An ode to Salient

If the loyal reader of my blog¹ had been wondering about my tardy posting record of late, they would be well advised to read on².

I once, you see, had a high opinion of both all opinions of mine other than the one I am currently expressing⁷, and of my rapier-like wit, my subtle but deeply incisive insight into the tragedy of the human condition, my bard-esque mastery of the English language and a certain red pair of underwear I own that no-one else on Earth can muster up the courage to call anything other than 'hideous'. In all of these talents, dear reader, I have discovered myself bested. Were it by a single, special individual I could have lived with my resulting sense of disappointment. Were it even by two individuals I likewise would have evaded the depths of depression into which I sank (provided, of course, these individuals were famous wits, poets, philosophers or possibly taxi drivers⁸). As it turns out, however, I find myself a distant second to a vast number of individuals drawn from a cadre of intellectuals who see fit to rub my nose in their superiority on a regular basis. I am referring, of course, to the letter writers to the otherwise pedestrian student magazine of Victoria University: Salient. But why would I waste more of my readership's precious time with my own inferior scribbles when I could instead elevate my blog to true greatness through the humble repetition of their literary and philosophical greatness? It is to this noble end that I now turn. The reader should note that the greatness they are about to witness is drawn but from the single latest issue of the publication.

Dear N-N-C-lient,

Big ups to the S.M.B!

Chur!

..... Hammer ......

________________________________

dear salient

i wasted an hour doing the damn crptography by yes i am really a campus coach it was such an arrogant way to write a letter but as i thought i was intellectual superior i completed it yes cc i did

your poem needs some work so here i decided to write you a lil story

she walked in the door eyes so sweet staring down as if afraid to meet I looked a second too long and in that second our eyes met and she blushed as her eyes followed mine i was confused what should i do? what could i do. this drove me to do the one thing i never thought id do ..... smile the cheesyiest smile you'd ever c and hope no expect one in return the anticipation was killing me as at first there was the confused look quickly turning into a rushed smile as she triped lucky that i was there to catch her as she stared straight at ny eyes again as if trying to analyse who i was? what type of person i was and just then i smelt the most esquisite smell i ever smelt it paralyzed me from head to toe i could only do one thing in that moment ..... to be continued⁹

from forever and ever hun xoxo.... miss ya long time!!!!

________________________________

Dear INFO 101 tutor,

Sorry I'm 15 minutes late. I got hit by a car.

So give me my attendance bastard!

Yours,

The sly and sneaky fox.

________________________________

Hey! Hey Salient!

Nice rack. Way-hey!

Michael "I-Like-Girls" Hempletine

________________________________

Dear So-it-was-okay-lient,

Today I waited for two buses for agest, then two came at once. But one of them was full, so it was okay¹⁰.

onelineletters

________________________________

Dear Salient,

It's been a while.

But did you see me in Craccum?

I'm so famous.

Love wellybabe87

That sound you are currently hearing, dear reader, is the contented silence of an entire nation. Sleep soundly, New Zealand. The hands of your future leaders are firm, just, wise and true.

¹Purposeful singular. You know who you are, and may cease hitting 'refresh'.

²As, indeed, would anyone who values a gripping read constructed by a true master of the English language<sup>3

3</sup>But who is also first and fore-most one of those rare connoisseurs of the bitter taste of disappointment⁴.

⁴.............. and don't kid yourself, buddy, they're out there⁵.

⁵..... I wonder..... would a foot-note to a foot-note to a foot-note to a foot-note to a foot-note be going too far do you think⁶?

⁶Not that that would have been one, of course. This one is, though. The reader is left to infer for themselves the degree to which the author really values their opinion....

⁷Yeah, I've always been a little luke-warm on that one. I suppose if I had to score it out of 10 (on an opinion-ometer, if you will) I'd give it about a 5.673. Incidentally, are all of these foot-notes giving you a head-ache yet? I'd hate to think I was going to all this trouble and you weren't getting a head-ache....

⁸Note the way I put that digression into a set of brackets rather than a foot-note? Yeah, I relented on my desire to wreak destruction on your head. Oh, wait.... bugger. Sorry.

