Racist Soda Pop

One would suppose that a store named Giant Eagle would sell only the classiest of groceries, but one would be mistaken. Wikipedia has this to say about Cherikee Red:

"Most commonly found in Pennsylvania and Ohio, the soda is rarely found outside of these two states. Despite not being as commercially successful as other popular cherry sodas, it has a popular nostalgic value within the distribution region of Cotton Club bottling." 

When in Rome... ?

A Small Room and Big Catsup

After crepes yesterday, Trae and I spent the afternoon at the Carnegie museum. 

Having seen the Sistine Chapel, I am less struck by the art historical import of a mediocre Monet than I would have been a few years ago, but Trae, who was raised in Georgia, marveled at the thickness of the paint and took pictures of himself pointing at his favorite Rothko, reminding me of what it is like to be young.  

The collection of American art featured an impressive portrait by Sargent and a landscape by Kensett, my decidedly favorite luminist, but the highlight of the visit was 'Opera for a Small Room,' an installation by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller. 

As my dear readers surely are aware, hermit shacks are some of my favorite things, and the afore mentioned small room is a plywood hermit shack with glassless windows through which viewers can peer to the soundtrack of opera interspersed with commentary, trains, hypnotism, and rain. The idea was conceived when the artists bought the record collection that once belonged to R. Dennehy from a thrift store in a small town in British Columbia. A plaque outside the gallery explained that Cardiff and Miller were curious about the seeming contradiction of a man from a small town listening to opera, so they created a fictional narrative and environment to explain it. I enjoyed their charming condescension towards the populace of rural Canada and found the installation to be engaging and likable. I have only

 two points of critique. 

First, we shall assume that the half gallon Heinz tomato can hanging in the center of the shack, displayed in the museum's Heinz Gallery was just a tasteless coincidence, but in a town where the population listens to the symphony in Heinz Hall and worships in Heinz Chapel, we may be in error by assuming that anything is too sacred to be used as a vehicle of catsup promotion. Second, the artists gave R. Dennehy no place to sleep. 

 On a different note, I am glad my dear readers have discovered that "blog" questions are never as simple as they appear. It is most probable that the last roll will cancel out the one before it, and it is also most probable that the last roll will add to the sequence. That is why dominance arguments are more complicated in infinite partitions.  

The Matter/Antimatter Tetrahedron Game

Category theory was abstract, mathy, and difficult, but at least I wasn't losing money studying it. 

This week we're learning game theory, and I've already lost fifty cents. Here's the game: 

You need an odd number of people, each with fifty cents to bet. Each person has a tetrahedron (google it, ignorami) with the sides labeled m+ (for mutron), m- (for anti-mutron), e- (for electron), and e+ (for positron). For ten minutes, roll the tetrahedron and list the particles that land on the bottom. As you go along, m+ and m-cancel each other out when they land next to each other, and e- and e+ similarly cancel each other out. E.g. if you roll the sequence 

m+, e-, m+, m-

the last two cancel, and it turns into 

m+, e-. 

Otherwise, the last roll is simply added onto to sequence. After ten minutes, stop and place your bets. Then do a final roll. Bet on whether most people's final roll will cancel out the previous roll in their sequence or will add onto the sequence. 

How would you bet?  

Pittsburgh Crepes

Ditching class isn't nearly as satisfying when you don't really need to be there anyway and are, in fact, going to great lengths to stay in school long after the less academically motivated masses have fled.

But let me tell you, dear readers, that if there was a Crepes Parisiennes within walking distance of Mount Holyoke, I would ditch class every afternoon, and it would be very satisfying indeed. 

Scary Things: A Partially Ordered Set

I'm not sure if you've noticed, but the planes that crash in the mountains are always the tiny planes. The ones with two tiny seats on either side of the tiny isle and propellers on the wings.

Waiting for just such a plane at the Islip airport Sunday, the fortyish other passengers and I eyed each other appraisingly, trying to guess who would live and who would be eaten. We made our final picks as we climbed the stairs that folded out of the side of the plane and saw where people were sitting. The scrappy man in a suit jacket was old but seated next to the emergency exit. He lives. The couple in the front row, definitely going through the windshield. 

For an hour and a half, our seats vibrated like type-A massage chairs until the plane approximated landing by plunging and thrashing its way into Pittsburgh, and this is what I learned: 

Tiny planes are a field trip to the llama farm compared with category theory.