Friday, June 19, 2009

M.T.A.

Gee, think these guys had some influence on the Torrey boys?

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Happy Bloomsday!

I'm planning to read Molly's soliloquy today in celebration. "Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel..."

A good day for poetry in general -- I saw this Poem on the Underground today:

LIKE A BEACON

In London
every now and then
I get this craving
for my mother's food
I leave art galleries
in search of plaintains
saltfish/sweet potatoes

I need this link

I need this touch
of home
swinging in my bag
like a beacon
against the cold

Grace Nichols

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

FLT

Today I received my first email from someone claiming to have a short proof of Fermat's Last Theorem. They even forwarded someone else's rejection of their argument, which points out their basic misunderstanding of factorisation.

Maybe it's urban legend, but I heard at some point that Cambridge had hired someone full time to respond to such letters. A friend of mine here at King's (who has been teaching the Elementary Number Theory course here for the past few years and is listed on the website as the instructor) recently received a whole book (self-published) with elementary "proofs" of all the major problems in number theory.