Metal Monday

I know, it’s not Monday. I’ve been revisiting many of the bands that I listened to in high school. I was excited because Kreator was going to be in Lubbock on Sunday (!), but they didn’t show up. Exodus was there instead. I’ll write about both of those bands later, but I wanted to kick off this series with the most extreme metal band I can remember, Nitro. Here’s there video for “Freight train,” their only real hit (and I use the term loosely):

Nitro comprises Jim Gillette on vocals, Michael Angelo Batio on guitar, T.J. Racer on bass, and Bobby Rock (not the producer) on drums. Everything about Nitro was remarkably overdone. Gillette boasted a five-octave range: according to Wikipedia, they were signed to a record deal after he shattered three wine glasses with his voice at a gig. Batio was (and still is, I think) a hero to shredders everywhere: his over-and-under left hand technique (see at the beginning of the video) and the infamous quad guitar that descends from the heavens at about 2:18 into the video set him apart from other metal guitarists at the time. And, let’s face it, the hair is second to none.

Gillette is now married to the first lady of heavy metal, Lita Ford. Batio has a solo career and has been releasing instructional videos such as this one:

Watch Michael Angelo Batio VERY INFORMATIVE shred lesson !!!!!!! in Comedy  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

2009 Fulkerson Prize

It seems 2009 Fulkerson Prize is awarded to the following paper.

• Maria Chudnovsky, Neil Robertson, Paul Seymour, Robin Thomas : The Strong Perfect Graph Theorem, Annals of Mathematics Vol. 164 (2006), 51 — 229 [pdf]

This is the fourth time for Paul Seymour, third time for Neil Robertson and second time for Robin Thomas. The list of past winners is here and here.

My Other Blog

I started a new blog (exclusively for technical posts) using wordpress. I like latex-editing features of wordpress much better than blogger. I will continue to use this blog for quick theory-related announcements, puzzles and other fun stuff.

Valiant's 60th Birthday Celebration

The program for Valiant’s birthday celebration is listed on STOC 2009 website. Next week (May30th to June 5th) is an exciting week. Valian’t Birthday celebration, followed by STOC 2009, followed by complexity workshop. I am glad that I will be attending all of them.

Godel Prize 2009

Via My Biased Coin….

The 2009 Godel Prize is awarded to Omer Reingold, Salil Vadhan and Avi Wigderson for their work on Zig-zag product of graphs. Here are the related papers :

• Entropy waves, the zig-zag graph product, and new constant-degree.
• Undirected st-connectivity in Log-Space.

Magical double bass?

In doing some research on (i.e., Googling) the double bass in Russia, I stumbled across this, which is old news, apparently:

Tonya Grotter and her Magical Double Bass

It’s a Russian parody/unauthorized copy/cultural adaptation of the Harry Potter books (which I’m proud to say I still haven’t read, despite working at a Barnes and Noble at the height of their popularity). But it’s totally different–the girl attends Abracadabra Magic School and flies around on a Double Bass.

The book is (not surprisingly) not available in English translation. I’m not going to get into all of the legal problems surrounding it. I did manage to find an unauthorized (!) translation* of part of it:

Chapter 4: “They forged Rvakli?”

“Tsviang!” hummed the string third from the end, which Tanya pressed
closer to the middle of the fingerboard. Hardly had the sound faded
when on the loggia sprang up a fat round head in a copper helmet. It was
about the same size as a decent cauldron, and fearsomely rotated its
gaze. The head’s appearance, frankly, was like a robber’s. Its curved
nose had at some time been dented by a fist, and on its cheek it
displayed a long scar.

“They forged Rvakli?” it asked, when its gaze settled on the little
girl.

“They didn’t forge Rvakli…I made a little mistake….” mumbled
Tanya, attempting to hide behind the double bass.

[...]

Tanya backed up in fright and, hoping the head would disappear,
quickly ran the bow across the neighboring string.

“Bzhiangg!” droned the string thickly. No, the head didn’t
disappear. Instead there immediately arose another right alongside,
even more bandit-like than the first and adorned with fluffy feldwebel
whiskers.

*Do two wrongs make a right? What about my unauthorized reproduction of the unauthorized translation of the unauthorized parody/copy?

STOC 2009 and Complexity Workshop at Princeton

I am attending STOC 2009 and this workshop titled “Complexity and Cryptography: Status of Impagliazzo’s Worlds” at Princeton. It is scheduled right after STOC 2009. I am planning to drive to STOC (Maryland) and then to princeton. Looking forward to one week of excellent theory talks !!

Anybody in and around atlanta (or) on the way to maryland, let me know if you want to join the drive. I have two more vacancies in my car.