E. Kowalski’s blog

I was last week at the conference on “Number theory and its applications” which was excellently organized by C. Delaunay and F.X. Roblot at the CIRM conference center, close to Marseille. Although I don’t have last year’s excuse at the end of the Joint Math Meetings, my remarks will be just as incoherent…

• M. Watkins showed a book he recently bought in the Canary Islands, which proves that G. Perelman is on his way to becoming a pop-culture figure:
  
  A cursory look at the content (though not by native Spanish speakers!) does not seem to suggest that this a serious work of mathematical scholarship…
• For the future writer of the definitive history of analytic number theory, I offer this remark from É. Fouvry, who said one could quote him:

  … et Chebychev arrive avec une astuce de voleur de mobylette… (…and then Chebychev comes around with a trick worthy of a bicycle thief)

• Charles Boyd, an enterprising soul worthy of homeric epithets, has ported Pari/GP to android

  

  The package can be downloaded here. There’s something confortable in having your phone factor the 8-th Fermat number during a post-dinner round-wine discussion… One may object that, at the moment, any syntax error causes the program to exit unceremoniously, but certainly this will soon improve. (Note: the broken screen was not caused by Paridroid…)

The world cup of the world’s greatest team sport has just ended with the final victory of the New Zealand team against the XV de France. Although it is somewhat bitter to fail for the third time in the final, all partisans of the French artistry on the field (where viril, mais correct is but one of the noble guiding principles) recognize that a victory — and it was rather close! — would have been undeserved. Indeed, the French qualified for the final only after a rather lucky win against a brilliant Welsh team in the semi-final. After fighting more than an hour with one man less, the Welsh barely lost by one point (9 to 8, and more importantly, without the French scoring a single try). I feel that the French’s loss by the same point (7 to 8) is fair. Their tremendous fighting spirit shows that their presence here today was not, in fact, entirely undeserved, but a win would have left a sour taste in my mouth. Let’s hope that in four years, they will (for once…) actually play throughout the tournament with the same intensity. And then let the best team win…

How much wine should riot-control police be allowed at lunch time? Should they strike about it? Important questions…

All unbiased observers agree that Rugby is the greatest of all team sports. Unbelievers should need no more than one look at this video to be convinced: a whole minute of play without interruption, ranging over the (large) field from one end to the other (both in length and width), ending with a try scored by the great Serge Blanco after ten or eleven players on his team touched the ball. This was during the last minute of the semifinal of the first Rugby World Cup, in 1987, between Australia and France (the French, having won this game to almost general surprise, rather characteristically lost the final game againt New Zealand).

One possible problem with Rugby is that it may be considered to be a bit on the violent side. It’s not quite as bad as suggested by Astérix chez les Bretons:

but it is sometimes a bit scary to see three or four fast and powerful players running towards the gallant arrière as he positions himself to catch the ball falling after a big parabolic kick (une chandelle, as we say in French), knowing that the rules allow them to do most anything to take it back — it is not permitted to jump at his throat, or to catch him in midair, but as soon as he has his feet back on the ground…