Sad News

My friend Larry just lost another cat.  Last year Edloe passed, and now it's Piper.

My condolences to the Simon family, those on two feet and those on four.

Lager Gig Success

The Rice Valhalla gig went very well Friday night.  Valhalla is where the Lagers originally started at Rice, so it was a great place to come back and sing.

The audience was fantastic.  They were very engaged, clearly enjoyed the music, and got (most of) the jokes.  We performed outside in the freezing cold, so we knew they weren't just listening to be polite.  They had to want to stay.  :)

There's Hope!

When I start whining about the state of engineering and science know-how in today's high schools, just remind me of this kid.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A high school senior from Oregon won a $100,000 scholarship from the Siemens Foundation in one of the nation's premier high school science competitions on Monday for his research in a new area of mathematics called string topology.

The research conducted by Dmitry Vaintrob, 18, a student at South Eugene High School in Eugene, Oregon, could provide knowledge that mathematicians and physicists might apply to understand electricity, magnetism and gravity, judges at the Siemens Competition in Math, Science and Technology said.

"His work is at the Ph.D. level, publishable and already attracting the attention of researchers," said competition judge Michael Hopkins, a professor of mathematics at Harvard.

(more at article)


PhD level research on string topology at 18!  I am in awe.  Well done!