For all the latest juicy gossip on the world of mathematics, check out kottke.org.
Hamilton contributed over fifty per cent; the Russian, Perelman, about twenty five per cent; and the Chinese, Yau, Zhu, and Cao et al., about thirty per cent. (Evidently, simple addition can sometimes trip up even a mathematician.)
Mathematical politics and the Poincare Conjecture (kottke.org)
Note: Also featuring dissapearing Russians and theories about bunnies being equal to spheres.
technorati tags:Math
Since I find social networks interesting, this article piqued my interest.
Clearly, even this did nothing to deter the plagiarist in question. So what did put the kibosh on this guy's cyber thievery? The rapid mobilization and deployment of a force I hadn’t even considered: the blogmob
Popular Science Blog - Flickr, Blogmobs, and a Seriously Fascinating Lesson on Content Licensing
technorati tags:Social Networks
Last night I had the opportunity to take a sunset flight up to the Lake Winnipeg area to check out some tornado damage by Gull Lake and in general enjoy a spectacular view.
I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, although they too can't quite capture the moment. Particularly the g-force tricks Dave pulled, but also the beauty of flying at night and having the black void defined by pin pricks of light. Of notable mention was also the landing in Selkirk, who's runway is made up of one gravel strip surround by trees (except for the side by the river which includes a convenient set of power lines). It felt like a bush plane landing scene straight out of a movie, I'm surprised tribes people didn't come out of the trees upon our landing to greet us.
A big thanks to Dave, a recent member of the studio crew, for hooking us up.
technorati tags:Flight
As part of the continual improvement and value enhancement initiatives over at Eppic Thoughts head office, it is my pleasure to provide you with our very first desktop wallpaper for your downloading enjoyment.
Thanks to all those (performers, beverages and fellow participants/partiers) that made Week 1 of Folklorama so enjoyable.
I've been reading a neat little webcomic for a while now, called Teaching Baby Paranoia, that mixes clean illustration style with an obscure* historical fact every week.
The picture above is from this week's comic, featuring gambling, bank robbers, archaeology, blimps and a dose of irony (click the image to view the comic).
technorati tags:webcomics, history
* It turns out the facts are a bit more "obscure" than I initial thought. The latest strip, which is an obvious political commentary, triggered a warning bell. A little googling supported this premonition. So the sentence may read more accuratly as a made up historical fact than an obscure one.
Sara has added her photos to the mix of those available and posts:
Audrey, Erica, Ruth, Jon, Matt, Dave, Geoff, Galina and I all went to Audrey's cabin for the last weekend in July. This is a record of what happened....
Audrey's cabin - Sara's photoset on Flickr
This photo set is a lot more all encompassing then mine, so you'll get a feel for the whole weekend
You should check out this photo set, if you'd like to see Geoff running down the beach (a la David Hasselhof), cool b-boys, Ruth with a "whip", ladies on an inner tube, a sand castle, people buried alive or Geoff cross-dressing. Oh there are also nice pictures of sunsets.
Last weekend I had the privilege of being invited out to Audrey's Grandparent's cabin. The company, great food and pirate boarding parties all provided for good times, but an event that stood out in my mind was the chance to sleep out on the beach under the brilliant display of stars. (This event may have stood out in others people's minds for different reasons. I don't know what they're talking about. I never heard anyone snoring. I was sleeping too soundly.)
I've thrown together a few pictures I took. I should emphasize the word "few", we were in good hands to have the weekend photo-documented and I'll try to provide links to those people's photos as soon as I'm aware of them.
This past weekend I had the chance to celebrate the birthday of a good man by the name of Ed Bohncke. For his birthday he had the privilege of having Tuesday Bloom* perform for him live on an outdoor stage.
* Unfortunately no official website link is provided as web search results provide a litany of things Orlando Bloom has done on Tuesday, as opposed to anything by the band.
Tuesday Bloom comes highly recommended by me. While I can't claim to have good musical taste, I can claim to be picky and Tuesday Bloom matches those arbitrarily high standards. Their songs are musically interesting enough to stand up as coffee house acoustic versions and lively enough to work in an open air festival. Beyond their musical abilities, the group's clearly ad libbed conversational banter provides another layer of enjoyability to the show.
After the bands had cleared the stage and we had taken a quick dip in the lake, it was the opportune time for a midnight game of ultimate. Out came the Survivoresque torches to mark the end zones and supply of glow sticks to identify the players. The photo provided below isn't actually a cool camera affect, but a fairly accurate portrayal of what it looked like to play the game.
The red circle is fairly obviously the frisbee (or disc for purists). Blue and green blur pairings represent each hand of a player on our team and orange and red the opposing team. Interestingly enough the apparent domination of the blue and green team (mine) seen in the picture, is also fairly accurate.
Playing in the dark provides interesting dynamics. For one, if a defensive player holds their hands behind their back they can't be seen at all (I may or may not know anything about that). Also, because you can only see lights and not the players themselves, you have no idea who is who. Lastly, although we never really play with out of bounds when playing pickup, if you are playing with a chain link fence just outside the boundaries of the playing area, the boundaries are enforced. As discovered by Adam running full speed into one of them.
Overall it was a great night and a great welcome back to Canada for me. Happy Birthday Ed!
