lieven le bruyn's blog
quotes of the day
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.
In a comment over at The Everthing Seminar
Shouldn’t dwarfs on the shoulders on giants be a little less arrogant?
by Micromegas. Well, I’d rather enter a flame war than report about it. But, for some reason I cannot comment at the EverythingSeminar, nor at the SecretBloggingSeminar. Is this my problem or something to do with wordpress.com blogs? If you encountered a similar problem and managed to solve it, please let me know.
UPDATE (febr. 2) : my comment did surface after 5 days. Greg fished it out of their spam-filter. Thanks! I’ll try to comment at wordpress.com blogs from now on by NOT linking to neverendingbooks. I hope this will satisfy their spam-filter…
arxiv, blogging, groups, puzzle, wordpress| Print article | This entry was posted by lievenlb on February 1, 2008 at 4:38 pm, and is filed under general, rants. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site. |
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NeB not among 50 best math blogs
about 3 months ago - 4 comments
Via Tanya Khovanova I learned yesterday of the 50 best math blogs for math-majors list by OnlineDegree.net. Tanya’s blog got in 2nd (congrats!) and most of the blogs I sort of follow made it to the list : the n-category cafe (5), not even wrong (6), Gowers (12), Tao (13), good math bad math (14),
Return to LaTeX
about 6 months ago - 5 comments
To most mathematicians, a good LaTeX-frontend (such as TeXShop for Mac-users) is the crucial tool to get the work done. We use it to draft ideas, write papers and courses, or even to take notes during lectures. However, after six years of blogging, my own LaTeX-routine became rusty. I rarely open a new tex-document, and
big Witt vectors for everyone (1/2)
about 7 months ago - 2 comments
Next time you visit your math-library, please have a look whether these books are still on the shelves : Michiel Hazewinkel‘s Formal groups and applications, William Fulton’s and Serge Lange’s Riemann-Roch algebra and Donald Knutson’s lambda-rings and the representation theory of the symmetric group. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or more of these books
The odd knights of the round table
about 7 months ago - No comments
Here’s a tiny problem illustrating our limited knowledge of finite fields : “Imagine an infinite queue of Knights , waiting to be seated at the unit-circular table. The master of ceremony (that is, you) must give Knights and a place at an odd root of unity, say and , such that the seat at the
Olivier Messiaen & Mathieu 12
about 8 months ago - 5 comments
To mark the end of 2009 and 6 years of blogging, two musical compositions with a mathematical touch to them. I wish you all a better 2010! Remember from last time that we identified Olivier Messiaen as the ‘Monsieur Modulo’ playing the musical organ at the Bourbaki wedding. This was based on the fact that
Seriously now, where was the Bourbaki wedding?
about 9 months ago - 3 comments
A few days before Halloween, Norbert Dufourcq (who died december 17th 1990…), sent me a comment, containing lots of useful information, hinting I did get it wrong about the church of the Bourbali wedding in the previous post. Norbert Dufourcq, an organist and student of Andre Machall, the organist-in-charge at the Saint-Germain-des-Prés church in 1939,
Where was the Bourbaki wedding?
about 10 months ago - 7 comments
I’m pretty certain I got the intended date & time of the Bourbaki-Pétard wedding right : June 3rd 1939 at 12h. Finding the exact location of the wedding-ceremony is an entirely different matter. And, quite probably, we are reading way too much in these pranks of the Weil-clan. Still, it’s fun trying to find an
When was the Bourbaki wedding?
about 11 months ago - 6 comments
It’s great fun trying to decode some of the puns contained in Betti Bourbaki’s wedding invitation. Below a photograph, taken on May 13th 1939, of three of the practical jokers (from left to right : Ralph Boas, Frank Smithies and Andre Weil), the others were Claude Chabauty, Weil’s wife Eveline and Louis Bouckaert (from Louvain).