⁹Nooooooooo! And I thought Dostoevsky finished chapters with cliff-hangers! Why must this tortured genius leave me in such gooey anticipation for the next installment? Why must life be so cruel? Never since Shakespeare have we witnessed a genius more deserving of the license he takes in breaking all rules of spelling, grammar and punctuation!

¹⁰I recall, with shame, my own clumsy attempt at conveying such an epiphanous tale....

First years say the darndest things.

I have just finished marking 1/4 of the questions of a first year exam. But before I begin on what little meat there is in this story¹, perhaps a little explanation is in order about the paper² in question. It is a 'discrete mathematics and linear algebra' course. There are two such courses (covering exactly the same material) running simultaneously. One takes a year, and the other one half a year. The half year version begins half way into the full year version. The reader is perhaps under some misapprehension that the latter course, covering the same material in half the time, is full of the really bright and/or hard-working people. This is, sadly, not the case. In fact it is full of individuals who originally enrolled in the previous course who then took a long hard look at their assessment results and, looking down the barrel of an epic fail, decided to drop out of the full year version and enrol in the half year version instead. The reader is perhaps also under the misapprehension that they tend to put more effort into their second attempt.

Anyways, I want to talk to you about question 3 a): Write down the definition of a rational number. Most people answered this incorrectly, and here are some of the responses I received:

1. Any number that is not a fraction.
2. Any number which can be expressed as p/q where p,q ∈ ℝ and p ≤ q. ³
   
3. A number that exists rationally.
4. Any number that is not irrational.
5. A number that makes scence(sic).
6. Any number that doesn't believe in fairy tales⁴.
7. Definition of a rational number. There is a chap in class who I always thought was an ace but he has written less than I. I guess I am not the only person who was either stumped by this course or who didn't work on it hard enough & is now compelled to write Ramayamas in the answer sheet. Yay! 15 minutes to go. Actually 20 mins but I think I am going to make a run for it. Have no clue what I am writing and I think am simply allowing all thoughts to spill out onto paper. Possibly my constant scribbling is leading the guy next to me to get very worried as he isn't writing anything either. I wish I could go home for a bit. Really wish I could go home if only it wasn't 18 hours away.
   

¹Which may be safely characterised as being to world literature what a ham bone stew is to world cuisine. P.S. Fuck you, yes, this is a footnote. Despite your endless pay-outs on this front, I still like the fucking things.

²In New Zealand Universities 'courses' are called 'papers'. This caused some confusion for me when in casual conversation a great number of people started casually talking about papers they did in first year. I thought I was surrounded by geniuses. P.S. Yes, this is another footnote. Go to hell.

³I had to at least acknowledge internal consistency here. When asked to prove that √3 was irrational they said: √3 = 3/√3 and, since 3 > √3, √3 is irrational. The correct answers were kind of cute, too, actually (& not the way I've ever seen this answered). They reasoned as follows: Let p,q ∈ ℤ. Then the prime factorization of both p² and q² contain an even number of terms. Thus p²≠ 3q ² and so √3 ≠ p/q.

⁴This guy got marks.

The end is nigh? Don't be silly.

There's an election a-comin' up in New Zealand which, I have to confess, I have neither been following nor thought about all that much. This is, as my office-mate points out to me, rather silly in that it is probably going to have more of a direct effect upon my life than that of the upcoming U.S. election which I have been following, and which scares me a great deal. Or at least, it used to dear reader. And, strangely enough, it was Andrew Bolt who made me see the light on this one.

You see, up until now, my sympathies very much lay with Sam Harris' appraisal of the situation. I found, amongst other things, the thought that a half-witted pentecostal who looks rapturously forward to the end of days is reasonably likely to, in a few short years, possess nuclear launch codes to be a little disquieting. But Bolt has forced me to re-think my opinions on Sarah Palin. Yesm. Allow me to illustrate. Take, for instance, the following (and I beg some indulgence here) video:



Now, if you're like me, you probably thought that Kellie Pickler was pretty stupid based on this video. Be honest, now, you did. Well then, Mr Clever-Dick, feast your eyes upon this one.

Pretty confronting, right? Clearly, Kellie Pickler isn't stupid at all.

Feel better now? I know I do......

