The small envelope
Mar. 14th, 2005 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sniffnoyMIT - Rejected
So I'm almost certainly going to Chicago, then...
In other news...
Having already written my 7 page rough draft, I may have to change my topic for my Lit paper.
The one basic requirement is that it has to be about something that someone else has already done a serious critical analysis of.
Now, I picked my topic at the last minute. Actually, after the last minute. So Dr. Mayers calls me over and he says, "Harry, you need to pick a topic."
"Um... I don't know?"
"Well, what are you reading right now?"
"Not really reading anything right now..."
"Well, what was the last thing you read?"
"I reread the Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy?"
"OK, so do it on that."
He then spends the rest of the class searching online and in the catalogs of various libraries (college libraries ("The Rutgers library has a good science fiction collection", he said...)) to find something written about the Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy.
His search turns up nothing. Several books about Robert Anton Wilson (the author), but no critical analyses of the books. Finally, he finds that a professor somewhere wrote a paper about what he called "Gnostic SF", in which he mentioned The Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy as an example of such. He emails this professor, asking where we can find it (and hopefully other things written about the trilogy).
My summary of his response: "Oh, man, I don't even remember that."
So, yeah.
In Nomicron news, Jef and I have signed a peace treaty, forming The Green Alliance!
The other thing I shouldn't say just in case any Nomicron players happen to have found this. :) You'll not get ahold of my evil plans *that* easily...
(Note: They're really not that evil. Really.)
Finally, you all need to see Fergie's latest entry. You must. It's hilarious.
ADDENDUM: I forgot to include this "George is a dumbass" story from the bus home today. George gets on the bus, saying he has a proof that 0=1. "Really." His proof? "Well, the derivative of 1 is 0, and the integral of 0 is 0, so 1=0." We (i.e. Tom and I, and occasionally Eugene) spend the entire bus ride trying to explain to him that there is no such thing as "the" integral of a function, that that's not how the fundamental theorem of calculus works, that antiderivatives are nonunique, that integrals don't work like that - there's such a thing as the constant of integration... "OK," he says, "Make it a definite integral." "No, George, that doesn't work..." We never get to explain why, as we constantly have to respond to everything else he's saying.
"I'm going to submit this to a formal math journal. Leibniz invented calculus, I'm going to be known as the person who destroyed it!"
"George, if you submit that to a math journal, they will send someone to personally come over to your house and slap you." (Oh, I would that were true...)[0]
"Look, the TI-89 says I'm right!" he says, telling it to integrate 0, and getting back 0. After a while trying to tell him that a TI-89 is not proof, I finally take the calculator, type in "1=0" and show its "false" response to him. "Look, the TI-89 says *I'm* right!"
I give him the following analogy... 1+2=3, right? And 2+1=3, right? Therefore 1=2, and 2=1. "No, you can't do that!" he says.
"Why not?"
"You can't just say x+y=y+x..."
"So addition isn't commutative?" says Tom. "Good job!"
"No, no, that's not what I meant! I mean, you can't just say x=y and y=x..."
"Why not? They both add up to 3. 1+2=3, 0+3=3. Therefore 1=0 and 2=3."
He insists this doesn't work. "Why not, George?"
I give him another analogy. "Your reasoning is like this: What's 1 squared?"
"1."
"What's -1 squared?"
"1."
"Therefore 1=-1."
"No, but..." - he then says some incomprehensible stuff about ±1, and, after a bit of what he passes off as thought, concludes that, in fact, 1 *does* equal -1. (This is, after all, an easy consequence of 1=0, but he somehow got it from ±1. Probably he said, 1=±1, -1=±1, therefore 1=-1.)
He said he was going to use this proof so he could pay less for muffins at the bakery. Then he decides they won't understand it there. "I think they'll just slap you," I say.
Yeah... that's all for now.
-Sniffnoy
[0]Been reading The Tempest in Lit, and I have to say I really like the sound of using "would" for "wish".
So I'm almost certainly going to Chicago, then...
In other news...
Having already written my 7 page rough draft, I may have to change my topic for my Lit paper.
