I want to congratulate MSRI and the organizers for such a stimulating and interesting conference. I have learned so much already and I am sure I will learn even more in the remaining two days. All the talks were excellent - with no exception. Lakshman's talk beautifully showed the future of interfacing numerical and symbolic computation, getting rid of the obsession of mathematicians with exact answers. Many times it is impossible to get exact answers, and numerical people knew it. But interfacing both cultures - the numeric and symbolic - was, I think, a big breakthrough. David Eisenbud's talk, although not striclty symbolic, was stimulating too - it is amazing how he can master the blackboard so well and deliver as much if not more, in as much clarity and facility, as most transparencies talks. I was able to find out what the so-called MRC conjecture is; I never knew anything about it. And finally I know what the twisted cubic is - unlike David Bayer who has been studying it all his life, I never heard about it until David Eisenbud's talk. And now I believe I know what it is - although not at the same depth as Dave Bayer. Marc Chardin's talk was over my head, but still I got the message that it is very deep and interesting stuff. Reinhard Laubenbacher's talk told us that symbolic algebra and symbolic computation, computer algebra and combinatorics together will solve the the traffic problems of LA and Saddam Hussein's craziness combined! So, although it is not yet completely implemented, it is very promising. Also H. Park's talk was very interesting and clear: how symbolic computation can be used in real life. Well, that is the main application nowadays - entertainment; every thing else is subordinate to entertainment, the internet, watching TV. Many people who go to the internet do not go right to the MSRI videos because some other sites appear much more entertaining - so imaging is very important. Park's contributions to this are very gratifying. Another thing which was very interesting although a little bit dry was Hendrik Lenstra's talk. But he has his dry sense of humor, and it was a very nice talk mathematically. James Shank also gave a very stimulating talk about SAGBI bases - I never knew about SAGBI, but now I know a little bit. Also, he mentioned my good friend, Gert Almqvist, so I have to write him an email that he got mentioned. Vickie Powers and Bruce Reznick - a double feature - were also very entertaining and very stimulating. It was very nice to meet Vickie Powers because I reallly enjoyed her article in the Monthly about two years ago about how Bruce won a bottle of champagne from Eberhard Becker for solving a long-standing problem on sums of squares and polynomials . I could tell from her article that she is a great speaker and I was not wrong. And of course I like Bruce Reznick's inscription on his tombstone - I hope not too soon - "Real sums of squares do not weep. Out with generic theorems!" . And William Sit's was a very nice talk: many things in addition to the beautiful method of how symbolic computation can help immensely with numerical computations -and being so modest he didn't make explicit enough how important this is, so some people in the audience expressed some skepticism - nevertheless, it is very interesting, I think. And also something I was very amused by - he introduced a new unit of complexity - cups of coffee: how many cups of coffee it takes to obtain a result. Willy Hereman's talk fulifilled a dream of mine - all my life I wanted to know about KdV equations in dynamical systems. I already have bought five books, hoping to get around to it. But then I'd look in the introduction, you know, blah blah blah, but, well, you know, I had other things to do so I'd never go beyond page five. But from these forty minutes of Willie Hereman's talk I think I understand what KdV and all that stuff is. So to understand something you have to program it - if you program you really understand something; otherwise it is really all abstract nonsense. Martin Sombra's talk was also nice, because doing Nullstellensatz was a big deal with Bernstein - a triumph to complex analysis. But now it turns out that it is a triumph allright - but not to complex analysis! That was really a red herring and everything was really algebra embedded in it - that is just a matter of language. All the talks here were excellent - super excellent. But only one talk was truly outstanding. Only one talk, in addition possibly to my own talk, I'll remember until my dying day and perhaps beyond. That was Dave Bayer's talk. I was so inspired by it that I'm even paying 25 bucks to buy the video for this fine talk. A modest price; I would gladly have paid much more. What was nice about Dave Bayer's talk - in addition to its technical content, which I admit I didn't quite understand - was the superstructure, the message behind it, about the joy of doing mathematics. And his debunking certain sacrosanct ideas in mathematics, for example, the obsession with minimality. I think that will help me a lot in my own research. So that was his pep talk which was so stimulating. Also, the amount of metaphors per second exceeded any talk I ever heard before. If ever there will be an MTV - not Music, but a Math TV - there Bayer will be a superstar! That was really stimulating. One of the many metaphors in Dave Bayer's talk was: you're too busy hiking. Stop being so busy hiking - stop and enjoy the view. So this was a really good thing - too many people are so busy hiking so they don't pause to enjoy the view. Even though Bayer is very good at metaphors, he doesn't heed his own metaphor at its origin: the hike, the beautiful hike David Eisenbud organized yesterday. As usual, Dave Bayer was seen to hike a lot, but I didn't see him stopping to enjoy the view as often as he could have. But, mathematically, I think, he does. So one of the things Dave Bayer talked about - well, not talking, he was preaching - the gospel of Bernd Sturmfels. Vickie Powers used the word proselytizing - he was proselytizing the gospel of orders of sums of squares. I am not a preacher and I am not a proselytizer - I am much more than that. I am a prophet!