Send me one I missed!
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Well, my Lecturer Quotes pages have been going over three years now. And still the lecturers keep uttering those surreal, amusing, cryptic or entertaining phrases that simply have to be recorded and placed on websites for your edification and amusement.
If you're a lecturer yourself, you may like to check out my page of Lecturing Tips from an Audience Member's Point of View. As with every page on my site, I'm always happy to receive people's thoughts or comments, whether it be "There's a spelling mistake here", to "I disagree with this point", or even "I don't want to be quoted on that! - please remove this quote from your page as soon as possible" :-)
So, without further ado: please enjoy the 2000-01 Lecturer Quotes.
Alex Churchill, 14th March 2001
Contents:
Part III Maths Lecturers
Forster / Logic & Combinatorics
Inglis / Topics in Group Theory
Grojnowski / Topics in Representation Theory
Thomason / Probabilistic Combinatorics
Suhov / QuIT (Quantum Information Theory)
Johnson / QuIT (Quantum Information Theory)
Drummond / Quantum Field Theory
Leinster / Category Theory
Leader / Ramsey Theory
Corti / Algebraic Geometry
Other Lecturers
Wright / Main Group Organometallics
Mycroft / Compiler Construction
Lawson / Magnetism
Goodman / Main Group Elements
WG Rees / Remote Sensing
MacFarlane / Particle Physics
Neil Dodge / Continuous Maths
Foundations of Programming
Introduction to Algorithms
Digital Electronics
Ley / Organic Synthesis
Lambert / Surface Science & Heterogeneous Catalysis
David Jefferson / Electron Diffraction
J E Davies / Advanced Characterisation Methods
Carlton-Padgett / Historical Jesus / Paul
Dennis Turner / Study of Theology
10.3.2001:
We don't need to worry about how nasty the A's are, because they don't exist anyway!
24.2.01
This thing is the greatest fixed point of the power set operator. Now to set-theorists, I know Cantor said there are no fixed point for power set... but this definition is written partly to annoy set theorists
22.2.01
Trees with gap-embeddings are hairy
17.2.01
I don't know how hard Exercise 4.2.6 is: nobody's ever done it yet. Probably not too hard.
I'm one of the 99.9999% of mankind who hasn't worked through the proof of this theorem
10.2.01
I've often wondered what I'd do if I proved P=NP. I think I've concluded... I'd go rob a bank.
1.2.01
Complete lattices are such grotesquely powerful natural objects that it's not surprising you can prove lots of things about them.
27.1.01
That's the reason why I like lecturing at 9am on a Saturday - you only get the people who are really serious
20.1.01
I hate lecturers who do this, so let me take this opportunity to do it myself
This is something that somebody needs to think about
18.1.01
Computer scientists call these things recursive datatypes, and if you call yourself a computer scientist you get much more money than if you call yourself a mathematician... so I'd say call them recursive datatypes
student: Is it a crime to conspire to conspire to do X?
- forster: I think it must be!
13.3
student: Could we ask you a question about the exam?
- inglis: Yes.
- student: What's going to be on it?
This is not the world as we understand it. In fact, it's worse than that, it's finite
There's a remark which I barely feel is sane to make at this point
1.3
Two, three, anything else - it's all the same
24.2
If you do this with intransitive groups, then... nightmare on a stick, basically. You don't want to go down that road. - Well actually you do, it's a very interesting research area...
17.2
You may hear this called Burnside's Lemma: it's not Burnside's lemma, Burnside's got bucketloads of lemmas
15.2
I'd now like to prove a useful criterion, which will come back, hopefully not to haunt us...
Either this subgroup bodily picks Gamma up and throws it over here, or it leaves it where it is and fiddles around with it
This is just a fluffy and rather bland statement
8.2
There's lots more one could say on that, but that's absolutely more than I should have said, so...
6.2
You can keep on fiddling around with this sort of stuff until the cows come home
I should have made the obvious and boring comment that...
In the previous two cases, I was being slimy and combining parts (b) and (c). This time I've no objection to being slimy, but can't see an easy way to do that
If this was the case, what are we doing fiddling around in the tough case - we're in the easy case, we'd be idiots! So since we're not idiots...
23.1
Let me just say it's equal to, er, ...
We try to be consistent, but only when... only when we can be bothered, really.
18.1
They didn't do this while I was alive...
12.3.01
I don't have a life, but that doesn't mean I don't /travel/...
