Ok, here's a list of things I hated about Math 424, it was a year ago but math 414 has rekindled my hatred for the low standards of teaching in the math department:

1. The class was on Wavelets and Fourier Transforms.  The prof. never told us what a wavelet is.  The professor currently teaching the class got to wavelets by the halfway point of the semester.

2. Instead, we spent the first 2/3 of the semester "learning" things most people already knew because there were people in the class who hadn't taken the prerequisites (like basic linear algebra, or the arithmetic of complex numbers).  Teach to the lowest common denominator.

3. He SUCKED at lecturing.  He would try to describe what he was about to teach for the first half hour instead of just teaching it.  I don't know why he did this, it was easy stuff.

3. There was no textbook.

4. There were no homework solutions.

5. There was no TA, just a grader.

6. If you asked the prof how to do the homework once you'd gotten it back, he'd tell you to come to office hours.

7. Office hours were held starting at 4:30, prohibitively inconvenient for anyone on a sports team.

Things i go beserk over in current math classes:

1. Classes the professor insists on curving to a B, even if test averages are around 85-90% and a sign error can cost you 5 points.

2. Classes where you are incapable of doing the homework if you don't read the book.

3. Classes where the professor assigns homework on things he hasn't gotten to in lecture.  We have to teach the subject matter to ourselves to do the homework, and then kill time doodling in class when he lectures word for word from the textbook for the next few lectures.  What's the point of class?

I'll add more as i think of them.

Well, all i've been doing the past couple days is running, so i'll talk about how bad its been going.  I tried to do a workout yesterday, and my tempo pace was barely under 7 minute mile pace.  I was utterly exhausted when i finished; i almost started walking with a mile to go.

Today i was planning to run about 10.5 miles, 2.5 on the dirt, 6 on the road, then 2 on the dirt.  So by the end of the first 2.5 miles i'm barely able to lift my legs (and it was barely under 8 minute mile pace), so i decide to revise my plan and nix the last 2 on the dirt.  2 miles from being finished i revise my revision, and decide to nix the last mile on the road.  I walk back to my apartment, have two glasses of water, and then two tablespoons of honey.  Took off my shoes, plopped myself down at the computer without changing or showering, and here i am.  I've never been so tired/exhausted.

I ran to the Little Red Lighthouse today (and back)!  For those of you uneducated types who weren't read to as little kids, there's a book about it.  The George Washington Bridge is built over it, and it has all these flashy little lights, so the little red lighthouse thought it wasn't important anymore.  In the end there's a boat that crashes (or almost crashes?) into the rocks next to the lighthouse, and it realizes its still just as important as its ever been. :)

Here's a picture of the little red lighthouse, i ran up to the bars around it and was somewhat disappointed u couldn't go in:

I found a picture of the book cover:

(Edit: Original image was moved.  Title of book is "The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge."  Why do they spell it gray instead of grey?  Isn't that British or something?)

That is all for now.  Running is going well.  I think i'm at about 70 miles this week, and i would start doing morning runs but i'm lazy and i really don't want to hurt my knee again.

Here's an email we got from Zeb today, copied and pasted from my inbox:

Dear "Cowboys,"

All of the things I've seen in the last week tell me something: please be
more careful about running in car traffic.

I'll leave names out, but you know who you are. I saw two of you almost
get sliced in half by a TCAT last week on Triphammer, then a pack of you
got scattered like bowling pins on the Stewart Ave. bridge yesterday when
a car was coming and you were running in the middle of the road. These
incidents are two among several lately.

If somebody dies, then I'll be really pissed because then we'll have
uneven teams again for Fantasy XC.

Zeb

I liked that last line :)

Temperature for Mars rover at lunchtime: 12 degrees; temperature in U.S. Northeast: minus 13 to 9 degrees

Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
Office: 607-255-3290
E-Mail: bpf2@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- During the most recent early afternoon on Mars, the temperature at the rover Spirit landing site in Gusev crater was an admittedly chilly minus 11 degrees Celsius (12 degrees Fahrenheit). But it was still warmer than most cities in the upper Northeast, gripped in a frigid winter chill.

The rover's Mini-TES instrument (for miniature thermal emission spectrometer) made the precise measurement of the landing-site temperature, at about three feet from the surface, at 1:15 p.m. Mars time, according to mission science team member Michael Smith of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Mars is 1.5 times farther from the sun than Earth.

It is day on Mars when it is night in most of the United States. But around the same time, at 1 p.m. today (Jan. 14), temperatures in the Northeast ranged from minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit in Caribou, Maine, to 9 degrees in Providence, R.I. Rochester, N.Y., was considerably colder than Gusev crater, at 3 degrees, according to Keith Eggleston, senior climatologist at Cornell University's Northeast Regional Climate Center. There were lunchtime subzero temperatures in Albany, N.Y., Syracuse, N.Y., Concord, N.H., and Burlington and Montpelier, Vt.

However, the Mars landing site, where it is late summer, cooled off considerably in the evening, reaching an estimated low temperature of minus 90 Celsius (minus 130 Fahrenheit), said Smith.

Commented Eggleston, "Well, for the Northeast, that record will be a little harder to break."

Temperature at 1 p.m., Jan. 14

Location              Temp. (Fahrenheit)
Gusev crater, Mars         12
Providence, R.I.            9
Scranton Wilkes-Barre, Pa.  8
Hartford, Conn.             7
Buffalo, N.Y.               7
Rochester, N.Y.             3
Ithaca, N.Y.                3
Albany, N.Y.               -2
Binghamton, N.Y.           -2
Concord, N.H.              -3
Syracuse, N.Y.             -4
Burlington, Vt.           -10
Montpelier, Vt.           -12
Caribou, Maine            -13
Mount Washington, N.H.    -36