Math – Just Say No

It’s good to be back in State College, even though we dragged the cold air with us. It was definitely a bit of a whirlwind weekend, from having to get up mega-early Saturday morning in Boulder to go to the Denver airport to finally getting back to State College in late afternoon. Shortly after I got back, it was time to head right back into campus for the PSCG Spring Semester Kickoff party, which had plenty of free pizza and games. Tim taught me how to play some Chinese variant of chess which was pretty cool, and then the rest of the time, while everyone else played other games, he & I played Megachess (my three-person chess game), rotating the board and taking a turn making the best move possible for the color in front of us. It was definitely an interesting and different way to play, not being able to come up with or execute any sort of coherent strategy (not to mention Megachess having completely different strategies from regular chess). I still prefer playing Megachess with three instead of two people though. 🙂
I spent parts of Monday and much of Tuesday copying Kerrie’s notes from the Linear Algebra class (Math 436) that we’d signed up for. After copying those, reading through chapter 1 of the book carefully, and starting to work on the assignment, I really got to thinking that the class wasn’t gonna be all that useful to me, while also being a lot of work (you know, trying to translate math language and think like a mathematician instead of a “normal” person). So with today already being the drop/add deadline here at PSU (they always have it so ridiculously early in the semester, especially compared to GAC), I had to put in some hard thinking of whether to stay in a class that I hadn’t even attended yet. And to be honest, I was dreading it (especially after Kerrie decided to drop the class, because then I didn’t know anyone), and didn’t really want to go through an entire semester like that. It would’ve been a different thing entirely if this were a linear algebra class from an applied math perspective, but instead it was clear after getting this far into it that it was gonna be from a pure math perspective. And that’s a world of difference. You see, I like applied math and physics-type stuff. But pure math? I despise it. It’s just too abstract for me, and my brain really doesn’t think that way. The way I see it, math is a tool that should be used to solve real-world problems; math (in my view) is somewhat pointless when it’s treated as an end in and of itself, and isn’t used to do anything practical. So I decided to drop it, and register instead for Remote Sensing of the Earth System (i.e., a class about satellites!). I was trying to decide between Radar Meteorology (which would’ve also been interesting) and Remote Sensing, neither of which is really remotely relevant to my research, but I think the latter will be potentially more interesting, spanning a wide range of topics (ozone/atmospheric composition, ice/snow cover, cloud properties, oceanography, etc., basically any field that uses satellite measurements). It should also be a bit less work that Linear Algebra, which would be a huge plus and would allow me more time to do research. And another plus is that Caren, Anke, Luna & Isaac are all taking it too, meaning I’ll have some company during that once-a-week 2.5-hr class.
While I was in Boulder I finally got around to reading a novel (gasp! reading something for fun while in grad school? perish the thought!), “Hood” by Stephen Lawhead (my favourite author!), book 1 of the King Raven trilogy. It’s a pretty cool book, basically setting Robin Hood in Wales in AD 1073, complete with Welsh place/proper names, giving it an authentic feel (Lawhead always does that in his books, which are typically Irish, Celtic or Welsh in flavor). I had originally started reading it last spring on my way down to New Orleans for Katrina clean-up, but didn’t get very far before thesising took over my life once I got back to PSU, so I just started over. I didn’t wanna put it down, and I was tempted all along last week just to keep reading, but realized that sitting through a bunch of presentations on little to no sleep wouldn’t be a wise plan. So I just waited until Sunday night to stay up late finishing it all! It’s definitely been awhile since I’ve done something like that. I wish I had more time to do reading for fun. But now that I’m hooked, I’ve gotta get book 2 in the trilogy, “Scarlet”!
So now that Fred Thompson has dropped out of the GOP presidential race, who am I supporting? That’s a really good question, and I wish I knew. All I know is that it’s certainly not Mike Huckabee or John McCain! Both of them are running pretty dishonest campaigns, in my opinion. I guess my top three right now would be Romney, Paul & Giuliani, though I’d have to hold my nose to vote for any of those three. Is it too cynical to say that I’m quite disillusioned with our current slate of candidates? A third party might look very attractive to me this year!