Run, Danny, Run

In addition to being a mathematician, football enthusiast, and all around great guy, I would also consider myself to be a runner. I ran for the cross country team in middle school and high school (mostly because cross country was a sport that did not have cuts; athletic I am not) and didn't do half bad. It was one of the few things that I worked hard at in high school, mainly because, when I started, I was really bad at it. In 7th grade, I finished dead last on the team in every race I ran.

But running is one of those activities that, if you do it enough, you will get better. And it doesn't require any specified skills either. Just go out and run, day after day, and you will improve. As opposed to mathematics, where you can sit for days without a creative idea, the only hard part about running is getting out the door. So through sheer determination, I improved myself to the point where, in my junior and senior years, I was one of the top five people on the varsity team. I even went to running camp in the Pocono Mountains. That was intense. We had two runs a day up and down mountains.

Running can be an incredibly rewarding activity, provided you can stay motivated. Unfortunately, after graduating high school, that motivation disappeared. I didn't get back into running on a consistent basis until this past summer. And let me tell you, the first month or so was brutal. But I found myself a group of runners, and signed up to run a half marathon last November. This provided all of the necessary incentive; I was determined not only to be able to finish it, but to finish it strong. I was able to get some long runs and speed workouts in, and I was ready to go.

Unfortunately, here in SoCal, while we don't get snow, we do get wildfires. And the day before the half marathon was to happen, there was a bad fire. The air was of such a poor quality that they had no choice but to cancel the race. No matter, I was in shape and I would run the next race. The next race happened to be the "Race With Grace," a Thanksgiving Day 10k back in my home town of Greece. There is nothing quite like running on a brisk November day in Upstate New York, especially after spending the previous 6 months in Los Angeles. But I sucked it up, got out there, and ended up finishing just under 50 minutes, which was precisely the time I was hoping for.

I had just achieved a difficult goal and was in great shape, so what was my next move? To take the next three months off, of course. That brings us to this past Monday, where I finally dragged my sorry butt out the door. Well I huffed and puffed and wasn't even able to finish the 4 mile loop. D'oh! However, I followed this up with runs Wednesday and Thursday morning with my friend Dylan, and I can already feel my lungs and legs getting better. Now, like so many other things in my life, the trick is to keep it up.

PS: Never, ever, under any circumstances call me Danny.

A Mathematical Pariah Part II

So, in a previous post, I had mentioned that, because I committed the grave offense of taking an extra year to graduate, I was stripped of my stipend and my office. Both of these, while upsetting, made sense to me. However, the thing that did not was that they went through the extra effort of taking my picture down from the graduate students bulletin board. I finally got an explanation why this happened: apparently, according to our esteemed secretaries, I am no longer a mathematics graduate student.

Never mind the fact that I am still living in graduate housing. Never mind the fact that I still can register for research credit as a grad student. Never mind the fact that it was a member of the mathematics faculty who had to sign off on my tuition waver for the year. Never mind the fact that the department still lists me here! Never mind the fact that I still have a department mailbox and receive my bursars bill from the university there. Never mind the fact that nearly every other department on campus has its students take far longer than 5 years (I know of physics students who have taken more than a decade) to finish, and yet they have no problem counting these students as their own.

Nope, according to the supreme dictators of all things mathematical, I am no longer a member of the department. Because I dared take one extra year to graduate. And when I mentioned this, one of our secretaries exclaimed "well you had five years to finish, most people finish by then!" Of course, I am willing to be all that I own (not a lot, granted) that she couldn't even pass a difficult undergraduate math course, let alone make it through the qualifying and candidacy exams.

If that last comment seemed a bit pissy, that is because I am pissed! I still meet with my advisor, work on my thesis, earn my 36 credits a term, and go to combinatorics seminars. Yet a woman who wouldn't know abstract mathematics if it snuck up on her and bit her in the you know where gets to decide that I took too long to graduate, so I must no longer be a mathematics student. Some world we live in.

Go Sabres!

It hasn't been a good couple of weeks for my sports teams. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, A-Rod got caught using steroids, after of course having denied it his whole career. But the Bills are also in the news, after star running back, and possibly the franchise's best hope, Marshawn Lynch got arrested on a felony gun charge. I don't know the details, but apparently he was in a car that got pulled over and, in the course of the investigation, they found an illegally concealed weapon.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that "Beast Mode" has gotten himself in trouble with the law. Last season, he participated in a hit and run, where apparently he hit a woman and then fled the scene. Luckily, she was ok, and that was the end of that. But as the old saying goes (despite our former president's attempt to butcher it): fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I gave Marshawn the benefit of the doubt last time. This time, I don't know what to think.

