So the torpor has set in fully, which has meant that I haven't made it to work at all today, and I will be skipping kendo to watch old dvds, half-heartedly edit this paper I'm supposed to turn in kirka midnight, and feast on Wifey's tapa. And in the meantime I've accomplished very little of even my scaled-down goals. And it feels like it's already tomorrow, the vague dread...

So I still remember a good chunk of my algebraic topology and my tensor calculus besides, which is reassuring in the sense that something has actually stuck with me, though I don't think Rob Chin was very amused as I tried to do this in pencil on the soft napkin at kenka--it probably didn't help that I was somewhat disparaging of his so-called eli math education. But I guess they just emphasized different branches of math, whereas I studied everything-but-analysis, and probably retain only 10% of it all.

The rest of today was consumed at the office, rereading my old aborted novel, which isn't half-bad, come to think of it, for half-a-month's effort. It's too bad that the effort I exerted there coincided with a collapsing sense of my school work. That and managing my portfolio, which really isn't big enough to require more than a fart's worth of time, but that's really just more in the proud tradition of post-Mao Chinese Communism. I've made decent enough headway on the paper, though, and regret only that I skipped kendo, especially with another shiai and then shinsa coming up. But it wouldn't be vacation without bonus Rob Chin.

So this woman on the subway ride home was vomitting, but it was mostly liquid though dark, and she brought her own shopping bag so her spillage only splashed herself.

So you know I was all enjoying Mean Girls on a lazy spring break afternoon since Wifey decided not to go to school today, and then Lindsay Lohan has to go and ruin everything by saying that to find the percentage which 48 is out of 120, that one should have 48/120=x/100, cross multiply and solve for x!!!!!!!!!

Fuck it all.

So in watching Kung Fu Hustle today, I came across a trailer for the new Jet Li movie Unleashed which concretizes basically every anti-imperialist feeling I've had in ages, though somehow he manages to land the white girl, which is odd, but I suppose it will all hinge on whether or not Jet Li is the only Chinaman in the movie. Certainly with Morgan Freeman's help he could secretly chip away a hole behind Rita Hayworth all the way to Red China.

So the trailer for next week's 24 is so damn juicy as it shows, gasp, probably in all likelihood as redux (history repeating itself as farce) for some sort of evil Turkish plot (all my Turk students are polite, and do not whirl) to nuke the Chinese embassy and start WWIII. It's just hard to really believe that the Red Chinese still wear those old-school PLA uniforms even indoors of the embassy. My favorite one-shot comic is still the Punisher THE END, the relevant line from which is: "Ten bad years./Iraq was one thing. North Korea. Even Pakistan. You shout War on Terror at the Chinese and they laugh so hard the world blows up in your face./That's the trouble with a war you never want to end." China's GDP growth is at 9.5% and overheating--what's your excuse, Rob Chin?

So the wind this morning which swept across the causeway this morning swooped the Post out of my hands and it hugged the street while fanning under wheels.

So the first day of vacation proper was solidly unproductive in the good way, insofar as I ran off to work and documented curriculum and tried to do some long-range planning for retirement again--May is looking to be this month's March as far as strain goes--it's sad, though, to realize that for all of this long-range planning, there's work that's already done out there, like CMP and so on, which takes care of all of this. It's an odd mindset, though, to get so deep into curriculum planning, and at the same time to feel so alone--a cursory glance at the existent other math curricula at my school reveals no narrative, no sense, no arc, and very little actual project-based learning, or even an attempt--I'm stuck, meanwhile, reinventing the wheel, which is fine, because most math folks are still using some sort of travois. Not that there's anything wrong with all that.

So I shouldn't feel so crazy that only thirteen days so far are booked out of my entire summer--there's a lot more I could take on at this point, but it hardly seems worth it, yet this boredom which is seeping in also barely helps--I should just enjoy myself and practice my half-suburi with extensions and do some decent haya-suburi for once--it's getting to be a major embarassment, and promotion exams are in about two months. The June tournament at Polytechnic sounds like it could be great fun, actually--the occasional shiai is always good to shake things up a little bit, and I should get back to lifting--the last thing I need is for Wifey to start complaining about Jigglypuff once more.

