An exciting week ahead!

I am very excited about this week.

First and foremost, my lovely fiancee is coming to town to visit!

Second of all, we are going to Fun Fun Fun Fest this upcoming weekend!

Third of all, one of my roommates and teammates from college is visiting this week!

Finally, it looks like I will be submitting my proposal abstract this week.

Other awesome things of note:

First, I now own a sweet top hat.

Second, the squirrels at William and Mary post amusing things on Facebook and, according to Miss Sarah Stanford, are getting quite fat and fluffy this time of year.

And finally, I have fallen back in love with chamomile tea.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween y'all! I hope this festive weekend has treated you well. This weekend has been quite an adventure for me. On Friday night, I went with my roommate to a law school party hosted at a local Austin bar. It was, to put it simply, fairly hilarious and a bit of a different crowd than I am used to as a PhD student. I believe the terminology I settled on was "all-out but well-composed"? Either way, there were some pretty hilarious costumes there. One guy was dressed as a tree, with 15 foot branches hanging off of him. He nearly took out the lights at the bar several times. For those who are curious, I went as the Tenth Doctor (yes, I am a giant nerd and I may have a slight man-crush on David Tennant) and my roommate went as Audrey Hepburn.

Last night, I held a small Halloween party at my apartment. I decided to have a bit more fun with my costume for this party, and I went to Lucy in Disguise with Diamonds to find the finishing touches. The result?

That's right. I was Dr. John Watson from the Sherlock Holmes mythology. Of course, this begs the question: where the heck was Sherlock Holmes? Well, so the story goes, Dr. Watson had just recently become engaged to a certain Mary Morstan and Sherlock was not particularly happy about it. Hence, Sherlock elected not to attend the evening party. The truth of the matter? I was originally going to go as Mr. Holmes but decided I desperately needed to wear a fake mustache.

The party turned out to be quite a lot of fun. It was a bit of a young professionals/graduate students mixer, with the usual consequences. There was plenty of food and drink, and I got to make quesedillas. Overly filled gluten-free quesedillas. Yes, they were delicious. Yes, I just might make some more tonight. So, without further delay, here is the simple (and rather non-specific) recipe.

John's Simple Quesedillas

Ingredients:

4 cups shredded Monterey Jack/Cheddar/Asadero cheese mix
12-ounces diced green chiles
1/2 cup medium chunky salsa (I use Pace)
1/4 teaspoon Mexican oregano
1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon chopped Cilantro leaves
Vegetable oil
16-20 corn tortillas
Salsa, guacamole, and sour cream for garnish

Steps:

1. In a large bowl, mix the cheese mix, chiles, salsa, oregano, cumin, and Cilantro leaves. Make sure to mix well.
2. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add a tortilla and spread some of the mixture even over the tortilla. Add as much of the mixture or as little as you want. I am not going to even pretend there is a correct amount. Top with a second tortilla, and cook until the cheese is melted. Flip the tortilla and cook the other side. Repeat to cook the remaining quesedillas (you will probably end up with 8-10 quesedillas, depending on how much mixture you use on each). If desired, cut each quesedilla into four, and garnish with salsa, guacamole, and sour cream.

The date is set.

January 18th. 10 AM. Judgment day.

The judges?

Professors Thomas J.R. Hughes (my advisor), Ivo Babuŝka, Leszek Demkowicz, Robert Moser, Omar Ghattas, and Yuri Bazilevs.

And whose fate, do you ask, are they judging?

Mine.

That's right. I have a date and time set for my PhD proposal. Cross your fingers and say a little prayer for me. If you are interested in what I will be proposing, a draft of my abstract is available here.

In other research news, I have just submitted to a journal a paper that I have been working with my advisor and Professors Franco Brezzi and Donatella Marini from Pavia, Italy.

Be forewarned - I am about to get technical.

The paper proposes a new theory for the modeling of plates and a simple yet effective plate finite element employing one-point quadrature. We obtained convergence results without adhering to any ad hoc stabilization tricks, and we believe these are the first such results for a one-point quadrature plate element. Needless to say, we are all quite excited about it.

And yet I am excited about this paper for an entirely different reason. Why, do you ask? Because I am now co-authors with both Babuŝka and Brezzi of the famous Babuŝka-Brezzi condition, a key result in numerical analysis of partial differential equations. I feel like I am now allowed to honarably retire (at least from the field of finite element analysis).

Yes, I am a giant nerd.

They just keep getting faster and faster.

No, I am actually not going to talk about running this time. Sorry for the misleading title.

In case you haven't heard, China's Tianhe-1A is now the fastest supercomputer ever built. It can deliver approximately 2.5 petaflops. Yes, you read that right. Two and a half petaflops. Hot damn. And what would one do with such computing power, might you ask? I don't know, how about simulate the Earth at speeds about seventy times faster than the Earth Simulator? I know some guys down here in Texas that would love to abuse appreciate that kind of computing power. They were, after all, just featured on the cover of Science.



And for those of you who care, Tianhe means "Milky Way". Looking at a list of galaxy names, I am not sure if a trend of naming supercomputers after galaxies is the best idea. Otherwise, I might soon be running code on Small Magellanic Cloud. Actually, on second thought, I think I will be naming my next machine just that.

Food, I have not been ignoring you.

