“The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others.”

[M]athematics only exists in a living community of mathematicians that spreads understanding and breaths life into ideas both old and new. The real satisfaction from mathematics is in learning from others and sharing with others. All of us have clear understanding of a few things and murky concepts of many more. There is no way to run out of ideas in need of clarification. The question of who is the first person to ever set foot on some square meter of land is really secondary.

Peace, love, and neutrinos

Edited to add: I had meant to add this caption: My wife is a physicist who studies neutrinos. She was given these buttons at a physics event by a physicist who studies how to use neutrinos in counterproliferation.

blog name change

Administrative note: I’ve changed the name of this blog, reusing the name of my (now defunct and largely deleted) LiveJournal. I’m not sure I’m going to keep this name, either. Update: Okay, I changed it again. I might tinker more later. (I’m sure this is the most interesting post ever.)

System Administrator Appreciation Day

I have learned (from BoingBoing, TeXblog, and a few other places) that today is System Administrator Appreciation Day. I don’t know who the system administrators are for this site. I pay a company, NearlyFreeSpeech, to host this site, ChrisPhan.com, and PhanBudd.com. I have not had any communication with NearlyFreeSpeech, save a few automated emails reminding me to renew domains, et cetra, so I haven’t had an opportunity to get to know my sysadmins.

Facebook is not a good forum for political arguments

Every once so often, I get sucked into a political argument on Facebook. Sometimes someone will post one of those “share this if you agree” pictures, and I don’t agree with it. Sometimes one of my liberal friends’ conservative friends will make a comment, and because (I’m not proud to admit) I sometimes suffer from the tendency illustrated by xkcd #386, I will feel moved to respond. Every one of these encounters has left me increasingly convinced that Facebook is not a good forum for political arguments. I’ve identified two reasons:

  1. The way Facebook displays comments is poorly suited for discussion.
  2. People who post political content don’t necessarily want to spark a discussion, and it’s hard to tell.