Blog Archives: March, 2003
Oxford
Earlier this year, I applied for admission to graduate school at a number of fine insititutions: University of Waterloo, McGill University, Université de Montréal, and Oxford University. As of earlier this week, I found out that I’ve been tentatively accepted to Oxford, and will in all likelihood find myself skipping the pond come October!
Oxford crest Oxford is the world’s oldest English-speaking university, and has been in existence in one form or another since 1096 (A Brief History of Oxford). It’s considered one of the most prestigious universities.
The course that I applied for is an MSc by coursework in Mathematics and the Foundations of Computer Science. The course starts in mid-October and is a one-year program in the Mathematics Institute.
I don’t have too many more details yet. I haven’t yet been accepted to a college, don’t know who my supervisor would be, not completely sure on financial arrangements, haven’t picked courses, don’t know where I’m living. But all that will work itself out.
England, here I come!
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Three Dead Trolls
(Yes, I’m a bad blogger. Yes, I haven’t my blog in weeks. I’m almost sorry, really I am.)
3 Dead Trolls logo My friend Janna Hickson, a colleague from my year on the Federation of Students Students’ Council, recommended I check out the tunes of Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, a Canadian band / comedy troupe. Their music is available online from Ampcast and mp3.com.
I’ve downloaded a bunch of their tunes but only had a chance to listen to a few. I particularly enjoyed “Every OS Sucks”, even though it bashed Macs alongside Windows PCs. And although I don’t want to jump on the bandwagon of anti-Americanism, “The White House Burned”, recounting the tale of the burning of the White House in the War of 1812, is also a good listen.
Are you listening to anything interesting? Post a comment and let me know…
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x% more Stebila
It’s all Albert O’Connor‘s fault, really. Last term, when I was President of MathSoc and Albert was Vice-President, Activities and Services, he ran a logo contest.
MathSoc with 30% more Stebila Things have gotten a little bit out of control since then. There are logos for MathSoc, MEF, and Godspell, the balloon, and the dictator survey. Read more to see the rest.
MEF with 80% more Stebila The MathSoc and Math Endowment Fund logos are the fault of one Yolanda Dorrington, troublemaker extraordinaire.
That caused Lino Demasi and Greg Hines to do this: the Guess the Dictator website. If you input this sequence of yes/no: nynnnynnnnnnnnnnnnynnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnny, then you’ll see that I’m a small-time dictator for MathSoc. (You can also go directly to this link.
Godspell with 80% more Stebila Kirk Schmidt created this logo for Godspell. And true, as stage manager I am god, but to have a logo is a little too much, even for me.
Balloon with 37% more Stebila Then there’s the balloon for Campus Day that Marshall Drew-Brook wrote on while I was standing unawares in the MathSoc. I later had to wear the balloon to a presentation about Combinatorics & Optimization and give tours to impressionable high school students.
I don’t understand. Why me?
Update 2003-04-03: I was just cleaning out old papers and came across an old issue of mathNEWS. Apparently I’m not just a small-time dictator, I’m a large-time dictator: MathSoc Vows To Proceed Unilaterally With Assault on Iraq.
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Ski Nationals
My friend and housemate Heather Murray (soon to have a blog, dear readers) is competing this weekend in the Canadian Cross Country Ski Championships, in Women’s sprints.
Update 2003/03/08: Heather’s brother Ian finished 3rd in the Senior Mens A Sprints.
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Laramie Project
This evening I went to see The Laramie Project, produced by members of Studio 180.
Laramie Project poster The Laramie Project is based on a series of interviews by members of the Tectonic Theater Company conducted in Laramie, Wyoming, following the murder of Matthew Shepherd.
Matthew Shepherd was a gay 21 year-old student at the University of Wyoming in Laramie, Wyoming. He was attacked, beaten, and left in a field outside of Laramie in October 1998; he died five days later.
In the year following his death, members of the Tectonic Theater Company went to Laramie several times and conducted over 200 interviews with members of the Laramie community. The experiences from those interviews formed the basis for the theatrical production The Laramie Project. It’s presented as a series of interviews and journal entries showing how the people of Laramie reacted to the murder and how their community changed as a result.
I was touched by the intense personal nature of the production. The original production in New York was performed by the actors who had actually gone and done the interviews. So this production was not only about the events of October 1998 but also about the actors who originally developed the project.
Through the production, we came to know the fears and hopes of some people from Laramie. My favourite character was Jebediah Schultz, a university student. He came to university on an acting scholarship, having won an acting competition through his portrayal of a gay character; his parents wouldn’t come see him perform at the competition. A year after Matthew’s death, he auditioned for and was cast in that same role in a production at university. (The play was Angels in America.)
Many of the townspeople reacted by distancing themselves from the reality of the event. “Laramie isn’t the kind of place where this type of thing happens.” But one character responded that it was a place where this type of thing happens, because it did. She argued that they needed to own the tragedy, to take it in, and only then could they grow from it.
Too often we try to separate ourselves from the reality of the events around us. Those types of things don’t happen around here, we’re not that type of place. And yet they do happen, we are that type of place. Not everywhere and not always, but we have a long way to go.
Matthew’s mother maintains a website about her son.
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Photography sites
I’ve come across a number of interesting photography-related sites on the web. There are some sites that offer daily shots by professional photojournalists, others that host large archives.
Maybe some day I’ll be hosting a photography site on the web.
Daily Photos
a photo a day: professional photojournalists posting one photo each day
A Day in the Life: each week, a new photographer shoots one photo each day
National Geographic: daily photos from the archive
Series
A Day in the Life of Africa: photos from a book of photography of Africa
PhotoLondon: archive of London photos
Katinka Matson: using a scanner to take high-resolution pictures rich in colour
Snow Crystals: images of snow crystals (snow flakes) using regular and microscopic photography
