a bad hit and run happened right in front of me just now on the bay bridge. it was raining and very windy, and so most everyone was driving slowly and responsibly. i'm in the middle lane, and there's a car immediately in front of me on my left. and then some idiot in a large white pickup comes out of nowhere in the far left lane. i remember thinking that perhaps pickups drive better in rain and i just didn't know about it. and the next instant, the pickup spins across all lanes of traffic, and slams into the driver's door of a tiny car in the far right lane. and then the pickup spins across all lanes of traffic again, and crashes into the railing on the far left. everyone comes to a halt. the pickup backs up out of the barrier, and speeds off! i couldn't believe it! as i start again and move past the car that was hit i see that its driver door is totally crumpled. and then i see someone else who's gotten out of his car and is running towards it. after five seconds or so it occurs to me that i should call 911, and so i do. and i get put on hold for over a minute! or maybe it was less. it was enough time for me to drive from about the middle of the span after the tunnel to the Van Ness exit, at 40mph. i told the 911 lady what i saw.

it was a night of near misses. in the maze before the toll plaza a general depression in the road created something of a lake, which was impossible to see. so i drove right into it, and totally hydroplaned. but that was good thing because it made me especially careful for the rest of the drive.

anyway, now that this is out of my system i can sleep for 5 hours. then it's off to Peru! my packing took 2 hours. i'm only taking bare essentials. and although it was a struggle, i decided not to bring any math books at all.

Machu Pichu, here I come!
My resolution for the new year is to bring only one math book with me on my trip to Peru. Hmmm, but which one will it be?

Hasta La Vista, Berkeley!

Yesterday I fired a gun for the very first time. It was totally easy. Not only pulling the trigger, but gaining access to it in the first place. You go to a shooting range, sign a bunch of papers, and with no instruction whatsoever you're given a gun, some bullets and a shooting lane. (Okay, maybe it's not that easy: I went with Ricky who does this sort of thing all the time. Without him I would probably have had to take a five minute intro course.) It's sort of like bowling, and also a bit like pool and photography. Point and click; even children can do it.

I couldn't connect my muffled shots to any kind of potential for destruction. Bits of target would flutter peacefully to the ground... and it was so easy to pull the trigger. I had to constantly remind myself that with each little pop I was hurling pebbles of lead out into space at supersonic speeds. the absence of a safety net was surreal, sickening, and mildly thrilling. the temptation was fascinating. like when I was 13 and my bedroom had a 7th floor balcony with a wonderful view. i'd raise myself up on the railing, higher and higher, my heart racing, and my head spinning as i looked down onto the tiny cars below.

I felt like there should have been some ceremony. Like there should have been for when I first drove a car, for when I first got drunk, and for when I first made out with someone. Austin Powers had a list of things to do before he died, and so do I. So I checked my list, and that was that. Shooting a gun was something I'd contemplated, but it came and went like everything else. That's probably what death is like: it just happens with no ceremony at all.

The shooting range was staffed by hard core gun people. Many of them had tattoos and piercings, and it crossed my mind that they probably voted for Bush and were proud members of the NRA. one of them informed me that over all of history, bows and arrows have been responsible for more deaths than guns and bullets. i didn't bother arguing. but i did talk long enough to determine that he had in fact heard of world wars I and II. It must be that he couldn't add.

I saw Narnia with Zach. In case anyone didn't know, evil queens are no good.

Weaver:
information is different from meaning.

My dad has been insisting this to me as well. I agree, but I argue that the power of google makes the distinction irrelevant. The issues are subtle and shifting; he responds that google has an anglo-centric bias that's squashing other cultures and points of view. I'm not so sure. I'd like to see it more like a calculator; like blindfolded justice. What fun conversations he and I have together!

Book that I don't need about waveletts, you are mine! The thrill of incipient knowledge courses through my veins. These mysteries now belong to me! treasure is inches away, in pages filled with pictures and graphs that i'll digest over rice cakes and chocolate milk.

Waveletts are totally unrelated to what I do, but a good life is slightly illogical, and so I'm satisfied with my purchase.

