2^6

The Facebook, my Gawd? I've never had so many people remember my birthday. Three screenfulls of gmail inbox scrolling continuously like a screen saver.

Windbag Senior says: "Wait till the senior moments start. (I've been having them for years:2^5.)"

I agree - 32 is such wonderful age. Talkin' bout my generation? As to the symptoms... Constantly running to pee, having bowel movements at oddest times, beautiful girls looking through you as one would look through a train window - you have to admire my courage, [this to Rock'n'roll Dreams, who could not understand why I bother to carry on, already in 1978] to survive all that for so long.

2^6 is a good number, in base 64 it is 10, so I got to blow out one lit candle, and blow out one imagined candle standing for zero. Half of the Indians at the dinner were Jewish, so the cake was Passover cake, made of matzo flour. Really good.

Next day I windbagged my way through two lectures at Tufts. Under the portrait of Norbert Wiener as a 13 year old graduate.

We count our blessings.

Grothendieck has spoken: what now?

This declaration by Alexandre Grothendieck, has been placed on the homepages of the Grothendieck Circle (in French), and Ferment Magazine (in English):

Declaration of my intention to refuse permission to allow my works to be published

I have no intention of publishing, or republishing, any work or text of which I am the author, in any form whatsoever, in electronic or print media, whether it be in the form of entire works or extracts, whether or not they be texts of a scientific or personal character, or any other kind, or in the form of personal letters addressed to others - as well as all translations of texts of which I am the author.

All editions or transmission of such texts which have been produced in the past without my express permission, or shall be made in the future as long as I am alive, which will or has been done in opposition to my will, as it is precisely expressed herein, will be deemed illegitimate in my eyes.

To the degree that I become aware of them, I will insist to the makers of these pirate editions, or any other publications including, without my express permission, texts from my own hand (apart from possible citations of a few lines at most), that they immediately withdraw these works from the marketplace; that the directors of libraries holding copies of my works, that these works be removed at once.

If my intentions as an author, as clearly expressed here, are treated as dead-letter, then let the shame of their contempt for me fall upon the heads of those responsible for those illegitimate editions, and on the directors of the libraries that harbor them. (From the moment that one or the other be informed of my intentions)

Made at my residence January 3, 2010 AG

Google.com/voice: 404 IT STINX

OK, I admit it: I never liked phones. I tried to live without one but having a wife and no phone is not possible. Actually, even before that - I moved into Livjaegergade without phone, but one day Carsten got so annoyed that he ordered one for me. As one fifth of Danes share the same name, and rest the remaining dozen names, they use their profession to distinguish themselves in the phone book. I got "fa." as a suffix, and an irate call from a ladyfrom the phone company to complain that I was misrepresenting myself, as I was no "fabrikant" (factory owner). Took me a while to get her to accept that I was a "fremmed arbejder" (foreigner worker), but she eventually gave up, and "fa." I stayed for next twenty years, with phone numbers everywhere: Copenhagen, New York, Chicago, Atlanta. Urrrgh. But at least I have no cell phone. Yet.

If one calls my google.com/voice number 404 487 8469, any number of phones in US that I set as active ring: home, office, Chicago home, a cell phone, or wherever I happen to be. If none of them answer, google.com/voice records callers message, and sends it to me by email. For example, one can try to pronounce my name, and it shows up in my email:

Whuz-yr-name?

It also transcripts it - and that is hilarious, it does not like any immigrant accents, so far only a lady from GaTech Human Resources got transcripted sensibly. Typical result is more like this:

You-better-brush-up-on-your-Shakespeare

If any phone picks up before google voicemail kicks in, then I do not get
a message - that's why I am trying to disable voicemail on all phones.

Inhuman Resources

I did my best to fill in my p-card (work purchasing credit card) and sign 7000 places, but not once since 2001 has this thing just gone in - always comes back to me multiple times. For example, there is some person in Inhuman Resources who does not like the way I sign these things. So I feel it less traumatic I put these forms in a cubbyhole of one of our administrators who actually does not do these things, but has gentle hands. It will be passed on, and come back to me in a few days.

It's also an occasion for celebration, because I refused to authorize Inhuman Resources to do a criminal check on me, so this is my last p-card, and from now on my attempts to get purchases refunded will take on a still more voluminous paperwork form. I was hoping for something more in the tradition of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence (Magna Carta, presumption of innocence, stuff like that) when I immigrated to these shores from "them" (the comrades of former communist Yugoslavia).