So, to overgeneralize, the Yankees and Bills are a bunch of cheaters and felons, respectively. That leaves the Buffalo Sabres. Now, I never was a hockey fan growing up. That said, if I rooted for anyone, it would be the Sabres. I can still remember the infamous "No goal," where Brett Hull was allowed to break the rules by having his skate in the crease before scoring the winning goal, beating us in the Stanley Cup Finals. Let me tell you, the sports talk world in Western New York was buzzing after that. The now defunct "Empire Sports" network talked about nothing else for the next two days, as Buffalo had gotten screwed yet again. In fact, at a later Barenaked Ladies concert in Buffalo, the drummer Tyler Stuart worked into Auld Lang Syne the line "And may Brett Hull never forget, that his skate was in the crease!" to the boisterous cheers of the audience.

However, that didn't really affect me much, and I didn't keep track of the Sabres after that, until New Years day 2008. That was the day of the first "NHL Winter Classic," an game between the Sabres and the Penguins played outdoors, in the snow, in Ralph Wilson stadium, in front of more than 70,000 crazy Buffalo fans. Sadly, we lost, but that game opened my eyes to the Sabres. Last season, I started listening to some games on the interweb, and this year, I went to my first Sabres game, against the Anaheim Ducks. Well, we lost that one too (losing is not that rare in Buffalo) but it was a great atmosphere, with many other Buffalo fans in attendance. I had borrowed my friends hockey "sweater" (you better not call it a jersey) and liked it so much, I bought one of my own.

And now I am hooked on the Sabres. We are currently just on the cusp of the playoffs; if the season ended today, we would be in, but not by much. So, Go Sabres! You can be my one respectable team, and do something the Bills haven't done in so long I have forgotten what it is like: actually play games after the regular season ends.

Limbo Rock

One of life's great dilemmas is the issue of whether it is better to get bad news instantly or to just go on for a while not knowing. Though it is often claimed that ignorance is bliss, as an aspiring mathematician, and thus a person who places a high value on rationality, I have always claimed it is better to know than to not know. The relevance of this issue to my life is the fact that in the last few months I have sent out over 120 applications for various post doctoral and assistant professor positions. And I have not heard anything from the vast majority of them.

So, though I finally got out of the limbo of not knowing whether or not I would graduate (I will!), I am in the related limbo of not knowing if I will be actually be able to use the degree I have spent the last 6 years earning. If I were to be consistent, I would say that I would like to know right now that I am not getting a job (if that is the case), rather than sit here for the next few months twiddling my thumbs. And I think that is true; I really do want to know. But I don't know if my ego can handle that kind of rejection.

Last year at this time, when it became clear I was not going to graduate on time and I was not going to be funded for an additional year, I spent my time applying to 30 or 40 community college positions. For all that, I earned a single interview. And they did not call me back. That hurt a lot, but I was able to justify it by noting that they were looking for people with teaching experience, something I did not have. Further, I got my tutoring job soon after, which helped mitigate the pain.

However, this time around, these are predominately jobs which are geared towards research, the thing that I am convinced I want to do for a living. Plus, I don't really have a backup plan, since I am not getting the hours tutoring necessary to pay for living in a real apartment (right now I live in the on campus apartments which are MUCH cheaper than those in the outside world). Then, there is the fact that 120 > 40, which means a lot more rejection.

The next time you see me, if I look a bit anxious, know that it is just because my entire future is on the line, and, at this point, I have no idea what that future will be.

Say it Ain't So, A-Rod

I have to say that I was hurt when news came out that Alex Rodriguez used steroids. I felt the same way when the news about Roger Clemens and Andy Pettite came out before last season. With Roger, I really wanted to believe him when he denied it, but it became fairly obvious he was lying as his story got more and more unbelievable. The fact that he knew he was guilty and still went to Congress and tried to get away with it shows the ultimate in arrogance, and for that I will probably never forgive him.

At least with A-Rod, he is finally coming clean, much like Pettite did. Now, I don't know if you can call coming clean if you admit to something after it is reported, but at least they didn't fall into the same trap that Clemens did. However, neither one of them took full responsibility, with Andy saying he did it for his teammates to get healthy, and Alex saying he did it because of the pressure.

I also feel like this is a slap in the face, since I have constantly defended A-Rod and have been very critical of Yankee fans who seem to constantly boo him. And A-Rod is the best in the game (in this humble Yankee fan's opinion), so to find out that the best in the game is, at least in part, the best because he broke the rules, is incredibly disillusioning. Perhaps I am too naive, but I like to think that, at least when it comes to my team, that the players are playing the game right. But, of course, just like a murderer is somebody's neighbor, the players on my team are no different from those on any other team.