Since we're talking infographics anyways, here's another interesting one from today.
Hey, I'm back in the Peg. Hopefully I'll have time to do some more recap blogs in the near future, but in the meantime a diversion from the journal style.
Discover how you fit into the rest of the world via a neat infographic at Population : One - One Person is One Pixel.
The Gardens are very beautiful, and we stayed late into the night, drinking beer, and eating giant pretzels. The next day in Munich marked the end of our Bavarian experience for this trip. To end the ocasion, we all went to a local Beer garden which was home to one of the excellent beers from throughout the region. We were not dissapointed. That evening saw us boarding a night train to Croatia, to begin the next leg of our trip. But more later on that.It's been a while and I've admittedly been lazily riding off the fact that Geoff is doing a lot of the blog updates. Currently we're enjoying Munich with Karl's relative, Wolfgang. Since he has an unlimited Internet plan, that means I'll have the rare opportunity to do a post accompanied by pictures. So what follows will be a speedy recap with pictures and a few snippets of text thrown in.
PortoI already wrote a bit about Porto. One of the neat things about Portugal was the colourful tiles used on the buildings, as can be seen on the buildings below.
Porto is of course famous for Port, a fortified wine, which gets its name from the city where it originated. Although created in Portugal, port is a British invention created out of desperation to keep the wine flowing to their country despite the efforts of the French. The result is a very smooth and full tasting drink, which now lives on for its own merits.
Below is the street festival (mentioned in a previous post) that we randomly came across during our night time exploration.
Our next destination was with Pedro's relatives
After a morning mass in beautiful little church, we spotted an old stone tower on top of a nearby hill. What followed was somewhat inevitable for those of you who know Geoff McGrath. The mission proved to be a very aromatic and picturesque one. Crunching through the arid but beautiful landscape, Geoff and I found our way to the tower, which offered and excellent vantage of the surrounding country.
Lisbon is Portugal's capital and we arrived at the height of the cities summer celebrations.
Earlier I compared the festivities to the intensity of San Fermin, that description may have little meaning for the average Winnipeger. Picture walking from Market Square to The Village. Now transform Portage and Memorial into cobblestone streets the width of a back alley. Fill those streets with young partiers until you can barely walk through them. Turn all the buildings into tall and narrow store fronts, each blaring music to the streets outside. Throw in the odd street vendor, selling food and alcohol of questionable origin. For good measure, make the city a little more 3D and you'll get an idea of what the experience was like. That's the first party area, now copy and paste that, except now make it an all ages crowd and superimpose it over an even older part of the city that feels like you're stepping straight into the middle ages (which architecturally speaking, you pretty much are). It was an amazing experience to say the least.
Lisbon has a reputation for thuggery. The amount of people that the festival brings out makes it quite safe, but the old part of town around the castle is essentially a labyrinth and the difference of a block can lead you to dead ends or side streets which are devoid of any company you would wish to share. Below is view of an area in which one would not want to visit at night (even during the day we walked through it at a decidedly quick pace).
The castle on top of the "old" part of town is pictured below. I use quotation marks, because by North American standards the main part of the city could be considered quite old as it is. The "old" section, distinguishes itself as being the part the city which remained intact after the earthquake of 1755.
The Algarve is the incredibly touristy section made up by the south of Portugal. The reason it attracted both tourists and ourselves, is fairly self explanatory. Gorgeous beaches at Portuguese prices.
I think I'll revert back to being as brief as I planned. Stuttgart is a really nice city where we saw our World Cup match.
The day of the match I had the great opportunity to visit with Olga again. It was wonderful to catch up and be thoroughly spoiled by her great cooking. Thanks. For those of you in Canada who remember Olga but haven't had a chance to see her new baby, her new baby is super sweet and quite cute (the photographic evidence is below).
Staying in Munich has been a complete blast. Our host, Wolfgang, has been so great that, I'm sure that we would have had an amazing time no matter where we met up with him. The fact that Munich is such a great city is simply a multiplier. It's almost three o'clock in the morning here and everyone else is in bed, so I'll try and add a more deserving and detailed post of the past few days tomorrow. For now, a small sample picture.
as Pedro when we arrived, and see how long it could last. It was even better than they had hoped. When we arrived, we came in two seperate cars, Jon and Karl in one, and Pedro and I in the other. Pedro and I were driven by his aunt, who fortunatly for the situation, drove a little slower than her daughter, letting Jon and Karl get there a little bit ahead of us. Jon got out, and was imidiatly approached by Pedro´s great uncle. Eyewitness accounts differe, but the basic story stays the same. When Pedro and I arrived, with Pedro´s english speaking cousin, and aunt, his entire family was gathered around a very bewildered looking Jonathan Epp, embracing him as their long lost Pedro. Eventually the situation was clarified, and Pedro´s great aunt was holding onto him for dear life, but not before we all had a good laugh!
french with a heavy portugues accent. He also has a very cool car. This picture is a little deceptive, the car is actually very large... big enough for five anyway! Besides having a slightly overloaded car(hey, most of us are canadian sized young guys, not portugues), Pedro´s grandfather is definatly where Pedro got his driving style from, there were a few corners I thought we were going to take on two weels! Driving around the country in this wonder was definatly the highlight of my time with Pedro´s family!
