Derelict of the Year 2009

And The Winnders Are:

1st place: Chris Gunslingin' ************* Rainey
2nd place: Jorge Ramirez, Dan Champion, Nate Ordansky, et al.
3rd place: All graduate students in their 3rd year or below

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone for voting!

Party Info

When: Sunday, May 17 at 6:30PM

Where: Dr. Newell's house

#330 Indian House Road.

East on 6th which turns into 5th at Country Club. Continue past Alvernon, Swan and Craycroft until you see Sewell Elementary School on RHS. Go 400 yards and turn right (south) onto dirt road, Indian House Road. #330 is 500 yards directly in front of you.

Nominations

Yaron Hadad
Construction Crew
Victor Piercey
Governor Jan Brewer
Ben Dyhr
All graduate students in their 3rd year or below
The Person Who Nominated Governor Jan Brewer
Bill McCallum
Andrew Lebovitz
Chris ************* Rainey
Steven Rosenthal
The DOTY Committee a.k.a. Derek Seiple
Gunslingin' Chris Rainey
Jorge Ramirez, Dan Champion, Nate Ordansky, et al.
Dr. William Faris
Facilities Management
R Philip Grizzard
Casey Warmbrand

Yaron Hadad

Although this nomination is for Yaron Hadad, it begins and ends with Johann Rafelsky - a professor in the physics department.

Dr. Rafelsky taught a course on general relativity in the physics department. This course was a sequel to a previous course taught be somebody else. At the beginning of the semester, a number of math students - including Yaron - gleefully signed up for the course. This number quickly plummeted as Dr. Rafelsky opened our minds to his mad, mad world. Here are just a few of the anecdotes I collected before avoiding dementia and dropping the class:

1. He wears rubber gloves to class! This is just creepy, what does he intend to do with his hands in a class full of eager young and impressionable minds? On top of this, he wears the same pair EVERY day! They have holes in them!

2. He asked us what was printed on the only transparency used in Jacob Wheeler's last talk. Keep in mind, this took place before any of us were born.

3. He was obsessed with numerics, but had no sense of scale. He asked the class for the frequency of blue light. When a student responded with something along the lines of 700, Rafelsky responded with "close, actually its about .2" While we are at it - he claimed \pi was exactly 3.13.

4. In the previous semester, we discussed the three possibilities for the curvature of spacetime: closed, open and flat. Rafelsky insisted that the universe is flat and that this is known to everybody who knows anything. This led to a long debate with one of the students, the student explaining that Rafelsky was mixing up the four-dimensional universe with a fixed-time 3-dimensional submanifold.

The next class, the student had dropped. This didn't stop Rafelsky from continuing the debate. He brought in one of this student's papers and announced in triumph that his interlocutor agreed with him!

5. He presented Bell's paradox to the class. In the previous semester, we learned that Bell's paradox was not resolved, but Rafelsky claimed he had the answer. When he found out that our prior professor told us that he didn't know how to solve this unsolved problem, Rafelsky gave a great cry in shock: "RRRREALLY!!!???"

But there is more to this story. A student mentioned that their solution to Bell's paradox written up in homework the previous semester was the same as Rafelsky's but that the grader had marked it off as incorrect. It turns out that the grader was none other than the student who debated Rafelsky in item four above! When Rafelsky learned this, he flashed an evil smile and shouted like Nero shouting for St. Peter's head: "BRRRING HIM TO ME!!! I WANT TO EDUCATE THIS YOUNG MAN!!!"

So what does Yaron have to do with this? On the first day, Rafelsky pointed Yaron out as somebody who looks like they like to skydive (or something similar). Yaron, like many endowed with a survival instict, promptly dropped the class - much to the dismay of Rafelsky. Rafelsky wrote Yaron an e-mail asking Yaron to come by his office anytime adding: "I want to look into your physics soul." One would think Yaron would respond by investing in a chastity belt. Instead, Yaron met with Rafelsky and rejoined this ridiculous class! Yaron is now known to be found sleeping in his office after a late night out with Rafelsky. He is even considering taking Rafelsky on as his advisor.

