Every now and then I actually feel that I have made a positive contribution to the world.
Math warning : Orange
I loaned “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers” to Bitterkat, the biography of Paul Erdos, a quirky man who lived for math. He had few personal possessions, no career to speak of, never married. He would wander around; show up at a mathematician’s home or office, usually unannounced, and say, “My mind is open.” And the mathematician would stop what they were doing in order to work with Erdos.
I think the book is great. Erdos is a very entertaining character. The author does a good job of explain advanced math concepts, and even showing a practical use for some of them.
Bitterkat tells me that she and her kids even worked on some of the problems, such as the
Four Colors Theorem.
What a great way for kids to spend time in the summer, doing topology with their mom.
I give the book an “A” and encourage everyone to read it.
A while ago, I was interested in the possibility of making a seven sided die. I should have started my search with Ian Stewart.
Math warning : Red
So I was paging through magazines I should have recylced a long time ago and found the "Tight Tins for Round Sardines" article by Ian Stewart in, Feb 1998, Scientific American, pp 94-96.
The article talks about the optimal packing arrangements for circles in enclosed spaces. For those of you who think that math needs a practical reason, imagine packing bottles in a crate for shipping.
He starts with packing in a square, then a circle, then a triangle, then packing cirlces on the surface of a sphere. Evidently Dutch botanist Pieter ML Tames posed the circles on sphere question in 1930.
There is a drawing of the answer. So at least I know there's an answer.
The way I figured it, you mark on a sphere 7 dots, all equal distances from each other, then you grind down the dots evenly, eventually you would have a seven sided die, with rounded edges.
The purpose? For DnD, I wanted to roll a seven sided die, because I think it would be funny.
I will keep the article around if anyone wants to read it.
Seldom in the history of cinema is there a film that is so timely and poignant with its telling of a story of contemporary moral imperative.
The moral of the story: “monorail is bad.”
Spoiler warning FLASHING RED
Well, I wasn’t bored, like I was for “Sin City”, but I really wasn’t entertained.
Let’s start with the fight scenes…very realistic, as in choppy, blurry, can’t really see what’s going on. If I wanted to watch realistic fights, I’d watch Ron Artest. I like a choreographed fight scene, it helps tells the story, for example, “Star Wars,” “Princes Bride,” “the Matrix,” “Shanghi Knights,” “Scorpion King,” and “Hero”.
Allegedly this rendition of Batman is more realistic. More realistic than what, I am not sure.
The haiku premise:
City is lawless
rich vigilante fights back
he has cool toys, cape.
When we add a few more details to the premise, we see how silly it gets.
There is a secret gang of kung-fu dudes that have been secretly destroying civilizations that they deem too corrupt for centuries. They find boy billionaire, train him, and expect him to destroy his hometown. He destroys their wooden hideout, because they were careless about fire & explosives. He returns home, beats up some mobsters, with the help of some gadgets he finds in forgotten multi-million dollar research complex in his dad’s old company. There is a crazy psychiatrist (hmmm…maybe Tom Cruise was right about psychiatry) who is using weaponized hallucinogenic drugs on incarcerated criminals, and he’s dumping the drug into the cities water supply, which conveniently goes right under the insane asylum. This is necessary so that when the secret water vaporizing weapon rides around the town on the monorail, it will make the citizens of the city go crazy. This is necessary so that the lawless Gothom will implode in anarchy, thus fulfilling the circle of life as deemed necessary by the kung-fu dudes. (Remember them, they survived the exploding hideout.) Yes, the kung-fu dudes respect law and society so much that they will come up with this outlandish scheme to push Gothom into chaos. But Batman saves the night.
You want a realistic way for a city to dive into anarchy? How about invite the WTO, or have a major sports team win a national championship. That would be interesting; Batman must make sure that the home team loses.
Regarding capes, as best explained by Edna ‘E’ Mode, “No capes!”
Let me tell you about rich white folk. When the city goes bad, or black, or bubonic, they leave. If Gothom were truly lawless, people with money would have left.
Batman, a good guy, when going on his speeding escape from the police, destroys a lot of city property. Yes, the innocent taxpayers will have to foot that bill. How do you feel now Mr. Wayne, knowing that the money needed to repair police cars, freeway onramps, and police officer medical bills will be diverted from social services?
Dear Hollywood, regarding temptation, please read “Screwtape Letters” by CS Lewis. It is the charming story of a senior demon teaching a junior demon the fine art of temptation. You don’t just say to someone “cut off this bad guy’s head, he deserves it, then we will join you, as you return home and destroy your birthplace.”
Maybe I’ve been ruined by other movies I’ve seen. Jack Nicholson is a very entertaining Joker. If you are going to have “an easily escapable situation involving an overly elaborate and exotic death”, please use “ill tempered mutated sea bass with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.”
Oh, and by the way, Elastigirl is incredibly hot.
Final Grade : C-