Snow leopard + wordpress + latex problem
about 11 months ago - No comments
Ever since I’ve upgraded to Snow Leopard I’ve been having problems with the webserver. At first there were the ‘obvious’ problems : mysql-connection lost and php-error message. These were swiftly dealt with using the excellent Snow Leopard, Apache, PHP, MySQL and WordPress! advice from ‘tady’. Right now, access to this blog is extremely slow (and
Grothendieck’s functor of points
about 11 months ago - No comments
A comment-thread well worth following while on vacation was Algebraic Geometry without Prime Ideals at the Secret Blogging Seminar. Peter Woit became lyric about it : My nomination for the all-time highest quality discussion ever held in a blog comment section goes to the comments on this posting at Secret Blogging Seminar, where several of
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 :
about 2 years ago
I guess these blogs are moderated, so there’s a delay before comments appear. And sometimes they remove some comments that are off-topic. Btw well done for the new layout of your blog, it’s very nice.
about 2 years ago
@tom : some moderation…
all i did is tell Jim what a great post it was (some days ago, so even if there is a moderator, (s)he must have fallen asleep).
at first i thought it was a bloody safari hick-up, but i made a 2nd attempt via Flock(Firefoxy) and even this didnt work.
So, Im at a loss : does one have to register to leave a comment at a wordpress.com blog? do they view all non-US comments as spam? hell, I comment not that much, but when I want to, my message seems to get lost in virtual space…
Is it some bug? Is it because I live in ‘old Europe’? Is it because I don’t support the Iraq war? Is it…
about 2 years ago
I have Hardy’s book on divergent series. I guess it’s nice to see this coming back in style after 100 years or so, but I hate to see divergent series used to justify stuff that is supposed to be at the foundations of physics.
The whole thing reminds me of the use of the Wick rotation in QFT. If the integrals are juvenile delinquents before Wick rotating, and are well behaved after Wick rotation, that seems to me pretty good evidence that the Wick rotated coordinates are closer to the nature of reality than the usual.
about 2 years ago
“Is it because I don’t support the Iraq war?”
Exactly, Lieven. We mathematicians are deeply saddened that you should be the only one among us not supporting the Irak war and some of us even have suspicions that you are luke-warm about launching a devastating attack on Iran. Needless to say I have always defended you against these vile calumnies. With all my prayers for you to repent, abhor and renounce your errors, T.
about 2 years ago
Dear Lieven, I am dreadfully sorry for the multiple appearance of my comment (being well aware that even one copy of it might be considered one too much ). I just couldn’t make your editing system completely delete a version of my comment. All my apologies, and best wishes for you and your fine blog. T.
about 2 years ago
@Torquemadendieck : no problem, Ive deleted your 2 extra copies.
about 2 years ago
Lieven, Its distressing to hear you couldn’t post on the blog. I checked our spam filter and found your three attempts to post. Do you have any idea what might be causing it to freak out like that, other than being from a different country? Its possible it somehow has decided that your webpage is trying to sell something, and thinks you are commenting just to get the link. In the future, if you have problems with comments, just drop me a quick email and Ill fish it out of the spam filter. Sorry for the annoyance
-Greg
about 2 years ago
PS- I was reading up on Akismet, and it says that it’ll learn not to mark you as spam after I fish you out of the filter a time or two. So, that should resolve itself sooner or later.
about 2 years ago
@greg : thanks! ive put an update to the post and replied to you by email (it only hit me afterwards that i got that email because you commented here…) sorry about that.
about 2 years ago
[quote post="380"]Its possible it somehow has decided that your webpage is trying to sell something[/quote]
@lieven: I told you when you changed the blog name to neverendingbooks that you should have chosen the on-line shop for quiver mugs and Calogero systems t-shirts. You’d be just as unable to comment, but at least you’d be having some extra money! Plus, I’d be SO much happier with that mug instead of this ugly plain-white one…
about 2 years ago
@javier : if you can convince me there is a market to sell quiver mugs, i’ll do it. nothing is easier these days than to sell custom made t-shirts, mugs and other things. as to the name : i agree that ‘neverendingbooks’ doesnt really sound like a math-site does it? also, Florin preferred MoonshineMath but i think i am not the person to run such a blog. my choice was to have the mane of the blog the same as the URL. but if you can come up with better alternatives using the URL http://www.noncommutative.org i will change it on the spot… sorry for replying so late but i was away skiing (people at UA would say ‘apres-skiing’)