Thursday, July 22, 2004

Back in QC we had prep

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for three hours a day on average. plus school for six hours a day. five days a week.

at Howard i think time management meant meet the deadlines, which meant work/study twelve hours a day, five days a week.

now i don't have a schedule.
i'm sure i work sometimes, but don't i need a fixed prep time?
like two hours for studying and summarizing papers, and two hours for other related things - doing math, looking for new papers, writing a quick program, meeting to work out a problem, doing research.

and when i've done these four hours i can be free to play or whatever without feeling guilty. no guilt. that sounds like a good reward.

Sunday, July 18, 2004

It's still July

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this month:
i went to a Naija thanksgiving party with my dear Chinwe K.
visited the Getty Center (in Los Angeles, CA) with my dear Jessica F.
went to my first out-of-town conference
(Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, SIAM, in Portland, OR)
did Doylefest
...i'm having great fun.

i also picked up L. Carleson and T.W. Gamelin's "Complex Dynamics" from the Millikan library.
I used to be so utterly unafraid of Math.
Ah to be young and oblivious.
But I am young.
Considering I've only lived about 20% of my life
(assuming a span of 120 years, and why not?)

Friday, July 02, 2004

It's July

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and I just started an African Literature Webgroup. I did some of the web design today. I have to set up forms on the site and publicize. It's at
http://www.geocities.com/dancingbeavers

I haven't touched complex analysis in days.

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Research Update

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Ditching Bio for a while,
also ditching Control Theory for a while.

Trying to read Nikolai Makarov's work on the thermodynamics of rational maps.
I don't know what this is, either.
A "pressure spectrum" P(t) is defined for a rational map F.
I don't understand why it is important. However, P(t) is related to "certain transfer operators."
Some keywords in this work:
Analytic, i.e. under certain conditions given in paper, the negative spectrum is real analytic
Rational functions
Riemann sphere, Spherical metric
Critical points, Periodic Points, i.e. limit sets of the dynamical system

More general:
Complex Dynamics
Conformal Dynamical Systems

I will try to ignore the portions relating to "measure" and dimension spectra, since I haven't studied measure theory. I ran away from Ma 110b in January.

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Life is brief

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But when it's gone
Love goes on and on

Cheeesy line from a song in Disney's Robin Hood

Other beloved cheesy movies:
Annie
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
The Lion King
The Wizard of Oz

Thursday, May 27, 2004

Achilles is a bull

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and Hector is a goat.
Definitely.
As in Taurus, and Capricorn.
If only they hadn't got in each other's way.

War.
Now that's a hard problem.
If you're the world's finest, this is the problem to go after. Forget the traveling salesman.

Monday, May 24, 2004

HIV

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It's still here. We don't talk about it with the fear or frequency that we used to. But it's still here. It still kills. All that stuff about not sharing needles and never ever having unprotected sex? It's still relevant. Just so you know, kiddo.

Monday, May 17, 2004

"Immortality."

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"Take it. It's Yours."
Thus bellows Achilles in the (current) film production of Troy.
Brad Pitt plays Achilles. You did very well, my dear!

Brad Pitt is a future president of the United States.
That's right. Say you read it here first.

I thought that line was the oddest ever in a movie.
"Immortality. Take it. It's yours."
I still think it's odd. But now I can't get it out of my head.

Immortality.
Take It.
It's Yours.

Who wrote the Iliad? Who is Homer? Who is Mozart? Who is...Cora Sadosky?

Saturday, May 15, 2004

As liberally as I'm able

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It's my duty to contribute to the world of science. I have done shamefully little of this.
Some keywords:
CORE
Biological Systems
Control Theory
Applications of Control Theory

TO EXAMINE
Mathematical Analysis
Jules Henri Poincare
Averaging theory
Dynamical Systems

TO WRITE
Proposed research