[steps back, looks at what he's written] Is it me, or is that entirely unilluminating? Oh God, this is awful...
This notation sucks! If you're laughing at the notation, you have every right to...
See? I can think in front of you... as long as it's trivial.
9.3.01
Isn't that lovely, isn't that special, doesn't that make you feel all sweet and gooey inside?
You should respect the formulae - you respect a formula by staring at it and seeng what they say
The warning, which you should ignore, is...
7.3.01
Sometimes it's a hell of a lot of work to be lazy in the right way...
Combinatorics bad. Representation theory good.
Combinatorics is for smart people. Representation theory is for lazy people.
They're hexagons, which I've been saying are circles
Why is this beautiful? Well, you can draw it, for a start
I'm going to prove this by doing some hard work, which is very different from any philosophy of mathematics I have
Cheating is excellent - I'm rather into cheating
5.3.01
People who know this stuff my not want to go to the next lecture or two. People who don't know this stuff may not want to also, but for different reasons
Not only have I not done anything this lecture, I've not done anything /slowly/!
Prissy pure mathematicans who care about small details. Yes! - that's us.
Even for mathematicians like me, who don't believe in odd numbers
28.2.01
I'll spend the rest of the course studying sl-2-hat, by the way, which is already hard enough. Um, I mean interesting enough.
student: Did you comment on why the rootspaces are finite dimensional?
- groj: No. Good point. Um - they are. Thank you.
We have some more examples. Only finitely many examples, but then, you can't be too greedy
I know a rather outrageous story about this, but I don't think this is the right venue for it
If you ignore the fact that you don't know what they are, you get a very nice theorem!
26.2
We can work out in a second why I'm a twit
You'll notice that 1 and 1 is twice 1, right?
We're now going to play one of the infinite number of "Fun & Games with Coxeter Groups" fun & games...
23.2
It's not that the proof is boring, it's just that it's the same as the previous proof... which I also omitted. ...OK, it's boring!
I shouldn't try to pronounce [Cartan] Car-tonn - I should say it in a pseudo-Australian accent, "Caaar-tannn"
I apologise to everyone who's completely bored, apart from me - I don't think it's polite to apologise to myself
This building's weird enough - all the people in it should be normal! The building's got all the weird bits...
21.2
This is somewhere between easy and hard, I can't remember where.
It can't be that hard, right? But it's unsolvable.
This is something we know and love. Well, something we know, anyway.
19.2
The sensible thing is, if you pick up a book on - which is a very unsensible thing to do, by the way - ...
Let me state a bit more about this theorem before I tell you the sensible thing
That's the graph you want to understand, and we wanna do it without having to draw the graph, because we're kinda awful at drawing graphs around here
Today I'm going to describe my work. Just for a joke.
16.2
It's always unclear whether to give the definition first, or the picture first. [pauses] ...I think I'll do them simultaneously
14.2
I have no intention of drawing a 248-element set on the board for you - it's anyone's guess who'd fall asleep first
This is an extended exercise: I'm not going to do a single detail, I'm going to expect all of you to go away and fill in all the details, cos it's fun!
9.2
e_i twiddle sends B to B, except sometimes it doesn't
I don't want to confuse anyone here, including me
7.2
The entire subject died in '92, and 4 or 5 years later most of its practitioners noticed.
I'm just having fun, this isn't particularly useful for anything
I've alluded to this theorem about twenty times in this course, but I thought I'd just tell you
The next thing I want to do is just have fun for a minute, cos it's fun to just have fun for a minute
I'm sorry, I think this is somehow... something... What am I apologising for? I don't know...
Have I made a mistake? No? I *haven't* made a mistake - now *that's* bizarre!
Some of your are nodding, some of you are bored, none of you are contemptuous which is always worrying
[pause for 20 seconds] Um... er... why am I confused?
This is somehing you've know since you were even smaller than you are now! Which is only about twice as big as me.
5.2
Everyone happy with that? Some of you are happy with that. Some of you can't even see it, so aren't sure if you're happy or not!
Let's see: what am I doing, other than going more slowly than anyone would think humanly posible?
Hey, laugh at my silliness, but get the math point
It's a cute cone. It's also an acute cone. ...All right, all right, all right. It's still early in the morning as far as I'm concerned - I'm allowing myself one bad joke. [at 1:30pm]
2.2
It ain't symmetric around the middle! 1, it don't have a middle, and 2, it ain't symmetric around it!
