Dear Geoffrey,
You requested us to obtain the title listed below via document delivery.
Unfortunately, we are unable to supply this as no library in Australia holds this so far. In addition it is a novel and therefore not related to your course. Only course related materials may be supplied via document delivery.
The book is available for sale via UK Amazon costing approximately Aus$16.00.
AUTHOR Haarbuurste, Ulrich
TITLE Ulrich Haarbuurste's novel of Roy Orbison in clingfilm.
IMPRINT Serapion Books, 2007.
ISBN 0955460204.
Regards,
Liaison Librarian
Earth Sciences, Physics & Mathematics
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Document Delivery Request
Fair Working Conditions for Oompa Loompas
This is a Busty StClair Christmas Special Edition of the afrogoose.
Me: Buxom breasts you say? Yes I am fond of them, but I also love large labia.
Colleague: Umm...can you please go back to talking about your cats?
So Elise returned from overseas. She bought a signed copy of "The Moor's Last Sigh" by Salman Rushdie for Chris. For me she got this:
"Mashed potato mashed potato, squished banana squished banana". Don't you hate it when someone sneaks a turnip in your mashed potato?
Me: Buxom breasts you say? Yes I am fond of them, but I also love large labia.
Colleague: Umm...can you please go back to talking about your cats?
So Elise returned from overseas. She bought a signed copy of "The Moor's Last Sigh" by Salman Rushdie for Chris. For me she got this:
How did she know that I liked penis?
The yellow thing is not a dildo; it is a banana protector. There is nothing worse than squished banana.
"Mashed potato mashed potato, squished banana squished banana". Don't you hate it when someone sneaks a turnip in your mashed potato?
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
My thesis in three minutes
I entered the UQ Postgraduate Three Minute Thesis Competition. Here is a transcript of what I said, or rather, what I planned to say. I didn't win; probably something to do with not wanting to send a goose to represent the School of Mathematics and Physics at the Faculty semi-final.
Here is a concrete example. Suppose you want to schedule a round robin tournament among six sporting teams. So this graph could represent the teams, with each edge corresponding to a match between those two teams. We want each team to play every other team so we have an edge between every pair of teams.
Good afternoon everyone. I study pure mathematics. I found attempting to explain my research in three minutes a bit of a challenge. You see, unlike most people, except perhaps theologians, I am not confined to studying things that actually exist. This is an example of what I study. It’s called a graph. It is not what you are used to thinking of when you hear graph but unfortunately mathematicians are not very imaginative with their names. Words such as simple, normal and closed have dozens of different definitions.
So here is a graph. It looks like a bunch of dots and lines. How could it be useful? Well, to be honest, pure mathematicians don’t seriously consider this question. It is a running joke among mathematicians to ask “what are the applications”. But on occasions such as these, when we are asked this question in earnest, it is not difficult to give an answer. A graph has a seemingly endless list of possible applications. A graph could model social networks, the internet, transport networks, biological networks, timetabling problems, flow of liquids in pipes, and on and on. That was just a list I made up then.
So here is a graph. It looks like a bunch of dots and lines. How could it be useful? Well, to be honest, pure mathematicians don’t seriously consider this question. It is a running joke among mathematicians to ask “what are the applications”. But on occasions such as these, when we are asked this question in earnest, it is not difficult to give an answer. A graph has a seemingly endless list of possible applications. A graph could model social networks, the internet, transport networks, biological networks, timetabling problems, flow of liquids in pipes, and on and on. That was just a list I made up then.
Here is a concrete example. Suppose you want to schedule a round robin tournament among six sporting teams. So this graph could represent the teams, with each edge corresponding to a match between those two teams. We want each team to play every other team so we have an edge between every pair of teams.
Now, we would like them to play one match a week so this graph could represent round one of the competition. And to schedule all the rounds we need to use up all the edges of the larger graph with smaller graphs that look essentially like this. So this is one possible solution, with each colour representing a round.
Ok, that was pretty easy. I wouldn’t have much to do if I was limited to modeling actual tournaments. But that is alright though, because the greatest tool in the mathematician’s toolbelt is the ability to invent new problems for ourselves. This trick is called ‘generalisation’. It has been said that a mathematician’s propensity to generalize is matched only by that of a lawyer’s inclination to sue.
So let’s look again at this example. First off, let’s get rid of this needless reference to real things. Let’s label the vertices with numbers. And instead of pulling the graph apart into three disjoint edges, lets pull the graph apart into these. Here’s one way you can do that. Unfortunately however, that problem has also already been done. That’s fine, I’ll just generalize it again.
