And That Is The Rest Of The Story

Hello everyone, my name is Aidan Patterson, and I am the owner of my own thoughts and actions. My hobbies include Mathematics, Karate, Physics and anything music related. Never be afraid to tell me I am wrong, but be prepared to prove it, and may I say, good luck proving it to me! P.S. I'm secretly an activist! I'm a feminist, I fight for anything related to LGBT rights, as well as for people of color, and those who don't have the privilege of ability! Communism will win.

[t-stride]

The Human Race Must Abolish Billionaires

Hello, let’s have a talk. A talky talk. A talky talk about how and why Billionaires should not be allowed to exist, why we can, must, and should seize all of their combined wealth, and what we can do with it when we have it.

And maybe some cheeky ideas about what to do with that sorry lot once we’ve plundered all their shinies and wealth, mhm! Oh yes.

Let’s start here:

Oh my oh my oh my! What is this!

It seems that 2,754 human beings on this planet we share have over $1,000,000,000 in wealth! This simply will not do, that’s far too many. But what I’d really like to do is draw your attention to the eye-gouging sum of their total wealth.

$9,200,000,000,000.

Truly a staggering sum. In fact, it’s so staggering, it’s achieved what really big numbers can do where they no longer really contain any conceivable value. It is truly difficult for the human mind to conceive of this kind of largeness, and it can even trick you into thinking, hey, this isn’t that much bigger than 9.2 million! Which isn’t all that much, really.

I’m so sorry but that’s wrong.

So how much is 9.2 Trillion?

A useful way to look at numbers is to use a scale we encounter every day: the second. I refer to this excerpt from a helpful letter to the New York Times written in 1986: 

“I found that 1,000 seconds ago was equal to almost 17 minutes. It would take almost 12 days for a million seconds to elapse and 31.7 years for a billion seconds. Therefore, a trillion seconds would amount to no less than 31,709.8 years.

A trillion seconds ago, there was no written history. The pyramids had not yet been built. It would be 10,000 years before the cave paintings in France were begun, and saber-toothed tigers were still prowling the planet.”

That’s just 1 Trillion seconds. 9.2 Trillion seconds is 291,730.16 years ago! Recorded history doesn’t even go back that far. The lost island in the North Sea Doggerland was still around back then. The land bridge between Russia and Alaska was still around. Starting to get how much money $9.2 Trillion is?

For the sake of argument, let’s say that these 2,754 people are one person (and for the sake of humanity’s scale, they might as well be), and decide to spend their cash. What can they do with $9.2 Trillion dollars?

What about a castle? Castles are cool! I’d like a castle. They gotta be expensive right?

The Devizes Castle, built in the 12th century, was sold for $3.2 million. On our time scale, that’s just about 39 days out of 291,730.16 years. But that’s not even close to the most expensive castle. That’s probably the Asheford Castle, in Ireland, also from the 12th century, valued around $68m. That’s a bit bigger of a chunk, coming around to about 3.2 years out of our budget of 291,730.

Okay, we have a swanky place to live. How about a plane to fly there? Or a boat? Let’s buy the best ones of each.

Luxury jets are easy: you want a Gulfstream IV - clocking in at $38m. There are other, much more expensive planes, but they are more straight up commercial airliners or tactical bombers. For a single person, a Gulfstream is really where it’s at.

Yachts? The choices here are way more varied. Technically, the world’s most expensive yacht is the History Supremee at $4.5 Billion, but this is just a mere 100-foot vessel coated in pure gold and platinum. Let’s go bigger, but slightly cheaper, and get the Eclipse, a 536 foot long, $1.5 Billion dollar vessel that is sure to make all the less rich people envious.

Why not a car? The most expensive car is the Koenigsegg CCXR Trevita, coming in at a mere $4.8 Million.

If we add this all up, it’s $1,042,500,000. This is 33 years.

You can buy the world’s most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car, and only use 35 years out of the budget of 291,730.

In FACT: if every single one of the 2,754 billionaires could buy one of the most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car each, there would still be $6.3 TRILLION left over between them.

Starting to get the picture?

