Cubism - Your Challenge

Type the cube root of the displayed number and press ENTER to submit your answer. If correct, press ENTER again to get a new puzzle!

The Ten Most Terrible Tyrants of Tech

As a favor to Valleywag/Gawker, since this one is so hard to find (from Aug 2008). Very, very dated and not fact-checked at all. Read at your own risk :)

Here's to the screaming ones. The chair-throwers. The death-threat makers. The imperious gazers. The ones who see things differently — and will stare you down until you do, too. They're not fond of rules, especially those outlined by the human-resources department on "treating your employees with respect." And they have no respect for conversational decibel levels. You can cower before them, hide from them, quote them behind their backs, or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they're so damn loud. They've worked at Google. Apple. Microsoft. AOL. They've ruled the industry — or they've failed, loudly. Below, we present you tech's 10 most tempestuous bosses — the ones who scream different. While some see them as sociopaths, Valleywag sees genius.

Steve Jobs: It's worse when he's not yelling

Steve Jobs's hot temper is as notorious as it is well-documented. The Apple CEO parks in handicapped spots. He'll fire employees in a tantrum. But more fearsome yet is Jobs's indifference. Even calm, calculated words can shrivel his underlings' spirits. He's created a cold atmosphere at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, one former employee tells us:

"No one greets him or says hi to him. Low ranking employees are afraid of him. I remember him walking around the campus one time and groups of people in his way would just split and let him walk through."

"My boss," says our source, "She's been with Apple since 1979. But she's only talked to Steve Jobs twice. She did a presentation for him when he was 24. He showed up half an hour late and without shoes. She needed money to start up a team. Steve Jobs listened to her presentation for an hour, said no and just got up and walked away." Another former employee told Variety in 2006: "Steve is always the smartest guy in the room and he knows it."

Eric Schmidt : Why companies need divas like Jobs to build brilliant products

Rob Glaser: screams to make the pain stop

Rob Glaser, the CEO and founder of RealNetworks, likes to scream. One former employee tells us that his abuse is so virulent that at it's common for RealNetworks execs to leave the company only one or two months before they're scheduled to receive bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our source says: "Another example was a buddy CEO at a startup back in the heyday of bubble 1.0."

"Real and Rob were expecting to make a strategic investment in a startup, only to lose out to Microsoft at the last minute. [That sent Glaser] screaming, throwing things, and ultimately slamming the door on the way out of the CEO's office knocking and breaking a picture on the wall."

Marc Benioff: Flowers ... and handcuffs

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff is a charmer, which is also a nice way of saying he's a smarmy manipulator. Blowing off call after call with a Time contributor, he might send flowers and leave a long voicemail explaining himself. But when the Wall Street Journal wanted to write a story about Benioff's Hawaiian vacation home, the Salesforce.com CEO went off the handle, writing the wife of Dow Jones's CEO a letter, flying to New York to berate a Journal editor, and then, finally ordering ordering construction workers and local police to detain a Journal reporter checking out the property. So a warning to Salesforce.com employees: better hope the boss's smile keeps working.

Diane Greene: Her only mistake was working for another tyrant

Reports the Register:

[VMware] employees have talked to us about going into meetings with [cofounder Diane] Greene and crawling into their foxholes, hoping to avoid being struck by criticism or worse, a tirade.

These same employees describe Greene as "a hard-driving perfectionist who loves nothing more than to get her way." But despite her flaring temper, VMware cofounder Diane Greene's underlings loved her as the head of their company, especially as her dictatorial management style helped send its stock through the roof. But the stock eventually faltered, and Greene's tempestuous attitude threatened Joe Tucci, CEO of VMware's parent company, EMC. Greene and Tucci never got along, and so when Tucci got the chance, he pushed Greene out of the company.

Ex Jobster CEO Jason Goldberg: hot head, hot lead

Jason Goldberg, the fired CEO of Jobster, now runs social news site Social Median. He still has a problem with his verbal filter. He thinks things, it seems, and even if he shouldn't, he'll say them. For example, there's the YouTube video embedded above. Goldberg impolitely rips Jobster's rival, Monster.com, calling it a "crap product." Takes a lot of testosterone to say that about the market leader — especially when no one's heard of Jobster. But that's not the worst of it. No, that'd probably be the time Goldberg told an employee he was going to put a bullet in her head because she allegedly leaked news of an executive poaching.

