Originally published at: Jaques Tits, the mathematician behind Tits buildings, the Tits alternative, the Tits group, and the Tits metric, has died at 91 | Boing Boing
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Looking respectfully at his obituary.
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came to see who is going to make the fatal mistake and open a can of whoop ass on themself. will check back later.
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He’s tits up?
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Oh was he the one who discovered the properties of number 58008?
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I was going to joke about it, then I read the wikipedia entries, and that’s some serious math.
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It is not just inaccurate to say that he named these after himself – essentially no mathematicians do* that, with the exception of the Mandelbrot set – but exactly backwards. What are today frequently called “Tits systems” he tried to get people to call “BN-pairs”, going to far as to name ones with certain properties “flat BN-pairs” and “pointy BN-pairs” in hopes of forestalling the other name.
*There are tricks one can use, though. The finite simple groups known as Con_1, Con_2, Con_3 after John Horton Conway were given a terrible name in his original paper: dot-one, dot-two, dot-three, where the dot is a large “.” and raised to be central in the line. Conway volunteered to me, unasked, that he had given them these terrible names intentionally with the goal that they be renamed after him. Of course it worked.
One reason it is difficult to break into mathematics is that so many things are named after people, and very often, these people names are of little use in figuring out what the mathematical objects are. It took me a while to figure out that all other sciences have terminology that’s just as confusing, but because everything is named with acronyms (which exist in mathematical terminology, but are very rare).
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heh heh - tits
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This is all an overextended joke on someone’s part.
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If I could find it easily, I’d post the “Tits” quote from the movie Hot Fuzz.
But searching for “Hot Fuzz Tits” at work is not exactly safe.
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Totally incapable to sustain usual performance, yes.
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cough cough 
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just tried. can confirm that it’s not a good idea. also couldn’t find the clip!
i was going to post george carlin talking about “New Nabisco TITS!” but that also ended up being fraught with, uh, things i didn’t want to see.
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I found it in a compilation of Olivia Colman moments from the movie by searching on my phone instead of my laptop.
From 0:18 to 0:26:
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Isn’t “Tits Alternatives” butts?
Betcha can’t eat just one!
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