Better Quasi-Ordering and Cthulhu

I made it to Robertson's Graph Coloring class (math 870), and am I glad I did! It was a two hour marathon of well quasi-orderings, better quasi-orderings, trees of WQO's, lower ideals of WQO's, and Nash-Williams theory. All in the service of the Robertson-Seymour Theorem, arguably the most significant theorem about graphs.

Then, I get home to find out that that bastard Fabrizio bought me a really great book I wanted, to thank me for letting him stay with me. He didn't have to do that! Ostensibly, it was because he's such a great guy, but I know that it's secretly a selfish ploy to get me up to speed on the math he's doing so that he can talk to me more about it... He'll get more than he bargained for.

Ran the farthest I ever have in the snow, inspired by all the great math around me. Worked on and solved some BQO problems I had while doing it, too. Robertson is using a different, new, definition of BQO (Q is BQO iff union of all chains of lower ideals with length < \omega_1 is WQO) rather than Nash-Williams' combinatorial characterisation, so I had to work out their equivalence and some nagging questions.

Also, I ran out of batteries for my optical cordless mouse so I have been hindered by having to use only my keyboard to navigate lately. I found a program to make my own hotkeys (who knew that I really used right-clicking and the scroll-wheel so much?) While that makes things slightly easier, I still usually suck out and wind up using Mousekeys for more than I'd like.

---

Oops! Where's that $9,000,000,000?





Seriously, can anyone do better than 22 at THIS?

Unless he meant to do that

It was snowing while I was out running today. It made for slippery conditions everywhere. That was one reason I was surprised to see a car round the corner ahead of me so quickly -- I thought the conditions on the road were obviously dangerous enough to take it easy. Evidently not to this guy. He doesn't make the corner, jumps the curb on the opposite side of the road from me, and levels a street sign before managing to stop. I came over and I saw when he got out of the car that he was only 16 or 17. He had a cell phone and was calling his parents. He said he was fine. On my way home I looped back past it and saw a few people with him sorting it out. Strange.

it's so bad it's good

Doonesbury





The Rules of Mafia

the Mitch Hedberg show was a train wreck

I got back from Mitch Hedberg's show (Columbus, OH - Mershon Auditorium) about 45 minutes ago and have been thinking about what happened and how it went wrong. Off the top of my head:

1) there were many VERY drunk people there
2) one of the opening acts bombed
3a) many college students are immature and shout during pauses
3b) Mitch has many pauses
4) there was vitually NO security to toss out the bad eggs
4) subtle humor is hard sometimes
5) correct delivery is difficult under pressure
6) things going bad made things go worse
7) the crowd was too big -- the laughs got lost quickly
8) continually referencing how badly things were going reminded the audience that they were not having fun

It was a bad scene. The first comic was stupid. Crude humor and swearing. The SECOND comic got the third degree. Hecklers nonstop throughout the portion of her act she was able to get through. She cut it short. I liked her. I had seen her open for Mitch in Cleveland where she didn't do well, either.

Then the first, stupid comic comes back out and tries to rally things. It didn't work. The laughter is forced. Everyone is kind of entranced watching this train wreck unfold. Everyone was distracted by the sheer weirdness of everything going wrong. No one could lose themselves in the jokes like they are supposed to.

Mitch comes out and a minute into it asks security to take out one loud heckler, WHICH THEY DON'T DO. The security here were literally people's grandparents, elderly volunteers who can't or won't confront the problems. It starts sliding downhill quickly and picks up speed. He gets distracted and forgets jokes, or tells them wrong. None of his jokes really kill. He can't win the crowd over so he makes self-depricating humor, as in: "I must not be funny." Eventually after several genius lines fall flat he gets angrier, as in: "You people are stupid. That joke was awesome."

Mitch vacillated between frustration and anger for things not going well with the crowd. He made jokes at the crew's expense after they tell him not to mess with electrical things onstage. Then he began dragging the mike stand across the floor to scrape words into it. It was palpable how agitated he was, which of course makes the crowd even more uncomfortable and takes them out of the moment. He really sped things up for the second half. But his jokes are about timing and delivery so it made it difficult to appreciate or let things sink in appropriately.

All in all, it was a downward spiral of a mess that I didn't enjoy much. A humiliating spectacle, it made me want to ask for my $30 back. I'd love to see him again in a few years someplace much smaller and smarter.

Never Trust Anyone Who Says "It Turns Out That..."

I now hold once held the record for this puzzle. Beat 22 23 cows!

Off to Mitch Hedberg right now.

What you say? Schfiftyfive!

I was invited to sit in on math 870 (Graph Colorings) today. Right before I had to leave, my boss at KTalk calls and wants to chat it up. Of course, I am late and miss the bus by a block and get to watch it roll away. Ah, humor.

