The annual Joint Mathematics Meetings are taking place in San Diego this week. For the first time in more than a decade, they are taking place without me. Well, if I can't actually go this year, I might as well write about it. I have a guest post up over at the Oxford University Press blog doing just that. Enjoy!
More like this
Via Russlings (here, here and
From
LA Times:
The San Diego Zoo's male giant panda, Gao Gao, nips at female panda Bai
Yun's back. The two adult giant pandas at the San Diego Zoo mated
...I don't know when I'll be back again.
Two conferences. Renato Renner sends along a note about QIP 2010. The paper submission deadline is one month away:
QIP 2010 will be held in Zurich, Switzerland, January 18-22.
The submission deadline for contributed talks is 22 October 2009.
Back in the Dark Ages I was a member of MAA and loved their publications. I would share them with my students to prove that math was accessible to them as sharp high-school seniors and would be as college students. They were a very mathy crowd, but more of them became engineers (sigh).
I am with you completely about a math community and how it can improve both knowledge and teaching. When I was finished coaching (my own kids were in the high school, so I chased them around instead of everyone else's) I wished to get the next degree in math (at night). Every time I signed up for a math class it would get cancelled a week before the scheduled start.
Eventually I got a call from the office of the Dean of Graduate Studies and was informed that I was going to get booted out as I was "not making progress towards my degree". The caused me to write a sharply-worded letter that contained the term "insidious fraud".
This got me a call from the Dean himself. I had to explain myself: what fraud was I upset about?
"You offer this degree, do you not?"
"Yes, we do."
"Does anyone ever get one?"
"Uh, I believe two people got that degree last year."
"Well, what freakin' courses did they take????????"
"Uh, I believe they were largely self-directed."
"Well, I've been self-directed for 22 years! I want to hang out with the math people!"
I gave them one more chance, but three days before a class was to begin it was cancelled. I was out. In fact, I was so far out that I get zero mail from this school to this day.
Now I'm retired but hope to find some mathy people to hang with.
And here i am, thinking you mathematicians either aim to find a fool-proof method to win tic-tac-toe, or aim to change the rules of tic-tac-toe in order to then find a fool-proof method to win. Sheesh. What was i thinking?