crossing the Rubicon

On well-quasi-ordering infinite trees - Nash-Williams' theorem revisited
Daniella Kuhn

No class today. More running in a bit. Then work. Then dealing with unresolved situations. All hail the embraced miscalculation.

more revealing are the words escaping

Slept very little last night before I had to wake Monday. Got in late to work; there until 6:15PM. At home, I finished a movie I had been watching, played guitar, and read the news.

John called. We spoke of genetic modification, synchronicity, code debugging, and my last week. After wasting the next 20 minutes, I uncharacteristically knocked on my neighbors Sam and Kate's door. We chatted it up for hours talking about MILO, relationships, music, the future, online journals, etc. They really helped me to talk through some concerns I have been harbouring. While scattershot at times (we are not exactly on the same wavelength in all respects (which is good (at times))), perspective from voices 1) not in my head and 2) removed from the immediacy of experience is valuable. Also, they are smart women with insight into a world I don't fully ken. Fabrizio must have been wrong.

Blocks, barriers, and Borel functions, oh my!

I have a lot more BQO reading to do. Went straight from work to MILO. Sleep is an option only for the unadventurous. More running when I wake up in about 4 hours. Paging Mr. Herman...

the batteries in my mouse have quite literally exploded

Heisenberg was driving his car when he gets pulled over. The cop walks up to him and asks "excuse me sir, do you know how fast you were going?"

To which Heisenberg replied "No, but I know where I am."

---

I slept at MILO Friday night. We watched La Dolce Vita until way too early in the morning. Jaymee drove me home around 9AM; enough time for an hour nap before work. After work I fell asleep for a few hours and then made dinner. Abby and Jaymee came over through Sam's apartment when they couldn't figure out how to get in otherwise. Sam told funny stories over Kool-Aid and chili about the arguments our upstairs neighbors have re: finding God, anarchism, inability to orgasm, feigning ignorance.

They played with Soma cubes for a while, as well as pentominoes, Snafooz, and Set. I tried to explain some of the mathematical content (combinatorial lines, tilings, symmetries, etc.) but they were too busy playing to care.

---

Ho hum. More Guantanomo abuse.

The documents uncovered by the ACLU HERE.

Je ne sais pas, Monsieur Beckett

Crying While Eating



"Purple Haze"
BY JIMI HENDRIX

Violet mist completely in my intellect
Recently, effects simply don't give the impression of being identical
Carrying on humorously; however, I am not acquainted with the reason
Pardon me at the same time as I make out with the atmosphere
Violet mist altogether in the region of
Don't recognize if I'm approaching happy or depressed
Am I content or in desolation?
Suchlike it is, that lass placed a magic charm on top of me
Assist me
Assist me
Oh, no, no
via McSweeney's

Also, read THIS.

Better Living Through Sophistry

Friday is my day off and in the afternoon I'm learning how to dance.

the llama needs no drama

Laura came over in the afternoon. I gave her her birthday present: a collection of her favorite comic, Chemical Corporation Baby Funnies. I pestered the artist long enough that he finally just made a huge stack of photocopies for me. I'll do it again, too.

Went to the MILO bonfire at midnight. Such drama that I'd scream if I cared at all.

I resume marathon training tomorrow.

THIS makes me so mad I could spit.

BQO and infinite Ramsey theory

I'm not sure you understand how much math is in me

Jaymee, Abby, and Anthony picked me up in Euclid on Sunday after the race. The ride home had my legs cramping up some, but nothing awful. We stopped at a park for a while until it started to rain.

We got back to MILO in the afternoon. I was totally beat from no sleep, running, and being sick. People drifted out to do other things and Jaymee and I were left alone in the room (intentionally, as I later find out). There has been this kind of un-talked-about thing hanging between us for a few weeks now. Well, I wasn't really sure. I'm relatively cautious about assuming what other people think^*.

After making some comment about how it was too bright out, all of a sudden Jaymee made it clear that she had an interest in me, and that she had been dropping hints like crazy but I'm too dense to do anything with them. "You don't just go pick someone up in Cleveland," was an amusing line. I let her know that I think she's super-cool, too.

Last night, I went over to MILO and wanted to talk more with Jaymee, but a drunken Mark interfered for most of the time. What perturbed me most was the transparency with which he appeared to delight in making sure we were not alone last evening. I couldn't understand his motiviations except as some sort of implicit disapproval of me. Eventually, I left early this morning after everyone had kind of dozed off.

---

An inferior piece of gear that works 100% of the time is better than an inconsistent, but superior, piece of gear.
John Vanderslice

I forgot to reinstall my Audioscrobbler plugin on the new computer. All those songs unrecorded!