For not protecting his own cornhole, and returning to the creepy man with the rubber gloves and a vengeful spirit, I nominate Yaron for this award.

Construction Crew

I would like to nominate for a DOTY Award the construction crew on the central plant adjacent to Math East that causes the Math East building to shake.

Victor Piercey

I would like to nominate Victor Piercey for derelict of the year. There are many reasons why Victor deserves this award, but I will instead do what cannot be done by Victor himself - I will type something short.

Governor Jan Brewer

I nominate Governor Jan Brewer for slashing the education budget.

Ben Dyhr

Ben Dyhr shares Math 217 with Casey Warmbrand, Sadie Bell (wink), Bob Jenkins and Cong Xie. Their desks are separated by only a few feet, but Cong Xie's desk is neat, Dyhr's is a godawful mess. It hasn't been cleaned down to the original surface since 2002. Things have fallen roughly into layers, over a base of mathematical smegma that sifts steadily to the bottom, made up of a fine layer of chalk, powdered coffee creamer and coffee stains, dry erase smudges, pretzel salt and white-out fluid, tiny remnants of ripped spiral notebook paper and tea leafs. Then comes a scatter of paperclips, rubber bands, staples, post-its, pen caps, loose change, spoons, nutshells, throat coats, erasers, tape, string, chalk, bottle caps,... above that a layer of postcards, notepads, CD jackets, unopened letters, unused forms, publications part read, scratch paper and notes, a homemade sleeve for a copy Les Claypool's 'Red Onions' ("He does have musical talent," Bob Jenkins reports, "a sort of 90's King Crimson, if you could imagine such a thing," Cong Xie decided she'd rather not), an empty jar of coconut oil ("for my hair"), pieces for a scrabble game, partly-finished crosswords, several copies of an essay of Poincare on probability, a picture of Johnny Cash cut out of a newspaper and glued to a piece of cardboard, cut-outs of hexagons and triangles, a DVD case for 'Like Mike' with a Les Claypool's 'Red Onion's' inside... a few name tags from various conferences, a key, an LP case for a rapper named 'Mathematics' (A Wu Tang Production in association with High Times), emptied bottles of mineral water, many folders, a scrabble set, a disassembled bike flashlight, 'gold chain' (made of painted aluminum), a star wars 'Leah' doll, any number of library books and manilla envelopes, sunscreen - a dictionary of Turkish, map of Turkey, a giant emptied pretzel tub and, most-likely, a copy of The Onion somewhere - Dyhr is a faithful reader.

All graduate students in their 3rd year or below

Through a great act of dereliction, the graduate students in their first through third years have allowed a garrulous three-headed monster to grow to extraordinary proportions. Already sagacious from the long life of its three heads, this ghidorah has been allowed to finely hone its power of consuming a conversation, or, often used in a pinch, derailing it along an irresolvable tangent. Tread lightly among the higher reaches of this tower of mathematics for the monster spares no man from its verbosity. It has already devoured our classrooms and APR meetings, and its hunger grows. Repent your negligence younger graduate students or no conversation, related to mathematics or not, will be safe from its grasp.

The Person Who Nominated Governor Jan Brewer

It is actually the legislature who slashed the education budget. Brewer is accepting the federal stimulus money to fill some of the holes.

Bill McCallum

Bill, Ivy-league educated and an alumnus of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, is a University Distinguished Professor and College of Science Galileo Circle Fellow. The author of dozens of research papers and half a dozen books, PI or co-PI of multiple seven-figure grants, Bill is the co-founder and director of the Institute for Mathematics Education. Recently he has taken, with humility and good humor, the role of head of the department of mathematics in a time of deep budget cuts and reorganizational turmoil.

However, Bill has yet to fix world hunger or bring about peace in the Middle East, and global warming continues unabated. Pick up the pace, Bill!

