Well they’ve finally reopened the Chambers St. viaduct after probably two years of construction. They closed half the lanes, tore up one side of the road, and then did nothing for a year because they neglected to get permission from the railroad before starting work.

At the Eugene Emeralds game, sitting in the table area way out on the right field line hoping to catch foul balls, and we haven’t had one come to us yet but the fielder did toss one to Alice.

Bird bath next to my office getting some use.

Good earth-shine on the crescent moon as I was taking out the trash.

My colleague turned me on to this site where you can generate all kinds of crazy graph paper. I needed some triangular graph paper to work out a combinatorial thing. incompetech.com/graphpaper/

MathSky: can anyone recommend an undergraduate abstract algebra textbook that does rings before groups?

Autocorrect turned “quartic K3 surface” into “aquatic K3 surface” and now I want to study them.

Bad year for slugs and snails.

Thinking back on being assigned to read Animal Farm in 7th grade (1994). We knew next to nothing about the Soviet Union, certainly no idea who Stalin was, and as far as I remember the teacher didn’t try to explain the allegory. What were we supposed to take from it? A cautionary tale about cliques?

Small victory: the University of Oregon has scrapped plans to have an AI voice read the students' names at graduation. Instead the names will be read by humans.

First little league game of the season yesterday after getting rained out last weekend. They smoked us, but we looked way better than last year — threw some runners out at first, caught some fly balls in the air, got the force at second on a grounder to short like we practiced. Couple of solid hits.

As the Brexit vote in the summer of 2016 heralded the coming of so much folly and ruin, let today’s vote in Hungary herald the beginning of a recovery.

When I was a kid it was always tough to wait my turn for the little wire dipper that comes with the egg dying kit, so when my kids were little I started saving them from year to year. But by this point we may have more than we need…

In grad school, every April Fools’ Day I planned to get someone in the office with the “pull out their chair as they sit down so they fall on the floor” gag, but year after year I got distracted and forgot. Now, 20 years older, I can’t do that to a colleague because it could really hurt somebody.

Listening to Isfahan from Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite, which was inspired by his band’s tour from Syria to India and Japan in 1963-64. m.youtube.com/watch?v=mxYj...

N: [Tries to explain something or point something out.] Teenager: [Doesn't get it.] N: [Tries again.] T: [Still doesn't follow.] N: [Tries again, finally gets through.] T: OK jeez you don't have to keep saying it over and over.

There’s a duck on my neighbor’s roof?!

In Vancouver, Wash. rallying with the family and my father-in-law. #NoKings

Driving up to Washington for spring break, very clear day, great views of Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, and Mt. Adams (not pictured).

Long line at the dump today.

Happy equinox!

I brought this hyacinth in from the garden so I could smell it without having to get down in the mud. Always amazed at how strong the smell is.

This pi day, let’s promote memorizing the continued fraction expansion 3 + 1/(7 + 1/(15 + 1/(1 + 1/(292 + …)))) rather than the decimal expansion. oeis.org/A001203

Good bed of daffodils on my way from the parking lot to the office.

Verdict was ‘meh.’

when2meet.com is fine for scheduling meetings, but I'm disappointed no one has set up whether2meet.com ...

Volunteering the seventh annual Eugene Youth Math Festival.

AaAaAaAaAaAaA

Discovered that my children (12 and 15) have never even *heard* of Spaghetti-Os, so I bought a can. Will report back.

Just been reminded about the 2009 movie “The Men who Stare at Goats.” Don’t remember anything about it, not even sure if I saw it when it came out, but what a title.

My department got last-minute approval to advertise a postdoctoral position. Please apply! Three years, teaching 2+1+1 on the quarter system. Review of applications will begin March 9 and continue on a rolling basis. www.mathjobs.org/jobs/list/28...

Just learned that Chebyshev’s first name was Paphnuty.

Genesis 1:7: And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.

My grad student noticed that the cohomology of the Grassmannian Gr(k,n) with the sl_2 action from hard Lefschetz is isomorphic to Sym^{n-k}(Sym^k(C^2)). Is this well-known? Does anyone know a reference?

No idea how this little guy turned up in my front lawn, but he’s welcome.

All my socks have decided to fall apart in the last two weeks.

Bigger crowd than last time, and even more honks of support from drivers.

Oh let’s rally round the flag, boys, yes rally once again, shouting the battle cry of freedom. #IceOut #NoKings.

There will be 2 postdoc positions to work with me in Utrecht, both for at least 2 years. One focuses on (higher-dimensional) noncommutative algebraic geometry, the other on Hilbert schemes of points on (noncommutative) surfaces. Contact me if you are interested. More info to come soon!

My best clean shirt is too similar to the one I wore the last two days— can’t risk having people in the office think I wore the same shirt three days in a row. What possessed me to buy two shirts that look the same?

Got the kids going through their drawers of trinkets and reorganizing and throwing some out. Took three bags of unloved stuffed animals to the thrift store.

Had some eggnog in the fridge that needed using up, so I put it in my coffee. Not exactly bad, but once a year is plenty.

Playing a family game with the kids and their grandparents. The game is called “Whose turn is it?”

Harvested the one reasonable beet for Xmas dinner.

Running into a lot of people I know at the grocery store the last couple of days. Like maybe more than the whole rest of the year.

So you’ve got the arithmetic mean (x_1 + … + x_n)/n, and the geometric mean (x_1 * … * x_n)^(1/n), but does anyone ever interpolate between them with the other elementary symmetric polynomials? Is there any use for taking the mean of x, y, and z as sqrt((xy + xz + yz)/3)?

Email exchange with one of our retired faculty: Dear Peter, The front office has a Christmas card that was mailed to you by [an acquaintance who for some reason sends a card to his work address even though he retired a few years ago]. /1

Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.

The joke in the Muppet Christmas Carol where there are two Marleys, Jacob and Bob Marley, and they’re Statler and Waldorf, gets better every year.

Squirrel perched on the fence holding a big mushroom that it got from somewhere and nibbling furiously.