I did the best I could - 2:10:21

I planned the race reasonably poorly from the beginning and I don't have anyone but myself to blame for that. I dumbly decided to go to the Headphones' concert even after I found out that it started at 11:30PM on Saturday and my race started at 7AM Sunday. Which left me about 3.5 hours of sleep. Also, my gigantic cough (which I still have in full swing) made everything bad into something worse.

Interestingly, except for the weather, Columbus' race was better than Cleveland's in almost every way. In Cleveland, a key station ran out of PowerAde, many of the race clocks were broken (including the finish line!), and their post-race plan could only be described as "herding". I had to walk during the race a lot more than I wanted to. I guess there's a reason people run well-rested and healthy.

I wish I could have had my shit together better enough to get people there (sorry everyone). Don't worry, though: my first full marathon will have a mandatory friends and family attendance policy.

wish me luck

Off to Cleveland this morning with Caitlin. We had fun last night hanging out at MILO. We went to the attic and all climbed the ridiculously rickety stairs to the peak. I think Jaymee, Abby, and Anthony will pick me up from Cleveland tomorrow. Whole lotta drivin' goin' on.

This cough hasn't gone away... Argh, it keeps me up at night and makes it hard to sleep solidly. I'll run no matter what, this just makes it less pleasant.

Caitlin's visiting tonight

Sometimes, the torment seemed to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both, according to report.
Story

Headphones video clip HERE. David and Tim practicing. I'll see them Saturday night in Cleveland.

Gotta go to work...

space of variable trees

I let a friend borrow my copy of the Discourses of Epictetus and now I miss it. It's good bedtime reading.

It's too bad that my waking hours are totally skewed. After work today I rode to MILO because I haven't seen anyone from there in a few days. But I forgot that most people really aren't awake at 1:45AM, despite my wanting them to be. In fact, the place was completely dead. Even my house, with all the apartments in it, have people up until 3 or 5AM, so I assume too much.

---

I had an idea today right before I got up from bed and I was still sleepy. Many Ramsey theorems can be proven as a consequence of some general partition theorem about variable words: the current 'most general' theorem keeps getting pushed further and further along. With it, most of the big results fall out in a way the literature describes fairly well.

My idea is to generalize the concept of variable word to variable tree. That is, associate letters and variables from some finite alphabet to the nodes of a finite (resp. infinite) tree, define some kind of concatenation and insertion rules. Then it becomes a semigroup so you can take its Stone-Cech compactification and use ultrafilter methods. Obviously a single branch is a tree, which corresponds exactly to a variable word, so we know we have all the previous results and then some. Let's hope it all goes through, I have to work on it more.

And proud we are of all of them

'Six Feet Under' soundtrack to kick ass.

This is my chance to live! I want to dance, I want to make love to a woman, I want to get a checking account, I want to know what it feels like to get my face socked in!
Buster Bluth, Arrested Development


Why, oh why did they have to schedule Lebowski Fest the same weekend as Lollapalooza? They even booked They Might Be Giants! Well, at least I have a backup plan now if something falls through...

I've got rhythm, bitch

I downloaded Ella Fitzgerald's 'Best of Gershwin' and it's frickin' awesome. I forget that people used to write really good melodic songs.

Star Wars Episode 3 opened at midnight last night and the freaks were in full swing. We had sold out every seat to all 24 theaters about 2 weeks ago, and the line to get the best seats had begun around Monday, with people camping outside resplendent in their Jedi/Sith attire. Around 7 or 8 PM last night everyone else showed up, many wearing meticulously hand-crafted costumes of their favorite characters. It was a good time and it isn't over: I work until 3AM tonight.

Cleveland's weather looks good for the weekend. My race is on Sunday and again, I'm a little nervous. I have a big whooping cough right now that's keeping me from last minute training. But I've been sleeping more than normal, drinking OJ, and not stressing out, so I hope it's enough to get me over it by then. Also, no snowstorm should be helpful.





An Indonesian student runs over a burning tire during a demonstration near McDonald's restaurant in the city of Makassar, South Sulawesi, May 18, 2005. Hundreds of students on Wednesday denounced the desecration of the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, despite a retraction by Newsweek magazine of the report.

a lack of dearth

I am thinking about contributing some math articles to Wikipedia. Sometimes I have to look up results and it's difficult without some central repository of coordinated information. Maybe I can make it easier for other people to find out more about Ramsey theory.

Top 100 American Speeches

The George Galloway transcript wherein he sticks it to the Senate with panache.