Andrew Lebovitz

At the beginning of the year Andy asked to be transfered into our office. Because of this we were forced to find room for another desk in our already crampped office space. But we did what we were told.

This is not a big deal, we managed with the extra desk. However Andy has never shown up to the office, not even once. Why request a change of office to never use it? All well. We use his desk for the coffee maker...

Chris ************* Rainey

I nominate Chris ************* Rainey for his truly memorable Brown Bag presentation. His presentation was oddly similar to this scene from Chasing Amy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMCki0Z_AlA&feature=related. Chris shattered the previous record, zero, of dropping the f-bomb during a Brown bag with a monumental three ejaculations of vulgarity. The first such explosion came when he told the audience to shut the **** up while we were debating whether his space shuttle was from Star Trek or Star Wars (it was from Star Trek). Other curious moments during the presentation included an interesting folder labeled chicks on his computer. For perverting this graduate student forum designed for developing professional growth, I believe Chris MF Rainey is an ideal candidate for Derelict of the Year.

Steven Rosenthal

I would like to nominate a Mr. Steven Rosenthal. We've all been through the first year of graduate school knowing the immense time consumption that is the core courses as well as the fluids lab course for applied students. There are numerous stories of ambitious young first years, but this story is one to be remembered. The core courses plus the fluids lab was not enough for young Steven, so he took the complex analysis course with Dr. Newell. Ask anyone who took the course and you will find that the class was painfully time consuming with homeworks and 29 page take home tests. Steven would not stop at that though, no, we all received the email

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Hi friend,

Are you interested in making some extra money and brush up your statistical knowledge? Then contact me soon..

..because I am looking for someone to help me grade the statistics course that I am teaching.

I will pay at $6 per hour and it will be 5 hours of grading per week.

Some basic knowledge in Statistics will be appreciated.

Hope to hear from you. Then we can go over more details. In the mean time you may visit the course web-page. Just visit my home page http://math.arizona.edu/~abhishek/ and click on MATH 160.

Best, Abhsihek

------------------------------------------------

Who would willingly be paid sub minimum wages to grade? Yes you guessed it, our over ambitious first year Steven. Poor poor Steven. This you might say is not enough for a Derelict nomination. So we'll add his tardiness. Despite having a office on the fifth floor, which all first year core courses are held, Steven found a way to show up at least 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes to every class. His lateness was even recognized by Dr. Tabor when at a weekly seminar, Dr. Tabor counted one short and assumed it was Steven, despite Mr. Rosenthal's presence directly in front of Dr. Tabor.

It is needless to say, but Steven did not take the spring semester of complex analysis and did not grade.

The DOTY Committee a.k.a. Derek Seiple

A ritual as hallowed as Derelict of the Year comes with certain rules and traditions. One of these is that the DOTY Committee maintains a façade of anonymity, at least until the DOTY Party. This year, however, the Committee made a major gaff when sending the annual fund-raising email:

"If you prefer to hand your money to a person, Derek Seiple (office 514) will be collecting money for the party,"

revealing "themselves" to be none other than Derek himself. Great job, Derek. Which tradition are you going to mangle next?

Gunslingin' Chris Rainey

I hereby nominate Gunslingin' Chris Rainey for derelict of the year. While the explicative laden Brown Bag Seminar was his great demonstration to those who attended of his dereliction, those of us who know him well will attest that this is only the tip of the iceberg. In his first year, Chris routinely arrived to class late as a result of his nightly 6-pack of fine imported beer and odd desire to bake oatmeal cookies. During any small study sessions, one could also count on Chris to mysteriously disappear, only to return an hour later asking to see the solutions to the upcoming work. Why exactly he wanted the answers is unknown, since he managed to get roughly 4 assignments late in each course. His response to what he was spending his time on often returned something like quantum computing or how exciting it is to have an office on the same floor as Alan Newell.

As Chris noticed the negative effect of this strategy on both his waste line and coursework, he rededicated himself...to any manner of lethal weaponry. In the past year, Chris has amassed an impressive collection of daggers, combat knives, swords, pepper spray, several pistols and the accompanying mass quantities of ammunition.

