Must you? Yes I must!

This is a portion of an email that I sent to my sister a while ago. She told me recently that she thought it was funny (I thought I was just solving a math problem). Maybe you will think it's funny too.

"The other day I got a phone call from a friend. The last 4 numbers
of her phone number are the same as yours. Even though it was a
Kingston number on the call display, I thought you were calling. Her
name is Larissa, but I heard Melissa. I wrote her the following email
in response, which you might also find amusing.

If x+Larissa=Melissa, what is x?

The last four digits of your phone number are 1234 [1].
The last four digits of my sister's phone number are 1234.
Thus, when I saw your number on my call display, I thought you were my sister.
My sister's name is Melanie.
Therefore, x=Melanie."

[1] Number changed to protect the identity of the phones involved.

Bavarians Would Not Be Pleased

I find this both intriguing and appalling.

Stop Rhyming! I mean it! [1]

What do you like better, Skippy or Kraft peanut butter?

[1] I recognize the quote may not be exact.

Got Mint?

Two people, a man and a woman. The man being taller by almost a foot. The woman about to stand on a footstool beside the man, but unsure of her footing.
"I'm not going to fall am I?" she asked.
"Only if you have bad balance," he said, "or I have bad breath."

Funny

Mathematician that I am, when faced with the fact that I needed to give credit in the form of a link to my food muse Erica, yet she didn't have a blog, I created a blog for such a purpose, aptly titled "The Blogless Erica".

Curious to see how much status a person without a blog could have on the internet, I decided to google The Blogless Erica and find out. Turns out there's only one other blogless Erica out there, who is, coincidentally, somebody else's food muse.

Linking Mathy Thoughts

What must be the most unusual reason for struggling with math that I've ever heard. Hat tip to Cosh.

What may or may not be a joke. Hat tip to the Blogless Erica.

What may replace trigonometry some day. Hat tip to myself.

Identity Crisis Part 2

"You're thoughtful." -- a paraphrase of quotes by two sisters.

I never thought that I wasn't thoughtful, but if you asked me what adjectives other people would use to describe me, I probably wouldn't have come up with "thoughtful".

Update: Crisis averted. See the comments to this post.

Seeing the Light

Teaching at RMC begins today (at 12:40 EST). I hear it could be time consuming. So blogging may be light for the next few months.

My First Time

My first experience with Wikivandalism (that wasn't pointed out by someone else):

"Everyone knows Edam is made backwards. They extract the cheese from the ball, they then need to separate it into all the bits that make cheese. Cheese is made by curdling milk using a combination of something called rennet (or rennet substitutes) and acidifcation. So, Edam is made by uncurdling the cheese to make milk and stuff. Bacteria are extracted to remove the flavours. Then, the milk is recurdled, new bacteria grow and it is put into a mould and re-waxed. Ta-da! Edam!"

So said the Wikipedia entry on Edam Cheese as of Friday January 4, 2007 at 11:28 pm.

Strangely it reads properly on friends' browsers.

Monday Afternoon Poetry

Poem for a passive-agressive partner

You're pretty when you smile
You're ugly when you don't
If you're smiling, I might kiss you
If you're frowning, then I won't.

Double Delight Oreo Mint 'n Cream: A Review

Today I bought a package of the cookies mentioned in the title.

They tasted good. However, when I tried to twist open the Oreo it did not go very smoothly. There was resistance. Then, suddenly, the icing half of the Oreo flew out of my hands and into the dirty sink, rendering the cookie inedible. This was disappointing. This particular variation of the brand does not live up to the level of quality that I have come to expect from that brand.

Mr. Christie, you made a bad cookie.

Cleared for Takeoff

The RMC math department secretary has told me to contact the instructor of the other section of the course that I had been asked to teach earlier. I assume this means I have passed the security clearance.

Quote of the Day

"In fact, after suffering the spectacle for decades of Canadians trying to make American films, we may have finally seen the obverse: these Americans have made a Canadian film -- quirky, tiny, and seen by nearly no one." -- Frank Moher

Update: Click the Frank Moher link to find out the name of the movie.

Identity Crisis

I have nearly completed a Ph.D. in mathematics. Throughout my enrolment in the program, I had thought that I was an aspiring algebraic graph theorist. I have recently been informed, however, that I am actually an aspiring qualitative matrix theorist.

I don't know who I am anymore.

With Headlines Like These, Who Needs Articles?

"He was naked, on crack and in alligator's mouth"

Back to the matter at hand

Not too long ago One More Epicycle asked what deep country was. I'm at loss myself. Googling for the phrase brings us back to the post in which the question was asked before we get anything close to an answer. As an adjective for country music, deep seems to be used primarily to describe The Be Good Tanyas. So things have come full circle. Deep country is what The Be Good Tanyas play. The Be Good Tanyas play deep country. Not very helpful. Call me crazy, but I hardly think that a band from urban Canada is going to define a type of country music, especially since much of the music on the CD of theirs that I own consists of covers and reinterpretations of traditional tunes.

