Too Bad This Guy Isn't a Mathematician

The guy at the city of Waterloo, Ontario who helped the mayor of Waterloo get online at the "Chinese Facebook", Sina Weibo, is named Max Min.

What a great name! Too bad he isn't a mathematician.

Friday Moose Blogging

From reader "MiKo", here is some great footage of a moose being induced to leave a swimming pool.

It probably would have been easier just to announce that moose swim was over, and that wolf swim was next.

Catenaries on "Car Talk"

Here's a puzzle from the radio show, Car Talk, with the misspelling corrected:

"There are two telephone poles. Each one is 100-feet tall. They are parallel and an unknown distance apart.

"We're going to attach a 150-foot rope from the very top of one of the poles to the top of the other. This rope will, of course, droop down somewhat. That drooping rope is called a catenary, from the Latin word for chain.

"The question is: What must be the distance between the two poles, so that the lowest point of the catenary is 25-feet above the ground?"

I confess, I worked out the equation for a catenary to try to answer this, but that's a waste of time if you think about the problem a little.

The answer, if you need it, is here.

Great Moments in Reprint Requests

I just received the following letter:

Dear Professor Shallit,

I am a graduate student in XXX University majoring in YYY. I want to cite one of your papers that should be of great use to my current research. The title of the paper is "Randomized Algorithms in Number Theory", published on Communications on Pure and Applied Mathematics 39 (1986), S1.

Because our library does not have access to the article, it should be best that you send me a copy via email.

I really appreciate your worthless help!


Now that's the way to ask for a reprint!

Atheism - The Energy-Efficient Worldview

Spotted on a bus in Boston yesterday:



I guess that makes atheism the energy-efficient worldview. Go green!

Take That, Bob Dylan!

I had a nice time with Celtic guitar superstar Tony McManus last night. Tony revealed that two of his pieces will be in the new Neil Jordan film, Ondine.

He also told the following story: a guitarist he knew recently died and was buried in a Jewish cemetery in Newton. His epitaph reads, "Times were sometimes tough, but at least I never made a Christmas album."

Don't Cite Works You Haven't Read

It's something you teach your graduate students: Don't cite works you haven't read.

It's a rule with good reasons behind it. First, it's a bad idea to rely on someone else's summary of another work. Maybe they summarized it incorrectly, or maybe there is more there you need to consider. Second, as a scholar, it's your obligation not to spread misinformation. Maybe the page numbers or the volume are given incorrectly.

Like all rules, there are occasional exceptions. Maybe it's a really old and obscure work that you've tried to get a copy of, but failed. In that case, you can cite the work but mention that you haven't actually been able to find a copy. (I've done this.) That way, at the least the reader will be warned that you're relying on someone else's citation.

And now, from Paris, comes a spectacular case of why citing works you haven't read is a bad idea. The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévi has been caught citing and praising, in his new book De la guerre en philosophie, the work of the philosopher "Jean-Baptiste Botul". Only problem? Botul doesn't actually exist. He is the creation of journalist Frédéric Pagès.

Now, maybe Lévy did actually read Botul's book La vie sexuelle d'Emmanuel Kant. But if so, despite the big warning signs (Botul's school is called "Botulism") he failed to recognize it as a big joke, which raises even more questions about his perspicacity.

Maybe I need to tell my graduate students another rule: Don't cite works that you suspect may be a hoax.

Oh, and for the record? I haven't read Lévi's new book, nor Pagès's satire.

Bumper Sticker Fail

The bumper sticker reads: "Welcome to America / Now Speak English".

The license plate reads "THREDZ".

Do I need to say more?

Maybe I do. My grandfather came to the US in 1912. For many years he spoke only Yiddish and very broken English. Despite this, he managed to start a business and raise a family.

There's no requirement that immigrants to the US speak English fluently. The vast majority of them will learn English because it is in their economic self-interest. And their children will almost certainly speak English - probably better than the owner of this car, who can't seem to spell "threads".

[Yes, I know, it's the name of his business. There you can find other logically and/or grammatically suspect utterances, such as "Experts in embroidery, screen-printing and sourcing products with creative distinction are just a few of the things that set Thredz Unlimited apart from others."]

Who's the President of Physics?

From xkcd, with a hat tip to Adrian Petrescu.

William Carlos Williams with a Handtruck

From my niece Rachel comes this inspired bit of silliness: an English professor couldn't find the departmental handtruck, so he put out a request on the local listserv. In response, he got 12 odes to the missing handtruck, done in the style of William Carlos Williams, John Donne, and other famous poets. I particularly like this one, by Carl Rapp.

This Is Just to Say

I have pinched
the hand truck
that I happened to run across in
a convenient location

and which
you were probably
saving
for your own future toils

Forgive me
it was so “dependable”
so red
and so obviously up for grabs

Can't you just hear Garrison Keillor reciting it?

Google Maps Easter Egg

Eric Veach of Google just spoke here at Waterloo about Google Maps in the J. W. Graham medal seminar. He told us about various strategies involved in making Google Maps work, including prerendering the maps, and dividing the work up so it can be done in parallel, with more processors allocated to denser parts of the world.

He also revealed the following easter egg: try getting driving directions from San Francisco, CA, to Sydney, Australia. The resulting itinerary takes about 41 days, but that's because much of the trip isn't by car.

Note to "9/11 Truth" Advocates

No, it is not appropriate to use the comments section of my blog to arrange "meetups" for your loony conspiracy theories.

(Yes, believe it or not, somebody tried to do this. For friggin' St. Louis.)

Fractal Wrongness

My son pointed out the following image to me.



Doesn't that perfectly describe your experience arguing with creationists, intelligent design proponents, crystal healers, holocaust deniers, global warming deniers, and 9/11-truthers?