theoretical mathematics and Critical Mass

Today I heard from a friend that there's a theoretical mathematician from England who is making some progress at understanding sensitivities to electromagnetic fields. He apparently understands that thing where people are sensitive to some frequencies but not others, just like my mountain biking buddy described. He also bamboozles rooms full of MD-type doctors, so it would be cool if some sick physicist could just turn up one of his papers on the web and figure it out, but I suppose that would make things too easy. As a side-note, I'm feeling well enough to be a little annoyed that I don't have access to any journal I want on the web. I mean, if I put a little work into it, I'm sure I could disguise myself as a U of A type and sneak into a library there to find one or another of his papers, but it's somewhat optimistic for me to expect to be able to function in a library full of slightly-moldy paper and petroleum-based ink.

In non-academic news, it sounds like last Friday's Critical Mass ride in San Francisco erupted in violence because some lady from Redwood City driving a minivan clipped a rider. Whatever happened, a bunch of riders turned on the minivan, causing $5300 in damage and freaking out the kids in the van. News reporters appear to be as baffled by the whole thing as the minivan driver, but I've seen riders seriously threatened by clueless cars, and there's nothing like it for scaring the living daylights out of a cyclist. Given a fight-or-flight reaction and most cyclists' tendency to chase things, be they hills, other cyclists, or cars, that they turned on the minivan does not surprise me in the least. I am, however, somewhat surprised by the quantity of the damage they caused.