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A central problem in combinatorics, probability theory, and analysis is to understand the spectrum of random d-regular graphs G with vertices. The following paper marks a huge leap in our understanding of this problem. Ramanujan Property and Edge Universality of Random Regular Graphs, by Jiaoyang Huang, Theo Mckenzie, and Horng-Tzer Yau. Abstract: We consider the normalized adjacency matrix of a random -regular graph on vertices with any fixed degree and …

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Herring Gull next to the Thames by HMS Belfast this week

Occasionally, I try a perfume for the first time and feel an immediate rush of excitement. It smells so wonderful, so perfect, that I think I’ve discovered a new favorite. But then, on subsequent tries, I can never recreate that initial feeling. The magic seems to vanish, leaving me wondering if I imagined it all. […]

Mesmerizing, delicate and seemingly impossible — this lovely luminescent denizen of the sea has been living in our oceans for more than half a billion years. Jellyfish are found all over the world, from surface waters to our deepest seas — and they are old. They are some of the oldest animals in the fossil record.Jellyfish are not fish at all. These gossamer wonders evolved millions of years

In the land of my father, as I recall, there was a pink Ganesha Scotch-taped to the back of the door. I pushed the door open, one hand parallel to the face of the idol, into the twisted light of a blue winter morning and saw him waiting for me there, on the stone steps. He did not have the comic humility of a playful divinity; he did not doff …

Hello! Recently I ran a terminal survey and I asked people what frustrated them. One person commented: There are so many pieces to having a modern terminal experience. I wish it all came out of the box. My immediate reaction was “oh, getting a modern terminal experience isn’t that hard, you just need to….”, but the more I thought about it, the longer the “you just need to…” list got, …

All the Way for the Win was just published by Penteract Press — today! It’s available for sale from their online store. This book of poetry begins by narrating the birth of the universe and concludes after describing the eradication of the last human-authored poetic text. While it doesn’t deal with everything in between, it’s mean to touch on many aspects of human history and experience. The poems in the …

To read this excellent edition and translation of John Buridan’s Questions on Aristotle’s De Anima is to encounter two things at once: an intellectual landscape remote from both ancient hylomorphism and post-medieval European philosophy and a bridge between the two.[1] Like Aristotle, Buridan thinks that all living things are animated by souls. But these souls are in many ways unlike the souls of Aristotle’s De anima. According to Buridan, the …

I don't normally do blog challenges, but I got pinged by ~hyde with the call, so here goes: Why did you start blogging in the first place? I don't remember a specific thing that got me started. My first post talked about students and learning and technology, so it was probably something I heard during a professional development at school. This was my first year teaching and the school was …

Last year I wrote that I wanted to be able to do one pull up. This year, I just want the year to progress uneventfully. I first started using the word “uneventful” when my traditional chinese medicine physician asked if I had any symptoms between my visits: there were rare times when I would tell her I didn’t have any symptoms in the couple of weeks since I last saw …

The Soviet documentary maker Roman Karmen at Điện Biên Phủ in 1954 From this English language Doco: His film on Vietnam here: https://en.qdnd.vn/culture-sports/culture/unforgettable-time-with-director-roman-karmen-in-viet-bac-562800 Mai Lộc And all the other films Karmen makes – Spain, China, Berlin, Cuba, Chile – right up to filming Burt Lancaster in Moscow’s Red Square.

I wrote another book about television. I like television. I like television so much that the first thing I modelled and printed on my new 3d printer was this … What shows do they make you think of? I made some more after that too. Can you hear it? Everything needs painting still, of course There’s a few more, including TVS, ATV, and HTV, but I bought you here to …

While in Palo Alto for the holidays, I stumbled on a piece of public art I didn’t previously know about: the Linus Pauling Commemorative Ceramic Mural, created in 2000 by Ross Drago. It’s a set of individually decorated ceramic tiles, installed on a wall along the sidewalk on the north side of Oregon Expressway, near its corner with El Camino Real. It’s not an area that attracts much foot traffic. …