Bill Gates: Doesn't even love his mother

These days, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates is known as the most charitable person in the entire world, giving away billions of dollars through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. But for years, Gates was known first for his money and second for a mean streak that flared particularly with women, starting with his mom. In an article bidding farewell to the now-retired top executive at Microsoft, Wired ran down the highlights:

• 1967: Gates, a difficult sixth grader, asks his mother, "Have you ever tried thinking?"
• 1977: On several occasions, Gates's secretary enters the Microsoft building to find him crumpled on the floor, asleep. He continues to live on pizza and is a demanding boss, often fighting with colleagues. Among his favorite responses: "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."
• 1985: Gates reportedly abuses a female executive so badly that she asks to be transferred.
• May 13, 1990: Gates schedules a retreat for Microsoft company executives — on Mother's Day.

Ex-AOL sales chief David Colburn - Prepared to get biblical on your ass

Back when he ran ad sales at AOL in the late '90s, David Colburn earned himself quite the nickname. The peons called him God — you know, the guy who turns water to blood and rains locusts down from the heavens. Once, at a holiday party in December 1999, Colburn called three rabbis up on stage and told them to pray for AOL's success, promising to donate $1 million to any Jewish cause if AOL's stock hit certain levels. The rabbis agreed, startling offended partygoers. But according to author Alec Klein, who recounts the anecdote in his book Stealing Time, none of them were about to say anything.

Who wanted to incur the wrath of David Colburn? There was so much to David Colburn, all of it so outrageous and comical and scary and brilliant and successful and charitable, that he almost defied human description. And yet there he was an open book, a raging, exploding caricature of a personality, a combustible force of nature.

A source who used to sit on the other side of the negotiation table from Colburn tells us that the ex-AOLer was an "evil f**r" who "scared the shit out of me, back in the day." Klein describes Colburn's negotiation tactics in a similar vein:

His was a bone-jarring negotiating technique that was filled with swearing and threatening. During one phone call in his office, he was heard yelling at someone, belittling him, tearing him down, screaming, "Don't be a f**g idiot!"

Someone, who happened to be passing by, asked another bystander whom Colburn was talking to.

"A client," came back the answer.

"David had such a reputation that you could always use his presence as a threat," said Neil Davis, a former senior vice president. "It was like, 'If we can't get over this issue, we have to get David on the phone' I could always invoked David as teh court of appeals."

"His presence just caused a ripple of fear," said an AOL official who worked for him. "You could always hear him coming."

Once worth an estimated $250 million, Colburn in May settled an SEC lawsuit alleging he and other former AOL execs schemed in 1990s to overstate AOL's earnings by some $1 billion.

TechCrunch editor Michael Arrington: Doesn't discriminate — he holds everyone in contempt

Michael Arrington's temper is as bad as everyone assumes. Says a former employee:

He yells at anyone and everyone, including his staff, and including [TechCrunch CEO] Heather [Harde]. I'd note though that it's not just the yelling, it's the tone he takes as well. Maybe a cultural thing, but I'd never talk to people the way he does. Everyone is beneath him, and he holds most people in contempt. But oddly enough it's always in short bursts. If you remember Loren [Feldman]'s Arrington puppet videos [embedded above], that's pretty close to what he's like. He'll be mid-sentence then stop and yell at someone else, then revert to the original conversation like he had never stopped. Weirdest thing I've seen. Perhaps a need to put others down to boost his own ego, or a complete lack on empathy for anyone other than himself.

Google SVP Jonathan Rosenberg: He'll yell at Larry and Sergey, too

Google's Mountain View campus is a happy primary-colored wonderland where no one ever screams or yells. Except for SVP Jonathan Rosenberg. A Google employee tells us that at the Googleplex Rosenberg is known as "a shitkicker" who "likes to crack the whip." Google lore has it that Rosenberg likes to yell so much, he even hollered during his hiring interview, presumably with Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

People were like what the f is going on in that conference room? And then someone was like someone is interviewing, and it's the interviewee who's doing the yelling. He just literally likes to yell.

His broken volume dial hasn't hurt his career: Rosenberg is one of a handful of execs who's allowed to participate in Google's quarterly earnings calls with Wall Street.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer: Would like to "kill" Google and its "pussy" CEO

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer loses it all the time, but nothing beats the story of when former Microsoft engineer Mark Lucovsky went into Ballmer's office to say he'd been poached by Google. After Google hired away Microsoft executive Kai Fu-Lee, Microsoft sued and eventually, Lucovsky ended up telling the story under oath. A telling excerpt:

At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: "Just tell me it's not Google." I told him it was Google. At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: "F**g Eric Schmidt is a f**g p**. I'm going to f**g bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I'm going to f**g kill Google."

