The World is Either a Donut or a Rabbit

This New York Times story about a reclusive mathematician who appears to have solved a famous problem isn’t really helpful explaining the solution’s relevance to those of us who are, shall we say, less than up to speed with the latest in topology theory. Oh sure, it tries to explain why the problem matters, but it’s the sort of explanation you’re used to hearing from, say, a villain in a Renny Harlin movie:

The conjecture is fundamental to topology, the branch of math that deals with shapes, sometimes described as geometry without the details. To a topologist, a sphere, a cigar and a rabbit’s head are all the same because they can be deformed into one another. Likewise, a coffee mug and a doughnut are also the same because each has one hole, but they are not equivalent to a sphere.

How this is relevant to anything or anyone beyond the binary halls of nerddom I have no idea. Reading on to the end, though, I think we get a sense of what’s really going on:

Asked about Dr. Perelman’s pleasures, Dr. Anderson said that he talked a lot about hiking in the woods near St. Petersburg looking for mushrooms.

… which is exactly what all my hackey-sacking hippie friends would’ve said about all that time they spent traipsing through the woods, babbling on about how things were all connected, thinking they were solving the problems of the universe.