The enterprising citizen-journalists affiliated with the Huffington Post have discovered the truth about me: I am a Pluto-hating fiend. First we remove it from the list of planets, next we remove it from the sky altogether…
There has been intensive discussion of Nasar and Gruber’s Manifold Destiny at Not Even Wrong, in these threads: Latest on Poincare, 2006 Fields Medal Winners, and Some Links. The controversy centers around whether Nasar and Gruber are unfair to Yau, but has taken an interesting turn: some of the commenters accuse the article of perpetuating stereotypes of Chinese mathematicians. The existence of a stereotype of Chinese mathematicians is news to me (ironically given the situation, there is a well-developed stereotype of Russian mathematicians that I have heard people invoke), so I’m curious if anyone else has ever heard any such stereotyping.