gesammelte swiss melange

Subject: gesammelte swiss melange

geneve and arolla:

hello folks from the hotel mont collon in arolla, switzerland, the sun is shining and all of my troubles are now behind me:

i began this trip by going  to the rochester airport with a feeling of deep forboding.  for three years, i have not had a flight without a major problem.  what would the airlines do this time to screw me up? 

last fall, on the way to my cousin's funeral, they made me sit in a plane on the tarmac in philadelphia for 8 hours.  could they top that?  no, they could not.  but you have to admire their consistent efforts to do so.  

this time they cancelled my flight to boston twenty minutes before it was to depart.  all the checking was of no avail. there was no notice.  first they said it was weather.  then it became mechanical problems.  since it was the start of a three plane trip to geneve (rochester-frankfort-geneve), this had the potential of a real screw up, a cascading of disaster.   even though i had allowed a 4 hour interval in boston,  it was not enough for their first attempt to fix the situation.  but i give credit where it is due.   usair got creative, sent me to washington to connect with a functioning flight to boston and into the relatively safe hands of lufthansa.  but i boarded the plane with great fears for my luggage.  i was right about that.

this is a message from geneve where i am waiting for my wayward luggage to arrive.  with the great start that usair gave it, it ended up in munich. this is interesting since my plans did not include munich, only frankfort.  oh well, at least the country was right.  

wait a minute! i am in switzerland, the country is wrong! 

but i have to give lufthansa credit.  they tracked the luggage without difficulty and promised to have it at my hotel by 2 o'clock local time.

i still have faith in german efficiency.  but that can be crushed too. my luggage arrived at 4 after i went back to the airport to see what was going on.  not too bad, at least, i had it now.

 yesterday night i ate in a restaurant in geneve called "at the foot of the pig" , in other words, "au pied du cochon."  i find it amusing that a restaurant called "at the foot of the pig" sits at the feet of the palace of justice."  this proves that the swiss do indeed have a sense of humor and a keen perception of society.

i had the signature dish of the restaurant, roasted pigs feet stuffed with mushrooms, accompanied by roasted potatoes, some very nice zuchinni stuffed with a tomato concoction, a white wine kir, and some sparkling water..  i enjoyed it immensely. first of all, the feet tasted like good roast pork, if maybe a little richer and fattier than our current obsession with lean.  but the texture was very different, it had a warm gelatinous quality that most americans do not like, reminescent to me of head cheese. in other words, it was pickled pigs feet without the pickling and it brought back warm memories of my german-american roots. 

as anthony bourdain says, the best food is often made from the "nasty bits", those things which some cultures throw away but which the great cuisines of the world learn to love and to turn into something wonderful.  such were the roasted pigs feet in geneve.  and i am pleased that anthony would be proud of me since i sought out this food!  granted, it did not take the courage that he showed when he ate the roasted warthog anus in the kalihari desert. 

oh yes, i had a dessert of creme brulee made with grand marnier. it was accompanied by the coffee with creme that the swiss call renverse.  it was very good, but it stopped well short of being wonderful since the creme brulee was only a little warm.
 
despite my tendency to lapse into english, the ticket agents in the train stations have been favorably impressed by my french.  this will surprise jacques who expressed the opinion that i would never learn french properly because of all the unpronounced letters in the words.  what jacques did not take into account is that i am learning from the tapes of the late michel thomas, the language teacher to the stars, the man who taught both woody allen and princess grace to speak french.  woody doesn’t lie and i trust any man who can get an endorsement from him.  besides that, michel thomas is the man who taught doris day to properly pronounce “que sera, sera.”  he is very proud of that.  

what michel thomas does is focus on two things, proper pronunciation and  then verbs and their tenses.  even when you take account of the exceptional verbs, the latter is rather mathematical.  it emphasizes the structure of the language.  vocabulary is important but is a secondary issue.  after all, since the time of william the conquerer, english has had a lot of french words in it.  all you have to do is learn how to tranform them and you already have a large active vocabulary, “une vocabulaire activ.”

a few remarks about my impressions of geneve.  geneve  is something like paris but less grand. i especially liked the bust of piaget in the park.  recall that piaget was famous for his early studies of child development.   and there seem to have been multple founders of the red cross, all of them with busts in the park.

you see many biracial couples and children here.  it is almost as if europe has passed into a new millenium which america has yet to reach.  no wonder barack obama is very popular here.

there seems to be no black-white racial tension   and, in geneve at least, little european-arab-turkish tension. this latter may be a false facade.  i certainly know about some such tension in european places like france and germany. and i even am fond of the spanish “festival of the moors” wherein they blow up an effigy of mohammed in memory of the reconquest of spain.  the festivities date to the 1500s. after all, the spanish have the right to do it. the bastards were invading their country. maybe some day the iraqis will have similar festivals.

i note that the russians have captured the town in georgia called gori.  since gori was the hometown of someone called joseph stalin, maybe they have a right to it.  and my friend paul panomarev points out to me that old joe had a lot to do with enlarging georgia by the forced addition of some provinces filled with people who are not georgian and do not want to be.  i myself must admit to some prejudices against a country that was, until recently, proud of having an avenue named after george bush. 

i note that our esteemed president, just back from fondling the american volleyball team in beijing, is delaying his new well deserved vacation a few days to keep up with the developments in georgia.  it is indeed true that the american people have gotten the government they deserve.  indeed, since they elected the guy or at least made it close enough to steal, they deserve the guy more than the romans deserved nero.

by the way, does anyone really believe that a small country like georgia is going to prod the russian bear with a stick without first clearing it with its major ally?  there are only 3 possibilities, they are stupid, or they are lying, or they have a very bad major ally, or any combination of these 3.  they remind me of the poles, of the government, not of the people.  or since they have close ties with the israeli government, perhaps they are taking lessons from them but without the political capital to get their way.

 if i may be permitted the observations of an over the hill, post aortic dissection male, i must say that geneve is full of very attractive young ladies and, i suppose also, attractive young men.  i certainly never encountered such density of pulchritude when i was young.  the place is alive with life and, i suppose, is getting continually more so. for example, some young ladies in dresses ride bicycles to work with all the good that that implies.

by the way, the internet is lousy in geneve.  5 euros for 30 minutes! and they have to be consecutive!  bummer!  for wonderful and free internet access, give me the paris mcdonalds anytime. i wonder if they have a macdonalds in geneve?  i have not seen one yet.