The one basic requirement is that it has to be about something that someone else has already done a serious critical analysis of.
Now, I picked my topic at the last minute. Actually, after the last minute. So Dr. Mayers calls me over and he says, "Harry, you need to pick a topic."
"Um... I don't know?"
"Well, what are you reading right now?"
"Not really reading anything right now..."
"Well, what was the last thing you read?"
"I reread the Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy?"
"OK, so do it on that."
He then spends the rest of the class searching online and in the catalogs of various libraries (college libraries ("The Rutgers library has a good science fiction collection", he said...)) to find something written about the Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy.
His search turns up nothing. Several books about Robert Anton Wilson (the author), but no critical analyses of the books. Finally, he finds that a professor somewhere wrote a paper about what he called "Gnostic SF", in which he mentioned The Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy as an example of such. He emails this professor, asking where we can find it (and hopefully other things written about the trilogy).
My summary of his response: "Oh, man, I don't even remember that."
So, yeah.
In Nomicron news, Jef and I have signed a peace treaty, forming The Green Alliance!
The other thing I shouldn't say just in case any Nomicron players happen to have found this. :) You'll not get ahold of my evil plans *that* easily...
(Note: They're really not that evil. Really.)
Finally, you all need to see Fergie's latest entry. You must. It's hilarious.
ADDENDUM: I forgot to include this "George is a dumbass" story from the bus home today. George gets on the bus, saying he has a proof that 0=1. "Really." His proof? "Well, the derivative of 1 is 0, and the integral of 0 is 0, so 1=0." We (i.e. Tom and I, and occasionally Eugene) spend the entire bus ride trying to explain to him that there is no such thing as "the" integral of a function, that that's not how the fundamental theorem of calculus works, that antiderivatives are nonunique, that integrals don't work like that - there's such a thing as the constant of integration... "OK," he says, "Make it a definite integral." "No, George, that doesn't work..." We never get to explain why, as we constantly have to respond to everything else he's saying.
"I'm going to submit this to a formal math journal. Leibniz invented calculus, I'm going to be known as the person who destroyed it!"
"George, if you submit that to a math journal, they will send someone to personally come over to your house and slap you." (Oh, I would that were true...)[0]
"Look, the TI-89 says I'm right!" he says, telling it to integrate 0, and getting back 0. After a while trying to tell him that a TI-89 is not proof, I finally take the calculator, type in "1=0" and show its "false" response to him. "Look, the TI-89 says *I'm* right!"
I give him the following analogy... 1+2=3, right? And 2+1=3, right? Therefore 1=2, and 2=1. "No, you can't do that!" he says.
"Why not?"
"You can't just say x+y=y+x..."
"So addition isn't commutative?" says Tom. "Good job!"
"No, no, that's not what I meant! I mean, you can't just say x=y and y=x..."
"Why not? They both add up to 3. 1+2=3, 0+3=3. Therefore 1=0 and 2=3."
He insists this doesn't work. "Why not, George?"
I give him another analogy. "Your reasoning is like this: What's 1 squared?"
"1."
"What's -1 squared?"
"1."
"Therefore 1=-1."
"No, but..." - he then says some incomprehensible stuff about ±1, and, after a bit of what he passes off as thought, concludes that, in fact, 1 *does* equal -1. (This is, after all, an easy consequence of 1=0, but he somehow got it from ±1. Probably he said, 1=±1, -1=±1, therefore 1=-1.)
He said he was going to use this proof so he could pay less for muffins at the bakery. Then he decides they won't understand it there. "I think they'll just slap you," I say.
Yeah... that's all for now.
-Sniffnoy
[0]Been reading The Tempest in Lit, and I have to say I really like the sound of using "would" for "wish".
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Date: 2005-03-15 01:28 am (UTC)Sucks about MIT. I will attribute it to the IQ-lowering effects of having to ride with George in a bus.
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Date: 2005-03-15 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-15 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-03-15 10:52 pm (UTC)Sorry about the MIT rejection. :(
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Date: 2005-03-20 04:42 pm (UTC)