This is great:

Ms. McKellar, now a semiregular on "The West Wing" playing a White House speechwriter, Elsie Snuffin, is probably the only person on prime-time television who moonlights as a cyberspace math tutor.

Her mathematics knowledge extends well beyond calculus. As a math major at the University of California, Los Angeles, she also took more esoteric classes, the ones with names like "complex analysis" and "real analysis," and she pondered making a career move to professional mathematician.

"I love that stuff," Ms. McKellar said last month during a visit to Manhattan after a play-reading in the Hamptons. Her conversation was peppered with terminology like "epsilons" and "limsups" (pronounced "lim soups").

"I love continuous functions and proving if functions are continuous or not," she said.

She may also be the only actress, now or ever, to prove a new mathematical theorem, one that bears her name. Certainly, she is the only theorem prover who appears wearing black lingerie in the July issue of Stuff magazine. Even in that interview, she mentioned math.

Real Analysis is not that esoteric! Dear, lord. However, the rest of the stuff is cool.

Heh. I love unexpected math nerds almost as much as closet rock and roll fans. (Though I already knew Danica had studied it in college.)

Unexpected Math Nerd: Phil Alvin, lead singer of The Blasters. He went back to grad school when the band ended.

Unexpected Rock Fan: June Lockhart, the mom on Lost In Space who had a huge Bowie poster over her bed in 1972.

Didn't Heddey Lamarr (no, not Hedley!) help to invent sonar or some such WWII submarine thingy?

Overheard in New Yorkers on restaurants

[link]

I am in receipt of a $50 certificate for TGI Friday's ... I'm still not sure what to do with it.

Booze, in the form of froofy drinks, is the only answer, I think.

"I love continuous functions and proving if functions are continuous or not," she said.

I don't remember math very well, but it feels like I learned this.

ETA: this is a snippet of a longer post where I complained about overblown claims for famous people's intelligence, so I meant to say, is that really that hard?

Friday's isn't so cheap that $50 would last long. Unless that's just the Special Manhattan Pricing. I went in one a couple of years ago, and was SHOCKED. We left and went to a pub.

OW.

I just lifted a box and caught the edge on my big toenail. There's a big chunk missing now, and I have no nail file.

Hedy Lamarr sketched out the concept behind cellular channels, during WWII. The Dept. of War politely declined her contribution, but yeah.