only time will tell.
later dudes.
discussion?
re: the comment I got on the previous post
Comment: Maybe becoming "emotionally exhausted" is not because of what is happening for whatever reason but is trying to determine a 'reason' for what is happening. Some things just happen, some for no apparent reason.
Response: maybe....
Comment: For what reason does the sun rise, clear on some days and clouded on others; some leaves fall in the autumn, some do not. Some people like the taste of watermelon, some don't.
Response: the sun rises because of physics, it's cloudy some days because of weather patterns, leaves fall or don't because of the biological makeup of the tree, and some people like watermelon because their chemical makeup is predisposed to positive responses from particular tastes. there are some things we can't see the reason to, but i think by and large most if not all physical things DO have a reason, but this is a completely different tangent than i think you intended.
Comment: Maybe those cycles do not happen because grandma is 'ready to let go.' Maybe they 'just happen.' Maybe you need to stop grieving ahead of time. Maybe there's no 'reason' to do that. Maybe you'll feel better.
Response: I haven't really analyzed why things have happened the way they have with my grandmother. She's repeatedly expressed that she is ready to die whenever God sees fit for her to. However, despite all this talk of reasons, I don't think that emotions are something you just "decide" to do. I don't think it's necessarily under my control whether I feel really sad and wonder "what if..." from time to time. I think it's healthy to feel sad in response to the potential of losing someone you care about in the near future, whether it happens or not. I see it as a natural buffer that prepares you mentally for the shift of losing someone in the event that it does happen. It's not like I've been sitting around crying and writing her obituary in the event that something would happen. It's more I've been wondering more frequently than when she's not in the hospital just what might happen. The reason for such a reaction being, when I get seemingly bad news, my reflex response is to be a little sad and make sure I'm prepared to deal with WHATEVER happens next. I don't seem to think it's a bad system, but maybe I'm missing your point.
discussion?
in other news, dr. z. held class outside today (it's sunny and 60 outside); it was a beautiful day, and 99% of grad classes aren't structured so that that's an option :-P... too bad my reading class just me and him needs the computer :-P
lunch time.
Comment: Maybe becoming "emotionally exhausted" is not because of what is happening for whatever reason but is trying to determine a 'reason' for what is happening. Some things just happen, some for no apparent reason.
Response: maybe....
Comment: For what reason does the sun rise, clear on some days and clouded on others; some leaves fall in the autumn, some do not. Some people like the taste of watermelon, some don't.
Response: the sun rises because of physics, it's cloudy some days because of weather patterns, leaves fall or don't because of the biological makeup of the tree, and some people like watermelon because their chemical makeup is predisposed to positive responses from particular tastes. there are some things we can't see the reason to, but i think by and large most if not all physical things DO have a reason, but this is a completely different tangent than i think you intended.
Comment: Maybe those cycles do not happen because grandma is 'ready to let go.' Maybe they 'just happen.' Maybe you need to stop grieving ahead of time. Maybe there's no 'reason' to do that. Maybe you'll feel better.
Response: I haven't really analyzed why things have happened the way they have with my grandmother. She's repeatedly expressed that she is ready to die whenever God sees fit for her to. However, despite all this talk of reasons, I don't think that emotions are something you just "decide" to do. I don't think it's necessarily under my control whether I feel really sad and wonder "what if..." from time to time. I think it's healthy to feel sad in response to the potential of losing someone you care about in the near future, whether it happens or not. I see it as a natural buffer that prepares you mentally for the shift of losing someone in the event that it does happen. It's not like I've been sitting around crying and writing her obituary in the event that something would happen. It's more I've been wondering more frequently than when she's not in the hospital just what might happen. The reason for such a reaction being, when I get seemingly bad news, my reflex response is to be a little sad and make sure I'm prepared to deal with WHATEVER happens next. I don't seem to think it's a bad system, but maybe I'm missing your point.
discussion?
in other news, dr. z. held class outside today (it's sunny and 60 outside); it was a beautiful day, and 99% of grad classes aren't structured so that that's an option :-P... too bad my reading class just me and him needs the computer :-P
lunch time.
go figure
so my aunt priscilla IMed me last night with "do you have time for a quick note?" while i was out of the room and signed off immediately 2 minutes later.
on one hand, i could infer that she was in a hurry and rushing off elsewhere on account of an emergency... on the other i could just infer that she was busy... i tried her cell and left a message (it was off the 3-4 times i tried throughout yesterday evening), and i got no answer at her house the couple of times i tried... so last night, that question and then nothing... i was severely wondering what was up.
this morning, my mom IMed me to ask if pris had called me last night, because she (mom) had heard nothing... no joke, the instant i closed mom's IM window, my phone rang with my aunt calling.
apparently the whole deal yesterday was that my aunt was NOT going to the hospital to see grandma because grandma was being released back to her nursing home. my aunt plans to visit her there tonight.
both pris and my comment was "huh... go figure... got me"
for all the "she's so frail, and barely breathing, and barely able to eat, everything's so precarious" all week, i'm frankly completely amazed that this happened.
mom's comment this morning (before hearing from pris) was that her gut told her nothing about what's going on, but if this is the end she just wants it to come quickly. ditto from me.
grandma's suffered plenty in the past few years. i think the different thing this go around (bouts of her being "sicker" and then better enough to hang out in the nursing home again have happened in cycles for the past 5 years) is that i'm finally able to say "yeah, i'm ready to let go", in a way my head has been preparing to grieve, for something that's looking like is not going to happen just yet, which don't get me wrong, is good... i'm just emotionally exhausted right now.
gotta get ready for class... later dudes :-P
on one hand, i could infer that she was in a hurry and rushing off elsewhere on account of an emergency... on the other i could just infer that she was busy... i tried her cell and left a message (it was off the 3-4 times i tried throughout yesterday evening), and i got no answer at her house the couple of times i tried... so last night, that question and then nothing... i was severely wondering what was up.
this morning, my mom IMed me to ask if pris had called me last night, because she (mom) had heard nothing... no joke, the instant i closed mom's IM window, my phone rang with my aunt calling.
apparently the whole deal yesterday was that my aunt was NOT going to the hospital to see grandma because grandma was being released back to her nursing home. my aunt plans to visit her there tonight.
both pris and my comment was "huh... go figure... got me"
for all the "she's so frail, and barely breathing, and barely able to eat, everything's so precarious" all week, i'm frankly completely amazed that this happened.
mom's comment this morning (before hearing from pris) was that her gut told her nothing about what's going on, but if this is the end she just wants it to come quickly. ditto from me.
grandma's suffered plenty in the past few years. i think the different thing this go around (bouts of her being "sicker" and then better enough to hang out in the nursing home again have happened in cycles for the past 5 years) is that i'm finally able to say "yeah, i'm ready to let go", in a way my head has been preparing to grieve, for something that's looking like is not going to happen just yet, which don't get me wrong, is good... i'm just emotionally exhausted right now.
gotta get ready for class... later dudes :-P
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
etc.
mom's version of priscilla's news last night (priscilla called me and then my mom with the same story as i had last night)
----: talked to priscilla last night
----: they were trying to get nutrition going for grandma; but when they started the feeding tube and bag, she complained of pain in her abdomen.
----: the nurse told Priscilla that grandma is in frail condition...at one point Monday night, her breathing got so shallow that the nurse thought she had died.
----: grandma wanted to "talk" last night...and wanted priscilla to make sure Debbee and I knew she loved us even though she wouldn't talk to us when we visited her.
----: that's all i know for now - priscilla didn't mention the CAT scan last night, so I'm guessing they did not do it yesterday.
----: Love ya.
the second line is the only part that was new to me.... my new CD (see previous post) is amazingly good for me right now... we'll see what happens...
later dudes :-P
----: talked to priscilla last night
----: they were trying to get nutrition going for grandma; but when they started the feeding tube and bag, she complained of pain in her abdomen.
----: the nurse told Priscilla that grandma is in frail condition...at one point Monday night, her breathing got so shallow that the nurse thought she had died.
----: grandma wanted to "talk" last night...and wanted priscilla to make sure Debbee and I knew she loved us even though she wouldn't talk to us when we visited her.
----: that's all i know for now - priscilla didn't mention the CAT scan last night, so I'm guessing they did not do it yesterday.
----: Love ya.
the second line is the only part that was new to me.... my new CD (see previous post) is amazingly good for me right now... we'll see what happens...
later dudes :-P
fun with music
i decided to mix a CD for my car for this week that matches my mood... can you deduce anything from the following playlist? ;-P
1. Sky is Falling (Lifehouse)
2. Fresh Feeling (Eels)
3. Hibernia (Michael W. Smith)
4. Dear Friend (Charlie Peacock)
5. Go Rest High on that Mountain (Vince Gill)
6. The River (Garth Brooks)
7. Everything's Not Lost (Coldplay)
8. Good Life (Francis Dunnery)
9. The Dance (Garth Brooks)
10. Vienna (Billy Joel)
11. My Life is in Your Hands (God's Property)
12. Where the Angels Sleep (Bebo Norman)
13. Lullabye [Goodnight, My Angel] (Billy Joel)
14. My Prayer (Chris Rice)
15. Hard to Get (Rich Mullins)
16. Hymn (Jars of Clay)
17. Hold Me Jesus [Dona Nobis Pacem] (Rich Mullins)
18. Hallelujahs (Chris Rice)
19. All the Way My Savior Leads Me (Rich Mullins)
1. Sky is Falling (Lifehouse)
2. Fresh Feeling (Eels)
3. Hibernia (Michael W. Smith)
4. Dear Friend (Charlie Peacock)
5. Go Rest High on that Mountain (Vince Gill)
6. The River (Garth Brooks)
7. Everything's Not Lost (Coldplay)
8. Good Life (Francis Dunnery)
9. The Dance (Garth Brooks)
10. Vienna (Billy Joel)
11. My Life is in Your Hands (God's Property)
12. Where the Angels Sleep (Bebo Norman)
13. Lullabye [Goodnight, My Angel] (Billy Joel)
14. My Prayer (Chris Rice)
15. Hard to Get (Rich Mullins)
16. Hymn (Jars of Clay)
17. Hold Me Jesus [Dona Nobis Pacem] (Rich Mullins)
18. Hallelujahs (Chris Rice)
19. All the Way My Savior Leads Me (Rich Mullins)
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
fun...and unfun
first the fun --
tonight, scott and i planned one of our margarita nights... this just involves going to chilis, on the border, or somewhere that sells margaritas, and then usually involves playing pool, reading a book, or something at one of our houses after... tonight involved all of the above.
months ago, i had read a short article on dr. seuss that claimed that he wrote green eggs and ham on a dare from his publisher that he couldn't write a book using no more than 50 distinct words. scott and i had laughed at this several times and claimed we would count them the next time we read the book -- that happened to be tonight...
here's the official tally:
(each dot represents an additional instance of the word... "if" for example only appears once, while "thank" appears twice, etc.)
notice it took a margarita night and bowls of pineapple jello to inspire us to take on this task :-P
done with that, we watched scrubs and the office and laughed our heads off for awhile... then i drove scott home where we played a few games of pool before i was off... it was a much needed fun/unwinding sort of evening.
here's the unfun...
my aunt priscilla called during scrubs... my grandma (as noted by my mom earlier) hasn't been able to eat for a week now. they finally got her feeding tube hooked up and running again without her vomitting, and gave her 10 units of food today -- she needs to work her way up to 40 units a day again before she can go back to her nursing home. so that way there's hope.
on the other hand, the nurses commented that her breathing was so shallow last night that a time or two they were almost certain she had stopped breathing...
priscilla visited tonight and said grandma made a very big point today of saying how much she loves each and every one of us... she told priscilla to tell me thank you for my visits and my letters and that she loves me a lot... and priscilla said she was crying the whole time. the way priscilla put it, it's like grandma doesn't feel like she'll ever see those of us not already in pittsburgh with her now ever again.
really, the way it sounds, the bulk of crazy things going on has subsided, so in that sense things are looking up... on the other hand, grandma is weak and things *could* end at any time. the last paragraph though is what especially got to me. whether it's accurate or not, the idea that i might not see her again is rather sobering and strange. we'll see.....
i guess that's it. i'm tired.
night y'all :-P
tonight, scott and i planned one of our margarita nights... this just involves going to chilis, on the border, or somewhere that sells margaritas, and then usually involves playing pool, reading a book, or something at one of our houses after... tonight involved all of the above.
months ago, i had read a short article on dr. seuss that claimed that he wrote green eggs and ham on a dare from his publisher that he couldn't write a book using no more than 50 distinct words. scott and i had laughed at this several times and claimed we would count them the next time we read the book -- that happened to be tonight...
