SUPER UPDATE 2012: Married, not living in Michigan anymore. Not even close. Available for talking sometimes, not much else. Stuff happens. Everything else is probably outdated, so assume it's a year or more old because it probably is.

OLD UPDATE: [BLATANTLY OUTDATED STUFF HERE, FOLLOWED BY NON-SEQUITUR:] ...But if you hate the 80s and love the Blackout Stout by the Great Lakes Brewery, I'd hate to lose a chance to talk about stuff just because it's complicated on Facebook

Ok, let's get the important stuff out of the way first:

* You don't have to read my profile in detail. I'd appreciate it if you raked your eyes over it and see if anything worth talking about pops out, and we can go from there. None of it is all that important in particular. Think of it as fodder.
* Jazz is awesome.
* Mitchell and Webb are awesome.
* BrokenPictureTelephone was/is awesome.
* Microbrews are awesome.
* I'm a fairly typical Pharyngula/PZ Myers fanboy, I think.
* I'm all up in the maths. Harmonic analysis if you have to know. I have a math blog I could show you if you really want to know.
* I don't know why, but the Godhand edit is my favorite meme. It's really lowbrow, but I don't care. It contains all the drama and frustration and glory and euphoria of the human condition in four panels. Maybe 90% of your life would have to be panel 1 for you to really understand. Could be.
* I am Mr. Gruff, the atheist goat who loves coffee instead of Jesus.

Ok, now back to how I last had my profile before:

I don't have a soul, but I was saving money to have one custom-made out of fog and street lights. And by that, I mean that I like 60's jazz a lot. Not that I really believe in souls, except as a convenient shorthand for epiphenomenal stuff or whatever. Like when someone said that my soul smells like damp pine needles, and I was sort of flattered because it makes me think of gin. I used to drink gin, but then I moved to Michigan for grad school and found out about microbrews.

I used to have a post-repressed rant about hangups and such, but then I got bored with all that and it looked somewhat and pathetic and a little creepy/needy/solipsist or something, and I cut it.

Honestly, I'm a fairly typical sample of what a commenter on the blog Pharyngula is like, so if that's the kind of person you like, there you have it. My job is math, so I'm not bad at understanding intricate things explained clearly, but I get bored/frustrated with and don't always try to pick up hints. I've gotten somewhat better about that, but I don't think I've used up my lifetime's worth of social blunders resulting from not having had something explained properly to me before yet.

I'm kind of old enough to eventually start thinking long-term and serious and whatever, but I'm finicky and don't always seem to bond much, so I don't know how that's going to work out, ultimately.

Also: Be sure to stick around for the "think of something from the 80's that SirJection actually likes and win a mention in his profile" challenge. It is what it sounds like.

I am ponderous, disaffected, and blaming grad school

I'm studying mathematics as a graduate student at Michigan State University. It seems like I'm learning math well enough to incorporate the vocabulary into lame in-jokes, but not well enough to solve non-trivial problems. But I sure do know some definitions, hoo boy, do I ever.

Update:
Well, I have a couple papers now anyway. My maths, let me show you them. Harmonic analysis, in particular. I have about two years left until the PhD, if I in fact finish. Something has sort of changed over the last year. It's not new and bewildering anymore, and I sincerely believe in a concrete way that I will finish someday, and not just in the abstract sense that a kid believes she or he is going to grow up "someday".

I still think that the Fourier transform is just a freakish coincidence that I can only partly understand by formal manipulation, though. That stuff is crazy, but it's an isometry of L^2, for what it's worth.

UPDATE THE 2ND: Ok, currently, I would like to be at the University of British Columbia a year from now. I need to apply for postdocs and such. So... sometimes I browse profiles in Vancouver just because I sort of want to be there and it may happen, even though I don't really know.

I'm passably good at math, I suppose. Or at least the part that calls itself analysis. Or at least I look good to outsiders, who I used to assume would be horrified if they could see how much trouble I often have with very simple issues I think no one should get stuck on, especially when it turns out to be blindingly simple in retrospect.

