How many emails????

I was struck today by the claim that was made in the disgraced-generals-have-inappropriate-relationships case that there is a strange assertion floating around: that Kelley and Allen had 20000-30000 emails etc going back and forth (and that some of them were inappropriate).

Now, a standard work week in the US (2 weeks holiday, 40 hours per week) runs 2000 hours.  This means that assuming that they have been communicating for a couple or years, say, they are still sending an average of 5 emails per hour.  Now, over short periods I could see someone doing that, but over a sustained period, of months?

Wondering if Allen/Kelley both have verbal diarrhoea...

Yours, having an email load rather smaller,
N.

The Undead Hotel

A short story, by Boo.

The Undead Hotel

Today, my family and I are going on a Halloween vacation.  The hotel is called The Undead Hotel.  I guess it's called that because it's a theme for Halloween.

We've just been told our room number.  The person behind the counter told us that to get to our room, we have to go up some "possessed elevator."  Well, here we go.  My brother is about to press the floor number three button when "don't press that button." my mum say!  "Why?" Skibo asks.  Suddenly, he spots it.  There's a face on the panel.  It's a ghost face!  It starts moving.  We look around the cramped elevator and notice lots of other moving ghost heads.  My brother presses the button really fast and finally we're on the right floor.  We step out of the elevator and into a long hall. I'm starting to get a bad feeling about this place.

We walk down the long hall.  I see millions of wax statues.  I notice George Washington, Henry Hudson and Rosa Parks.  "Anybody hear something behind us?" I ask uncertainly.  We all turn around. "Ahhhhhhhhh!"
we all scream together.  There are wax figures following us.  I remember the man at the counter telling us to beware because there's danger lurking around every corner.  My family and I dash to our room.  We lock the door behind us.  I can hear the wax figures pounding at the door.  I can hear my heart beating as loudly as the wax hands at the door.  We all turn around to catch our breath.  Uh oh, the wax figures aren't our only problem now.

"Any body else getting the creeps?" I ask.  "Wow." James exclaims.  We can't hear the wax figures anymore, so we walk away from the door.   The room is so quiet, it's horrifying.  The room is full of zombie figures.  I see some in chairs and there's two on a bunk bed.  It looks like a zombie family.  I  see two zombies that look like kids, two that look grown up and, oh look, a zombie dog!  I thought that they didn't allow animals in hotels, but I guess they make an exception for zombies.  "This is so cool!" announces my brother.  "Shhh, don't talk so loud." I whisper to him.  Uh oh, it's too late.  The zombies in the bed began to sit up.  They got out of bed and headed our way.  The ones in the chairs followed them.  The dog started to bark.  "Brains, brains!" the zombies started shouting.  They were about to attack us when we ran right through the middle of their group.  "Look, a door!" I shout.  We run straight through the open door into a dark, smelly place.

We stumble around the dark place for a while, trying to find our way around.  "Ow!" I shout as I stumble over something on the floor.  I fall flat on my face!  Luckily, I fall on something soft and furry. "Grrrrrrrrr! I feel a slow rumbling underneath me.  Then, the object I am laying on, stands up!  I hear a growl coming from the object!  Finally my dad lights a match, and puts it in the lantern he found.  The whole room escapes with light.   I look around.  There's a fifteen foot bear standing on its hind legs in front of me!  Two tiny cubs stand beside it.  "Don't make a sound, and don't move!" Mama whispers.  The bears charge towards us. We make a run for it.  There's an opening at the end of the cave.  We run out right before the bears catch us.

Finally, we're out!  I never thought that I'd see the light again!  We're surrounded by millions of trees.  Wait, what's that lurking in the shadows?  Suddenly, something jumps at me from behind.  I duck down just in time!  Vampires appear from the shadows.  They slowly come closer and closer.  When they were just inches away from us, they took one whiff of us, paused, and flew away into the night.  I was puzzled by why they flew away, when, it hit me.  I remembered reading that vampires were allergic to garlic, and we had garlic bread for dinner, so we still smelled of garlic.  We have made it out of the woods, and are standing at the edge of a maze-like place.   I wonder what horrors await us inside.