Gowd, I must be turning Libertarian? It's something they are adding to Virginia-Highlands water.

But having all administration (financial offices, grant office, computer people) turn from supporting us in our work to running interference and policing us is getting increasingly tedious, so I'm getting edgy. This is what happened. First a secretary somewhere embezzled tens of thousands of dollars (our annual budget is 1.2 billion dollars). Then another secretary posted naked pictures of herself using work computer. The level of wrongdoing remains the same. To cite Patrick Jenkins, senior Information Systems Auditor (Whistle, April 2010):

It's important to remember that it's a very small minority involved in questionable activity. [...] The problems we run across are easily 0.01 percent or less of what we look at, overall.

Total 2010 GaTech budget is $1.2B, so we are talking about $120K in questionable spending. School of physics alone has about 4 people using most of their time generating paperwork related to faculty purchases. My wild guess is that we are spending between $1M and $10M to prevent faculty from initiating potentially questionable spending in $100K range. Would it not be much cheaper to assume that the faculty and staff consists of upright citizens, and criminally prosecute the few that stray from the straight path?

Nevertheless - transition took only couple of years - we have been kidnapped by a locust cloud of liability lawyers, who construe the purpose of the Flagship of Technology and Science of Southeast to be preventing people who work here from doing anything that could become a criminal liability for the institution.

In the old time my computer would greet me like this:

--- welcome to "zero", the CNS linux network server ---
--- ubuntu/dapper linux 2.6 2 amd86x64 ---
Now that KBG has taken over, it greets us like this:

This system is for the use of authorized users only. Individuals using this computer system without authority, or in excess of their authority, are subject to having their activities on this system monitored and recorded. Be advised that if such monitoring reveals possible evidence of criminal activity, system personnel may provide the evidence to law enforcement officials.

Well thank you so much. In my innate state of moral turpitude the thought that criminal activity might lead me to law enforcement officials never crossed my mind. Now I'll be doubly vigilant while engaging in it. And while we are at it, can you please hang a sign around the neck of every child entering the campus saying:

Georgia Civil Code Secs. 19-7-5/19-15- 1/49-5-180 and Georgia Criminal Code Secs. § 16-3-20. Parent or person in loco parentis reasonably disciplining of a minor has a justification for a criminal prosecution based on that conduct.

plus rest of the penal code, lest we forget. So now we are recruiting top talent by whispering sweet nothings in their ears while a job offer that reads like incarceration papers is in the mail.

As an added security measure, an unattended computer on my desk locks up every 15 (fifteen) minutes and pops up the above winged greeting. Then you press [ctrl][alt][del] and type in your user ID and your password, and voila! you can continue your criminal activities. Really improves your productivity while keeping you out of the jail. So everybody is lugging their laptops to work, and waiting for the day when a G4 wireless connection will liberate us. Part of our research is already running on John's off-campus server, and I'll have to move the rest as well.

The stupidities our IT Security Organs impose in their very effective work on preventing us from working... For example, CNS network Tzar and I could not [shut down] the Center communal W7 PC, so we had to request the KGB administrator to come, log in as administrator. What goes through IT people's heads I cannot fathom. My instinct is that if you give people a chance, they'll do the right thing. Why would they be doing science otherwise?

I'm writing pointless letters of protest, like to our telephone police. "They" just informed us that from now on they will erase any voice mail older than 30 days. So I'm trying to figure how to move all my voice mail to google.com/voice. They are not technology powerhouse, like us, but they seem to be able to keep voicemail for more than 30 days. If the locust cloud of liability lawyers does this to our emails - and - for added computer security - to all our computer files, the life will become so much simpler again. As secure as the death itself.

Followup: What I wrote above was in the morning. Since then I got this email: "You have turned in your January p-card statement. However, you have not signed it on the cardholder signature line. Please come by the Finance Office as soon as possible to sign your statement."

I'm fairly sure I signed that piece of paper, but not on the right dotted line. The world will collapse and both our departmental Financial Officers and I will be taken away in ball and chains if I do not "come by the Finance Office as soon as possible to sign". But I feel too fragile to attempt such a thing in my present condition.

