A Weblog

Today I went to my first Old Library Luncheon, which, despite its name, is held in the Junior Common Room. Once again, despite the room’s name, it was populated by the Senior Common Room members, that is, and me. That’s right. I alone gave any semblance of legitimacy to the room, and, therefore, the event. These things happen pretty weekly, or biweekly — it’s hard to know. They schedule is very inconvenient to anyone in the math department. But the Kaplans are no longer in the math department proper. [Bob still has his @math email, though.]

I admitted to Chief that “the grown-ups scare me.” He told me that the Kaplans are no more grown-ups than he is. He is, you know, right. They run this marvelous program for elementary through high schoolers called the Math Circle. They’re both brilliant and patient teachers, mathematicians, and effectively Scottish. There’s no way we couldn’t be friends. I was relieved to find them at the lunch.

Ann Porter, a new resident tutor, was hooked by Bob’s casual mention of different sized infinities. Sitting with him is something like dining with a Jesuit. Ask a simple question, and before you know it, you’re converted. But I’m in the choir. So perhaps my view is a bit unfair.

Anyway, it’s time to wrestle with different locations of infinity. I promised Verena a lecture on ADM mass, which is taken at spatial infinity. There are other defintions of mass; the Bondi mass is measured from null infinity.

If anyone else would like to listen to me drone on about mass, PLEASE come tonight at 7:30pm in SC 411. If you would, please email me first. I want to make sure not to walk there if I don’t have to.

To Spatial Infinity, and Beyond!

In order to finalize our course selection, Harvard students must fill out a form known throughout as a study card. This year they’ve swapped out the old-school SAT fill-in-the-bubble cards for slick, new electronic versions. We still have to fetch the same signatures from advisors, professors, and friends as before; so, if anything, they’ve only complicated the process for those not entirely sure on their semester’s courseload.

I, on the other hand, was done shopping after Monday. I’m taking an undergraduate course on partial differential equations — an essential, medicine-type course that really ought to be bigger than three people, and certainly should contain more than one undergraduate. The professor is new, earnest, and nice. He demands a bit of audience participation, but since we’re such an intimate group, I think this will be just fine.

Next up, a course on general relativity in the math department taught be S.T. Yau himself. He’s taken an interesting approach, that is, he’s started in what might be in an advanced second year course. The Cauchy problem and initial data and, also, the Hamiltonian formualation of GR. We’re all over the place. Today we defined the ADM mass. I couldn’t be happier. My PDE professor attends lecture. Perhaps we can work on problem sets together.

Last up, an ethomusicology class. I don’t have much to say. The professor has an unhealthy and unabashed obsession with Yo-Yo Ma. He’ll be here with his Silk Road Ensemble on Monday to play for us. I guess I can hold off asking his son for tickets to his dad’s concerts for a while.

The point, though, is that Peter Kronheimer, the new head tutor since Cliff assumed the role of chair of the department, teaches the first semester, graduate-level differential geometry class, and that I audit it, along with, it seems, about thirty other people. Today he asked those who are planning to take the class for credit to raise their hands. No one. This is almost understandable. The grad students don’t generally take courses for credit, and the number of undergraduates in grad courses should be few as a matter of course. But it looks as though not one person is registering for the class even though thirty of us attend.

After lecture I asked Professor Kronheimer to sign my study card. “Oh, hello. Did you take some time off? It seems like so many years ago we had that strange, little dinner together.”

“That’s when I took my time off, actually. I’m a second semester senior now,” I explained.

“Well, you’re taking to math classes. That seems good. Here you go.”

He was right. That strange, little dinner was three years ago this spring. I invited him to a student-faculty dinner with Danielle Li and James Patrick Donlinger-McElligot in Quincy House, despite my non-student and non-affiliate status.

It was strange. I’m glad he remembered.

In other news, I started a workout regimen. Shamed by the looks of the men’s water polo and swim and dive teams, I decided I ought to buckle down and swim not only for leisure but also for profit. The first workout lasted 3500 yards. I lasted only 2450 yards. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

It may have been a bit weird to answer the door in my hospital scrubs, no shirt, and while brushing my teeth just. That Jon Rieman trekked down two flights of stairs in nothing but boxers and white, tall socks to ring my doorbell was weirder, still. He immediately apologized after I opened the door. Wrong U, apparently. I could only point at Luke’s room immediately to my right and do my best look questioning. After all, Luke is his blockmate.

Then he turned away, then back, then asked, “Does Alex live here?”

I pointed informatively across the hall to the other U.

I’m not sure what to make of him, or Keith Lockhart. Regardless, the pool re-opens for the season tomorrow at 7am.