i have arrived in arolla.  nothing to do there except think about mathematics, work on a paper, hike around, and practice a little french. i will enjoy it and learn somethings about homotopy inverse limits.  what precisely are they anyway?  it seems that they are the actual inverse limits of  diagrams where, according to some yet to made precise laws, some or of all maps have been replaced by fibrations.  there should be people who know here, people like bill dwyer, and i look forward to becoming enlightened.  i am thinking of putting an informal description of homotopy inverse limits in my book, nothing fancy but something which summarizes the essense of them.  done well, the accumulation of such relatively little things can be major selling points.

halleluyah!  the hotel mont collon has entered the modern world! they now have wireless connection to the internet!  this is now the perfect hotel.

unfortunately, my ipod seems to have encountered nonresponse problems.  this is evidently a standard disease of ipods and can be cured over the  internet.  but the price is a temporary wiping out of all your ipod stuff.  since i can still hook up the ipod to my laptop and play my language tapes, i don't want to wipe it all out at this time.  it will have to wait until my rochester based desktop is available to act as backup.

a lazy day:

it is snowing in arolla, 10 centimeters the last time it was measured.  hiking is curtailed. naps to cure jetlag are always welcome and i spent my waking time calling up my credit card companies to verify that the lastest email message is a fraud. it claimed that my account had just been billed 8300 dollars and i don't even have that much in there.  it is just some scheme to get me to reply to them and send them useful financial information.  i thought so but now i am sure.

i was happy to hear from jacques that the internet had a cure for frozen ipods.  it worked like a charm and caused no loss of data.  so i can, while walking around, commune with the ghost of michel thomas concerning the mysteries of the french language.

the hotel must feel sorry for us in this snowy wilderness.  they are offerring a choice between fondue and raclette for dinner tonight.  i like fondue better.  the wine helps the cheese a lot.

i am feeling better concerning kathryn's prohibition of my going on the glacier walk.  old and out of shape as i am in this post aortic dissection world, i was still feeling that i was going to miss something.  now i can enjoy the schadenfreude of hoping that the weather continues to be lousy tomorrow, lots of rain, sleet, snow, fog, and clouds, perfect mountain weather for staying inside.

i contemplate unsuccessfully how to prove that the inverse limit of a tower of fibrations is a weak homotopy invariant.  it is not that i have real doubts but the proof is elusive.

by the way, i am leaning towards choosing cambridge over the ams as the publisher of my book.  the attractiveness of the cover, the offer of being in a series which also has a book by bombieri, the fond memories of frank adams, and the traditional lure to americans of british class are the perhaps shallow reasons for this leaning.  no matter, both would be good choices.

it is the next day and the sun is shining so i guess that i will be forced to take a walk.  today is actually beautiful.

i think that i have over night actually figured out how to prove that the inverse limit of a tower of fibrations is a weak homotopy invariant.  it is rather clever.  for the experts, it involves playing the hurewicz notion of a fibration against the serre notion.


a not so lazy day:


to paraphrase lewis carrol,

"you are old, father william, and a little bit fat.
yet your trade you ply in the mountains up high,
pray what is the purpose of that?"

yesterday, i hiked up to and back from the "cabane des aigelles rouges", the "cabin of the red eagles", a mountain hut to which i have been before in previous younger years.  it took 7 hours to complete the hike.  although i have been doing 6 hour hikes in rochester, there are two major differences up here.  one, the air is a little thinner.  two, the hike here consisted of 4 and a half hours of uphill and 2 and a half hours of hard downhill.  the hikes in rochester were on canal paths and exceedingly flat.  believe me, it makes a difference!

for me this was a difficult hike.  i barely made it back to the bus stop before the last postal bus.  if i had missed that, i was threatened with a long, flat walk on the highway back to the hotel.  i knew i didn't want that. i was forced to increase the speed of my downhill descent.  and without poles!  as several swiss told me, they knew what my next purchase would be, poles to check and steady the descent.   as i told them, i already owned very good poles but they were home in rochester.  in fact, though i did not like to be so rushed, it was good to have to revert to my younger days when descent involved careful placement of one's feet on solid rocks so that one did not slip. no poles then!

"brave mountaniers!  we always were untroubled by time."  (song by gordan lightfoot)

anyway, i caught the last bus back and arrived at the hotel, much to the relief of madame anzevui. she was threatening to send out the mountain rescue corps if i didn't return on the last bus.  actually, as i told her, i had discovered that i had two options.  one, i could have phoned my hotel from the small restaurant at the bus stop.  madame would have gladly picked me up. she and kathryn seem to have formed some conspiracy to avoid the possibility of having to ship my body back to rochester.

but much better was the second option.  on the trail i had agreed to take a somewhat artistic picture of 8 young frence ladies who had arranged themselves in a pinwheel lying on the ground.  there was much giggling.  let your imagine fly, you can imagine it if you try!  when they saw me waiting for the bus, they asked if i needed a ride.  at that moment, the bus arrived to whisk me back to my hotel.

by the way, i had endeared myself to the young french ladies by apologizing for our current president.  together we expressed strong wishes that obama win the election and rescue the american political system from the abyss.  i pointed out that, with the american electorate being so stupid, things could easily get worse.  they suggested that we take zarkosy if we needed him.  they were not fans of him either.

let me add that my acceptance on the trail is much increased by my newfound ability to reply with french sentences which are not minimalistic, not just the simple , " tres chaud, ne pas?"  but something like "c'est tres difficile pour moi.  je suis trop vieux pour le faire."   i mean that my sentences are complicated enough and have enough meaning  to have been composed by an adult.

since i had arrived back in time for dinner, i went in to join the other topologists for dinner.   i enjoyed the salad and soup, but unfortunately, when  the main course of port arrived, i was just too tired to continue eating.  this was sad to me since pork is ordinarily one of my favorites.   i skipped the rest of the dinner and just took a large bottle of sparkling water back to my room.  lots of liquids were clearly what i needed.

i did not discover exactly what the dessert was.  it was something called "pavlova" and, despite my suggestions that it consisted of pieces of the corpse of the most famous russian ballerina of all time, perhaps jumping out of a cake, it probably was some concoction of sorbet topped with grand marnier.  sorry to have missed it.