Nobody said that life here would be a bed of roses.

In the real world such defects could have consequences

My personal playwright, of K. und K. fame:

"The liberation of the laptop. We can work anywhere, any time, so we drift away from our offices, retreating into our own little cyberworlds, while the floors grow quiet as the prairie and the nexus of activity spins apart... Know what I have? A writing board, coffee shops, and a consortium of bastards. Go cry on someone else's shoulder."

"While a physicist's gotta hide, dramatista needs to feel the pulse of humanity and lots of bastards to get adrenaline flowing. Go get them!"

"Oh, I don't have to go get them, it's the theater community, I can't avoid them. On the other hand, knowing so many actors, directors, and, yes, playwrights, has given me an invaluable understanding of narcissism, callowness, superficiality, cravenness, hypocrisy, selfishness, and self-delusion. Fortunately, most of these people don't live in the real world, where such defects could have serious consequences. We are so much more comfortable in the black box than Out There, where the others don't realize how special we are."

"I've had some interest in [my own story] over the years, but that's never led to production. 2010 might be the year, though; I've submitted it to Essential Theater and to Stage Door. However, I've given up trying to figure out how ADs make their decisions. I've moved on."

Do no count citations, impact numbers

This from D. N. Arnold, SIAM NEWS, December 4, 2009 (via my friend Gregor)
Integrity Under Attack: The State of Scholarly Publishing

Pay no heed to silly numbers - just check what journal the good publications that you have read are, publish there. Even that can be gamed and is, in good journals like Physical Review Letters; once you establish a little subfield, with a group of friends citing and refereeing each other, it can have a good run with not very good articles. There is no defense other than common sense.

Incurrable schmaltz

I cannot help it. Instead of doing anything sensible, I fell for this. And this. OK, here are a few movies that I love. They might be pure schmaltz, but I cannot help it - I'm an incurable romantic:

Off the Map
Genghis Blues (a wonderful documentary by my two nephews)
Everything is Illuminated (with lead singer of Punk Bordello as interpreter)
Across the Universe (the baby boomer relapse)
Run Lola, Run (a movie about sensitivity to initial conditions)

For adult couple viewing I recommend any of Sid Nagel's 10 best movies.

You better brush up on your Shakespeare, Google Voice

I cheated - had Nick do the work for me and take picture of Blot. But get a load of this:

William Shakespeare - Sonnet #29,


When, in disgrace with Fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings.


as read by Blot

and transcribed by Google Voice:

When in disgrace with Fortune. I'm inside.
I will alluring be, we, my outcast state
and so I will definitely been with my blue skies
and look upon myself in curse my fate
wishing me like 21 more rich in hope.
Featured like a m like, and with friends possessed
design this Mansard and that meant scope
with what I most enjoy content at least
yet in these thoughts myself. Almost. This biting.
Hopefully, I think, on, the, and then my state
like to the market breakup day arising
from selling her things him at heaven's gate

for the i, sweet love. Remember such well Springs
at de nice want to change my state with king.

Yeah, I don't gain own.
We were 42 20 80, savvy it up and walk to do to reach Jandy are not Oktoberfest for feel it'd be air. If you do then.


To be fair, the last four sentences are in Danish, Croatian, French and German, respectively:

Jeg vil gerne ha' en ol.

Large aspect plane Couette turbulence

For an introduction into plane Couette turbulence, see
ChaosBook.org/tutorials

Alexander the Huge

what do you know? At the opening of Gunilla's exhibition (scroll on the right until a picture of two girls appears - then click on next until the big painting of little Alexander shows up) Alexander the Huge was the first paining that got sold.
So much for the theory that nobody buys baby portraits (other than one's own baby's).

Toni faces mortality

I talked to my father. He is a very sprightly 72 year, still running the Central Europe sales of the Danish company he works for, and flying all over the place almost every week. 

He and his wife had moved to Villach on former Austrian/Yugoslav border some eight years ago, both to avoid taxes and to be close to Croatia. So what has he been up to last few weeks? 

