Wave making moon movie

quicktime (jpl)

Dr. Torrence Johnson, Cassini's imaging team member, talks about the tiny object in the center of the Keeler gap [in Saturn's rings] and the wavy patterns in the gap edges that are generated by the moon's gravitational influence. This moon is provisionally named S/2005 S1.

This video is strangely enhanced quite a bit by having that mysterious harmonic music playing in the background. It's the kind of music they play in Monterey tourist traps that want to sell you a plastic dolphin, windchime made of shells, or DVD on whales. In those settings, such music just gets under my skin. But shown with the little moon sweeping clear debris between the rings of Saturn, it's just right.

Remarks

Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics [Wittgenstein. Books like this are endlessly amusing. All the great philosophers share this trait—they are just too funny. I almost skipped the Galison lecture to continue reading it. (I'm not trying to put down Wittgenstein. I *like it*)]

Covering Things with Things

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Proceedings of the 1st ACM workshop on Story representation, mechanism and context

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[Another thing I looked at in the Stanford math library prior to the Galison lecture. Reminded me of its random].

Quasi-thin

If the back cover of this book (which I recently examined in the Stanford Math library) is to be believed, the proof of the classification theorem for finite simple groups is finally down on paper in all its inscrutable glory, roughly 25 years after it was announced and mathematicians generally accepted its truth.

* * *
Added later: This is what is says on the back of the book:

Around 1980, G. Mason announced the classification of a certain subclass of an important class of finite simple groups known as "quasithin groups". The classification of the finite simple groups depends upon a proof that there are no unexpected groups in this subclass. Unfortunately Mason neither completed nor published his work. In the Main Theorem of this two-part book (Volumes 111 and 112 in the AMS series, Mathematical Surveys and Monographs) the authors provide a proof of a stronger theorem classifying a larger class of groups, which is independent of Mason's arguments. In particular, this allows the authors to close this last remaining gap in the proof of the classification of all finite simple groups.

["Quasi-thin" may be in the title, but it's over 700 pages long, hardbound]