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.

90 years.

http://www.folkalley.com/music/peteseeger/

Hold on to your room, Mark!

Pinball machines, beware!

I'm bound for Ithaca.

I have accepted a one-year visiting position at Cornell, starting this fall. (The Brits always snicker when I say "fall", meaning autumn. I'm happy to take on their plural "maths" and their old school "trousers" and even, eventually, their foreshortened "veg", but using autumn in this context as an American makes me feel pretentious.)

The offer is conditional on one small minor little trifling detail (having my PhD), so I'm a bit busy at the moment.

Ithaca
Constantine P Cavafy

When you set out for Ithaka
ask that your way be long,
full of adventure, full of instruction.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - do not fear them:
such as these you will never find
as long as your thought is lofty, as long as a rare
emotion touch your spirit and your body.
The Laistrygonians and the Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - you will not meet them
unless you carry them in your soul,
unless your soul raise them up before you.

Ask that your way be long.
At many a Summer dawn to enter
with what gratitude, what joy -
ports seen for the first time;
to stop at Phoenician trading centres,
and to buy good merchandise,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and sensuous perfumes of every kind,
sensuous perfumes as lavishly as you can;
to visit many Egyptian cities,
to gather stores of knowledge from the learned.

Have Ithaka always in your mind.
Your arrival there is what you are destined for.
But don't in the least hurry the journey.
Better it last for years,
so that when you reach the island you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to give you wealth.
Ithaka gave you a splendid journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She hasn't anything else to give you.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka hasn't deceived you.
So wise you have become, of such experience,
that already you'll have understood what these Ithakas mean.

Spring!

Unseen Buds
Walt Whitman

Unseen buds, infinite, hidden well,
Under the snow and ice, under the darkness, in every square or cubic inch,
Germinal, exquisite, in delicate lace, microscopic, unborn,
Like babes in wombs, latent, folded, compact, sleeping;
Billions of billions, and trillions of trillions of them waiting,
(On earth and in the sea--the universe--the stars there in the
heavens,)
Urging slowly, surely forward, forming endless,
And waiting ever more, forever more behind.

O sweet spontaneous
e.e. cummings


O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting

         fingers of
purient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

      beauty      .how
oftn have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
       (but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover

        thou answerest

them only with

                        spring)

The Trees
Philip Larkin

The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
The recent buds relax and spread,
Their greenness is a kind of grief.

Is it that they are born again
And we grow old? No, they die too.
Their yearly trick of looking new
Is written down in rings of grain.

Yet still the unresting castles thresh
In fullgrown thickness every May.
Last year is dead, they seem to say,
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.