"Monsoon wedding" rocks

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I also saw "The girl next door" several times. Awesome coming-of-age movie...high school dreams...it's a treat.
I watched a Margaret Cho stand-up comedy video. If you see "Cho Revolution" on DVD, by all means listen to the commentary in which she is her Notorious MOM.
I saw a lot of movies in the past few weeks:
I finally saw the lovely "De-lovely," a delicious musical about Cole Porter's life, with performances by singers Natalie Cole, Sheryl Crow, Diana Krall etc;
I saw "Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid," which was an unexpectedly nice movie;
the slow but intruiging drama "Wicker Park";
"Vanity Fair" with Reese Witherspoon;
"Paparazzi," a violent drama about retribution which I really really enjoyed.
It's possible that I saw "Beyond Borders" in September as well. I liked this movie very much. I cried, I think. War is dumb. Maybe I saw it earlier though, in August.

I'm reading Convex Optimization stuff by Stephen Boyd et al. And George Orwell's "1984". And the "Bhagavad Gita" which Dennice very kindly lent to me. And the usual astrology stuff. And a dab of complex analysis. And a dash of Arabic. And a dot of Pablo Parrilo's brand of problem solving. (It's exciting, learning is. And solving problems.) And I just finished a Christian book on "Smart Listening for Couples" that I bought two weeks ago in Pensacola, Florida. Yeah I went to Pensacola. By bus from Atlanta. Long story. A few days before hurricane Frances.

My darling Carlos defended his thesis this afternoon, and it's time to go and party with him. His research is in plasma physics and he essentially took snapshot photos of spheromaks (see Paul Bellan, his advisor, on the web for more info). It's not trivial to take several photos within microseconds (0.000001s) of one another, you have to be smart about it. Plus I guess the plasmas are very hot - millions of degrees. Find his thesis if you want more info.

Olympiad

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I wish I had gone to the Games in Athens.
It is always inspiring to watch the Olympics...the best in the world in their finest hour.

Nigeria won two medals:
A bronze in the men's 4 X 100m relay (it was a beauty to watch) and a second bronze in the men's 4 X 400m relay.
Next time, we'll win more events: aquatics, women's events, and football quickly come to mind.

I fell in love with several Americans: Michael Phelps the swimmer, Paul Hamm the gymnast - though Morgan is just as hot, Carly Patterson the gymnast...the diver Laura Wilkinson has a calm and mature charm.
I'm also in love with Ian Thorpe the Australian swimmer and Nan Zhang the Chinese gymnast. Nan Zhang is delicious to look at. She's so beautiful. Her birthday is April 30, a day before mine.
Also, Haile Gebrselassie and Kenenisa Bekele and several other marathoners and long-distance runners who made me dream.
Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki, the hot mama who led the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games.
And of course, all the Nigerian competitors, whether they were representing Nigeria or not.

In four years it will be time for Beijing 2008.
YAY!

Quoting Khalil Gibran

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...For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst?
Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves,
and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters...

...You are good when you are one with yourself...

...You are good when you walk to your goal firmly and with bold steps
Yet you are not evil when you go thither limping
Even those who limp go not backward.
But you who are strong and swift, see that you do not limp before the lame, deeming it kindness.
You are good in countless ways, and you are not evil when you are not good,
You are only loitering and sluggard...

O do read "The Prophet"
Find it for instance online at
http://www.library.cornell.edu/colldev/mideast/gibrn.htm

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.

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?)

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

"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?

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