here's the official tally:
(each dot represents an additional instance of the word... "if" for example only appears once, while "thank" appears twice, etc.)
notice it took a margarita night and bowls of pineapple jello to inspire us to take on this task :-P
done with that, we watched scrubs and the office and laughed our heads off for awhile... then i drove scott home where we played a few games of pool before i was off... it was a much needed fun/unwinding sort of evening.
here's the unfun...
my aunt priscilla called during scrubs... my grandma (as noted by my mom earlier) hasn't been able to eat for a week now. they finally got her feeding tube hooked up and running again without her vomitting, and gave her 10 units of food today -- she needs to work her way up to 40 units a day again before she can go back to her nursing home. so that way there's hope.
on the other hand, the nurses commented that her breathing was so shallow last night that a time or two they were almost certain she had stopped breathing...
priscilla visited tonight and said grandma made a very big point today of saying how much she loves each and every one of us... she told priscilla to tell me thank you for my visits and my letters and that she loves me a lot... and priscilla said she was crying the whole time. the way priscilla put it, it's like grandma doesn't feel like she'll ever see those of us not already in pittsburgh with her now ever again.
really, the way it sounds, the bulk of crazy things going on has subsided, so in that sense things are looking up... on the other hand, grandma is weak and things *could* end at any time. the last paragraph though is what especially got to me. whether it's accurate or not, the idea that i might not see her again is rather sobering and strange. we'll see.....
i guess that's it. i'm tired.
night y'all :-P
here's something cool... :-)
saw this on laura's blog last week... google does satellite view maps now! (see here)
here's a few i found (note you can search in the top bar and it zooms where you want) of places i frequent :-P (in memphis and in jersey -- unfortunately valpo's part of the world isn't available on quality zoom yet, neither is budapest... oh well..
click to see in a new windowand the file name should tell you what you're looking at ;-)... enjoy :-P
busch campus -- can you find the math building?
my church here in jersey-- it's inside the lower right clover leaf
my house and neighborhood here in jersey
zoomed out view of my town in jersey
my high school
my family's house (really the only thing distinguishable is the waterfowl pond out back)
my memphis church/my grade school
downtown memphis -- i thought the pyramid looked kinda cool from above
running late to meet scott for dinner... happy tuesday all? :-P
here's a few i found (note you can search in the top bar and it zooms where you want) of places i frequent :-P (in memphis and in jersey -- unfortunately valpo's part of the world isn't available on quality zoom yet, neither is budapest... oh well..
click to see in a new windowand the file name should tell you what you're looking at ;-)... enjoy :-P
busch campus -- can you find the math building?
my church here in jersey-- it's inside the lower right clover leaf
my house and neighborhood here in jersey
zoomed out view of my town in jersey
my high school
my family's house (really the only thing distinguishable is the waterfowl pond out back)
my memphis church/my grade school
downtown memphis -- i thought the pyramid looked kinda cool from above
running late to meet scott for dinner... happy tuesday all? :-P
g-ma update and lara update
mom's update on g-ma (over IM while i was out this morning)
-----: la, I talked with Cil late yesterday...Grandma is to have a CAT scan of her abdomen today to try to find out what is going on
-----: the nurses are concerned that she has had no nutrition since she was brought to the hospital
-----: fortunately the vomiting had finally stopped, by Saturday/Sunday, I guess
-----: Priscilla said the nurses were"blunt" about whether or not Grandma would "bounce back" from this
-----: Debbie rightly asked what "bounce back" means...it is to survive, or to return to her prior level of health and energy
-----: so we shall see...
-----: Love
that's all i know on that
lara update -- eye doctor appointment today -- after 2 days of headaches my eyes were dry and irritated when he saw me, so he was concerned that they're like that a lot and that i should try a different kind of lenses... he gave me a trial pair of the new 02optix kind (you've probably seen ads on TV... click here) for a week and i have to go back next tuesday.
what weirded me out a little was what my eyes were doing during the tests. when one of the assistants did a peripheral vision test (you stare into a machine at a black dot and have a button to push when you see lights moving at the side of the screen) my vision in my left eye was blacking out in spurts while it was going... like not that i wasn't seen peripherally, i wasn't seeing at all for a few seconds...
also when the dr. had me looking at the eye chart across the room, i could read just fine with both eyes but it was all a blurry mess or no letters at all looking at the same thing with just one eye or the other... when i looked with just one eye writing looked gray and hazy... suddenly when i had both it focused and i could see the writing clearly... it was weird.
he took notes but didn't comment much... the contacts he gave me for this week are the same presciption as before but he said he might decide next week to change it... eyes... they're weird.
now i should be working.
later dudes
-----: la, I talked with Cil late yesterday...Grandma is to have a CAT scan of her abdomen today to try to find out what is going on
-----: the nurses are concerned that she has had no nutrition since she was brought to the hospital
-----: fortunately the vomiting had finally stopped, by Saturday/Sunday, I guess
-----: Priscilla said the nurses were"blunt" about whether or not Grandma would "bounce back" from this
-----: Debbie rightly asked what "bounce back" means...it is to survive, or to return to her prior level of health and energy
-----: so we shall see...
-----: Love
that's all i know on that
lara update -- eye doctor appointment today -- after 2 days of headaches my eyes were dry and irritated when he saw me, so he was concerned that they're like that a lot and that i should try a different kind of lenses... he gave me a trial pair of the new 02optix kind (you've probably seen ads on TV... click here) for a week and i have to go back next tuesday.
what weirded me out a little was what my eyes were doing during the tests. when one of the assistants did a peripheral vision test (you stare into a machine at a black dot and have a button to push when you see lights moving at the side of the screen) my vision in my left eye was blacking out in spurts while it was going... like not that i wasn't seen peripherally, i wasn't seeing at all for a few seconds...
also when the dr. had me looking at the eye chart across the room, i could read just fine with both eyes but it was all a blurry mess or no letters at all looking at the same thing with just one eye or the other... when i looked with just one eye writing looked gray and hazy... suddenly when i had both it focused and i could see the writing clearly... it was weird.
he took notes but didn't comment much... the contacts he gave me for this week are the same presciption as before but he said he might decide next week to change it... eyes... they're weird.
now i should be working.
later dudes
Monday, April 11, 2005
stuff
something that make me sad:
headaches that last for 40 hours
something that i'm glad is over with:
me taking my turn "practice teaching" in TA training class this afternoon... the prof even complimented my handwriting (go figure)
something i wish i could remember:
apparently eric called me at 2am last night (i had been asleep for the better part of 3 hours at that point, but had my phone on in case of grandma news... i had emailed him yesterday afternoon to call if he didn't get back super late (he had a family reunion in california this weekend) and he figured i'd be asleep with my phone off and he'd just leave a message being like "hey look at me, i really DID call!"...)... i'm aware he called and we talked for 10 minutes (my phone tells me so... 11 minutes 44 seconds actually), however after i went back to sleep all i vaguely remember is the phone startling me awake, me not being able to read the caller ID without my glasses and being confused until i heard eric, and him laughing at my slurred just-been-startled-awake speech. i honestly have no idea what i talked about for 12 minutes to him in the middle of the night... doht.
something that makes me happy:
jessica IMed me this morning that she had gotten a free itunes code from a pepsi bottle and being unable to use it, she thought she'd share. i finally got my computer to place nice with itunes and downloaded my song of choice -- no complaints... and yay for jessica :-)
later dudes -- maybe tomorrow will be a NON-headache day... that would be soooooooo nice
headaches that last for 40 hours
something that i'm glad is over with:
me taking my turn "practice teaching" in TA training class this afternoon... the prof even complimented my handwriting (go figure)
something i wish i could remember:
apparently eric called me at 2am last night (i had been asleep for the better part of 3 hours at that point, but had my phone on in case of grandma news... i had emailed him yesterday afternoon to call if he didn't get back super late (he had a family reunion in california this weekend) and he figured i'd be asleep with my phone off and he'd just leave a message being like "hey look at me, i really DID call!"...)... i'm aware he called and we talked for 10 minutes (my phone tells me so... 11 minutes 44 seconds actually), however after i went back to sleep all i vaguely remember is the phone startling me awake, me not being able to read the caller ID without my glasses and being confused until i heard eric, and him laughing at my slurred just-been-startled-awake speech. i honestly have no idea what i talked about for 12 minutes to him in the middle of the night... doht.
something that makes me happy:
jessica IMed me this morning that she had gotten a free itunes code from a pepsi bottle and being unable to use it, she thought she'd share. i finally got my computer to place nice with itunes and downloaded my song of choice -- no complaints... and yay for jessica :-)
later dudes -- maybe tomorrow will be a NON-headache day... that would be soooooooo nice
Saturday, April 09, 2005
new stuff
background: at christmas, my parents gave me a fairly large wad of cash and told me it was designated for buying new clothes (this probably had something to do with the fact that at thanksgiving in pittsburgh i purposely wore sweaters with holes and bleachspots and pointed out that i was in need of new clothes to my mom throughout the weekend ;-) )
anyhow, me being perpetually running low on cash, i had gradually spent all the clothes $$ from christmas via putting a $10 or a $20 in my wallet when money was running low.
today as my reward to myself for hitting a major goal i made for myself months ago (to not be named just now as it's an ongoing project), i decided to go clothes shopping and get a few other things i've been needing for a bit -- just in the amount that my parents had originally given me earmarked for clothes.
if you don't pay enough attention to my habits, there's about ONE day a year i'm in the mood for clothes shopping and today happened to be it.
so my day went something like this:
*wake up
*pay bills
*sort through a week's worth of mail
*shower, lunch, laundry, sweep my room
*go to get a haircut but was told there was an hour wait (oops)
*go to kohls, and spend an hour there finding the best pair of black dress pants ever, and a decent pair of khaki's but no luck on shirts and long line to the fitting room so i left with just the pants to start
*met up with ben for a 4pm showing of "the upside of anger" -- quirky film, but worth seeing
*get out of movie around 6:30, tell ben about my morning and that i'm still in need of shirts... he comments that he needs shirts too so if i go somewhere with a men's section he's game... we go to another kohls where i got a black tank top (been in need of one), a nice blue button down shirt, an orangy-pink shirt and a green shirt, and a beige poncho (i've been wanting one for awhile) -- *NOW* i've officially spent my christmas $$ :-P
*went to staples and invested in a decent paper shredder... i've been collecting papers i need to shred for forever, now i can unfill some of the boxes full of such papers :-P
*went to walmart where ben and i each got new sunglasses
*came home and did a mini-fashion show for my roommates -- results below :-P
*am now writing to my blog after 12 hours of running around and getting absolutely no math done.
enjoy: (notice that you can click on the pictures to see them better in a new window)
my new paper shredder -- woohoo :-P
new $5 sunglasses, ben approved
new outfit 1: new khakis and orangy-pink shirt (the green shirt is almost identical)
new outfit 2: new spiffy black pants, new black tank top, and new khaki poncho
new outfit 3: same as outfit 2, only with my new blue shirt instead of the poncho (check out the fabric on it -- it has a cool print :-P)
and that's that.
in other news, on the way home, ben answered the phone when my aunt priscilla called with the grandma update (i was driving in busy traffic). last night the scoop was that g-ma was fairly stable, but her blood sugar (which had been 326 the previous day) was still in the high 200s and they still really needed to get that down before she went anywhere, but mostly it looked ok-ish.
i didn't get to hear aunt pris's tone for myself, but ben's relay of her message didn't sound good -- g-ma's resumed throwing up and it's changed in color from brown to black (i.e. more blood) and although before it was from her esophogas, ben's version of the message sounded like they didn't know the source this time.
we'll see what happens -- this one's nowhere but God's hands.
