Category Archives: Waffle

Persiflage, 2012-2024

Posted on July 23, 2024 by Persiflage

No, not a eulogy! I’ve been a bit concerned for a while about how stable wordpress is as a website — various plugins are always updating on their own, and I have sometimes noticed that old blog posts do not … Continue reading →

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En Passant IX (I’m a Gnu)

Posted on October 28, 2020 by Persiflage

One feature of having an electric piano is the ability to record the accompaniment to songs which (for reasons of timing or otherwise) are quite hard to play and sing at the same time. A possible downside, however, is that … Continue reading →

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Job Dedication

Posted on January 25, 2020 by Persiflage

Earlier last quarter, I had suffered a fairly poor night from some sort of stomach bug. Unfortunately, I made the ill-advised decision not to cancel my classes and went to work, which involves driving from Evanston to Hyde Park. Things … Continue reading →

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Choices

Posted on May 29, 2019 by Persiflage

Who is your preferred next prime minister? I guess it depends on what variety of politician you prefer.  

Posted in Politics, Waffle | 1 Comment

Organization

Posted on December 31, 2018 by Persiflage

This is the current state of my inbox: That either makes me very efficient and up to date, or simply very unpopular (or both!) I’m ready for the new year!

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The spoils of Rio

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Persiflage

Congratulations to Akshay and Peter — don’t spend all those loonies at once! (Actually, I’m not sure that’s a grammatically correct usage of the word loonies unless they pay the winners in the form of 15000 coins; possibly the Hawk … Continue reading →

Posted in Mathematics, Politics, Waffle | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Erdős Number 3!

Posted on March 26, 2017 by Persiflage

My chances at this point of writing a paper with Erdős are probably very small. My chances of writing a paper with one of Erdős’ collaborators is also quite small. I had assumed that I had not even met — … Continue reading →

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What does it take to get a raise?

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Persiflage

Gauss … [had] a salary that remained fixed from 1807 to 1824. (see here.) What was Gauss’ salary? My limited google skills were not able to find this information, although I’m not sure how meaningful it would be to translate … Continue reading →

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Random Photos

Posted on February 20, 2015 by Persiflage

Lunt Hall, the Northwestern mathematics building,  recently underwent an upgrade of the fire alarm system. This includes introducing informative new signage, such as the following: Another change is that the “internal” window to my office was boarded up. The window … Continue reading →

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Harris 60

Posted on December 15, 2014 by Persiflage

I’ve just returned from the excellent MSRI workshop which honored Michael Harris’ 60th birthday, and here is a brief summary of some of the gossip and mathematics I picked up when I was there. First, let me take note of … Continue reading →

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