Flat's Last Tire and Black Country Western

Chuck Grimes cgrimes at tsoft.com
Sun Jan 24 00:02:10 PST 1999


Almost all discussion of technology tends to get blurred by such narrow definitions of technology. Very seldom, for example, do people talking about technology discuss the various storage devices that allowed the development of neolithic agriculture.

Carrol --------

Pottery? Cool.

But, speaking of topologies of genus 0 and 1, yesterday, while I was fixing a flat tire on a math professor's push chair we were talking way knarlly, waay bad number theory--possibly the Empress of propeller heads everywhere. It seems Richard Taylor (one of co-authors of Weyl's proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, FLT) is at UC Berkeley and holding seminars. So, Robert Coleman, of flat tire fame, is doing a course on elliptic curves. He will have a syllabus for the course posted at:

http://math.berkeley.edu/~coleman/

The relevant material should show up next week sometime. The point is, that the key to understanding the method of proof in FLT is understanding the automorphisms of algebraic numbers, and these have a representation as elliptic curves, i.e. their Galois group. See, I told you it was waay bad.

For a quick look at elliptic curves:

http://www.best.com/~cgd/home/flt/flt03.htm

Chuck Grimes

I am telling you the people you meet fixing wheelchairs just blows me away. One Saturday, I hear what sounds like a whole street full of big rigs pulling up outside. After a couple of minutes, three black guys come in dressed in the fanciest western cowboy outfits I have ever seen pushing a forth guy in dark glasses and a cowboy hat. Guess whose chair broke down on a gig in Oakland--none other than Freddy Pendergast(?).

Should I post this? Why not. Give PMS and Kelley something to chortle about--"Will ya look at look that. I told you, Honey, they're all alike--counting pimples on wicca's ass must be a guy thing. For sure."



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