So... I guess I'm good at doing trivial things thoroughly and with confidence. But I'm getting slightly better at re-doing non-trivial things in a slightly different context too, what with having to write my thesis soonish and all.

Oh, and I'm pretty good in bed, and it's a little different each time. I'm allowed to say that because it's not a self-assessment. I can provide references.

Growing on you... like cancer. Again, not a self-assessment, but I'm pretty sure it was meant as a compliment. Though your mileage may vary.

Um, I had a gay guy tell me that I have nice eyes once. Totally randomly.

At the moment, I have a beard. Maybe I'll take a picture and post it at some point. Grad school is great like that because you can just start growing a beard whenever you feel like it.

a) Something Happened by Joseph Heller. Read it! There's also Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison - every book should end with the narrator going into a hole with gin and jazz, especially the Bible.

Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman! is a physicist's collection of autobiographical essays full of observations about how weird people are and how they misperceive things a lot.

I'm hoping that when PZ Myers finishes his book, it will be this high on the list or higher. Dawkins and the others have some good things to say, but I can without hesitation say that PZ gets the point of view toward religion exactly right where I have reservations about the delivery or a general sense of falling-flatness of the others.

I liked Animal Farm by George Orwell, but I can't place it at the top with the others.

Now for some math texts: Real and Complex Analysis by Walter Rudin, but it's not for everyone, what with it being a graduate math text and all. Also in this genre is Geometry of Sets and Measures in Euclidean Spaces by Pertti Mattila - my copy is autographed! You should be jealous, but you're probably not.

I had been reading a little of Carl Zimmer, who seems to me like a pretty good biology writer for the educated layman, but I don't have that much to compare him to yet. Also, reading biology and things like that is sort of frustrating because the more you know the more you realize that Thing A doesn't have a finite set of Causes X, Y, and Z that are completely quantifiable with total certainty. Not that no one knows anything and all explanations are equal, but you can't really conclusively capture the entire picture in a single fell swoop as if you were proving the Intermediate Value Theorem, either.

J. G. Ballard was starting to grow on me, but then I got busy and didn't get to read a whole lot The Overloaded Man in particular describes how I feel sometimes. Franz Kafka, The Complete Short Stories is great when it's good. Albert Camus has also been known to strike a chord at times.

I keep meaning to start reading again, but I haven't really made time, and I'm a slow reader and have a hard time getting into new things.

b) I don't know, I'm not into movies that much these days. I kind of draw a blank, for the most part. A lot of stuff is kind of dumb and not applicable to anything. Sort of like, "OMG, what if you were more awesome than you could ever imagine, and you just needed Angelina Jolie to have sex with you to realize your epic destiny?" I used to take that magic destiny sparkles crap seriously, and I think it set me back a lot in my development. Mixing indecision, a perverse mathematical hankering for conclusive final answers to all things, and a sense that there is something pathological about NOT having a magic destiny experience to tell you how to fulfill your inner awesome results in more indecision and a sense of being cheated.

So... I don't know. I also hate the relentless tedium that is Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and musicals make me clock out in my head more often than not. When I do like a movie, usually it's a mild like and then it doesn't come to mind when I try to populate a list such as this one later.

I was going to watch The Big Lebowski on a tip because there are nihilists in it, but the rental copy was stolen from the store, apparently.

I don't mind movies that much, though. Well, except for the ones that make me want to stab.

For a positive note, maybe we can allow plays? The Crucible, yes? And Doubt, I suppose. Both were made into movies, so I think I'm actually fine here.

c) John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Thelonious Monk. Infrequently, I'll show a little bit of old soul and go for some Bill Evans or Oscar Peterson. I vaguely suspect that I'd be into some classical music if I had any idea where to start.

I grew up with a lot of Paul McCartney and James Taylor, and sometimes if I hear it somewhere, it gets to me. But I don't own any or go out of my way to listen to much else other than jazz these days. Perhaps I should branch out, but it's very difficult, because usually I have to hear something all the way through at least 3 times before I'll like it, and by then, I've usually given up.

