Bonus Pork Post

The other day, my housemate and I made pulled pork, which it turns out is very easy to make. It's basically just waiting for pork to cook in a crock pot, and then pulling it apart and adding barbecue sauce. But we ran out of bread, so I hadn't actually tried any of it till tonight, after buying some bread from the Wawa, because it's the closest place. We did, however, have a head of cabbage, so I did the sensible thing and made coleslaw. I learned the trick of putting coleslaw on a pulled pork sandwich from Saga Dave, weirdly enough, but what a delightful trick :)

Alpine Spring Break

My spring break started officially some time this weekend, but since I wasn't taking any classes, it doesn't really matter when it actually started. I had a final to give on Thursday, but it was an optional final. Fortunately, most of my students are academically very lazy and unwilling to take a test at 8am even though it can't possibly hurt their grade and might possibly help it. So, only about 3o of the 130 students in the class bothered to show up, which made grading go quickly, and we were able to finish around noon of the same day. Friday there was a board game night, which I went to and had fun at, but that was the only thing I actually did at school. I'm feeling pretty lazy, so just this post will just be a few thoughts without a ton of structure.

The games that I played Friday were Incan Gold, which is a simple but fun exercise in expected value, and Risk, which we all know I love. Usually I can't get other people to play, but this time there was no problem with that. In fact, we had seven people playing, with two people working as a team. I think of myself as being relatively expert at the game, given how much time I've spent on it, but I try not to be obnoxious about telling people what they should do or over-explaining the rules because I hate when people do that. My one friend always asks me for advice on what he should do, which is funny, since we are ostensibly enemies for the purposes of the game. Anyway, the one guy in our department who we basically all dislike because of his lack of social/hygiene skills was also playing, and he kept trying to lecture people about what to do, so we were all sort of silently relieved when he was actually the first one eliminated. Full disclosure: I did recommend eliminating him to the couple that then promptly did so when he was down to three territories, but it was a strategically sound decision that garnered them a few cards (we were playing the usual rules where cards become obscenely valuable obscenely quickly), and they were soliciting advice.

If you are curious, I did not win, though I will attribute this partially to not really trying due to my terrible starting position and the fact that I wanted to do some other stuff at the time, so I kept leaving and coming back just for my turns. If you are even more curious, my starting position was something like three territories in northern Asia, a couple in North America, one in Australia, and I think one in Africa (?). Normally I consider North America the place to be, but the couple playing got more and better distributed territories there to start with, and built those up at the cost of their other territories, so I didn't have any options. My housemate also started out with a territory in Australia, and put all his armies there, so I really had no options, but such is life when you randomly select territories. So, I just sat back most of the game, accumulating territories one per turn and hoping to build up large armies. Alas, it was not to be.

Alright, so enough Risk. Last night I noticed that Netflix recently added the amazing(ly terrible) 80's horror movie "The Stuff," so I had to watch it. For anyone who doesn't know what that is, and I assume that includes pretty much everyone, it's a movie about people eating some kind of ice cream/yogurt/marshmallow goo out of the ground, which turns out to be an organism that turns people into zombies and then maybe explodes them or something. It has the worst acting I've seen since Troll 2, and dialogue that is almost as out of left field at times. But get this: some of the actors appearing in it are Michael Moriarty, Garrett Morris, and Paul Sorvino! Yeah, two Law & Order actors from the early days of the show and the most under-appreciated SNL alum I can come up with off the top of my head. None of them really seem to know/care what they are doing in the movie, though, so it is kind of extra fascinating. Michael Moriarty spends about half his time with a southern drawl and half his time just kind of reading lines, Garrett Morris explodes, and Sorvino, well, I don't know. He's a militia leader or something? His motivations and dialogue are baffling, like there were pages missing from the script. Anyway, check it out.

The "Alpine" in the title is because I bought a Sam Adams variety pack the other day, and Alpine Spring is one of the new brews that is included. It's not actually any good. I get really annoyed with Pennsylvania's stupid alcohol laws that basically force you to buy variety packs if you want to try new beers. See, you can only get beer from distributors, which have to sell it by the case, or from restaurants, which can sell you six packs, but always mark it up to ridiculous levels because, hey, it's not like you can get it from anywhere else. Supply and demand and all that. So, if I see something that looks interesting at a beer distributor (prices are also higher at these than at comparable places in, say, New Jersey, but not as bad as at restaurants) I have to buy 24-30 bottles of it, which is ludicrous, especially because I don't know if it's actually going to be good or even palatable. So, variety packs are the way to go, since at least then you are getting a few kinds and are guaranteed that at least one of them will be decent. But then you have less selection overall, because not every company makes such things, and for instance, Sam Adams always includes their Boston Lager as one of the varieties, and it's pretty much garbage. I'd rather drink one of the low-end American-style lagers like Bud or Miller than Boston Lager. Yards, which may be sort of local, I don't know, usually has variety packs, but they're often full of IPAs, which to me is meh. I'll drink IPAs, but I feel like they're just the snob version of crap beer. Like when this whole craft beer trend started, people learned that fancy beers have hops in them, so now they're in a stupid space race of seeing who can cram more hops into their own brew. I don't find hops to be that amazing, so I'm pretty put off by such a strong and not nuanced flavor. Any thoughts, beer drinkers?