Schfiftyfive

Q: Is Social Security in crisis?
A: Yes it is! And if we don’t do something right now it is going to EXPLODE!
Q: Oh no!
A: In forty years.
Q: Then what happens?
A: Then Social Security runs out of money! That means either your benefits are reduced, or all Social Security everywhere explodes in a giant fireball and we will have to run away from the fireball and jump away from it in slow motion to escape!
Q: Tell me more about this crisis in gritty detail!
A: The fireball is huge and loud and expensive and there is grinding guitar music on the soundtrack informing everyone that we are bad, bad dudes! The radiation turns all old people into very poor mutants who must scavenge and eat each other for food. Eventually the robots come: they are unstoppable. What has science done!
via fafblog




the Infinite Cat Project

我宿は丸めた雪のうしろ哉

waga yado wa marumeta yuki no ushiro kana

my dwelling--
somewhere behind
the bundled snow

-Issa
(have this installed to view Japanese)

I passed out a few moments ago when I stood up too quickly and stretched. That was crazy! I haven't done that in a long time. I came to on the floor, with the sound of the Charlie Rose Show slowly filtering in. It took me a minute to realize what had happened; I felt very confused and dazed. My knees hurt. The whole thing took place in such a short amount of time, probably less than 90 seconds. I remember now that right before I passed out I thought something like, "No way am I going to pass out."

Dear Winter: Be Over

Running in snow today stunk. I can't wait for everything frozen to melt so I can stop using the weather as an excuse to not train as much.


Mike Doughty is selling his most famous guitar.

Article about the guy waiting for Star Wars 3 HERE



<math>
Beginning to really understand Gallier's "What's so Special about Kruskal's Theorem and the Ordinal Gamma_0?".

I went to Rathjen's talk "The role of ordinals in proof theory" today, which Friedman wouldn't stop talking through.

It going to be ordinal notations all weekend.
</math>

It's the Abominable Ho-Man

My music page on Audioscrobbler looks funny after Fabrizio visits. It's full of rap and skews my statistics in funny ways. My #1 song is now Ludacris - Area Codes.

The best torrent site I've found: Bi-torrent

Man standing in line for Star Wars 3... it comes out in May.

If Bush's Speech Had Rocked as Hard as His Inauguration.
"My family and I will kill and eat anyone who stands in our way."

Off to the grocery store in the middle of the night. The best time.

What's $80,000,000,000 more?

What's $80,000,000,000 more? We're already screwed.

Going to the Ohio Mushroom Society meeting tonight.


via boingboing


Alberto Gonzales

I hate smelling like smoke

A Fake Newsman's Fake Newsman: Stephen Colbert

Doctorow on DRM

put that in your poke and smipe it

When friends have too much time on their hands they create Celebrity Look-Alike pages. Do I have the distinction of partially resembling my celebrity? So they say. Much thanks to Gina.

best... tattoo... ever...

You Snooze You Lose, Well I Snost and Lost

I'm feeling down. Math is not cheering me up.





Why the hell doesn't Josh ever call me back? He knows I love him, but God damn it that he can't be bothered to pick up a phone.

Finishing some Schopenhauer and Ganz's and Manco's books.

Positive Semi-Definite

Try to Feel Nothing On Command

It is wrong that every day when I wake up and read Google News I hope to see that the President has been shot.





The Salvador Option (editorial)

think of the children!

My computer keeps freezing! This is the third time I've written this!

Fabrizio said it best:
[(apples:oranges):(PC:Mac)]:(apples:oranges)



free (and legal) Mike Doughty concerts HERE

don't go out on January 24^th

Kanamori-McAloon Principle



Banksy inspires

ほちほちと雪にくるまる在所哉

hochi-hochi to yuki ni kurumaru jûsho kana

softly, softly
blanketed with snow...
my residence

-Issa
(have this installed to view Japanese)

I am listening to Mike Doughty religiously. I feel slightly uncomfortable that it's a bootleg copy of his new album, but since I plan to buy it my anxiety is lessened.

Translating the Untranslatable

FCC Complaints

Pattern?

While Fabrizio was here I noticed a thread running through some of the math I am interested in: sets with the property that they intersect every *special* subset nontrivially. What *special* is differs in context. For example:

stationary sets:
intersect every closed unbounded set of ordinals (in some alpha)
piecewise syndetic sets:
closure (in the Stone-Cech compactification) intersects every two-sided ideal
simple sets:
intersect every recursively enumerable subset of integers

More Sticker Graffiti

More High Street sticker art from the same guy. This must be his 'Mouse' period.

I trust T. William Walsh

I got tickets to Pedro the Lion in Cleveland, as well as Columbus.



My copies of this great zine, Moonlight Chronicles came in the mail. I am still reading it.

Now With More Fabrizio!

Fab will stay until Thursday, beacuse he can't get enough of me (and Bucket Death). More to come.

Bucket Death

We have been playing Bucket Death for the last 5 or 6 days now, for several hours per day. It is a game played by two people each standing on a bucket holding different ends of a rope. The game is over when one person touches the ground or lets go of the rope, in either case losing. Endless variety, hysterical matches, and 90% strategy with 10% balance makes for a great game. We had the first Bucket Death Championship the other night with Casey (Engine) Corvis taking first place. Nicknames are as follows:

Landon: The Clock
Bruner: Silencio
Adam: Bones
Casey: Engine
Josh: The Burninator
Fabrizio: Forcep
Chad: Ninja

Bucket Death 4-EVA

My cable was out since Saturday thanks to that damned tree down in the backyard. Fabrizio will be here through Sunday! More pictures and updates then.

No sleep and all work makes Landon a... where am I?

I defy you, universal covering space!

Tsunami assholes