10pm... maybe i should think about dinnertime :-P
later dudes
anyhow, me being perpetually running low on cash, i had gradually spent all the clothes $$ from christmas via putting a $10 or a $20 in my wallet when money was running low.
today as my reward to myself for hitting a major goal i made for myself months ago (to not be named just now as it's an ongoing project), i decided to go clothes shopping and get a few other things i've been needing for a bit -- just in the amount that my parents had originally given me earmarked for clothes.
if you don't pay enough attention to my habits, there's about ONE day a year i'm in the mood for clothes shopping and today happened to be it.
so my day went something like this:
*wake up
*pay bills
*sort through a week's worth of mail
*shower, lunch, laundry, sweep my room
*go to get a haircut but was told there was an hour wait (oops)
*go to kohls, and spend an hour there finding the best pair of black dress pants ever, and a decent pair of khaki's but no luck on shirts and long line to the fitting room so i left with just the pants to start
*met up with ben for a 4pm showing of "the upside of anger" -- quirky film, but worth seeing
*get out of movie around 6:30, tell ben about my morning and that i'm still in need of shirts... he comments that he needs shirts too so if i go somewhere with a men's section he's game... we go to another kohls where i got a black tank top (been in need of one), a nice blue button down shirt, an orangy-pink shirt and a green shirt, and a beige poncho (i've been wanting one for awhile) -- *NOW* i've officially spent my christmas $$ :-P
*went to staples and invested in a decent paper shredder... i've been collecting papers i need to shred for forever, now i can unfill some of the boxes full of such papers :-P
*went to walmart where ben and i each got new sunglasses
*came home and did a mini-fashion show for my roommates -- results below :-P
*am now writing to my blog after 12 hours of running around and getting absolutely no math done.
enjoy: (notice that you can click on the pictures to see them better in a new window)
my new paper shredder -- woohoo :-P
new $5 sunglasses, ben approved
new outfit 1: new khakis and orangy-pink shirt (the green shirt is almost identical)
new outfit 2: new spiffy black pants, new black tank top, and new khaki poncho
new outfit 3: same as outfit 2, only with my new blue shirt instead of the poncho (check out the fabric on it -- it has a cool print :-P)
and that's that.
in other news, on the way home, ben answered the phone when my aunt priscilla called with the grandma update (i was driving in busy traffic). last night the scoop was that g-ma was fairly stable, but her blood sugar (which had been 326 the previous day) was still in the high 200s and they still really needed to get that down before she went anywhere, but mostly it looked ok-ish.
i didn't get to hear aunt pris's tone for myself, but ben's relay of her message didn't sound good -- g-ma's resumed throwing up and it's changed in color from brown to black (i.e. more blood) and although before it was from her esophogas, ben's version of the message sounded like they didn't know the source this time.
we'll see what happens -- this one's nowhere but God's hands.
10pm... maybe i should think about dinnertime :-P
later dudes
breathing is all it takes to be a miracle
it's been a decent afternoon....
after pizza seminar, i read for awhile (started in on hitchikers guide again), then when leigh came home we decided to go to a diner for dinner. jersey diner specials -- oh man! for one price you get a nice huge entree, salad bar, bowl of soup, and dessert, and they give you so much it's basically two meals because you take half of it home with you... it was a party.
afterwards, when we got home, colleen was back too, and they agreed to watch "garden state" with me. i had seen it twice in theaters and bought the dvd earlier this week in a buy 2 get 1 free sale at blockbuster.
as for me, i remembered again why i loved the movie so much last fall. i saw it with eric and scott just a week or two after roommate's mom's funeral, and again a little after that when my friend jessica came to visit. after all the emotion that went along with the summer, that movie especially hit a chord timing wise then and stuck with me. (if you've not seen it, the 1st scene of the movie is the main character waking up to a phone call his mom has died and he goes home for the funeral, where the whole movie takes place (in his hometown) in the week following the funeral).
i love(d) the movie because it's all about real life and real people and about being honest about feelings and about yourself. i also loved some of the imagery and the soundtrack was spectacular.
leigh and colleen on the other hand, saw the movie for the first time. i feel a little bad because i probably could have predicted their reactions but i still suggested they see it anyhow. without matching names to comments....
one roommate said, "i liked some of the ideas it conveyed, i just didn't overall enjoy the way it was put together and all the stuff they went through to convey them... it was ok"
said the other roommate, "i guess i would have been happier if i hadn't seen it. i don't like movies about people with screwed up lives, i'm happier in my bubble world when it comes to movies"
doht.
this is completely fair of them, they each see the world much differently than me. while i enjoy warm and fuzzy happy movies aplenty, for some reason dramas that are about real people with real screwed up lives strike a chord with me and i really like them. after all, we're all screwed up to varying degrees and i have my share of stories in that vein as well.... garden state was well done in this category (of conveying real, true, screwed up life) and i loved the conclusions it drew and the process the characters go through to get there.
life is about feeling, even if it's pain. there's not something better (in this world) to be waiting on, *this* is the time we've got.
i sat put and watched bloopers and deleted scenes tonight too after colleen and leigh went back to their rooms... the title is a quote from one of the deleted scenes, all in the same vein as before, but commented well... i need to replay it and get the exact quote.
the dude who lives in the arc in the quarry said something along the lines of "this is life, even if i'm never famous i'm ok, because i have a family who loves me and i'm doing stuff i love"
zach braff replied with something along the lines of "yeah, i've been looking for a philosophy like that,... i guess for too long i've assumed that if i don't become someone famous or discover something big i'm a waste of energy and the force that created all this will be disappointed with me"
the dude who lives in the arc replied "i think it's more along the lines of the force who created all this would want you to realize that breathing is all it takes to be a mircle... remember THAT"
in my mind, it was quality.
after polluting my roommates minds with an R-rated movie they didn't like, (oops), i'm off to read some more.
night y'all.
after pizza seminar, i read for awhile (started in on hitchikers guide again), then when leigh came home we decided to go to a diner for dinner. jersey diner specials -- oh man! for one price you get a nice huge entree, salad bar, bowl of soup, and dessert, and they give you so much it's basically two meals because you take half of it home with you... it was a party.
afterwards, when we got home, colleen was back too, and they agreed to watch "garden state" with me. i had seen it twice in theaters and bought the dvd earlier this week in a buy 2 get 1 free sale at blockbuster.
as for me, i remembered again why i loved the movie so much last fall. i saw it with eric and scott just a week or two after roommate's mom's funeral, and again a little after that when my friend jessica came to visit. after all the emotion that went along with the summer, that movie especially hit a chord timing wise then and stuck with me. (if you've not seen it, the 1st scene of the movie is the main character waking up to a phone call his mom has died and he goes home for the funeral, where the whole movie takes place (in his hometown) in the week following the funeral).
i love(d) the movie because it's all about real life and real people and about being honest about feelings and about yourself. i also loved some of the imagery and the soundtrack was spectacular.
leigh and colleen on the other hand, saw the movie for the first time. i feel a little bad because i probably could have predicted their reactions but i still suggested they see it anyhow. without matching names to comments....
one roommate said, "i liked some of the ideas it conveyed, i just didn't overall enjoy the way it was put together and all the stuff they went through to convey them... it was ok"
said the other roommate, "i guess i would have been happier if i hadn't seen it. i don't like movies about people with screwed up lives, i'm happier in my bubble world when it comes to movies"
doht.
this is completely fair of them, they each see the world much differently than me. while i enjoy warm and fuzzy happy movies aplenty, for some reason dramas that are about real people with real screwed up lives strike a chord with me and i really like them. after all, we're all screwed up to varying degrees and i have my share of stories in that vein as well.... garden state was well done in this category (of conveying real, true, screwed up life) and i loved the conclusions it drew and the process the characters go through to get there.
life is about feeling, even if it's pain. there's not something better (in this world) to be waiting on, *this* is the time we've got.
i sat put and watched bloopers and deleted scenes tonight too after colleen and leigh went back to their rooms... the title is a quote from one of the deleted scenes, all in the same vein as before, but commented well... i need to replay it and get the exact quote.
the dude who lives in the arc in the quarry said something along the lines of "this is life, even if i'm never famous i'm ok, because i have a family who loves me and i'm doing stuff i love"
zach braff replied with something along the lines of "yeah, i've been looking for a philosophy like that,... i guess for too long i've assumed that if i don't become someone famous or discover something big i'm a waste of energy and the force that created all this will be disappointed with me"
the dude who lives in the arc replied "i think it's more along the lines of the force who created all this would want you to realize that breathing is all it takes to be a mircle... remember THAT"
in my mind, it was quality.
after polluting my roommates minds with an R-rated movie they didn't like, (oops), i'm off to read some more.
night y'all.
Friday, April 08, 2005
ode to buying shoes
it's that time of year again -- the week where it suddenly changes from highs in the 40s to highs in the 60s... the week where i get to wear sandals again without my toes turning blue... (because after all i do hate socks and much prefer bare feet)
earlier in the week i dug out last year's sandals -- wearable but in need of replacement
so today (payday), i went by payless to get a new pair. normally this is not newsworthy, but one thing made me happy.
i buy men's shoes.
not for like dress shoes or whatever, but for a decent pair of sandals, i go straight to the mens shoes section.
i wear 11 or 11.5 womens size shoes and the selection is generally lacking for size 10.5 and higher, AND all the womens shoes freakin hurt your feet... they're much more about appearance than comfort. you go to the guys shoes section and they're oodles more comfortable, plus 9 or 9.5 size guys shoes gets like its whole own row.
so here i am trying on different sandals in the mens section when lo and behold i saw another lady down in the mens size 7.5-8 section doing the same thing. yay for people who would rather buy comfortable shoes than pain-causing decorated ones. i was happy to see i'm not the only one who does that :-)
the end.
earlier in the week i dug out last year's sandals -- wearable but in need of replacement
so today (payday), i went by payless to get a new pair. normally this is not newsworthy, but one thing made me happy.
i buy men's shoes.
not for like dress shoes or whatever, but for a decent pair of sandals, i go straight to the mens shoes section.
i wear 11 or 11.5 womens size shoes and the selection is generally lacking for size 10.5 and higher, AND all the womens shoes freakin hurt your feet... they're much more about appearance than comfort. you go to the guys shoes section and they're oodles more comfortable, plus 9 or 9.5 size guys shoes gets like its whole own row.
so here i am trying on different sandals in the mens section when lo and behold i saw another lady down in the mens size 7.5-8 section doing the same thing. yay for people who would rather buy comfortable shoes than pain-causing decorated ones. i was happy to see i'm not the only one who does that :-)
the end.
helpful hint
if you, like me, have been irritated with blogger in the past 24 hours in that you can read blogs, but it doesn't seem to want to let you open any of the pages for writing your own post, a helpful hint from the status blog:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday, April 08, 2005
If you are experiencing problems loading Blogger.com, please try clearing the cookies in your browser.
posted at 1:51AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
they've been working on a lot of stuff on the server this week and that's a result -- worked for me, hope that's useful info for you ;-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Friday, April 08, 2005
If you are experiencing problems loading Blogger.com, please try clearing the cookies in your browser.
posted at 1:51AM
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
they've been working on a lot of stuff on the server this week and that's a result -- worked for me, hope that's useful info for you ;-)
Thursday, April 07, 2005
all kinds of stuff
greetings blog fans
here's the update in lara land
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
math: i thought dr. z. would be disappointed that i didn't actually prove what i meant to this week... instead he was impressed with all the literature i did find on some things we talked about last week and gave me a new direction to go in. in fact, there are only two papers we're aware of on the new topic (strongly related to my old one)... one of the two papers isn't published yet, and he's supposed to referee it, but he decided i should referee it instead so i can put "have been a referee for a major journal" on my c.v. i was amused.
dr. z. makes me feel happy about math and happy to be here... very unlike combinatorics. i wrote up 2.5 answers perfectly, 1.5 more somewhat iffy, and the rest of this week's assignment i've basically given up on. i'm not proud of the way i do my homework for that class anymore. i read the problems until i understand them, and if they look doable, i try for a bit until i get really frustrated and then see what i can find online or see what help i can get from the guys in the class. seriously though, i feel like i'm soooooo much less skilled at solving the problems we're asked in there, i feel incompetant. and i've felt that way with this professor's homework for 3 straight semesters now. this isn't to say that i don't recognize he's brilliantly smart and has proved some amazing things. this isn't to say i don't appreciate that he gives amazingly well organized and motivated lectures. it is to say that my intelligence is dwarfed by his class and i will rejoice greatly when i turn in my last homework for him and never plan to take a course form him again.
dr. z.'s been asking me frequently in detail about how my homework is going for that class lately... it makes me suspect he and my combo prof have talked about me a time or two lately, and while dr. z. appears to love my work, i doubt my combo prof has anything good to say about me. it makes me wonder what gets said about me that i don't hear. i can't imagine that it's overly flattering... oh well, dr.z. still seems to like me, and that's what counts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
apprentice: i can't believe angie got fired. while chris is improving personal aspects, loosing the money and being MIA for most of the task is moderately ridiculous. from what the viewers saw, angie was given 90% of the responsibility, and had her work complicated by chris's being gone 2/3 of the task and alex's not keeping a good schedule. sure the presentation sucked, but what was she supposed to be doing instead? it's not like she was just sitting around. she admitted she didn't excel, but i don't see how anybody could with the responsibilities that skewed. i was disappointed in chris for losing the money and then disappearing for a large chunk of their time and then pawning off blame on the person who did all the work. i was saw that trump just said "admit you choked" and when she said "fine" he fired her immediately. if she had disagreed he would have fired her for being a smart alleck. whatever. angie was quality, i had hoped to see her last farther. i'm really pulling for tana, followed by kendra, followed by bren. we'll see if it works out to my satisfaction or not.... anyhow, farewell angie, sad to see her go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
grandma: this morning it appeared that all was well. with medication g-ma's vomitting had stopped and she was sleeping peacefully, they hoped to send her back to her nursing home this afternoon.