I just realized I had not talked about food for a while on this blog. The truth is I have not been making the most elaborate of meals this week. I have been super swamped with work and other responsibilities, so most of my meals (including dinner) have been of the simple breakfast and lunch variety.

However, even a simple "lunch for dinner" meal can be tasty. Take my (somewhat large) dinner last night for example.


Two HTBLT (ham, turkey, bacon, lettuce, and tomato) sandwiches served with mayo and Udi's gluten-free white rice bread, Mission tortilla rounds* with guacamole, spinach salad with 365 brand basil pesto and diced feta, and milk. Simple, yet still classy as I served myself milk in a wine glass.

*I realize that Mission products are made in plants that also process wheat tortillas, but I honestly have never had an issue with Mission chips.

Now guacamole has become one of my favorite food items since I moved to Texas. I simply cannot get enough of it. And naturally, its tastier when its fresh, so I encourage making it yourself rather than buying some packaged mix.

John's Guacamole Recipe


Ingredients:

2 ripe (standard size) avocados
1/4 to 1/2 red onion, chopped
1 serrano pepper, minced (and seeded if desired)
3 tablespoons cilantro leaves, finely chopped
1 garlic cloved, minced
1 tablespoon of fresh lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon of coarse salt
1/2 teaspoon of cumin
A dash of pepper
1/2 ripe tomato, seeds and pulp removed, chopped

Steps:

1. Cut the avocados in half, spoon out the avocados into a mixing bowl (or if you're lazy like me, into a Tupperware container), and remove the seeds. Mash the avocados using a potato masher.
2. Add the onion, cilantro, lemon juice, salt, pepper, cumin, and garlic. Mash a bit more. Finally, add the serrano pepper. If you want to minimize the kick, make sure the pepper has been seeded. Enjoy some more mashing.
3. Once you are ready to serve, add the tomatoes and stir.

Voilà. Enjoy the creamy goodness.

Last night, I went to my friend Sarah's dinner party, and I discovered my good friend Chris's wife Jenn had made gluten-free cupcakes for me! I instantly became the happiest dude in the world. They were delicious and Jenn even decorated them as little pumpkins. I am convinced I have the most awesome friends in the world.




Finally, I should mention I just found photographs of another gluten-free meal I made myself last weekend. I grilled myself a medium-rare coffee-encrusted steak using some old espresso grounds to make the rub. Of course, I forgot exactly how I made the rub. Once I remember, I will be sure to post it.

So where are applied mathematicians?

Andrew Howard, feel free to make the standard required comments regarding Classics.

Apparently, a few select people DO care about the Oxford comma.

The results of our study are in. We have collected a whole slew of statistics from you, the community at large, regarding your thoughts on the Oxford comma. To make things lively and graphical, I have decided to reveal the data in the form of pie charts in addition to percentage statistics.

Let us recall the original question. Oxford comma: Yay or nay? Overall, 73% of our audience of over 200 voters responded yay, and 27% responded nay. Graphically:


Honestly, this roughly lined up with similar polls we had seen online. To make things interesting, we decided to also examine demographic statistics such as gender and college major/area of study. I should note that many of the people I polled were working professionals who worked in fields entirely unrelated to their college major. I did not poll anyone who did not have at least some college experience. This was not on purpose - I just polled whoever was convenient, and I happen to work at a university. The statistics with regards to gender were fairly boring - for both males and females, the graph above was essentially replicated. The statistics with regard to area of study were a bit more interesting. Before proceeding, I should further note that I also "polled" some celebrities, politicians, and academics by checking out their webpages to add some fun and variety to this poll. Now, without further ado, here are the charts and statistics.

Science and Technology

Yay: 84%, Nay: 16%

Pure Mathematics

Yay: 71%, Nay: 29%

Law and Policy

Yay: 100%, Nay: 0%

Business

Yay: 92%, Nay: 8%

Liberal Arts

Yay: 63%, Nay: 37%

Education

Yay: 100%, Nay: 0%

Journalism

Yay: 5%, Nay: 95%

A few remarks to finish off this post:

• My fiancee Sarah and I predicted a great number of these statistics ahead of time. One set of statistics we did not predict, however, was the one associated with liberal arts. We honestly figured a lot more people trained in the liberal arts would be against the Oxford comma as was the case for journalists. However, I suppose the result is not entirely unexpected as the Chicago Manual of Style, which advocates the Oxford comma, is the grammar bible of choice for many liberal artists.
  
• I polled a lot of people with a background in law. They all, to a t, replied yay. I later learned the Aspen Handbook for Legal Writers insists that lawyers use the Oxford comma. As an aside, I should note the improper use (or absence) of a comma can lead to a world of hurt in the courtroom, as illustrated by this court case.
  
• Facebook does not use the Oxford comma. Neither does any major news publication or magazine.
  
• We originally decided to separate pure mathematics from science/technology early into our poll. A lot of students I knew studying pure mathematics were against the Oxford comma, illustrating a clear break in trend from the other sciences. However, I then began to start examining the writing habits of prominent mathematicians in the field and found a different set of preferences. And for the record, Terry Tao seems to prefer the Oxford comma.
  
• I use the Oxford comma. Sarah often does not. We somehow manage.
  
• I only included American citizens in this poll. If I was to include visiting Europeans I know, for example, the outcome of the poll would have been a bit different. Notably, my Italian collaborators rarely use the Oxford comma (even in their journal publications written in English) as it is not used in their native language.