What I did this week

I took five exams, and four of them went exceptionally well.

The fifth one was my math final. Eight questions; I solved the first six in twenty minutes and spent the next hour and forty minutes doing two things:

1. Failing to integrate tan(x) * sin(x). It’s probably simple if you know trigonometric identities. But I don’t.

The answer is something really ugly with a natural log and a bunch of trig functions.

2. Failing to find the inverse Laplace transform of the most ginormous function I have ever seen in my entire life. I swear, it had six terms, each of which had 314567890 factors in the denominator and 13456789 in the numerator. Approximately.

Oh well. I’m done now.

Remember, children, adults don’t like you.

Exhibit 1, which I would link to if it didn’t identify my geographic location: Some asshole commenter on a local blog opines that public humiliation of disobedient students is a great way to reduce discipline problems in schools. Why does this make me uneasy? Something, some similarity to a historical atrocity…

Oh, yeah. The Cultural Revolution.

Exhibit 2, which I will link to: Amanda at Pandagon opines that children shouldn’t be given the right to vote because it “privileg[es] the be-childed.” The argument is that children will either be brainwashed or intimidated into conformity with their parents’ political views. That conformity magically disappears at age 18, at which time the children are fit to vote. Or something like that.

Friday Poetry

This poem borders on emo (”the whole world is against me; I’m so misunderstood!”), but I’m posting it anyway because I was happy to rediscover it yesterday.

English translations here.

L’albatros
by Charles Baudelaire

Souvent, pour s’amuser, les hommes d’équipage
Prennent des albatros, vastes oiseaux des mers,
Qui suivent, indolents compagnons de voyage,
Le navire glissant sur les gouffres amers.

À peine les ont-ils déposés sur les planches,
Que ces rois de l’azur, maladroits et honteux,
Laissent piteusement leurs grandes ailes blanches
Comme des avirons traîner à côté d’eux.

Ce voyageur ailé, comme il est gauche et veule!
Lui, naguère si beau, qu’il est comique et laid!
L’un agace son bec avec un brûle-gueule,
L’autre mime, en boitant, l’infirme qui volait!

Le Poète est semblable au prince des nuées
Qui hante la tempête et se rit de l’archer;
Exilé sur le sol au milieu des huées,
Ses ailes de géant l’empêchent de marcher.

“Uh-huh. Right. Okay. Sure.” From the “I’m flattered that you think so highly of me” department.

Dramatis personae: me, math professor

Scene: I’ve been keeping up in math this semester. Final exam next week, and I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’ve only missed one point on one quiz, where (a-b)² mysteriously became a²-b² (cue laugh track). And I haven’t spoken one word to my professor all semester.

So I’m surprised, of course, when he stops me as I turn to leave the classroom.

Professor: Julia?

Me: (to myself) Wow, he knows my name? How about that.

Professor: What do you plan on doing in math after this class?

Me: (mumble something about the classes I plan on taking)

Professor: That’s interesting. Have you heard of the Poot-nam Competition?

Me: What?

Professor: Poot-nam. P-U-T-N-A-M.

Me: No.

Professor: It’s an international math competition.

Me: Uh-huh.

Professor: You should Google it.

Me: Okay.

Professor: It’s very competitive. The median score is zero.

Me: That’s really bad.

Professor: It’s not bad. If you can get three questions out of twelve, that’s already very good. And almost nobody gets a perfect. But the people who win usually end up getting Nobel Prizes or Fields Medals.

Me: Okay.

Professor: So if you are interested in physics or mathematics or something, you should consider it.

Me: Sure.

Professor: Just look it up.

Me: Right.

So I go look it up. From the same people who brought you the AIME, USAMO, and IMO, you have a competition that, by the looks of it, you can only win if you go to Harvard, MIT, Caltech, or Princeton. Well, this is wonderful. Sample question:

A repunit is a positive integer whose digits in base 10 are all ones. Find all polynomials f with real coefficients such that if n is a repunit, then so is f(n).

I’m flattered, though.

Yay, a meme.

Tagged by Robert at Casting Out Nines.

1. The rules of the game get posted at the beginning.
2. Each player answers the questions about themselves.
3. At the end of the post, the player then tags 5-6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read the player’s blog.
4. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

[Side note: Notice the singular "themselves" in #2. I like it.]

What were you doing ten years ago?

I was in grade school, coloring with crayons and learning arithmetic. I also recall some nationalistic history lessons; I learned, for example, that Thomas Jefferson was the most awesome anti-racist ever. He didn’t really want to own slaves, you know.

What are five things on your to-do list for today?

1. Study for a French exam.
2. Study for a history exam.
3. Study for a physics exam.
4. Study for a math exam.
5. Read some Virginia Woolf.

That’s not all going to get done within the next day, but realism is never a goal with these to-do lists.

What are some snacks you enjoy?