There is a serious point to be made here though, and that is that when you allow people the freedom to follow their curiosity, they end up being more creative than if you were to require them to narrow their focus to just one problem. And this is useful when scientists stumble across a piece of mathematics, invented for its own sake, and realize that it can be used to model their piece of the real world. So it’s worthwhile keeping us around.
Ok, that was pretty easy. I wouldn’t have much to do if I was limited to modeling actual tournaments. But that is alright though, because the greatest tool in the mathematician’s toolbelt is the ability to invent new problems for ourselves. This trick is called ‘generalisation’. It has been said that a mathematician’s propensity to generalize is matched only by that of a lawyer’s inclination to sue.
So let’s look again at this example. First off, let’s get rid of this needless reference to real things. Let’s label the vertices with numbers. And instead of pulling the graph apart into three disjoint edges, lets pull the graph apart into these. Here’s one way you can do that. Unfortunately however, that problem has also already been done. That’s fine, I’ll just generalize it again.
There is a serious point to be made here though, and that is that when you allow people the freedom to follow their curiosity, they end up being more creative than if you were to require them to narrow their focus to just one problem. And this is useful when scientists stumble across a piece of mathematics, invented for its own sake, and realize that it can be used to model their piece of the real world. So it’s worthwhile keeping us around.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
Hatred
Jeanette Winterson's prose in 'The Passion' is simply wonderful. At merely 160 pages, it can barely be considered a novel except that it is so dense that it feels much more substantial than its length suggests. Many of the passages, such as the one below, I found myself rereading over and over.
I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?
Indeed.
I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?
Indeed.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
I call him Blinky
A while ago I read the memoir 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' by Jean-Dominique Bauby which was adapted into a movie of the same name. Bauby had a massive stroke which took his brain stem out of action. He survived but with a condition known as 'locked-in syndrome', where the sufferer is paralysed from head to toe. Blinking his left eye-lid became his only means of communication.
The letters of the alphabet were read to him one at a time, in descending order of the frequency of usage in French, and he would blink to stop them at the letter to be noted.
E S A R I N T U L O M D P C F B V H G J Q Z Y X K W
In this manner, he dictated his memoir a letter at a time. This is one of my favourite passages.
And then one afternoon as I confided my woes to her likeness, an unknown face interposed itself between us. Reflected in the glass I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil, before I realized it was only mine.
Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter - when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke. My jovial cackling at first disconcerted Eugenie, until she herself was infected by my mirth. We laughed until we cried. The municipal band then struck up a waltz, and I was so merry that I would willingly have risen and invited Eugenie to dance, had such a move been fitting. We would have whirled around miles of floor. Ever since then, whenever I go through the main hall, I detect a hint of amusement in the empress's smile.
The letters of the alphabet were read to him one at a time, in descending order of the frequency of usage in French, and he would blink to stop them at the letter to be noted.
E S A R I N T U L O M D P C F B V H G J Q Z Y X K W
In this manner, he dictated his memoir a letter at a time. This is one of my favourite passages.
And then one afternoon as I confided my woes to her likeness, an unknown face interposed itself between us. Reflected in the glass I saw the head of a man who seemed to have emerged from a vat of formaldehyde. His mouth was twisted, his nose damaged, his hair tousled, his gaze full of fear. One eye was sewn shut, the other goggled like the doomed eye of Cain. For a moment I stared at that dilated pupil, before I realized it was only mine.
Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter - when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke. My jovial cackling at first disconcerted Eugenie, until she herself was infected by my mirth. We laughed until we cried. The municipal band then struck up a waltz, and I was so merry that I would willingly have risen and invited Eugenie to dance, had such a move been fitting. We would have whirled around miles of floor. Ever since then, whenever I go through the main hall, I detect a hint of amusement in the empress's smile.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Why?
Everything passes away - suffering, pain, blood, hunger, pestilence. The sword will pass away too, but the stars will still remain when the shadows of our presence and our deeds have vanished from the earth. There is no man who does not know that. Why, then, will we not turn our eyes toward the stars? Why?
-Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard
-Mikhail Bulgakov, The White Guard
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Dreams
My dreams of late have been unvaryingly traumatic. Last night I went into my kitchen and grabbed a persimmon and a knife. As my hand went to pierce the flesh of the persimmon I was jolted with mind-numbing anger and the knife instead pierced my flesh just beneath my sternum. Chris went on to write his first novel 'He died with a persimmon in his hand'. It is made into a Hollywood motion picture because stories about crazy mathematicians are the flavour of the month.
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