Jordan Ellenberg's Blog, page 4

Any sufficiently advanced corporation is indistinguishable from academia.

(via Michael Harris)

Lena Gorban, the wife of the mathematician Azat Miftakhov’s, has requested that mathematicians post this message on Azat’s birthday, which is March 21. This is his sixth birthday in prison in Dimitrovgrad, near Ulianovsk in Russia. For more information on his case please see this website.

Hello, this is Azat Miftakhov. For technical reasons, New Year’s Eve happened a week ago. I received many warm, touching letters and cute pictures. Reading them, I experienced many positive emotions. I would like to answer everyone, but return letters are very difficult for me. Just like public addresses, which I make extremely rarely. The thing is that I am too demanding of myself and I am afraid that my words are imperfect. I worried about my insurmountable perfectionism for a long time, until one day I accidentally learned about similar problems with writing texts from such a luminary of science as Lev Davidovich Landau. It even happened that his co-authors designed joint works for him. After that, I partly accepted this feature of mine. But only partly, because it still bothers me that you expect answers from me! And on my birthday, I found the strength in myself, and I want to express my gratitude to you. Thank you for all the support I have received from you over the years. For your letters and wishes, for the events you have organized: from large rallies in support of political prisoners in different countries of the world to bold actions in totalitarian Russia (like, for example, the recent action at the Lomonosov monument in support of me and Dima Ivanov). I am glad that political activity does not fade away, despite the difficult times. What you do greatly helps political prisoners and their loved ones, but also demonstrates mass disagreement with the policies of the current regime. With your support and solidarity, the walls will come down!

Привет, это Азат Мифтахов. По техническим причинам Новый год у меня случился неделю назад. Я получил много тёплых трогательных писем и милых картинок. Читая их, я испытал множество позитивных эмоций. Мне хотелось бы ответить каждому, однако обратные письма даются мне с большим трудом. Так же, как и публичные обращения, которые я делаю крайне редко.

Дело в том, что я бываю слишком требователен к себе и боюсь, что мои слова несовершенны. Я долго переживал по поводу своего непреодолимого перфекционизма, пока однажды случайным образом не узнал о схожих проблемах с написанием текстов у такого светила науки, как Лев Давидович Ландау. Даже случалось, что совместные работы оформляли за него его соавторы. После этого я отчасти принял эту свою особенность.

Но лишь отчасти, потому что всё равно меня беспокоит, что вы ждёте от меня ответов! И в свой День рожденья я нашёл в себе силы, и хочу высказать вам свою благодарность. Благодарю вас за всю вашу поддержку, полученную за все годы. За ваши письма и пожелания, за проводимые мероприятия: от больших митингов в поддержку политзаключенных в разных странах мира до смелых акций в тоталитарной России (как, например, недавняя акция у памятника Ломоносова в поддержку меня и Димы Иванова).

Меня радует, что политическая активность не угасает, не смотря на сложные времена. То, что вы делаете, очень помогает политзаключенным и их близким, но также демонстрирует массовое несогласие с политикой нынешнего режима.

С вашей поддержкой и солидарностью стены рухнут!

CJ was considering (but in the end isn’t) living in the substance-free dorm at college. I know what it means — it means you can’t drink or smoke weed in your room. But I like the name. The substance-free dorm! Where everything exists only in the realm of forms, you dematerialize at the door and float ethereally into the concept of a bunkbed, your roommate the idea of a roommate, your home a desire to have a home.

was the 2024 Baltimore Orioles. I seem to have been the only person who noticed this piece of history being made, so I wrote a piece for Slate about it, and more generally about the way we notice what happens more than we notice what doesn’t happen. But what doesn’t happen is just as important!

The best thing about writing this is that I got to have a phone call with moneyball hero and Orioles Assistant GM Sig Mejdal. I felt like a bigshot! And he was extremely nice and down to earth. I hope he wins us five championships in a row.

Back to math and baseball posting later this week, but first, some politics.

I don’t always talk about this on the blog, but I’m Jewish and I’m a Zionist. I work closely with Israeli mathematicians, I visit Israel, I contribute to charities there, and I would protest any move to cut ties with Israel by the university where I work. And UW-Madison, like every American university I’m aware of, is firmly committed to maintaining those ties, which benefit both countries.

I do not believe that the current Presidential administration has my best interests or the Jewish people’s best interest in any part of its mind. The harm it wants to do to the American research and teaching enterprise is not on my behalf. It is not going to do any good for the thriving Jewish community of faculty, staff, and students here at UW-Madison or anywhere else; quite the opposite.

