Needed?

Do we need Bob Dylan?

I'm listening to Dylan when he was young. He got into his singing, and guitar playing. Hollering and whatever he felt different kinds of folk music needed. I like him. Do I need him?


Am I needed in Chilpancingo?

Am I needed in the World?

These questions tend to be irrelevant in my mind. Can I do this? Is a more relevant question.

I'm also reading a Stephen Wolfram program. Do I need Wolfram?

Another relevant question in my mind is: Is that original?

Around here students come to see their mentors if by doing so, they will learn something, and get recognition for it, and eventually financial support to keep on living.

I need Wolfram more than I need Dylan.

From Wolfram:

The shift map is a standard example of the sensitive dependence on initial conditions that is at the core of traditional chaos theory. This Demonstration illustrates this basic phenomenon, and shows that there is often more going on in the shift map.

At each step, a number is multiplied by the specified multiplier, but only the fractional part is kept. The main array shows the base-2 digit sequences of successive numbers generated in this way.

One starts with two numbers that differ by a "perturbation" that affects only high-order digits. What the Demonstration shows is that often such a perturbation will grow, as its digits are shifted into more significant positions.

For multiplier 2, all the shift map does is to shift digits to the left. There is apparent randomness in the values shown on the left even in this case, so long as the digit sequence of the initial conditions is somehow seemingly random, say because it comes from a number like $\frac{1}{\pi}$

If machine arithmetic is used (as in most earlier numerical work), the phenomenon becomes more confused, since after a limited time one "runs out of bits", and starts generating 0s.

With multipliers other than 2, another phenomenon appears: even with very simple initial conditions, apparent randomness is generated, quite independent of "excavating the bits" from the initial conditions. In most practical situations, this is probably a more important source of randomness than the specific one associated with sensitive dependence on initial conditions.

End of Wolfram's notes.

What am I getting at?

First and foremost I need myself. I really like to be alive; problem is, I do not have what I need to do my work. My monitor is green, bad cable; my modem is gone, maybe a weather related effect, I may not get the Physics class I am teaching this term, after January. A few students are interested, but they do not seem to me at this point, like physicist material; maybe one or two. So:

Am I needed?

The main point is that I need more money. People here are not showing me the money. Students seem grateful, but they don't have money.

Day to day, things look alright. I am concerned about later, both for me, my family, and the world.

In six days I fly to Dallas. Last time I was there, immigration officers treated me bad. Somehow my not being full time in the States, was against the rule of my status. My wife and I had the same problem when we went to live one year to Cambridge. I was invited at MIT by professor Hung Cheng. In that case it was the Mexican officials who stopped us on my birthday coming home, while my family was waiting at the airport in Mexico City. The mess was eventually fixed in the Interior Ministry, in charge of innigration matters.

I do not know good bureaucrats.