He knows an architect that was remodeling some tombs in the pretty 18th century Zagreb cemetery, and the architect found for him a good empty tomb just in the front row by the entrance arcade (with all known Croatian poets, writers, politicians, sculptors etc.). He has space for six, so he is now moving in my grandfather and grandmother's coffins from Rijeka, and grandgrandmother from Slavonski Brod (rest is in Derventa across in Bosnia, town which Serbs leveled with the earth in 1992). He will also put up his brother's name (he was buried up to his neck alive by the Serbian partisans in 1945, even though he was part of the Croatian partisan underground), and so he has three free slots. He says it is more convenient for him to have them all in Zagreb, as he has an apartment there and they are there often. 

I think he 1) has too much money and nothing reasonable to use it on 2) he is being his usual manic obsessive. In other words, he is thinking of mortality, and the response is a catholic one - it is important there there be a grave, and as many generations of family names on it as possible. 

I ate with a group of Indian colleagues/wives last night and asked them - what do they do with the deceased? A family and friends getting together and remembering - cremation - then a remembrance on the date a year later, each successive year less elaborate. They believe in reincarnation, so the sooner all material aspects are gone, the better for the cosmic cycle - only the saints are buried, ase they have reached nirvana. At the same time, each Hindu is supposed to know his patriarchal descent through 14 generations - this has to do with 1) property 2) arranging marriages. Each Hindu knows the name of the first in the family tree - primordial first, not the 14th generation back, and one avoids marriages between the descendants from the same tree. Only the men count in the tree.

Toichiro Kinoshita makes a transatlantic phone call

 

to Kay, June & Ray Kinoshita, June 2023

 

I should have gone through my diaries and correspondence from 1963-1973 but many deaths and general decay of my generation seems to be getting me down, and I can see I will not get through this any time soon, so here is a tidbit I would have written about. You, being all amazing students, and me almost as good of a student, we have all had decades of recurrent nightmares that go something like this: You have suddenly received a letter from your high school, and they have found out that you had missed the exam in -let's say- biology -and your high school diploma (and the college diploma that followed) is null and void until you complete your biology requirement. This nightmare comes back and back again for years and decades, until the work takes over and you have no time for nightmares any longer.

So, you paid Velma to type it up and you have delivered your PhD thesis in July 1973, you have not as much as touched a computer keyboard for the next 4 years, so traumatic all the computer nonsense had been, once Tom lured you into this madness by giving you first a few easy Feynman integrals that you aced, there was no turning back. Way too much had been invested into the calculation. It was like 2 years in the trenches of Vietnam and that was not what you had gotten into grad school for.

You have totally changed what you work on, you have thrown away anything that might even vaguely smell of your PhD thesis, except for a tiny ring-book that contains the lists of the numerical values of some 1000 (?) Feynman integrals you had computed . It's 1995 (?) and your Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen office phone rings. It's Tom. It cannot be good - he had never called you, and a transatlantic call costs an arm and a leg. Tom wants to know whether I had computed the integral 63-B (let's say). I have no idea, I do not even have my PhD thesis (it's in my American brother's basement someplace in Michigan) but I have this little ring-binder on the bookshelf. I run for it, I find 63-B and wow! 

 

I tell Tom: "Sapirstein did 63-B."
Saved.

The thing is, Tom was not into making mistakes, and I caught all of mine by finding independent calculational methods to cross-check everything - in our 2 years of calculation we found only one, numerically small error in one of our counter-terms, due to a typing error in a Jacobian. We found it by recalculating everything in a new formulation, one which I believe I had invented (my memory is of the idea coming to me while babysitting for a graduate student friend's baby), and Tom believed he had invented (he must have had a different memory, you were too big and too wild for any babysitting).

 

I never found out what happened to Sapirstein.

I have this somewhere in the diaries and letters. But I did find a letter from Tom in the sole ring-binder leftover from my PhD calculations.

 

Toichiro Kinoshita: the theorist whose calculations of g-2 shed light on our understanding of nature - 29 May 2023 Robert P Crease 

Toichiro (“Tom”) Kinoshita (1925–2023): Pioneer of precision in tumultuous times - July 11, 2023 Robert P Crease

Masako Kinoshita - Me & Olivia go way back

Memorial for Toichiro & Masako Kinoshita

 

A regular pervert in the kingdom of Bohrdom

I am living as it were in the very kingdom of Bohrdom, but as the fate would have it, something actually happened here. 

