A Weblog

I’ve received two emails from, I suppose, vastly different people asking if I am some particular Joshua. Indeed, of course, I am. I must be. It’s sort of a matter of defintion. But, and I regret to say this, I have not been the Joshua in question, or, I suppose, in questions. And, oh, the emails, they’ve all been in Spanish. Spanish seems to be a theme in my immediate present. Last night I hit up the Raza party. Lisa and I wanted to talk about people privately in public. Were we in Sweden, perhaps Spanish would be a reasonable secret language. But at a party hosted by the Mexican students club? I don’t know who we thought we might be kidding. If you’re trying to sneak about, try to choose a language you speak well. And if not, make sure that everyone else around doesn’t speak that language better than you.

This entry is a product of procrastination. I’ve been reading about spinor bundles and connections and the like. This time it makes a lot more sense. My recent revelations are well overdue. I fear that I won’t have time to finish my thesis. NSF grant applications need to be electronically submitted by November 2. My PDE midterm has November 3 deadline. And the Landau equation from plasma physics looks like it’ll be tricky. Thankfully, I’m not doing plasma physics. But the course name is Partial Differential Equations and Applications. The equation is well within the realm of fair game.

After the HAA fall awards banquet, an email from the Office of Career Services, and a short chit-chat with Judy, I think I might want to work for the Alumni Association for a year or so. That way I can stay in Cambridge, attend math classes, possibly teach, get my applications in proper order, and give back a little to my alma mater. Funny, I never thought I’d ever be old enough even to have an alma mater. Today Diana told me that I’m old — so old, said she, that I’ll probably retire at thirty-two.

I never made it there. Instead, I woke up and lunched with Mr. and Mrs. Rosenthal, Diana’s parents. They’re in town for the fourtieth reunion. They liked that I was somewhat Jewish and naturally charismatic. It’s hard to hard the charm, even early, early at 2pm in the morning. Teymour’s family is in town from Paris, too. While I haven’t seen Miriam around, they promise she’s here. I met Cyrus, Tey’s thirteen year old little brother. I can now testify with the full knowledge that Tey-tey is indeed a product of his environment. The snow inspired us to stay inside, after running around outside to buy a game of Clue. It was Miss Scarlet in the Library with the Wrench. Twice. In a row. The odds of that are outstanding. I’m still not even sure it happened.

I’ve almost been productive. You can start in on chapter two of my thesis. The derivation of ADM mass is a bit dry; please, please tell me what I can do to liven it up. Perhaps I’ll give up, go to some party at Ground Zero, and wake up in time for my dad to pick me up to see Spamalot tomorrow in New York.

Good night, America. God love you all.

This weekend I’m going to the New England Beer Festival and buying some math books. Maybe three.

This entry will begin with a public service announcement. Snap bracelets, which had once been removed from the public market as a response to accidental suicides that they had caused, still boast the same sharp metal insides that got them in trouble in the first place. Yesterday, while playing with my University Health Services “Thrive” snap bracelet, I received a very precise slice in my right middle finger. I have since disposed of the menacing bracelet. If possible, avoid the 80s nostalgia and save a life.

A new copy of my thesis has been posted, replacing the September 14 draft. Less than a month is left for its completion. Would that we lived inside a Kerr blackhole, then I could construct a Carter time machine, go back, and start earlier. In fact, who’s to say we’re not within the horizon of some really massive, slowly rotating blackhole? I guess causality does. So strike that. Read the thesis. I’m going to MIT to get a book.

Patrick Lenehan, T. Sean McKean, and others from Pfoho came back for Cambridge’s most time-honored and celebrated event, Head of the Charles. Just its mention sends me tripping down Memory Lane. Oh, those time we looked at the boats. And those other times we didn’t. I remember those other times mostly. Whatever their reasons, my almost blocking group is here this weekend. Diana Rosenthal, who was never almost in my blocking group, however, is here, staying with me. At least her suitcase is here. She seldom is. Yesterday she napped in my bed while I read math a few hours. In my mind that counts as quality bonding time. Read that as an indication of what you like.

