Saturday, December 27, 2008

A Post Few of My Readers Are Likely to Understand

A graph G is strongly asteroidal if it contains three vertices a, b, c such that there is a path between any two of these vertices that

  1. Does not contain the third vertex, nor any neighbor of the third vertex.
  2. Does not contain two consecutive vertices that are adjacent to every neighbor of the third vertex.

This? Is my job.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Fun Fact: There's only one Stephentown on Earth

Okay, so last week really was my last trivia night. Maybe. I'll have to spend some time in Clemson next semester, and the w is convinced I'll be arranging things so that I'm there on Thursday nights. We'll see. For now, savor the misses from last week's victory.

  1. In what southeastern state might you find the towns of Frog Jump, Only, and Sweetlips?
  2. In what southwestern state would you find the town of Ding Dong?
  3. What freshwater mollusk produces red or pink pearls?
  4. Which family of trees includes both the largest and fastest-growing living thing on earth?
  5. What is the more common name of herpes zoster?

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Where have all the tan M&M's gone?

Because I ran across this while I was cleaning out my bookbag: trivia returns!

1. What original Lifesavers flavor was nearly removed from the roll in 1999, after Nabisco announced that it was "not Y2K compliant?"
2. How many times did Marshal Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem, flunk the ninth grade?
3. What country's first nuclear weapons research facility is now a tourist attraction known as "Nuclear City?"
4. What film, starring Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson, was banned from the Cineplex Odeon Universal City in Los Angeles, out of fears that it might cause trouble in the trendy City Walk complex nearby?
5. What part of the Britney Spears doll's anatomy do you push to get her to sing?

Tomorrow will likely be my last trivia night in this town. Goodness knows what direction this blog will take afterwards. Will I find a new trivia night in Winston-Salem? Start writing my own? Reprint all the Ken Jennings questions I miss? Stay tuned.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Been a Long, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely, Lonely Time

Okay, so, Fall Break has stretched into an extended hiatus, as wedding and honeymoon time have been supplanted by research time and job-application time and write-the-dissertation-already time. I have a brief moment of blogging time tonight, though, so I return with a question:

Curriculum Vita or Curriculum Vitae? Or does it matter? My understanding was that "Vitae" was plural, but still acceptable usage (similar to "criteria").