There is no logical, moral, ethical, or even comedic argument to be made for even 10,000 people to have access to $9.2 Trillion in wealth, much less 2,754. They simply cannot spend this wealth on a meaningful, individual level. It can only be hoarded, and used to create more wealth.

Now, let’s say we forcefully take their money, and liquidate all their assets, and we, the people, now have $9.2Trillion in fungible cash. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that the $200 billion that we need to drop to make this an even 9 gets lost in depreciation. That’s almost 2%, so, I feel that’s not a difficult or even unfair argument to make.

So, let’s say after seizing these bastard’s wealth and liquidating it we have $9Trillion left over. What can we do with all of that?

It would only cost about $55 Million to fix Flint. Let’s do that.

The most bloated estimates say it would cost $265 Billion to end world hunger and malnutrition. Let’s do that.

What about education? What if we forgave all the American student loans? That’s a hefty $1.4 Trillion, but, we have it to spare.

Reducing Greenhouse Gasses is a tricky one. Planting trees to offset carbon emissions is a good idea, so, let’s fund some projects to do that.

“The cost to plant a tree varies depending on the location of the project and the type of tree being planted, and ranges between approximately one dollar to three dollars per tree.” - Plant a Billion Trees

So, $3Billion for a billion trees. Nice. That’ll regreen the landscape quite a bit, and this is just one example of a single effort to reforest multiple lost jungles. Let’s fund five such projects, bringing the total to 5 billion trees and $15 Billion dollars.

What about Solar? What if we made a Solar Farm in the Sahara to cover the energy use of the entire planet? The cost of the project will be about five trillion dollars assuming we could figure out the infrastructure to support it.

What’s that got us, totaled up? We’ve spent $6.68 Trillion. We’ve got about $2.3 Trillion left over. We’ve ended world hunger, forgiven all American student loan debt, replanted billions of trees, and the world, in theory, is on 100% solar power now. Seems like a pretty rosy state of existence. And we still have 72,932 years of our time/money left over. That’s almost enough left over to buy every billionaire the most luxurious castle, jet, yacht, and car.

FUCK. THAT.

So, clearly, it is an illogical, immoral act for a billionaire to hoard all this wealth, when we’ve seen what we can do with it. What should we do with them?

[plagu3rat5]

This is something that affects every single school in Ontario, Canada. This isn’t just about the phone ban, no, this us about the funding cuts, the teacher cuts and everything else that is being affected by this useless law that will cause more problems than solve them. On April 4th at 1:15pm we are doing an walk out to protest against this and make a statement to the school board. They say we have voices and a right to speak up, but they are afraid when we choose to actually use our voices for something we believe in. On April 4th I will be walking out, but I ask this to every student in Ontario. Will you walk out aswell?

Please reblog even if you’re American or dont live in Onatrio, Canada please help get the word out about this

[invdious]

[math-a-magic]

Great chicken in the sky

[mathematicalmemer]

[vacuously-true]

This can’t be right. I swear every time I have a sign error so the swear jar should be at least as full as the sign error jar.

[math-a-magic]

Homophobia in STEM

Over the course of my degree in math, I’ve had quite a few experiences with discrimination. Most of these were instances of students, people in my year, who would say rude things about me, or confront me in bars on weekends, or spread rumors about me to my peers. While detrimental to my mental health in first year, this explicit homophobia was something that I had learned to deal with in the past, and was something that I was able,  more or less, to shrug off. 

Later into my degree, I found a far more sinister manifestation of this same discrimination. The men I trusted as my educators and mentors would often be short with me during office hours, ignore my requests for meetings, or be generally unaccommodating in ways that I expected them to based on what my peers had experienced. Of course not every man in Math acted this way, but the few who did left a lasting impression on me, and it has changed the way that I interact with my professors, and even what subjects I find interesting. Mathematics seemed to me like an “old boys club”, and the comradery that other men in my program got to enjoy seemed inaccessible to me.

Luckily, around my third year I found some guidance under a female professor, and her close peers that helped me to understand that I had potential, and forced me to confront my apprehensions about my abilities that other professors and people in my program had imparted on me. This person has truly changed my life and improved my self worth, and to them I am forever grateful. Despite this happy ending, there is still one experience that I had at a conference that I find myself thinking about often. 