Fruit. I love fruit. Mangos, guavas, pineapples, strawberries, peaches, watermelon. Everything but bananas.

What would you do if you were a billionaire?

Bribe people in power. How else are you supposed to get things done?

(Oh, and I would like to be able to pay for college, of course. And there are quite a few people in the world who could use money right now.)

What are three of your bad habits?

1. Cracking my knuckles. I can make a really loud popping sound with my fingers and toes. It drives my brother crazy.
2. Twirling my hair. I do it when I’m bored or when I’m nervous.
3. Refreshing the CNN Political Dashboard every two minutes the night of a primary.

What are five places where you have lived?

1. Washington, DC.
2. New York City.
3. Dinkytown, USA, where I live now.
4. There is no #4.

What are five jobs you have had?

Just tutoring. Mostly for math.

Tag five people.

If you’re reading this and you haven’t done this meme yet, consider yourself tagged!

John Edwards can get a clue.

I don’t read People magazine. I promise. I found this story through CNN Political Ticker. While I am perplexed as to why the Edwardses would agree to be interviewed by People, of all magazines, and while I am amused by the dramatic contrast between the interview and the links in the margins (”Rihanna Takes Her Pup Jewelry Shopping in Florida”), I am most baffled by a certain comment by John Edwards:

One is, I think he really does want to bring about serious change and a different way of doing things. And secondly, I think it’s a great symbolic thing to have an African-American who could be president.

What the…? “A great symbolic thing”? He doesn’t have anything to say about the actual policy issues, so he decides to tout Obama as a symbol?

Somebody help me understand what that could possibly mean, for the more I think about the comment, the less it makes sense.

The Obama campaign is not symbolically fighting racism. It’s, you know, actually fighting racism and racial prejudice, every day, because our society is profoundly racist. And if Obama wins against McCain in November, a prospect that I am seeing as less and less likely by the day, it won’t be a symbolic victory against racism; it’ll be an actual victory against racism, with infinitely many more to come.

At that, Mrs. Edwards rolled her eyes and, gripping the arms of her kitchen chair with some exaggeration, seemed about to lunge from her seat. “What about the great symbolic thing about a woman …”

“It’s important. It’s important,” her husband said. “I know it.”

Translation: “Crap, I totally forgot about women. Let me try desperately for a save. Oops, I failed.”

Cultural pride: acceptable in self-defense

Yesterday an Argentinian woman, mother of a six-year-old boy with adorable curly hair (we’ll call him Andrés), told me this story.

“So my parents are here to visit me. And they were going to pick up Andrés from school. But Andrés told me, he said, ‘Mommy, I don’t want Grandma and Grandpa to pick me up from school.’ And I said, ‘Why not?’ And he said, ‘Because they don’t speak English.’

“I was so shocked. I said to him, ‘Andrés, who told you that was something to be ashamed of? They do speak a little English. And they speak Spanish, they speak Italian, and they speak Portuguese. You see, they speak three languages! That’s better than only speaking English.’

“And he thought about it for a while, and he said, ‘Oh. Okay, then.’ And then they picked him up from school and everything was okay. But can you imagine? I was completely shocked.

“And I know what’s coming. In a few years he’s gonna be ashamed of me.”

Poetry links

To make up for the last few poetryless weeks.

Anne Sexton, “Her Kind” (with audio)

Adrienne Rich, “Trying to Talk with a Man” (scroll down)

Audre Lorde, “Who Said It Was Simple” (intersectionality, yay!)

Stuff I’m still arguing with myself about

Gradualism or radicalism?

Is separatism reactionary?

Is militancy for the sake of social justice justified?

Socialism: delusional idealism, pure evil, or plausible solution to injustice?

The proper role of the law (and government, for that matter): to level the playing field? to enforce certain moral laws? to protect natural rights?

Affirmative action: wrong morally, okay morally but ineffective in practice, or moral and effective?

Can governments be held to the same moral standards as individuals?

To what extent is group identity/unity, including movement unity, necessary? What happens when group goals conflict with individual ethics?

Is cultural pride ever good?

Reappropriation: does it work?

Excuses

Okay, I have excuses for not updating this blog. And I’m sure no one is interested in hearing these excuses, but I’m offering them anyway, mainly because I want to complain.

I took two tests today, two tests yesterday, two on Friday, and two on Thursday. I have five more tests this week, three the next week, and five the week after.

I wrote one essay yesterday, an essay the day before, an essay the day before that, and an essay the day before that.

And I haven’t gotten enough sleep.

You know something weird? When you don’t get enough sleep, the first day you feel this hyper-concentration and heightened focus and irrational happiness. The second day you can’t type a sentence to save your life. And by “you” I mean “I.”

I’ve been drinking lots of herbal tea. “This, too, shall pass” is my new mantra. I repeat it every ten minutes or so.