Fuddland

I met some members of the University’s Court today. I didn’t even know the University had a Court, or even what one was, so I did a little digging.

Court is the highest body in the university system, and [in our case at least] consists of:

1. The Members of the Council;

2. The Members of the Senate;

3. The Emeritus Professors;

4. The Registrar;

5. The members of the Standing Committee of Convocation;

6. Five representatives of the Students’ Union elected by the Union;

7. One representative of each of the recognised trades unions of the University;

8. Such other representatives of the University as the Court may determine.

Every year they tour a few departments, to get a flavour of what goes on research-wise. This year was our turn, so yesterday afternoon [yesterday afternoon! As if we’re not busy enough] a couple of colleagues and I were asked to prepare some demos of our research.

I made a few movies [in lowly 2D due to the time constraints] which purported to demonstrate some of the ideas and applications of interpolation. These were promptly blown out of the water by someone else’s 3D simulation of the solar system aging a couple of billion years, but there’s obviously no jealousy in the world of mathematics. [Not since Galois anyway.]

I chatted to a very nice chap at the beginning; I cunningly kept him talking about himself for long enough that the rest of the group passed me by without a word, and he was a non-scientist so was obviously very impressed by my 2D movies [I made sure he had his back to the solar system simulation]. Once he’d left I did had to explain what I did to a couple of other people, but they seemed to get the gist, or at least [and more likely] were well-practised at nodding in the right places.

I do enjoy important people trying to seem interested in things they really don’t know anything about — it often results in things like this [paraphrased] exchange, which occurred towards the end of the afternoon:

Court member

How much more accurate is your model of the solar system than the ones the Babylonians and Egyptians were using?

Colleague

Well I don’t know — how accurate were their models?

Court member

Er. I don’t know.

Colleague

I think they were only interested in a couple of thousands years at most, whereas my model does things in millions and billions years. Also, I think they were more interested in alignments and significant astronomical events such as eclipses. My model is really trying to predict whether the solar system is stable or if the small chaotic traits we are aware of will result in total entropy, the dissolution of the system and the end of any life that might happen to still exist on Earth.

Court member

Well moving on…

#1

Jann | 2004 / 02 / 12 – 21:56

And not only was the dueling mathematician dude cool, he invented smoking in France, too…

#2

David | 2004 / 02 / 13 – 11:16

Re #1: Umm. Okay. I take it Galois is a brand of cigarettes in France.

#3

Jann | 2004 / 02 / 13 – 15:40

T’riffic. Not only was that joke borderline unfunny, it’s now officially not funny at all.

Thanks a lot.

#4

David | 2004 / 02 / 13 – 15:46

Re #3: It wasn’t that. It just depended on the jokee knowing about French brands of cigarettes — not my own particular specialist subject. :)

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