So I'm on spring break, but it really doesn't feel like it all, and I've made a number of bad purchases this week, but it's going to be ok, really--it's going to be a week of retrenchment, as usual, I fear--it feels like I do that too often, somehow--and there are now but two months left to the school year, and this I think is well overdue--this summer my mind can turn to other things, like Wifey, and kendo--it's hachidan season, the sweat is worse than ever, and I forgot to put away my bogu on Thursday i was so tired, it'll probably reek worse than Beary's come Saturday.

So since getting back I've been alternately lazy and asleep, only returning to practice todya, and getting my ass kicked from outside and the peanut butter inside that was trying its best to ooze its way out onto my hakama. Still, you can't beat 24 for quality of late, and Spring Break is soon enough that I will be able to regear, re-orient, and get a grip again. It's just been exhausting, and kind of sad to realize that the other math teachers in the school can't really handle the math I'm teaching students, to the point where they try to override the lessons I've left for them. Don't know what to say in that regard, at all.

So it's nice to see some sincerity in public schools:

Queens school disgrace
NY Daily News
Juan Gonzalez

Outrage as Haitian kids have to eat 'like animals'

It's the kind of spat that flares thousands of times a day in schools all over the country.

But at Public School 34 in Queens Village, Assistant Principal Nancy Miller's ghastly way of handling a minor scuffle between two Haitian fourth-graders has sparked fury.

According to parents and students, Miller, who is white, chose to punish all 13 Haitian pupils in the school's only fourth-grade bilingual class - even though just two were involved in the March 16 incident.

She ordered all 13 to sit on the cafeteria floor, then made them use their fingers to eat their lunch of chicken and rice, while all the other students watched.

"In Haiti, they treat you like animals, and I will treat you the same way here," several students recalled Miller saying.

Some of the punished fourth-graders were so humiliated they began to cry. A few begged Miller for spoons to eat.

Her behavior has triggered a probe by the schools' office of special investigations, as parents accused Miller of racial bias and demanded that she and the principal be fired.

One of those punished was Woosvelt Isac. His father, Sony Isac, noticed the boy was upset that night.

"He was almost crying," Isac said yesterday. "I asked him what was wrong. Then he told me, 'They put me sitting on the floor. They put me to eat with my hands.' I couldn't believe it."

At the suggestion of a teacher, several children wrote their accounts of the incident that afternoon in their bilingual class.

This is what one child wrote:

"Mrs. Miller made me and our classmates sit on the floor to eat our lunch. She said that we are animals and we got it from our country. ... I was hurt, and when I got to my class I told my teacher about what happened. I did not like what she said about my country."

Isac and other parents complained to the principal, Pauline Shakespeare. They claim that Shakespeare, who is black, tried to cover for Miller.

They also claim school officials tried to bribe the kids with ice cream to deny the incident happened!

An April 1 note written by one of the children, Ronald Destine, backs that claim:

"Today after questioning my friend and I for the fourth time, the principal [Mrs. Shakespeare] sent the guidance lady [Mrs. Gilbert] to get me in my classroom while I was reviewing math.

"When we got to her room, Mrs. Gilbert asked me what the school could do to have us change my story.

"I answered, nothing because I want the truth to come out! At this time, she offered free ice cream to us so we could say something else.

"I have a big math exam coming this month, and I would like for the principal to stop harassing my classmate and I. Please do something."

No one at the school was talking yesterday.

When I reached Miller by phone yesterday, she would only say, "I can't talk about it, because it is under investigation."

Shakespeare did not return calls for comment. Elizabeth Bandy, the school's parent coordinator, sounded more like another bureaucrat than someone representing parents.

"I heard about it but I'm not at liberty to speak about it because it's under investigation," Bandy said.

A spokesman for Schools Chancellor Joel Klein confirmed that the office of special investigations has opened a probe into allegations of corporal punishment by Miller, noting that Education Department officials were taking the charges seriously.

Word of what happened in PS34 has been the big topic on the city's many Haitian radio programs for more than a week.

"The community is definitely outraged about this," said Dahoud Andre, host of one of those programs, "Lakou Nouyòk."

Parents and Haitian community leaders plan to picket the school today.

They want it made clear that educators who abuse and intimidate children, of any race, don't belong in our schools.

