Hoopin'

Lately I've rediscovered a long lost passion for hula hooping. I first learned the fancy kind when I was working as a tap dancer on this bizarro promotional tour for kid's water bottles. One of the other performers was a hoop dancer and she started showing me halos while I taught her buffalos.

This video makes me feel like a five year old watching the Olympic figure skaters again. Go to 20 seconds and watch her. Amazing.

A Rose is a...

I made rose flavored ice cream the other night - fresh, cool, perfectly smooth, fragrant, nostalgic, just lovely.

Whatever happened to Lilly Hahn?

I've recently been poring over 'The Crisis in Intuition' - a paper by Hans Hahn, founding member of the Vienna circle and early 20th century mathematician. At one point, he is passionately describing the removal of intuition from mathematics and says, 'The simple geometric proposition that "every closed polygon that does not cross itself divides the plane into two separate parts" requires a lengthy and highly complicated proof. This is true to an even greater degree of the analogous proposition of solid geometry: "every closed polyhedron that does not intersect itself divides space into two separate parts.'

The latter proof is referenced, and upon checking the end notes, I found that it was published by one 'Lilly Hahn'.

Lilly, thought I, a woman? Sister to Hans? Getting excited I googled 'Lilly Hahn', and found one relevant hit, in the wikipedia article on Hans: 'He married in 1909 Eleonore ("Lilly") Hahn, and they had a baby, Nora'. That was all. So she was his wife, but... but...where did she come from? Where did she train? What else did she prove? So far, I can't find anything about her - no articles on Google scholar, no other mention of her work. How perfectly infuriating. This is not the only one. The history of mathematics (and science) is littered with such desaparecidas.

Slurp Slurp

I've been voraciously watching 'True Blood' online. The show is basically mythology mixed with soft core porn (though, come to think of it, many of the good mythologies are pretty pornographic themselves).

I've always been a sucker for ur-stories - the ones that keep echoing through the ages - and this does a good job of serving them up fresh.

Stupid $#%ing Bunnies

I will never read my children the Beatrix Potter stories about Peter Rabbit. Some nibbly little fellow managed to destroy three of my nearly grown cauliflowers and about 12 juvenile cabbages and cauliflowers last night. I can't believe the carnage!

Poor Farmer McGregor was just a hard-working guy trying to put food on the table, and Peter and family were lazy theives.

Old Timey Music

Listen to this! No school like the old school, eh?

Rooster-Cat

Here's a little kitty-porn. Catsius Clay dressed as a rooster from this past Halloween.