Elon Musk the Entertainer, by Walter Isaacson

Done? Please comment to let us know how you liked it :)

On the Fly Tool Creation with chatGPT

If you know me, you know I'm a tool guy. In this case, I have a list of books that I want to put in my email. I'd like to do what the video shows - have the author,title in a line of text, click on it and be able to insert that in my email in a message to myself. So, how do I get such a list that is "interactive" - because I want to see which ones I've already picked - aka, where I am in the list..

Thank you chatGPT. Sometimes, you can hack it.

Starting prompt (one iteration saying "not ok" not shown)

I will give you a text file consisting of several paragraphs. Each will contain the name of a book and author. The book name is on the first line and "by <author name>" on second line.

Your task is to parse the text, and give me a downloadable HTML file with javascript. When I open the file in a browser, I will see the list of books and authors in this format : 

author name - book name - book recommendation

To clarify, that means name of the book, then a a hyphen, the author name, another hyphen and finally, the words "book recommendation" . One one each line

The javascript will ensure that, when I click on any line, the text of the entire line will be copied to clipboard. No alert box of any kind is required and should be suppressed.

All the text should initially be displayed in bold font. When a line is clicked (anytime a line is clicked, its text will be copied to clipboard) it's font should toggle - that is, if it was bold, it should change to normal and vice versa.

And chatGPT's re-write:

I will provide a text file with several paragraphs. Each paragraph includes the title of a book on the first line and the author on the second line, formatted as:

<Book Title>

by <Author Name>.

Your task is to:

Parse the file to extract the book titles and author names.

Create a downloadable HTML file that:

Displays the books and authors in the following format:

• <Author Name> - <Book Title> - book recommendation.
• Lists each book entry on its own line.

Add functionality to the HTML using JavaScript so that:

All book entries are initially displayed in bold font.
Clicking on any line:

• Copies the text of the entire line to the clipboard silently (no alerts or pop-ups should be shown).
• Toggles the appearance of the line between bold and normal fonts.

Ensure the font toggling works regardless of the initial style applied or browser-specific behavior.

Style the HTML for readability:

• Use a clear, modern font (e.g., Arial or sans-serif).
• Ensure the list items change the cursor to a pointer on hover, indicating they are clickable.

Believe it or not, the JS magic doing that formatting is pretty compact:

<script>

  document.querySelectorAll('.book-item').forEach(item => {

    item.addEventListener('click', () => {

      // Copy text to clipboard

      navigator.clipboard.writeText(item.innerText).catch(err => console.error(err));

      // Toggle font weight

      item.style.fontWeight = item.style.fontWeight === 'bold' || item.style.fontWeight === '' ? 'normal' : 'bold';

    });

  });

</script>

 

What Can You Do to Get Type 2 Diabetes

In type 2 diabetes, the body is unable to regulate sugar levels in the blood. Several factors are involved in sugar level regulation in type 2 diabetes, including genetic and environmental interactions and increased calorie intake (high fat diet) and lack of exercise. All of these factors induce insulin-related abnormalities, ultimately leading to events that cause late-onset type 2 diabetes. Overall, the elevated level of blood glucose is due to the failure of beta cells in the pancreas to produce insulin or to regulate insulin resistance.

Some lifestyle choices that can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes include: 

• Extra weight, especially around the waist, can lead to insulin resistance and increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. 
• Not being physically active at least three times a week can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. 
• A high fat diet can increase calorie intake and lead to insulin-related abnormalities. 
• Regularly drinking more than 14 units of alcohol per week can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. 
• Snoring, short sleep duration, and long sleep duration can all increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. 
• Sitting for long periods without standing up can increase the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

How do you know if you're developing diabetes?

• Urinating often.
• Feeling very thirsty.
• Feeling very hungry—even though you are eating.
• Extreme fatigue.
• Blurry vision.
• Cuts/bruises that are slow to heal.
• Weight loss—even though you are eating more (type 1)
• Tingling, pain, or numbness in the hands/feet (type 2)

You Think You Might Like Doing Business in Japan? Think Again

"Of course it was torture."

"I was in solitary confinement for 17 months. Two showers in six-and-a-half months. What civilized country does that?"

