Monthly Archives: October 2013

Abelian Varieties

Posted on October 30, 2013 by Persiflage

Jerry Wang gave a nice talk this week on his generalization of Manjul’s work on pointless hyperelliptic curves to hyperelliptic curves with no points over any field of odd degree (equivalently, \(\mathrm{Pic}^1\) is pointless). This work (link here) is joint … Continue reading →

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The problem with baseball

Posted on October 27, 2013 by Persiflage

Jordan Ellenberg, in a lovely slate article, explains perfectly what I don’t like about baseball. I think the fundamentals of baseball as a sport are sound. I like the pace of the game, the variation, the statistics, the quirkiness, the … Continue reading →

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Does Harvard discriminate in favour of Jews?

Posted on October 22, 2013 by Persiflage

In The American Conservative, Ron Unz published an essay that was ostensibly about whether the top Ivy schools discriminate against Asian students but, upon closer reading, was mainly concerned with arguing that Harvard/Yale/Princeton discriminate against white Gentiles in favour of … Continue reading →

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Who is D.H.J. Polymath?

Posted on October 20, 2013 by Persiflage

D.H.J. Polymath is the assumed collective pseudonym for the authors of a number of papers which have arisen as a result of the polymath project initated by Gowers. Presumably, since it is a matter of open record, one can go … Continue reading →

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Why is my paper taking so long to review?

Posted on October 1, 2013 by Persiflage

The question in the title does not refer to any of my own papers; rather, I want to *answer* the question from the perspective of an editor. Here, roughly, is how the sausage is made (this is a medium case … Continue reading →

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