2pm: grandma's vomitting resumed and they had no idea why, she didn't seem to be responding to medication either.
8pm: they decided to replace her feeding tube even though this one wasn't that old, they're hoping that by putting a whole new one that will help ease whatever is agitating her so much. they had to suction her mouth at least 4 times today from the recurrent vomitting. blood returned, but they determined it was from her esophogas, and was old blood (not current bleeding)... basically something's going on in the stomach/intestines that isn't happy and since her esophogas isn't really used anymore, the vomitting was screwing something up on the way up. (i.e. the bleeding isn't something to worry about, and isn't current). g-ma's also diabetic (the ultimate cause of all of her medical problems), and my aunt noted from her file by her bed that her blood sugar was up around 326 today (it was 256 yesterday... for someone who hasn't eaten in a bit it should be below 100) -- that's really not good. anyhow, the doctor in charge is pretty conservative, so even after they stabilize everything he'll want to keep her in the hospital for several more days rather than sending her immediately back. meanwhile, aunt pris continues to update me so i can update mom.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
the lara update: i'm tired, and grumpy about math at present. i want to go to sleep, but need to wait for another hour until mom's out of meetings at the conference she's at so i can tell her the 8pm update.... tomorrow? turn in crappy homework, listen to an 80 minute lecture on van der waerden numbers (we've actually just started a lecture topic i understand and enjoy in that class, i hope it lasts several lectures before we get into probability measures and stuff i don't get at all again...), putz around for an hour, pizza seminar, then come home and be lazy :-P. i'm hoping to re-read hitchiker's guide to the galaxy before the movie comes out in 3 weeks... i plan to start cracking tomorrow afternoon and just read until i crash -- it'll be FANTASTIC.
and that's a wrap.
night y'all
here's the update in lara land
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
math: i thought dr. z. would be disappointed that i didn't actually prove what i meant to this week... instead he was impressed with all the literature i did find on some things we talked about last week and gave me a new direction to go in. in fact, there are only two papers we're aware of on the new topic (strongly related to my old one)... one of the two papers isn't published yet, and he's supposed to referee it, but he decided i should referee it instead so i can put "have been a referee for a major journal" on my c.v. i was amused.
dr. z. makes me feel happy about math and happy to be here... very unlike combinatorics. i wrote up 2.5 answers perfectly, 1.5 more somewhat iffy, and the rest of this week's assignment i've basically given up on. i'm not proud of the way i do my homework for that class anymore. i read the problems until i understand them, and if they look doable, i try for a bit until i get really frustrated and then see what i can find online or see what help i can get from the guys in the class. seriously though, i feel like i'm soooooo much less skilled at solving the problems we're asked in there, i feel incompetant. and i've felt that way with this professor's homework for 3 straight semesters now. this isn't to say that i don't recognize he's brilliantly smart and has proved some amazing things. this isn't to say i don't appreciate that he gives amazingly well organized and motivated lectures. it is to say that my intelligence is dwarfed by his class and i will rejoice greatly when i turn in my last homework for him and never plan to take a course form him again.
dr. z.'s been asking me frequently in detail about how my homework is going for that class lately... it makes me suspect he and my combo prof have talked about me a time or two lately, and while dr. z. appears to love my work, i doubt my combo prof has anything good to say about me. it makes me wonder what gets said about me that i don't hear. i can't imagine that it's overly flattering... oh well, dr.z. still seems to like me, and that's what counts.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
apprentice: i can't believe angie got fired. while chris is improving personal aspects, loosing the money and being MIA for most of the task is moderately ridiculous. from what the viewers saw, angie was given 90% of the responsibility, and had her work complicated by chris's being gone 2/3 of the task and alex's not keeping a good schedule. sure the presentation sucked, but what was she supposed to be doing instead? it's not like she was just sitting around. she admitted she didn't excel, but i don't see how anybody could with the responsibilities that skewed. i was disappointed in chris for losing the money and then disappearing for a large chunk of their time and then pawning off blame on the person who did all the work. i was saw that trump just said "admit you choked" and when she said "fine" he fired her immediately. if she had disagreed he would have fired her for being a smart alleck. whatever. angie was quality, i had hoped to see her last farther. i'm really pulling for tana, followed by kendra, followed by bren. we'll see if it works out to my satisfaction or not.... anyhow, farewell angie, sad to see her go.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
grandma: this morning it appeared that all was well. with medication g-ma's vomitting had stopped and she was sleeping peacefully, they hoped to send her back to her nursing home this afternoon.
2pm: grandma's vomitting resumed and they had no idea why, she didn't seem to be responding to medication either.
8pm: they decided to replace her feeding tube even though this one wasn't that old, they're hoping that by putting a whole new one that will help ease whatever is agitating her so much. they had to suction her mouth at least 4 times today from the recurrent vomitting. blood returned, but they determined it was from her esophogas, and was old blood (not current bleeding)... basically something's going on in the stomach/intestines that isn't happy and since her esophogas isn't really used anymore, the vomitting was screwing something up on the way up. (i.e. the bleeding isn't something to worry about, and isn't current). g-ma's also diabetic (the ultimate cause of all of her medical problems), and my aunt noted from her file by her bed that her blood sugar was up around 326 today (it was 256 yesterday... for someone who hasn't eaten in a bit it should be below 100) -- that's really not good. anyhow, the doctor in charge is pretty conservative, so even after they stabilize everything he'll want to keep her in the hospital for several more days rather than sending her immediately back. meanwhile, aunt pris continues to update me so i can update mom.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
the lara update: i'm tired, and grumpy about math at present. i want to go to sleep, but need to wait for another hour until mom's out of meetings at the conference she's at so i can tell her the 8pm update.... tomorrow? turn in crappy homework, listen to an 80 minute lecture on van der waerden numbers (we've actually just started a lecture topic i understand and enjoy in that class, i hope it lasts several lectures before we get into probability measures and stuff i don't get at all again...), putz around for an hour, pizza seminar, then come home and be lazy :-P. i'm hoping to re-read hitchiker's guide to the galaxy before the movie comes out in 3 weeks... i plan to start cracking tomorrow afternoon and just read until i crash -- it'll be FANTASTIC.
and that's a wrap.
night y'all
update
4:30pm: aunt pris called again... apparently g-ma was admitted to the hospital because she was extremely lethargic and was vomitting what looked like coffee grounds (i.e. she was vomitting dried blood)... they planned to do tests to figure out where the bleeding was coming from, and pris was just hanging out with g-ma at the hospital waiting on more news
8:30pm: aunt pris called once more -- apparently they flushed g-ma's stomach and things were ok... the blood was coming from her throat; she's apparently gotten dehydrated (she's been on a feeding tube for years now which inputs through her stomach... she can't swallow so her throat is pretty much unused for that function, even for water; apparently also she's had diahrea problems for a little bit which contributes to the dehydration even if she is getting proper care) (sorry for the possibly gross sidetrack, just explaining things to my satisfaction)... anyhow the report for the night was that pris was going home and would call the hospital in the morning to check on things... mostly they wanted to get g-ma rehydrated and observe her over night, and hopefully send her back to the nursing home in the morning.
not as high of drama as it possibly could have been... you have to admit that "in a failing condition" isn't encouraging medical vocabulary, but for tonight at least, things are ok.
since mom's out of town this week, i get her spot on the family phone chain and then i get the job of calling her and telling her what's what.
oh, and here's something you don't hear every day:
----: YOU! *points accusingly* were in my dream last night?
lkp 42 42 42: doing what?
----: well... first off, have i ever told you why i usually dont remember my dreams?
----: cuz.. they are usually QUITE dysfunctional.
----: so anyways..
----: you were hanging out in the cave in my side yard, which apparently was IMPOSSIBLE to get into, and housed the little elf-like guys who knew the secret to slaying the invisible beast that was tormenting me...
----: but when i finally find the way in, you were just chillin... and i was like.. lara?
lkp 42 42 42: dude
in other news, for the first time all semester, zeilberger's not getting any concrete proof of work this week -- i've worked hard, but not hit any major milestones since last thursday... oops.
time to crash.
night y'all.
8:30pm: aunt pris called once more -- apparently they flushed g-ma's stomach and things were ok... the blood was coming from her throat; she's apparently gotten dehydrated (she's been on a feeding tube for years now which inputs through her stomach... she can't swallow so her throat is pretty much unused for that function, even for water; apparently also she's had diahrea problems for a little bit which contributes to the dehydration even if she is getting proper care) (sorry for the possibly gross sidetrack, just explaining things to my satisfaction)... anyhow the report for the night was that pris was going home and would call the hospital in the morning to check on things... mostly they wanted to get g-ma rehydrated and observe her over night, and hopefully send her back to the nursing home in the morning.
not as high of drama as it possibly could have been... you have to admit that "in a failing condition" isn't encouraging medical vocabulary, but for tonight at least, things are ok.
since mom's out of town this week, i get her spot on the family phone chain and then i get the job of calling her and telling her what's what.
oh, and here's something you don't hear every day:
----: YOU! *points accusingly* were in my dream last night?
lkp 42 42 42: doing what?
----: well... first off, have i ever told you why i usually dont remember my dreams?
----: cuz.. they are usually QUITE dysfunctional.
----: so anyways..
----: you were hanging out in the cave in my side yard, which apparently was IMPOSSIBLE to get into, and housed the little elf-like guys who knew the secret to slaying the invisible beast that was tormenting me...
----: but when i finally find the way in, you were just chillin... and i was like.. lara?
lkp 42 42 42: dude
in other news, for the first time all semester, zeilberger's not getting any concrete proof of work this week -- i've worked hard, but not hit any major milestones since last thursday... oops.
time to crash.
night y'all.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
prayer request
my aunt in pittsburgh just called
she commented that she didn't want me to have to wait for my mom to get her message and call me, so she figured she'd call me herself (a sign that something BIG is afoot)
apparently my grandma schumann/fischer (mom's mom, g-ma who's been in a nursing home for 5 years now) is "in a failing condition" and is being rushed to the emergency room. priscilla (my aunt) said she knew nothing else, but she was en route to the hospital and would call in the next couple hours when she knew more.
irony? i called my mom immediately (assuming she had gotten a message from pris before i did) and i was the one who broke the news to her.
seriously, when priscilla said that news above, i started shaking and felt like my gut fell through the floor and the wind got knocked out of me.
not for certain, but apparently there's a high probability i'll be travelling to pittsburgh in the near future. this will be the weirdest yet (in terms of family funerals) when it does happen (looks like soon, but nothings for certain), because while i've already dealt with losing both of my grandfathers, grandma schumann has always been the most of a friend to me of all my grandparents. she was my penpal for years, and has treated me as an equal and been supportive of what i've done with my life. even after her strokes she's been thoroughly interested in knowing what i'm up to. it's been a gradual letting go process for years as she becomes increasingly physically limited, but it's still gonna hurt like heck when she's officially gone and not there for even small chats anymore.
to summarize, prayers for my grandma, that she's not in pain whatever goes down today; prayers for my aunt priscilla as she's the one family member responding first hand; and prayers for the rest of the family as we see what comes next.
i'm still shaking.
update later.
she commented that she didn't want me to have to wait for my mom to get her message and call me, so she figured she'd call me herself (a sign that something BIG is afoot)
apparently my grandma schumann/fischer (mom's mom, g-ma who's been in a nursing home for 5 years now) is "in a failing condition" and is being rushed to the emergency room. priscilla (my aunt) said she knew nothing else, but she was en route to the hospital and would call in the next couple hours when she knew more.
irony? i called my mom immediately (assuming she had gotten a message from pris before i did) and i was the one who broke the news to her.
seriously, when priscilla said that news above, i started shaking and felt like my gut fell through the floor and the wind got knocked out of me.
not for certain, but apparently there's a high probability i'll be travelling to pittsburgh in the near future. this will be the weirdest yet (in terms of family funerals) when it does happen (looks like soon, but nothings for certain), because while i've already dealt with losing both of my grandfathers, grandma schumann has always been the most of a friend to me of all my grandparents. she was my penpal for years, and has treated me as an equal and been supportive of what i've done with my life. even after her strokes she's been thoroughly interested in knowing what i'm up to. it's been a gradual letting go process for years as she becomes increasingly physically limited, but it's still gonna hurt like heck when she's officially gone and not there for even small chats anymore.
to summarize, prayers for my grandma, that she's not in pain whatever goes down today; prayers for my aunt priscilla as she's the one family member responding first hand; and prayers for the rest of the family as we see what comes next.
