November 2006 Archives

"The Einsteinian constant is not a constant, is not a center. It is the very concept of variability--it is, finally, the concept of the game. In other words, it is not the concept of something--of a center starting from which an observer could master the field--but the very concept of the game."

--Jacques Derrida

This is a beautiful essay that was actually published in the journal Social Text:

Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity

Scroll down to the last article in this pdf for a quality convocation address on why people hate economists:

http://www.uchicago.edu/docs/education/record/pdfs/41-1.pdf

Ok, here's an idea: The director of undergraduate mathematics here is very interested in K-12 education, as well as at the college level. He's particularly interested in starting to teach real analysis around 2nd or 3rd grade, and continuing it throughtout the early years of education. Educators could also possibly delve into topics in algebra, like groups, rings, and fields, if time was available in the early years of education.

All that I'll say for now is that I think this is a very interesting and excellent idea. I have to go, so for the time being, I'll let you ruminate and articulate all of the reasons that I'm wrong. I can tell that this is going to be another one of these times that I'm on the unpopular side of the argument.

"ugh. i stopped liking here when my midterm grade dropped below my ACT score."

--A Facebook post by a member of our house, and a classic U of C moment.

It turns out that New York City is a really cool place.

At last, the time comes. The world's influential economist of the 20th century is dead, after directing economic policy and the direction of macroeconomic theory for 50 years. I imagine that the economics department will be somewhat somber tomorrow.

Last Friday around 4 AM, I woke up, packed my bags, and walked up Ellis Avenue to 55th Street. I stood in the freezing cold of that weird time between nighttime and morning, waiting for the 55 bus. It came. I boarded. I dozed. Forty minutes later I met with seven other people at Midway airport, where we caught our flight to go to Brown University to debate.

Within several hours, we were at Brown, standing around with a bunch of suitcases and six hours of spare time. Brown is, of course, generally regarded as a very good school. It is a member of the Ivy League, and lots of smart people want to go there. Standing around, however, I couldn't believe how awful and vacuous of a place it seemed. When I go to a good school, I expect to see people walking around talking about intelligent subjects, walking alone, or sitting around studying. Instead, there were a bunch of disinterested students trundling out of class talking about apathetic topics, and the occasional barefoot bum pathetically attempting to skateboard. My initial impression was magnified when a member of Brown's debating team took us to a room where we could leave our luggage. Aside from initially seeming a bit disinterested himself, he delightedly informed us that (unbeknownst to me) the Brown tournament takes great pride in being the "most alcoholic" of debate tournaments on the American Parliamentary Debate Association's (APDA) circuit. In addition to throwing a very raucous party, they apparently were to give out--"in the spirit of Brown University"--alcohol in place of trophies.

After five hours of chatting, idling, and preparing, the first round came. We hit a pretty good team from Tufts, and although it was close, we ended up losing. I personally thought that we should have won, but it was a fine round anyway. We must have hit the very bottom of the next two brackets, because the two other teams we debated that evening (Vassar and Northeastern) were not good at all. We beat them both.

Exhausted, we schlepped our stuff off to the dormitories. Some idiotic Brown student led us to the lounge in which we slept. We shared the lounge with the MIT team, which prompted several minutes of savage harassment by this Brown bum... something about suicide rate and fun dying. At one point, this girl tried to convince us that we were going to sleep in a doorway. Basically she was one of those unfortunate persons who likes to think that she is funny, but really is not.

So, FINALLY, we arrived in this lounge with the MIT team. It was a little warm in the lounge, but considering that it was 30 degrees outside, and considering that the heat turns off at night anyway, this was nice. Nevertheless, an MIT student insisted that someone turn the air conditioning on, leading to a particularly ridiculous argument with the idiotic Brown students. I hope he froze that night, when the heat went off and the temperature dropped...