You can read proofs in books, but books often don't give explanations, and that would be giving away trade secrets
I guess you should check that s-alpha-squared is one. But it isn't, unfortunately!
That's not just a flavour but a theorem
One of the things about math is that nothing is technical
Technical is a bad word - it means I'm counting how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, and being really finicky about it
It's not only not obvious, it's wrong
I personally find it instructive - it's optional whether you do
I'm going to give you 3 proofs, cos I'm embarassed about not proving anything
I wasn't wasting your time talking philosophy - I was talking cold, hard, concrete math
[4 mins before lecture] I'm now entering "switch mode" mode.
- student: You have a mode to switch modes?!
- groj: [holds up packet of coffee] Yes indeed I do, and I'm just off to enter that mode!
31.1
Thou shalt not confuse thy gothic letters
That's how you'd expect it; but what I'm going to talk about is not that. And there's something quite mystical about "not that"
I'm sorry - I'm a verbose bunny
I haven't decided which things in nature I'm going to choose - I have a big pile of them on my desk. [audience laughs] I do...
He has a finite set of non-garbage examples...
Some people try to study these things - mostly they don't because someone will take them aside and say, "Um, this is garbage", but some people won't listen...
P-groups are garbage. Does everyone here know what I'm talking about when I say P-groups? Yes? Good. Does anyone here study P-groups, and so I've just mortally offended them by saying P-groups are garbage? No? Oh good...
These are called the Serre relations because they were discovered by X, Y and Chevrolet
There are as many ways of proving this as there are moods you're in when someone asks you to prove it
29.1
It's got a hexagon of concentric circles
You just do idiotic linear algebra. But it's really nice idiotic linear algebra!
(At 11:40) I had my first cup of coffee a few minutes ago, and it's starting to take effect - I'm starting to wake up
26.1
There's something worrying abut the idea I stand up in front of you for an hour and NO-ONE'S LISTENING. If I'm going to waste my time, I'd rather... have more coffee
The structure theorem for Lie thngummywhatsits
Those of you who are bored should try to reconstruct a proof: my guess is you'll fail
That's my excuse for the day: I had insufficient coffee
It is standard to omit commas when you're lazy: if you're more pretentious you say "when it doesn't cause confusion" ... but the thing with that is, it just did
Here's a quick exercise, just to check you're on Planet Math
I have to get to the things I want to talk about, so that I have an excuse to write them down
24.1
I'm not going to prove this, because... I don't feel like it, really
20.1
You guys haven't met the compact groups! Horrible! Ewww! ...Well, I'd better get on with it, or you never will at the rate I'm going
If you stay in any kind of math related to this, these guys wil be your friends for life, cos there ain't nothing else
I think I could make a joke, but no-one would get it, so I won't
18.1
The sort of thing that interests me is - well, it doesn't really interest me, but let's pretend it does
I don't know. And nor does anyone else - it's not just me
Just to remind those of you who went to my course last year - I'm not a morning person...
Turn off that mobile phone, or I'll throw chalk at you!
There's an infinite list of things that "everyone should know", and this is on it
This is my personal belief - I haven't yet written enough down and proved enough theorems to convince anyone else
The idea of teaching in a "Actuaries Room" is a bit disturbing
I feel I have to explain why I'm putting some bizarre axioms on the boards: the reason is they control everything.
They control some things you genuinely wouldn't expect them to - well, I wouldn't expect them to - well, actually, nobody else did either, so nyer.
What planet was I on when I wrote this? The right one!
Here's a fun exercise for those of you who are bored, which may well be everyone
23.2
Corollary 9.2 is useless. [audience laugh] [looks at Corollary 6.2 on the board]
Corollary 6.2 is also useless... Corollary 9.2 is definitely useless, because it's empty!
19.2
Any time I say "delta is small" it should be taken as relative to epsilon and n. And I should make only a finite number of such statements during this proof, but I think that's pretty safe
16.2
thomason: Lemma 7.1 --
- student: Where's the 7 come from?
- thomason: Which 7? This 7? Well, have a guess - what would you call it?
- student: Lemma... 4.1.
- thomason: Have we really only done 4 sections? Oh well. Lemma 4.1, then...
We decided we didn't fancy using our brains, cause it looks a bit hard; so we thought we'd just try to take a pile of stuff at random
14.2
Although these things exist exactly hardly ever, you hardly ever need them to exist!