i'm still shaking.
update later.
through the inbox
oh the random emails i get... today was a grand assortment... here's 4
first thing each weekday, i get an email from arxiv, which is a site that lists preprints of math and science papers... i get a list of all the new papers in a few specific areas of math i'm interested in... today there was an article entitled On the entropy of LEGO, which is seriously about mathematics of building things with legos... i was impressed :-P
mid morning, i was working at my computer and grumbly abou the whole oil ordeal, when i got a survey email from a lady i know in memphis, who works at the office i worked at for a summer a few years back. angstful about the state of my morning so far, and since i actually like filling out surveys, i responded.
her answer to one question: "Favorite sport to watch: Football, men in spandex bending over!"
my answer to the same question: "Favorite sport to watch: football -- but not for
the same reason as you debbie :-P... i like betting on the next play, and my grandpa schumann (mom's dad) raised us all to be devoted steelers fans for the sake of the game, not the players :-P" -- honest answer... if you ask anyone who's watched football with me i seriously get really into game play, not players :-P
her email back to me? "Lara, Even the Steelers look good bent over!"
oi.
mid afternoon, a friend caught me on IM. she commented, "next time we're in the same place, i really should ask you what it is you do now". i don't think about this too much anymore, because in the general population most people comment "oh you do math... *gag*", when really, any decent scientist/mathematician should at least generally be able to explain what they do to someone who cares to listen. it's not like combinatorics problems are generally hard to formulate. just because you don't have to tools to solve something doesn't mean you can't try to understand what the QUESTION is. anyhow, i don't even think of it as something that bothers me (unless someone's being completely stubborn and extremely vocal in saying they don't want to hear anything because they don't have a chance of understanding), but it really completely made my day that i had a chance to write a 2-part email about the pattern avoidance stuff i've been working on. it's not like i'm an expert on other people's stuff either, but i try to read a variety of stuff and at least have a general idea of what my friends do; it's just extremely nice when it's actually reciprocated since i'm one of those weird aspiring mathematician type people :-P
finally, in our usual one sentence back and forth throughout the day about math stuff emails, eric commented to me this afternoon "Incidentally, here's a joke (of sorts) I came up with today: There's a Hungarian guy named Franz Conn. (Think about it:)"
hint 1: think of franz liszt (hungarian composer)... franz is his german name, but his first name in hungarian is a variation.
hint 2: once you have that, you should know that hungarians say their last name first.
those are your two hints... if you still don't get it, i'll make a comment to this post with the answer... we both laughed hard at it, but it's really exceedingly silly.
and that's a day in the life of lara.
oh, that and scrubs and office. scrubs as always as an excellent episode. office is growing on me. although i find the head boss and dwight abrasive, i really like pam, and the guy who likes her, and a few others of the characters a lot, so i still tune in :-) now i have 4 shows instead of 3... doht!
time for sleep.
night y'all!
first thing each weekday, i get an email from arxiv, which is a site that lists preprints of math and science papers... i get a list of all the new papers in a few specific areas of math i'm interested in... today there was an article entitled On the entropy of LEGO, which is seriously about mathematics of building things with legos... i was impressed :-P
mid morning, i was working at my computer and grumbly abou the whole oil ordeal, when i got a survey email from a lady i know in memphis, who works at the office i worked at for a summer a few years back. angstful about the state of my morning so far, and since i actually like filling out surveys, i responded.
her answer to one question: "Favorite sport to watch: Football, men in spandex bending over!"
my answer to the same question: "Favorite sport to watch: football -- but not for
the same reason as you debbie :-P... i like betting on the next play, and my grandpa schumann (mom's dad) raised us all to be devoted steelers fans for the sake of the game, not the players :-P" -- honest answer... if you ask anyone who's watched football with me i seriously get really into game play, not players :-P
her email back to me? "Lara, Even the Steelers look good bent over!"
oi.
mid afternoon, a friend caught me on IM. she commented, "next time we're in the same place, i really should ask you what it is you do now". i don't think about this too much anymore, because in the general population most people comment "oh you do math... *gag*", when really, any decent scientist/mathematician should at least generally be able to explain what they do to someone who cares to listen. it's not like combinatorics problems are generally hard to formulate. just because you don't have to tools to solve something doesn't mean you can't try to understand what the QUESTION is. anyhow, i don't even think of it as something that bothers me (unless someone's being completely stubborn and extremely vocal in saying they don't want to hear anything because they don't have a chance of understanding), but it really completely made my day that i had a chance to write a 2-part email about the pattern avoidance stuff i've been working on. it's not like i'm an expert on other people's stuff either, but i try to read a variety of stuff and at least have a general idea of what my friends do; it's just extremely nice when it's actually reciprocated since i'm one of those weird aspiring mathematician type people :-P
finally, in our usual one sentence back and forth throughout the day about math stuff emails, eric commented to me this afternoon "Incidentally, here's a joke (of sorts) I came up with today: There's a Hungarian guy named Franz Conn. (Think about it:)"
hint 1: think of franz liszt (hungarian composer)... franz is his german name, but his first name in hungarian is a variation.
hint 2: once you have that, you should know that hungarians say their last name first.
those are your two hints... if you still don't get it, i'll make a comment to this post with the answer... we both laughed hard at it, but it's really exceedingly silly.
and that's a day in the life of lara.
oh, that and scrubs and office. scrubs as always as an excellent episode. office is growing on me. although i find the head boss and dwight abrasive, i really like pam, and the guy who likes her, and a few others of the characters a lot, so i still tune in :-) now i have 4 shows instead of 3... doht!
time for sleep.
night y'all!
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
ode to the oil company
turns out for all the mess and getting our landlord involved, the oil company just called to say that the problem is that we had run out of oil and needed more in the tank. originally (in august when we moved in), it was leigh's job to set things up with them. apparently we get 150 gallons of oil put in per month but with the oil creating all our hot water, and generating all the hot water to go through our furnaces and keep the house heated, we've been using more than that per month, ending with us using up all the freakin oil. maybe they recommended that amount to leigh or something, but i had been under the assumption that they were just topping off the tank each month to a certain fill line and we were getting billed appropriately. either way, we get 2 oil bills this month instead of 1, and i get to sit here in a freezing cold house all morning... yuck
later dudes
later dudes
current IM away message
furnace is broken and spewing out oil = no hot water (i.e. no shower and can't wash dishes) + messy basement + freakin cold house + house that smells like oil + frustrated landlord in and out of the house + lara stuck at home to answer phone calls from the fix it place since i'm the only one who doesn't have class today
i am NOT happy
i am NOT happy
Monday, April 04, 2005
movie reviews
one last night and one tonight -- woohoo!
last night, eric had me over to his house where me, him, and sporadically some of his roommates watched "jesus christ superstar". the most familiarity i had had with it was hearing the soundtrack while on the crosscountry roadtrip with eric last summer. at the end, he asked what i thought, and i commented at the time that my reaction to it as a production would have a lot to do with how the end was staged. as a rock opera, it was a lot of fun, and very interesting to see how it was staged/choreographed... it was really cool how they used the natural landscape where they were filming to play into some of the scenes. my commentary of the ending was that to me it felt incomplete because nothing was done with the resurrection. eric's comment was "yeah, well, that's YOUR story; i don't think it was meant to be historically accurate so you can't knock them on that". while that's true, and my comment wasn't meant in that way, i can still make observations.... anyhow, it was entertaining, and on the whole i enjoyed it; the soundtrack *is* catchy too, and the performers in it were so energetic; it was quality.
tonight, was "meet joe black"... eric and i had intended to get dinner at subway (we like racking up stickers for our free sub cards), and he had a movie to return, only while there we started looking around and that was the first movie that neither of us had seen that sounded interesting to both. i thoroughly enjoyed it. brad pitt's character spooked me out from time to time, but on the whole i really enjoyed the whole idea behind it. i don't think either of us realized beforehand just how complex and epic the thing is (it's 3 hours long!)... eric startled me too when he whooped at brad pitt at one point :-P i thought that it was interesting to discuss with eric afterwards too because while i enjoyed the balance between plot and characters discussing out emotions, eric thought that the latter was waaaaaaaaaaaaay overplayed and complained about it; then again he's not one who's much for discussing emotions with other people either... for me on the other hand, life is in large part about feeling, and discussing feelings in reaction to things is important to me too; eric doesn't function that way and so we clash in our views of things accordingly :-P... at any rate, i thought it was a beautiful story and i enjoyed it a lot... i think you also (besides having 3 hours free) have to be in the right mood to sit down and properly enjoy it. quality again, but in a completely different way.
while at blockbuster, i noted that "garden state" is out on video now! and that blockbuster was having a buy 2 DVDs, get 1 free special, so i bought 3 flicks i'd been meaning to get for awhile -- garden state, in america, and 13 going on 30. i'm pretty happy with my choices. this is also the first time ever i've bought DVD instead of VHS! (not that i own a dvd-player besides my computer, but as long as i live with leigh i have one to use :-P) -- i think all 3 of those will get much quality viewing time as well, especially as i already know i like them all a lot :-)
anyhow, the end. i'm going to sleep.
last night, eric had me over to his house where me, him, and sporadically some of his roommates watched "jesus christ superstar". the most familiarity i had had with it was hearing the soundtrack while on the crosscountry roadtrip with eric last summer. at the end, he asked what i thought, and i commented at the time that my reaction to it as a production would have a lot to do with how the end was staged. as a rock opera, it was a lot of fun, and very interesting to see how it was staged/choreographed... it was really cool how they used the natural landscape where they were filming to play into some of the scenes. my commentary of the ending was that to me it felt incomplete because nothing was done with the resurrection. eric's comment was "yeah, well, that's YOUR story; i don't think it was meant to be historically accurate so you can't knock them on that". while that's true, and my comment wasn't meant in that way, i can still make observations.... anyhow, it was entertaining, and on the whole i enjoyed it; the soundtrack *is* catchy too, and the performers in it were so energetic; it was quality.
tonight, was "meet joe black"... eric and i had intended to get dinner at subway (we like racking up stickers for our free sub cards), and he had a movie to return, only while there we started looking around and that was the first movie that neither of us had seen that sounded interesting to both. i thoroughly enjoyed it. brad pitt's character spooked me out from time to time, but on the whole i really enjoyed the whole idea behind it. i don't think either of us realized beforehand just how complex and epic the thing is (it's 3 hours long!)... eric startled me too when he whooped at brad pitt at one point :-P i thought that it was interesting to discuss with eric afterwards too because while i enjoyed the balance between plot and characters discussing out emotions, eric thought that the latter was waaaaaaaaaaaaay overplayed and complained about it; then again he's not one who's much for discussing emotions with other people either... for me on the other hand, life is in large part about feeling, and discussing feelings in reaction to things is important to me too; eric doesn't function that way and so we clash in our views of things accordingly :-P... at any rate, i thought it was a beautiful story and i enjoyed it a lot... i think you also (besides having 3 hours free) have to be in the right mood to sit down and properly enjoy it. quality again, but in a completely different way.
while at blockbuster, i noted that "garden state" is out on video now! and that blockbuster was having a buy 2 DVDs, get 1 free special, so i bought 3 flicks i'd been meaning to get for awhile -- garden state, in america, and 13 going on 30. i'm pretty happy with my choices. this is also the first time ever i've bought DVD instead of VHS! (not that i own a dvd-player besides my computer, but as long as i live with leigh i have one to use :-P) -- i think all 3 of those will get much quality viewing time as well, especially as i already know i like them all a lot :-)
anyhow, the end. i'm going to sleep.
Saturday, April 02, 2005
eh
i hate feeling unproductive and i hate feeling like a third wheel.
giving up and going to sleep; hopefully i'll be out of my funk tomorrow.
giving up and going to sleep; hopefully i'll be out of my funk tomorrow.
ode to my advisor
my advisor, dr. zeilberger is known for practical jokes. remember in february when he pulled this on us? our only required homework of the class to date
*that* i saw right through.
he also has a tradition of april fool's jokes. he has an opinions page on his website, and 4 of the 5 years from 2000-2004 has posted a humorous and goofy opinion on april 1st for kicks. see:
April 1, 2000: Opinion 41: The British Government Should Declassify Turing's Counterexample to the Riemann Hypothesis
April 1, 2002: Opinion 45: The Clay Mathematics Institute Should Pay Most of the Million-Dollar Prize to the Anonymous Genius Who Proved that the P vs. NP Problem is NP Hard
April 1, 2003: Opinion 52: The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics and arXiv.org Should Reverse their Unfair and Bigoted Decision Not To Publish On the So-Called Genome Code
April 1, 2004: Opinion 59: The Rutgers Math Department's Executive Committee's Decision to Forbid Sleeping and Other Improper Behavior in Seminar and Colloquium Talks Should Be Adopted by All Mathematics Departments
in other words, he has a reputation. :-P
somehow, when we all got the following email yesterday morning though, none of us caught it at first:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 08:57:10 -0500 (EST)
From: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: Important Information about Monday's Class
Dear Class,
I apologize for the short notice, but I just found out
about this today. As you know, Nobelist John Nash is
scheduled to speak at the Experimental Math seminar
on April 21.