The night was still young, and Brown had touted this debate party so much that we felt obliged to drop by. Although most of Brown's architecture is particularly ugly and plain (think of the worst example of unornamented, brick, colonial buildings, and you have Brown), they had managed to find a nice room for the event. There was even some mediocre jazz. For a few minutes, we stood around and talked, and--I daresay--we almost enjoyed ourselves. Before long, though, some despicable ignoramus (god only knows from where... probably Brandeis) decided that it would be brilliant idea to walk around in nothing but underwear and an aluminum foil yarmulke. If this wasn't bad enough, one or two other people emulated him, sans yarmulke. This would be bad under normal circumstances, but given the pasty and atrophied bodies of most debaters, we had to leave immediately. It was a horrific sight. Walking through campus we were nearly accosted by bands of drunken students, apparently walking to and from numerous loud parties that were actually inside the dormitories. It was a bit strange and actually downright obnoxious. What kind of people have raging parties and blare absurdly lound music actually inside of their dormitories? Doesn't this seem to violate even the most minimal level of respect for one's neighbors? Furthermore, think about this from a pragmatic perspective. I am Joe, and I want to have a raging party. My room is probably about 120 square feet and probably contains two beds, two desks, and two dressers. So, I can probably fit about 5 people in my room comfortably. But 2 of those are my roommate and I. So I can comfortably invite 3 people. Now you know why they drink so much and play their music so loud. These logisitics are simply depressing. Even if this practice isn't as abnormal as it seems coming from the U of C, it really did turn me off to Brown. I'm so glad I don't go there.

Where did that place us? Back in the lounge with the MIT debaters. One of them was particularly entranced by strange type of flashing yo-yo. It was an unfortunate night.

In the morning, we debated some more rounds, facing teams from Harvard and Brandeis, beating both. Although my partner and I were debating in the novice division, we had a good enough record to break into the varsity elimination rounds. To be perfectly honest, the only reason we did so well was due to complete luck. We faced mostly mediocre novice teams. In the elimination round, we lost very narrowly to a really obnoxious Amherst team on a 3-2 decision. Apparently, they are well-regarded on the APDA circuit, which always gives an edge over unknown teams like my partner and I.

The rounds continued, culminating with a horrendous final debate between two Yale teams. They really showed off the calibre of the Yale's economics by debating whether a one-time windfall tax should be assessed on oil companies: all but one of the economic arguments on both sides was absolutely false.

So where did that leave us? My partner and I had won the novice division and placed 10th overall. I was the 2nd place novice speaker, and he was 4th. The rest of our team didn't place, but this was because their schedules were loaded with top Harvard and Yale teams, not lame novices from northeastern liberal arts colleges like ours. Apparently this makes me the 10th ranked novice speaker in all of APDA: a bit silly, if you ask me. And what did all of this mean? Envision me walking around in a suit, clutching three bottles of hard liquor in one hand, and a legal pad in the other. I felt a bit out of character, naturally. More importantly, I had no idea what to do with all of this stuff. I had received 750 mL of cognac, 75 mL of some sort of high-quality lemon-flavored vodka, and 50 mL of something called "Jaegermeister" (German for "master of the hunt"). The natural response would be to drink it. Indeed, someone on our team tried some of the cognac. He reported that it tasted vile. Nevertheless, I smuggled home this veritable minibar in my luggage. It now sits in my closet, mostly unopened, taking up space. I tried to find some people willing to drink it tonight, but no one really wants to. Apparently I came back to the University of Chicago a bit too soon.

Next weekend: Fordham.

A friend in my physics class has been collecting a series of brilliant quotes by our physics professor Woowan Kang this quarter. Here are the best:

With his laser pointer: "set phaser to stun!"

While discussing the discovery of the top quark: "Before then, physicist thought the universe may be topless."

"I walked into analysis and the professor's fly was down. So I got turned off from analysis."

"Analysis leads to paralysis. That's why CIA guys are so bad at predicting terrorists."

"Analysis is like tofu, it has no flavor."

"The math department here is too mathematical...or maybe analytical...or maybe just anal."

"If you build a teleportation machine people will worship you as a god. If you're a guy, women will be flying after you. If you're a girl, you'll have many men to choose from. So physics can be glamorous. Look at Stephen Hawking. Sick, huh? So build teleportation machines if you can. Or maybe if you can't buld a teleportation machine change the universe so Planck's constant is much larger."

While getting really excited about Legendre Polynomials: "this is like pulling the hat out of the rabbit!"

"I'm spreading manure, wait, maybe fertilizer...and I'm planting the seed so it can germinate....so study for your G.R.E."

It's amazing how posting entries only one sentence in length stimulates commenting.