Yesterday fru F. was exiting out onto my balcony, when she perceived a stark naked young man of muscular build and Nordic persuasion standing in the balcony doorway across. He's eyes were closed - bright sunny day - in rapt adoration - and he had the cock out, a rather impressive tool says G. Having been married 7 times, G. knows the available range. So she withdrew into the kitchen - what does she know the Danish customs? 5 minutes later UFO himself came into the kitchen to inspect the sight, and the man was still at it - it is apparently a laborious process. 

Ever since we have been busy - something as exciting has never happened in our little petty bourgeois building - seems we got a regular pervert. Catching up with New York, finally. I have installed locks on back-stair doors and so forth. This is it - the big news. 

Rolling back into abyss of time, backwards: I became a director of the CATS Center (Chaos and Turbulence Studies) I got the Danish Physical Society prize and delivered a major oration. My Wo was in tears with pride. There was 100.000 kroner to this, but it will all go to help rebuild a library of a Croatian University bombed silly by Serbs in one of their paroxysms of fraternal luuuuv. 

Been engaged in much scientific procreation, hormones and doctors and whole schlemiel - does not work, and is sure not fun. But the Wo wants to make a miniP of her own, so we are in clutches of miniscience.

They made me official Windbag, member of the (Danish) Royal Society. Delivered oration explaining Quantum Chaos to archeologists and such. The nodded in awe, said that while usually they only understand the prepositions in physicist's popular talks, this time they understood some nouns and verbs as well. 

Been profoundly disgusted at this planet - fat assed Euro diplomats and such, watching on tely an ongoing genocide, hoping that Serbs just get this over with so all is quiet again. De-pressing. 

On the bright side, variety of local friends kids are also growing into very delightful people - so charming that one could even consider procreation as rational act, and not only the selfish gene in action. 

This grownup life has not much to recommended - everybody exerting civilizing pleasure until there is nothing left that makes life worth living. My strategy has been internalization: I just think Predrag thoughts internally, and I externally nod politely and eat correctly out of color coordinated plates. 

One of the things I miss is freedom to just take off for a week or a month, and wonder in Greenland or somewhere. But we suffer from the dreaded academic 2-body problem - getting 2 jobs in a same place. So I might have to leave all this behind, and head for god knows where. Might be fun...

A not so short history of Universal Function

Acceptance speech - 1993 NKT Research Prize in Physics
Dansk Fysisk Selskab Årsmøde, Lalandia, Rødby, Maj 18, 1993

                                                                           Excerpted and edited July 5, 2019

[For A very brief history of universality in period doubling click here]
[For hyperlinks to some of the literature,  click here]

Among my friends at Cornell were two called Feigenbaum.  The first one moved to a factory town to do union organizing, and reached brief national fame when the Mafia bombed his house.  The other one was amazingly fast in solving New York Times crossword puzzles, but he published nothing. Hans Bethe dispatched him to Blackhole, Virginia, where he languished publishing nothing until Peter Carruthers rescued him and took him to Los Alamos on the risky presumption that the man seemed very smart.  In contrast to these good-for-nothings, I was advertised as the best thing since Roman Jackiw and sent off to Stanford, Princeton and Oxford with a mission to solve the QCD quark confinement problem.

[...]

Mitchell told me about existence of period doubling universality at 10pm on December 19 1975, in a bar in New York City, over a glass of good red wine and in presence of my Black Irish Poetess.

In spring 1976 he came  from Los Alamos to visit Princeton, having published even less than before.  He gave a seminar, but nobody understood a word. Starting point was a parabola, then things got incredibly complicated, and at the end it turned out that the theory might be applicable to fluctuations in forest moth populations.

During his graduate school years at MIT, the strongest intellectual influence on Mitchell was not his adviser Francis Low (of Gell-Mann--Low beta function), who by that time had lost faith in quantum field theory, but charismatic cognitive scientist Jerry Lettvin. So Mitchell and I were driven by a secret agenda - the thing was robust, you could make it very imperfect, and a universal superstructure would survive the imperfections. In other words, just what you need to build a brain - all parts imperfect, and the thing functions anyway.

But my first task was to help my friend, make his lecture comprehensible. My friend Betty Boop worked on a Hewlett-Packard assembly line, so I was able to acquire a discounted programmable pocket calculator (with [multiply] and  [divide] buttons interchanged) for a mere one-fourth of my monthly salary.  Mitchell needed no such display of dedication, Los Alamos was floating in money.