When I invited him to give a seminar, I also suggested that
he deliver a guest lecture at our Math587 class,
on April 4, using Mathematica rather than Maple. He kindly agreed, and
I didn't tell you before, since I wanted it to be a surprise.
To my great embarrassment, he must have told about it to
some media people, and as a result, PBS wants to
film this class. Of course, I couldn't say no,
since I didn't want to hurt Nash's feelings.
But the down side is that PBS requests that the class will look
"professional". We (including myself) are expected to dress
up in suits (or dresses for women), and to look presentable.
Also, all you people who often come late: for once, please come
on time, or even ten minutes early.
Otherwise, just act naturally. Please keep this secret, since
we don't want there to be a mob scene.
See you Monday,
Dr. Z.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In retrospect, yeah, how plausible is it that PBS would be filming our class?,... and it IS awful suspicious that he sent it out on April 1st, but Nash really is coming to speak on April 21st, and his offices are only half an hour away at princeton, so really it's not completely unreasonable that he could make it here twice... we're just unsuspecting tired grad students... anyhow, just about everyone i talked to believed it for a bit until we started talking amongst ourselves. this morning, dr. z. sent out a follow up message.... he got us good... enjoy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:08:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: John Nash regretfuly cancelled
Dear Class,
John Nash forgot that he had a previous important
engagement, and hence the bad news is that you would
have to put up with me, as usual, and the good news is
that you can come as you are. However, you may still
come on time!
Best wishes
Dr. Z.
P.S. Here are some disrespectful reactions from some of you
alleging that it was an April Fool's "Joke"
(except from Paul!). Would I do
something as tacky as that? I am really offended.
--------------------------------------------------
From: Paul Raff
To: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: (MathIsFun) Re: Important Information about Monday's Class
Amazing! I know Padmini is notoriously late (and she admits it herself)
but I'll make sure she is on time, even if it means picking her up from
Livingston.
[paul]
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:28:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Thotsaporn Thanatipanonda
To: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: Re: Important Information about Monday's Class
Dear Dr.Z,
I was very excited for awhile. Then I realize that this might
be your famous April fool joke. This is really funny though.
Sincerely,
Aek
MathIsFun
---------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 11:38:44 -0500 (EST)
From: Eric Rowland
To: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: Re: Important Information about Monday's Class
Dr. Z,
I don't suppose we can clue PBS into the fact that business attire isn't
required in graduate school?
Also, I don't think the ARC computers have Mathematica installed.
Eric
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 11:59:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Eric Rowland
To: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: Re: Important Information about Monday's Class
Happy April Fool's Day!
MathIsFun
Eric
-----------------------
Is there any particular significance to the fact that you sent this
email on 4/1 rather than, say, 3/31 or 4/2, or any other day of the
year?
Best,
Vince
-----------------------------
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
at least Nash REALLY is speaking here in 2.5 weeks and we'll meet him then; so it's not a complete loss :-P but man, dr. z. got us good.
happy day after april fool's day :-P
*that* i saw right through.
he also has a tradition of april fool's jokes. he has an opinions page on his website, and 4 of the 5 years from 2000-2004 has posted a humorous and goofy opinion on april 1st for kicks. see:
April 1, 2000: Opinion 41: The British Government Should Declassify Turing's Counterexample to the Riemann Hypothesis
April 1, 2002: Opinion 45: The Clay Mathematics Institute Should Pay Most of the Million-Dollar Prize to the Anonymous Genius Who Proved that the P vs. NP Problem is NP Hard
April 1, 2003: Opinion 52: The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics and arXiv.org Should Reverse their Unfair and Bigoted Decision Not To Publish On the So-Called Genome Code
April 1, 2004: Opinion 59: The Rutgers Math Department's Executive Committee's Decision to Forbid Sleeping and Other Improper Behavior in Seminar and Colloquium Talks Should Be Adopted by All Mathematics Departments
in other words, he has a reputation. :-P
somehow, when we all got the following email yesterday morning though, none of us caught it at first:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 08:57:10 -0500 (EST)
From: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: Important Information about Monday's Class
Dear Class,
I apologize for the short notice, but I just found out
about this today. As you know, Nobelist John Nash is
scheduled to speak at the Experimental Math seminar
on April 21.
When I invited him to give a seminar, I also suggested that
he deliver a guest lecture at our Math587 class,
on April 4, using Mathematica rather than Maple. He kindly agreed, and
I didn't tell you before, since I wanted it to be a surprise.
To my great embarrassment, he must have told about it to
some media people, and as a result, PBS wants to
film this class. Of course, I couldn't say no,
since I didn't want to hurt Nash's feelings.
But the down side is that PBS requests that the class will look
"professional". We (including myself) are expected to dress
up in suits (or dresses for women), and to look presentable.
Also, all you people who often come late: for once, please come
on time, or even ten minutes early.
Otherwise, just act naturally. Please keep this secret, since
we don't want there to be a mob scene.
See you Monday,
Dr. Z.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In retrospect, yeah, how plausible is it that PBS would be filming our class?,... and it IS awful suspicious that he sent it out on April 1st, but Nash really is coming to speak on April 21st, and his offices are only half an hour away at princeton, so really it's not completely unreasonable that he could make it here twice... we're just unsuspecting tired grad students... anyhow, just about everyone i talked to believed it for a bit until we started talking amongst ourselves. this morning, dr. z. sent out a follow up message.... he got us good... enjoy
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Date: Sat, 2 Apr 2005 10:08:49 -0500 (EST)
From: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: John Nash regretfuly cancelled
Dear Class,
John Nash forgot that he had a previous important
engagement, and hence the bad news is that you would
have to put up with me, as usual, and the good news is
that you can come as you are. However, you may still
come on time!
Best wishes
Dr. Z.
P.S. Here are some disrespectful reactions from some of you
alleging that it was an April Fool's "Joke"
(except from Paul!). Would I do
something as tacky as that? I am really offended.
--------------------------------------------------
From: Paul Raff
To: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: (MathIsFun) Re: Important Information about Monday's Class
Amazing! I know Padmini is notoriously late (and she admits it herself)
but I'll make sure she is on time, even if it means picking her up from
Livingston.
[paul]
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 10:28:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Thotsaporn Thanatipanonda
To: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: Re: Important Information about Monday's Class
Dear Dr.Z,
I was very excited for awhile. Then I realize that this might
be your famous April fool joke. This is really funny though.
Sincerely,
Aek
MathIsFun
---------------------
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 11:38:44 -0500 (EST)
From: Eric Rowland
To: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: Re: Important Information about Monday's Class
Dr. Z,
I don't suppose we can clue PBS into the fact that business attire isn't
required in graduate school?
Also, I don't think the ARC computers have Mathematica installed.
Eric
Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2005 11:59:38 -0500 (EST)
From: Eric Rowland
To: Doron Zeilberger
Subject: Re: Important Information about Monday's Class
Happy April Fool's Day!
MathIsFun
Eric
-----------------------
Is there any particular significance to the fact that you sent this
email on 4/1 rather than, say, 3/31 or 4/2, or any other day of the
year?
Best,
Vince
-----------------------------
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
at least Nash REALLY is speaking here in 2.5 weeks and we'll meet him then; so it's not a complete loss :-P but man, dr. z. got us good.
happy day after april fool's day :-P
a review
if you followed the link in my AIM away message, you probably want the post below this or the two before that, nonetheless...
last night i saw "bride and prejudice" with leigh and promised a review!... here's the short version :-P
while not perfect to the book, and while not hardcore bollywood, it's an interesting twist of both. i very much enjoyed the music and all the colors. it's a movie i'm glad i saw on the big screen due to that.
as far as plot, it's cute and entertaining, but not insanely new of a story of extremely complex. in the end it was quality.
said a rutgers math prof. earlier this week -- "it's quality, and the critics should be disregarded... they've obviously never been to india."... while i still think it was a little played up, it was happily reminiscent of actual bollywood films i've seen, even though it's not actually one.
it's fun, if love stories or musicals are your thing, see it while it's still out.
the end :-)
last night i saw "bride and prejudice" with leigh and promised a review!... here's the short version :-P
while not perfect to the book, and while not hardcore bollywood, it's an interesting twist of both. i very much enjoyed the music and all the colors. it's a movie i'm glad i saw on the big screen due to that.
as far as plot, it's cute and entertaining, but not insanely new of a story of extremely complex. in the end it was quality.
said a rutgers math prof. earlier this week -- "it's quality, and the critics should be disregarded... they've obviously never been to india."... while i still think it was a little played up, it was happily reminiscent of actual bollywood films i've seen, even though it's not actually one.
it's fun, if love stories or musicals are your thing, see it while it's still out.
the end :-)
an ode to the pillars of mathematics.
jessica commented re: my last entry that:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a question for you: I run up against claims that mathematics isn't certain. Last week I heard a talk, "Mathematical accidents and the end of explanation." Or what about Morris Kline and "Mathematics: the loss of certainty."
I know you used to have a view of the certainty of math, in your why you like math essay from a while ago, but I figured your opinion had changed. Do math people address these issues, or are they just outside attacks? (NB: these people don't dimiss the worth of math)
I don't exactly understand what they say.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
my response:
I have never heard a talk or been made aware of this book... in searching for it, I found some reviews and comments that made more clear to me what it was talking about.
i will quote heavily from a review by a CS prof at stanford (found here: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/reviews/kline/kline.html)
quote 1:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Professor Kline recounts a series of ``shocks'', ``disasters'' and ``shattering'' experiences leading to a ``loss of certainty'' in mathematics. However, he doesn't mean that the astronaut should mistrust the computations that tell him that firing the rocket in the prescribed direction for the prescribed number of seconds will get him to the moon.
The ancient Greeks were ``shocked'' to discover that the side and diagonal of a square could not be integer multiples of a common length. This spoiled their plan to found all mathematics on that of whole numbers. Nineteenth century mathematics was ``shattered'' by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry (violating Euclid's axiom that there is exactly one parallel to a line through an external point), which showed that Euclidean geometry isn't based on self-evident axioms about physical space (as most people believed). Nor is it a necessary way of thinking about the world (as Kant had said).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In this sense, the shattering of mathematics, is merely showing that the original asumptions about how things turn out to be are not always true. (e.g. finding the length of the diagonal of a square should be an integer, there existing non-Euclidean geometry (Euclidean geometry is what you learn in Geometry in high school, but there do exist geometries that don't obey the same laws you learn in school... there are theories that the universe follows a different geometry, but we just see such a small corner of it that locally it looks euclidean). I have no problem with this, and think that it doesn't show inconsistency -- it shows a developing of understanding. It's not as if someone had PROVED the diagonal of a square must have integer length if the sides have integer length. It's an idea people hoped to be true and were shocked when it was proved it wasn't. This isn't an issue of inconsistency; it's an issue of people not fully realizing the complexity of the universe we live in/the complexity of the structure of mathematics.
However, there DO exist questions of certainty in mathematics
quote 2:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once detached from physics, mathematics developed on the basis of the theory of sets, at first informal and then increasingly axiomatized, culminating in formalisms so well described that proofs can be checked by computer. However, Gottlob Frege's plausible axioms led to Bertrand Russell's surprising paradox of the the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. (Is it a member of itself?). L.E.J. Brouwer reacted with a doctrine that only constructive mathematical objects should be allowed (making for a picky and ugly mathematics), whereas David Hilbert proposed to prove mathematics consistent by showing that starting from the axioms and following the rules could never lead to contradiction. In 1931 Kurt Goedel showed that Hilbert's program cannot be carried out, and this was another surprise.
However, Hilbert's program and Tarski's work led to metamathematics, which studies mathematical theories as mathematical objects. This replaced many of the disputes about the foundations of mathematics by the peaceful study of the structure of the different approaches.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let me summarize some developments in math in the last century that are referenced above. Do you believe that sets exist? Can you make a set of objects, and another set, find their intersection and union? Sure you can. At least if you're only looking at a finite number of objects. Hopefully you learned that in grade school or high school or something. So sets, exactly what you learned about back in the day... we're on the same page.
Think about the set of all sets which are not members of themselves. Does it contain itself?
If this sets does NOT contain itself then it doesn't really contain ALL sets who don't contain themselves, does it?