The sad thing is, this won't change a thing for me when the season starts. I still want the Yankees to win, and I will probably just willfully ignore this whole thing about A-Rod, much like I was able to do with Pettite last year. And integrity takes another hit in the interest of the bottom line.

I Want to be a Mathematician

Mathematicians do math. They don't read message boards. They don't watch TV. They don't do any number of activities designed to distract and postpone doing real work. And I want to be one. I want to be thinking about mathematics when I wake up, and when I go to bed at night. The question is: How bad do I want it?

Of course, the above paragraph is a bit simplistic. Mathematicians are people, and they have lives, and do things that regular people do. But they also make math a priority, and often it is the number one priority. This is something I have consistently not done, which is certainly one of the reasons I am struggling to finish graduate school a year later than everybody else. So I wonder, almost every day, if this is really the life for me or whether I am just going through the motions.

But then, I find myself getting into a problem, and losing an hour or two. I find myself writing in LaTex and getting so into it that I almost am late for work. I found myself getting excited explaining even the most mundane SAT problem. And this leads me to believe that I do want it. But it isn't going to come easy. Barbie was right when she said "Math is hard."

So I am challenging myself: do more math. I have a stack of library books, half of which are math texts, and I need to read them. I have at my disposal all the journal articles I could ever want, and it is about time to take advantage of that. Every day, I pledge to ask myself: "Were you a mathematician today?

Those Pesky Creationists

Throughout my time at grad school, there have been various activities that have distracted me from my work, such as Magic: The Gathering, Poker, and, my latest obsession, reading message boards dealing with creationists and their attempts to discredit the theory of Evolution. Let me be clear about where I stand: I am a mathematician, and a friend of scientists, and, as such, I side with the people who use reason, logic and evidence, ie the so called "Darwinists."

Now, right off the bat, there is trouble with that phrase, since it implies a certain degree of hero worship. We don't call people who believe in relativity "Einsteinists" or people that believe in quantum mechanics "Bohrists." There is also the fact that science has progressed a whole lot since Darwin's day, and, while he was an incredibly influential genius, he did get some things wrong and we continue to go far beyond his original theory.

But anyways, that is a side issue, and while calling someone a Darwinist is very flawed, at least it expresses clearly what side of the debate I am on. Now, I never really enjoyed biology, and have participated in calling it a "stamp collecting" science. However, and this is some insight into the abyss that is my brain, a year ago, at Christmas time, my cousin Julie was saying some ridiculous things about evolution, and, since I was fairly clueless on the matter, I didn't really have anything to say in rebuttal. That led me to online searches about evolution to be able to better argue my point, and, in the process of trying to be right, I actually learned a bunch. One of the better sites I found was Talk Origins, which gives a lot of information about the science and the insanity of the arguments against it.

Unfortunately, at least for my productivity, I also found some interesting message boards, such as After the Bar Closes, which I just cannot turn away from. Part of it is that I like to feel superior, and it is not hard to feel superior to a lot of these creationists. But I also like to make sure I really think what I think I think, and in that respect, the more I read about the different sides of this issue, the more I realize that I am on the right side, and I do think what I think I think. Now, if only I could stop using this as an escape from work, and actually read the stack of math books I got from the library...

Super Sunday

I can never really get into the Super Bowl unless the Bills are playing (not a likely occurrence anytime soon) or a team I really hate is in it, like the Patriots last year. Man it was sweet watching them lose...

That said, I am still a football fan, and I enjoy a good game. So this Super Bowl didn't let me down. It had big plays, like a fat man running 100 yards for a touchdown and then needing oxygen, a good comeback, and a last minute touchdown drive. Also, at least from my perspective, there was some controversy. I definitely think the last play should have been reviewed, as Kurt Warner had the ball in his hand and it was moving forward. I don't know if he had control, but I would have liked to see the people in the booth at least look at it a few more times.

Ah well, like I said earlier, I didn't really have any reason to root for either team, and since the guy who hosted our little get together was a Steelers fan, I suppose it is good that they won. Especially since our group seemed to consist of him, a few people who didn't care about football, and the rest, who were vocally rooting for the Cardinals, I guess as a whole support the underdog thing. I was as well, at least as far as I was rooting for anyone, but the Steelers winning didn't upset me terribly, and I felt bad for Dave (our host) who appeared all by himself. So good for him, and good for Pittsburgh, a city in the northeast, where football is meant to be played out in the elements. Not to mention, they have some good, hard core, working class fans, much like the we have in Buffalo.

And yes, with me, it all comes back to the Bills, in some way or another.