On Saturday afternoon, we loaded ourselves onto several buses which went over to Tom and Sarah’s house, where we could see the mathematical art, and participate in building some new sculptures. Soon enough Neil got to work on what he called a “Hilbert Curve,” a sculpture which eventually ended up looking like this: Julian came [...]
On Friday at G4G9, magician Derek Hughes asked Neil to come on stage with him for his act. Unfortunately for Derek, Neil has spent the morning listening to talks from illusionists on perspective and misdirection. My video is just awful, but the dialogue between the two of them is great: Derek has made Neil promise [...]
There were only a few talks scheduled for Saturday morning, since we were all going off to the party at Tom’s house that afternoon, but they were very good talks. Al Seckel, who wrote Neil’s favorite illusions book, gave a talk about the Nature of Belief: how our own biases affect our perception, and how [...]
G4G9 invited both those who like to make puzzles, and those who try to solve them. So when I had the chance to speak to one of the puzzle-solvers, Joe DeVincentis, I asked him how he goes about solving puzzles. He told me the first step is to figure out what kind of a puzzle [...]
Towards the end of the Friday lectures, I left Neil to go up to the hotel room and clean myself up for dinner. I dawdled, so when I went down, the G4G9 attendees were scattered, and I was unable to find Neil anywhere. Sure that we’d crossed paths, I set myself at the cocktail party, [...]
As I discovered, the dress code for G4G9 is “math professor.” I made the mistake of dressing “business,” and ended up being confused with Ritz-Carlton staff. However, my costume turned out to be handy for crashing a business party upstairs and making off with a free glass of champagne. G4G9 is Neil’s ultimate party: it’s [...]
Bill Gosper travelled with us to Atlanta for G4G9. He gave us a first taste of what it might be like, when at 5:30 am on Tuesday morning, he absent-mindedly accessed the 6th dimension and bypassed the security check at the airport. Since I was holding his boarding pass, this confused everyone, so we called [...]
Recently, a friend of mine quit her job because she objected to the ethics of her most recent employer. For one thing, he’d ask her to post job positions on Craigslist, with no intent of ever filling the job. For him, it was a cheap research tool–he’d cull the incoming resumes for the most qualified [...]
A few weeks ago, I went to a job interview, and I was surprised how well-briefed all my interviewers were about me already. Did they want a copy of my resume? Well, no thanks, they’d already downloaded it from my LinkedIn profile. How about examples of my previous work? No worries–they knew who I had [...]
Peter and I are taking a 14-week Bible course: Kelly’ school requires it of all the non-church families like us. It’s kind of like catechism, but not;overtly, it’s to fill us in on the Lutheran lessons our child is learning in class. You know, over in public school, the spirit of Caesar Chavez is faith-healing [...]
