ChapterZero

Katz’s has an awesome cheesecake shake: deliciously cheesecakish, and thick as molasses. Only one time have I encountered a shake on the same level of gastrointestinal delight– a butterscotch shake from a small food place on the Strip in Las Vegas.

Christmas is about the only time there’s cheesecake in the house, and ice cream also, so I figured instead of a slice of cheesecake and a glass of ice cream, I’d attempt to recreate my favorite thick shake. I tried 1 part milk to 2 parts ice cream and 1 medium slice of cheesecake. Unfortunately, this attempt didn’t have the chunkiness of the Katz’s shake, and was too thin. Really, what’s the point of a shake that isn’t thick enough to be eaten with a spoon? You might as well just add sugar to some milk and call it a shake.

My next attempt (tomorrow– we always have cheesecake left over) will use less milk, maybe some cream cheese, and I’ll blend it for only a couple seconds. Hopefully that’ll keep the cheesecake from breaking up too much; the cream cheese trick is something that I’ve seen in multiple shake recipes. I’m apprehensive that it may end up tasting like cream cheese, but the Internet never lies

I’m the only one in the family who eats cheesecake, so I have about 6 more attempts.

Possibly relevant posts:

• Successful culinary experiments (9/30/2008)
• Bajan Food Part I: Sweets (11/3/2008)
• Goat cheese, arugula, and chorizo (9/14/2008)

Merry Christmas!

Allow me to work up to my Christmas wish. Here’s a bit of trivia for you: a 2007 poll determined “The Greatest British Band of All Time”. Who do you think won? I guaran-damn-tee you’re wrong– it’s not the Beatles.

It was Queen. So, in recognition of this astonishing fact, here’s a classic.

and here’s a song wholly inappropriate to the season, and not representative of the Beatles (who I think in a sane world would have won), since it’s just Lennon. Then again, maybe it is appropriate for the season. This is what I want for Christmas, Santa:

Possibly relevant posts:

• feeling the spirit (12/28/2001)
• And now… Christmas! (12/25/2004)
• Rufus Wainwright (3/21/2007)

Here’s a hint: 1.3806503 × 10-23 m2 kg s-2 K-1.

Possibly relevant posts:

• A large deviations problem (4/4/2007)
• Goldilocks zone (6/25/2007)
• King Henry III (12/24/2007)

I’m a big fan of “The Final Encyclopedia”, one of the books in Gordon R. Dickson’s Childe Cycle. It tells the first part of Hal Mayne’s story, who was found drifting in Earth orbit in a courier ship at the age of two. He’s raised on an estate in the Rocky Mountains by three tutors, one from each of the most powerful of the Splinter Cultures, colonies of humanity with deliberately engineered planetary cultures: the Friendlies, who focus on faith and God, the Exotics, who focus on the advancement of humanity through philosophy, and the Dorsai, a martial culture. His tutors are killed when he’s sixteen, and he flees the planet to escape the attention of the man responsible for their deaths, Bleys Ahrens.

The Final Enclyclopedia details Hal’s growth into young adulthood– his genius is accompanied by some physiological and mental advantages, he discovers– and realization of his purpose in life. That purpose lies in the eponymous The Final Encyclopedia, an artificial satellite placed in orbit around Earth that serves as a repository of all the knowledge and artwork generated by humanity, and as a center for their study. His goal is to harness TFE to lead humanity in the next stage of its evolution, which he views as the removal of the instinct to cause harm to other humans, and the instillation of a sense of communal responsibility.

His nemesis, Bleys, has also decided that he will lead the human race forward, through the agency of the society of Others, composed of people who are the product of cross-breeding between the Splinter Cultures. He believes that, as they tend to be more intelligent than mainline humanity, and the inheritors of the multiple strengths of the Splinter Cultures, they represent the next step for humanity. He also believes that technology led humanity to leave its cradle too soon to ensure its survival. His goal is to manuever the Others into positions of dominance over the colony planets, turn the resources of the colonies against Earth, and repopulate Earth with Others while simultaneously self-destructing the colonies.

The Final Encyclopedia is more than strong enough to stand on its own, but it’s in fact only the middle of Hal’s story. It turns out that Hal is actually the reincarnation of a historic Dorsai figure, Donal Graeme. The earlier books tell his story, and make it clear how Hal attempt to assist humanity forward is a continuation of Graeme’s own.

