Prompted by my GOTV efforts in this election, I've started to think about the Electoral College and the role it plays in our elections. As we all know, it's possible for someone to become president while losing the popular vote, and this is certainly a bug, not a feature. However, I've been thinking about other consequences of the system, and not ( Read more... )

Oh, and, incidentally... have I mentioned how proud I am of Indiana?

Everyone had this look in their eyes, the knowledge that something big and wonderful had happened. The air crackled with energy, as though a sports team had just one a world championship ( Read more... )

Bank robbery.

The things you find while job searching.

That said, I'm not sure how truly wise this was (and, of course, brilliant though this was, I hope they catch the guy). Internet activity like that can't be too hard to track.

I'm going to be teaching Math 181, a course in mathematics for non-technical majors, starting on Monday. It's a really fun course, and I always enjoy teaching it ( Read more... )

On my way up to teach at UChicago's Splash, I was asked to stop in at a Wal-Mart to pick up some tape. After asking if there was anything else, I was asked to pick up some origami paper. I got the tape, and I failed to get the origami paper. That's the short version. The long version is how much I learned in the process ( Read more... )

With virtually nothing thought out, I'm going to be in Boston from tonight until Sunday afternoon. Most of the trip is taken up with the MIT "Alumni Leadership Conference." I'm definitely planning to stop by ET. Other than that, things are conceivably open and I'd love to get together with anyone who's likely to be reading this. Drop me an e- ( Read more... )

When very young kids first learn to add, they do something called "counting up." To add 7 + 2, the child will count: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, [pause], eight, nine and will declare the answer to be 9. One hopes.

Eventually, they progress to "counting on." To add 7 + 2, the child will count: seven, eight, nine and declare the ( Read more... )

I'm someone who thrives on change. The more things stay the same, the more dull they are, in my opinion. I can settle into routines and enjoy them, but only if those routines get mixed up sometimes, only if the individual pieces aren't "and now I do this" but are instead "and now I come up with something interesting." This may, in fact, be part ( Read more... )

I'm not one for sports in general, but sometimes a sporting event just manages to encapsulate a great story. None of the paragraphs and paragraphs of text in a novel, nor exposition in a movie, to establish the characters: you understand that these are real-life people, and so the sport itself can be distilled to just the bare essence of the story ( Read more... )