I don’t usually sign open letters, because they usually have a lot of extra bullet points and there’s always something I can find that I don’t feel comfortable putting my name to. This one is much more narrowly tailored, saying in more words just what I said above, and I signed it. If you’re Jewish and part of a university community in the United States, I hope you’ll consider signing it too.

In the final stages of writing up a combinatorial argument, no part of which is really deep, but which is giving me absolute fits, so this song is in my head. Penn and Teller! I forgot or perhaps never knew they were in this video.

Also: my 14-year-old daughter knows this song and reports “Everybody knows this song.” But she doesn’t know any other songs by Run-DMC. I’m not sure she knows any other ’80s hip hop at all. “It’s Tricky” wasn’t even Run-DMC’s biggest hit. It’s very mysterious, which pieces of the musical past survive into contemporary culture and which are forgotten.

The Whole Foods in Madison used to be on University Avenue where Shorewood Boulevard empties onto it. That’s about a 7-minute drive from my house. I stopped in there all the time, just because I was driving by and I needed something that was easy to find there. Last year, Whole Foods moved over to the new Hilldale Yards development, still on University but just across Midvale. It’s now an 8-minute drive from my house. And I haven’t been there since. Somehow, everything east of Midvale is “my zone” — a place I a place I might pass by, and go without planning to go. And anything west of Midvale is only accessible by a dedicated trip.

By the way, the old Whole Foods location is now Fresh Mart, an international (but mostly Middle Eastern and Eastern European) grocery store. It’s awesome to have an international store the size of a Whole Foods but it is really hard to imagine how they’re making rent on a space that big. So please go there, buy some actually sharp feta and freekeh and ajvar and marinated sprats in a can! They have an extremely multicultural hot bar with great grape leaves and a coffeeshop with multiple kinds of baklava! I’m glad it’s in my zone.

“Never doubt that the master’s tools will dismantle the master’s house; indeed, they’re the only thing that ever have.”

The word “abstemious” is one that usually comes to mind only because (apparently sharing this feature only with “facetious”) it has all five English vowels, once each, in alphabetical order. I had always assumed it derived from the word “abstain.” But no! “Abstain” is the Latin negative prefix ab- followed by tenere, “to have” — you don’t have what you abstain from. But to be abstemious is specifically to abstain from alcohol. What comes after ab is actually temetum, a Latin word whose ultimate origin is the proto-Indo-European temH, or “darkness” (i.e. what you experience when you drink too much temetum.)

Anyway, no better time to listen to EBN OZN’s wondrous one hit, “AEIOU Sometimes Y,” which is apparently the first pop song ever recorded entirely on a computer. “Do I want to go out?”

We recently got back from a family trip to Mexico, a country I’d almost never been to (a couple of childhood day trips to Nogales, a walk across the border into Juárez in 1999, a day and a half in Cabo San Lucas giving a lecture.) I’m a fan! Some surprises:

“Reaktorn läck i Barsebäck” doesn’t sound like the name of a Mexican song, and indeed, this is a 1980 album track by Sweidish raggare rocker Eddie Meduza, which, for reasons that seem to be completely unknown, is extremely popular in Mexico, where it is (for reasons that, etc etc) known as “Himno a la Banda.”

2. Mexico had secession movements. Yucatán was an independent state in the 1840s. (One of our guides, who moved there from Mexico City, told us it still feels like a different country.) And a Maya revolt in the peninsula created a de facto independent state for decades in the second half of the 19th century. Apparently the perceived weakness of the national government was one cause of the Pastry War.

3. Partly as a result of the above, sisal plantation owners in Yucatán were short of indentured workers, so they imported 1,000 desperate Korean workers in 1905. By the time their contracts ended, independent Korea had been overrun by Japan. So they stayed in Mexico and their descendants still live there today.

4. It is customary in Mexico, or at least in Mexico City, to put a coat rack right next to the table in a restaurant. I guess that makes sense! Why wouldn’t you want your coat right there, and isn’t it nicer for it to be on a rack than hung over the back of your chair?

5. The torta we usually see in America, on a big round roll, is a Central Mexico torta. In Yucatán, a torta is served on French bread, because the filling is usually cocinita pibil, which is so juicy it would make a soft roll soggy. A crusty French roll can soak up the juices without losing its structural integrity. The principle is essentially the same as that of an Italian beef.

6. The Mesoamerican ballgame is not only still played throughout the region, there’s a World Cup of it.