I'm not one for hyperbole........

...... but¹ and this .... is like Nazi Germany. First, dear reader, they moved my office 10 metres down the hall for no good reason at all - and you did nothing, for it was not your office. Then they took away our coffee beans for Christ's sake²!!! - and you did nothing, for you did not drink our coffee. I'm not sure exactly what they're going to do next .... but I'm sure we can all agree that the writing is on the wall and that my entire readership is .... well, don't be expecting me to stick up for your rights when things turn really nasty, O.K.? Basically, you've let me down. I am currently drinking the very last cup of free, real coffee as supplied by the school of mathematics, statistics and computer science to graduate students on up. It is a sombre moment marking the, I think we can all agree, first step down that slippery slope towards nuclear Armageddon. It's been nice knowing you all......

But moving along ..... this does seem like a good place to ask the question: What makes people vote republican? I do not pose this question in a topical "Dear god how could anyone want to risk giving Sarah Palin the nuclear codes?" kind of way - but in the more general sense as posed by the author at said link. See also an online book here. On the one hand, well, surely what makes people vote the way they do is as valid an area of social research as any other.... and, well, I tend to agree about the existence of people of a certain mindset to actively vote for parties who are demonstrably acting in manners contrary to said voter's interests and that there are substantial numbers of conservative voters that fall into this category. On the other hand, though ...... I get an uncomfortable feeling that someone approached a grants committee and said something like "basically, my research will be on how people who vote Tory suck more balls than Annabelle Chong - slip me some dough, brother". How would Today Tonight deal with this, I wonder? How do I feel about the fact that I just asked that question? It's a thorny one.

DISCUSS!

¹Happy, Dave?

²Bean-counters are stealing our beans, if you will. My office mate and I have thoroughly scoped out the administration building to find out where they hide theirs (it being our solemn duty to return the favour) ... but thus far to no avail.

LOL

A conversation from my office:

Adam: I've just made an infinite injury argument in which requirements injure themselves.

Me: So, that would be an infinite self-injury argument, then ....... Wow. Recursion theory goes emo.

The post previously known as ""

I was about to begin this post with : "You probably don't remember this, but", but then I remembered just who my readership was...... Anyways, there was once this episode of Red Dwarf where the crew of said vessel met up with alternate versions of themselves from other dimensions. The humour from said episode deriving from the fact that Rimmer's opposite number turned out to be the Übermensch. I bring this up because I seem to be living with a similar happenstance. Readers may note that in the past I have mentioned that my current supervisor looks like John Bunnett. What I didn't mention before now was that, well, he kind of acts like John Bunnett too.... only with a few crucial differences.

Let's say you're sitting in a seminar or summatt when the speaker makes a statement that seems either innocuous or goes completely over your head. It is not unknown to hear an "ahhhhh" or "cool" emanating from your left such that, with your eyes closed, could fool you into thinking you're sharing a room with Gomer. Then a question will be asked of the speaker by said individual which, at first, no-body really understands. The difference being that, after a similarly long and painful exchange it will invariably turn out that the questioner has actually spotted some fundamental flaw or implication that no-one else did, and isn't merely asking to be convinced, at the freaking end of a Galois theory course, that you can't express all roots of a quintic as radicals.


This leads me to the inescapable conclusion that my supervisor is, by some bizarre cosmic trick, the man that John Bunnett was meant to be.

It's creepy.

Judicial activism, NZ style

Recently, my august colleague harbored a discussion linking judicial activism to bills of rights. Now, it seems to me that with or without a bill of rights the community will always, well, expect a certain level of judicial activism anyways.... or at least they should do. The separation of powers is, for rather obvious reasons, a damn good thing. Further, even competent and just governments cannot be expected to foresee every circumstance to which a given law may be applied - and so cannot possibly be expected to draft law, the interpretation of which will fail to be ambiguous in every possible circumstance to which it will be applied. Thus, at some point or other it will become inevitable that judges will find themselves staring down the barrel of multiple interpretations of the law to a given circumstance - one of which they must pick guided only by (we would hope) their reason and their conscience. Lastly, requiring that law-makers face a hostile judicial environment is, I rather think, a good thing for the democratic process in the long term anyway.