A nice proof of the Halpern-Lauchli partition theorem HERE. It has been oft generalized but the original is still quite amazing.

no kind act will go unpunished

I saw 'Star Wars: Episode 3' Tuesday night after work and it was decent. It lived up to the hype, brought closure, came full circle, etc. I probably won't see it again until it's out on DVD, though.

Be Cool to the Pizza Dude

It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
Epictetus

I have been listening to the
Graduate Course on Partition Theory and Banach Spaces. It was taped several years ago and is being offered online for free.

Venezualan Beaver Cheese

Josh and I watched 'Unleashed' last night. I expected it to be a piece of kung-fu garbage but it pleasantly surprised me with such things as acting, story, and dialogue, in addition to the requisite ass-whupping. Afterward, a lot of people helped to move Bruner's stuff into his new apartment across the street from MILO. The night was capped off by Abby drunkenly taking out Anthony with an elbow to the face on accident.


I am working tonight and I might watch a movie afterward.

taming lemurs for fun and profit

Supreme Court allows interstate wine sales

We'll be indifferent to you: what-ever!

Gina and Neil came to visit Friday night. They weathered the hellish I-71 storm getting here and I commend them for it. While trying to use the computer, Neil scored mad geek cred when, after discovering my mouse had no batteries, he just reached into his pocket and pulled out two! The comparative ease with which I compose this is directly attributable to him.

We went out to the Dube before going to the party that had already begun at my neighbors' place. Josh and many MILO-ites were already there (Devaney, Corvis, Jaymee, Abby, Adam, Chris Cropper, et al). There were intermittent thunderstorms throughout the evening, which made for a fun backdrop. The three of us opened a bottle of wine and enjoyed ourselves. I had Chris make more drawings for me -- he had already made one of Fabrizio at the last party over there. I used a Sharpie to write out Ramsey's theorem on whoever had exposed skin. I left a disturbing image on a random camera, inspired by Neil's exploits and an episode of Arrested Development.

I accidentally turned on the air conditioning too high before we went to bed, so when I walked through the room Gina and Neil were sleeping in to find them huddled under covers for warmth I realized my mistake. We ran around on Saturday to Long's (why we didn't get the cheerleading outfit for Gina I'm still unclear on) and out to lunch. Over to MILO to show them around. I showed them the Park of Roses, where the wedding they were going to attend would be. Neil gave me a new computer, too! Holy crap, I forgot how cool my friends are. I haven't hooked it up yet but anything is better than this piece of crap that resets every 45 minutes.

After we successfully scoured the neighborhod for hair gel and they took off, I went to work at 6PM. After work, I came home to eat and tape SNL (will Ferrell hosted). Off to MILO by 12AM. Josh and Casey were cracked out on a video game, so I sauntered over to Anthony's place. They were watching a 3-hour western and losing to it. I met and sexed Jaymee's and Abby's new cat Guadalupe. They thought it was a male, gave it a female name, and it turned out to be female anyway. I hung out with Jaymee at her place until 4AM and then I try to crash at Josh's.

He had fallen asleep on his couch. I assumed he'd wake up and climb into bed at some point before fully rising, so I tried to sleep on the floor. Unfortunately, Josh's crazed night moanings were so incredibly distracting that I gave up on sleep there and biked back to my place. I was asleep by 7AM. Up by noon, because we had practice at 1PM Sunday. We try to work through a song but the drummer Adam keeps speeding it up. He eventually gets fed up with trying to "keep time" and quits, but not before dropping a few insults. Josh and I are not dismayed at the loss (if you can call it that) and proceed to crank out 2 more songs before we stop, exhausted, at 7:30PM. I hear later that Adam just found out his girlfriend has been cheating on him and naturally wants to play loud, fast, angry music, so he can be forgiven for being something of an ass today. Animation Domination, pizza, then Chris drives me home.

>

more cleaning

guard my hut's key
pine tree!
going moon gazing

-Issa, 1819


via boingboing

is it safe to come out yet?

The bird singing outside my window at night reminds me of the mornings I miss. We had a disgustingly inefficient initial practice at MILO today. After Adam left, Josh and I fought for a while, then remembered we're better at playing music than talking about it. We proceeded to shut the fuck up and work out the gory details of a song that had been giving us problems. It has 9 parts, changes time signatures four times, and rarely repeats. It is truly awesome. We are recording it Sunday and hopefully I will be able to preview it here. That is, if he can nail down the final melody by then.