A bit more sleuthing seems to indicate that deep country is "white man's gospel music". There's at least one song on Chinatown, which I own, that resembles gospel music to me. The Be Good Tanyas being white people, by this definition that song would qualify as deep country, so maybe this is what is meant. The term also seems to be used to describe country music that hasn't been corrupted by Nashville or at least is in an earlier stage of corruption[1]. This too would fit, but it's too vague of a description for me to think that that's what is meant when calling their music deep country.

Whatever was meant by deep country, it's got to be a better descriptor for their music than "like Led Zeppelin" as Conan O'Brien said. Owning one of their albums and having listened to it, I have no idea where he got that from.

Personllay, I'd prefer not to think of The Be Good Tanyas as country music at all, since I like them, but I don't like country.


[1] I really can't stand country music radio, metonymously known as Nashville, on the whole. Occasionally I hear something that doesn't make me want to change stations immediately. Lately though, I've come accross a fair amount of country music that I do like. It crossed my mind that my attitudes toward country music might be changing, so I tried to listen to country music radio or watch country music tv to test that possiblity. But no. I still can't stand it. It's not my attitudes that have changed. It's the music that I have access to. Thank you internet!

Rough Riders vs. Roughriders

People used to poke fun at the CFL because the league, with a meagre 9 teams, had 2 teams with almost the same name, differing only by space. Will people now poke fun at Canada for having our two major political parties being led by people with essentially the same first name in their respective languages?

Water water everywhere...

...how many drops to drink?

There's a common bit of wisdom floating around out there that we're supposed to drink about 8 cups of water per day. I've been skeptical about this wisdom ever since I tried to get those 8 cups one time and was required to leave my desk about 16 times. The 8 cups rule is often accompanied by a number of other dubious claims about water, such as that 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated, or that water cures certain diseases and ailments .

It turns out that it's "wisdom" and not wisdom. The 8 cups rule is an exaggeration, and we get most of the water that we need from the food we eat. The rest of the claims have no scientific basis.

Snopes contains a great deal of information on other urban myths, and I'm not going to post on all of them. In my experience, however, the 8 cup rule and accompanying "wisdom" is rather pervasive. It even appears on the bulletin boards in the hallowed halls of academia, where at least some of us should know better.

Let the celebrations begin

Once again, a new month is upon us, so I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Month Day[1]. Well, everyone except you.

[1] I guess if I wanted to be consistent with the yearly event that inspired this monthly event, I should call it New Month's Day. But nobody likes pronouncing an "s" after a "th", and I've been calling it New Month Day for, well, months.

Tuesday night CanCon

"Writer"
Al Mader
The Minimalist Jug Band
[If only you could hear it--ed.]

I hear you're chasin' the golden egg
Relocatin' to Winnipeg
For a Ph.D. and a career

Well don't expect me to beg
Go ahead and break a leg
But there always a place for you here

And You can always just be a writer
If nothin' else goes right
Scribble your thoughts on a napkin in the morning
And perform them up onstage at night.

And you can always just be a writer
If everything else goes wrong
Take your heart break and misfortune
Transform the into a song

Well I know that poets are annoying
Even the ones who are good
At least they have
an understanding of
What it's like to be misunderstood

And You can always just be a writer
I put your name on the list
Well you're after the girl
with the bleach blonde curls
And the bandages on her wrist

And you can always just be a writer
There's no real shame in that
Well it's a gift that you got
And like it or not
It's not a gift that you can take back

Well Henry and William were brothers
You could hardly tell them apart
But Willy James chose the machinations of the mind
While Hank chose the beating of the heart

And I didn't bother to do any research
But I'd be more than willing to bet
Henry James had the better life
And died without regrets

And they told Henry
You can always just be a writer
If nothing else goes right
Scribble your thoughts on napkin in the morning
And perform them up onstage at night

And you can always just be writer
I'll put your name on the list
Well you're after the girl with the bleach blond curls
And the bandages on her wrist

And you can always just be a writer.

--

Brought to me in audio form courtesy of Steve Fruitman on his CIUT radio show Back to the Sugar Camp.

I bothered to transcribe this quite some time ago in response to an email, the contents of which are also amusing, and appear below.
(I'll link to who sent it,
if he will consent to it.)

RJN, at First Things:

--
Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in six words, which
he did. (I'll get to what he wrote.) Black Book magazine issued the same
challenge to a slew of well-known contemporary authors. Norman Mailer
wrote this: "Satan -- Jehovah -- fifteen rounds. A draw."

John Updike: "'Forgive me!' 'What for?' 'Never mind.'"

None of them come close to what Hemingway wrote: "For sale: baby shoes,
never used."
--

It's lines like that that make me realize I'm never going to be a writer..