The quesadillas were wonderful. I ate five already, leaving one for the immediate later.

This semester I’ve positioned my desk so that I face the River while at my computer. Having woke up only at 4pm after a night of drinking, video games, Dogma, and those delightful broccoli and cheese chicken things they used to serve at brunch with Tracy and DJ, I figured that maybe I should sit down to stare at my computer and the River until meeting with Susannah sometime after 9pm.

Sometime last week Verena and I found hard-covered composition notebooks, the type we had to purchase for high school chemistry and physics classes, at Staples on sale. The asking price was only seventy-nine cents for the gridded kind. (Seventy-two for ruled.) We abandoned our loose sheet note method, joining the long tradition of notebook note takers. So far it’s worked out pretty well for me.

Earlier this summer I had lost several notes I had taken for my thesis — I recently rediscovered some of them during the move next door to my current room — but now! now I can take my notebook with me where ever I go and have all my notes in one place.

But as utile as my notebook is, it doens’t make it any easier to concetrate for extended periods of time. As mentioned in my last post, I’m redrafting the section on Dirac operators before I give a copy to Professor Taubes. In his paper he used coordinate calculations. I rely on them, too, but in a somehow less coordinate-dependent manner. At least that’s how it feels to me. I rely pretty heavily on Clifford algebras, and I can’t remember if he told me to develop my understanding of spinors in a Clifford algebraic or a representation theoretic framework. I chose what seemed to be more geometrical, but I have my misgivings.

I was distracted initially by the sunset, and I meant to describe the clouds. But the sun has nearly completed its setting and my transcendentalist tendancies have subsided. My new neighbor, also Josh, just walked in. Henry Walters, who is presently in the Vatican attending a year-long Latin immersion program, suggested that I invite him to brunch this year. (Henry, you may know, was a core member of our exclusive and little-known brunch club. Apparently Henry now calls himself Sylvester Slipshod though he sometimes lapses and signs his emails Hank. I’m genuinely concerned.)

Today was the first official day the House accepted early arrivals. But the fact of the matter is, we’ve been taking people on board everyday for the past week, perhaps longer. (Actually, I don’t know this for certain. I do know that I let at least six desperate upperclassmen in yesterday.)

Housing is a funny thing around here. Towards the end of the summer everything runs scarce. Money is harder to come by, forcing an artificial shortage of food. Likewise, subletters return home, casting poor, unassuming upperclassmen onto the streets. That is, unless they can make their way back into the Houses.

So they swarm like hyenas around a sickly lion cub. Each knows that he couldn’t pick off the cub on his own; the adult lions wouldn’t allow it. But as soon as Paul steps out, wham! I can’t pass out keys fast enough.

Remind me to redraft the section I ripped off from Roe on Dirac operators before I submit a copy of my thesis this weekend to Cliff, who tells me that Potsdam is probably not the type of place I’d like to go for postgraduate study. I don’t know, the Einstein Institute does have Einstein in its name. That’s got to count for something, right?

Dear Madam,

I must admit that you’ve caught me. To be truthful, I had my misgivings concerning the accuracy of my memory. The story seemed all too familar to me, and, indeed it was. I applaud your shrewdness and commend your boldness. Allow me, then, to recount what really happened Friday afternoon until evening, for I did go to Tracy’s to watch the Sox, the Italian Job, and the Snatch before falling asleep.

Friday morning I woke up at about 10 am to the construction outside my window. From the looks of it, they have nearly finished laying the several layers of finer and finer gravel on the site of the new graduate housing to be built behind G Tower. I showered and dressed. It was a bit early for my taste, but I was already fully awake and there was no possibility of going back to bed. I considered going to the pool, but as I hadn’t been in over two weeks, the inertia of my habbits facilitated keeping with my recent “no exercise” mantra. Not to mention, I was still rather sleepy.

I looked up a number of books on Dirac operators and gravity on HOLLIS, our school library catalogue, trying to find a derivation of ADM mass, but, alas, to no avail. Abby called to ask me if I could help her move this weekend and whether I preferred Saturday or Sunday. I chose Sunday. This was around 11 am. Had it not been for the construction, I may’ve been quite angry. That isn’t so, as I’m not usually angry at anyone for waking me up. But there are rules, and they are to be respected. I have a rule about waking up before 1 pm: I don’t do it.

By 11:30 am, I was getting antsy. Grendel’s has a terrific four dollar lunch special. I ordered the French dip and added a cup of chicken tortilla soup. It’s a steal at only ninety-nine cents. As usual, I tipped 75%, but only because the food is so cheap and because I really like the waitstaff.

