Mar 13, 2010
Mar 9, 2010
Darty, live bloggin
Electricity is now cut, but we are still online, thanks to our Belkin surge protector. Live bloggin.
Some electronics inside the new hob went pouff. A piece needs to be ordered, then somebody will come to repair the thing. 7 days. We still had the old hob, which we kept in the garage. Old hob has taken the place of the new hob. Nice repairman. Handshake.
Off for a walk in the Esterel now. Live bloggin. Over. Out.
Mar 8, 2010
The meaning of π (3)
Recall the last episode. π is an irrational number? Irrational number are infinitely long? How do you know? How do we get to the end of the rainbow?
Sit back and don’t relax. Rational numbers can be expressed by a fraction m/n, where m and n are integers, with n non-zero. For example, 4 is a rational number (4/1 = 4), 0.25 is rational (1/4 = 0.25), and so on. Irrational numbers, then, by definition, cannot be expressed by such a fraction.
The first famous example for an irrational number was the square root of 2, and when Hippasus, a member of the Pythagorean school of mathematicians (Pythagoras, him, the author of the notorious theorem)…when Hippasus came up with the first proof, he was apparently not lauded for his efforts: according to legend, he made his discovery while out at sea, and was subsequently thrown overboard by his fellow Pythagoreans “…for having produced an element in the universe which denied the…doctrine that all phenomena in the universe can be reduced to whole numbers and their ratios.”
How do “we” know π is irrational? Well, “we” did not, for quite some time, although “we” had our suspicions, because all efforts to represent π by a rational number failed. So we had to wait until the 18th century, as the proof requires some serious (infinitesimal) calculus, which had to be invented first (by Newton and Leibniz).
How do we know that irrational numbers have an infinite decimal expansion? Well, because the long division of a rational number either terminates (1/4), or yields a repeating sequence (1/3, for example, or 1/81).
No conspiracy? You mean that's a happy ending?
Stay tuned.
Mar 4, 2010
The meaning of π (2)
In fact, by sheer coincidence, some meaning is apt to crop into meaningless strings. Somewhere along the line some monkey will type "srv zgftj To be or sxew vdkt." (Much) later, some monkey will create the string "ljoh To be or not to dsr cvf.." And so on. How long will it take for a given group of monkey's to churn out the complete works of Shakespeare? By sheer happenstance? Very long. But it's not impossible. The first "To be" may crop up in a year. The first "To be or" might require a decade (we could employ lot's of monkeys that work in parallel). The first "To be or not to be" may require 100,000 or 1,000,000 years...but...you get the idea. The longer the monkies churn along, the longer the take on Hamlet's soliloquy will get, and with infinite time we should eventually arrive at the bard's complete works.
Mar 3, 2010
The meaning of π
Mar 2, 2010
Senator's remarks cause outrage and destruction
Professor Krugman explains: "In fact, reconciliation was used to pass the two major Bush tax cuts, which increased the deficit — by $1.8 trillion."
The Democrats are now planning to use reconciliation to pass health care reform in the face of stubborn Republican opposition.
Feb 28, 2010
"Ahem"...clearing my voice..."ahem"...
OK, let's get serious. On a regular basis, P. Krugman observes an event sequence that already must have brought Socrates to desperation. Here is Krugman's description:
"It goes like this: Person A says 'Black is white' — perhaps out of ignorance, although more often out of a deliberate effort to obfuscate. Person B says, 'No, black isn’t white — here are the facts.'
And Person B is considered to have lost the exchange — you see, he came across as arrogant and condescending."
Krugman has tons of these examples on his blog. Here is another example, closer to home: On this blog, in the post "German for beginners (3)", we associate three lines from the washed-up scriptwriter "Am Brunnen vor dem Tore"...where was I...I meant "Vom Eise befreit..." with a picture of two deer stalking through a thick cover of snow. Then we translate these lines with Google, and the result is gibberish. Subsequently, we first blame the poor scriptwriter for his poor poetry and then blame him for the mismatch between his lines and the winter-deer-picture.
And it happens all the time. And the poor scriptwriter always loses.
-"You are doing this to me all the time!"
-"No, it's YOU, you are doing this to me all the time!"
-"That's what I said."
Feb 25, 2010
Vom Eise befreit
Hidden in this heap was a single sheet of paper, not attached to any of his hopeless feature scripts ("Lethal Weapon meets Dr. Strangelove"). The sheet was covered with three handwritten lines, and nothing else. Here they are:
It's hardly legible, and it's in German, but here is the Google translation:
"Are freed from ice streams and creeks,
Spring holder, invigorating look,
Springeth in the valley hope luck."
Yes, I know. Perhaps I should not have brought this up. Perhaps it isn't German after all. Plus, it's unfortunate that his "poetic" lines do not really match the beautiful winter theme of Dirk's picture. One starts to understand why the washed-up scriptwriter had to end the way he did.
Feb 21, 2010
Alexander Haig (1924 - 2010)
And here it is:
"That day, Secretary of State Haig wrongly declared himself the acting president. “The helm is right here,” he told members of the Reagan cabinet in the White House Situation Room, “and that means right in this chair for now, constitutionally, until the vice president gets here.” His words were taped by Richard V. Allen, then the national security adviser."
Reagan was shot, but not killed, kids, and I was there. Sort of. Reagan was shot in March '81 ("Please tell me you're all Republicans" he told the doctors in the hospital---that's the spirit, President Obama), and I arrived on the scene in May '96, for a workshop at the Hilton Hotel. It was the night of the White House Press Corps dinner, and Wolf Blitzer and this woman, she who always sits in the first row in a red dress and gets the first question during a WH presser (Dr. Alzheimer will remember her name), were standing in animated conversation outside our conference room. I could have touched them. I could have asked for an autograph.
We left for dinner downtown. Outside, hunks with sunglasses and big earpieces(white, thick spiraling cables) had descended upon the scene, and were directing towing trucks with spiraling gestures. The trucks were hoisting vehicles still parked around the hotel. Crowds had gathered. Somebody helpfully explained to me the implications of roadside bombs and the President's plan to attend the dinner. There must have been hundreds of secret service agents, all listening ostentatiously to their earpieces, all gearing up for the big event, the President's Arrival.
We waited for the president. We waited more. Clinton was always late. Finally the motorcade arrives, hunks on bikes, ambulances, limousines, more hunks on bikes, cars, trucks, more ambulances, larger limousines, ever larger limousines. Suddenly, the motorcade stops, with the largest limousine right in front of the entrance. We would see the President!
Then, without prior warning, the president's limousine backs up into a concrete cubicle next to the entrance. A steel shutter comes down.
And that was that.
They had built a special access garage for the president right where Reagan had been shot in '81.
Learning from history.
Feb 18, 2010
Feb 16, 2010
Cellar door
Cellar door. Cellar door. Cellar door.
Cellar door. Cellar door. Cellar door.
I don't get it.
I like "dubloon", though.