I would like, then, to take a quiet judicial-activism appreciation moment. I would like us to reflect that, on occasion, it can fall on the shoulders of judges to act as those that stand on the wall as our last lines of defense against a descent into barbarism. Perhaps we can all recall at this moment our favorite instance of such a moment. Much of my pinko-commo readership will, I imagine, be thinking of, say, the Mabo decision at this point. I am not. For me, there will always be the one definitive moment of an instance where, with the barbarians at gates of the courthouse a single judge stood firm and said .... "no. Here is a line that society simply must not cross. I cannot, in good conscience, allow such a pernicious blot on the name of humanity to stand." Further, I am pleased to say that this case occurred right here in my adopted home of New Zealand. Wiping away the tears, dear reader, I refer you to the details¹.

¹Make damn sure you read the readers comments. Oh, yeah, and thanks Helena.

Random Ramblings on Wellington Part 1 of at least 1.

My first note will be, rather boringly, on the weather. I was informed, before leaving for the place that I should make good my farewells to the sun due to the fact that, if Richard Dawkins was born here, there might currently be a bestselling book on New Zealand shelves titled The Sun Delusion. I was also informed that Wellington is a very windy place. Now, I will grant you I've only been here a brief time in, well, summer but while I can certainly attest to the latter fact, the former one is bullshit. I've seen plenty of sun and there is good reason to believe that, given the truth of the latter fact I will continue to do so. I have, in point of fact, seen rain clouds racing across the sky that I like to think were having the following conversation¹:

Cloud Leader: Looks like we're going in full throttle!

Cloud one: Target's coming up.....

Cloud Leader: STAY ON TARGET!!!

Cloud one: We're coming in too fast!!!!

Cloud Leader: STAY ON TARGET!!!

Cloud one: Rain's away!!!!

Cloud five: Did you hit?

Cloud Leader: Negative. Just. Scratched. The surface.

My second note shall be about coffee mugs. This relates to Victoria University in comparison to UQ. More specifically, the tea room. The tea room at Victoria is, unlike that of UQ, furnished with the following:

1. Coffee beans, free.²
2. A coffee ginder, functional.
3. Tea, milk, sugar, etc.., long list thereof.
4. A fridge, frosty.
5. A boiling water dispenser, hot.
   
6. Plungers and coffee pots, aplenty.
7. A stove, also hot - but only when you want it to be.

Given that all of this is the case, I can find it in my heart to forgive the following omission:

8. Mugs, in large supply.

Now, up until now I had taken a similar attitude towards coffee mugs as I had to pens, umbrellas and wine knives. These aren't things you buy. There's just a common pool of the things. More are constantly being injected into the system as gifts and promotional items and people are constantly losing them, then subsequently finding another one someone else lost. But I needed a mug. Being forced to buy one, I resolved upon getting a good one. This was not, it turns out, an easy task. I wanted the kind of mug where, when pulling an all-nighter to meet the kind of deadline that, if missed, could result in your left testicle being fed to wild pigs, you could look down at it and develop the pleasing delusion that everything is going to be O.K. This was, it turns out, no easy task. I looked, and looked and looked but to no avail. Having failed to purchase a mug I then resolved upon stealing one. I would find a quirky cafe with interesting cups and make good my escape post-haste. Unfortunately, while I could find plenty of quirky cafes, they all had dull cups. I lost hope. I trudged dejectedly back towards uni, when I chanced upon a strange little shop. There were numerous flowers on a sign which read:

Fancy World
It becomes a dream....

Barely daring to hope, I made my way around a store filled with various Japanese Hello Kitty style objects. Finally, I saw it. It had a pig on it. In answer to the question on one side of said mug I answered, weeping tears of joy, "No, I do not know the story of cute pig 'lulu'." Wiping away the tears and presenting my stiff upper lip, I continued "But the tale of this pig intrigues me. I am hungry to know it. Tell me more, Oh muse......". Sadly, there was little in the way of hard facts to be had on the other side of the mug save to say that the pig was crying in that Japanese cartoon type stylised way that just screams Waaaaaa!!! at you. There was, however, a speech bubble which said "Why she don't like me?" along with a squiggle reminiscent of a pig's tail. It would seem that our unfortunate lesbian pig had taken a sadly non-reciprocated liking to another sow³. The sorrow of Lulu touched me deeply, dear reader, and I made good my purchase. It came also with a lid that doubles as a saucer and a porcelain spoon⁴! Having wasted an entire morning on this search, I took the directest route back to uni⁵.