Now for the only part of the post that may be sort of interesting to people. I probably shouldn't bury the lead, but here it is. A while back, a caring soul sent me the book American Ballads and Folk Songs by Alan Lomax. It's kind of a classic reference book in its field, I think. Anyway, it's an invaluable resource if you are interested in folk music, and full of gems that sadly time has forgotten. There's a short section on war songs, in which I found a catchy little number, and I'll reproduce some of the lyrics for you:

Damn, damn, damn the Fillipino,
Cross-eyed, kakiack ladrone!
And beneath the starry flag
Civilize 'em with a Krag
And go back to our own beloved home!

Lovely, isn't it? I actually copy-pasted that from another website, but the book has the same lyrics. For people who don't speak 19th century, which includes me, "kakiack" basically means yellow, a "ladrone" is a thief, and "Krag" refers to a type of rifle used by American soldiers in the Spanish-American war. I doubt that anyone of my readers is old or racist enough to remember this song, but maybe you will recognize the alternate lyrics:

Jesus loves the little children
All the children of the world
Red and yellow, black and white
They are precious in his sight
Jesus loves the little children of the world

One of the things I love about these old folk songs is how if you liked a song, it has generally been cool with everyone if you just took the melody as your own and added different lyrics. It's not parody or anything, just different lyrics. The vast differences in this case just point out how crazy the switch can be at times. So, I guess the first little bit got me interested in brushing up on the history of the Spanish-American/Philippine-American War, since AP US History was a long time ago, and who can remember anything about them but the Maine? Haha, get it? So, I was reading the Wikipedia page, and the little bit about the "fighting" in Guam made me laugh. I'll copy paste this for you, too:

On 20 June, a U.S. fleet commanded by Captain Henry Glass, consisting of the armored cruiser USS Charleston and three transports carrying troops to the Philippines, entered Guam's Apra Harbor, Captain Glass having opened sealed orders instructing him to proceed to Guam and capture it. Charleston fired a few cannon rounds at Fort Santa Cruz without receiving return fire. Two local officials, not knowing that war had been declared and believing the firing had been a salute, came out to Charleston to apologize for their inability to return the salute. Glass informed them that the U.S. and Spain were at war. The following day, Glass sent Lt. William Braunersruehter to meet the Spanish Governor to arrange the surrender of the island and the Spanish garrison there. Some 54 Spanish infantry were captured and transported to the Philippines as prisoners of war. No U.S. forces were left on Guam, but the only U.S. citizen on the island, Frank Portusach, told Captain Glass that he would look after things until U.S. forces returned.

How ridiculous is that? Alright, that's enough for me for today.

CB&C

Not much to say or any pictures to upload or anything. My housemate/landlord/coworker made corned beef and cabbage last night, presumably because it's almost St. Patrick's Day. That's a thing, right? Anyway, it was delicious, of course. But it's one of those things that's even better the next day when you can just take it out of the fridge and heat it up for a minute or so, or just make a sandwich. I looked it up on Wikipedia, as I do all interesting foodstuffs, and found a suggestion of cider vinegar as a condiment, which I have to say, turned out to be excellent, at least on the cabbage. I don't know why it's just called corned beef and cabbage when there are also potatoes and carrots and whatnot, but whatever. As for the beef itself, spicy mustard is awesome.

These are the only thoughts I've had lately.

Lack of Updates

Hello, all. Sorry for the lack of updates. To tide you over, have this nice picture of sushi that I made. Since I have a request for math updates, perhaps I will do something about that soon enough. I can't go into too much detail about it, though, I guess, since then someone will steal all my precious research.

This is an actual thing to fear, I think. My advisor and I have some constructions and some preliminary results, at least, by trying to emulate what has been done in some papers for our extension of their cases, and we have enough stuff that we could probably publish a paper without too much more work, I guess, but he doesn't want to do that because he thinks that somebody, like the people who wrote those papers we are emulating, might see them, figure out what we are doing, and then do it faster. It's so weird how the academic world works.

So, I've been busy with that research, although I feel like I'm actually contributing very little. Mostly I attempt to do some calculation, and then my advisor does it faster, but at least it gets done. The next step is supposedly all me, though. This is proving that strict modules over a curved algebra are equivalent on a homotopy level to all modules over that algebra, if anyone is curious. I think it's mostly just finding the usual result and seeing if it applies, which I think it does.

