April 20

It is a crazy-busy time right now with school winding up as it winds down - cram night, exam writing, exam grading, finalizing records, trying to assuage student distress, etc., etc. It's also kind of a special day - my grandpa's 98th birthday, and the anniversary of the day David and I got engaged :-)

In the midst of the craziness I still couldn't resist driving 90-ish miles to go to a math lecture at Stanford. The title Linguistics, Poetry, and Mathematics (my three very most favorite topics) just made it too tempting to me to resist. Not only that but the speaker, Dr. Majul Bhargava of Princeton, got his Ph.D. under Andrew Wiles (of Fermat's Last Theorem fame), so that added to the draw for me. Besides, I hadn't been out of town in as long as I can remember, so it was time for an adventure.

As part of the adventure I arrived a bit early and just enjoyed Stanford's beautiful campus - with my eye and with my camera.

One thing I was very pleased to see is that the speaker used overhead projectors - my favorite, yet much maligned, mode of presentation! (Note the good-sized crowd.)

Here's a close-up (note that the poetry he focused on was Sanskrit poetry):