My last note relates to the results of a survey widely publicised here. According to Durex, New Zealand women are the most promiscuous on the planet. It seems, then, that perhaps the time is ripe for an "irresistible force vs immovable object" type of experiment: Will New Zealand women sleep with mathematicians?

Only time will tell.

¹I am aware, of course, aware that there is at least one person who regularly reads this blog and hasn't seen the original Star Wars movies. Let us all take a moment to reflect in sadness on the reference they're missing here....

² A footnote is in order here about coffee generally in Wellington. It's good. There are, you are informed, more cafes per square unit of area here than in New York (assuming of course that your unit is not sufficiently large as to include all of New York). The thing is, though, they all know what they're doing. There is actually a distinction in ordering a flat white and a latte here, other than the type of cup you get it in, for instance. I recall once being thrown behind an espresso machine at QPAC when someone ordered a takeaway latte. I picked up the take-away cup, stared at it for a while and turned to my colleague quizzically: "What" I asked "is the difference between a takeaway latte and a takeaway flat white", to which my colleague replied "hmmm.... I guess there isn't one".

³ I have since devoted a good deal of thought to the 'why' question with which Lulu seemed so concerned. Possibly, of course, the sow in question just likes boar. Possibly she has various objections to Lulu's poor grasp of Syntax. Maybe, Lulu, you're just too whiney.....

⁴ I suspect it may have been intended for children.

⁵ This involved a staircase. A big one. Oh fellow Brisbane-ites, you have no idea about what a big staircase really means. Wellington, being on a fault-line has bits of the city which are just suddenly much higher than other bits, and the university is on a hill. There are staircases on which, while climbing them, you expect to see the skeletal remains of people holding flags who just didn't make it. It was just such a staircase I was forced to climb carrying my piggy treasure.

Here Breaketh the Drought

There has, I will admit, been something of a dearth in posts on this here website of late. I have been aware of this and no amount of reminders, gentle prodding or rocks being thrown through windows on the part of you, the readership¹, was ever going to change this. It is now the case, however, that, were I Adam West playing batman, I might find myself tempted (or possibly contractually obliged by virtue of it being in the god-damn script Adam ... would you just for once drag your pathetic B-grade actor's arse off of the booze long enough to learn your fucking lines?) to say that the purpose for this pusillanimous posting paucity is past, my post-perusing pal.

You see, I was always aware of what many people would have been thinking sniggeringly behind my back when I left Australian shores last month: "He'll be back. Sure he's thinks he's going to do a PhD and all, but let's face it to get that far the son of a bitch is going to have to enroll ...... Oh, chuckle, chuckle chuckle, tee hee hee, hee hee hee." Now, while I was at least a little tempted before now to post about my administrative peccadilloes on that front, well, I was always just that little bit frightened that you might actually be right and hence I thought I'd just hide quietly in a corner² for a while. Anyways, I am now pleased to announce that I am now officially enrolled and, perhaps more importantly, am as of today able to actually log on to the fucking computer on my desk³. It is from said machine that I write this seminal post.

Having left Brisbane airport at 9:00 on a 3 hour flight which arrived in Wellington at 15:00 local time, I was feeling a little cheated. Assuming that I do so during another period of daylight saving, however, I suppose I will get to make that up on a subsequent return journey and take a 3 hour flight into a city 3 hours behind my point of departure - thus achieving the giddy thrill of feeling like I am arriving at the same time I departed. Anyway, perhaps because I was bitterly knawing away at this thought, I didn't just go straight to the university as it turns out I should have done - resolving instead to do so on the morrow. Let me explain why this turned out to be a terribly bad idea with a little aside, yes?