Anyway, other than that, what has been going on in my life? Well, yesterday I got food poisoning or something, so I felt terrible all day, but still taught four hours of class and two of tutoring. After getting home, I slept for about 13-14 hours, so I'm feeling much better now. This past weekend, I went to a conference in Ann Arbor, MI, about homological mirror symmetry. This may lead you to ask, what is homological mirror symmetry? I wish I could tell you. It's some very deep conjecture about certain algebro-geometric or topological constructions having some sort of dual construction that carries the properties or something, but I guess it's not even convenient to state what the conjecture is in full generality.

My advisor was giving a talk there, so he wanted me to go, and learn things "by osmosis" because I wouldn't understand most of the algebraic geometry, and anyway, they would "explain it wrong" anyway. He's kind of hilarious, the way that he thinks a lot of people approach problems the wrong way because of some bias they have or desire to demonstrate something on the most abstract level. He told me once that if you're not doing math that's meaningful, you might as well "be a social worker." So, he's often at odds with other people, who go about things in backwards ways, which even I can see without totally understanding what's going on. Ann Arbor is nice, except the bus terminal, which is terrible. I took buses both ways, partially out of a dislike of the TSA, and partially because I like traveling where I can see out the windows, and partially because apparently you can't fly direct to Ann Arbor, anyway. If you are curious, the route was basically this:

Philadelphia --(Harrisburg)--> Pittsburgh ---->Cleveland -- (Toledo) --> Detroit -->Ann Arbor

Place names in parentheses are places that the bus stopped but that I didn't have to change buses. Reverse the arrows to get the route back (haha, it is just like my research!!!)

It's interesting how the bus terminals are different. Philadelphia's is sort of middling size, but relatively well organized, and there are always people arguing about how their bus was late and they should be getting a refund, despite Greyhound having never once given a refund to anyone. Their buses are late a ton of the time, by the way, and if you ever need to be on time, you should not take them.

Pittsburgh's terminal is very long and thin, which seems like how these places should be set up. I've yet to be there earlier than midnight, so I wonder if that colors my impression of the place. They have a bunch of TV's that are always playing the scifi channel. Syfy, I guess they call it now. There are a bunch of generic arcade games, like this last time, there was a cabinet for a racing game called "Fast and Furious," clearly trying to bank off the popularity of the movie series without paying any of the royalties.

Cleveland's seems nice, like it was repurposed from some other building. The walls are all lined with wood, and all the doors are crammed down on one end of the building. There are two TV's with chairs surrounding them, and now chairs anywhere else, like a midwestern house built around the television.

Detroit's is like Detroit: sad. I heard one of the workers saying that there used to be fifty-four employees or something, but now there are only two. They're nice enough, but the place is full of bums and the half-hearted attempts at keeping the place clean are failing miserably. It was funny to hear a guy going home to Cleveland complaining about how terrible Detroit is, and the woman he was talking to laugh about how Cleveland is only the second worst city in America.

Ok, I guess this has become a massive update, so there you go.

Heart Growing Fonder, Anyone?

Sorry for the long absence, but I had basically no internet access for the last month. Although, from the looks of the comments, nobody really noticed. Well, back to the mathzzz.

Mammon, You Been on My Mind

Here you go, an unfinished product, but a product nonetheless. Forgive the eye rhymes and whatnot; it's just a goofy little song that resulted from posts/comments. Also, I'm not sure if "My" should be capitalized or not:

Never met a man named

Nebuchadnezzar

I guess he was

One of a kind

I ain’t sayin’

It can’t happen never

That Mammon, you

Been on my mind

Maybe Judas’s little sister

Or a long lost cousin

Needed a new heart

And a little more time

Thirty pieces of silver

For a simple operation

Or maybe, Mammon, you

Been on my mind

I can’t be the only one

To think the golden calf,

And I ain’t sayin

It’s a sign

Looks like a chargin’ bull

By little more than half

But Mammon, you

Been on my mind

The joke is really just a reference to a Bob Dylan song, "Mama You Been On My Mind." I figured it was obscure enough that nobody would get it. I was busy writing better songs, so this one is kind of a throwaway. It's good to write throwaway stuff sometimes, I figure, especially if it gives me practice in different keys. This one's written in F, which is not so difficult to play in, but sort of hard to sing in. I recently wrote a (better, in my opinion) song in D (!!!), which means two sharps for anyone who doesn't know. More sharps is generally more difficult, but D is a sort of particularly strange key for me because I don't have a D harmonica, and playing the blues in D, besides maybe being kind of weird historically, would require a more functional G harmonica than the one I have, which is held together only partially by a liquefied rubber band.

In terms of lyrics, choosing a structure where the last line is always the same or just a slight variant on the same line is a convenient way of churning out a song but makes it difficult to fit in what you want to fit in. The third verse demonstrates that, I think, since there's no natural way to phrase it that doesn't require the other lines to end in something like "calf" or "bull" and almost nothing rhymes with the former, while the latter seems only to rhyme with three+ syllable words, like "syllable," which make for awkward lines. Anyway, I challenge you to do better, since I think it's pretty clear how to structure a verse.

Excellent

Olbermann owns Bloomberg. Hilarious, Keith. Too bad it's on a channel nobody has.