joe n


grumpy observations:

after all these years of going to conferences,  i have finally learned a very important lesson.  the most important and valuable thing is who you eat your meals with.  it is vital both for enjoyment and for learning, the only two purposes of going to conferences.

breakfast, lunch, and dinner conversations are far more useful and enjoyable than most lectures.  therefore, it follows that extreme care should be taken in getting a good spot at a good table.  carelessness here can lead to being trapped at a table with an extremely boring clump of people.

in my case, i was completely surrounded by a trio of totally narcisistic englishmen.  they filled the air with boring conversation.  it was totally  centered around themselves.  they chose to discuss personal things with roots in their youth, not things of broad general interest.  only they could possibly care about this trivia.  they had no wit to speak of. i was being driven out of my mind.  it was far worse than silence could ever have been.

a disastrous dinner can happen in the following way.  you see a cluster of interesting people around a table. you therefore choose to sit at the corner of that table.  but what you saw was just a temporary clump.  the interesting people  disperse and the table is left  available for colonization by others.

you may take this as a reflection on your own social desirability. it might well be.   or, to be more kind to yourself, you may realize too late that the potentially interesting people had in fact previously acquired seats at distant tables which they have now returned to.

into this vacuum,  a person appears with whom you have been acquainted for years. he takes possession of all the seats which surround you. he is accompanied by two of his long time friends, people who you do not know.  they are a small swarm with little, if any, connection to the conference.  you are soon immersed in a sea of vapid conversation.  you are slow to realize your true danger.  your acquaintance, while known for his nonstop talking, has been bearable in the past.  that was because you were always able to escape.

i lasted through the first course of pickles, ham, and the swiss version of ham that is made from beef.  it was quite good.  but, during the wait for the start of the fondue, i realized that i was approaching insanity.  i stood up, looked around for an empty seat that would provide escape.  the nonstop blathering  was torturing me.  i found no empty seats.   i decided that, since i had had fondue 4 days ago and since i had some oranges back in my room, my preference was to just leave. i did so.

i got my computer and used skype to call michelle ravenel.  i had a far superior conversation than the one i had escaped from. i regained more equilibrium by taking a walk in the night along the dark road which went past the hotel.  madame anzevui was terrified for my safety and was relieved when i finally returned.

all should be well tonight.  i have ran levi's promise to save a place for me at dinner.

back to mathematical things. one of my old friends told me that he thought that mathematics had entered a new phase where the emphasis was no longer on solving problems but was now on formulating new ideas and programs.  being a cynic, i feel that this is the easy way out.  in fact, i think it is true more in algebraic topology than in other, more healthy areas of mathematics.  it is more a sign of decay than renewal. it is better than nothing.  but give me real problems solved anytime.  this includes the traditional areas of application of algebraic topology to things like manifolds and and groups.  of course, the crown jewels are things like the poincare conjecture, fermat's last theorem, and the riemann hypothesis.  transcendent problems all.

the names of some of the new areas of study seem to have been chosed by people with strong understanding of the principles of advertising.   "sell the sizzle, not the steak."  some topologists are selling the sizzle.  new areas have names like "topological string theory"  and "topological quantum field theory."  they incorporate the ideas of cobordism and monoidal categories but the names are meant to imply that they are important for the development of physics.   this may be doubtful.

i recall a conversation i had  with an eminent physicist who just happened to be chuck mcgibbon's father-in-law.  i asked him what he thought about the new work in gauge theory that was being done by mathematicians of the high caliber of atiyah and bott.  that work was held in high repute at the time.  he smiled sagely.  he said that he guessed that it was a good thing that the mathematicians were getting around to looking at these things.  but it was his honest opinion that the mathematicians were studying only those cases that the physicists thought they understood well enough already.  he thought that the mathematicians were avoiding looking at the cases that the physicists still wanted to understand.  the point is not that either side is completely right or wrong here.  the point is that both sides probably have some portion of the truth and it is rare for either side to see the truth of the other.

and, striking at the heart of physics itself, recall the words of richard feynmann shortly before he died of cancer.  "i am an old guy now and you should never ask for the opinions of old guys, but what the hell,  my opinion is that string theory is junk." or words to that effect.  feynmann believed that the ultimate test of physics was experiment and string theory did not pass that test.  in fact, it had not even taken the exam!  nor, absent access to the energy of a small star, could it.

perhaps some of these observations are caused by the fact that the sky is gray and it is starting to rain.

on a positive note, i am extremely pleased that i have learned some solid things about homotopy inverse limits from people like bill dwyer, wojcieck chacolski, and jerome scherer. you can't get better experts than that in this area.  the resulting references to their papers have completely answered some debatable points in my book.  i now feel no need to make an attempt to include a treatment of inverse limits in the book.  it is enough to have the references and to understand the proofs.

so that is not being grumpy.

joe n

grumpy observations continued:


in relation to the importance of finding a good seat at meals, the subject of the mathematics conferences at oberwolfach was brought up by paul panomarev.

since oberwolfach had a mandatory seating arrangement, randomly shuffled by the staff, there was no choice involved.  but the seating plan used at oberwolfach is fraught with danger.   under the appropriate circumstances any methods, legal or not, are justified to avoid the conference equivalent of waterboarding.

i  have not been to oberwolfach in a very long time.  i remember little about it, except for the german preoccupation with the hard boiled eqqs at breakfast and who was entitled to them.  you had to reserve an egg to have a legitimate right to one. the pushy americans were always appropriating eggs which were the rightful property of others, usually of germans.  many raw feelings were the result.

at most conference meals, paul panomarev's suggestion to dawdle on the periphery would a good way to minimize loss. but the best choices often go quickly.   don't wait too long or all the good choices will be gone.  obviously, if you are certain that an attractive dinner companion has firmly planted her butt in a specific spot with an adjacent empty seat, then you would be a fool to delay.

i am  getting strong agreement with the comments on the changing nature of mathematics, at least in topology.

most of the talks here in arolla are "satz frei," that is, no theorems.  at best, we are being told that one thing that we know nothing about is the same as another thing that we know nothing about.  such knowledge can be quite important.  i remember donald spencer describing the atiyah-singer index theorem in precisely those words.  so it is not always a bad thing.

but, what we  are getting in arolla are descriptions of large abstract machines for which there are no known applications to traditional problems. the machines include in their formulations references to grothendieck algebraic geometry and to maclane categorical coherence.  that is their world.  the air is thin up there and it is a long way back to earth.  our departed colleague, david anick, would not be pleased.  his work was always clever and tied to real problems.

