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Entering the Dead Period

The Super Bowl ended not too long ago. It was an incredibly boring game (especially when compared to last year’s shootout extravaganza.). In a way, that is fitting. I spend a good chunk of time about 7 months out of the year watching baseball. Once baseball is over in early November, I transition to college and professional football. It is less frequent than baseball, but fills the sports-shaped void in my heart well enough.

Now all that is over. It is a dead period of sports for me. This boring game was the perfect transition, since there was no excitement to get hungover on the next morning.

Of course there are other sports, if I cared much about them. For example, NBA and NHL seasons are still ongoing (I think?) and there is of course March Madness in a month. But those have never been events I’ve taken much liking to watching remotely. I do enjoy attending any sporting event in person, but baseball and football are the main American professional sports whose seasons I actually follow.

What I am curious to discover is if my general feelings change being in California as opposed to Minnesota. In Minnesota, winter was always a tough period for sports because I was not a big hockey fan, and there were no other sports one could play outside. Football was theoretically an option, but organizing games becomes increasingly difficult as you get older. Spring and summer were always the best because you could play any sport outside. Whether it was just playing catch, getting a few friends to play soccer or throw a frisbee around, or just play with my own boomerang, spring and summer were always significantly more active for me. Now that I’m in (southern) California, I have less excuses for letting this dead period of sports align with a dead period of fun physical activity for me.

I do expect to be better this year. I recently moved to a new place where there is a fitness center a very short walk from my door. There are some open parks in the area. I have far more options in general than I had during this time of year in Minnesota, and I want to take advantage of that as much as possible. But for now, I guess I just have to wait until March for baseball’s spring training to start up.

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Whale Watching

This weekend I went whale watching for the first time. It was a fantastic experience. I went with Offshore Blue Adventures, which I’d probably consider the premier experience for anybody who wants to see whales and dolphins up close. They use an inflatable boat, similar to what the Coast Guard or Navy SEALs would use. The benefits of small boats on the ocean is that they ride large swells very easily; the benefits of small boats when whale and dolphin watching is that you can get closer without scaring off the animals.

We say quite a few gray whales, far more than our guide would have expected. We also saw two pods of dolphins. I had quite an obsession with whales growing up, yet beyond the odd beluga in an zoo setup, I have never actually seen one. This was one of my favorite mornings I’ve spent in San Diego so far.

Here is a Dropbox folder with a few videos I took. They were on my phone in a moving boat, but I did the best I could.

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Movie Review: “Glass”

A couple years ago, I watched Split. It was a very engaging movie. I walked away quite thrilled by the psychology of the entire situation. One of the people I saw the movie with mentioned it was a spiritual successor to a movie made about fifteen years prior, Unbreakable. It wasn’t clear there was any connection, other than the main character of Unbreakable having a short cameo at the very end of Split. Beyond this brief mention, the movies largely left my mind and I don’t recall talking with anyone else who saw Split.

Over the past few months, I’ve been frequenting the movie theater. During the twenty minutes of previews, Glass kept coming up. I immediately recognized James McAvoy’s cast of characters in the preview, and really wanted to see it. However, I wanted to perform my due diligence of preparation, so last night I watched Unbreakable. That is another excellent movie, but obviously not the point of this review. Feeling caught up with the story as it stood–Elijah Price in a mental institution, David Dunn moonlighting in the security business with his adult son (played by the same guy who played the kid in Unbreakable), and Kevin’s body inhabited by a split personality still abducting young girls to satiate the Beast–I proceeded to the theater to watch Glass.

To make things clear, I am far from a movie aficionado. In particular, I hold no feelings either way toward M. Night Shyamalan. I believe he’s made some great movies, and some not great movies. The idea of a Shyamalan Twist was not on my mind, and I just wanted to enjoy a movie featuring a cast of three characters I found very intriguing. My goal is not to spoil the movie in any major way.

I would say the characters were as expected. Elijah Price continued to be devilishly witty, David was the “reluctant hero”, and Kevin & co. had severe issues, and everyone was treated to another superb display of character acting by James McAvoy. I find no fault in their performances, nor their character’s motivations. Of course, one gets a free pass on motivation when the characters are institutionalized.

The character that bothered me the most was Dr. Staple, the psychologist who took over the treatment of the three main characters. If anything, it was a roller coaster; she started out just bothering me. The actress herself just wasn’t my cup of tea. Then, I started to notice a manic look in her that played well throughout the rest of the movie.

There was little payoff at the very end. It left things open for another movie, but I’m not sure I want it. However, I do value that Shyamalan had the courage of his conviction to finish the movie in a way super hero movies refuse to in most cases.