The point is this. Patrick tricked me into meeting them at Shay’s last night. Worse still, they left after two beers and a shot of drambuie. In another effort to drown mi hispanicidad with Scottish liquors, I’ve taken to whiskey derivatives. At this time, they all left to go home, or did they? Felipe’s as you well know is open so long as there are hungry, drunk Harvard students milling about the streets. And so there we were, along with Barusch. She left, and was replaced with name-brand tie designer Baruch. We introduced ourselves to one another. Then I saw Natalie, to whom I apologized for my public display of social ineptitude last Sunday. She forgave me, and explained that I had really done nothing wrong, as it was unlikely that I knew she and Mark had broken up. Then, there’s always a then at Felipe’s, Summer and Janie showed up. They invited me to sit down with them, but I was on my way home. But, and there’s always a but after each then at Felipe’s, Diana Rosenthal, the very same who naps in my bed and says I looks like Abe Lincoln, appears. Before we can say three words, Ian and Berch attack us in what looked like some sort of sexual assault. The cops took care of them, asking if they were sure they had not jumped on some cars earlier that night. I told the cops that the boys were here and so it was impossible. I was waved away. By this time Summer and Janie had snuck out and ran when I crossed the street, only to stop in front of the Signet, where, as luck should have it, JC and Clint were, smoking a cigarette. They invited me inside for a cast party. There upon they called tie designer Baruch. Come four o’clock I was home. Being almost the start of a new day, I decided to groom. There’s a small nick on my upper lip. Let this be a lesson: no matter what, don’t shave while drunk.

Nambi, the one who studies wireless finger detectors or something, introduced me to a Firefox browser alternative tonight called Opera. The layout and feel and functionality and everything, everything is better designed, better implemented.

He also taught me how to play a complicated, team variant of the classic kid card game Fish, at which he is very good. Then I convinced everyone to play Bullshit, at which I am very frustrating, though not so good. Nambi, however, is bad. It’s fun to watch.

The Gates Scholarship application deadline is tomorrow, Greenwich mean time. The directions were a bit unclear. Some whom I’ve talked to seem to think that applications must be received by that time. Such a possibility had not occurred to me, and I took the deadline to refer, as it did when applying to colleges, to the postmark date. Even still, I’ve promised them to have my graduate application to Cambridge complete sometime today. I’m going to use local time.

In fact, I’m going to use local time to sleep. Stephanie Tung and I might go to the pool and speak Spanish once I wake up. Tonight’s jambalya is sitting heavy in my stomach and Stephanie still doesn’t speak Portuguese. Clearly a nap is in order.

Also, I think I was a little cheeky at history table today to David Slavitt. Thankfully Richard was there to even things out. These guys speak so quickly. I mean really.

Today I talked to them on the future (history) of telephones, paroting things my dad has told me about voice-over-IP technologies and problems [with emergency and police services] that arise. They offered to interview, I believe the word Slavitt used was “mock,” me should I make it that far with my fellowships. They promised to be especially unkind if need be. Would only that it come to that, please.

I would be swimming, but the pool is closed from 215p until 5p weekdays. And rather than relearn the theory of second order differential equations — and I need to — I choose to spend my time with you, dear reader.

I begin, again, with Benoit. Bart, another boy from Leverett also at the lecture, tells me that poor Mandelbrot had been discredited by his contemporaries throughout his life and that he, Bart, not Mandelbrot, was prepared for far worse. I say this only as fact. Forty years later he should be over it. McMullen showed that the Mandelbrot set, his set, is a universal object. Some might say that’s makes it a pretty important object of study.

Last night marked the third and final birthday party this Columbus holiday weekend. Anahita turned twenty-three only hours after Kaitlyn. She reserved the commonspace in Conant for the night. Her mother even came, from Iran.

The commonspace consists of two rooms divided by a short hallway and an adjoining kitchen. In one room the Persian danced; in the other the physicists — Anahita is a G1 in the physics department, you know — they kicked each other or watched the Persians.

Having practiced my moves at Adel’s party on Friday night, I felt more at home with the Iranians than the physicists. Nina Ni came with me; she acted as a natural bridge, being both shameless and a decent dancer.

After she left and quiet hours began, a few of us walked down the street to Cambridge Commons for an end of the night beer. Jonathan, the Quebecois, noted that those of us with beards drank faster than those without. Verena, being the only girl and being without a beard, objected initially but realized that the rate at which she drinks is, as noted, a physical inevitability. Alberto, who is also from Madrid, but bearded and not a physicist, was quite nice. He easily accepted my being half-Mexican. Apparently I’ve grown more picante by means of association. I’ve never claimed to be Irish or more than one-quarter Mexican, though I do entirely believe in the integrality of mi hispanicidad.

