Category Archives: Uncategorized

The best speeches are not originating these days from the Palace of Westminster, the French National Assembly, or the US senate. And they are definitely not features of Question Period in our own House of Commons. Strasbourg has supplanted Rome as the hotbed of oratory, and … Continue reading →

Andy Rooney, a fixture of CBS for over 30 years died on Friday at the age of 92. I confess that he had been one of my favorite American characters ever since I landed on this continent 35 years ago. … Continue reading →

Viewed so far by 153,373 people, retweeted 2302 times, this creation by PhD student, Matushiq Sotak, became an overnight sensation when it appeared about a month ago. I have asked him if he can make a new grid on how … Continue reading →

Very sad news this morning. Canada lost a good politician, Jack Layton, a decent and likable man with a great heart, who has been able to transcend the bitterness that politics seems to breed. His untimely death is so damn unfair! Here … Continue reading →

Google.ca offered in: français

Fields medalist Daniel Quillen died yesterday at the age of 70. Known for his role in developing higher algebraic K-theory, Quillen was, until 2006, a Professor of Pure Mathematics at Oxford. His wife of 50 years, Jean Quillen, sent this … Continue reading →

Not much. “However horrifying the pictures, however moving the reports, there’s a limit to how much suffering people can take on board – and it’s extremely low.” Writing about any other subject now is nothing but an unbearable display of … Continue reading →

Michelle did it again the other day. I was in a meeting in Toronto when I received her text message:  “As a university professor, do you consider your body to be simply a means of transport for your head?” I … Continue reading →

Here are some of the issues I will be posting on in the next few weeks – not necessarily in the order below. Some are ready, others need to be polished and analysed further. Please chip in if you will. … Continue reading →

An Oxford scholar discovered recently that “high art and low art were packaged, sold and read together in the 18th Century”. Indeed, it turns out that the secret of success for the poetry collection, “The Works of the Earls of … Continue reading →

I should have said that’s how California mathematicians settle their differences. Didn’t the Unabomber have once an office in Berkeley’s Evans Hall? Here are the new findings by the NSF, and UBC’s response to the “Too Asian?”

There is a new journal around and here is a number of reasons you may choose to submit to it:

Especially the young ones who never got to hear about Tom Lehrer. Here is Lehrer’s Lobachevsky. But don’t take him seriously about Lobachevsky. The guy was a genius. In any case, what do you think of this quote? “To copy … Continue reading →

On January 10, 2010, Sam Roweis, 37, an associate professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, jumped to his death from a 16th-floor balcony at his university-owned apartment. Prior to teaching at NYU, Roweis was an associate professor in … Continue reading →

… as I will be busy being Canadian

Another feature of Bill C-470  (see previous post) is that it contains compensation disclosure provisions –with a floor of $100,000– that are aimed at improving the accountability and transparency of charities. The AUCC finds the following problem with this provision:

Researchers at Northwestern University found that people were more likely to solve word puzzles with sudden insight when they were amused, having just seen a short comedy routine by Robin Williams. Not so when they’d seen a scary or boring … Continue reading →