I brought a copy of Poor’s Differtial Geometric Structures with me to slow the eating process, but I don’t think I’ll ever understand connections and parallel transport on bundles fully. This is sad to me. But I still have a copy of Lisa Randall’s book. I came home and picked up my new orange book and read a bit more about the Standard Model and particles.

Thirty or so pages later, Tracy called me, asking my favourite beer. I told her that I had already told her — I really like Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA and Flying Dog Doggy Style, others, too, of course. She, like Abby, was scheduled to work at 5 pm at Legal’s. They had overstaffed and sent her home. We hit up University Wine for some Rogue Mocha Porter and Rolling Rock, for balance. Then we bussed it over to Watertown for the Sox game. You can read what happened after that.

And so, Michelle, and others, I leave it to you to decide whether this post was a complete lie or not. Mind you, I have some lovely home-made minkie skin lampshades and the funniest lemur hats you could imagine for sale, should you want them. And they’re fresh, too.

Life moves awfully quickly, especially nowadays. Starting Friday, things have buzzed straight through at a blindingly fast pace. A quick recap of events:

Friday — Michelle, Tracy, and I hit up Diesel Cafe, Davis. A bunch of men with hair longer than the women in the group show up and discuss action figures and anime only loudly enough for me to speculate that they were discussing actions figures and anime. I had over the keys to my since deceased car and long time friend the Stratus to my dad. He hands them, presumably, over to the Special Olympics donation representative. I watch the Sox at Tracy’s, followed by the Italian Job and Snatch. The Italian Job, while worse in all individual catagories, is, in my mind, better over-all, proving once again that the whole is not always the sum of its parts. (cf. gestalt.)

Saturday — Time to wake up. Tracy and I head back, replete with clean laundry, to Leverett. She teaches me about transfer tickets, cutting my bus fair, effectively, in half. We sit in relative isolation from each other until about 6pm when I decide to walk to Dunkies for a strawberry frosted donut with sprinkles. Upon arrival, I am taken by the limited time only pumpkin donut, however, I am not swayed and take a strawberry frosted. Hours later DJ arrives, demands an Xbox, which necessitates a trip back to Tracy’s. We fetch the gaming console only to return to Leverett. We play Soul Caliber II until 4 am. At that time, DJ and I start on Sonic and Tails. I play as Tails. By 6 am, Abby calls me. It’s time to move. Luckily, DJ and I were just about the finish the game.

Sunday — After the end credits of Sonic, Abby and I move her stuff to Davis in Dave the painter’s truck, as provided to me by Jean. We hit up Tosci’s for coffee, Irish breakfast tea, a scone, a muffin, and a cinnamon twist. It is there that I take off and forget my Sox cap, something I had found by chance only hours before.

I nap from 10 am until 1:21 pm, a palindrome. Eventually DJ, Tracy, and I make it the South Shore. The Walgreens is sold out of ninety-nine cent eggs, forcing a trip to the Stop & Shop down the street out of us. We purchase a dozen eggs, two pounds of low-grade bacon, and a loaf of white bread. We proceed to my father’s appartment, which we find empty. Thinking ahead, I unlock the door with the key which I had put on my key ring immediately before departure rather than breaking the door down by force. There within I assume the role of cook. DJ took three eggs; Tracy, two; and I took two myself. All were served over easy. We only ate about three-quarters of a pound of bacon. We used all but one of the remaining eggs on French toast. I added sugar and vanilla extract to the egg batter. There was no cinnamon, ground or stick, as far as I could see.

Tracy and DJ watched a production of the opera adaptation of Little Prince on WGBH while I cooked. After a short visit down the street to see Trisha and sons Kyle and Luke, we were off to Pembroke. There we swam in a lake until full sunset. Tracy lost her ring. But, by that time the light was too faint for a successful recovery despite our best efforts.

Knowing that I had to watch Robert Monday morning at 9pm, we opted for the 10:10 pm showing of the 40 Year Old Virgin rather than the 9:40 pm showing, as it afforded us more time to watch Forrest Gump and eat cereal.

The movie was much, much, much more exceedingly enjoyable that one might’ve thought based on the commercials. All three of us were out of time with the rest of the audience and laughed during what were otherwise silent moments, the most flagrant example of which came after Cal said to Dave, “You know how I can tell that you’re gay? Because you listen to Coldplay.” Perhaps everyone else in the theater really likes Coldplay and hates that he’s gay. It is hard to know, however, since correlation is not causation.

We returned, threw out some trash, and parted. I went to bed closer to 3 am than to 2 am.