even very abstract work like that of bill dwyer and emmanuel dror farjoun can still be tied to real problems.  it is all relative.

in this land of the mountains, the old quote of george mallory is relevent.  when asked why one would want to climb everest, he said "because it's there."  and no one has ever come up with a better reason.  in fact, it is not a bad reason.

so, when i ask why i should have the slightest interest in the tangent space of some moduli space related to ring spectra, perhaps mallory's answer has validity.  after all, lots of interesting things like algebraic groups are blended into the structures.  something interesting might come out even if it hasn't yet done so.

but i am suspicious.  i recall an quote due to von neumann:  "the chief danger in mathematics is that it will become baroque."  baroque mathematics being that which has grown far from its roots in the soil of experience and tradition, in the soil of physics, geometry, and number theory.  such mathematics tends to get more and more complicated, more and more abstract, less and less connected to other things, and less and less interesting.

the baroque era is in full flower around here.  it seems firmly planted at such major centers as harvard and mit and is spreading rapidly.  princeton seems less infected with it as yet.  perhaps princeton received an innoculation in the solution to fermat's last theorem.  tons of abstract machinery were used but in the service of an important, venerable, and central result.  princeton could be protected by pasteur's principle of vaccination.

there are national histories and national styles in mathematics.  there is the classic german style exemplied by gauss, riemann, hilbert, and others.  in fact, riemann with his simplicity and brilliance seems to have a little russian dna in him.  the french define the modern world of mathematics.  they have poincare and leray to reflect the russian style.  they have weil and serre to reflect the german tradition.  but they also have this totally french creation of grothendieck who may very well be the antichrist of mathematics and destined to lead mathematics down into the depths of abstract hell.

in closing,  there is something honest about number theory, geometry, and physics.  there are fools there too but they seem to be more quickly found out.  maybe string theory is an exception since it has lost its roots in experiment.

this is the last conference day and i am looking forward to hearing about model categories.  at least, i think i will understand most of the words!

tomorrow, weather permitting, i will take a walk down into the town of les hauderes, have a coffee and snack, and take the bus back up.  no strain  involved.



best wishes,

joe n

conference summation:

…

i walked down to the village of les hauderes today and found this little metropolis on sunday to be even more shut down than the little tourist clump that is arolla.  but the walk was pleasant.  i encountered a french couple, not very young, who were bicycling up the trail.  they told me that the bicycling was "heavy."  they eventually gave up and i saw them whiz by me onto the road.  it seems that spandex is not sufficient to make a champion.

by far the best athletes around here are the cows.  i have always been very impressed with the athletic ability of swiss cows.  i am sure that, if olympic runners had to carry gallons of milk while competing, the cows would beat them every time.  no matter how high you go in the alps, never think that you have surpassed the level of the cows.  just as you think that it is safe to drink the water, you will hear the sound of cowbells coming from the stream above you.

the cows in this valley are exceptional.  they actually fight for dominance in the herd.  and the swiss encourage this behavior.  they hold festivals to determine the champion fighting cow.  these cows are certainly not meek.  they look you straight in the eye with a look that says that you should be the one to give way!  on one of my hikes, a cow chased a dog over a bridge.  i think it was just to show the dog who is boss(y).  sorry, i couldn't resist that pun!

ran levi"s graduate student nora is really very sweet.  i think she is very overwhelmed by all the mathematics here.  i try to be encouraging and tell her to take into account that even an old fossil like me, especially an old fossil like me, cannot understand most things.  the way to be is to not worry about it, ask lots of modest questions, and then some enlightenment will eventually come to you.  in fact, i seem to recall that this advice goes way back to some french or swiss mathematician of the eighteenth century, perhaps l'hopital. "go on and faith will come to you." in which case, it would be l'hopital's rule, which for those who never took calculus, is a mathematical pun!

anyway, if i ever get to aberdeen, nora has promised to make me "plaumekuchen", plum tart. i happened to mention that i loved it as a child.  nora is german, and knows how to make it.  this should go well with the haggis that ran has promised me if i come to aberdeen.  so i will have to go.   there is a convenient occasion next summer, a conference planned on the isle of skye.

nora cemented her sweetness credentials by giving presents to the conference organizers, flowers to kathryn and very nice collapsible hiking cups to jerome and christian.  kathryn was touched by the flowers but i think that the next day she may have been a little disappointed to have impermanent flowers instead of a sturdy and attractive hiking cup, a gift that will last forever and refresh you on the trail.

speaking of flowers, i am very impressed by this model category stuff.  there is a lot of real homotopy theory embedded in there.  for example, the model category experts prove very general results on weak equivalences.  when i tried to prove even the special case that a bouquet of weak equivalences is a weak equivalence, i had to haul out the van kampen theorem and an old result of ganea. it is not hard but it involves at least one classical result, that of ganea,  which not every professional knows.  i will have to look more carefully, but these experts seem to get the general case without using any classical results.  magic?  it is all included in the mantras that homotopy colimits and homotopy limits both preserve weak equivalences.

i was listening to nick kuhn giving a lecture on v_n periodic phenomena in the unstable homotopy groups of spheres.  at one point, he said "this result is so old that it is in joe neisendorfer's thesis."  i immediately told him that vengeance would be mine!

at the end of the talk, i asked him whether all this fancy machinery could compute the homotopy groups of an eilenberg-maclane space.  the answer was no, except for the case of a circle.  next i asked if all this fancy machinery could compute 4 times the 2-primary component of the homotopy groups of the 3 dimensional sphere.  again, the answer was no.  the point is that, in both cases the answer is essentially zero.  it is an imprecise mantra, but there is a lot of truth to the mantra that "properly understood, all good theorems in homotopy theory compute zero."
it means that, instead of not knowing how twisted and tangled up things are, you know when they let go.

by the way, i prefaced these questions by saying that i had two questions related to v_2, not in the modern sense,but in the sense that the germans used it in world war 2.  in those days, v_2 meant vengeance weapon, version 2.  needless to say, this joke went way over everybody's head and was not well received!  doesn't anyone know any political or military history around here?

i do not pretend to know the answer but it is not clear to me which will be easier in god's eye (as einstein used to say), unstable or stable homotopy theory.  since more people live in the stable world, more people seem to thing that the stable world is easier.

