Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.  ‑ Oscar Wilde Readers are invited to guess who's modeling those clothes in the pic. Hints: he's famous for something else he was mentioned in Tommyjournal earlier this year he's 19

Because another pic reminded me that I like the look of bookshelves.

No one knows what time is; certainly no one knows how to define and explain it to the general satisfaction. But we sure know how to measure it.   - David S. Landes

When I was a kid, the four-color map theorem was famously unproven; for planar maps, there was a gap between the number of colors known to be necessary (four) and the number known to be sufficient (five). When a proof--that four colors sufficed--finally arrived, it was huge and relied on extensive computer analysis--a victory, but not a satisfying one.

More recently, there was an ever-narrowing gap between how many moves were known to be needed to solve configurations of Rubik's cube and how many were known to be sufficent in all cases. When that gap was closed (just recently), the solution came by extensive computer analysis. (20 moves are necessary and sufficient.)

The team that solved the problem has posted a description of their method, along with a table showing how many configurations can be solved in a minimum of n moves for 0 <= n <= 20. A plot of the configuration counts (some are approximate) appears below. I fitted a curve to the points not to suggest that the function is meaningful for non-integer values of n, but rather to show how close to exponential (visually linear with a log scale in y) the function is until around n = 18. It's reminiscent of the growth of a population until it runs out of resources.

This guy assumes curious poses when he's getting ready to shed.

I just got back from a short but very pleasant trip to Lone Pine. I was curious to see how I'd feel upon returning to Colorado; would I be bummed that I had left the desert again, I wondered.

I wasn't bummed. On the contrary--it felt good to be back here, and especially good to get back to work. Of all the things I am grateful for, having work that I enjoy is high on the list.

Having said all that, I must also say that I was loving being in Lone Pine. There was a rabbit in front of my house to greet me when I drove up, the Caesalpinia was in bloom, and a (live) scorpion was in my bathtub. Does the desert rock, or what.