Ще не вмерла України і слава, і воля

 

Why should we languages?

From then on, he was entranced by every language he encountered. His mom’s French record albums. A German dictionary he found at one of his dad’s handyman jobs. A boy from the Soviet Union who joined his junior high class. By then, one of Vaughn’s favorite places was the library. He checked out a beginner’s guide to Russian.

Soon after, he overheard a Russian woman in a grocery store.

“Здравствуйте, как поживаете?”. Vaughn asked. Hello, how are you? He explained that he was trying to learn Russian.

He liked the look he put on that woman’s face.

“Like she was hit with a splash of happiness,” Vaughn remembers. 

Highlights from lunch, February 2019

A fun fact about how solutions to the wave equation behaves very differently in even dimensions: in 2 dimensions, instead of a single clap, you'll hear a decaying tail of claps. Because, somehow, to do the analysis you have to imagine going up a dimension and replacing your point source with a one-dimensional source. Sound travels from all along that line towards you, with suitable delays and decay ... hence that decaying tail ...since Pac-man eats stuff on a plane, you shouldn't just hear a "piu" every time he eats something, it should be more like "PIIUUuuuu ... "

Still a little too real

We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable —

but then, so did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.

--- Ursula K. Le Guin 

... yön uhka karkoitettu on jo pois,

ja aamun kiuru kirkkaudessa soittaa ...

(Was this really written in the middle of WWII? I guess maybe it was after the Winter War ... )

Mladen could probably've told ya

I had a dream in honor of my late friend and co-author Gilbert Baumslag. Gilbert and I were both in Berkeley, and he invited me to come over for lunch in the free product with amalgamation that he was renting. It was not clear which factor I was supposed to come to, and figuring this out involved some tricky group theory. I was still puzzled about it when I woke up.

Peter Shalen, via Facebook

Meh fact of the day

"Meh" might come from the Yiddish, via the Simpsons. From the Oxford English Dictionary:

Etymology: Probably <  Yiddish me be it as it may, so-so (1928 or earlier), probably imitative.
Probably popularized by the U.S. cartoon series The Simpsons , in which its earliest use was in the episode Sideshow Bob Roberts , first broadcast on 9 Oct. 1994.

A RAAG, an Anosov representation, and a Higgs bundle walk into a bar.

They start debating what GEAR could stand for. They immediately reject the notion that it could possibly stand for "Geometric structures and representation varieties", noting that this goes against everything that acronyms are supposed to do. After some back-and-forth the right-angled Artin group proposes that the acronym captures the way that the network functions: "Guesses, Errors And Retries". The Anosov representation and the Higgs bundle don't like this very much ... after more debate, the Anosov representation claims that the acronym is all about the guiding principle of the network: "Give Everybody Ample Renumeration". This is not universally accepted either, and the argument goes on ... finally, the Higgs bundle comes up with what is obviously the most perfect answer ... but nobody can understand a word of it.

(from Steve Bradlow, at the GEAR retreat banquet)

Meanwhile, in math grad school

My sentiments exactly

Grad school in 2017: an absolute riot.

Oh well. What the hell.

NATE SILVER 2:10 AM

Something to remember: Whatever your feelings about the state of the country right now, it’s fundamentally not that different a place whether the final call is that Clinton has narrowly won or narrowly lost. Add just 1 percent to Clinton’s vote share and take 1 percent away from Trump’s, and she would have won Florida and Pennsylvania, therefore would probably have been on her way to a narrow Electoral College victory.

Victory is ... nobody's?

W: Shouldn't that be true more generally?
M: I don't think so ...,
W: ... well, one of us wins.
C: Nah, it's not such a nice game. We could all lose. 

---from this week's Topology seminar

Fine, you can name those after me

L'un des auteurs insistant pour que l'on adopte cette terminologie, aujourd'hui généralement admise, l'autre auteur s'y résigne

Armand Borel and Jacques Tits, "Groupes réductifs", footnote explaining the origins of the term "Borel subgroup" 

Calculus quiz haiku, Round Two

thin thin flimsy walls
made of donut dough ready t
o collapse, yummy  

(Theis) 

Donald Trump looks like
Burnt coffee cakes that went through
Space exploration 

(Salhaney)

(the following came in a pair)

Donald Trump will make
America great again:
Slash NASA's budget!  

No funds for spaceships---
Trump Administration buys
Lots of coffee cakes.

(Hoopingarner) 

Qu'elle est belle, la devise de Paris

Depuis des siècles, des amoreux de la mort ont tenté de nous faire perde le goût de vivre. Ils n'y sont jamais parvenu. Ceux qui aiment. Ceux qui aiment la vie. À la fin, c'est toujours eux qui gagnent.
...
Les gens qui sont morts ce soir étaient dehors pour vivre, boire, chanter. Ils ne saviaent pas qu'on leur avait declaré la guerre. Au lieu de nous diviser, vous nous rappelez comme tout cela est précieux: notre mode de vie. Amoreux de la mort, si Dieu existe, il vous exécre. Et vous avez déjà perdu, sur la terre comme aux cieux. 

Fluctuat nec mergitur: ça signifie merde à la mort. 

---Johann Sfar 

Thursday's problem session went hilariously well

Okay let's just try to muddle through this ... 

[two minutes of silence] 

... 

If I weren't here you would all be sulking right now ... more than you already are.

... 

Okay, let's try problem 4. 

I hate problem 4.

Wait, we've been saying that about every problem we've tried! Problem 1---no, we hate problem 1. Problem 2---we don't like problem 2 either. Problem 3---no ... 

...

I think I'm going to quit math and become a janitor. 

I'll join you!  

On Wednesdays, up to linear distortion

C: "I'm not really a geometer, only a quasi-geometer---"
S: "Well, are you a quasi-geometer, or are you quasi a geometer?"
C: "I'm quasi a quasi-geometer."

---overheard at this week's RTG seminar 

Only a crazy person would do that

Senator Daniel Inouye served in WWII and was seriously injured while attacking a German position along a ridge in Tuscany.  He stood to throw a grenade into a machine gun nest, when one of the gunners shot him in the stomach.  Inouye ignored the wound and killed the machine gunners with his Thompson SMG. 

Instead of getting out of combat, Inouye continued the attack and destroyed a second machine gun nest before collapsing from blood loss.  After collapsing, Inouye crawled toward a third machine gun nest to continue the assault.  As he prepared to throw another grenade, a German RPG severed his right arm.  He used his left hand to remove the live grenade from his dead right arm and tossed it into the machine gun nest. 

After destroying three German positions, being shot in the stomach, having an arm severed by an RPG, and nearly being blown up with his own grenade, Inouye got up and ran around the ridge, shooting at the remaining Germans with his left hand.  He continued to do so until he was shot in the leg, fell off the cliff, and was knocked unconscious at the bottom. 

When he awoke in a hospital, his friends told him what he had done.  He replied, "No.  That's impossible.  Only a crazy person would do that."

as told by Josh Stein, via Quora