 i am biased the other way.  since the beginning of my career, this has never been my experience.  my thesis was aimed primarily at stable homotopy theory and included unstable machinery only as a afterthought.  so far, the stable stuff has proved fairly useless and the unstable stuff has made my name.   it is rather near the end of my career. i do not expect the situation to change in my lifetime.

tomorrow i catch the 10 o'clock postal bus to the train station in sion, then on the train to overnight in geneve, and onto a plane the next day.  3 planes later, i should be back in rochester.

joe n

last swiss thoughts:

michelle ravenel says that i must not care much for swiss food since i do not write about it much.  that is not exactly true and yet there is truth in the statement.  first of all, let me say that the last conference dinner at the hotel mont collon consisted of totally properly cooked duck a la orange and a wonderful salad with goat cheese.  it was superb meal and, in many ways, a departure from the usual swiss food.

i love many swiss consumables, such as  yogurt, milk chocolate, the form of dried beef that is native here, and the excellent, subtle cheeses like appenzeller and a nice gruyere.   all these are swiss foods not to be missed.   notice that they all have their origin in the cow.  much of swiss cuisine is defined by the cow.  it is both the strength and the weakness of swiss food.

as an aspect of the cow cuisine, the swiss love to put their meat in a cream sauce.  i am not fond of that.  for the conference banquet, the hotel roasted a whole calf and served veal.  it was a superb meat, not overcooked, but, alas,  in a cream sauce.  the swiss will never learn. i know that the swiss don't always immerse their meat in a cream sauce but there is no denying their tendency to do so.

the swiss share many characteristics with the jews.  both are a tribal people who were conquered by the romans.  but the swiss have never been a hot desert people who had to learn to be cautious about milk.   the swiss have no caution when it comes to milk.  they would benefit by adopting some of the principles of kosher, in particular, the law against mixing the milk of the mother with the flesh of the offspring.  on the other hand, i see no real reason to adopt the prohibitions against pigs and crustaceans.  i have to admit that i love some cream cheese on my cold roast beef sandwiches. add some lettuce, mayonaisse, and pepper too, please.

madame anzevui's mother lives in israel.  so i am baffled as to why kosher principles have not infiltrated the hotel mont collon.

this morning i took the bus to sion and then the train to geneve.  an uneventful trip since i decided not to stop in lausanne, hike up the steep hill to the chocolate shop, buy some chocolate, and return to the train to geneve.  kathryn is a feirce partisan of lausanne chocolate but, after all, the big brother city geneve is also known for chololate and i could certainly get some good stuff there.

i spent some time contemplating the weak homotopy invariance of homotopy colimits, the two main cases being pushout diagrams and infinite increasing unions of cofibrations.  the second follows directly from the fact that homotopy commutes with such direct limits and has no difficulties.

the weak homotopy invariance of pushout diagrams is harder, even in the easier cases like bouquets and suspensions.  when the spaces are simply connected, the theorems follow from the mayer-vietoris sequence in homology.  but if the spaces are not simply connected or even connected, the game is much more subtle.  for example, the weak homotopy invariance of the suspension requires some thought on what exactly does the suspension of a nonconnected space look like. not hard, but subtle.

the difference between the old methods and the new model theoretic methods of proving the weak homotopy invariance is that the old methods require one to do too much.  old methods require getting a tighter hold on the geometry.  sometimes the tighter hold is a computational hold on the homotopy groups of these homotopy pushouts.  for example, the van kampen theorem on the fundamentql group of a bouquet is such a hold. ganea's result on the homotopy fibre of the map from the bouquet into the product is another such tighter hold which is not computational..

the model theoretic versions proceed without getting a tighter hold..  these methods prove nonsimply connected weak homotopy invariance results for homotopy pushouts even when there is no such tighter hold. in particular, knowledge of the homotopy groups remains far away.   remarkable.

upon arrival in geneve, i deposited my things at the hotel ibis and headed out on the town.  a short distance from the hotel, i passed mike wong's "fast food asiatic" restaurant. as i stopped in stunned disbelief,  i recalled the words that humphrey bogart said to ingrid bergman in the movie casablanca:  "if you don't do this, you will regret it, maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but someday,  soon, and for the rest of your life."  what i now saw before me was the opportunity to try ice cream made from the fruit called durian.

durian is the fruit described by anthony bourdain as tasting something like rotten custard.  it is beloved by some in southeast asia and detested by others, including most westerners.  it is one of the ultimate acquired tastes.   guests are not allowed to bring it into the finer hotels of southeast asia. it smells that bad.

bourdain is able to savor durian. he says that one should think of it as similar to a fine and very stinky french cheese. i think of the german cheese called limburger.   anthony can swallow some awful stuff. recall his adventure with roast warthog anus in the kalihari dessert.

bourdain's dark clone, the bizarre foods guy, andrew zimmer, the guy who relishes rotten fish and worms which bourdain hates, cannot swallow durian. he has tried many times.  he has failed many times.  durian is a worthy test of food courage.

i resolved to try it.  perhaps the ice cream would thin it out a bit.

the deal at mike wong's is that you have to buy two tubs of ice cream for 5 francs. you cannot not buy just one.  i choose the durian and the coconut.  it was interesting to compare them.  the coconut was the stronger, with a perfectly acceptable coconut taste.

the durian had a much fainter taste. it was not unpleasant.  it hinted at the potential to be truly revolting.  it was in fact faintly reminiscent of rotten custard.   but not in a bad way.  i enjoyed the durian ice cream.  i  was slightly disappointed that it had not been more of a challenge.

but there was so much of the durian ice cream that i could not finish it.  i closed the tub and took the remainder back to the hotel.  since it was a hot day, i put the tub under the spare blanket that the hotel had conveniently provided, probably for some other purpose.  i left the ice cream there.  i went back out to explore the city of geneve.

several hours later i returned to my hotel and decided to finish the durian ice cream.  in the interval, it had thawed considerably. this caused it to regain much of its power.  the durian had not become totally disgusting. i still liked it.  but it had woken up. it now had a much stronger taste of rotten custard.  i was happy that i had been able to enjoy this powerful and marvelous fruit.