I am completely unapologetic about dripping milk into my water at restaurants. If I am paying for my food then I'll do what I want with it. Unfortunately this sort of activity causes some of my friends (Darwin) to become extremely agitated. He was totally unappreciative of the delicate tendrils formed by the falling milk particles, and he tried unsuccessfully to make me stop by taking my milk away and shaking my glass of water. I pointed out how interesting it was that these miniature white rivers turned into upside down mushroom clouds and rings, but to no avail. How sad that he and Sam missed out as the rings broke into pieces and continued to fall, creating a root system in three dimensions that penetrated all the way to the bottom of the glass! If they would only look they would see something as beautiful and as fascinating as the fireworks and smoke rings of gandalf...

Fluid motion:


Poincare:
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful;
he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.

my head is never so clear as when i'm hiking through downtown, buffeted by people and cars, surrounded by noise. the chatter in a cafe, the pulsing music in a club, the lights in a bar. i am alone in the middle of chaos, and i love it. i feel like a fish floating in a strange ocean with a magnificent view of strange worlds all around.

POD (Principle of Distraction):
That mild distractions give us stability and focus. That constant disruptions and agitations are positive.

Explanation of POD:
the idea is simple: mechanisms for maintaining a course grow weak if they aren't used. mild distractions provide exercise and keep things strong.

Examples of POD:
-good thinking is easy to do while walking.
-one's life comes into focus after a vacation.
-mildly vibrating the feet of old people (for instance with piezo-electrics in their shoes) dramatically improves their balance, (perhaps by priming their nerves for action).

Syriana was slow and painful, and some guy sitting two rows in front of me snored loudly during the entire film, even during scenes with explosions and shooting.

only savages kill people. how eerie and sad that i can concern myself with reading email while accross the bay a man is concerning himself with the last hour of his life. and though i might ignore it, i am party to his death. government is BY the people.

after spending an hour or so navigating food and people at my department's christmas party, my conversation with friends was interrupted by the door prize raffle. of course i wanted an ipod nano, but considering the hundreds of people present i didn't give it a chance. before i knew what was happening though, my number was called, and i found myself standing on a chair, in front of gobs of people, and opening a package that might contain a nano, but that also might contain a rubber chicken instead. i was completely petrified, because i knew my disappointment would show if i got only a chicken, and that would be totally awkward. but the planets were properly aligned, and my package contained an ipod nano.

improbable events apparently come in bunches; after i got home with my new ipod nano, i got a call from none other than backwards man! amazing. of course this completely destroyed my resolve to be an eccentric machine designing hermit, at least for the time being. instead of working the weekend away in my apartment and in the corners of various cafes, i spent it meeting up with people and being social: going to clubs, watching movies, having brunch, feeding bugs to carnivorous plants, and so on. the grand finale was dinner with hugh and company at tante marie's cooking school. the rule there is that you have to help cook or you don't get anything to eat, so i'm now an expert at cutting cauliflower.

Here is my cross between Escher's tower of babel and Dhali's corpus hypercubus. How I love to make things! I dub this image "multitubus cube". It reminds me of math proofs, in which various parts interlock to form something bigger and more beautiful than merely their sum. My current project is a clock in which the hand tips trace out ellipses. Red hands, black dial, and no numbers at all!

Machines are the eternal sunshine in my spotless mind, and backwards man grows fainter by the hour. Thank god for forgetfullness!

i realized recently that proper salutations and sign offs in email are a waste of space. what a shock, that these things accomplish nothing at all. i'd been clinging to relics from a past age out of habit and rigid intolerance, like the poor souls who refuse to enjoy anything but classical music. freedom! i'm liberated for my discovery, and closer to that time several centuries ago when it was a good thing to spell a word in as many ways as possible. in the spirit of ignoring formality, i've decided to do away with capital letters as well. i'll use them when i feel they make a contribution, but not to indicate proper nouns or the beginnings of sentences. a lower case i is so much less assertive and pleasant, and a period does just fine all by itself.

my fall ended with a hard crash onto the foundation of who i am. i called some friends i hadn't spoken with in a while, and i spent several hours reading about wavelets in Cody's. i've developed a completely new and useful representation for knots and links, and i've been having fun trying to tease invariants out of it. i'm going to Peru in a month, and several great movies are coming out on friday.

Having a blog appeals to me because I value good writing. The idea is that having my thoughts out in public will scare me into expressing them well. Also, I'm starting a blog because I wanna experience modern culture; if an earthquake sends us back to the dark ages tomorrow, there will have been a brief strange moment in time when a world full of people was magically connected. Wouldn't want to have missed that.