CAG@LOCS#6
My pastry made me smile today. I'm at my second work session at The Black Sheep, which would provide a great studious atmosphere if not for the dial being always tuned to a station that derives its playlist mostly from the less popular tracks on the "NOW" compilations, and the single-digit ones at that. I got a mere medium mocha (using vegan chocolate powder, unavailable anywhere else i've checked in town, and therefore my top local recommendation to the ecologically-minded beatnik), anticipating a couple of attention-deficient hours at the Reading Seminar and Valley Geometry Seminar aided by the black coffee mercifully supplied by the Department. Upon arrival i climbed the now-familiar 15 flights of stairs (which, incidentally, are much more calming to the climber, being arranged in pairs of 12 steps each, rather than staggered and out of alignment as in McBryde) to find the fliers for both seminars marked "CANCELLED", and almost got pissed before i remembered that i'm not on anyone's listserv here. Upon my return to the Black Sheep i found one remaining "Republican party torte": a macaroon full of "fruits and nuts". It's little things like this that make me glad to have spent some time in a somewhat more progressive part of the country.
I keep wishing some observation or epiphany will change my life. Today it was a plaque at the Post Office commemorating the efforts of the office in making their district the first in the nation to recycle 100% of their undelivered bulk junk mail. The continued efforts of junk mail providers to whistle past environmental concerns notwithstanding, it occurred to me that if i were to devote my time outside academic work to a genuine cause, this is about what its culmination would be. No one's name was mentioned on the plaque, just some stamps designed from children's drawings on what they thought of as environmentalism (and, as we all know, the children's passions are what drive society). Now if i worked at a post office for a living then i would proudly commit myself to such an endeavor and send pictures of this plaque to all my friends and relatives. But this is simply someone making what improvements ze can in the context of zer own life, not going out of zer line of work to "make a difference". WMLA (no website, but you can find plenty of trash on them at The Rick A. Ross Institute) encourages its volunteer members to devote several days or weeks at a time to their cause, and i finally have a solid understanding of why this bugs me. No one should be expected to set aside mer life, even temporarily, to try to fix society's problems. If you don't want to make the revolution your life, you've got to be content with making your statement through the political process, your purchasing power, and your circle of personal influence.
I want to be a mathematician, and there's no immediate obvious way for that career to germinate a progressive undercurrent. But one might say the same thing about working at a post office. I guess it really comes down to this: If people can't change things for the better through their careers, then we're already fucked.
A girl/guy couple came in from the snow while i was waiting in the post office. Looking out the door, she pointed and said, smiling, "That could be us." He asked, "Who?" "The man pulling the kid in the sled." (It's been snowing heavily since dawn.) He looked, perfunctory "Yeah.", looked down, turned away. She was slightly put off. Mini-moment of drama in someone's else's romance. I know he was just being thoughtful, but being thoughtful in person implies not being thoughtful enough on your own time, whether or not that's the case. I'd like to think i know better than to let rumination take over for action again.
I don't mean to eavesdrop, but it's usually worse to acknowledge what you hear.
Determinantal equations are irritating buggers to add and process. I can see why [KLMW] restricted their view to plücker coordinates. Anyway, i'm splitting time nowadays between "homework" for a couple of courses at UMass and spotted projects orbiting my thesis, although for the next two weeks the focus will be almost entirely thecal, as i cram and exposit like mad in preparation for the Oral Exam. (It would be nice to be able to say what it is i'm trying to do. I suppose right now i'm trying to explicitly describe a set of equations in the ideal of these matrix affine schubert varieties and prove (yes, prove) that the ideal they generate is in fact prime, i.e. no other equations are necessary to generate every equation that vanishes at every point of the variety.) Meantime i'm trying to teach myself the deeper nature of multiplicities. I guess everything comes down to collections of maps.
I keep wishing some observation or epiphany will change my life. Today it was a plaque at the Post Office commemorating the efforts of the office in making their district the first in the nation to recycle 100% of their undelivered bulk junk mail. The continued efforts of junk mail providers to whistle past environmental concerns notwithstanding, it occurred to me that if i were to devote my time outside academic work to a genuine cause, this is about what its culmination would be. No one's name was mentioned on the plaque, just some stamps designed from children's drawings on what they thought of as environmentalism (and, as we all know, the children's passions are what drive society). Now if i worked at a post office for a living then i would proudly commit myself to such an endeavor and send pictures of this plaque to all my friends and relatives. But this is simply someone making what improvements ze can in the context of zer own life, not going out of zer line of work to "make a difference". WMLA (no website, but you can find plenty of trash on them at The Rick A. Ross Institute) encourages its volunteer members to devote several days or weeks at a time to their cause, and i finally have a solid understanding of why this bugs me. No one should be expected to set aside mer life, even temporarily, to try to fix society's problems. If you don't want to make the revolution your life, you've got to be content with making your statement through the political process, your purchasing power, and your circle of personal influence.
I want to be a mathematician, and there's no immediate obvious way for that career to germinate a progressive undercurrent. But one might say the same thing about working at a post office. I guess it really comes down to this: If people can't change things for the better through their careers, then we're already fucked.
A girl/guy couple came in from the snow while i was waiting in the post office. Looking out the door, she pointed and said, smiling, "That could be us." He asked, "Who?" "The man pulling the kid in the sled." (It's been snowing heavily since dawn.) He looked, perfunctory "Yeah.", looked down, turned away. She was slightly put off. Mini-moment of drama in someone's else's romance. I know he was just being thoughtful, but being thoughtful in person implies not being thoughtful enough on your own time, whether or not that's the case. I'd like to think i know better than to let rumination take over for action again.
I don't mean to eavesdrop, but it's usually worse to acknowledge what you hear.
Determinantal equations are irritating buggers to add and process. I can see why [KLMW] restricted their view to plücker coordinates. Anyway, i'm splitting time nowadays between "homework" for a couple of courses at UMass and spotted projects orbiting my thesis, although for the next two weeks the focus will be almost entirely thecal, as i cram and exposit like mad in preparation for the Oral Exam. (It would be nice to be able to say what it is i'm trying to do. I suppose right now i'm trying to explicitly describe a set of equations in the ideal of these matrix affine schubert varieties and prove (yes, prove) that the ideal they generate is in fact prime, i.e. no other equations are necessary to generate every equation that vanishes at every point of the variety.) Meantime i'm trying to teach myself the deeper nature of multiplicities. I guess everything comes down to collections of maps.