There is something, I think, rather endearing about the working habits of mathematicians. These being, to my eye, not dissimilar to that of composers or artists generally. In between sometimes feverish fits of work, they often find themselves just kind of tossing ideas about, taking long naps, coffee breaks, three hour lunches, wandering around and generally waiting for inspiration to hit them. Sometimes, for instance, they just need to up and go surfing on the south island for a couple of weeks or so. Funnily enough, this is precisely what my own principal supervisor found himself doing as of the day after I arrived - as I discovered upon checking my in-box on the 28th. There are a few more points which I feel are relevant to our discussion at this juncture:

1. Australian students are here treated as domestic - and thus have to enroll in person.
2. I discovered the above after sending all of my forms over in November 2006. Not to worry, though, the relevant documents (including required certified copies of academic transcripts, degrees and what-not the originals of which I was to subsequently leave in Australia) were, I was told, forwarded to my principal supervisor for safe-keeping, and all could thus be made well on my arrival.
3. Even if I had all relevant copies (which I was cautious enough, in point of fact, to bring with me), and acquired minty fresh new forms to fill in on arrival - I still needed my supervisor's signature on one of them.
4. The terms of my scholarship contract clearly required me to be enrolled by March 7 else there would be "no dineros for me".
5. My supervisor was to return on March 11.

As it happens, the scholarships office people were surprisingly (given my past experiences with administrative types) quite prepared to ignore point 4. Further amusement, however, was to be had on my endeavours to open a bank account into which the dineros mentioned in point 4 should be payed. I'd opened an account with HSBC Australia before leaving with a view to conveniently subsequently opening an HSBC New Zealand account on arrival here - having been assured that they did, indeed, have branches in New Zealand and would in the mean-time be able to access the Australian account through ATMs anyways. It was, on reflection, a mistake to assume that "branches in New Zealand" meant "branches in Wellington, the fucking capitol". Happily, however, there are three branches in Auckland through which, being the bloody minded son of a bitch that I am, I resolved to set up said account. To do so, I required various certified copies of various proofs of identity and of address. Of all the various options for identity proving, the only viable options for me were a passport and a New Zealand driver's license. To prove address, I essentially needed an official letter from a New Zealand employer to a New Zealand address⁴. My next step, then, was to acquire a New Zealand driver's license. To do this, I required the following:

1. My passport
2. My Australian driver's license
3. A proof of address⁵
4. To pass the theory test you do to get a learner's permit.
   

The proof of address could take the form of a utility bill, a bank statement, or some other ambiguously worded letter of proof the exact wording of which I do not remember past to say that the meaning of said wording was not remotely clear. The utility bill one was clearly out. Thus, it seemed, I needed a bank account to get the driver's license and a driver's license to get the fucking bank account. Yip-de-fucking-ha. Not to worry, though, it turned out that any official-looking computer generated letter correctly addressed would fall into the third category. Not knowing, at this point that they wouldn't even keep a copy of the letter, it is a source of deep regret to me that I didn't simply invent a bogus company and letter-head and write the damn thing myself. Instead, I got my Aunt (who currently works as a policy adviser to the police) to write a bogus letter on official New Zealand Police letter-head instead (note that I was doing this before the actions of footnote 4). Note that the address in question also happens to be her own address.

Anyways, I am officially posting again, and shall write more anon.

¹The little people

² Some might say that this is an apt characterisation of what not just myself, but the entire population of New Zealand finds itself doing.......

³This is not to say that I wasn't happy with the various fulfilling pastimes I was able to enjoy with my nerd-machine. Why, I could make the keyboard go "click, click". I could rest hot beverages on it and play with the log-on screen for, oh, hours at a time. I just felt that it was time to take our relationship to the next level is all....

⁴This last was achieved in a quaint manner via a conversation with Rob (my administrative supervisor) which went a little something like this: Me: "Ah, could you possibly just write a letter on official letter-head addressed to me at this address?" Rob: "What should the letter say?" Me: *shrug* Rob: "Why don't I just write to confirm you're doing a PhD here?" Me: "No, I don't want it to sound like I asked you to do it....." Rob: "How about I just inform you you were allocated that office I showed you to yesterday, and that you should pick up at the school office that key you have in your pocket?" Me: "Perfect."

⁵Seriously, though, what the cock is with all of this address-proving crap you have to do here?