If this set DOES contain itself, it's no longer a set of sets not containing themselves, so again it violates its own definition.
paradox.... in a field that's supposed to be completely based on building up truths from axioms.... oi.
thus there are issues with sets, which are a fundamental basis of mathematics.
another example: the banach-tarski paradox says that i can take a sphere, cut it up into a bunch of pieces and put them back together in such a way to get two separate spheres OF THE EXACT SAME SIZE AS THE ORIGINAL SPHERE. this isn't just wishful thinking or a fluke, this has been proven rigorously with topological arguments.
something strange is going on.
here's where you get into logic -- the part of math that my friends scott and sam and paul worry about. back around the turn of the century people saw things like the above two paradoxes and were worried about mathematics and its consistency. why doesn't something as simple as "the set of all sets" seem to coherently exist? why can i theoretically saw up my bouncy ball appropriately and get two? mathematics takes pride in taking axioms and building up theorems from them, and proving them rigorously. mathematics is not an experimental science where we run something through tests and see the same result enough times and declare it true! every step in a mathematical proof must be already proven to be true, or be a fundamental axiom/definition of the universe (e.g. 0+0=0). this created a flurry of activity 100-ish years ago. people wanted to prove mathematics extremely pedantically and try to make sure all strange things (like the two examples above) would go away. here you have books like principia mathematica coming out. the mathematicians saw their science as the epitomy of consistency and truth once you adopt the right model, but unlike the "goofs" and "inconsistencies" of quote 1, these seemed more fundamental.
1931. Kurt Godel comes on the scene. He proved that any formal system (of sufficient expressive power) cannot prove itself to be consistent. In other words: I give you a set of axioms and let you go off and start proving all the things you possibly can given those axioms. No matter what you do, THERE WILL ALWAYS EXIST TRUE BUT UNPROVABLE STATEMENTS in your system. This basically showed that the recent efforts of math world (trying to pedantically axiomatize everything) were in vain. (here you can find notes to a math class that talked about this paradigm-shattering theorem).
Here's another summary of Godel's work: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~eddy/math/Godel.html Again, they state the conclusion of Godel's work is that any formal system including Peano axioms necessarily (a) could not be both consistent and complete; and (2) could not prove itself consistent without proving itself inconsistent. You may be surprised to hear this but Peano axioms are the basic principles of doing arithmetic. (see here: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PeanosAxioms.html for a definition -- notice that there's nothing in them that you don't already take for granted about the way your world works)...
So, at its core, Godel showed mathematics (or any system containing basic arithmetic) will never be complete. No matter the system, there are statements we cannot prove or disprove. Lots of people didn't like that idea to start. It bends many minds today, but 70 years later, people have learned to work with it.
When you start talking about the nitty gritty, mathematicians might say to you that "oh all math is fine... as long as you accept the axiom of choice... or as long as you accept zorn's lemma"... (the axiom of choice says that "Let X be a collection of non-empty sets. Then we can choose a member from each set in that collection." -- seems pretty intuitive, right?.... zorn's lemma says "If S is any nonempty partially ordered set in which every chain has an upper bound, then S has a maximal element." Basically it says if you have a set and you can give an upper bound on how big certain subsets are, you can find a maximal element... again, seems pretty intuitive) (quote from here: "In effect, when we accept the Axiom of Choice, this means we are agreeing to the convention that we shall permit ourselves to use a choice function f in proofs, as though it "exists" in some sense, even though we cannot give an explicit example of it or an explicit algorithm for it. ")... In effect, mathematics assumes such principles as "hey, I can start a proof with 'Pick a number (or other mathematical object).'" and go from there to try to take care of the above issues.
You (Jessica) originally asked about the certainty of math, and here i've gone rambling about lots of theorems and paradoxes and ideas. In summary, 90+% of mathematicians would tell you Godel proved mathematics would never be complete -- there will always exist questions that we cannot prove are true even though they are. However, those questions are dwarfed (philosophically) by the body of things we CAN prove and DO know. Any mathematician will recognize that unprovable truths exist; however, the sweeping majority of mathematicians are not troubled by this in their work. Everything that HAS been proven IS certain. It has been proven rigorously from axioms and from other theorems built up from those axioms. This isn't to say that mathematics is a clear-cut a body of knowledge as one might think; because we have our proven paradoxes and issues like above. But it does not say that the work that's been done for ages in uncertain. We just have to recognize that there do exist out there statements that are true and NEVER will be able to be proved.
Finaly paragraph from the stanford review I've refered to throughout?
quote 3:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Professor Kline's presentation of these and other surprises as shocks that made mathematicians lose confidence in the certainty and in the future of mathematics seems overdrawn. While the consistency of even arithmetic cannot be proved, most mathematicians seem to believe (with Goedel) that mathematical truth exists and that present mathematics is true. No mathematician expects an inconsistency to be found in set theory, and our confidence in this is greater than our confidence in any part of physics.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In conclusion, yes we recognize inherent incompleteness to any formal system such as mathematics. No, this is not a problem for us. As stated above, the sweeping majority has the view that we are still in search of truth and what we prove is true and beautiful (and I still argue that math is one of the very few if not the only field where one can study absolute truth with certainty in that the proofs we do have are either true or false, and never gray). When we say certainty of mathematics, we have to be clear. If it's that original assumptions about the world have been shattered (e.g. the diagonal of a square example above), that's not so much certainty as mis-assumption. If it's that we're talking about the inherent paradoxes of math (e.g. the set question or the banach-tarski paradox above), those are recognized and their existence is closely tied in with Godel's proof, which again is accepted clearly -- there exist quirky things in mathematics. However, this does not ruin the certainty of proofs derived from the axioms we do have.
Congrats if you made it to the end! :-) I'll stop rambling now :-)
*thanks to scott schneider for proofreading this post and making sure i didn't tell any blatant lies about set theory :-)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here's a question for you: I run up against claims that mathematics isn't certain. Last week I heard a talk, "Mathematical accidents and the end of explanation." Or what about Morris Kline and "Mathematics: the loss of certainty."
I know you used to have a view of the certainty of math, in your why you like math essay from a while ago, but I figured your opinion had changed. Do math people address these issues, or are they just outside attacks? (NB: these people don't dimiss the worth of math)
I don't exactly understand what they say.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
my response:
I have never heard a talk or been made aware of this book... in searching for it, I found some reviews and comments that made more clear to me what it was talking about.
i will quote heavily from a review by a CS prof at stanford (found here: http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/reviews/kline/kline.html)
quote 1:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Professor Kline recounts a series of ``shocks'', ``disasters'' and ``shattering'' experiences leading to a ``loss of certainty'' in mathematics. However, he doesn't mean that the astronaut should mistrust the computations that tell him that firing the rocket in the prescribed direction for the prescribed number of seconds will get him to the moon.
The ancient Greeks were ``shocked'' to discover that the side and diagonal of a square could not be integer multiples of a common length. This spoiled their plan to found all mathematics on that of whole numbers. Nineteenth century mathematics was ``shattered'' by the discovery of non-Euclidean geometry (violating Euclid's axiom that there is exactly one parallel to a line through an external point), which showed that Euclidean geometry isn't based on self-evident axioms about physical space (as most people believed). Nor is it a necessary way of thinking about the world (as Kant had said).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In this sense, the shattering of mathematics, is merely showing that the original asumptions about how things turn out to be are not always true. (e.g. finding the length of the diagonal of a square should be an integer, there existing non-Euclidean geometry (Euclidean geometry is what you learn in Geometry in high school, but there do exist geometries that don't obey the same laws you learn in school... there are theories that the universe follows a different geometry, but we just see such a small corner of it that locally it looks euclidean). I have no problem with this, and think that it doesn't show inconsistency -- it shows a developing of understanding. It's not as if someone had PROVED the diagonal of a square must have integer length if the sides have integer length. It's an idea people hoped to be true and were shocked when it was proved it wasn't. This isn't an issue of inconsistency; it's an issue of people not fully realizing the complexity of the universe we live in/the complexity of the structure of mathematics.
However, there DO exist questions of certainty in mathematics
quote 2:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once detached from physics, mathematics developed on the basis of the theory of sets, at first informal and then increasingly axiomatized, culminating in formalisms so well described that proofs can be checked by computer. However, Gottlob Frege's plausible axioms led to Bertrand Russell's surprising paradox of the the set of all sets that are not members of themselves. (Is it a member of itself?). L.E.J. Brouwer reacted with a doctrine that only constructive mathematical objects should be allowed (making for a picky and ugly mathematics), whereas David Hilbert proposed to prove mathematics consistent by showing that starting from the axioms and following the rules could never lead to contradiction. In 1931 Kurt Goedel showed that Hilbert's program cannot be carried out, and this was another surprise.
However, Hilbert's program and Tarski's work led to metamathematics, which studies mathematical theories as mathematical objects. This replaced many of the disputes about the foundations of mathematics by the peaceful study of the structure of the different approaches.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Let me summarize some developments in math in the last century that are referenced above. Do you believe that sets exist? Can you make a set of objects, and another set, find their intersection and union? Sure you can. At least if you're only looking at a finite number of objects. Hopefully you learned that in grade school or high school or something. So sets, exactly what you learned about back in the day... we're on the same page.
Think about the set of all sets which are not members of themselves. Does it contain itself?
If this sets does NOT contain itself then it doesn't really contain ALL sets who don't contain themselves, does it?
If this set DOES contain itself, it's no longer a set of sets not containing themselves, so again it violates its own definition.
paradox.... in a field that's supposed to be completely based on building up truths from axioms.... oi.
thus there are issues with sets, which are a fundamental basis of mathematics.
another example: the banach-tarski paradox says that i can take a sphere, cut it up into a bunch of pieces and put them back together in such a way to get two separate spheres OF THE EXACT SAME SIZE AS THE ORIGINAL SPHERE. this isn't just wishful thinking or a fluke, this has been proven rigorously with topological arguments.
something strange is going on.
here's where you get into logic -- the part of math that my friends scott and sam and paul worry about. back around the turn of the century people saw things like the above two paradoxes and were worried about mathematics and its consistency. why doesn't something as simple as "the set of all sets" seem to coherently exist? why can i theoretically saw up my bouncy ball appropriately and get two? mathematics takes pride in taking axioms and building up theorems from them, and proving them rigorously. mathematics is not an experimental science where we run something through tests and see the same result enough times and declare it true! every step in a mathematical proof must be already proven to be true, or be a fundamental axiom/definition of the universe (e.g. 0+0=0). this created a flurry of activity 100-ish years ago. people wanted to prove mathematics extremely pedantically and try to make sure all strange things (like the two examples above) would go away. here you have books like principia mathematica coming out. the mathematicians saw their science as the epitomy of consistency and truth once you adopt the right model, but unlike the "goofs" and "inconsistencies" of quote 1, these seemed more fundamental.
1931. Kurt Godel comes on the scene. He proved that any formal system (of sufficient expressive power) cannot prove itself to be consistent. In other words: I give you a set of axioms and let you go off and start proving all the things you possibly can given those axioms. No matter what you do, THERE WILL ALWAYS EXIST TRUE BUT UNPROVABLE STATEMENTS in your system. This basically showed that the recent efforts of math world (trying to pedantically axiomatize everything) were in vain. (here you can find notes to a math class that talked about this paradigm-shattering theorem).
Here's another summary of Godel's work: http://www.chaos.org.uk/~eddy/math/Godel.html Again, they state the conclusion of Godel's work is that any formal system including Peano axioms necessarily (a) could not be both consistent and complete; and (2) could not prove itself consistent without proving itself inconsistent. You may be surprised to hear this but Peano axioms are the basic principles of doing arithmetic. (see here: http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PeanosAxioms.html for a definition -- notice that there's nothing in them that you don't already take for granted about the way your world works)...
So, at its core, Godel showed mathematics (or any system containing basic arithmetic) will never be complete. No matter the system, there are statements we cannot prove or disprove. Lots of people didn't like that idea to start. It bends many minds today, but 70 years later, people have learned to work with it.
When you start talking about the nitty gritty, mathematicians might say to you that "oh all math is fine... as long as you accept the axiom of choice... or as long as you accept zorn's lemma"... (the axiom of choice says that "Let X be a collection of non-empty sets. Then we can choose a member from each set in that collection." -- seems pretty intuitive, right?.... zorn's lemma says "If S is any nonempty partially ordered set in which every chain has an upper bound, then S has a maximal element." Basically it says if you have a set and you can give an upper bound on how big certain subsets are, you can find a maximal element... again, seems pretty intuitive) (quote from here: "In effect, when we accept the Axiom of Choice, this means we are agreeing to the convention that we shall permit ourselves to use a choice function f in proofs, as though it "exists" in some sense, even though we cannot give an explicit example of it or an explicit algorithm for it. ")... In effect, mathematics assumes such principles as "hey, I can start a proof with 'Pick a number (or other mathematical object).'" and go from there to try to take care of the above issues.