i cannot understand how richard and joanne kane could be in southeast asia, the home of durian, and not sample it.  it ranks right up there with many canadian classics such as poutine.  oh well, what do you expect when the kane's first meal in singapore was texmex food?   i had suggested that they try the boiled shark's head and the chili crab.  chili crab is made from crabs which fatten on the corpses in the ganges river.  the kanes completely ignored my suggestions, even though these suggestions came with the enthusiatic endorsement of the great anthony bourdain.  these are some of the reasons why anthony regards singapore as the food capital of the world.

as i wandered the streets of geneve, i discovered the swiss department store called "manor." they have wonderful foods in the basement.  i bought a plum tart and a bottle of carrot juice. i passed up the salmon pizza.

up on the fourth floor of "manor"  there is a cafeteria called "manora."    i had a capuchino and a salad from the buffet. the buffet was piled high with sliced cucumbers, chopped beets, chopped celery, roast potatoes, and many other good things.  i was doing well with food!

i looked at the chocolate available in "manor".  it was excellent but i did not judge it to be so exceptional that it made sense to get it there.  it was a hot day.  the selection at the geneve airport is not bad and it has less time to melt before you get it on the plane.

by the way, like all foods of real character, the durian has a significant and lingering aftertaste.

joe n


 wikipedia on durian:

The unusual flavour and odour of the fruit have prompted many people to express diverse and passionate views ranging from deep appreciation to intense disgust. Writing in 1856, the British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace provides a much-quoted description of the flavour of the durian:
“
The five cells are silky-white within, and are filled with a mass of firm, cream-coloured pulp, containing about three seeds each. This pulp is the edible part, and its consistence and flavour are indescribable. A rich custard highly flavoured with almonds gives the best general idea of it, but there are occasional wafts of flavour that call to mind cream-cheese, onion-sauce, sherry-wine, and other incongruous dishes. Then there is a rich glutinous smoothness in the pulp which nothing else possesses, but which adds to its delicacy. It is neither acid nor sweet nor juicy; yet it wants neither of these qualities, for it is in itself perfect. It produces no nausea or other bad effect, and the more you eat of it the less you feel inclined to stop. In fact, to eat Durians is a new sensation worth a voyage to the East to experience. ... as producing a food of the most exquisite flavour it is unsurpassed.[17]
”
While Wallace cautions that "the smell of the ripe fruit is certainly at first disagreeable", later descriptions by westerners are more graphic. British novelist Anthony Burgess writes that eating durian is "like eating sweet raspberry blancmange in the lavatory."[18] Chef Andrew Zimmern compares the taste to "completely rotten, mushy onions."[19] Anthony Bourdain, while a lover of durian, relates his encounter with the fruit as thus: "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother."[20] Travel and food writer Richard Sterling says:
“
... its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock. It can be smelled from yards away. Despite its great local popularity, the raw fruit is forbidden from some establishments such as hotels, subways and airports, including public transportation in Southeast Asia.[21]


”










Hydrogen sulphide is one of the chemical compounds that may be responsible for the characteristic odour of durian


Other comparisons have been made with the civet, sewage, stale vomit, skunk spray and used surgical swabs.[22] The wide range of descriptions for the odour of durian may have a great deal to do with the variability of durian odour itself. Durians from different species or clones can have significantly different aromas; for example, red durian (D. dulcis) has a deep caramel flavour with a turpentine odour while red-fleshed durian (D. graveolens) emits a fragrance of roasted almonds.[23] Among the varieties of D. zibethinus, Thai varieties are sweeter in flavour and less odourous than Malay ones.[2] The degree of ripeness has an effect on the flavour as well.[2] Three scientific analyses of the composition of durian aroma — from 1972, 1980, and 1995 — each found a mix of volatile compounds including esters, ketones, and different sulphur compounds, with no agreement on which may be primarily responsible for the distinctive odour.[2]
This strong odour can be detected half a mile away by animals, thus luring them. In addition, the fruit is extremely appetising to a variety of animals from squirrels to mouse deer, pigs, orangutan, elephants, and even carnivorous tigers. While some of these animals eat the fruit and dispose of the seed under the parent plant, others swallow the seed with the fruit and then transport it some distance before excreting, with the seed being dispersed as the result.[24] The thorny, armoured covering of the fruit discourages smaller animals; larger animals are more likely to transport the seeds far from the parent tree.[25]

the end of the journey, a posting with the permission of av suvorov, and a bit of michael moore:

i survived the trip home with no major incidents, just the cancellation of a flight by my trusted lufthansa and the loss of my luggage by united airlines.  both problems were fixable.

the cancellation was easily remedied by lufthansa. they rerouted me via british air to geneva-london heathrow-washington dulles-rochester, with the last leg remaining the same originally scheduled us air flight.   or so i thought.

i had been warned to avoid heathrow.  security delays were supposed to be very long.   i approached this change of planes in heathrow with trepedation.   it went well even though  i was astonished that the necessary bus trip from the new terminal 5 to terminal 4 took one half hour of travel time.  who in the world had designed this wide separation?   the people, being british, were helpful even when they didn't know anything about where to go.  so one felt content.  

on the british air flight there was a safety video involving detailed instructions as to how to use a life jacket.  it occured to me that i was not aware that life jackets had ever saved any lives during a plane crash.  even in the case  of the sinking of the titanic the life jackets were rather useless since the water in the north atlantic over which we were flying was rather cold.  the survival time was too short unless you were in a life boat out of the water.  i asked the steward about this and, after much consultation, he eventually came back with the claim that, once, in the middle of the indian ocean, 5 lives were saved by life preservers.  the water was warm there and the sharks were not quick enough.

when i arrived at washington dulles, i made a minor mistake.  as one must, i secured my luggage, went through customs, and looked for the place to transfer to the luggage to my us air flight to rochester.  if there was a place, i missed it. i was told that i couldn't go back. i must take  the luggage to the us air ticket counter.  this was ok since i needed to convert the e-ticket to a real ticket anyway.   i headed to the us air ticket counter.  it was closed.  and no one was there.  from a baggage person, i eventually learned that my us air flight was actually being operated by united airlines.  the airlines did this sort of switching all the time. they did not think that it was important for passengers to know it about it.  since the united counter was open, there was  no problem.  with an hour to spare, i secured my ticket and gave them my luggage.  all was well or so i thought.  two hours later i arrived at rochester.  my luggage did not.  i filled out the lost luggage form.  doug and michelle ravenel took me home late at around midnight.

the next day, i had a pleasant but misleading conversation with a confused baggage person. he was located in calcutta and had no direct knowledge of my luggage. but a computer told him that my luggage had been found, put on the plane and then taken off again for an unknown reason.  he assured me that he would tell the people in washington to put it on the next plane to rochester.  but, in fact , my luggage was already in rochester. it was delivered almost immediately afterwards.  so the trip was finally over.

i close by relaying the following emails which i received from a certain av suvorov and from a certain michael moore.  both are different points of view than usual.  they are similar but one has more hope.

joe n



SUVOROV BEGINS:


O.K. Neocons, you have a major problem:

1) The U.S. military is bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

2) Most of the Muslim world, both Sunni and Shiite, hates our guts because
of our criminal invasion of Iraq and our mindless support of the Fascist
state of Israel.

