Medieval Feast

Today was quite long. I rehearsed the songs I played tonight for the medieval feast last night for a few hours with Matthew Ledbury. That meant that I didn't start grading papers until 11:30pm, which inturn meant I didn't get to sleep until 2:30am and I had to wake up at 8:00am.

It's Thursday -or it was. Apparently there is something special about Thursdays. Last week I was posting at about this time saying that it was very much an oxford day. I spent the morning grading and the rest of the day tutoring. During lunch, many spoke about the midterm elections. It may be the first time I've ever noticed a mid term.

Anyway, after teaching all day I went to the feast. It was fun. The songs went well. I played some bad chords, but I had to play louder than my guitar would like, so what do you expect? Now, though I am experencing the post-drunk low to which I have becoming used. It serves its purpose. For instance, part of me wishes to post to whomever may be viewing (you anonymous reader[s]). That part of me doesn't get a chance most times. It gains a voice at times like these.

Anyway, it is apparent I am getting old.

1) I have had a stuffed nose for four weeks.
2) After talking for an hour, I go hoarse.
3) I regret my mistakes.
4) After drinking, I drink water and take vitamin C to stop whatever illness is waiting to take advantage of my lowered immune system.
5) I maintain a calendar.
6) Most of my good friends are far away.
7) I care about mid-term ellections.

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Journal of Discarded Ideas

As a PhD student, I spend much time re-inventing the wheel -mainly to understand it better. Much of the rest of the time, I spend inventing broken wheels. The purpose behind publication is to advance human understanding. However, it would also be helpful to have a publication of avenues of research that do not work. I mean, seriously, if there were a journal of discarded ideas, I'd be sure to look up any topic I was interested in researching before persuing it.

You would probably need many journals.
Journal of Discarded Economics
Journal of Discarded Mathematics
Journal of Discarded Politcal Theory

and so forth.

1:48 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Winter Arrived, Heated Debate
Category: News and Politics

It suddenly became colder here. The 31st of October was mild and the first of November chilly. I have been told that cold weather comes from the relatively dry artic, whereas the wet comes from the relatively warm jet stream. So, it is usually cold or wet, but not normally both.

There was a hustings (candidate interrogation) today for the position of MCR Assistant Steward. It went well until I made a joke about nation-specific (non-British) events being removed from the term card. Over the past few years, there have been Halloween Parties and Thanksgiving potluck dinners on the Term Card, which is a list of MCR sponsored events that goes to all graduates. This year they decided to take those events off. I like both of them, so I argued with Meredith (a friend and American on the committee) about it. She has a point, which is essentially that having a North American Centric term card is not p.c. Even though (or maybe because) the last four years (including this year) the committee has been dominated by North Americans. By dominated, I mean that North Americans have held the presidency and often a majority of the positions.

Anyway, my side of the argument is basically that Halloween and Thanksgiving are fun. If you take them off the term card, we end up doing less as an MCR. Since these events are fun and there are a lot of North Americans in the MCR, they are going to happen regardless of their being on the term card. However, if North Americans organize these events spontaneously instead of the committee and instead of putting them on the term card, then they are more likely to be exclusive events ..which may develop clicks. That argument is practical. Regardless, political correctness shouldn't be the sole standard by which we judge the worthiness of events. I have in mind a handful of other less honest arguments that are based on principles with which I will not bore you (but you know I throw them in the heat of battle like a barbarian does a handful of sand ..straight into those idealistic eyes!)

If you know me, you know I like debating stuff. Usually I..m on the narrow end. This time my side of the argument drew support. The supporters were from Australia, Great Britain, Israel, Canada, China, and Romania. It was uplifting having others on my side of the argument.

The heat of a debate contrasts the cold well.

3:37 PM - 1 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Baudy Midieval Music
Category: Music

Next week there is a midieval feast here in Oxford at my college. Matthew Ledbury and I are planning on playing a few songs (mintrel melodies, really). We have a few that we have been able to figure out from listening to some track by Oxford Waits. However, if any of you know of some tabs that would work, let me know.

1:41 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

St. Edmund Hall Pummels Exeter in a 84 - 16 Blowout
Category: Sports

We won our basketball game. I only score on fast breaks and I scored over 10 points. We've never scored over 60 in the last three years I've played and the average game ends at about 44 points. The score at the end of half was 43 - 4. I don't ever expect to win by so much again. Go Hall!

3:58 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Today was an Oxford Day

I wake up after 4.5 hours sleep at 8:00 am. It's really 30 minutes before I am supposed to get up, so I go back to sleep. Ages past. I mean ages. I have classes to teach today, and papers still to grade, so it's important that I get up on time.

Before I continue with this story, let me enlighten those who may not know. I am a chronic late sleeper. I missed my first day of high school because I slept until 3:00pm. That..s no joke. I was proud of it at the time, but it happened unintentionally. I justified it at 2:15pm when I first woke up by remembering the obscure school regulation that stated something to the effect that absents are not counted until after a day of attendance.

So yeah, ages past and I sit up suddenly scared that my alarm did not go off and that I have overslept. It..s 8:12 am. All is safe. I'm in disbelief, ages and it's only 8:12? I check my watch, the clock and my phone. It is 8:12am. All within a few seconds I go back to sleep, wake up at 8:30, reset the alarm and get up at 9:30 for the day. I was desperately hoping the hour from 8:30 to 9:30 would last as long as the 12 minutes after 8:00am. It didn..t.