Over the summer, I went to a conference (I won’t specify which one to keep this somewhat anonymous) that invited undergrads to attend lectures by their peers, and to attend some keynote lectures put together by amazing professors. Coincidentally, the same female professor that I previously spoke about was scheduled to give one of they keynote speeches (and it was amazing!). Another particularly good speech was given by another female professor on a topic in number theory, and it interested me enough that I wanted to speak to her after her talk. I didn’t get a chance after her talk because she had somewhere to be immediately afterwards, but there was a gender diversity panel later in the week that featured her as one of 5 guest speakers, so I decided to attend that and speak to her afterwards. 

Many things happened during that panel that honestly deserve their own post, but at the end, the professor I wished to talk to and another woman that raised some excellent points were sitting next to each other, so when the panel ended, I went up and began speaking to both of them. Both of them had talked about how important finding a mentor in math is, especially someone who can help you to grow personally, and who treats you as an equal. This has obviously always been a problem for women in math, and so I wished to speak with them about how I had tackled the same problem, and had found some refuge under the previously mentioned female prof. 

The woman who I had intended to speak to the day before was younger and very quick witted, so I was exited to hear her opinion on the intersection of our experiences with men in math. The other was and older woman who had already moved away from academia and into an industry job, where she struggled to have her male peers treat her and an equal, and thus had dealt with a lot of self doubt early in her career, as I was, and so I wanted to ask her how she dealt with it and what she would recommend I do. 

The conversation started lighthearted, and we joked about how rude some of the audience members had been. I expressed my views on how math has become an “old boys club” and how difficult it is as a gay man to find common ground with most of my male professors, which makes it difficult to find mentorship and advance my career. The older woman nodded and agreed with me; she had experienced the same thing, which had ultimately driven her to pursue a private industry career. The younger woman politely waited for me to finish, and then said something which completely crushed my spirit. She looked me in the eyes and said “It shouldn’t be so bad though because it’s a lot easier to be gay now, and it’s not like it’s something that others know unless you tell them.” I had poured my heart out to this person, and she essentially denied that I had any claim to discrimination based on the fact that you “can’t see gay”.  

The older woman was quick to come to my defense, and cited numerous times in the last 5 years that she had heard her boss be openly homophobic, as well as peers that she had previously worked with in academia. Despite her interjection, I was so embarrassed that I had asked this person for advice, only to be told that my problems don’t exist, that I simply smiled, said “thank you for your time, this was a great panel.” and left. 

The problem with homophobia in STEM is that in most cases it is covert, much like sexism. Though I may not be considered “visibly gay” (whatever that means), I still am gay, which is and always has been a barrier to my success. Striking up personal connections with men in Math will always be harder for me personally because I can’t share many details of my personal life for fear of being “discovered”. It is impossible to forge a meaningful connection with someone when you fear what they will think of you when they learn about who you really are. I have found some refuge with the incredible women in Math  (and men believe it or not) that I am grateful to have the opportunity to know, but after the conversation I had following the panel at this conference, I’ve become a little more apprehensive about everyone I speak to. I am so lucky to have found a mentor, and someone I can trust. It was the knowledge that I have at least one connection in the Math department, and that she has been remarkably kind to me, that kept me grounded in that moment.   

So, for anyone wondering how to deal with the crippling self doubt that comes with being LGBT in STEM, I have some advice. Find a mentor, or someone that you can trust in the department that you’re in. Having someone in your corner at all times can do wonders for your self esteem, and can open a lot of doors for you that would be inaccessible otherwise. Despite what I’ve been saying, don’t be afraid to open up to people as well. Once you find someone you can trust, it’s possible to use that relationship to grow emotionally. I spoke to my mentor about how I was nervous to present some of my research to the grad students during a seminar, and she reassured me that my work was valuable, and that I shouldn’t get caught up in my minor mistakes at the board as much as I should be painting a broader picture for people to follow, and let them worry about the tiny details. This has improved my public speaking ability tremendously, which is amazing considering I’ve been terrified of it for years. Don’t be afraid of personal relationships, they can be your greatest weapon in your fight to be recognized for your abilities. 

