2005.10.28 23:56:21 EDT RIP: Richard E. Smalley Richard Smalley (June 6, 1943 - October 28, 2005) was one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996, as a co-discoverer of Buckey-balls. He earned his Ph.D. at Princeton's Department o
2005.10.28 11:21:00 EDT On the stability of tables This is a problem I actually considered a couple years ago. It stemmed from a discussion I had with my suite-mates my second year at Argonne. Under what condition will a "table" be stable? The questio
2005.10.22 10:37:44 EDT Who said lightning couldn't strike twice? ARGGGGGHHHH! Curse you! Why is it that ye Gods always find it necessary to smite down manifested hubris?! Around 9:30 or 10 last night, there was a brief power outage. After navigating myself in the d
2005.10.20 15:38:18 EDT Noether's theorem and Lorentzian Boost A good question about Noether's theorem that most textbooks do not address: what is the conservation law corresponding to Lorentzian boost? We first start with some background material. We are intere
2005.10.20 02:26:27 EDT Monty Hall Problems First, let's begin by looking at the classic Monty Hall Problem You died and went to the purgatory, where the devil himself shows you three doors. He tells you that behind two doors are express hand
2005.10.16 00:35:39 EDT Journal: CJE plays Kansas City Suite Concert today went well. More on that later. Last night, my sister T arrived home with two friends: she sort of forcibly recruited them to come to listen to my concert. For that I am grateful. The two
2005.10.10 21:07:01 EDT Journal: Yellow Sale Wheee! Cheaper books! I am still waiting to see if Thierry Aubin's Some Nonlinear Problems in Riemannian Geometry will ever be on the yellow sale (151 dollars is way more than I want to pay for that b
2005.10.09 02:33:53 EDT Journal Long day today. Just got back from school. And I left home at 8 am. The day started with rain. It seems that it didn't stop raining at all since yesterday (Friday) around noon. It drizzled yesterday,
2005.10.06 15:24:29 EDT Small combinatorics problem Suppose you start with N objects, you want to choose M of them, M (An application of this question: a pizza store carries 30 ingredients. You are allowed to put only one kind on a slice. A pizza has 8
2005.10.03 20:26:16 EDT Update to website; Cooking Journal The spider mystery has been solved: it is a wolf spider. Am in the middle of some renovation on the website: the "papers" and "teaching" sections will be up shortly, probably within the next 10 hours.
2005.10.03 04:43:50 EDT big, brown spider Caught this big fellow about an hour ago. I tried to find some information on Google about what kind of spider it is, but it is hard to compare a picture of a spider to a real thing, and descriptions
2005.10.02 17:51:51 EDT anti-wine and cheese Originally I planned to go to school today. There's a Towney vs Gowny Tourney in the badminton club yesterday and today. But after playing yesterday, my knee (and several large muscle groups) is feeli
2005.10.01 21:38:25 EDT Longwang vs Katrina; the Danger of living in the USA I think, in general, the whole Katrina business is due to the American people being awfully unprepared for hurricanes, even as they live in an area where hurricanes should be the norm. With that said,