"99.4% conviction rate—what chance do you think I had?"

"It was a business decision. Plead guilty and serve 2 years or wait 3 and a half years for trial and then get convicted and spend 2-3 more years"

Mr. Taylor, having planned and executed what some would call the greatest escape, many people are praising you for the ingenuity. Others say you assisted a criminal, therefore you yourself have committed a crime. How do you see yourself?

Article 103 of the Japanese Penal Code says clearly it's not a crime. Bail-jumping is not a crime in Japan, which a lot of people around the world don't realize, cause most Western countries and even in the Middle East, if you're out on bail and you depart that country, it's a violation of law. That's not the case in Japan. So people are entitled to their opinions. But the fact of the matter is the law is the law. Article 103 of the Japanese Penal Code is clear. It says that it's only a violation of law if you help somebody get released from incarceration such as prison, a police car in handcuffs.

But you pleaded guilty. Guilty of what exactly? And if you don't think you committed a crime, why didn't you just go ahead with the trial?

Very simple. It was a business decision. To get to a trial in Japan, as we saw with Greg Kelly, it takes an average of three- to three-and-a-half years. So to get to a trial, I'd have to sit there in jail, in solitary confinement at the Tokyo Detention Center for three- to three-and-a-half years.

But you apologized to the prosecutor and Japanese justice system for helping Ghosn escape. Was this done under duress?

Of course it was. I was in solitary confinement there. I was in solitary confinement for 17 months. I was allowed to have a shower two times in six-and-a-half months. What civilized country does that?

So you think your trial in Japan was rigged from the get-go. You clearly don't think highly of the Japanese legal system, do you?

Of course, it was rigged from the get-go. It was a political decision. You know, (former US President Donald) Trump and (former US Secretary of State Mike) Pompeo are the ones that, you know, (who) extradited us. Trump beating his chest constantly saying he protects veterans. And the number one job of the president of the United States, of any nation, is protect their citizens.

As we saw recently, the British courts denied an extradition request to ship some British citizens to Japan because they say, the British courts say very clearly, that Japan tortures people and violates their human rights. Therefore, they will not extradite them.

There were allegations that you and your son Peter were subjected to torture in prison. Is that true? Take us through the way you were treated.

Of course, it's true. Well, you have no attorney-client privilege, first of all. So to speak to my attorneys and to tell them about the briefings that I had with prosecutors, the interrogation, I have to write it down on a piece of paper that says privileged communication.

However, your privileged communication is a farce because I have to give those papers to the guard. The guards copy them, do whatever they want with them. And you know, 20, 30 minutes later, they get to my lawyers who are sitting on the opposite side of the glass. So, and after you plead guilty every time you see your lawyers, yeah again, you're monitored by a guard and an interpreter there who's writing everything down.

So you don't have attorney-client privilege as well. And as far as the torture, yeah, 17 months in solitary confinement. One ? two showers in six-and-a-half-month period of time. There's no heat. You get frostbite daily, no air conditioning or ventilation during the summer. People are passing out from, you know, heatstroke. So yeah, I would say, and according to the United Nations, that's clearly torture and violation of human rights.

And how is your son doing now?

He's doing fantastic. He's got his health back. He's young. He is vibrant, so he's doing quite well. Thank you.

Well, if what you're saying is true, your country, the United States, must have come to the rescue. Did the US government help in any way?

No, the US government did not help. They helped the Japanese. You know, there's some rumors going on that, you know, I hope that some good investigative journalists somewhere work on (it). And that is that there was some type of business arrangement made where quid pro quo for Aegis destroyers, Aegis radars for Japan, which we found interesting.

I don't know if it's true or not, but we would love to see somebody investigate that to see if it was a quid pro quo and that, you know: You purchase these Aegis radars from us, we'll look favorably upon an extradition request.? It's just amazing that we get extradited for what legal scholars say is not a violation of law whatsoever.

Yet three Japanese citizens from Takata airbag (Tokyo-based Takata Corp. is a company found guilty of manufacturing defective auto airbags) who's now responsible for the death of 29 human beings, don't get extradited when they're indicted in federal court in Michigan back in December of 2016. Where's that logic? Would you consider you and your son collateral damage? How does that make you feel? Especially that you were also incarcerated when you arrived back in the US? Well, anytime you're collateral damage, yeah, you feel like your country betrayed you.

Would you consider you and your son collateral damage? How does that make you feel? Especially that you were also incarcerated when you arrived back in the US?