I think the most praise I can give this movie is that it had me invested in the characters, and believing the unreliable witnesses we had available to us. The movie was set distinctly in our world, and the ambiguous state throughout kept me engaged. I say see the movie, but only if you can be bothered to watch both Unbreakable and Split, and like them both, and want to see an interaction between those two movies. However, I believe they may be better on their own, as spiritual cousins with shared inspirations.

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Some Recent Reading

Last year, I finally began compiling a list of books I have read over the years. While I am sure it is incomplete; the approximate dates I’ve given are inaccurate as I go further back; I have not included many of the young adult (or younger) books I read; and I didn’t individually list books that are in a series, it has still been informative for me to have this list and remember how much I’ve liked getting through a book over the years.

Around this past Thanksgiving, I started on a reading rampage like I haven’t seen in myself for years. I finished three books throughout the month of December, and have finished two thus far in January. I should easily have a third finished before February rolls around.

Continue reading “Some Recent Reading”
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That’s a Bad Pirson

I was on one of my favorite subreddits today, /r/learnmath (of course I sort by New), and a question came up that ultimately came down to understanding order of operations. These always frustrate me because they stem from a poor understanding of how the order of operations work; furthermore, any problem involving order of operations can be fixed and cleared up with an additional set of parentheses.

Consider this math problem below — the type I see making its way around Facebook.

Continue reading “That’s a Bad Pirson”
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Sit Down and Read

College was a reading blight for me. I had other things to do, classes pulling my attention, and a pretty damaged ability to focus due to the introduction of a smartphone in my life. I was on-and-off reading books for fun, and felt pretty bad for accumulating books that I just was not getting to.

When I was an intern the past summer, I was hoping to change that. Yet I only made it through one book. Now that I’m in my real adult life, and settled in a bit, I’ve finally boarded the reading train yet again, and it is fantastic. It kicked off with reading Neuromancer by William Gibson over the course of a couple weeks. It was touch-and-go for a while there, but I made it through and very much enjoyed it. The past few fiction books I’ve read were sci-fi or technology thrillers of some variety. But I wanted to get back to where I was in high school and early college: able and willing to read just about any book I came across, even if it wasn’t very good. So, I recalled a recommendation an acquaintance gave to me, Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel. It is classified as a science fiction novel, but really is just a post-apocalyptic novel taking place in modern day, after a particularly deadly strand of swine flu wiped out most of the world. I read the book in only two days.

Inspired by this quick finish, I went to the website whatShouldIReadNext.com and selected the first book I could find which was available as an eBook from the local library. It was The Book of Speculation by Erika Swyler. This was further afield than most books I read, following a librarian whose sister, mother, and other females going back have all worked in various circuses, and all die via suicidal drowning. It’s unclear how much fantasy magic or legitimate “curses” are involved, but it was a surprisingly engaging read. I finished that in two days as well.

The book I am currently on — which has taken me longer mainly due to the holidays — is Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd. I started this book completely on accident: I thought I was getting a different book from the library, and just started. Luckily, it’s actually quite engaging. It takes place in WWI-era Europe, and may simply be a “follow this person’s life” book. Either way, I’m enjoying it.

It’s felt great to finally just sit down and read for long stretches of time. I’ve avoided some of the other tempting media (podcasts mostly), allowing my attention span to rebuild; this also puts me in a quiet mental space, giving my brain time to process and enjoy the ride a bit more.

While I am not as disconnected as CGP Grey is, and I still go on reddit and participate on the internet, it’s been nice to have these quiet moments with a book. It reminds me of when I had far fewer responsibilities, less to worry about, and I believe that’s been healthy for me. I suggest finding a way to be quiet, to be comfortable being alone without being lonely. It’s a good thing to be able to do.

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Holes in a Paper Towel Roll

At work the other day, we had a bit of a break to celebrated the month’s birthdays. During this time — my coworkers sitting around a large table, munching on pie and ice cream — a conversation broke out. How many holes are there in a paper towel roll: 1 or 2?

Of course, there is the joke that if you claim 1, then there is only one hole of consequence in the human body: that which leads from your mouth to the escape of your digestive system. At that point you’re just talking out of your ass.

But, being a company full of nerds and pedants, those of us who were sensible had to claim 1; after all, a paper towel has width to it and is thus homeomorphic to a torus (think, bagel).

Topology is a fun subject. Imagine taking geometry, and saying “I don’t really care about angles, or lengths, or these things that make geometry what it is. I mainly just care if I can stretch something to make it into something else, and how many holes there are in the shape.” That’s the base level of topology. An introductory topology course teaches you about homeomorphisms, which means you can continuously stretch, pull, push, or generally manipulate an object without cutting or tearing it.