As a general rule, anything made in the 80's could vanish entirely from time and space and I wouldn't miss it much. I doubt that there are that many exceptions to this rule. Obligatory key changes signifying the climaxes of ballads, Ferris Bueller, Ronald Reagan... I don't know what happened. Usually if something's on the radio and I don't like it, I'm like, "ew, that's probably 80's", and if it's not so bad, I'm like, "hmmmm, that's probably 70's", and I'm right or at least borderline, usually. There's a reason why That 70's Show worked and That 80's Show didn't.

Anyway, this is why I now pose to you the "think of something from the 80's that SirJection actually likes and win a mention in his profile" challenge! It is what is sounds like, so get to thinking about it!

d) The necessity of eating is a tedious consequence of energy conservation laws.

If I may put drinks here, though, I've been discovering my love of local brews over the last few months. I lean toward porters and stouts, and sometimes I like IPAs and others.

I think that if I could live forever in a not-too-old body, but I had to continue eating to sustain myself, I would tire of it to the point that I'd be ready to die by the time I was 300 or so. If I only had to continue drinking, I could last indefinitely, I think.

Convolutions
The monotone convergence theorem
Holder's inequality*
The mean value theorem and its myriad corollaries
The various triangle inequalities
Euler's formula

I would've probably put Broken Picture Telephone up there, but it's been down for months and somehow, here I am.

* - can I get an umlaut?

Buffon's needle.

Whether it annoys me more when people take the "six things" question literally, or when they take it figuratively. I just want to say "that probably isn't so" in the latter case, but the former case is understandably boring common knowledge not specific to the person. Unless they need insulin or something, but most of us don't really have something unique like that to put there, let alone six such things.

How to be pedantic. Or how not to be pedantic.

Mathing. Or maybe being social, depending on whether the few friends I bother trying to hang out with lately are answering the phone or not.

I hate Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I realize that this is totally a minority opinion, but I have to take a stand. Not only is it a relentlessly boring movie, but a lot of women my age seem to have modeled their idea of the cute male off of it. Aside from that, I simply hate what Broderick and company did to Inspector Gadget. Don Adams, he ain't. Broderick used to be my least favorite person in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, but now it turns out that he's competing with a child molester and a Nixon apologist turned Intelligent Design proponent.

Oh, and I'm into kinky stuff because it's awesome.

You're a fan of PZ Myers (anti-theist science blogger behind Pharyngula. I can't wait for the book, the dark tome of P-Zed.)

Or if you'd like to take the "think of something from the 80's that SirJection actually likes and win a mention in his profile" challenge. It is what it sounds like! So get thinking!

Or if you want the link to my livejournal. Or if you want the link to my math blog, if you're weird like that.

Or if you're curious about the fundamental theorem of algebra, the Weierstrass approximation theorem, or the intermediate value theorem work.

Or if you would like to learn how to have thy name written in the Cupid's Book of Saved People. Behold, I have saved many.

Or if you think that talking dogs who peddle flea control products should be drowned in sewage and force-fed to Bil Keane.

Or if you're totally down with the anthropic principle, Euthyphro's Dilemma, The Flying Spaghetti Monster, Russell's Teapot, and Last Thursdayism - especially if you think you're ready to take it to the next level with Next Thursdayism.

Or if you can help me get better at biology. I have a casual hobbyist interest in evo devo - or I used to before it seemed like I didn't have time anymore.

Or if you don't mind... whatever it is that I've got, nihilistic existentialist leanings or something.

Or if you're checking whether Broken Picture Telephone is back online again yet all the time like I am.

Or if you like my dog. He's kind of emo and not worth the trouble.

On the other hand, DON'T message me if you're one of my students. I'll already feel ill just from having you show up on my stalkers page. That hardly happens ever somehow, though. It is The Thing That Cannot Be Acknowledged, should it happen somehow. If it happens, you can message me, like, two years later, though, and I'll be like, "lol, yeah, that." But not sooner.