So here we go again--it's odd drinking and dining with elders--Wifey still thinks this is inappropriate, at least when it involves the forebears of Rob Chin, especially since all Chinatowns are one, the hive-mind of death-worship, our edge being our fecundity--to get a sense of the deep history behind a school that works, the maverick, lone wolf leave the cub behind sensibility which at the same time is myopic--it's never enough, what we are doing for our kids now, because there are more kids out there, always--what we might have gotten if only we'd asked for it.

So

They carry
their rolls
wherever
they go
they do not tote
in drooping
sails
their lines
they emjamb
to undermine
their trenchant
there.

So this is the score so far: Knob Creek neat, purple haze, Makers Mark rocks, and a longitudinal plan to topple algebra.

It's amazing how things fit together at points like this, how the critical theory one learned, the Wittgensteinian skepticism, the emjambing, and the seven types of ambiguity (even if this need not be read), altogether form a new-critical uncapitalized melange, better than the spice, dune, arrakis, dessert planet. As mazur says, taniyama provides a bridge between two worlds, and these worlds are on different planets. There is a sense, a drunk sense, imbibed in the right way, libated and liberated, associative in a way that makes me recall my old work, the verse without a net, or even a racket, the telescoping series of events and perspectives which add up to more than some of the parts, puns past running-on, a needless sense, the Original Sinn.

I miss wifey in times like this.

So it turns out that I am quite able to blog, in point of fact, insofar as there is a business connection here at this bujii hotel in the South for which Bill Gates is paying $165/night. Not bad for a third-year teacher who can't stop yellin at his kids.

So I am coffee-tired on a Wednesday and thoroughly confused as to what next to do this afternoon before yet another class, and another observation tomorrow, with an entire parade coming up, somehow. It's half a month to go before this paper due, another week after this one for Spring break, and at least two practices to be missed, somehow.

It's also the sort of hyperactive day where you are glad around 330 that the markets are all pretty much down, but then you suddenly get sidetracked explaining the development of algebraic number theory, and before you know it, all chances are closed out but it's okay because there's always tomorrow. Time to get back into shape.

So I suppose I need to get my blogging kicks in as soon as possible, as likely this weekend will bring a blog-blackout, roughly from Thursday morning until Sunday afternoon. Perhaps I can get Rob Chin to guest-blog, but like as not he'll just not-publish yet another draft.

Today's return to practice was miserable in the expected way--no follow-through, no zanshin, wobbly center, and horrendous ma-ai. Step by step is the way to go--it's odd to think that I'm not in a sports dojo, but that's a good thing--it's a long Way.

Anyone want South Carolingian souvenirs?

So I love 24's heady mix of office politics, global terror, co-worker romance, heavy-handed police tactics, and dinged feelings.

I imagine the grey-haired guy from Division's speech:

We have just been briefed that AirForce One has gone down over the Mojave Desert. The status of President Keeler is still unknown, but we are sending rescue teams there as soon as possible. Also, I was fucking Michelle Dessler, but she just turned me down. That is all. Keep focused, people.

.

So I just came from the obligatory class on Western (American) Images of Asians (Chinese). Slides and slices of entrenched (but not always so bad, really) racism against Asians aside, the real meat came from the discussion of representations of Asian males in contemporary American culture since the War. It was hard to know if I could have done any good in jumping in with this wonderfully heterogenous group remarking on how the Asian male is "gendered" as embodied by M. Butterfly (is Western capitalism's career as knackered as Jeremy Irons'?) and in particular feminized with all these childhood tales about how Asian men have smaller dicks, and Asian women have no breasts (giggle giggle), but of course, has the white woman done any fucking field research? It's too bad, as our professor reports, that Marxism is bankrupt. China will hafta rise another way.

So I ran into an ex of mine yesterday as I was exiting kenka with Rob Chin. It was strange, as it'd been just about two years since he'd dumped me after I fell asleep on him one night at the beginning of my first spring break as a teacher. Strangely enough, this was also around the time when I met wifey. In any case, Ex was looking rather farmerly and rather plumper than I remembered, as if he had just jumped off the haywagon from Wisconsin, and it was strange to be suddenly put on the spot--the how have you been question which pops right there--the are you still which makes you realize that in some ways you are still there and all--and the honesty that comes with, despite all of the formal and credentialistic advancement you're still kinda stuck, just biding time until who knows what, until the next credential and the next cherry post. Well, at least I'm not fat.