Imagine you had a very flexible, putty-like bagel. If you mad the bagel very thin, skinny, and tall, you can imagine forming yourself a paper towel roll. This is what we mean when we say they are homeomorphic. We don’t put an extra hole anywhere, we just squish and shape things to our will.

Some people may ask why this is useful, particularly when you learn a coffee mug is also homeomorphic to a torus. The easiest explanation is math is about abstractions and patterns. Sure, a cube and a non-cubic rectangular prism have some differences, insofar as the rectangular prism doesn’t have three equal edge lengths. A cube and a triangular prism seem even further removed. Yet, any prism, or more generally polyhedron (which includes pyramids as well!), are all homeomorphic to a sphere. These three dimensional figures share certain properties, most notably that they are solid objects with no holes in them. And there’s something to be said for that!

While topology goes well beyond this idea, it gives a good grasp at what mathematicians are interested in. They noticed that we can generalize some of these properties, and map between objects using these homeomorphisms. So, instead of topology being about classes of objects which are the same in some small way, it is really about how we relate these similar objects. Topology is about showing the similarities and patterns between objects. It’s interesting that with a consistent set of rules, we can say “cube is to sphere as bagel is to paper towel roll.” We notice this pattern, and figure out how to make it rigorous and useful.

This is an under-appreciated aspect of math. It is not about rules that have no reason, or about abstraction for no reason. It is about finding a pattern, and seeing how other objects follow a similar pattern. This is what make mathematics a very fun subject, yet it is a mindset very few people are able to have. I hope this can change in the future.

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Coffee Shop Blogger

I’ve been curious how cultural trends adjust our feelings toward various habits people have. The biggest change to me has been that of the hipster blogger, sitting in a coffee shop with their MacBook, doing some personal photo-journalism for the benefit of mankind. I think the common notion of what, and who, a writer is has changed dramatically. No longer is it necessarily someone cramped up in an attic, papers everywhere, a drink at hand; it can be anyone with just about any device. I’m sure there are people out there who write posts from their phone — I know I’ve at least edited a few posts from mine.

Of course, there is still some tongue-in-cheek (and I’m sure for some people, legitimate) ridicule for such endeavors. With so many people opening themselves up to the internet in this way, they are also opening themselves up to the critical eye of the internet populace. Many people wanting to blaze their own path end up falling into a broader statistic. But this isn’t new, nor what I want to focus on. Particularly because I’m writing this post in a Panera before I go to work this morning.

I want to focus on whether this development is good. Is the ability for people to have these platforms for themselves, to bombard more and more servers with their thoughts, photos, and any other media they wish a positive change in society? My initial reaction is yes, it is good. People are writing more, sharing their ideas, helping others out, and making their experiences known for others to learn from. Not only is it good for a society to voluntarily participate in efforts to make themselves more literate, it is also beneficial to have more information available to compare and make use of.

If I attempt to remove my optimist hat, I must acknowledge some of the legitimate gripes people have with this shift. Perhaps the biggest is the lack of credibility on the internet. Due to relative anonymity, people can claim what they want about themselves, and subsequently write what they want about the world from a perceived position of authority that is entirely undeserved. This is what we see in anti-vaccine movements, issues with climate change, and many other anti-science positions that flourish in certain corners of the internet. People with very little knowledge or background in a subject dishonestly post what they believe, framing it with the intent to make it come off as fact, especially to some particularly vulnerable people who roam the internet.

This extends to relatively innocuous aspects of thought. For my little corner of the internet, these people are largely crank mathematicians. Prior to the internet, amateur mathematicians would simply mail their ideas to professors, who could pretty quickly disregard anything that said “Trisect” or “Squaring a circle“. Now, many a young student gets drawn into arguments provided by people with insufficient background, wondering how it could possibly be that 0.999… is equal to 1, or why Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems don’t invalidate all of mathematics. I’m sure there are similar situations for just about any field of interest. For example, consider video creation and YouTube. That was quite the democratizing effort, and has provided amazing content. And some horrifying results.

I don’t wish to be so naive as to suggest that only people who “should” be talking about a particular subject can be allowed to. Ultimately the democratizing aspect of the free internet should win out. We can provide due diligence by educating people (particularly our parents who did not grow up with it) about how to properly navigate information on the internet, but beyond that I still firmly believe that having these platforms is good. Despite very few people reading this blog right now, I’m happy this opportunity exists. The same goes for podcasts. It is exciting to create the type of media you enjoy consuming. 

While I still do not identify as a coffee shop blogger, and likely will never own a MacBook, I’m happy people can do it. More power to them.