As the first year students were preparing for the Qualifying Exams over the summer, meeting several times per week, they would occasionally wonder where the Chris was. As early July arrived, with still no sighting or contact with Chris, one student called to find out that he was spending his time at the Gun Range. Thankfully he has given up the 6-pack ritual in this time. The day of the Qualifying Exam, Chris showed up with Aluminum foil hats his fellow classmates to wear, so they could protect their brain waves from aliens and the evil thoughts of 'Darth Tabor'. Only Chris wore his.

These days, if you strike up a conversation with the Gunslinger, you are sure to be sucked into a long discussion about how exciting his new handgun is, or how he has finally been granted his concealed weapon permit to keep him safe as he heads to Fry's to buy more oatmeal. Be wary to say something which displeases him -however- as he will quickly display photos of his arsenal, which he keeps handy in his cell phone.

For forcing all graduate students to live a life of fear, as well as for his choice words at the Brown Bag Seminar, I nominate Gunslingin' Chris ************* Rainey as the true candidate for Derelict of the Year.

Jorge Ramirez, Dan Champion, Nate Ordansky, et al.

I nominate Jorge Ramirez, Dan Champion, Nate Ordansky, et al.

People in this department need to learn to look after their limbs better.

Dr. William Faris

There is a tradition of nominating inanimate objects for the derelict of the year. Often, the elevator is the object of attention as it tries to nab the lives of the residents of this building. While the violence of the elevator seems to have dropped for the moment, one class of objects has taken its place. These tools do not reach out for the lives of just any member of our community, however. These tools are out to get one person - Dr. William Faris. These tools, of course, are the dreaded overhead projectors.

It is only on rare occasions that these monstrosities are even used anymore. Between their infrequent uses, the projectors congregate and discuss how they will sneak out of their hiding places and lunge under Dr. Faris' feet as he is walking by during lectures, causing him to nearly plummet to his death. This usually occurs a few times a class. Anyone who has had the experience of a class with him knows this threat all too well. The projectors are not alone - oh no. They have even talked the tables and chairs into jumping into his path as well.

Fearing for his very life, Dr. Faris left the country under the guise of a "sabbatical." He thought that he would be safe in another country. Beginning in the early 19th century, Great Britain birthed a movement known as the Luddites. These textile artisans knew that technology would be their downfall, and Dr. Faris thought that he could find sanctuary in their birthplace. He was wrong. Below is a clip from a documentary that will filmed in England while he was there. A video has been found and is below.

The overhead projectors must be put in their place. The only thing in the department that should remind us of their projected terror should be a computer in the computer lab. Dr. Faris should be able to roam the aisles of room 501 free of fear.

Faris Video

Facilities Management

Every drinking fountain blasts the wall behind it when turned to full, except the fourth floor's which doesn't work at all. The cold water faucet in that floor's bathroom is mounted backwards. The hot water in the building has been busted for months now. The sinks overflow from the suggestion of a dirty dish. The clocks can't give the right time even twice a day. We're beginning to think that the annual nomination shouldn't go to the elevator but rather to those who should be repairing it.

R Philip Grizzard

Not only did 'R Philip Grizzard' take the time to make this video; he actually mass-emailed to everyone in the department. True derelict style: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Qz27tteAJY&feature=related.

Casey Warmbrand

OK, so a few of the nominees have once or twice done something silly this year. Let's honor someone for whom dereliction is not just a passing accident, but a lifestyle. Casey Warmbrand is the Pat Paulsen of DOTY (see e.g. 2006 and 2008). Casey is finishing his 5th year with no signs of stopping anytime soon. His CV still shows expected graduation in 2008; his research page shows some nice pictures -- drawn by someone else. Scrabble? Boggle? Fantasy baseball? Casey, in the true Ben Levitt tradition, is down for whatever whenever. Casey is a type-B role model who reminds all of us not to get too uptight. I, for one, salute him.