Tag Archives: mathematics

Resolution

On December 31, I thought about resolving to be even lazier in 2007 than I was in 2006, but I never got around to it.
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Havoc

While we’re on the subject of insects [ "Spiders aren't insects!" --- "Oh, don't be such a freaking literalist!" ], here’s an urgent message from Physics Today: In 2005, we all witnessed, via the international media, the devastation that hurricanes caused in property damage and loss of life. Katrina alone almost destroyed New Orleans and flooded [...]
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1101110010110100000

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary and those who don’t those who are sick of this joke. (Google says there are about 452,00010 instances of it on the web.)
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Attractive

Who would’ve expected to find Lorenz attractors on a box of Godiva chocolates? Here’s a nice Java applet that generates the Lorenz “butterfly.”
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Ones

Laura sent an e-mail to a mutual friend, letting him know about a Terry Jones show on TV this week, The Story of One. Here’s what she got back: Ah yes, one. It’s given us all a lot of trouble. First the Jews turned it into a religion. Then the Christians showed up and kept calling it three. The Manicheans—remember the Manicheans?—kept [...]
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Random?

Of course, nothing’s really random. Nothing comes from nowhere. We’ll use the category “Random” in the slang sense, as in “Where the hell did that come from?” I remember when I had to generate random numbers to pick a couple of winners (we gave out iPods—well, a chance at an iPod—to people who answered a detailed [...]
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  • Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.
    Gravity’s Rainbow

    ‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.
    The Third Policeman