Posts In Category rants
Bourbakism & the queen bee syndrome
on July 15, 2009 by lieven in general, rants, Comments (0)
Probably the smartest move I’ve made after entering math-school was to fall in love with a feminist.
Yeah well, perhaps I’ll expand a bit on this sentence another time. For now, suffice it to say that I did pick up a few words in the process, among them : the queen bee syndrome :
women who have [...]
can -oids save group-theory 101?
on February 15, 2009 by lieven in groups, rants, Comments (2)
Can one base a group-theory 101 course on the notion of groupoids?
the future of this blog
on August 6, 2008 by lieven in general, rants, Comments (7)
Some weeks ago Peter Woit of Not Even Wrong and Bee of Backreaction had a video-chat on all sorts of things (see the links above to see the whole clip) including the nine minute passage below on ‘the future of (science) blogs’.
The crucial point being that blogging takes time and that one often feels [...]
bloomsday 2 : BistroMath
on June 16, 2008 by lieven in egotism, iMath, rants, Comments (0)
Exactly one year ago this blog was briefly renamed MoonshineMath. The concept being that it would focus on the mathematics surrounding the monster group & moonshine. Well, I got as far as the Mathieu groups…
After a couple of months, I changed the name back to neverendingbooks because I needed the freedom to post on any [...]
NSF annual report – the comic book version
on May 21, 2008 by lieven in rants, Comments (0)
Annual reports of organizations often make extremely dry reading. With available word processing tools, however, several agencies try to make their report at least visually pleasing. A good example is the 2007 annual report of the NSF (USA). It has an attractive cover (left) and has a couple of daring inside pages, such as the [...]
wankers
on April 10, 2008 by lieven in rants, Comments (4)
You may not have noticed, but I’m in a foul mood for weeks now because of comments and reactions to the last line of the post on Finding Moonshine. I wrote
Du Sautoy is a softy! I’d throw such students out of the window…
and got everyone against me for this (first floor) defenestration threat…
That’s OK! [...]
Finding Moonshine
on March 2, 2008 by lieven in groups, rants, Comments (10)
On friday, I did spot in my regular Antwerp-bookshop Finding Moonshine by Marcus du Sautoy and must have uttered a tiny curse because, at once, everyone near me was staring at me…
To make matters worse, I took the book from the shelf, quickly glanced through it and began shaking my head more and [...]
quotes of the day
on February 1, 2008 by lieven in general, rants, Comments (11)
Some people are in urgent need of a vacation, myself included…
From the paper Transseries for beginners by G.A. Edgar, arXived today :
Well, brothers and sisters, I am here today to tell you: If you love these formulas, you need no longer hide in the shadows! The answer to all of these woes is here. Transseries. [...]
please, use this bookmarklet!
on January 21, 2008 by lieven in iMath, rants, Comments (14)
Great! You’ve finally managed to arXiv your paper after months of laborious research, and now, you’re eagerly awaiting response…
The odds are you’ll be disappointed, if not frustrated. Chances are high that if you get any response at all it is only to clarify that someone else (usually the person emailing you) proved this result a [...]
now what?
on January 14, 2008 by lieven in rants, Comments (2)
You may not have noticed, but the really hard work was done behind the scenes, resurrecting about 300 old posts (some of them hidden by giving them ‘private’-status). Ive only deleted about 10 posts with little or no content and am sorry I’ve self-destructed about 20-30 hectic posts over the years by pressing [...]
Hi, I'm a professor of mathematics at the University of Antwerp, in Belgium. My research areas are non-commutative algebra and non-commutative geometry. Sometimes, you can also find me here :
