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The place was pitch black and loud; Mathesian never showed.
The dim yellow jacket is the proffie who showed up (To proffie: I'm not sure which name was your handle, and which was your true name so I'm not naming you, sorry; please name yourself in the comments), the candle on the table was the brightest thing in the room, and we have the guy's Joint Mathematics Meeting event listing and the Craft & Commerce wine list to prove we were there.
The pins on the herringbone jacket were my calling card; top is a North Korean Kim Il Sung flag pin, then a DOSAAF instructor pin, below that a Young Oktobrist pin, then Bob Ugly of the woefully defunct San Diego pirate radio station Free Radio San Diego (96.9FM). Yaarr!
I suck for not remembering the proffie's name, and where the Hell were you, Mathesian?
Strelnikov
Angriest Man in Eurasia
Add: All photos taken with a flashless cameraphone
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| Craft & Commerce's Wine List |
I didn't know you were a mathematician, Strel! But of course, Mother Russia has produced more than a few fine ones. How horrifying it must be for you to have to deal with today's American students, who think they're hot stuff and yet can't even handle fractions, and then totally without shame loudly declare that, "Math isn't important." Enjoy the compound interest on those student loans, pea brains!
ReplyDeleteWhat's even worse is engineering majors who, during a final exam, ask what the formula for the circumference of a circle is. This happened twice in one class last semester. I was tempted to scream that if you don't know, you shouldn't be an engineer, since you'll be dangerous.
DeleteI was an engineering freshman nearly 40 years ago and I noticed how standards declined over the years.
DeleteBut the apparent lack of ability wasn't entirely the fault of the students. When I was a TA while working on my first master's degree in the early 1980s, I had one in a statics course who couldn't do basic trig. Somehow, he managed to graduate from high school without knowing what sines, cosines, and tangents were. In 5 minutes, I taught him everything he needed to know how to calculate those functions.
About 20 years ago, while I was teaching, I had a student ask me how to solve a quadratic equation during a work session. Not only was it something that I'd learned in junior high school, but the chap had taken a math course the previous term and I'm sure that low-order polynomials would have been covered.
I still have no idea how situations like that could even be possible.
"Enjoy the compound interest on those student loans, pea brains!"
ReplyDeleteLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!
I'm not a mathematician. I teach phys ed in Baja and drove up in order to slaughter a large numb of the blog users who hate me. When I saw it was just the one sad dude, I let him go.
ReplyDeleteThen I had an In n Out burger and headed back.
Oh yeah, In-N-Out Burgers. While they do have many fans, the name has long disquieted me: which end do they come out?
DeleteFroderick, it's a spoofer.
DeleteI don't do math, wish I did, but I don't.
Yellow-jacket proffie please name yourself, I didn't have my notepad with me.
Where the living fuck were you Mathesian? I may have come a smidge late, but YOU HAVE TO STAY. Unless, of course, YOU NEVER WERE THERE.
Please tell us what happened, inquiring minds want to know!
Grade school kids always thought that burger chain name was a sex joke.
[Previous post written by The Real....ly pissed off Strelnikov.]
DeleteNote from Leslie K:
DeleteThe "Strel-get-off" comment is from the same person who spoofed Strelnikov's moniker yesterday, and whose comments on more than a dozen posts I took down.
When I take a comment down, it also removes all the replies directly to that comment. Since his comment here is relatively harmless, and because of the usefulness of the replies to it, I've opted to leave it up. Try not to reply directly to any comment that you think might be zapped for the draconian and feminine rules that this poor, dying blog still uses.
Leslie K
Certainly there might have been a messup, but here's Mathesian's email:
Deletefrom: mathesian mathesian
to: College Misery
date: Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 11:05 PM
subject: Re: A post about the Joint Mathematics Meetings
Thanks. I will post a comment, but if you could post this update, it would be appreciated.
We, the mathematicians of CM, will meet at 7pm PST, January 10, at Craft & Commerce, on 675 Beech Street, between India and Kettner, in San Diego. I will be wearing a beanie cap.
This makes me sad. I had high hopes for a big gathering.
ReplyDeleteI like your calling card, Strel. I certainly would have recognized you (and presumably you would have recognized someone in a beanie).
ReplyDeleteMaybe Mathesian was there, but his (her?) chair, or another colleague, was, too, and (s)he didn't dare pull out the beanie? That's the only reasonable explanation/excuse I can think of.
If we ever do this again in SD, I'm arriving early and wearing my furry hat.
DeleteIn SD, that would definitely stand out. In this and next year's MLA venues (Boston, Chicago), not so much. I could have used a furry hat last week.
DeleteI still REALLY want to know what happened to Mathesian....I got there about 30+ minutes late, and he/she/it wasn't there. What happened? Does San Diego have it's own Bermuda Triangle? Can we get Leonard Nimoy to narrate a TV documentary if it does?
DeleteCassandra, my hat is Soviet Navy surplus thus it's probably fishfur. You can get ushankas either civilian or military via the Internet. BTW, the crowd was mostly young; I approached everybody who looked the "right" age, nobody admitted to being "attached" to the site.
Yes, yes, I was there and had the honor of meeting Strelnikov, who walked in just as I was despairing of meeting CMrs and pondering plan B. I'm the guy in the yellow jacket, and had the JMM program with me (Joint Mathematics Meetings).
ReplyDeleteNice conference, BTW. Great for a change to be in a place where everyone, high school to retirees, loves math and pursues it with a passion, not "because it's required".
YES!
DeleteYou the MAN, Peter K!
Thank you for responding!!
I was there wearing a black beanie as indicated from 7:05-7:55. I walked around a bunch, had a beer and some fries (without ketchup), and nobody approached me.
ReplyDelete-Mathesian
The place must be gigantic, what with Strelnikov, his crazy pins, and a man in a yellow jacket rousting the rabble and never finding you!
DeleteI was there at 7:30ish; were you over at the right side of the room? I was asking everybody with a black hat.
DeleteWere you there on the 9th?
I was near or at the bar most of the time, but I also circuited the place a couple of times. Yes, it was the 9th. I wish now that I had picked a more obvious identifier, rather that "a hat". Seriously, I was there, bored that no CMers approached me, had a 2 beers and fries (no a lot of vegetarian options), and left.
DeleteFrom an earlier post:
DeleteWe, the mathematicians of CM, will meet at 7 pm PST, January 10th, at Craft & Commerce, on 675 Beech Street, between India and Kettner, in San Diego. I will be wearing a beanie cap.
Crap! I join Darla in being saddened by this. I was hoping for news of a fun filled meet up. Dang it all.
ReplyDeleteI want to do something in New York. Any takers? I guess it has to be during a conference, right? I could also do Boston......
I want to do this again in San Diego, but we have to pick an emptier bar. Wednesdays at the Whistle Stop on Fern Street are usually laid back, so are Sundays in the afternoon.
ReplyDelete