The More Things Change...

The more they seem oddly familiar.

The World Series is upon us, and I find myself rooting for the local team. As I drive around the city, I see billboards cheering them on with the words "We Believe." When I turn on the television to watch the game, I see "Go Sox" lit up in the windows of skyscrapers. The underdog is down three games to none, and once again I want to believe in the impossible.

Other things that I thought would change have also stayed the same. It's a clear Texas night in October, but the temperature right now is a chilly 46 degrees. And while the Rice Football team may indeed be a step up from that of Oberlin, which holds the record for most consecutive losses by an NCAA team, the Owls do hold the longest current losing streak. Maybe they'll erase the Yeomen from their dubious place in history.

In other news, I am once again published, albeit on the internet, so it doesn't really count. But it's a math article that is based partly on some work I did last year as part of my honors project. The proof that I was working on then was completed by Ben Purcell, a student at Oberlin, who then wrote up most of the paper. It's about playing games with binary strings! Check it out at http://www.oberlin.edu/math/Research/Burns-Purcell.pdf. You can also get there by going to the math department homepage, http://www.oberlin.edu/math, and clicking on the button for "student research," which I think is pretty cool.