I wake up, grade papers, teach a tutorial, eat in the Merton College Senior Common Room (SCR) where I chat with fellows and others higher up on the academic food chain whom I do not know. It..s one of the perks of teaching. The food is great ..little octopi and salmon as the cold starter, some sort of lamb and cabbage for the main and fruit for dessert. Yhe people are all friendly, though it..s a bit nerve wracking. Then I have a coffee in the SCR. I and everyone else choose coffee since the day before the cappuccino machine exploded when I tried to use it ..no joke the dude next to me jumped and I covered my face when we heard the explosion and saw the steam rising out from behind the innocent looking machine. Somehow neither of us got wet.

Then, it..s back to teaching four more tutorials. Tutorials are different than, well almost any other style of teaching in the world. I won..t bore you with the details, but to get the gist I only teach three students at a time, I set the assignments and grade their papers and am responsible for their covering the material. Anyway, tutorials are not lectures and some tutors are able to employ the Socratic method. I am not. By the end of the day, my voice is horse and my mind fried after repeating myself five times. I..m getting better at questioning them and letting them squirm, but eventually I cave in to the desire to ensure we cover the material.

Afterwards, I head off to my own Middle Common Room (MCR) at St. Edmund Hall. Here I used to be King, or at least president. A couple of years have passed since then and there have been two groups pass through. The new group hardly recognize me as their elder, but it..s still a place I feel immanently comfortable. Eventually, when the bureaucracy gets around to it, evidence of my status as elder will be printed on plank of ex-presidents and I..ll be able to point -when my voice is too horse to speak- to the board when being introduced to the next wave of incoming students.

Anyway, I went to the MCR to wait for the wine and cheese night we were having. There..s a Halloween party tomorrow themed around the letter G. So, I spent the hours from 7:00pm to 9:00pm reading out from the Oxford concise dictionary, as one does, different nouns beginning with G that I thought would be funny Halloween characters. Apparently ..gash.. is highly offensive slang for vagina. Though, Alistair and I still thought it would be funny to go as a giant vagina. The others that would be neat included gamete, gigolo, GIFT (gamete intrafallopian transfer), and galvanometer. A galvanometer measures small electrical currents and it would be fun (Alistair and I thought) to hold small black currents, the fruit, between our thumbs and forfingers and claim to be a galvanometer. It would be a riot amongst British electrical engineers. In the end, I thought I could be a gongoozler, one who stairs. Then I ate cheese, drank some wine, chatted with the veterans I knew and ended the night early. I..ve got a game tomorrow. The Hall..erm Globetrotters are playing Exeter. Wish us luck.

4:25 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

About being Subdean

As well as being a graduate student and a teaching associate for the economics department, I am also subdean. A subdean is like a resident assistant for those who ever lived in a dorm in the U.S. So, the college owns a few buildings in an area and for those buildings I resolve noise complaints, inforce the rules, keep my eye out for trouble, and let people into their rooms after they lock themselves out. The 120 or so students I look after are mainly graduates and some fourth year undergraduates. The drinking laws are different here. For instance, the college owns a bar, serves alchohol at formal dinners, and hosts parties where alchohol is served. Needless to say, it isn't against the rules to consume alchohol the premises. That means the policing aspect of the job is relatively lax. It's more about creating a sense of community and letting people into there rooms. I am on call from 8pm to 8am. In return for these duties, I get senior common room dining rights and reduced accomidation (it would be free, but Becky and I live in a married flat.) There is ussually something to do as subdean twice a week. So far, I have avoided vomit.

11:29 AM - 2 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Uncertain about blogging Update
Category: Life

I was able to prove uniqueness today. That's good. It means that, under a general set of circumstances, the uncertainty induced switching cost is well defined. Which means the concept is useful.

1:11 AM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Uncertain about blogging

I figure a post is better than no post. I may be wrong.

This is what I did yesterday, and to be honest I do something like this most days that I am not teaching. I thought about the following problem. So, there are these two functions. One of which is simply f(p1)=p1 (a straight line with slope of one and a y intercept at 0). The other is h(p1) =u(x1) - E(u,a) + [(1-d)/(1-d*G(a))]*[E(u,a) - E(u(x2)]), where E(u,a) is the expected value of the function u(x) given X is greater than a, 0<1, G(a) is the cumulative distribution function of X evaluated at a, u(x) is the utility function of x, and it is assumed u'(x) > 0, u''(x) < 0. Finally, a satisfies u(a) = p2-p1 +u(x1) where the ps are prices and x1 is firm one's quality. I need to come up with minimally restrictive conditions to ensure that h(p) and f(p) cross only once. I can prove that they cross atleast once (by evaluating the limits and assuming continuity). I can also show that if h''(p) never equals zero, then there is a single crossing. Likwise, if h'(p) equals at most at one value of p, then there is a single crossing. Single crossing is important because it ensures that the uncertainty induced switching cost is uniquely defined. There are mathematicians and economists for whom the problem is trivial. In a few days I'll probably have the restrictions that I'll use and I will move on to some other part of the problem.

Then I had dinner with some friends (Meredith, Franscisco, Noam, and Davis). Beck was out with co-workers. I came home late, and that was Friday.

5:26 AM - 1 Comments - 2 Kudos - Add Comment

First Blog First Post
Category: Life

I've just started out on my space and I have one friend. (No not Tom, or whoever that automatic friend was -I deleted him before I started counting). The friend is John Belhmann. At the moment, he is the only audience I expect. It's fitting that J is the first to become my friend. I've known him forever and he is a techno-addict whenever he isn't busier than an "ant bed after a thunderstorm."

About blogging, its interesting that people's connectedness with me is somewhat dependent on my ability to generate content. Given my techno-attentionspan, I am afraid my first blog may be my last. But who knows?

5:03 PM - 1 Comments - 1 Kudos - Add Comment