We enter the maze.  I touch the hedge.  "Ouch!" I exclaim in pain.  Electricity shocks my whole body.  I fall to the ground in pain.  "Are you ok?" Dad asks with a worried look in his eyes.  "Yeah, I'm fine, just a little dazed." I answer in a small voice.  I stumble to my feet.  "Now let's get out of here!"  I announce.  I stumble around, still feeling dazed.  We walk around the maze for a while, feeling lost.  We come to a a few dead ends a couple of times.  I hear a groan coming from around the corner, I look up, up, up, and there stands Frankenstein!  "Grohhhhh!"  He groans again.  He walks toward us.  The ground shakes as he walks.  Thud, thud, thud, goes his shoes on the ground.  Now, this may seem asbsurd, but Skibo and I got these little water pistols for Christmas, and now we carry them everywhere.  So, we take out our water pistols and start shooting Frankenstein.  We short circuited him and as he fell to the floor, we ran around him and out of the maze.

Now we're standing at the top of a tube.  I think that it's a slide.  It curves and twirls around and around.  "Looks like this is the way out." James announces.  We each hop into the slide.  It twists, twirls and curves.  It takes us over small bumps.  Finally, at the end of the slide, we land in a small pit of sand.  "Yes.  We're outand I'm alive!" I shout, happy to see daylight again!  After everyone's out of the slide, we journey home, exhausted from our long adventure!

And now, a word from Boo's sponsor.  I'm thrilled by this!  It is so far beyond anything I was asked to do at the age of 10!
Yours, publishing her story, copyright Boo, 2012,
N.

I've been remiss in posting...

But tonight I have an incentive to post!  Boo had a writing assignment, due tomorrow, and sat down with me as she finished it.  She's to write a short story, a scary story: and I'm stunned by the job she's done.  I don't think I was expected to work at this sort of level until I was 12 or 13, not just turned 10!

Yours, thrilled,

N.

Happy Birthday, Boo!

Double digits!!!

Yours, parentally proud,

N!

Bullshit!

Lawrence O'Donnell, on MSNBC this evening, talking up President Obama for re-election, spent many minutes discussing whether he could use the word the President had been reported as using to describe Mitt Romney: Obama used the word "bullshitter", which in the context of the lies and misrepresentations that the former Governor of Massachusetts has used seems rather tame.

But apparently the MSNBC lawyers are unwilling to let L O'D use that word on the air.

Such bullshit!

Yours, wishing that the US would lighten up a little (actually, a lot) where swearing on TV was concerned,

N.

Cycling

I love cycling.  I don't do it often enough, and I'm not particularly good at it.  I do it for fun, for exercise, not to race or compete.
But I have to say that I am sorry that international body in charge of cycling has taken all of Lance Armstrong's record from him.  I understand their view that he was cheating by taking steroids or other chemicals: it appears that it's undetectable still, so we don't know who else took it....

But my feeling is this: he brought such hope to cancer survivors: he was so inspiring to those who need hope: he took a "you're dying" diagnosis, and came back to show incredible resolve: I'd rather we never knew about the drugs.  I'd rather we still were all screaming his name, taking inspiration from his feat.
What he did was incredible, cheat or not.  Without the wins, we'd merely celebrate him as a mildly inspiring individual who went back to bike races.... and the inspiration would be nice, but mild.  With the wins, he had the potential to really inspire.  Now that those wins are gone, he's back to human.

Yours, missing when he could be considered stronger than any human I knew,
N.

Nice conference

Spent a couple of days away at a conference: I was the first plenary speaker, and naturally I stayed around for the rest of the meeting.  I really enjoyed lots of talks --- mainly by undergraduates about research they had done, and felt good about encouraging them, and pointing them to new potential directions to examine.
I've received some wonderful mentoring in the past, from several directions, and it always makes me happy to be able to pay back some of this by passing the advice on forward.

Yours, suddenly realizing that I'm a "senior" mathematician, not a "junior" one any more.
N

Getting stuff together

Spending a few minutes printing out an agenda, directions, hotel reservations, etc, in preparation for a trip tomorrow.  Off to give a conference talk:-)

Yours, sure to forget something,
N.

