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Chinese Mathematicians Prove Poincare Conjecture
Joe Lau writes to mention a story running on the Xinhua News Agency site, reporting a proof for the Poincare Conjecture in an upcoming edition of the Asian Journal of Mathematics. From the article: "A Columbia professor Richard Hamilton and a Russian mathematician Grigori Perelman have laid foundation on the latest endeavors made by the two Chinese. Prof. Hamilton completed the majority of the program and the geometrization conjecture. Yang, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with Xinhua, 'All the American, Russian and Chinese mathematicians have made indispensable contribution to the complete proof.'"
You might think that this is useless to you. However simply memorize a few quotes from the article and you can be prepared for any situation. Boss unexpectedly wants a status report? Sure boss, currently my I'm developong a compact n-manifold that is homotopy-equivalent to the n-sphere if it is homeomorphic to the n-sphere. We'll be done in a couple of weeks. Wife bothering you to take out the trash? Sure honey right after I demonstrate that every simply connected closed three-manifold is homeomorphic to the three-sphere (in a topologist's sense) S^3, where a three-sphere is simply a generalization of the usual sphere to one dimension higher. Never be at a loss for words again!
Philosophy.