Today at lunch, I swapped out a seat at the table with the boys across the hall for the silent sophomores. This time they talked back. All of them, including Mark. David Saunders has told fantastic stories in which Mark speaks, but I had always taken them for lore. It turns out that he has a thick North Shore accent. I tried to play up what little of a Shore Shore accent I have. By the end of the meal Alyssa had slipped into one, as well. I tried to focus mine in Hyde Park. Alyssa picked up a proper end-of-the-Red Line inflection. The polyphony was in itself magical. But the real breakthrough is this: they stayed to chat even after they had finished with their food.

April regaled us with tales of Donald, “the retard on a bike who burned things” in her town on her reservation. Donald also tries to steal cats.

But then it was time to move on.

I just came back from Tequila Rain on Landsdowne Street. There was a five dollar cover, but no matter where I go, I always end up spending precisely thirty dollars. Tonight was no exception. So things were okay. Whenever there are only bad beers on tap, I opt for a Maker’s Mark and giner ale. The Ryan’s were there to celebrate. And Myers got me a Bud Light. I bought Nick one, so things evened out. Ryan owed Nick. I payed Nick. I owed Ryan. All is right in the world.

Lindsey and Rita and Jacqui — I no longer call her Qui — where there. Qui and Nick recently took the LSATs together. While I enjoy knowing that Joe is sitting next to the man in the fedora and is not the hit man, I still can’t imagine going to law school. Nick couldn’t give me a good reason for applying, but he works at a law firm. Maybe he has a reasonable idea. It’s hard to say.

I’ve signed up for another Persian birthday party. This time it is Anahita’s birthday. Last time we celebrated Adelle’s [please excuse the spelling]. Before her birthday dinner and cake, Verena and I are slated to play squash. Halvar and David are invited once again. I can only hope they join us, and I can only hope I wake up in time.

Verena explained how Cambridge is a catch-all, at least for Harvard folk. At MIT we ran into Tse-tse, who is not a fly but a recent graduate from Eliot House now in an MArch of PhD program in course four, architecture for you lay-men. No one seems to go too far. At least most people don’t. Boston and New York are only fifteen dollars away, and email is free no matter where you are. Growing up here makes the world all that much smaller. And Nick and Kershner promised tonight to travel as far as Durham to see me. England is about as far. If only I could make some headway on my thesis. Complete Banach spaces with respect to horrible hypersurface Dirac operator-like norms, here I come.

By the way, I’ve included a picture of that horrible, famous man, Mandelbrot. He mentioned that some have called the Mandelbrot set the most complicated structure in mathematics. I wrote an elementary paper for my complex analysis class showing that it is, in some sense, no more complicated than a circle. [For those in the know, it is a routine fact that the Mandelbrot set is simply connnected; it is, as McMullen showed, also universal. It's quadratic, after all. So are you really surprised?]

Last night I dragged Venera and her, and now our, friend Anahita to the Museum of Science to the first in their Lectureology series. To kick things off, they brought in mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot to talk about roughness, cauliflower, and fractals. I’m not sure he did any of these things. He did manage to tell us just how great he knows himself to be more than a few times, however.

I was fairly shocked just how quickly he was to dismiss, mostly be flagrant omission, the other “fathers of fractals.” True, Mandelbrot did coin the phrase. He told us so three times in less than one hour. He was not, as he claimed last night to be, the first one to consider roughness. Julia, famed for his aptly named Julia sets, was Mandelbrot’s own teacher. In fact, the Mandelbrot set is a catalogue of Julia sets. Of course we could throw in Douaday, Hubbard, and Fatou while we’re at it. Then, there was another branch of complex dynamics going on which resulted in Bers slices, the Maskit slice, Fucshian groups and all that. I happen to think that the other school made cooler pictures. (Compare the limit set of a Schottky group [top] with the Julia set [bottom].) The point is Mandelbrot didn’t go it entirely alone.

Perhaps the only thing I took away from my tenth grade English teacher Mr. Tony Baxter is this: when writing a story, you can’t just tell the reader what’s going on. It is incumbent upon the author to show the reader what’s going on. Mandelbrot should’ve taken Tony’s class. He’s still a teller, not a shower. And then, not even a good one. He didn’t once tell us what the Mandelbrot set is, let alone a fractal. I do remember his throwing around the term Hausdorff dimension somewhere in the middle of his talk. But he didn’t spend nearly as long on that as he did some honorary doctorate he received from somewhere in Germany.

Verena and Anahita and I left for the food court at the Galleria in the middle of the question and answer session, just after he was explaining how much metereology he knows and named-dropped infinite dependence.

At least we got into the Museum for free.