nawl

Late spring flowers.

West of campus and the IAS woods.

New Jersey is very flat from Fine Hall.

An Apple store opening in Manhattan. There was a big crowd waiting to go in, and a second crowd gathered around the first, snapping pictures on their cell phones and commenting on the lines. "I talked to one woman who'd been waiting for six hours!" "There was a guy in line on his Segway who was taking pictures of people as he rode by!"

I flew to Seattle.

Within hours of landing, I was feasting on sushi, and cupcakes bought from a newly-opened cupcake cafe that replaced the Ben and Jerry's that closed because the neighborhood shut it out for being non-local and competing with the 85-year-old neighborhood ice cream shop, and ice cream bought from said ice cream shop (chocolate orange!) and lounging in a hot tub watching the sun set over jagged mountains.

I'm charmed by this city. It's on the correct coast. The trees are familiar. There are cozy little ranch houses with little flower gardens. The downtown area may be a bit shiny and sterile for my taste, but there are funky little neighborhoods up and down hills, and mountains in the distance, and water everywhere.

I realized there was something odd going on while riding the bus, and then I figured it out. There are no black people here.

Oh, and the conference. There are interesting talks, and lots of interesting people. But really, it is a night at the opera, or a society ball. We are here to see, and be seen, and work, and we new students are like debutantes at our coming out. Where do you come from? And who do you work with? What are you presenting? Who is your advisor? How's the dog?

It's fun. I have lots to read.

My favorite quote of the conference so far, from Impagliazzo, in response to some question I couldn't hear: "If it could be done by 19th century techniques, Gauss would have done it. Gauss is 19th century complete."

I fixed my blog the other day, but in the process lost nearly all of my comments to a corrupted database. This has the interesting effect that anybody commenting on an entry causes all the comments to disappear. Goodbye girly-girl comments, goodbye angry Christians.