The study constrained itself to “utilitarian moral judgments” which were themselves limited to having only two allowed answers, so maybe people with damaged prefrontal cortexes (cortexen?) are just faster at choosing between two options. You should read the paper and let me know. I’m not going to bother :) Here’s an excerpt from the press release, though.

Quick response! What’s the best thing to do on a lifeboat with one too many people on board? Should one throw a mortally injured person overboard to ensure definite survival for everyone else, or refuse to act and ensure certain death for all individuals in the boat?

If you said “throw the injured person overboard”, science has concluded that you have brain damage.

In Tuesday’s lecture, we were discussing grand unified theories, and he posed the (implied) question, “Guess how many grand unified theories I understand.” I responded quickly and authoritatively, “Zero.” The professor immediately burst out laughing and headed for his wallet. Fishing around for a quarter he said, “No, no, no. That deserves something more”. He pulled out a single, but said, “No, no”, and pulled out a five spot. Coming over to my seat he proclaimed to the class, “This is the most money I have ever given out in all my days as a lecturer. No one has ever had the chutzpah to say something like that. Congratulations.” I expressed my deepest honor and gratitude and stuck it in my pocket.

The rest of the class responded with a mixture of laughter, shock, and (I’d like to think) admiration (for the both of us).

To make the deal even sweeter, Professor Wise also finalized his plans to take the class out to dinner the following evening.

Five bucks and a free meal for going to class and being a smart ass. Awesome.

They play a little hard to get, functional derivatives do. But once you get the hang of them, they’re reasonably straightforward to cope with. I’ve known and loved various sorts of delta functions for quite some time; functional differentiation isn’t such a step from there. It’s the functional integration that gets a little tricky. As far as I’m concerned, defining and comparing measures is done by waving tiny little hands over yellow bits of paper and writing down an equal sign here or there.

I have never once thought, “I know enough math.”

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Michelle wondered to me whether these announcements and subsequent, or supersequent as the case may be (don’t bother to look that one up either), congratulatory notes will get boring by the time they would be applicable to either of us. I wonder whether there will be anyone around by the time such announcements concern me.

But Amigo’s was good at any rate. Katie (bless her) made a delicious chocolate cake (recall, now ISO standard) for the occassion which Heidi kindly offered to the always happy staff at Caltech’s favorite geek bar. I bailed on the party early, though, as it was also Quantum Margarita Night; at about 9:30 I moved to the table next door and talked shop for the next… many hours over margaritas. I hope QMN doesn’t get permanently moved to Thursdays, though. I TA lab this term on Fridays at 8:00am.

In other news, it seems likely (it used to seem unlikely) that I’m being funded by IQI over the summer. Not a sure thing, though.