So it's spring and I have all manner of stirrings in me, of forgotten like seasons a year or two ago--this is only my third New York spring, though I feel as there have been more than that, as this will be my fourth summer here in the city and after college--there's something about the heat and the pollen and promise--I can understand why my kids' hormones get all up in this season--the afternoon was perfect and bright and even the winos decided to emerge again and smoke on street-corners, fanning out their issues of USWeekly for all takers. It's a heated unhappiness here, in the grocery supermarkets where I am the only one waiting in line who isn't shouldering what will soon be pernil. So I don't know--all I know is that I've skipped two kendo classes and will miss two this weekend when I am off to South Carolina, and I only have a half-assed idea what I will do with students tomorrow and this week, but it's somehow all OK, somehow.

So I don't normally quote in detail, but this seemed worth it:

Graduate student arrested

Mathematics student admits to about 60 incidents of lewd behavior toward Asian females on campus

By Chanakya Sethi

Princetonian Senior Writer

A graduate student in the mathematics department has been charged by Borough police with reckless endangerment and harassment in connection with more than 60 incidents targeting Asian women on campus. President Tilghman has barred the student from campus.

Michael Lohman, a third-year student in the applied and computational mathematics program, was charged last week by Borough police with two counts of reckless endangerment, two counts of tampering with a food product, one count of harassment and one count of theft.

Lohman, 28, cut and took locks of hair from about nine Asian female University students without their knowledge or consent and poured his own bodily fluids into the drinks of Asian female students more than 50 times, according to police reports.

Lohman lives in the Butler apartments with his wife of four years, who is Asian, a graduate student who knows him told The Daily Princetonian Tuesday.

The investigation began on March 3 when an Asian female student riding a campus Green Line shuttle bus on Washington Road reported to the Department of Public Safety (DPS) that an unidentified man had cut off a lock of her hair, University and Borough officials said.

Public Safety officials believed the incident was related to others dating back several years, DPS deputy director Charles Davall said Tuesday. The department had received three reports -- in October 2002, April 2003 and May 2004 -- of an unidentified man pouring substances into the drinks of Asian female students.

Those incidents occurred in the Graduate College dining hall serving line and in the Fine Hall library when the women's drinks were left unattended, Davall said.

A joint investigation between DPS and Borough police revealed that Lohman was on the Green Line shuttle when the female student's hair was snipped. In January, a witness from one of the earlier drink incidents identified Lohman in a photograph as the man who had poured an unknown substance into a woman's drink in April 2003, Davall said.

Upon interrogation, Lohman confessed to cutting the woman's hair and to cutting the hair of Asian female students at least eight other times, University communications director Lauren Robinson-Brown '85 said. All of the hair-snipping incidents occurred on campus, Davall said.

Lohman also admitted to pouring his bodily fluids into the drinks of Asian female students on more than 50 occasions, Robinson-Brown said. The fluids poured into the drinks were semen and urine, Lt. Dennis McManimon, the Borough police's spokesman, said in an interview Tuesday.

"In my 23 years in the department, this is clearly the most bizarre case that I've seen," McManimon said.

The Graduate College drink incidents in 2002 and 2003 occurred while Lohman was living there. Since the fall of 2003, however, Lohman has neither held a meal plan nor worked at the Graduate College dining hall, a graduate student who knows him and University officials said.

Borough police also reported that Lohman may have squirted bodily fluids on Asian female students as they rode on University shuttle buses.

A search of Lohman's apartment revealed "a quantity of women's panties and numerous mittens," according to a statement from Borough police.

The investigation, McManimon said, "has been leaning" toward the conclusion that Lohman stuffed the mittens with the hair he had obtained from students and used them for personal sexual gratification.

The full extent of Lohman's activity may not be known for some time, University and Borough officials cautioned. "The investigation is far from over. It's in its infancy," McManimon said.

Barred from campus

On Tuesday afternoon, University officials were finalizing paperwork to bar Lohman from campus. A section of "Rights, Rules, Responsibilities" -- the University document on disciplinary polices and regulations -- gives the president the authority to expel an individual from campus in circumstances "seriously affecting" the health, well-being or physical safety of any University person.