Gina and Neil are visiting this Friday. I have much cleaning left to do in order to fool them into thinking that I am not an utter slob and care nothing for basic tidyness. I don't suspect it will work but I'll pretend anyway (the clue may be the inevitable piles of junk I will not get around to hiding by the time they get here).

The word on the street may be that the party planned (in another apartment) in my house this weekend takes place on Friday rather than Saturday. If so, it is good and bad: good because G&N get to go to a party; bad because they'll probably need to sleep at some point. We may all end up crashing at Josh's in that case. He has plenty of room.

Sleep then more cleaning.

misconjugatedly uncopyrightable

THIS torrent of a solo Ben Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie) concert is worth the download for the cover of Lauper's 'Girls Just Wanna Have Fun' alone.

One of the strangest pictures I've seen in a long time. I didn't directly post it because it's slightly graphic.
via Patton Oswalt

I went to Karl Malburg's lecture today on the proof of the Crank Conjecture. I was surprised by several things. First, there were not as many people there as I had expected for such a huge result, and only one student besides me! Secondly, the clarity and deliberateness with which he spoke was remarkable not only for his age (he's 25) but for any mathematician. It's always a treat to hear great math told lucidly, sprinkled with examples, put in historical perspective, and paced well. Kudos to Karl on a job more than well done.

I am off to MILO to make music at our second band practice.

Etaoin Shrdlu

Ah, my computer. For a little while, whenever I pressed the 'd' key, it would minimize whatever window I had open. I had to avoid using that key until whatever the problem was went away. Rather than become frustrated, I remembered what I had read when I was younger about lipograms and people who used to write novels without the letter 'e'. I looked up some english language letter frequencies and found it interesting. I had it comparitively easy with 'd'!

I went over to Josh's boss' house today to help him with computer problems. He offered me money and I declined (I was just trying to be helpful, not turn a profit) which I now think may have been a mistake. My thoughts at the time went something like:
1) I'm doing a favor for Josh
2) I had fun
3) be nice now and have someone influential on my side later

But I really could have used the money, and I shouldn't have devalued my time/service. I don't want him thinking he can call me for free tech troubleshooting, now. We'll see whether it was a good idea or not.

I spent the last two evenings at MILO hanging out with Adam, Anthony, Abby, and Josh, Jaymee. J's and A's. We determined that my phone number is (61-i-am-thy-LP). And that the word for smell corresponding to 'visibly' must be 'olfactorily'.

would you like lyme disease with that?

I did not avoid well enough: I found a tick on me last night. It hadn't burrowed in, it was just lounging around. It did annoy me some, though, so that whenever a hair moved on my body I thought I had another one. It took some time to stop mildly freaking out about it.

OSU Mathematics Seminars of Interest:
Wed. 3:30PM - Karl Mahlburg
"The Andrews-Garvan-Dyson crank and proofs of partition congruences"

Th. 4:30PM - Ben Green
"Arithmetic progressions of primes"

Both of these results are ground-breaking! The first one made world news for solving a 70-year old Ramanujan problem. The second one is just freaking revolutionary: there are arithmetic progressions of arbitrary length (also known as AP-rich) among the prime numbers. This supports the oldest (and most lucrative) Erdos problem that any sequence of natural numbers whose reciprocals diverge is AP-rich. This would imply Szemeredi's theorem (often referred to as the crown jewel of combinatorics) that any set of natural numbers with positive upper density is AP-rich, among many others.

sun, fungus, and drums

I had to work most of the weekend. When I wasn't working I was mostly at MILO. When I wasn't at MILO, I was hunting for morel mushrooms in Delaware State Park while avoiding ticks. When I wasn't doing any of those things I was sleeping. But there's nothing interesting about that.

I might be in a new band that's forming at MILO. The drummer Adam is super-tight. I had noodled around with him before but never seriously since he was already committed in another group. Whatever they had going broke up (not serious enough?) so he's floating around looking for something new. We're trying to nail him down while he's still available! We have practice tomorrow at 7PM. I have lots of reading to catch up on between now and then. Also, running in the morning now before it gets too hot. My mouse is out of batteries out again, so cutting and pasting links, pictures, etc. will have to wait until I (care enough)/(get enough expendable money) to go out and get more.

Anthony at MILO is turning out to be a real cool cat. He has gone on 7,000 mile bike trips over mountain ranges. Seven. Thousand. Miles. Holy shit that's crazy. Anyway, I think we may go on a much shorter trip here in Ohio this summer for a few days. He's not as flaky as the artists I'm used to spending time with, so it may even happen.

friday comics

I salute you, Ajai Raj

Ajai Raj, the UC student arrested for a rude question at an Ann Coulter speech, fires back.