You (Jessica) originally asked about the certainty of math, and here i've gone rambling about lots of theorems and paradoxes and ideas. In summary, 90+% of mathematicians would tell you Godel proved mathematics would never be complete -- there will always exist questions that we cannot prove are true even though they are. However, those questions are dwarfed (philosophically) by the body of things we CAN prove and DO know. Any mathematician will recognize that unprovable truths exist; however, the sweeping majority of mathematicians are not troubled by this in their work. Everything that HAS been proven IS certain. It has been proven rigorously from axioms and from other theorems built up from those axioms. This isn't to say that mathematics is a clear-cut a body of knowledge as one might think; because we have our proven paradoxes and issues like above. But it does not say that the work that's been done for ages in uncertain. We just have to recognize that there do exist out there statements that are true and NEVER will be able to be proved.
Finaly paragraph from the stanford review I've refered to throughout?
quote 3:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Professor Kline's presentation of these and other surprises as shocks that made mathematicians lose confidence in the certainty and in the future of mathematics seems overdrawn. While the consistency of even arithmetic cannot be proved, most mathematicians seem to believe (with Goedel) that mathematical truth exists and that present mathematics is true. No mathematician expects an inconsistency to be found in set theory, and our confidence in this is greater than our confidence in any part of physics.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In conclusion, yes we recognize inherent incompleteness to any formal system such as mathematics. No, this is not a problem for us. As stated above, the sweeping majority has the view that we are still in search of truth and what we prove is true and beautiful (and I still argue that math is one of the very few if not the only field where one can study absolute truth with certainty in that the proofs we do have are either true or false, and never gray). When we say certainty of mathematics, we have to be clear. If it's that original assumptions about the world have been shattered (e.g. the diagonal of a square example above), that's not so much certainty as mis-assumption. If it's that we're talking about the inherent paradoxes of math (e.g. the set question or the banach-tarski paradox above), those are recognized and their existence is closely tied in with Godel's proof, which again is accepted clearly -- there exist quirky things in mathematics. However, this does not ruin the certainty of proofs derived from the axioms we do have.
Congrats if you made it to the end! :-) I'll stop rambling now :-)
*thanks to scott schneider for proofreading this post and making sure i didn't tell any blatant lies about set theory :-)
Friday, April 01, 2005
thinking big
first terri schiavo's death after so much controversy and now it appears that the pope has at most the weekend... it's a crazy week in the universe.
regardless of the arguments presented about schiavo, it saddens me that we live in a system that will allow a citizen to starve to death. this article on msnbc interested me... it shows actual brain scans from 3 years ago and evidence of what percentage of terri's brain had degenerated since her heart failure in 1990. regardless of whether she would have wanted to live in the state she'd been in, in a country where it's illegal to starve animals, our legal system made it legal to starve a 41 year old to death. it doesn't matter if she could feel/process it completely or not; it wasn't "letting" her die, it was "making" her die. i can understand michael schiavo's arguments and i can understand terri's parents feelings; i can understand that there's a lot of gray area in this case and that it was not possible to ascertain terri's wishes directly. it's not the same but i kept thinking back to when my grandma had a feeding tube put in. at first she didn't want it, but the pastor who visited her commented "when God's ready for you to go home, He'll take you, feeding tube or not... in the meantime, i'd let your body decide, and not force it by not allowing yourself to get the food you need" in other words, if it were a respirator, or something keeping organs going fine; choosing to deprive someone of food, moderately ridiculous. regardless of the court's decision (and given i don't know enough of the specifics to know why they decided as they did), i think there are much more humane possibilities to have been considered. starvation i think, is wrong.
re: the pope -- wow, what a time to be living in. my dad was just commenting over christmas that he always watches midnight mass at the vatican when we get home from candlelight christmas eve service at our lutheran church... "same old pope all these years" he commented, and about how much he likes him. living with colleen (who is catholic) this year, i've heard a bit more about the pope's writing and positions on various things and my respect for him has grown; the world will miss him.
re: other things... eric and i had our big "chat about the universe" this afternoon... in case you have no intuition about which of my friends says which kinds of things, the question i posted last night was his, which i think is a wonderful question. he took lots of notes about things i said so that i figure he didn't think my commentary was completely ridiculous :-P my response to his question from last night? (what would an ideal religion accomplish for you?) was "well, it's a parallel construction to your answer, but i accept the axiom that God exists, so a religion i accept needs to (1) tell me about who God is, and (2) help me understand my relationship with Him"... eric asked me if i think mathematics is created or discovered (my 11th grade pre-AP pre-calc teacher's phrasing of a question eric went a much longer way around to addressing), because he argues that mathematics is a constant and even more fundamental in structure than the universe, i.e. there could exist different plausible universes, but there could not exist mathematics other than it is... when my answer (after much pondering) was "i think math is created by God and discovered by us", eric was thrown for a slight loop... eventually i concluded thought that i understand science to be the exploration of God's creation and if math isn't God's creation, it's firmly intertwined with God's creation and so by studying it, you're still studying an aspect of God's creation no matter how you put it.... we talked about absolute justice (i think it exists but while it's clear from the context of God's perspective, it's often hard from our perspective to see it in all situations; eric thinks it's an unnatural concept and that there's too much gray in the world for it to exist)... eric also argued that he thinks people come up with theorems and then form axioms to back them up, and i argued that that isn't always the case (e.g. he thinks i was taught at some point that absolute justice exists and therefore i choose to believe in axioms that support that, while i countered that my belief in the existence of absolute justice is a result of my understanding of who God is and His plan for the world... in other words, in his diagram of implications in his notes he was taking, i told him to turn his homology statement of my beliefs into a cohomology statement and he laughed at my mathy phrasing :-P)... finally, i made the point that i think that while science, by it's very nature of systematically studying how the universe works, is built on axioms and theorems and corollaries and lemmas and the like, you can *maybe* axiomatize some of the existence ideas of religion, but since religion is also about people in relationship with God, it can't all be quantified by the same methods and criteria (nor could i axiomatize my friendship with eric... relationships between living creatures are too dynamic to be completely formulated scientifically), and broken down into axioms.
so yeah, it was a highly quality chat. when we talk about God and religion and the universe it sounds so scientific :-P i'm glad he respects and trusts me enough to sit down and talk about such things; i think it's interesting to dissect how deep you have to go to get to the differences in our beliefs..... i.e. we come to very different conclusions about many things, but it's not because one of us is crazy -- it's because we have some very different fundamental assumptions about the universe, and the resulting philosophy we each hold seems to be the best fit for what we each hold to be true... example? i believe that God exists and that He exists outside time and outside space, while being able to interact with time and space as well. Eric has issues with understanding how a being can exist without a time-space frame of reference, because his definition for "exist" has to do with those. i think i get as much out of our chats as i apparently give him to think about (taking evidence as what crops up in future chats and what i see him take notes about).... after all that rambling, any thoughts from anyone else? or have i used sufficiently many math words to scare you all :-P?
so yeah, that sums up my afternoon -- lots of chatting about the nature of being and the structure of the universe -- aren't you jealous?
oh! and i think i came up with a bijective proof of something that's never been proved bijectively before :-) dr.z. will be proud of me again next thursday... he's also known for practical jokes, and i'm beginning to think an email he sent to our class this morning was one such joke, but it caught a lot of us at first... i'll post it when i know for sure if it's real or not; if it was a joke, it was a good one.
now, leigh and i are off to see "bride and prejudice", review of that later :-P
night y'all
regardless of the arguments presented about schiavo, it saddens me that we live in a system that will allow a citizen to starve to death. this article on msnbc interested me... it shows actual brain scans from 3 years ago and evidence of what percentage of terri's brain had degenerated since her heart failure in 1990. regardless of whether she would have wanted to live in the state she'd been in, in a country where it's illegal to starve animals, our legal system made it legal to starve a 41 year old to death. it doesn't matter if she could feel/process it completely or not; it wasn't "letting" her die, it was "making" her die. i can understand michael schiavo's arguments and i can understand terri's parents feelings; i can understand that there's a lot of gray area in this case and that it was not possible to ascertain terri's wishes directly. it's not the same but i kept thinking back to when my grandma had a feeding tube put in. at first she didn't want it, but the pastor who visited her commented "when God's ready for you to go home, He'll take you, feeding tube or not... in the meantime, i'd let your body decide, and not force it by not allowing yourself to get the food you need" in other words, if it were a respirator, or something keeping organs going fine; choosing to deprive someone of food, moderately ridiculous. regardless of the court's decision (and given i don't know enough of the specifics to know why they decided as they did), i think there are much more humane possibilities to have been considered. starvation i think, is wrong.
re: the pope -- wow, what a time to be living in. my dad was just commenting over christmas that he always watches midnight mass at the vatican when we get home from candlelight christmas eve service at our lutheran church... "same old pope all these years" he commented, and about how much he likes him. living with colleen (who is catholic) this year, i've heard a bit more about the pope's writing and positions on various things and my respect for him has grown; the world will miss him.
re: other things... eric and i had our big "chat about the universe" this afternoon... in case you have no intuition about which of my friends says which kinds of things, the question i posted last night was his, which i think is a wonderful question. he took lots of notes about things i said so that i figure he didn't think my commentary was completely ridiculous :-P my response to his question from last night? (what would an ideal religion accomplish for you?) was "well, it's a parallel construction to your answer, but i accept the axiom that God exists, so a religion i accept needs to (1) tell me about who God is, and (2) help me understand my relationship with Him"... eric asked me if i think mathematics is created or discovered (my 11th grade pre-AP pre-calc teacher's phrasing of a question eric went a much longer way around to addressing), because he argues that mathematics is a constant and even more fundamental in structure than the universe, i.e. there could exist different plausible universes, but there could not exist mathematics other than it is... when my answer (after much pondering) was "i think math is created by God and discovered by us", eric was thrown for a slight loop... eventually i concluded thought that i understand science to be the exploration of God's creation and if math isn't God's creation, it's firmly intertwined with God's creation and so by studying it, you're still studying an aspect of God's creation no matter how you put it.... we talked about absolute justice (i think it exists but while it's clear from the context of God's perspective, it's often hard from our perspective to see it in all situations; eric thinks it's an unnatural concept and that there's too much gray in the world for it to exist)... eric also argued that he thinks people come up with theorems and then form axioms to back them up, and i argued that that isn't always the case (e.g. he thinks i was taught at some point that absolute justice exists and therefore i choose to believe in axioms that support that, while i countered that my belief in the existence of absolute justice is a result of my understanding of who God is and His plan for the world... in other words, in his diagram of implications in his notes he was taking, i told him to turn his homology statement of my beliefs into a cohomology statement and he laughed at my mathy phrasing :-P)... finally, i made the point that i think that while science, by it's very nature of systematically studying how the universe works, is built on axioms and theorems and corollaries and lemmas and the like, you can *maybe* axiomatize some of the existence ideas of religion, but since religion is also about people in relationship with God, it can't all be quantified by the same methods and criteria (nor could i axiomatize my friendship with eric... relationships between living creatures are too dynamic to be completely formulated scientifically), and broken down into axioms.
so yeah, it was a highly quality chat. when we talk about God and religion and the universe it sounds so scientific :-P i'm glad he respects and trusts me enough to sit down and talk about such things; i think it's interesting to dissect how deep you have to go to get to the differences in our beliefs..... i.e. we come to very different conclusions about many things, but it's not because one of us is crazy -- it's because we have some very different fundamental assumptions about the universe, and the resulting philosophy we each hold seems to be the best fit for what we each hold to be true... example? i believe that God exists and that He exists outside time and outside space, while being able to interact with time and space as well. Eric has issues with understanding how a being can exist without a time-space frame of reference, because his definition for "exist" has to do with those. i think i get as much out of our chats as i apparently give him to think about (taking evidence as what crops up in future chats and what i see him take notes about).... after all that rambling, any thoughts from anyone else? or have i used sufficiently many math words to scare you all :-P?
so yeah, that sums up my afternoon -- lots of chatting about the nature of being and the structure of the universe -- aren't you jealous?
oh! and i think i came up with a bijective proof of something that's never been proved bijectively before :-) dr.z. will be proud of me again next thursday... he's also known for practical jokes, and i'm beginning to think an email he sent to our class this morning was one such joke, but it caught a lot of us at first... i'll post it when i know for sure if it's real or not; if it was a joke, it was a good one.
now, leigh and i are off to see "bride and prejudice", review of that later :-P
night y'all