Possibly relevant posts:

• A book proposal: God of the gap (5/14/2007)
• Election and other evil notions (8/4/2001)
• Convocation (9/17/2006)

I just posted a challenge (the coupon collector problem) to the UHME google group. Here’s the group blurb:

This is a group for students at the University of Houston who are
interested in discussing mathematical topics and problems.

Anyone is welcome to join.

Feel free to post problems or discussions.

The original UHME mailing list started when I was an undergraduate; we had a bumpercrop of students enthusiastic about math that all took the same series of courses offered by our resident Socratic-style/Moore’s-method prof, so we decided to start a University of Houston math enthusiast club (UHME). Unfortunately, due to scheduling conflicts, I could only make it to a few of the physical meetings per term, but I used to blow up the mailing list.

Those were the days. After the initial generation graduated, the mailing list speedily became defunct. Recently one of the guys who stayed on at UH for his grad degree started up the UHME google group. So far there are three members, so I’m trolling for live meat.

If you’re interested in challenging math problems, or just discussing math (there were a lot of tongue-in-cheek metamathematical discussions– your basic math nerd shop talk stuff– on the old mailing list), join! And if you want to see what the coupon collector problem is, and more importantly (you can’t google this kind of insight), how it relates to randomized algorithms, join!

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• Awesome email posting abilities of Wordpress (8/30/2004)
• On UCB (5/21/2004)
• grad schools— the final list! (9/28/2005)

I’m thinking of going to a shrink and getting myself shrinkwrapped– since high school I’ve thought I had some sort of social anxiety disorder, and although it’s not as debilitating as it once was, it’s still bad enough to interfere with my life more than I’m willing to let it. Anyhow, I was looking this stuff up on Wikipedia and I came across the Eysenck Personality Test (an online version). I don’t know how much more meaningful this is than all the other personality tests you come across on the internet, but my results seem depressingly accurate.

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• Some thoughts on shareware (7/14/2007)
• Koder search engine (6/22/2005)
• UH’s second annual middle and high school math competition (2/20/2006)

This page is the most amusing NUMB3RS related website I’ve come across yet; it enumerates the inaccuracies and inconsistencies of each episode, mathematical and otherwise, and the (numerous) occasions where Charlie’s contributions are empty mummery, while contrasting them to the glowing reviews of the show given by Gary Lorden, Eric Weisstein, Keith Devlin, and other people who should know better.

This page contains analysis of the CBS television program NUMB3RS and the affiliated worksheet program sponsored by Texas Instruments and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Of primary concern are evidence of Charlie’s pathological behavior and inappropriate relationships, instances in which Charlie’s mathematical work is either useless or unnecessary for solving the crime at hand, and inaccuracies in the worksheets that are often such that they render the worksheets useless as a tie-in to the episode.

Ha ha: pathological behavior and inappropriate relationships– it’s like the author has a personal vendetta against Charlie. And I love how he refers to Larry as the “homeless physics professor.”

Possibly relevant posts:

• Script for Shifting Postscript pages (6/19/2003)
• Electrodynamics question (11/22/2008)
• Math as a Maze; poems (2/12/2004)

“We posited the existence of waves with frequencies outside the range of those known. We propose that those waves could be used to transmit information”

Everything is wrong about those two sentences. If you’re going to resurrect the old cliche of the reluctant telepath who sees disasters, please do it better than that.

Possibly relevant posts:

• The joke (2/7/2005)
• Thanksgiving (11/26/2003)
• Anticipating a math REU (3/1/2004)

“Of course, E=MC^2 … This means, by focusing the radio output of the magnetron onto the beans”

Alton Brown is the new face of Welch’s advertisement, apparently. Meh, not too exciting.

But it’s nice to see him back on TV. Maybe Good Eats is still on FoodTV, but I don’t have cable, so it’s been years since I’ve had the privilege of listening to his unique blend of science, history, and tomfoolery.

The episode about edamame (named “Et tu mame”) is a good representative of the geist of the show. There’s a huge informational dump after the beginning skit, when Alton’s on his safari to the edamame field, then the show settles into its more usual humorous tone when he hits the kitchen.

The second part is where the true food geekiness comes out (or is it biology geekiness? he tends to mix the two)

Possibly relevant posts:

• Vector Analysis and Fast food (9/22/2006)
• The scientific method is not magical (10/9/2008)
• Mathematical Information Access Software System (2/7/2005)