One waves one's hands and this totally amazing rabbit pops out of a hat. And though you believe in the rabbit, so to speak, you can't quite see where it came from
This is a totally amazing fact, and I'm going to write that here [writes "(totally amazing)" on the board], just to record it
7.2
It's precisely that sort of situation that the Local Lemma was invented to deal with. Unfortunately it doesn't work.
student: What's c?
- thomason: c is a constant. Think of your favourite constant, maybe 28?
The language of graph processes offers a way to highlight this fact in a vivid way... I'll tell you the vivid way shortly.
31.1
Next week, having done the grizzly bit, we can cream off some nice results
Some people have been expressing skepticism at the accuracy of the things I write up on the board, which I think is entirely justified
24.1
Looking at my notes, I see I've titled this chapter "By Way of Variance". But on second thoughts I'll just call it "The Variance": there's a limit to how much of that stuff I can stand.
"Infinitely many" means "not 20".
22.1
Think of a number: [brief pause] ...C.
There's no limit to how unkind I can be
There's an obvious progression: you're going to keep having more and more success, and I'm going to keep being more and more unpleasant
19.1
There's an obvious difference [between G(n,M) and G(n,p)]: this is a lowercase p and this is a capital M
In general you can say - we probably shall do, at some stage - ...
I've called this section "Low Expectations" - I don't know if that reflects anything...
You've probably seen some one-line proofs I've done before across several boards...
You may ask yourself if you know this fact, but in fact you do... if you look back in your records at first year Probability, example sheet 1, question 1, you'll see that you proved it
26.2
This trace is greater than or less than or equal to...
23.2
This point is very subtle... notice I said "subtle", I didn't say "strange"
Proof: parts (a) and (b) follow from the definition, as indeed does (c).
[students ask: "c?"] Ah, yes. There's no part (c). So much the better.
[rubs out words "as indeed does (c)"]
I'll leave out the proof for two reasons. One: I don't have time; two: the proof still doesn't exist.
19.2
Alice and Bob can be on different stars; it doesn't matter.
16.2
When we talk about teleportation in the next lecture, I will try to teleport some pieces of matter; then hopefully it will become clear what I mean
This fact is very important, and it has a simple name. Some facts are lucky enough to get simple names.
9.2
I used to like mathematical logic. When I was younger. Not any longer.
26.1
I will try to be as kind as I can - but I can't be infinitely kind
You know that in general everything in this place is done in a hurry. This I think is something of an understatement.
12.3.01
This is kinda like those Hollywood films where the villian looks like he's died while there's still 20 minutes to do; you just know the villain's got to come back to life because otherwise the film wouldn't last the remaining time. In the same way, with there being 30 minutes remaining, so you know that when I say we've solved the problem, that can't be quite true
One of the great things or the awful things about thwe Cambridge Part III course, depending on your point of view, is that some member of the audience of any given course is likely to know more about it that the lecturer
9.3.01
I've argued and nobody's disagreed with me - which I take as being my indication of correctness
7.3.01
It may be less clear - to people who can't multiply 2^L x 2^L complex matrices in their heads - that this is unitary
What they didn't tell you in primary school was that if you knew Fast Fourier transforms....
Suppose you went to a school where you learnt to multiply numbers in binary
I thought I'd tell you how to jump from a bridge or cliff into a river
If you want to be a pure mathematician, and insist "No, I want to guarantee this algorithm will work in less than the age of the universe", then basically, you're in the wrong course
2.3.01
This is after all a StatsLab course, so we are allowed to have a certain amount of randomness
Classical computing is deterministic - anyone who's used a product by Microsoft may disagree, but - you know, it crashes in a deterministic way
The theorem I'm going to prove - or at least, wave my hands at you until it goes away - is...
We're pure mathematicians - who cares if we can actually build the thing?
I know I'm waffling here, but I'm waffling roughly along the lines of the notes, so when you go and download the notes, you'll see that I've waffled over the same stuff
"The space shuttle exists; it goes faster than my car; but that doesn't mean it makes my commuting to work any faster"
22.1
Hamming came up with this code, just as a way to type his computer programs so that they didn't crash so often
19.1
It's a bit like talking to Jeffrey Archer: if you know that Jeffrey Archer always lies, then you can take the contradiction of whatever he says, and that'll be most likely to be true
This case is a problem, so we ignore it.