I started thinking about functional equations on May 1, 1976. I calculated away with such gusto that I was calculating even laying on my belly on an operating table, with a surgeon lancing a large bicycle-caused sore. Eventually I reduced the whole complicated mess to one equation, wrote down the period doubling fixed point function equation on May 3, 1976,

and went off to the math library to look it up.  The Institute has an excellent math library, but I did not find it.  As a matter of fact, we never found it to this very day - it had never been written down before.
             For the record: universality in period doubling and the functional renormalization theory that explains it were         Mitchell's discovery, my contribution was to recast what was an infinite tower of renormalization equations into a more concise form.

As one would expect, nobody wanted to hear about it.  To be fair, I remember that a total of four people did:  Freeman Dyson, John Milnor, Bill Thurston, and Donna Lee.  Donna Lee is a wonderful San Franciscan whom I love even more dearly than Dyson; the rest you should know.

Blott, AKA Donna Lee above us to the right. In front: following our friend Stephen Wolfram, Nordita purchased the first Sun-1 in Scandinavia (though this desktop is not it). On the keyboard is one of Mitchell's calculators, on which he did most of his early period-doubling computations.

Six years passed and I was laboring away at Nordita, Copenhagen, when the word arrived from USA; there is chaos, and in August 1981 I could muster an audience for my first talk about the period doubling universality. It was an after-dinner talk in the Perturbative QCD Nordita summer school, Yngsjö, Sweden. In long run, quantum field theorists became dismayed by this theory. Being as intelligent as they were, they should have understood it with no effort, but they did not. But this first evening talk, to innocent, budding theory graduate student was a resounding success.

I went around spreading the news. In those days it was impossible for most to access the literature in a field so new, with foundational publications spread across so many specialties, so a put together a book of source materials:

This was the 3rd of my heavily illustrated home-production books, with hand drawn covers that I called 'Classics Illustrated'. Here we have Graf von Chaos himself as Faust (he loved Goethe) in der Periodenverdoppelnde Wald, cigarette aflame, desirous of Black Irish Poetess, soul aflame with turbulent longings, Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan, eying Die Gleichung. I had just returned from California where it was not unusual that a woman would ask you about your Sign. Plus? Minus? I resent all those violent and horned animals, so I would have to explain that mine was Helix Vulgaris, or the Gentle Garden Snail, the not well known 13th Sign of The Zodiac.

Passover seder with Bram

Professor Pro is convinced that I am Jewish, because I have that gleam in my eye (well, maybe, but that must have been before 1658).

One would find overdose of the alleged gleam in my eyes last Monday - fresh gefelte fish and matzo meal arrived from New York, and there I was, kneading the balls. We had the haggadah, Sigrun's David acted as the youngest child asking the appropriate question, and we had the bitter herbs and matzo and the charoset mortar with which "we" built the pyramids, and the menu that would warm up my Czech grandma's heart - the whole schlmeal.

        There were some irregularities; specially that injunction about circumcised males was not strictly observed - but the rest - the genuine thing. It was beautiful, in a totally unexpected way. I had invited Bram and Ida, which turned out to be something much more important than I had realized. Abraham Pais was musing those days about his survival during the war and about layers of his identity; Jew, Dutch, American, now even a little bit Danish. So for him this was an occasion to remember his orthodox father, and for the first time to sing songs in Hebrew in front of his Nordic beloved; he sang beautifully, with Ashkenazi pronunciation the songs his father liked, and with Sephardic the ones his mother liked. It was very touching, and moving.

        Then Bram told us how he lost his faith. One Shabbat his parents had left him alone in the kitchen, and he stood there with a match in his hand - what would happen if he did the did the forbidden? and - and - he lit the match. He stood there petrified, awaiting the heavens to open and lighting to strike him. Nothing. So there was no God after all.

        Next day I made the error of reading the Exodus and loudly commenting how I feel about that petty and vengeful God of the Jews - that was not wise, as it lead to a scene, with me accused of belittling God.

The Man who made Matzo Balls

PS June 7, 1996

Message from Bram: " I plan to be in Copenhagen for s stretch starting end of June. You are supposed to save a seat by your side for me in the frokoststue."

PS December 4, 1999

Bram Pais saw me in the cafeteria and immediately said:
"You look terrible - What are you doing with this Jewish beard?''
 I said: "How do you know it is a Jewish beard?''
"I know'' he said.

