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Hiding from the crazy
02/16/07
by Shaw

I owe you a column. I owe you an update. I owe you SOMETHING. It's been a while. I know! I'm sorry. This is Shaw, saying, "I'm sorry."

You see, sometimes, the crazy gets me.

Last week, I was at a conference in Gainesville at the University of Florida. (Remember the last time I went to a conference?) Yesterday and today, I have been working all day and all night at a mathematics conference held in my department here, and so my day was spent attending to the needs of some very needy mathematicians.

What are those needs?

Coffee. Mathematicians drink what my friend Ethan would refer to as a "shit-ton" of coffee. My friend Jim Grogan would more likely call it a "shit-pot" of coffee. Either is appropriate. Between every session at this conference, there is a 15 minute break during which 40 people together consume 96 ounces of coffee and 64 ounces of tea. This happens every 45 minutes.... so your average mathematician is drinking 40 oz of coffee or tea during the day. That might not sound like a lot to you, but considering that some of the people here don't drink coffee, the ones who do are really taking it to the limit. And if that still doesn't impress you... try it. Drink 40 oz. of coffee. Make sure you have time to clean your bathroom the next day.

Help in recognizing common items. First of all, we have two very large trays of bagel halves (two trays of half-bagels is not the same as one tray of whole bagels, discuss), and somehow these are being consumed at an alarming rate as well. There are some conference participants here who take a new bagel at every break. I wonder if mathematical bulimia is being investigated by anyone at the moment. As I was sitting here, I overheard an American professor, who walked up to the tray of bagels, took one, and looked at the vat of cream cheese next to the bagels. The cream cheese is white, and, you know, looks like cream cheese. The guy looked at it with scorn and said, "is that butter or whipped cream?" Then he sneered and walked out of the room, his bagel unsmeared. Who doesn't know what cream cheese looks like? And who the fuck serves whipped cream with bagels?

Beer. Last night we hosted a party and I did something I have never had to do before, which is funny since I went to college. Having ordered a keg of beer, the tap didn't work. Along with several others, I spent 20 minutes trying to re-screw the tap, failed miserably, and finally gave up. But such was the pressure coming from the mathematicians at the party, that I finally had to go find a pair of pliers, wrench off the entire tap output, and pour the beer by tipping the keg over. Strange how that never happened in college.

Help for the crazy. This older retired professor... crazy... just walked in to the lounge, and I knew something was wrong because he said, "hello" to me, and he is usually unable to communicate with humans. Well. As it turns out, even though the lounge is empty I don't think he was saying hello to me... I said, "hello" back, and he looked down at the floor and said, "c'mon c'mon C'MON!" And then he stole a bagel, ripped into it, and said ominously through gritted teeth (to the bagel!), "Don't make me LAUGH!" and then walked out of the room. This really happened.

So, you see, sometimes the crazy gets me.

Regular updates return next week.

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