Perfect codes are like supermodels: they're very beautiful, but there's not very many of them around, and in particular there's not enough of them around to make much of a difference to your and my life
And we have this wave function here, just waiting... quivering... to be operated on
20.11
This is called by Australians the category of elements, or by French the Grothendieck fibration
I'm almost certain people have said precise things along these lines, but I can't remember what they are
You might be thinking you know what exponentials are in the category of abelian groups, but to put it rather rudely, you don't
I'm happy today. If you've been a bit lost, then you should be happy today as well.
15.11
This... would say that 1+1=1. Which is sometimes true, but we shouldn't assume it is.
3.11
This is a pleasant and harmless exercise
1.11
This is one of those unfortunate moments when I'm obliged to say something set-theoretic
We need to show there are two functions: this one I shall call hat, this one I shall call twiddle
Yoneda had to get a train, and so Mac Lane finished discussing the Yoneda lemma on the train, and that's how the Yoneda Lemma was born... Well golly gosh.
27.10
Sorry if you've been writing very fast this morning - only a
couple more minutes to endure
20.10
Are there any less highbrow questions? [silence for 20
seconds] Oh, well, it's not Cambridge tradition for people to
talk, especially at 9 in the morning
You can just write down these expressions, just as marks on
a bit of paper
If you don't feel at One with algebra...
By the sound of it, what I'm about to say won't make sense
to anyone
"You know what presheaves are, cos I've told you"... well...
"I've told you what presheaves are", to be more accurate
How do you turn a presheaf into a sheaf? You sheafify it
30.11
You can't understand this stuff seeing it in real time, in lecture time. As opposed to chapters 1 and 2, which you understand instantly - well, you could understand instantly if you're awake
These are hard things - you're supposed to have to go away and drink coffee.
28.11
A good test of whether you understand this is whether you can follow the proof of Theorem 4 without your head exploding
21.11
Is this a 2-colouring, by any chance? It's a k-colouring? Awww..
I'm going to write 2, cos I can't be bothered to write k
Actually, I'm scared of odd numbers
We're looking for some kind of Zorny kind of thing
That's a bit of waffly nonsense - let's get to the proof
16.11
If you're confused by all the C_A_i_n
[C sub (A sub (i sub n))]
and so on, then remember: all we're doing is just... nothing. But it's a fiddly nothing.
7.11
If you don't know that fact, think back to your school days until you do know that fact.
31.10
We've got plenty of time to kill our infinite set
Take some time to think about this until you see it's blindingly obvious
The HJ theorem is so fantastically good, it automatically improves itself at once
sometime
"a is not equal to a" is not true; for example, a=3
16.10
"Infinitely many" means in this case 5
12.10
This theorem is usually called "Ramsey for r-sets", because,
it is Ramsey for r-sets.
10.11
Every reasonably wise person would think that this makes sense
I'm gonna call this a contradiction. It's not a contradiction, but it's kinda uninteresting.
It might be that it's "Ideas" that are making fun of "Statements&Proofs", and not the other way round
I guess in undergraduate mathematics, it's very rare that you guys see any ideas.
3.11
This is called the "irrelevant ideal". We would like to remove
this ideal, to pretend it's not there; but we can't! So at least we
can punish it, by calling it irrelevant...
What I'm doing here when I say the word "is" is a standard little
abuse of language... without which Mathematics would be
impossible. Algebraic Geometry especially.
1.11
A rational function isn't something crazy, right? - It's *rational*
Imagine taking an infinite white sheet, covering an infinite bed,
and then pinch one bit of it
student: I've lost control of myself
- corti: Well, this is a good thing!
If some of my colleagues saw this equals sign here, they would
skin me alive
30.10
This equals sign here is naughty. But still, I don't care.
18.10
corti: [Looks at clock - 5 mins left] I don't have time to prove
either a) or b) of this theorem.
- student: Let us go home early then!
- corti: [laughs, wags finger] That is a very... *naughty*
suggestion!
13.10
"...with 0=0 [zero=zero]." The zero on the left is zero; the zero
on the right is nought.
[after he's mucked up a very complicated diagram]
student: Would this get full marks in the exam?
corti: Oh, please. Let me tell you something: life is unfair.
I know you think I'm an ordinary guy, and I agree: but I'm an
ordinary guy on *this side of the classroom*. I've already done
the exam! Don't ask me to do it again!
9.10
Projective space is very difficult to imagine, even for someone
like me, who's done this kinda stuff for 15 years. Or for even
more, I don't want to think about it...
