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blogshares

Published November 12, 2004 by lieven


I've added a few side-bar links just for fun. One is who links here which is described to
be

Who Links To Me – for the ultimate
narcissist within you

and if you click it you get
_some_ of the pages linking to this weblog. Not that it is so
important but it is pleasant to see that some real people (as opposed to
spiders) look at this page and at times this is needed just to carry on
blogging.

Another link I like is blogshares. On its homepage its purpose is described
as

BlogShares is a fantasy stock market for
weblogs. Players get to invest a fictional $500, and blogs are valued by
inbound links.

Much to my surprise my blog is
valued to be worth $3,793.32. I'll be happy to cash this in and
start a brand new blog anytime! Unfortunately, so far nobody seems to
have bought a share of @matrix, so please do, I think it's a good
investment if you look at the current growth rate. A more sobering
figure is that my present market share is a mere 0.000195188 %…

(added febr 2007) : clearly i’ve given up on
such things (though I’m presently worth 5 times more)

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congrats carolyn

Published November 10, 2004 by lieven


Rumour has it (see for example here or here)
that Carolyn Dean proved the Jacobian
conjecture in two variables!!!
Melvin Hochster seems to have
checked the proof and is convinced it is ok. Here is what he mailed to
seminar participants

The Jacobian conjecture
in the plane has been an open problem since 1939 (Keller). The simple
statement is this: given a ring map $F$ of $C[x,y]$ (the polynomial ring
in two variables over the complex numbers $C$) to itself that fixes $C $
and sends $x, y$ to $f, $g, respectively, $F$ is an automorphism if and
only if the Jacobian determinant $f_x g_y – f_y g_x$ is a nonzero
element of $C$. The condition is easliy seen to be necessary.
Sufficiency is the challenge.

Carolyn Dean has
proved the conjecture and will give a series of talks on it beginning
Thursday, December 2, 3-4 pm, continuing on December 9 and December 16.
Because there have been at least five published incorrect proofs and
innumerable incorrect attempts, any announcement of a proof tends to be
received with skepticism. I have spent approximately one hundred hours
(beginning in mid-August) checking every detail of the argument. It is
correct.

Many congratulations Carolyn and I hope to see you once
again somewhere, sometime.

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version pi

Published November 10, 2004 by lieven

Now
that versions 2 and 3 of my abandoned book project
noncommutative~geometry@n are being referenced (as suggested) as
“forgotten book” (see for example Michel's latest paper) it is
perhaps time to consider writing version $\\pi$. I haven't made up
my mind what to include in this version so if you had a go at these
versions (available no longer)
and have suggestions, please leave a comment. An housekeeping-note :
this blog is flooded with link-spammers recently so I did remove the
automatic posting of comments. I use the strategy proposed by Angsuman to combat
them. This sometimes means that I overlook a comment (this morning I
discovered a lost comment while cleaning up the spam-comments, sorry!)
but it is the only way to keep this blog poker-casino-sex-etc free. It
goes without saying that any relevant comment (positive or negative)
will be approved as soon as I spot it.

At the moment I
haven't the energy to start the writing phase yet, but I am slowly
preparing things

  • Emptied the big antique table upstairs
    to have plenty of place to put things.
  • Got myself a laser
    printer and put it into our home-network using AirportExpress which
    allows to turn any USB-printer into a network-printer.
  • Downloaded the Springer Verlag Book Stylefiles svmono.zip. This
    does not mean that I will submit it there (in fact, I promised at least
    one series-editor to send him a new version first) but these days I
    cannot bring myself to use AMS-stylefiles.
  • Accepted an
    invitation to give a master-course on noncommutative geometry in Granada in 2005 which, combined with
    the master-class here in Antwerp next semester may just be enough
    motivation to rewrite notes.
  • Bought all four volumes of the
    reprinted Winning Ways for your
    Mathematical Plays     as inspiration for fancy terminology and notation
    (yes, it will be version $\\pi$ and _not_ version $e$).
  • etc.
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