"I took the unusual step of barring Mr. Lohman from campus because the nature of his actions as we have come to understand them are not acceptable behavior on this campus, and are deeply disrespectful of the rights of others," Tilghman said in an e-mail Tuesday afternoon.

University officials are encouraging victims to come forward. "We are concerned that there are victims who have not come forward," Robinson-Brown said. "Anyone who feels that they were a victim should immediately contact Public Safety."

By the end of the day on Tuesday, the Borough police had received "at least a dozen" phone messages regarding the case, McManimon said, though he was not certain that all calls were from alleged victims.

Mental health questions

Borough police reported that Lohman was taken to Capital Health Systems, a hospital in nearby Trenton, after being arrested. Davall, the deputy director of DPS, said he could not say "whether [Lohman] is still there or why he was hospitalized."

It remains unclear whether Lohman suffers from a mental illness.

An e-mail message sent on Monday to students enrolled in MAT 308: Theory of Games, the course for which Lohman is a grader, explained the delay in returning student homework by saying that "Michael Lohman is sick."

Michael Litchman, a visiting professor in the psychology department who teaches a course on abnormal psychology, said, "Obviously [Lohman] has some extremely serious issues regarding interpersonal relationships, self esteem and socially acceptable behaviors in public."

"It may be that he does, indeed, like Asian women and may have been rejected by one or more, and he's angry and hurt. That's one possibility, but there are many other possibilities," Litchman, a clinical psychologist by training, said, stressing that he has not met with Lohman and thus cannot make a specific diagnosis.

"It might also go back to something that has happened to him prior to his entry to college, perhaps even during his childhood. At this point in time, it's difficult to pinpoint with any degree of certainty exactly what happened to this man other than to conclude that he needs intensive psychotherapy and that he shouldn't be allowed on this campus until such time as he's been successfully treated," he added.

A gifted mathematician

In interviews with the 'Prince,' a friend and former professors of Lohman painted a portrait of him as a gifted mathematician and friendly individual.

"I was shocked," a graduate student who knows Lohman said. "I couldn't believe [the news] because . . . how can one prove that he really did that?"

Lohman received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Louisiana State University (LSU) in 2001 and was awarded a scholarship on the basis of his academic performance, professorial recommendations and accomplishments in math.

While at LSU, Lohman met his future wife. They were married in the summer of 2001, just after Lohman graduated, the Princeton student who knows him said. When Lohman moved to Princeton in 2002 after a year of graduate work at LSU, his wife stayed in Louisiana to finish her doctoral degree.

For the year during which they were separated, Lohman lived in the Graduate College, the Princeton graduate student said. When Lohman's wife joined him in Princeton, the couple moved to the Butler apartments, which are intended for married couples.

"They seemed happy," the student said. "The relations between he and his wife were excellent."

LSU mathematics professor Robert Perlis, who taught Lohman and was on the committee that decided to offer him a scholarship, said he was "absolutely shocked and almost in disbelief that [Lohman] could do something like this."

Another LSU professor, James Oxley, said that though his interaction with Lohman was confined to the classroom, he "had no reason to believe anything other than he was a normal student, except very gifted mathematically."

Oxley said he "was really impressed with [Lohman's] mathematical ability" -- so impressed that he recommended that Lohman go to Princeton for graduate school. He encouraged Lohman to work with Paul Seymour, a University professor he considered "the best person" in the field of graph theory.

Perlis added that Oxley "thought Michael would perhaps do better in the Princeton environment" because of the opportunities to work with some of the strongest minds in applied and computational mathematics.

When Lohman wasn't admitted to Princeton, according to the graduate student who knows him, he stayed at LSU for another year and reapplied to Princeton -- this time successfully.

"Princeton is the place he really wanted to come," the graduate student who knows him said. "He wants to be a professor, surely, in academia. He had a lot of progress on his research project, so it's a pity that he cannot continue his work . . . I will be so sorry about it."

Seymour and other members of Princeton's mathematics department declined to comment on Monday, citing a desire to respect Lohman's privacy.

I guess all's I got to say is that it's good to see applied math is good for something. I'm looking in general Rob Chin's direction.