I just watched an incredible movie. It's called Crash and I give it an unqualified recommendation. It makes me think Magnolia meets Traffic meets Do the Right Thing. I haven't enjoyed a movie this much since Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I'm going to watch Crash again this weekend.



LINK

the best revenge is living well

$95
Lineup includes: Coldplay, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie, Franz Ferdinand, Keane, The Doves, The Black Keys, Rilo Kiley, Spoon, the Decemberists, The Futureheads, and Mike Doughty.


Anthony over at MILO ran the Capital City Half-Marathon too. He did it with a contraption he built himself strapped to his back designed to DRAW A PICTURE. I thought I had it tough: he lugged around a machine!

bonfire of the manatees

After classes today I rode to MILO. I found Josh there and joined a cookout already in progress. That lasted several hours and was amusing and delicious. But the *REALLY* fun part was the discussion we had afterward in his apartment.

From around 11:30PM until 5AM he and I hashed through some of the toughest frank relationship issues I've ever encountered. Details ranging from ethics to sex, ego, spirituality, sex, mental health, lies, sex, revenge, and destiny. Oh, and sex. I learned more about Josh tonight than I have since we came to Columbus. It was truly amazing: I've never felt more like I had a brother in my life. I forget how much more he's been through than I have and how much I can learn from him. He can frustrate the hell out of me sometimes but these evenings remind me how worthwhile it still is.

dreams and the Natti

I had super-depressing dreams last night. I woke up and I normally would have been ecstatic for it all to have been unreal but the weight of it uncharacteristically brought me down the whole day. I kept trying to break out of it (Epictetus is good for that, for me) but without success. I never like to relate dreams because I've found you can relay the literal content but not the context and ineffable associations, so I'll spare you the details.

In better news, I found that Cincinnatti technically falls into the 'Central' region for Amtrak, thus making my plans to tour the country later this summer easier. Let me explain: you can buy different kinds of passes to travel as much as you like within four prespecified regions. The more regions you'd like to travel through, the more it costs. As you can see below, most of Ohio is in the East. So it costs about $100 less for me to hop on in Cincinnatti and start and end there.

it's a sleepy day

Oxford English Dictionary's most frequently asked questions about words HERE. I thought this was great.




Zak Smith illustrated Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Every page of it. That's amazing, people.

train to chicago

A few years ago I would take a train from Cleveland to visit Laura while she lived on a farm outside Chicago. I found some music I listened to on those trips and the whole experience is coming back to me while I listen to it.

The train left at 4AM and people looking dead tired and sleepless. The sound of rolling over the tracks, gently swaying back and forth, slowing for turns and picking back up to speed over long stretches, the sun coming up and filtering in through tinted windows. I can remember the books I took with me and read, the people I sometimes sat next to, passing those decrepit houses in northwest Ohio next to train tracks with their yards in uncomfortably joyous disrepair.

The tenseness of separation heightened by an anticipated imminent reunion mixed with the stink of strangers' body odor. Struggling over some math problem, hearing the compartment's door lurch open and slam shut, somehow going over a lake, slicing it in two, strange clouds, doodles and notes to self I won't quite understand later when I look them over. Urban, suburban, rural, continuous transition from each to the other and back again. Picking up more people and the mad rush for a smoke break causes aisle congestion, dining car smells drifting, the hovering isolation that comes with means to ends that go on too long, patterned carpet with a simple tiling, catanery telephone lines that rise and fall like crayola kindergarten waves, while drifting haphazardly toward and away from me. Feeling conflicted when the music ends.

quoth Josh: no one's ever played sadder chords

My going to class on less than six hours of sleep is pointless. I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone concentrate enough to understand simplicial homology constructions.

I hung out with Josh on Sunday just to catch up. We hadn't seen each other since our dispute about a month ago, though we'd talked on the phone intermittently. I'd like to spend more time at MILO again: things have cooled off there and some of the bad elements have moved out.


I am super-pissed at the bike shop I've been going to. I had a flat tire, I took it there to be fixed, and after riding it for 20 minutes it's flat again. I took it back, they act like I'm *CRAZY* because they can't find the leak, they put another tube in. And the same thing happens! Flat fucking tire and I have to hitch a ride home from work. It's starting to become inconvenient enough to consider going to a bike shop that isn't one block away from my house.

I have been listening to Robbie Fulks the last few days. It's hardcore country! But the songwriting is undeniable. Check out this song: Where There's a Road

outside to enjoy the weather today

I am rereading Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn this weekend.

Peter Nyikos - Various Topologies on Trees


Family Guy - New episode tonight at 9PM!