Friday with Logicians
Today was a fairly full day. French class in the morning, then I went with Betsy to Intermezzo for lunch. Along the way we passed by the tree in front of Dwinelle where the guy had been protesting the last two weeks. Right as we were arriving we could see him getting pulled/helped off the bottom branches, but we didn't see enough to know whether they had pulled him all the way down from his perch up top, or whether he had fallen/come down from exhaustion from his hunger strike. The cops arrested him fairly peacefully and then walked with him towards Barrows, with a very large crowd following. We got mixed up among the people. There was lots of cheering, but I couldn't tell whether people were congratulating him for lasting so long or relieved that he finally came down (one way or another). Here's a story on what actually happened.
Betsy and I came back with our salads and ate in the Tarski Room, where we ran into Joe and I got to ask him some job stuff. Then after lunch there was some conversation with Emily and other mathematicians before I went to MUSA's Pi Day celebration for some pie. Then at 4 I went to Logic Colloquium, where Matthias Aschenbrenner was giving a talk on Gröbner bases and logic. I can now say I have a less than vague idea of what Gröbner bases are, and the logic part was interesting but felt a bit more like recursion theory than model theory. At the reception afterwards, I spent a good time talking to M., Joe, Janak and Scanlon. Christian then came and we joined up the group going to dinner with the speaker. The restaurant they chose was Maritime East, on Telegraph by Ashby.
The restaurant has a nice decor and the waitress that served us was just the right mix of friendly and professional. The atmosphere and staff of the restaurant certainly matched the price level of the entrées. As for what really matters, the food... well, that's whence my criticism comes. I had "deviled" dungeness crab on linguini with poached egg, while Christian had artic char. In my dish, the overabundance of spicy red pepper completely overpowered the crab. They were also rather skimpy on linguini, which I don't expect the plate to be overflowing in a nice restaurant, but there should have been twice what was there. Pasta is dirt cheap, so there's no need to skimp on that. Christian's dish had nothing but a square of fish served on some thinly sliced garnish. No side at all (sides like fries, veggies or potatoes were an extra $3-5). Neither dish was spectacularly flavorful either. They weren't bad, but certainly not memorable. These were not dishes worth $22 and $23, respectively: more appropriate would be the $15 range.
It turns out that we were the only two grad students in the group of 8: there was Aschenbrenner, Steel, Scanlon, Harrington, Reimann and this guy I've never seen before, perhaps a grad student, but I think he came with the speaker. That was slightly uncomfortable, but not too bad. Since 3 of the 5 were German, a lot of the conversation centered on the differences between the US and German paths to getting tenure, and how that's causing lots of problems for Germany in retaining mathematicians, especially logicians. It was fairly enlightening for both of us as we (esp. Christian) had been considering some German positions/postdocs. This led to talk about who was where and which cities/countries were magnets for logicians. Paris, Lyon, England, etc. In the US, they mentioned Berkeley, but qualified it by saying that all these famous people are coming here to retire: Martin Davis, Dana Scott, Carol Wood, Ward Henson, etc. Reimann joked that "Berkeley is the Florida of logicians."
Betsy and I came back with our salads and ate in the Tarski Room, where we ran into Joe and I got to ask him some job stuff. Then after lunch there was some conversation with Emily and other mathematicians before I went to MUSA's Pi Day celebration for some pie. Then at 4 I went to Logic Colloquium, where Matthias Aschenbrenner was giving a talk on Gröbner bases and logic. I can now say I have a less than vague idea of what Gröbner bases are, and the logic part was interesting but felt a bit more like recursion theory than model theory. At the reception afterwards, I spent a good time talking to M., Joe, Janak and Scanlon. Christian then came and we joined up the group going to dinner with the speaker. The restaurant they chose was Maritime East, on Telegraph by Ashby.
The restaurant has a nice decor and the waitress that served us was just the right mix of friendly and professional. The atmosphere and staff of the restaurant certainly matched the price level of the entrées. As for what really matters, the food... well, that's whence my criticism comes. I had "deviled" dungeness crab on linguini with poached egg, while Christian had artic char. In my dish, the overabundance of spicy red pepper completely overpowered the crab. They were also rather skimpy on linguini, which I don't expect the plate to be overflowing in a nice restaurant, but there should have been twice what was there. Pasta is dirt cheap, so there's no need to skimp on that. Christian's dish had nothing but a square of fish served on some thinly sliced garnish. No side at all (sides like fries, veggies or potatoes were an extra $3-5). Neither dish was spectacularly flavorful either. They weren't bad, but certainly not memorable. These were not dishes worth $22 and $23, respectively: more appropriate would be the $15 range.
It turns out that we were the only two grad students in the group of 8: there was Aschenbrenner, Steel, Scanlon, Harrington, Reimann and this guy I've never seen before, perhaps a grad student, but I think he came with the speaker. That was slightly uncomfortable, but not too bad. Since 3 of the 5 were German, a lot of the conversation centered on the differences between the US and German paths to getting tenure, and how that's causing lots of problems for Germany in retaining mathematicians, especially logicians. It was fairly enlightening for both of us as we (esp. Christian) had been considering some German positions/postdocs. This led to talk about who was where and which cities/countries were magnets for logicians. Paris, Lyon, England, etc. In the US, they mentioned Berkeley, but qualified it by saying that all these famous people are coming here to retire: Martin Davis, Dana Scott, Carol Wood, Ward Henson, etc. Reimann joked that "Berkeley is the Florida of logicians."