So I keep on losing this post, for various reasons, but I was at some point triumphant though that sense of triumph was not really aware of the deep exhaustion which dogs me still, having passed out for four hours this afternoon and positively drooping on the train on the way home from the aquarium. Meeting with parents after working six straight periods, or rather just about seven hours, was actually rather satisfying, and walking around after hours, with everyone else gone (which happens rather often, I must admit), I felt like I was doing about the right thing. Perhaps that was also based upon the impolitick comments of another team's para that I should work with their students more often--it's sad to see how much more effective I am with other students than with my own--the thing about my teaching these days is that I've gone away from the more high-powered directive methods that are taken to be good teaching, but that has usually meant a surrender of any real responsibility for clarity or exposition. That is, leading requires more than not-saying.

So I'm vaguely inspired to go back and study more sociology, particularly of the "micro" variety--I'm reminded of the sexy dream in 1984 in which Winston dreams of the Golden Country and wakes up with the word "Shakespeare" on his lips, only on my lips would be the words "Goffman" for all the forgotten promise of freshman year--I used to be much more of a generalist and dabbler--these days I working-classedly fritter away my time doing the same thing Over and Over Again as they say. All this redoery is founded on tonight's lecture, which makes me take more structural-Marxist approaches more seriously--somehow the statistics that one needs for real hardcore sociology is the sort of thing we should be aiming for, not more algebraic manipulation.

Parents are always odd to meet and greet, with my broken espanish and optimistic attitude, as well as my apologetic Chinese and bogus evidence of student progress. I feel like such a charlatan, and not the poetic kind that lurks around Nelsonian kiosks, but the mountebank whose laziness is ill-suited to this messy individualized mess.

So it's crazy--I debuted a new shinai today and within a few cuts (whacks, I guess), the nakayui had broken again. Either eguchi has cheap leather or I am hitting too much mengane. It's really unclear, while at the same time I feel guilty for not being able to make practice Thursday because of parents. It's tough, as I'm still nearly always the lowest bebogued student, though finally there are a few young-uns who are slowly climbing into their do and tare. It's a good road, but one that just needs to be walked.

It was a hectic day today, when I barely got a chance to go to the usual team meeting because of the conference, but it turned out all right--my cute baby strand did rather well in terms of presentations today, and I still can do my fair share of logic. I am currently mulling over some sort of summer-school/college-credit deal. Were I to do that, I would be able to finish my entire salary max-out thing, but I might also go a little crazy, maybe--it's hard to know. Hrmm. I wonder what happened to Rob Chin.

So Kenneth is doing rather well, he tells me, having made it into the LSE, which is quite a feat. Now his odd unidentifiable Singlish accent might not seem so out of place. He boasts that they only have a 3% admissions rate, but then again that's still higher than his ass. Still better than Brother, whose best bet is still somehow the RPI, which is literally rather unheard of still. RPI, perhaps, is still better than the NYCTF.

Today I was super-teacherly, strongly directive, talking for thirty minutes, a la my Mr. White counterpart. It's odd, though as I am feeling deeply lazy these days with all these days off and conferences and what not--it's a matter of counting time, hard-core grading, and fending off complaints and comparisons to my reactionary counterpart. It's an uphill battle most of the way, somehow. Time to figure out busywork for my class tomorrow.

So today I was lucky enough to find a dollar, albeit rather wet and sandy, on my rainy way into work today. This was for the time small recompense for my usual office-bound financial dithering amid legions of yearbooking students and yet more arbitrary grading of half-assed student projects when I could have been snuggling with Wifey or watching more of NBC Saturday morning. Having no time to get real food and barely finishing my anecdotal report cards, I was forced to dip into leftover Valentines candy and feed myself only on Hershey's kisses and lightly salted peanuts, which meant that I was all light-headed and stomachey. Luckily, practice cleared my head--despite the humidity and overdidactic kata pandering to the beginners, by the end of a very muggy mawari-geiko, I was awake again.

Wifey's gotten a cute new short haircut. I've little else to report, I suppose, other than a crazier and crazier series of weeks (conferences, parents, aquarium), until Spring Break weeks and weeks away. Okuri-ashi is the way to go--keep that head level.