PS October 25, 2000 Apropos Bram

Tina, friskier at 80 than many are at 60, is the woman who hid Abraham Pais in Amsterdam during the war. She told me few months ago I look like Marcelo Mastroiani as we danced to kletzmer at Bram's memorial. It's not true, but it is a sensitive thing to say to a guy of uncertain countenance.

Harry J. Lipkin: "Bram had spent the war in Amsterdam, hidden from the Germans. When he was finally caught and arrested and would have been shot, his teacher Kramers wrote a letter to Heisenberg asking him to help Bram. Heisenberg did nothing. But the heroic Dutch woman who had hidden Bram  during all these years risked her life to go to the Gestapo commander to plea for Bram's release and she took a copy of Kramers' letter to Heisenberg. This was enough to convince the commander to release Bram. His cell mate who had been arrested with him was shot."

Feigenbaum contemplating a cauliflower

It is true: Mitchell has gone live on the 7PM German TV news  contemplating a cauliflower (?)

Zeta function for diffusion on Lorenz lattice

It started by having some great time with Mitchell, theologians and semi-idiots.

Then I ran into a problem, a problem that turned out to be very pleasant, the problem of Eckmannia. That is to say, we actually solved a problem - Eckmann is still convinced that if we could solve it, it must be trivial; "everybody must know that???" - but we finally wrote down the zeta function for diffusion on Lorenz lattice.

I have been thinking about it for at least 3 years - and it finally came out, with a very pretty and sensible answer. So now we have done what I never have done; written a paper in 2 days flat, from first conversation about existence of the problem, to the first complete draft of the paper.

I was also screamed at by some Chinese physicist about importance of his solution of the percolation problem, but I am so happy it made no dent.

The worst meal of my life

Apropos nothing: 

Universität Greifswald has a special place in my heart, as the place where I had the absolutely worst meal of my life, in the University Mensa. I was given what smelled like a barely rinsed plastic plate with multiple indentations, and the mensa cook ladled in some orange-yellow fluid substance that I still do not know what it was.

I also remember fondly watching prisoners in white-black horizontal stripes suits walking in a circle, while talking to the Chair of the Physics Department (his window overlooked the prison yard). Greifswald was brown gray, everything about it and its air was colored by the coal soot.

Greifswald Nonlinear Dynamics Workshop, Trassenheide, GDR, 25 april 1990.

Hallur wins the 3rd world war, European theatre

Hallur wouldn't get of the phone a few minutes ago - had to tell me that he won the 3rd world war, European theatre. He was Warsaw pact - that is better, because Warsaw pact has so much more of everything. He dropped a gas bomb on Bruxelles; NATO retaliated by sending a huge atom bomb - he lost something, he thinks it was called Moscow - blew away most of the screen - but then he got West Germans surrounded, 5 armies encircling their 2; couldn't kill them all, but he won anyway.

Mitchell does prime time TV in Copenhagen

Mitchell has appeared in the leading Danish left-intellectual rag, (Mis)Information, holding a Wonder-bread-like blackboard sponge, pensively, to great merriment of our students who have the picture on our bulletin board, with a variety of captions emanating from his mouth, comic-strip style. It is a reasonable article, from Mitchell's angle the best thing about it is that it is in danish, so he is safe from understanding it, and I ask you only 3 brief stupid questions, so I'm also clean.

Mitchell is now a heartthrob of many a wo in this ducky kingdom. They aired him and Polyakov in prime time, and they re-aired him alone today. It is actually almost sensitively done, considering the foreign worker treatment I got on Danish DR televison.

Well, Mitchell does have his detractors. MargArethe says that he has a strange way of blinking into camera, and that neither he nor Polyakov are her man types. But many a less critical Valkyrie is wet to her knees just at one of those blinks.

Other than that, there is much ballooning around. The Eye's woman is supposed to burst any day or hour now, and Ulla and Natural Radiance bounce around like Venus of Milendorf fertility amulets.

How long is this seriousness going to continue (and this includes Mitchell)? It's deadening, the joy is gone if every act is supposed to be laden with meaning. I'll go home and bounce few balls on the HP - it's trivial childlike game, but it is making me euphoric. All the patriarchal and fessorial responsibility
is dry and dusty as old wood.