Well, anytime you're collateral damage, yeah, you feel like your country betrayed you. And they did. And you know, you know that old saying, karma's a ? Well, I understand Trump just got indicted again in Georgia.

Clearly, you seem, you went through a lot. Was the money worth it? How much did Carlos Ghosn pay you? I have heard something between $3 (million) to $5 million. Is that true? And did you get the full amount?

Well, I'm not gonna go into any conversations about finances, but I could tell you my legal fees are still outstanding and they're very high.

Anytime you're dealing with legal fees on both sides of an ocean like that, both the United States and in Japan, your legal fees end up, you know, tallying up quite high. And I had some wonderful lawyers on both sides. You know, I had Dan Marino, Tillman Finley, Abbe Lowell, Paul Kelly, Ty Cobb. And Ty Cobb, former general counsel in the White House, didn't even charge a dime for his time and his service, trying to help prevent this from happening.

And, you know, one of the main things is that, one of the motions they filed in federal court in Boston, was that no American should be extradited to Japan because there will be torture. Judge (Indira) Talwani, the judge requested that the State Department provide her with a sworn affidavit saying that we will not be tortured.

And of course, they play with the diplomatic language saying: ?It's more likely than not, they won't be tortured.? They know very well there's gonna be torture because on the State Department's own website, they publish documents saying that, you know, in the prisons, people were getting frostbite because there's no heat.

Mr. Ghosn, if he was here, would say that he settled the amount as per written agreement with your son. Do you dispute that?

Again, I don't comment on anything like that, and I don't know that he would say such a thing.

So what's next? Will you be suing him? How will you get the money you think you are owed?

Again, it's the financial issues that we don't discuss in a public domain.

So clearly you think Carlos did you wrong, but what are your views on his whole lawsuit with Nissan? Was he a villain or a victim?

You know, that's not for me to say. You know, my whole involvement with this was, and as it was presented to me, that there's a man over there being tortured, and to the point where he can't even, according to the court, talk to his wife.

Tell us about the upcoming Apple TV documentary and how it's different than the one which appeared on Netflix and MBC Shahid.

Well, the Apple documentary's coming out and I understand it's gonna be a four-part series and it will be aired on Aug. 25th, so very shortly.

What is next for you?

Well, next I'm working on my company, which is Vitamin One. It's a healthy hydration drink full of vitamins and electrolytes and no sugar.

Think You Have What You Need to Trade? Think Again - You Need a Solid PC!

And who says you *have* to have a superfast computer to trade? Eddie Z, prize trader, that's who.

The same folk who says the seven biggest mistakes traders make are:

1. Trading on an old, outdated computer system (costs you slippage)
2. Trading on a low-end laptop computer
3. Going to a local retailer
4. Buying a mass-manufactured machine
5. Not having backup systems (UPS and redundant internet connection!)
6. Not doing enough research
7. Not keeping a calm state of mind while trading

WORLD'S FASTEST INTEL TRADING COMPUTER
NEW - INTEL i9-14900KF - 24 Core Processor
Benchmark 60,844

Processor	Intel Core i9-14900KF 24 CORE Processor @ 6.0 Ghz In Turbo Boost Mode - Benchmark 60,844
Processor Cooling	Liquid Cooling
RAM	FREE UPGRADE - 64GB RAM Upgradeable to 128GB
Hard Drive	FREE UPGRADE - 1 TB M.2 Solid State Drive
UPGRADED Case	FREE UPGRADE - Ultra-Quiet Sound Dampening Case
Monitors (optional)	27 Inch LED Quad Monitor Package includes Heavy Duty Steel Stand and all cables ($4095 total)
Warranty	5 Year Warranty & Lifetime Tech Support Click here
Price	$4098 - Complete Package - Includes Radical X14 with 27" Quad Monitor Package and all EZ Bonuses Below OR $2999 - Radical X14 EZ Trading Computer - Computer Only - Includes all EZ Bonuses

What if you insist on a laptop based solution? Got you covered mate:

World's Fastest AI Ready Laptop for Trading
NEW AMD Ryzen 9 Benchmarks at 58,082

Processor	AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX - 16 CORE Processor @ 5.4 GHZ in Turbo Boost Mode - Benchmark 58,082
Graphics	17.3 Inch Screen - 2560 x 1440 (WHQD) LED Backlit IPS Screen - Nvidia RTX 4060 with 8 GB Video RAM - AI READY - more info
RAM	FREE UPGRADE - 64 GB RAM
Drive	FREE UPGRADE - 1 TB M.2 Solid State Drive - Upgradeable to 8 TB
Backup Drive	FREE UPGRADE - 1 TB M.2 Solid State Drive - Upgradeable to 8 TB
Communication	Triple Band Wi-Fi 6E AX211 + Bluetooth Built-in Gigabit Ethernet LAN
Weight	6.2 LBS
Operating System	Windows 11
Other	1x HDMI 2.1 2x USB-C 3.2 Gen2 2x USB 3.2 Type A Backlit Keyboard Built-in Webcam Built-in Mic
Price	$2999

That's Why They're So Great. Professor Chen-Ning Yang Introduces Yang-Mills Gauge Theory

Let's see you pull this off when you're 84 years old! (Let alone having that much black hair:)

You know what the fundamental physics is about? It is to ask how matter is put together. In the 19th century, people realized that everything is made of atoms and molecules. In the 20th century, we learned that molecules are made of atoms. Atoms are made of protons, electrons, and neutrons. But what are protons and neutrons made of? Now we know they are made up of quarks.

So, that is one aspect of what we do. Namely, we want to take matter apart and look at the constituents. But there's another part of the endeavor: how these parts are put together. The reason they are together is because there's a force between them. In daily language, we call it a force; in physics, we call it an interaction. So, the question is, what are the interactions between these constituents? The interaction of force is well-known already. Since Newton's time, there's gravitational force. Through the 19th century, we knew there were electric and magnetic forces. In the 20th century, we learned there are two additional kinds of forces. They are called nuclear forces, which are responsible for the atomic bomb, and weak forces, which are responsible for things like radioactivity.

So, there are now four types of forces. The question is, what is the precise nature of these four types? We know that gravity, through Newton, follows an inverse square law. You probably learned that in high school physics. One of the basic, fundamental questions we face is, how are these three other forces structured? They are not inverse square laws, but what are they? That's where the Yang-Mills Theory or gauge theory comes in. Gauge theory gives a principle that governs how these forces are structured mathematically and precisely.

Originally, in 1918 and 1919, stimulated by Einstein, Hermann Weyl, a great mathematician, proposed what is called gauge theory. He used that to describe electricity and magnetism, and that was successful, but it does not apply to the other two forces: nuclear forces and weak forces. What Mills and I did was generalize what Weyl did, and that became a general principle of forces, including gravity. That principle is now called the gauge principle. The gauge principle's detailed mathematical structure is what we wrote down in 1954.

At the time we wrote it down, nobody believed it was important, and we didn't know it was that important. But we said this is a beautiful idea, and the mathematical structure is very elegant. So, we published a paper about it. Then, 20 years later, various experiments showed that this was approximately the right direction. After struggling for another five years, it became clear that it was not just approximately right, but exactly right. So, that became something that is now the universally accepted principle of how these forces are formed.

1954? Yes.

How do you feel about the fact that 50 years later, something you created has been so important to your field?

Well, of course, I feel good about it. But I tell my students that the structure of everything often has a hidden beauty in it. If you can vaguely sense some of this beauty, do not let go. The reason that in 1954, Mills and I were able to do it is that it was not in agreement with the experiment, and nobody believed it. But we saw the beauty of the structure, so we wrote it down.

By the way, I should add the following, and this has something to do with Stony Brook. This theory was published, and gradually, people didn't believe it, but more and more people saw the beauty of it, so they began to work on it. It was only in the 1970s that it was confirmed by experiment. By the 1960s, there were not many papers, but every year there were 10 or 20 papers about it.

I came to Stony Brook in 1966, and one day, it must have been 1968 or 1969, I was giving a talk. I was giving a course on general relativity, a graduate course, and I wrote down on the blackboard a long formula—a famous formula called the Riemann tensor. Riemann was one of the greatest mathematicians of the 19th century. The Riemann tensor has something to do with Einstein's gravity theory. So, I copied down the long formula of the Riemann tensor on the blackboard. As I was copying it down, it suddenly flashed through my mind that the structure of this Riemann equation is very similar to the equation that Mills and I had written down in 1954. We didn't notice it at the time because we were not doing general relativity.

During that lecture, I found they were very similar. After the class, I went to my office and checked in detail. Sure enough, they were not just similar; they were exactly the same if you defined some quantities correctly. I was a bit excited, but I didn't understand it. So, I went to see Jim Simons. Jim Simons, as you know, was the young department chairman of mathematics at Stony Brook, and he was a great geometer. He knew Riemannian geometry very well.