3) The U.S. is the world's leading debtor nation and most of the debt is
owed to China.

4) Now Russia is calling your bluff and standing up for its national
interests - instead of giving them away like Gorbachev and Yeltsin.

5) You have a volunteer army consisting mostly of high school dropouts,
misfits and retards, who have to rely on massive air power to get anything
done.

6) But all the indiscriminate bombing mostly kills innocent civilians, so
the insurgencies get stronger and the U.S. is hated by more people around
the globe.

7) The American educational system is so bad that the electorate does not
have the critical thinking ability to make sensible political choices.

8) The corporations run everything - it's a "corporatocracy", not a
democracy - and the rich get richer as they piss on the middle class and
the poor (Reagan's real "trickle down theory").

9) The housing and banking sectors of the economy are being barely propped
up by the Federal government.

QUESTION: How long before the whole rotten system finally collapses?

Posted by AVSuvorov at 02:13 AM : Aug 29, 2008

SUVOROV ENDS

MOORE BEGINS

Friends,
I'm am speechless after listening to Barack Obama's speech last night. So I'm sending you something I wrote to you two weeks after Hurricane Katrina. It remains every bit as relevant today, on Katrina's 3rd anniversary, as when I wrote it on September 11, 2005. Please give it another look. Here it is in full:

A Letter to All Who Voted for George W. Bush... from Michael Moore 

Dear Friends, 

On this, the fourth anniversary of 9/11, I'm just curious, how does it feel? 

How does it feel to know that, the man you re-elected to lead us AFTER we were attacked, went ahead and put a guy in charge of FEMA whose main qualification was that he ran horse shows? 

That's right. Horse shows. 

I really want to know -- and I ask you this in all sincerity and with all due respect -- how do you feel about the utter contempt Mr. Bush has shown for your safety? C'mon, give me just a moment of honesty. Don't start ranting on about how this disaster in New Orleans was the fault of one of the poorest cities in America. Put aside your hatred of Democrats and liberals and anyone with the last name of Clinton. Just look me in the eye and tell me our President did the right thing after 9/11 by naming a horse show runner as the top man to protect us in case of an emergency or catastrophe. 

I want you to put aside your self-affixed label of Republican/conservative/born-again/capitalist/ditto-head/right-winger and just talk to me as an American, on the common ground we both call America. 

Are we safer now than before 9/11? When you learn that, after the horse show runner, the #2 and #3 men in charge of emergency preparedness have... zero experience in emergency preparedness (!), do you think we are safer? 

When you look at Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, a man with little experience in national security, do you feel secure? 

When men who never served in the military, and have never seen young men die in battle, send our young people off to war, do you think they know how to conduct a war? Do they know what it means to have your legs blown off for a threat that was never there? 

Do you really believe that turning over important government services to private corporations has resulted in better services for the people? 

Why do you hate our federal government so much? You have voted for politicians for the past 25 years whose main goal has been to de-fund the federal government. Do you think that cutting federal programs like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers has been good or bad for America? GOOD OR BAD?! 

With the nation's debt at an all-time high, do you think tax cuts for the rich are still a good idea? Will you give yours back so hundreds of thousands of homeless in New Orleans can have a home? 

Do you believe in Jesus? Really? Didn't he say that we would be judged by how we treat the least among us? Hurricane Katrina came in and blew off the facade that we were a nation with liberty and justice for all. The wind howled and the water rose and what was revealed was that the poor in America shall be left to suffer and die while the President of the United States fiddles and tells them to eat cake. 

That's not a joke. The day the hurricane hit and the levees broke, Mr. Bush, John McCain and their rich pals were stuffing themselves with cake. A full day after the levees broke (the same levees whose repair funding he had cut), Mr. Bush was playing a guitar some country singer gave him at some fundraiser with John McCain. All this while New Orleans sank under water. 

It would take ANOTHER day before the President would do a "flyover" in his jumbo jet, peeking out the widow at the misery 2,500 feet below him as he flew back to his second home in DC. It would then be TWO MORE DAYS before a trickle of federal aid and troops would arrive. This was no seven minutes in a sitting trance while children read "My Pet Goat" to him. This was FOUR DAYS of doing nothing other than saying "Brownie (FEMA director Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job!" 

My Republican friends, does it bother you that we are the laughing stock of the world? 

And on this sacred day of remembrance, do you think we honor or shame those who died on 9/11/01? If we learned nothing and find ourselves today every bit as vulnerable and unprepared as we were on that bright sunny morning, then did the 3,000 die in vain? 

Our vulnerability is not just about dealing with terrorists or natural disasters. We are vulnerable and unsafe because we allow one in eight Americans to live in horrible poverty. We accept an education system where one in six children never graduate and most of those who do can't string a coherent sentence together. The middle class can't pay the mortgage or the hospital bills and 45 million have no health coverage whatsoever. 

Are we safe? Do you really feel safe? You can only move so far out and build so many gated communities before the fruit of what you've sown will be crashing through your walls and demanding retribution. Do you really want to wait until that happens? Or is it your hope that if they are left alone long enough to soil themselves and shoot themselves and drown in the filth that fills the street that maybe the problem will somehow go away? 

I know you know better. You gave the country and the world a man who wasn't up for the job and all he does is hire people who aren't up for the job. You did this to us, to the world, to the people of New Orleans. Please fix it. Bush is yours. And you know, for our peace and safety and security, this has to be fixed. What do you propose? 

I have an idea, and it isn't a horse show. 