A lot of you may have already seen this. [pause] Maybe even in
high school. [pause] I'm not being ironic...
I'm the kind of lecturer who is very imprecise about k, k+1, k-1,
+1, -1... these kind of things
6.10
sheppard-barron / algebraic geometry:
This is a circle [draws circle] - though I don't want to emphasise its roundness too much, so I'll draw it as an ellipse [rubs out circle, draws ellipse]
thomas / lie groups:
5.10.00
Sometime about week 7 or 8 [of 8], I may have time to tell you about the Weyl character formula, by which time you'll be able to understand it.
wright / main group organometallics:
16.10
student: It's gone off the top of the screen, could you move it
down please?
- wright [hastily rubbing]: Oh good, that means you didn't see
that mistake then
13.10.00
These are so stable that you can pour them on the table and
they *don't* burst into flames
[having mislaid an overhead and spent a minute looking for it]
I'm trying to introduce a bit of slapstick to these lectures. Next
time I'll bring a ladder, and maybe a pane of glass.
[having mislaid another overhead which, since he was unable to make clear which one he had lost, students were unable to tell him was already on the other OHP]
I'm cultivating it. They think you're more academic if you have strange habits or are very forgetful. Next lecture I'll wear a monocle as well as bringing the ladder and pane of glass.
5.10.00
I'm going to sneeze - cover your faces!
Natural Language Processing
31.1.01
If I said "Look out, the roof's falling!", you would all be out of the door by now if you ever listened to anything I say in these lecturers
Mycroft / Compiler Construction
19.1.01
This is like a course on crocodile fighting
Lawson / Magnetism
26.1.01
Did we do paramagnetic susceptibility last year with chocolates?
Goodman / Main Group Elements
27.1.01
This may be revision for those of you who've done a course whose number escapes me
WG Rees / Remote Sensing
24.2.01
It was Los Angeles so it was bound to be a rectangle. If it was Barcelona it probably wouldn't have been.
[re: an OHP pen] The spatial resolution is better but the colour is worse
Everything turns gaussian in the end...
15.2.01
This can be deduced from Pythagoras' Theorem - the earth IS flat, after all.
The ocean is bigger than the UK. - Don't say you don't learn any geography from me!
macfarlane / particle physics:
6.10
Oh, I should have said how these [u, d, s] quarks are called:
up, down and sideways...
neil dodge/continuous maths:
18.10
We can have 1 of something, 2 of something, 3 of something,
and I can't juggle!
Now we're doing Limits, Integration and Differentiation on
page Wibble!
foundations of programming:
9.10.00
This is dotted wooliness, if you like
introduction to algorithms:
9.10.00
You give me the table. It's doubly infinite in length but we won't worry about that...
digital electronics:
9.10.00
...proof by blatant assertion and proof by obviousness...
ley / organic synthesis
18.10.00
Many reactions we use today were used long before syntheic chemists
When nothing else works, think biology!
12.10.00
We have an enolate and an inimium ion. And those two would really like to meet up, shake hands and make a product
lambert / surface science & heterogeneous catalysis:
Everybody and his auntie does density functional theory today. For everything!
david jefferson / electron diffraction:
21.11.00
Remember, reciprocal space is a /three-dimensional/ mythical entity
j e davies / advanced characterisation methods:
3.11.00
Stalin is centrosymmetric
carlton-padgett / (historical jesus/paul)
25.10
There are 23 different prepositions in John, and in 1 John there are 14. Isn't that /fascinating/!
Remember that New Testament scholars are, broadly speaking, daft!
12.10.00
This was recent - it's not that recent now - it was recent when I wrote this lecture, about 50 years ago
dennis turner/study of theology:
23.10
Right. What is it I'm meant to be talking about today?
Modernism / post-modernism? Right... what can I think of to
say about that?
It's not ultimately clear... nothing is
Progress consists of learning you're much more ignorant than
you think, and coming to like that
I've always wanted to do a lecture about Dennis, for Dennis, by Dennis
16.10
What's the difference between a good piece of cheese and a
good time of day to have a cocktail party?
Thomas thinks that bogglement of mind is what this is all about
Fido is my dog. Well, I haven't got a dog, and it isn't called
Fido. But if I did, I might be foolish enough to call it Fido!
physics experiments:
If the result of the experiment is that the experimenter doesn't exist, it is a bad sign...