Blog Posts

Seen (and overheard) about town today… A murmuration of joggers. A homeless man with an enormous bag of cans and bottles. He was walking up College Street and the only way he could keep the bag from dragging on the sidewalk was to hold it with his arms fully extended, elbows locked, above his head. A woman breaking up with her boyfriend over the telephone, at high volume, with a Bluetooth headset. ... Read more …

Seen about town today… Here’s the quote in context, from an interview quoted in The New Yorker: “Bosch and Brueghel were ahead of their time. They were fighting against enormous odds to make statements that might be seen as sinful. Looking at their pictures, I see these brown and red tones that seem to evoke history and madness at the same time, and I want to commend them for taking this plunge into madness. ... Read more …

Seen about town today… A fellow on UVM campus all decked out in lederhosen and a Tyrolian hat. I guess it must be October Oktober. One of the biggest red-shouldered hawks I’ve ever seen, swooping over University Heights. A Wednesday Addams doppelganger in Bailey-Howe Library. And… Forgive me for getting sappy about such things, but this evening the rising moon over the Green Mountains was so beautiful, and the sunset behind the Adirondacks across the lake was so beautiful, I got choked up. ... Read more …

On Friday, Robert J. Lemke Oliver presented a talk at the UVM Mathematics Colloquium entitled “Prime Numbers, Randomness, and the Gambler’s Fallacy.” Abstract: “Prime numbers are often said to be ‘random’, but, given that primes are deterministic, what does that actually mean? One way in which this randomness manifests is in the last digits of primes: it turns out that each possible last digit is equally likely in a certain strong sense. ... Read more …

A Fundamental Theory to Model the Mind Jennifer Ouellette, Quanta Of course, I’m going to make a joke. While the claim of the research described in the article is that “localized episodes of disordered brain activity help keep the overall system in healthy balance”, I can’t help but wonder (in my own case) about the effects of widespread episodes of disordered brain activity. Ha. I was interested to find that the phenomenon described, involving self-organizing criticality, has been applied in modeling blackouts in power grids (a subject near and dear to UVM). ... Read more …

Some graffiti seen about town today…

Seen and heard about town today… Tee shirts: I run my world I’m nobody. Who are YOU? The future is FEMALE A young woman who might have passed for a Hemingway grand-daughter, sitting at a sidewalk cafe. She drums the table and hollers “Where’s my poutine? Where’s MAH POOOTEEEEEN?” A fellow about my age dove on a cigarette butt the way a seagull might dive on a french fry. He snatched it up, inspected it carefully, grumbled, and tossed it aside. ... Read more …

We will attend the Champlain Valley Mini Maker Faire at Shelburne Farms, Sunday 24 September. See you there! http://champlain.makerfaire.com

Seen and heard about town today… Overheard at the Art Hop: “I don’t think they have any venues, just, like, places.” A nest of bees in a rotted out railroad tie in front of the Maltex Building. Best of show (IMHO): Two paintings leaning against the wall in Linda Jones’ studio—“Fungus Tree” and “Sticks”, both from 2010. An unusually large number of cute babies (I’m such a sucker for babies). ... Read more …

I plan on attending. I’ll have room for two more in the car. Anyone from UVM interested? Processing Community Day 21 October 2017 MIT Media Lab 75 Amherst Street Cambridge, MA https://day.processing.org