# The Spectre of Math

## October 30, 2008

### Damn radical ideals

Filed under: Mathematics — jlebl @ 9:30 pm

So it turns out I can’t get rid of this damn radical in my theorem, so it’s more like a proposition now.  I have to replace “factorial” with “prefactorial” (i.e. every prime ideal of height one is a radical of a principal ideal).  The trouble is, very few people know what prefactorial is, and I have no clue how large the class of germs of varieties with ${\mathcal O}_{X,0}$ being normal and prefactorial is.  It seems to be larger than factorial and smaller than normal.

That’s the problem with ideals and radicals.  Just like in politics, they just cause problems.  And just like in politics, if you could find the generators of those radical ideals, you could really solve some problems.

## October 29, 2008

### Socialism

Filed under: Economics,Mathematics,Politics — jlebl @ 10:03 pm

Question: Why are we all socialists?

Answer: Let’s consider $Co$ to be communism and $Ca$ to be capitalism. Anywhere between is really socialism. I.e. The model of any country is $tCo + (1-t) Ca$ for $t \in [0,1]$. Now socialism then corresponds to $t \in (0,1)$. Since no country in the world is either really communist nor really capitalist, the whole world is full of socialists. In particular, both Obama and McCain are socialists, though I guess $t_{obama} < t_{mccain}$.

## October 28, 2008

### Syria

Filed under: Politics — jlebl @ 2:41 pm

Hmmm … this must be a conspiracy theory, but: Military (and the president) probably mostly support McCain. It seems generally agreed that international crisis (especially one requiring the military) is good for McCain (in terms of the electorate). So why are we attacking things inside Syria one week before the election sparking a possible shooting confrontation? Why now?

## October 24, 2008

### On stocks (price of)

Filed under: Economics,Politics — jlebl @ 10:53 pm

Value in our main portfolio dipped below \$100k today. I feel sort of light headed when I think of how much money we’ve lost this past few weeks. I keep telling myself it’s monopoly money. I did some extra shares of AINV today, thinking it can’t go any lower, I might as well make some money if it does another dead cat bounce and I sell.

So someone should explain to me why republicans are supposed to be better for the markets. Investors are still voting republican. For the lower taxes? That doesn’t make sense to me. If the taxes are lower, but your investments are where they were a decade ago (not counting inflation) how is this good for you? 0% of 0 is not much less than 30% of 0.

## October 23, 2008

### Planetmath

Filed under: Mathematics — jlebl @ 7:08 pm

So planetmath is descending deeper and deeper into crankiness. There is a lot of quality content on planetmath (the vast majority), but as it allows total cranks to write entries the overall quality of the site deteriorates. The most recent example which is so far unchallenged by the admins (and is the reason why I am not writing new or updating my old entries there) is bc1. An good example of what I am talking about is this entry. Note that I am talking about version 1 in case he edited the entry which he does very often to his entries.

This guy even wrote on some CR geometry and of course got it wrong. But I got tired of the fight.

Anyway, I have just found the link above and thought it may be amusing. It should also serve as a warning about sites like planetmath.

### Hmmmm …

Filed under: Technology — jlebl @ 6:38 pm

OK, this is mostly a test. I figure I should find a better “blog” site than advogato. And since I might want to write about math then it is nice that I can insert some latex such as $\int_\Omega d\omega = \int_{\partial \Omega} \omega$

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