Monday — I spent most of my time with Robert; we watched the Incredibles, played soccer, bean bag toss, went to Tommy’s for sausage pizza and lemonade, and watched the Sox (both Red and White), and played ping pong. By this time Michelle had returned from Maine, and Verena, from the Cape. We dined at Cambridge Common, an adult-ish type bar and restaurant. They have a fairly good selection of beer, 24 on tap and a rotating selection of Dogfish Head and Brooklyn. Michelle, worn from travel, got on the T for Jamaica Plain. Verena and I took a quick survey of her room in Perkins before we headed back up Mass Ave for Temple Bar. The drinks were precisely one dollar more expensive then they ought to’ve been. Two drinks later it was near to 1 am. I went to bed at about 2 am.

Tuesday — Today is Emma’s birthday. To celebrate Vere, Emma, Liz Wood, and I are going out to dinner. Liz and Emma do not know each other. But Vere and I know them both. I feel that this balances the company. After dinner, Liz and I will meet up with Amit. He will trade his knowledge of Php for my knowledge of LaTeX. We will end the night with some turtle cheesecake from Grendel’s, or, possibly, apple caramel pie from Hoffa’s.

A few days ago I received a package from Moica. She had sent, from San Francisco, mind you, a framed photograph taken earlier this year at graduation. From the look of it, you might guess without logical reproach that there’s a good chance Danny and I are still drunk. The night before has, as luck would have it, his twenty-first. The celebration’s motto: “a small horse,” which is short for “we are going to buy a pony and order it beer. Danny will have to match the pony drink for drink until it dies.” We didn’t have enough money for a pony, forcing us to estimate. We may’ve overestimated. During the champagne breakfast before morning ceremonies, Susannah, both co-masters Ann and Howard Georgi, and several other graduates-to-be asked us if we could use some help standing. Somehow Anna Franekova was the only other drunk before the champagne. Throughout the day, the Georgis, Catherine Shapiro, our senior tutor, and our fellowships tutor Judy Murciano each checked on us twice. Danny almost didn’t make it through the line of congratulatory and mandatory handshakes from the House tutor staff immediately after receiving his diploma from Howard who likes to be called and will from hereafter referred to as Chief.

The photo in question was taken several minutes after all the diplomas had been given out but before I had started on my box lunch. If I’m not mistaken, my dad took the picture with Monica’s camera. This makes sense since she is in the direct center of the frame; Danny is to her left in cap and gown; I am to her right in lay clothing, cap in hand, and ostensibly buzzed.

I thought a while about where to put the picture. It was already framed. However, I already had seventeen — perhaps eighteen — other photographs on display in my room, and none of them featured people. One of them shows two geese in the Charles. Most of them are landscapes from Scotland or England or Boston or Harvard. In fact, all of them are. I don’t tend to go anywhere else if possible. Where and why would I?

Anyway, now I have up two Perezes and one Reyes. Because of atypical nature of its subject, Moica’s picture immediately demands prominence upon entering my room. Tracy noticed it the first day. I preemptively spoke. “I know, it’s the only one with people and it’s hard to tell our relationship.” She was glad.

“I was thinking that, but I didn’t want to say anything,” Tracy replied. Ian didn’t mentioned anything about the picture the other day. Instead we talked about braneworlds and he offered me Wayne, his aloe plant, in case I grew especially hungry and desperate before September 10, the date of his return. Ian had cooked and sampled his aloe plant some time ago this summer. There’s a reason friends don’t eat friends — they taste bad.

But then today (Saturday and not Sunday morning)! I received a phone call from some unrecognizable number; unrecognizable because I don’t know the area codes in Georgia, certainly not the one for Fort Benning, though I should probably learn it. Talking on the phone to strangers may or may not be more fun than moving furniture, which was the task at hand — everything must move to its proper place before Dorm Crew trashes the unoccupied rooms on Monday — laziness got the best of me, so I took a break. I’m glad I did. Danny was on the other end. Today they allowed him ten minutes of talk time. He called Monica first; me, second. I tried really hard to catch him up on everything, on Alex’s and Nina’s recent trip to Costa Rica, about Ian’s missing his flight, about going to John Harvard’s with Abby, about everything. Danny is little over seven weeks into basic with just under seven to go. Once he gets to airborne he’ll have more time off. Sometime in October he and some friends of his are going to visit Boston.

I’ll have to get my thesis done before then, because Danny has no soul, I have no will, and the bars open at 11:30 am.

Emma, newly back from Greece, was to take me sailing today. She doesn’t have a bike yet. That didn’t really stop us. Instead, I made a list of fellowships, of schools, and of their deadlines. Brown and Dartmouth were cut from the list of schools, bringing the American count to five, equalling the number of schools across the Pond under consideration. On Tuesday I meet with Cliff to discuss my future.

Until that time, Tracy and I are rocking out to the Rolling Stones.