Subject: [vallist] Web pointers, a short story by Kola Krauze (#7)
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2000 23:27:37 -0800
From: Michele Vallisneri 
To: Vallist 

Dear friends,

long time, no see! I am sorry it took me so long to come back to this
list. As you can imagine, I had grand plans for a celebrative Millennium
issue, but sometimes plans remain, well, plans. At last I am back to you
with a few web-pointers and with a short story by my friend (and
Vallist-member) Kola Krauze.

I a somewhat Borges-esque fashion, Kola elaborates on a ``list of things
that do not exist''. Not everybody on the list might be familiar with
the reference to a ``Moebius strip'': if a long, rectangular strip of
paper is glued to itself by twisting one of its extremities once, a
configuration is obtained which has only _one side_. One can see that
this is true by drawing on this surface a continuous line, which will
rejoin itself after traversing all parts of the strip.

Moebius strips are often brought up in the mathematical theory of
surfaces, where they exemplify what is called a ``non-orientable
surface''. A famous rendition of a Moebius strip is the one by Escher,

http://vc.lemoyne.edu/ant305/students/8_dkovach/Images/odd_260.html

Well, this is all for this time; talk to you soon,

Michele

--> Two physics talks

In my opinion, one of the most enjoyable parts of being a (would-be)
theoretical physicist is getting to prepare and give talks. I find a
special pleasure in distilling and lining up complex ideas that took me
very long to understand into a few minutes of (hopefully) snappy talk.
The last two talks that I gave are available on the internet:

* Slides (and audio!) from a seminar I gave Jan 18 at Santa Barbara's
Institute of Theoretical Physics

http://doug-pc.itp.ucsb.edu/online/numrel00/vallisneri/

Namely, ``Prospects for Gravitational-Wave Observations of Neutron-Star
Tidal Disruption in Neutron-Star/Black-Hole Binaries''. I don't expect
you to follow, or be interested in, the actual physics; but you might
find some amusement in hearing (in RealAudio, if you have the right
browser plugin) how my Italian accent emerges with prepotence whenever I
have to think about what I am saying. Also, check my misguided attempts
at witticisms, something one is absolutely expected to deliver to
American audiences.

[The link was not working today when I checked it before sending this e-
mail; hopefully it should be up again soon.]

* ``Einstein, Gravity-Waves, and Relativity at Caltech''

A _very_ popular introduction to research on gravitational waves in my
group at Caltech. This was prepared for a visit to Caltech by the
Italian consul to the US South-West. I cannot say he was elated, but all
in all the talk was well received. I had some competition in a bunch of
Italian engineers hyping their internet start-up, but they messed up the
``tech'' in their hi-tech presentation, so I had the floor for myself.

If you use Internet Explorer 4 or 5, you can see a high-quality
rendition of the slides at

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~vallis/einstein/einstein.html

but the link will be heavy on your internet connection. You can find a
lighter version at

http:
//www.its.caltech.edu/~vallis/einstein/einstein_files/v3_document.htm

--> More random pointers

* Astronomy picture of the day
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

``Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe
is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional
astronomer.''

* Landover Baptist Church http://www.landoverbaptist.org

``The largest, most powerful assembly of people to ever exist. Unsaved
are NOT welcome!'' A bit in the style of the famed ``Onion'' (http:
//www.theonion.com), this parody of an American fundamentalist church
proves it hits on the mark when fellow fundamentalists send e-mail to
bitch, or to congratulate.

* Urban Legends Reference Pages http://www.snopes.com

I recently witnessed a talk by Jan Harold Brunvand, arguably the world's
foremost expert on ``urban legends'': these ``friend-of-a-friend'',
apocryphal tales try to serve a didactical purpose, elaborating on
present preoccupations and perceived dangers; their diffusion has been
especially bolstered by e-mail and internet sites, sometimes to comical
results. Brunvand recommended this site as the state of the art.

--> The List of Things That Don’t Exist, by Kola Krauze (1999)

The story goes that Schuyler Wilson first heard of the List during his
third term in the Department of Finno-Ugric Languages at the University
of Smyrna. Deep in his cups the night before St Walpurga’s with the
young priest, Eleazar Balthus, who’d originally come down from the
Seminarium in Riga, he had been told the intriguing tale and the two,
soon becoming firm friends partly through their mutual appreciation of
the more ephemeral branches of linguistics (as well as a healthy respect
and affection for strong drink), were to spend many more nights
speculating on the nature of the List, if list it even was, and its
contents.

The pair had managed to come to some agreement on one point. Namely,
that the List would have to be a product of innumerable generations of
authors adding to its unholy and prodigious length. Yet even this small
step forward in imagining the genesis of the document in question raised
new problems. What form could such a list reasonably take? Any finite
suggestion, such as Wilson’s initial hypothesis of an immense tome with
several hundred blank pages (out of several thousand heavily
overwritten) still awaiting entries for new non-existent things, proved
wholly dissatisfying, though many were made over the course of several
nights and a great many bottles. An ever-growing number of separate
volumes, however, while eschewing the limitation of finity, was
discarded with equal disdain early on in the discussions as too simple a
solution, as one not stimulating, not challenging enough for their
eager, if variously sodden, intellects.

Taking his cue from Wilson’s volumes, Balthus considered a codex of
separate manuscripts from different periods, written in numerous and
differing hands, all sewn together into one unmanageable whole to which
additions could, arguably, be sewn on in their own turn. Deriding this
as scant progress on his original idea, Wilson triumphantly slurred a
new proposal: a never-ending scroll, no, an antediluvian Moebius strip
of such titanic proportions that when it finally looped in on itself,
its end seamlessly joining its beginning, the current scribe would reach
those earliest entries so faded and worn by time and the elements that
they could no longer be read by human eyes (even if the primaeval long-
dead tongues of their composition could be deciphered) and so this
gargantuan palimpsest would continue, new entries written over old ones
faded into invisibility, becoming in themselves non-existent things. I
had reached this story four days after I myself began to read the List.

                    --------------------------------

            ("The Vallist" #7; Pasadena, February 20, 2000)