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

Nothing is more reassuring than the sight of a transluscent, purple-green polyhedron

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

Everything Will Be Okay.

[complex-variable]

Treat yourself every once in a while

[math-a-magic]

You're gonna be alright ❤

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

Nothing is more reassuring than the sight of a transluscent, purple-green polyhedron

[the-real-numbers-deactivated202]

Everything Will Be Okay.

[complex-variable]

Treat yourself every once in a while

[raginrayguns]

learned about muonic atoms recently. Muonic hydrogen, muonic helium.

A muon is a particle with the same negative charge as an electron, but about 200 times the mass. They’re, like… short-lived but not THAT shortlived as these things go, the halflife is over a microsecond.

Muonic helium means you have a helium nucleus with muons around it instead of electrons. (or one muon and one elctron? I’m not sure.)

people apparently make muonic hydrogen tofigure out how large a proton is.

in chemistry stuff you usually model he nucleus as a point charge, which it isn’t, but it’s interesting the lengths people have to go to get its non point charge ness to have any detectable effect on the behavior of the system. Makes that point charge assumption look real safe

[math-a-magic]

Fun fact! People were pretty sure about the size of a proton a while back, and they figured it out by looking at how the electron tugs it around in a hydrogen atom. They tried their model for a Muon and it didn't work anymore, and they found that the proton was smaller than their other experiment predicted (by about 1% if I'm not mistaken). Here's a the story! https://www.google.ca/amp/s/arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/researchers-orbit-a-muon-around-an-atom-confirm-physics-is-broken/%3famp=1

Also, when you take a bunch of protons, and add Muons instead of electrons, so that the hydrogen atoms are bonded with Muons, the protons are bound far closer together. This makes the probability of then turning into helium neucli far more likely, and is actually an effective way to do cold fusion. The only problem is that it takes more energy to make muons than we get back out of the fusion. Here's the wikipedia article https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muon-catalyzed_fusion

Finally, we know that when you put an electron in a magnetic field, its spin axis processes in a circle, and the speed it does that at is related to something called its g-factor. Initially we thought this number was 2, but after factoring in special relativity, we get about 2.001l. We're now doing something similar for a Muon, and if we dont observe the same thing, we have some new physics to come up with! Here's a link as well http://muon-g-2.fnal.gov

[math-a-magic]

I love how most of the general public thinks that mathematicians just do fancy calculations on calculators all day. I'm in my fourth year, and I get offended if calculators are required for an exam.

[pheministphysicists]

First woman Physics Nobel winner in 55 years

The 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics is awarded to a woman for only the third time since the award began.

Donna Strickland, from Canada, is only the third woman winner of the award, along with Marie Curie, who won in 1903, and Maria Goeppert-Mayer, who was awarded the prize in 1963.

Dr Strickland shares this year’s prize with Arthur Ashkin, from the US, and Gerard Mourou, from France.

It recognises their discoveries in the field of laser physics.

[Read More]

[bisexual-bifurcations]

WHAT????????????????????????????

[mindblowingscience]

Breaking News:

The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2018 has been awarded to Arthur Ashkin, Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland “for groundbreaking inventions in the field of laser physics”.

Donna Strickland is the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 55 years.

Nobel Laureate Arthur Ashkin has been awarded the #NobelPrize in Physics “for the optical tweezers and their application to biological systems.”

Nobel Laureates Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland have been awarded the #NobelPrize in Physics “for their method of generating high-intensity, ultra-short optical pulses.”

Article here with more information about their work:

Arthur Ashkin, Gérard Mourou and Donna Strickland win Nobel physics prize

[math-a-magic]

Congratulations to Prof.Strictland! Waterloo represent!

[math-a-magic]

So I had a weird dream last night that one of my friends mothers was giving me a piano lesson. About 2 minutes in she goes "you're doing great! I think it's time to generalise to the protective piano". I sit in the room wondering what she meant while she runs into her kitchen, and comes back holding a somehow simultaneously black and white piano key. She then proceeds to "unfold" the piano around us acordian style, and use this key to complete the circle. With this new "protective piano", she then played me a melody so undescribably haunting, that it transcended sound and danced around the room, warping the walls and producing an Aurora type effect.