Yours, 

Michael Moore

MOORE ENDS


joe n


what michael moore has actually said and some quotes from james madison


hello folks:  since there has been some false testimony about what michael moore has said about the storm gustav, here is the actual message from him.  you can judge for yourself whether he wishes new orleans to get hit by gustav.

i also include some quotes from james madison.  these quotes may be summed up by:  so much wisdom then, so little wisdom now.  it is more convincing evidence that america is a society in decline.  "the best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with pashionate intensity."

compare james madison with john mccain and sarah palin.  this is not evolution, it is degeneration, comparable to ancient rome.

joe n

p.s.  like albert einstein and richard feynman, i do not believe in a god who intervenes in the affairs of men.  he is a mere metaphor and he is lucky to be that.  yet people seem to take seriously these pleas which are sent off into the cosmos and called prayers.  so it would behoove them to quote the prayers accurately.

by the way, george carlin pointed out that he got better results by praying not to god, but to joe pesci. he asked joe  to intervene in the affairs of men with a baseball bat.  and isn't it a good deal to get the credit for all the good things and none of the blame for the bad.  according to traditional standards of evidence, there is sufficient evidence that our lives are controlled by aliens in a spacecraft in the andromeda galaxy.  you might try addressing your prayers to them.

meanwhile, you can also judge for yourself whether this federal administration has done enough to avert another catastrophe for new orleans.  they have had three years to fix the levees.  that is 3 quarters of the time that the franklin roosevelt administration fought world war two.  compare the results.

by the way, although i have much respect for the creator of our national parks,  people should understand the the later of the two roosevelts is the greater president.  the first one suffered from a severe case of being a war monger.   our current administration and its chosen successor have adopted the bad half of the first roosevelt's motto to "speak softly and carry a big stick."

isn't it past time to say that the american people have proven themselves to be a stupid people.









 An Open Letter to God, from Michael Moore

Sunday, August 31st, 2008

Dear God,

The other night, the Rev. James Dobson's ministry asked all believers to pray for a storm on Thursday night so that the Obama acceptance speech outdoors in Denver would have to be cancelled.

I see that You have answered Rev. Dobson's prayers -- except the storm You have sent to earth is not over Denver, but on its way to New Orleans! In fact, You have scheduled it to hit Louisiana at exactly the moment that George W. Bush is to deliver his speech at the Republican National Convention.

Now, heavenly Father, we all know You have a great sense of humor and impeccable timing. To send a hurricane on the third anniversary of the Katrina disaster AND right at the beginning of the Republican Convention was, at first blush, a stroke of divine irony. I don't blame You, I know You're angry that the Republicans tried to blame YOU for Katrina by calling it an "Act of God" -- when the truth was that the hurricane itself caused few casualties in New Orleans. Over a thousand people died because of the mistakes and neglect caused by humans, not You.

Some of us tried to help after Katrina hit, while Bush ate cake with McCain and twiddled his thumbs. I closed my office in New York and sent my entire staff down to New Orleans to help. I asked people on my website to contribute to the relief effort I organized -- and I ended up sending over two million dollars in donations, food, water, and supplies (collected from thousands of fans) to New Orleans while Bush's FEMA ice trucks were still driving around Maine three weeks later.

But this past Thursday night, the Washington Post reported that the Republicans had begun making plans to possibly postpone the convention. The AP had reported that there were no shelters set up in New Orleans for this storm, and that the levee repairs have not been adequate. In other words, as the great Ronald Reagan would say, "There you go again!"

So the last thing John McCain and the Republicans needed was to have a split-screen on TVs across America: one side with Bush and McCain partying in St. Paul, and on the other side of the screen, live footage of their Republican administration screwing up once again while New Orleans drowns.

So, yes, You have scared the Jesus, Mary and Joseph out of them, and more than a few million of your followers tip their hats to You.

But now it appears that You haven't been having just a little fun with Bush & Co. It appears that Hurricane Gustav is truly heading to New Orleans and the Gulf coast. We hear You, O Lord, loud and clear, just as we did when Rev. Falwell said You made 9/11 happen because of all those gays and abortions. We beseech You, O Merciful One, not to punish us again as Pat Robertson said You did by giving us Katrina because of America's "wholesale slaughter of unborn children." His sentiments were echoed by other Republicans in 2005.

So this is my plea to you: Don't do this to Louisiana again. The Republicans got your message. They are scrambling and doing the best they can to get planes, trains and buses to New Orleans so that everyone can get out. They haven't sent the entire Louisiana National Guard to Iraq this time -- they are already patrolling the city streets. And, in a nod to I don't know what, Bush's head of FEMA has named a man to help manage the federal government's response. His name is W. Michael Moore. I kid you not, heavenly Father. They have sent a man with both my name AND W's to help save the Gulf Coast.

So please God, let the storm die out at sea. It's done enough damage already. If you do this one favor for me, I promise not to invoke your name again. I'll leave that to the followers of Rev. Dobson and to those gathering this week in St. Paul.

Your faithful servant and former seminarian,

Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com

P.S. To all of God's fellow children who are reading this, the city New Orleans has not yet recovered from Katrina. Please click here for a list of things you can do to help our brothers and sisters on the Gulf Coast. And, if you do live along the Gulf Coast, please take all necessary safety precautions immediately.





In memory of a time in which america had intelligent leadership, i quote James Madison (yes, these things were actually said by a man who was elected president of the united states!  say them now and you will be sent to political oblivion. this is evidence of the growing stupidity of the american people.):




A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce, or a tragedy, or perhaps both.


A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.


All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.


All that seems indispensible in stating the account between the dead and the living, is to see that the debts against the latter do not exceed the advances made by the former.


By rendering the labor of one, the property of the other, they cherish pride, luxury, and vanity on one side; on the other, vice and servility, or hatred and revolt.

Each generation should be made to bear the burden of its own wars, instead of carrying them on, at the expense of other generations.

Every nation whose affairs betray a want of wisdom and stability may calculate on every loss which can be sustained from the more systematic policy of its wiser neighbors.


I should not regret a fair and full trial of the entire abolition of capital punishment.


If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.


In no instance have... the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.


It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.


Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.


No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.


Of all the enemies of public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded.


Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.


The capacity of the female mind for studies of the highest order cannot be doubted, having been sufficiently illustrated by its works of genius, of erudition, and of science.


The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war.


The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home


War should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.


We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.


Whenever a youth is ascertained to possess talents meriting an education which his parents cannot afford, he should be carried forward at the public expense.

Wherever there is interest and power to do wrong, wrong will generally be done.