A more enjoyable debate last night

As a committed leftie, last night's Presidential Debate was rather more fun to watch than the previous bout between these two: as much fun as the VP version last week.

Yours, hoping this helps the polls swing Obama's way a bit,

N.

Ooops

I miss a day of posting, and suddenly it's nearly a month that's gone by.  Oh well.  I won't pretend and catch up: let's just see if I can restart.

Yours, jolted,
N.

Great grades!

Boo and Skibo brought home report cards this week: straight A's for both of them!  Skibo 100% down the line, while Boo had 97, 98, 99, 100 and 100.

Yours, pleased as punch with how they are doing,
N.

Way to go, Skibo!

Skibo tested for his second yellow stripe on his white belt this morning!  He did really well --- and the senior black belt invigilating the testing told us that apart from improving his balance a little bit (which is normal), she didn't have a lot of things to write down about how he was doing.
Boo will get to test on Wednesday, assuming that she's feeling up to it: this morning her throat was really sore, and she really didn't want to do it -- we weren't about to force it on her.

Yours, proud of Skibo, and hoping Boo's better soon,
N.

Poor Boo

Unfortunately Boo has come down with a sore throat, and had to come home from school early.  Hope that this doesn't mess up the martial arts testing in the morning!

Yours, hoping my little girl gets better really soon,
N.

Magic, the gathering

Just finished with my undergraduate group: we meet every week to discuss magic tricks, and to talk about the mathematics behind some of them: they are going to be working to generate some lesson plans and other ways to incorporate them into math classes in the school system.  A nice bunch of students, and I love the fact that they are excited by this project!

Yours, letting them pick a card, any card, and forcing the outcome,
N.

Damned elections

Every four years at this time (and to a lesser extent every two years) I end up spending way too much time reading online posts, blogs, news, about the elections.
This year, it seems, Romney is generating even more buzz than ever, and almost none of it good.  Of course, given that my political leanings are rather further to the left than his (even when he was in Massachusetts as a relatively centrist Republican) I'm quite happy for him to continue to gaffe.

Yours, enjoying some of the commentary
N.

Proud of Boo and Skibo

This morning we met with Boo's teacher, so that she could discuss with us her progress, and in particular, her scores on the standardized tests they've been taking.
I'm not a believer in the standardized tests: I don't think that they test the right things, or that they are valid metric of achievement.  That said, I'm still tremendously proud of Boo's scores, which are not just higher than they need to be now, not just higher than they need to be to demonstrate a mastery of the material at the end of the year, but higher than they need to be for "exemplary" at the end of the year.

We haven't yet met with Skibo's teacher, but he told us what scores he was making, and we're expecting a similar report for him.

Yours, happy they are doing so well,
N.

I am the 47%

So Mitt Romney thinks that the 47% who support Obama and oppose Romney are moochers?  Wow!  That's surely going to help persuade me to change my mind and vote for Romney!

Yours, amazed....
N.

A nice dinner with friends

Last night we spent a lovely evening with our friends who own the bookstore in town: their daughter was visiting, and it was a lovely, gentle, time.  Great food, great company:-)

Tonight it was the kids turn: their friends are finally back down from New England: three weeks or more late for school but they made it, finally.  We had them over for dinner to welcome them home, and they immediately slipped right back into the routines that great friends have.

Yours, so happy for the easy adjustment,
N.

A funeral

A fairly big funeral, at that, for our friend Jim from across the street: Uncle Jim as he was to Boo and Skibo.  Especially to Boo.  She accompanied LOML and me to the ceremony, held outside in the graveyard at the old church down the street, the one only opened occasionally, it's so old and small.
A lovely, simple, moving service.  Short, and, of course, sad.

Yours, in memoriam,
N.

A wake

Tonight the sprogs were at their martial arts dojo for a "parents' night out": a fundraiser, where we pay $20 per child, and we get to go off and enjoy the evening.
As we were on our way to go out, we realized that tonight was the wake for our friend Jim from across the street: so we walked down to the square to the pub, and hugged, and reminisced, and generally celebrated our friend, now gone.  Tomorrow, we'll go and be somber at the memorial service.

Yours, celebrating a life, and sorry for a death,
N.