Gloom, schmoom

The storm clouds may be gathering

But blithely shall we fly by them

And soar as we always have

Surely and swiftly through even the darkest night

2017 January 4-7, Singapore and Ann Arbor (i.e. home and home)

Danke schön Österreich

Now we can keep going for a little longer. 

Resolved

1. I am rubber, you are glue. Any nonsense coming my way will bounce off me so fast ...
2. If need be, I will be a bystander intervention ninja (although hopefully I will never need to.)
3. Even as I remain safe in my bubble (or not), I will give all aid to those who fight the good fight.
4. Knowledge is power. The battle against ignorance and bigotry starts today.
5. I've lost enough sleep and productivity. Going back to work and life now (with adjustments as necessary.)

I could sit around and wallow in despair for a while

But, well, let's not. The next time you feel like doing that (i.e., probably every hour or so for the next two weeks [years?]): take a deep breath, remember that you're not quite going to bear the brunt of it, look forward and think of what you can do to change things, look around you and listen and offer support to those who need it more, and act. And remember that in the shitstorm of rhetoric that's still flying around you, the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the hazy unarticulated middle, and that you would do well to listen carefully and discern the inside voices and subtle overtones hiding in the cacophony. (Of course, all of this will be moot if nuclear winter actually happens.)

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.

Not actually the worst description of moduli spaces

"Yo dawg I heard you like geometry, so we put some geometry on your geometry, so you can geometry while you geometry."

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

Just one more thing now ...

Not too long ago the (apparently still English) current chair of the doctoral committee informed me that "now all that's left to do is to write and defend a thesis." That seems to have sparked a little bit of a dark mood in me. Now comes the part where you fall deep into a rabbit hole, for years and years on end, and never emerge, possibly not ever again, to see the broad sweep of the plains and the distant majesty of the mountains, is what some part of me seems to have heard.
But that was not what was said, and that is not what you should do. You should remember the way down the rabbit hole, the better to climb up back out of it. You should take note all of the tunnels that go between the rabbit holes, and the intricate networks that they form, and how they transverse the broad sweep of the plain and take you, sight unseen, towards the mountains. You should never forget, as you seem dimly aware of now, that the rabbit holes, for all of their fascinating depths, are only ever part of the story, and that you should never lose sight of the whole.
It will be a constant struggle to remember this, to remain as broad as you could be even as you delve deep into your chosen rabbit hole. But it's something that you can at least try to do, that you must at least try to do---and your work and life will be the richer for it.  

We only like the semisimple stuff around here

Parabolics just make us hurl.

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" 

Ignorance and bigotry are like cancers

And we should treat them like we treat cancers, or other diseases of the body. Not with outrage and loud denunciation, or at least not with those alone. Those might be useful for drawing attention to the problem, but they're not going to make it go away.

No, we should study them closely, and understand deeply their origins and how they grow and spread. We should use this knowledge to systematically and methodically eradicate them, the same way we have eradicated smallpox and are so close to eradicating polio. 

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 

But is it better to let never exist?

Clearly you believe that, in the case of commitments you doubt you can honour, the answer is a resounding yes. Even if that exchange on Kenmore did make it seem as though, in general, your opinions were exactly the opposite. 

Welcome home

Of course I'm happy to be home. Excited to see friends and family, and glad to find comfort in the familiar. But this time I also feel sad, that in some perhaps distinctly limited---but very concrete---sense this will soon no longer be home. Upset, angry even, because I feel like my home is being taken away from me---but really there is no reasonable or good target for this anger. Part of me is defiant---it doesn't matter, this will always be home; or: what does it matter? The world is my oyster---; part of me is already grieving over what it sees, rather overdramatically, as imminent exile.
Last evening I thought about the upcoming flight home and the words that would greet me as I passed through the immigration gantries at the end of that long journey. Never have those words felt so deeply charged, or provoked such conflicted ambivalence. I really felt like---still feel like---screaming and bawling and crying. It's not terribly reasonable, and when I've had time to calm down and actually reflect on it for a while it feels rather like making a mountain out of a molehill. Then again, all that reasoned reflection doesn't make---hasn't made---this profound sense of loss go away.
Maybe I should just come to terms with that. That, no matter how I spin it, my identity---the narrative I have built of myself, of who I am and where I belong---will be---has been---fundamentally shaken. That I should not---cannot---simply pretend that things will carry on as before. That perhaps that identity wasn't nearly as solid or sturdy as I thought it was, and that I should rebuild a stronger one where the old one collapses. 

Oh well

What the hell

"Oh hello!!!"

Anger and outrage is all very well, but maybe it's more useful to investigate the causes---calmly and systematically, though insistently nonetheless---and address them. Ignorance and myopia and bigotry are scourges, I agree. But they are scourges which we should aim to eradicate, not merely condemn. Unless public condemnation be part of that process of eradication---but honestly I cannot see it being the entire solution in and of itself. 

Not even sure why I'm angry or whom I'm angry at

But I am. I think it's a sign that, no matter how hard I try to rationalise it, my heart emphatically does not want to uproot itself anymore.