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In a surpreise move, the nominial Republican Presidential candidate, John McCain, choses Washington outsider Palin as his running mate. And I thought you had to be a US citizen.

Leonard Bernstein would be 90 years old today. The best popularizer of music in his day, with the Young People’s Concerts, and, of course, a highly noted conductor, Bernstein was also a great composer. From the amazingly lively Candide composed early in his career (a late recording), to the incredibly rich Mass he created for a commission by the Kennedy’s after his retirement from conducting, his work will live on. Mass was roundly derided by the critics after its opening at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. I saw it at Lincoln Center in New York shortly thereafter and predict it will go down in history as one of the great works.

In 2004 he was the first high school teacher to be an invited speaker at the MAA’s MathFest.  Steve Sigur also co-wrote a book with arguably the most famous mathematician of our time, John H. Conway.  Aside from being a gifted mathematician - as the many testimonies of his students attest [1][2][3][4], Steve Sigur was, for nearly 30 years, a gifted teacher.  When stricken with the same deadly brain cancer that recently afflicted Senator Edward Kennedy, he underwent experimental procedures at Duke University that enabled him to continue teaching for over a year; and incidentally, finish his triangle-shaped-full-color-with-software-included-book, The Triangle Book (not available yet).

As Philip Davis’ 1995 paper (pdf) points out, triangles have a long and rich history, from Euler’s Elements to the work of Emile Lemoine.  To understand beyond 1995 The Modern Geometry of the Triangle you must read Sigur’s paper (pdf).  His web pages are chock full of triangle math and other delights.  But the crown jewel is a set of interviews the Paideia School did with him.  Here he discusses his love for life.

Steve Sigur died last month.

At 5:30 AM 63 years ago today, J. Robert Oppenheimer’s brainchild was first tested at the Trinity site in what is now White Sands missile base in New Mexico.  The device, code named “the gadget,” was Plutonium implosion based, because the Uranium version was a sure thing.  Indeed, as President Truman decreed, the next 2 “tests” were over Hiroshima and Nagasaki (and ended WWII).  The ball on the right illustrates the amount of Plutonium 239 needed for the bomb that destroyed Nagasaki.

MIT’s “Doc” Edgerton, the father of high speed photography, used his Rapatronic cameras (note the plural – one shot per camera!) to capture the event at microsecond intervals with exposures as short as 10 nanoseconds.  The cameras were based on a sandwich of 2 polarized plates at 90 degrees to each other – blocking 100% of the light; with a filling of a cell that could polarize light at 45 degrees when energized.   Due to the strange nature of light polarization, adding a 45 degree filter between two 90 degree filters actually lets 50% of the light through.  Go figure!

They probably explain it well at the Exploratorium, the best science museum in the country, founded by Oppenheimer’s brother, Frank.  Go read Lawrence and Oppenheimer by Nuel Pharr Davis for the Trinity backstory.  It is a great read.

P.S.  A photo of the initial tenth of a microsecond of the Trinity blast has been on display by Doc Edgerton’s old office in MIT forever.  But, until recently, for security reasons(?), unlike the milk drop crown, it has had no label.  If you go see it, it is unlikely you’d mistake it for a bullet through a balloon!

Simon Plouffe has a new Inverter containing over 2.459 BILLION constants.  A few of the most interesting ones are named after mathematicians.  Can you match the constant with the name(s) without looking?

We first blogged about  George Carlin, appropriately enough, in a post about language, pointing you to the seven dirty words – verbatum transcript prepared by the FCC.  Dirty words keep changing – prior to 1900 the terrible seven would have been doggone, drat, forcryingoutloud, gee or jeepers, Jiminy Crickets (safe enough for Disney now), Odsbodkins, and the ’sh’ words shoot and shucks.   Genius is a constant and lives on.

A Variety article on Carlin’s 50+ years in the business, a transcript of the Modern Man poem read on the Tonight Show, a Mother Jones article on a darker look at education from an HBO special, and finally, a deciphering of the bumper stickers on the hippie VW van, Fillmore, which Carlin voiced in the movie Cars, can all be found on the internets.

What was missing till now are Lia and Alan’s remarkable impressions of Carlin.  Below is Lia’s impression.

Here is Alan getting into makeup.

And the splitting image.

As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer began a presentation at the Corvinus University in Budapest, a rude Hungarian (redundant) student stood up and shouted

Hey you! Microsoft has stolen 25 <billion> Hungarian Forint.  To the Hungarian people, give that money back. Right now!

He then threw 3 eggs – 1 on the floor, 1 on the wall, and 1 on the projector screen – before running out of ammunition, while Ballmer took refuge under the rostrum.  The student was asked to “Please leave” and “Very quickly” and “What were you thinking?” to which he responded the country pays while this guy has the nerve to be parading around here, and walked out exposing everyone to the back of his shirt proclaiming “Microsoft = Corruption.”

Following the “friendly disruption” Ballmer calmly continued his talk, wherein he was found by index.hu to be a surprisingly brilliant speaker.  In the Q&A he admitted to being egged before, in 1966 (no doubt on Halloween, when he would have been 10).

While the whole incident took place in broken English, Fake Steve Jobs is looking for a Czech translator!?  I am sure you’ve seen the original recording of the event posted on youtube – here is the Bono version.  Now we know who the Eggman is, but who is the Walrus?

Dear friends, both known and unknown to me, fellow Russians, and people of all countries and continents, in a few minutes a mighty spaceship will carry me into the far-away expanses of space. What can I say to you in these last minutes before the start? At this instant, the whole of my life seems to be condensed into one wonderful moment. Everything I have experienced and done till now has been in preparation for this moment. You must realize that it is hard to express my feeling now that the test for which we have been training long and passionately is at hand. I don’t have to tell you what I felt when it was suggested that I should make this flight, the first in history. Was it joy? No, it was something more than that. Pride? No, it was not just pride. I felt great happiness. To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage single handed in an unprecedented duel with nature – could anyone dream of anything greater than that? But immediately after that I thought of the tremendous responsibility I bore: to be the first to do what generations of people had dreamed of; to be the first to pave the way into space for mankind. This responsibility is not toward one person, not toward a few dozen, not toward a group. It is a responsibility toward all mankind – toward its present and its future. Am I happy as I set off on this space flight? Of course I’m happy. After all, in all times and epochs the greatest happiness for man has been to take part in new discoveries. It is a matter of minutes now before the start. I say to you, ‘Until we meet again,’ dear friends, just as people say to each other when setting out on a long journey. I would like very much to embrace you all, people known and unknown to me, close friends and strangers alike. See you soon! – Yuri Alekseevich Gagarin, first person in space, April 12, 1961