This was by far the weirdest math/music crossover I've ever had in a dream, and I am still shook. Idk how my brain even remembered the P1 = S1 correspondance for the shape of the piano.

[zorn-lemon]

Probably the nerdiest thing I’ve done in some time - a math limerick of my own!

The way it should be read is:

The integral of inverse two z Taken over a circle, size e Divided by i Times square root of pi Gives you gamma of one-sixth times three

I’ve seen math limericks that used integrals before, but I haven’t seen one that would use complex analysis, so here it is

[anarchyisfunandfree]

Viewing politics as a spectrum with a ‘middle’ and ‘extremes’ is a really powerful and dangerous ideological concept. The prevailing ideology decides what constitutes the middle, its arbitrary, it doesn’t represent any sort of ‘balance’ or any other properties outside of its material content. If your ideology occupies the ‘middle’ space, it’s because the ideas constituting it are normalized in the prevailing mainstream, which speaks to the position of power it occupies, not to its inherent truth, practicality, or morality. There is no such thing as neutral, inaction and abstention are passive support of the underlying power structures of our society.

[thesecretsongofbees]

i’m genuinely interested in what OP has to say about fascism or terrorism in regards to cases of extremism in ideology, not in a passive-aggressive way at all

is the general idea that you can practise far-right and far-left ideologies but still not be extreme unless it’s through the actions/the way in which you practise/express them? does this mean far-right politics just in its ideology is NOT extreme?

[anarchyisfunandfree]

Being a fascist is wrong for reasons other than where it falls on the political spectrum. If you presuppose that fascism is wrong because it’s extreme or “far from the poltical center” it allows you to draw a false equivalency between the far right and far left that doesn’t really make much sense. It also lets centrist ideologies like neoliberalism get a pass when they support incredible violence which is only politically acceptable because it’s against people that are marginalized by our political system. How extreme an ideology is just acts as a measure of how much it conforms to the prevailing political status quo and doesn’t say much else about the actual content of the ideology.

[math-a-magic]

“Fiscal Conservatism”

One thing that I think that everyone in Ontario should understand after this last election is that there is no distinction between being “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” and being fully conservative. People who identify as a socially liberal usually take it to mean that they believe in the liberation of oppressed people, and seek the abolition of legislature which regulates us. Fiscal conservative ideology is in direct opposition to these beliefs. Our oppression as minorities is not simply social, but material, meaning it is capitalism which perpetuates our struggle. Lack of social initiatives and government resources, coupled with the deregulation of business, directly supports our exploitation under capitalism, and no amount of social liberalism will change this. Your identity is an inherent contradiction, and whether you want to believe it or not, you are now directly responsible for the oppression and exploitation of thousands of people, if not millions. By the end of the next 4 years, there will be blood on your hands, and I refuse to let your ignorance allow you to live comfortably with that reality. 

[justsomeantifas]

them, wrong: a venn diagram is just when you shove a bunch of circles together, see like this them, wrong:

me: ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WRONG. ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE I’M TIRED OF THIS. IF YOUR ALLEGED VENN DIAGRAM IS SO RIGHT THEN WHY ISN’T THERE AN INTERSECTION OF ONLY ENVY AND GREED AND NOTHING ELSE

me: MAYBE IT’S BECAUSE THIS ISNT HOW VENN DIAGRAMS WORK

me: U WANNA SEE A VENN DIAGRAM OF SEVEN? I’LL GIVE U A VENN DIAGRAM OF SEVEN

me:

me: i’m just so tired of the lies.

[andmaybegayer]

If you’re the kind of pedant who cares about this the correct term for the first thing is a Euler diagram. Venn diagrams have to represent every possible combination of all the sets involved which is why the highest order one we have today is only like 11 or 13 or something.

[andmaybegayer]

Ah yes I remember now, HERE is the 11th order venn diagram. Do you like this? no, of course you don’t. This is a bad image.

[justsomeantifas]

love this lil bad boy.

[math-a-magic]

Spring Research

I was offered a position with the pure mathematics department at the University of Waterloo doing Differential Geometry, and I have never been more excited for life! The professor I'm working under is amazing, and the topic is very interesting. I can't wait for this term to end so I can start!