Wednesday  27 Sep 2023           1 comment

This is Ansel, who graced these pages twice last year.

If you throw his stick once for him to fetch it, he will not understand why you won't want to keep doing it all day long.

Tuesday  26 Sep 2023           1 comment

In various Statements of Financial Condition, Donald Trump claimed that his apartment in Trump Tower was 30,000 square feet. Today's ruling against Trump et al. says that it's really 10,996 square feet, and notes

In opposition, defendants absurdly suggest that "the calculation of square footage is a subjective process that could lead to differing results or opinions based on the method employed to conduct the calculation."

with the footnote

Despite this assertion in their motion papers, counsel for defendants, Christopher Kisa, Esq., conceded during oral argument held on September 22, 2023, that square footage is, in fact, an objective number.

Sunday  17 Sep 2023           comment?

As much as I'd like to explain what a sporadic group is, it's too involved for a blog posting. Let it suffice to say that there are 26 sporadic groups and they've interested mathematicians since Émile Léonard Mathieu discovered five of them in the 19th century.

It wasn't until 1964 that another sporadic group was found. Mathematicians of the day didn't expect there were more than five. Croatian mathematician Zvonimir Janko was trying to prove that but in the process discovered a sixth.

Decades later, at a celebration of Janko's 65th birthday, fellow group theorist Bertram Huppert said that only two events in his life had really surprised him: Janko's discovery of a new sporadic group and the fall of the Berlin wall.

Thursday  14 Sep 2023           comment?

This is such a classic country road: narrow, picturesque, sometimes shared with cows (see Tuesday's pic).

This is part of a ¼ mile stretch that's too narrow for two way traffic. Normally you have the road all to yourself but it's seeing a lot of use since the main road up from the valley floor got destroyed. This is the road delivery trucks are taking to get to my neighborhood, as the other road that's still open is even less suitable.

In 25 years of living here, I never saw these fields so lush with sunflowers (Helianthus nuttallii).

Tuesday  12 Sep 2023           comment?

Friday  08 Sep 2023           comment?

Saturday  02 Sep 2023           comment?