CALL ME SNAKE

I was at an amusement park with the family last week. While my kids were on a mini-rollercoast, a guy came up to me and said: “Excuse me, are you native American?” I told him I was not and that to the best of my knowledge I was of Lithuanian descent. He I looked exactly like people from a tribe in Alabama. If I went there, he said, they would claim me as one of their own.

In his convention speech, Joe Biden referred to the “eight scariest words in the English language: The Vice President’s office is on the phone.” And it will be a relief to get the prince of darkness, Dick Cheney, out of office. But I have to wonder, who is scarier: Dick Cheney or Sarah Palin? On a superficial level, Palin certainly looks better than Cheney. On the other hand, I’d rather have a pit bull without lipstick because then  you never lose sight of exactly what kind of creature you are dealing with.

The Republicans did last night what they do best: dumbing it down. Rudy G. aimed for the lowest common denominator and Sarah Palin went even lower. The only question remains: Are Americans dumb enough to buy it? Some will argue that eight years of George Bush answers that question. But there’s also the hope that people can learn from their mistakes, and, at this point, that’s about the only hope we have.

We took the kids to an amusement park on Labor Day. I don’t love them as much as I used to because many of the rides make me feel sick. I tolerate some of them, just to accompany the kids, but I’m often waiting for them to be over. However, I really did enjoy the old-fashioned rollercoaster they had over they, which goes by the name of Yankee Cannonball. That was great fun, and it was reassuring to know I can still enjoy some of the rides that used to thrill me so much.

No one campaigned harder and less transparently for the vice presidential nomination than our own Mitt Romney. After getting tossed out of the presidential race, he suffered the further humiliation of being passed over in the VP nod. That’s a great disappointment to me. Much as I can’t stand seeing the guy on TV—or hearing his voice over the radio—I wish McCain had picked him because Romney has such “high negatives,” which is another way of saying people hate him.

Don’t get into a wrestling match with a pig, McCain once said of his former opponent. You both get muddy and the pig likes it.

So I guess this is goodbye Mitt. For now, that is. Maybe we’ll see you again in 2012.

I was surprised that at a recent conference event, a very famous (and even legendary) physicist signaled me over to meet his wife. I hadn’t expected that since I’d only talked to him once before, face-to-face, and for only a minute or two at that. He said: “___, this is the guy who keeps sending me all those emails with questions about Calabi-Yau manifolds.” 

I’ve been at a conference for a mathematician in honor of his 59th birthday, but I’d been puzzled as to why they didn’t wait a year for the birthday celebration. Last night I found out: He is Chinese, and in China you are one year old the instant you're born.  We count 0,1,2, 3... They start their counting at 1. Which is why, at least in this category, China will always be ahead of us.

I didn’t figure the kid could go the distance. I guessed he’d only last one lecture at the most. And I ran into his dad, the mathematician, at the conference today and found out I was right. He only made it  through one lecture (45 minutes of dense, abstruse math) and then had to get out of there.

Not that I don’t sympathize with the kid. I sat through a lecture today given by a man considered perhaps the most brilliant physicist in the world. He was trying hard to make his talk on gauge theory understandable to everybody. Well almost everybody. I was trying hard to follow him but only got about half of it. Of course, not getting the other half was almost equivalent to getting nothing. A physicist afterwards asked me if  there were any new developments reported in the talk--any progress toward solving an important mathematical problem. I did not think so but told him he might want to check with somebody who had a clue as to what was said.

I was at a differential geometry conference today (for work) and ran into a mathematician I vaguely knew who’d brought his teenage son along with him for the conference. The kid had no particular interest in the subject, and these talks are incredibly technical—way beyond me for the most part. I’m sure the kid was glad dad had dragged him along for the day.

Call me a spoilsport, call me a curmudgeon, but I’m not fond of the kind of speeches that Michele Obama delivered today. Obama’s wife says he’s quite the family man, and she’s in a position to know. But tell me again: Why is that supposed to be relevant?