I went to his office—we were still in that old red-brick building, both his office and mine. I said, "Jim, here's the Riemann formula that you are very familiar with. Some years ago, Mills and I wrote this formula. Look, they are very similar." He thought about it for a while and said, "Yes, yes, that's not strange. They are both fiber bundles."

I asked, "What's a fiber bundle?" He gave me a book written by a famous Princeton mathematician called Steenrod, called *Fiber Bundles*. I went back with the book, but it was impossible for me to understand. Mathematicians have a tendency to write very dry, very abrupt statements. They are precise, but there is no flesh to it, so it's all bones and impossible to understand. So, I didn't understand it. I went back to Jim and said, "This book is useless for physicists, but we want to understand what this fiber bundle business is about. Could you explain it to me?" He said, "Fiber bundles are a new thing in mathematics too, but earlier than in physics. Starting in the 1940s, there were already many papers in mathematics on fiber bundles, and it's now an important branch of geometry." 

So, I asked, "Could you give us some lectures understandable to theoretical physicists?" He said yes, and he gave a series of lunch lectures, very informal. There were maybe 10 of us, faculty and graduate students of the Institute of Theoretical Physics here at Stony Brook. He must have talked for about a whole month, and that was very useful for us.

At the end of that, we decided to give him a gift for the series of lectures. We chipped in money and decided to buy something for him. I went to Irving Kraw, a mathematician I knew very well, and said, "Irving, we want to give Jim a gift. What should we buy?" He said, "Jim cannot spell, give him a dictionary." So, we bought a big dictionary and gave it to Jim. He told me recently that he's still using it.

What we learned from Jim in those lectures was very important, not only for me and for Stony Brook, but in fact, it launched a new trend. That came about this way: after I understood the gist of what the mathematicians were doing with fiber bundles, I realized that indeed both general relativity of Einstein and gauge theory were fiber bundles. I wrote a paper with T.T. Wu of Harvard immediately after that, in which we explained in detail the relationship between the mathematicians' ideas and terminology and the physicists' ideas and terminology. We made a little dictionary. The little dictionary had maybe 15 entries. On the left side were the physicists' terminology; on the right side were the mathematicians' terminology, and there was an exact correspondence.

We called it the dictionary, but there was one item which physicists used repeatedly. Its technical term is called "source." The idea of a source was due to Ampère, you know, the electric current—three amperes, five amperes? That was named after the great French physicist of the 19th century, Ampère. Now in physics, Ampère's idea of a source was a crucial concept. So, we had to have that in our dictionary on the physics side. But on the mathematics side, I went to ask Jim, "What do you call this?" He said, "We don't deal with this concept." So, we left it blank. It's a dictionary with maybe 15 entries on one side and 14 entries on the other side.

Then Isadore Singer from MIT, a distinguished mathematician, came to visit. I had known him, so I gave him a copy of our preprint. He looked at it, and there's this blank. He thought about it and decided that it's a very interesting concept and that they should deal with it. Somehow, in their 20 or 30 years of dealing with fiber bundles, they had never touched on this idea. So, he went to England immediately. He was a great collaborator of perhaps the greatest mathematician today in Great Britain, Michael Atiyah (now Sir Michael Atiyah; at that time, he was not a "Sir" yet). They looked at it and found that this concept, which they had never used but we had dealt with since Ampère, was most interesting. That became a new branch of mathematics.

What do they call it?

Well, there are many names. In particular, a student of Atiyah called Donaldson did the pioneering work in it,   so it's called Donaldson theory. But all those are related to that blank spot.

In some sense, you know, in the first half of the 20th century, physics and mathematics were divorced. In earlier centuries, physics and mathematics were in close collaboration, but in the first half of the 20th century, the mathematicians became more and more abstract. They were very happy. In fact, one of them wrote an article saying that the greatest achievement of 20th-century mathematics was that it finally liberated itself from the shackles of physics. That was by a famous mathematician. But with this fiber bundle business, the mathematicians and the physicists are now coming together again. If you want to say, how did that coming together come about? I would say it has something to do with me and Jim and that blank spot in that dictionary and with Stony Brook. So, we are very happy that Jim continued to be interested in physics and math. You know, now he's a billionaire, and he just announced he would give $25 million to Stony Brook.